Of bills and bears

I've been catching up on movie watching since I finished and filed my taxes and am now waiting for the money to be deposited in my account. Money is also on my mind, but in the sense of paying bills and remembering annual dues that have to be paid. Dues seems like such a small amount of money until they all hit at once. If I don't get to them immediately, I put them on my mental To Do list and promptly forget about them until they nag me over and over, which does no good unless I actually have access to money at the same time they're nagging. It's not a good example to set to be a board member and the newsletter editor who reminds people to pay their dues when I forgot mine. At least mine are paid now so I can safely nag others.

For the first time in years, there is real milk in my fridge right now. I usually buy almond milk but this time I splurged and got real milk. Very strange indeed, but I wanted to make real hot cocoa with real milk, but it's organic milk. I don't like hormones and antibiotics in my meat or eggs and I know that if the hormones and antibiotics are being injected into the living cow it's going to show up in the milk, cheese, and butter, so I buy organic. I have enough hormones circulating in my system so I don't need external help and I don't want to confuse my menopausal status now. It's just too hard to go through all those hot flashes again just when things are settling down, although some hot flashes would be good right now since it's so cold. People who have lived here a lot longer than I have say they thing this winter has been the coldest they can remember. I don't disagree. It has been quite frosty, although there hasn't been much snow down here in my little west side neighborhood. However, there has been quite a bit of snow in the higher elevations and that means good snow pack and lots of melt water coming in the spring -- if it ever gets here.

I received another story to edit for another anthology and I have ignored it for two whole days. I guess I'd better go over it, dispute or accept the editing changes, and send it back so I can check something else off my To Do list. I have been very productive this week, although not as productive as I should have been. Still, I finished and submitted my taxes, paid my dues, worked like a dog, bought groceries and put them away, forced myself to read the current review book and finally made a blog post, so I'm not doing too badly. I also watched a couple of movies: Sweeney Todd, which has a very interesting literary history, and The Golden Compass. I wonder why Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig figure so prominently on the movie poster since they have very little screen time.

Did you catch how thick Nicole looked? Was she pregnant when the movie was filmed? I know they're setting things up for the sequel, but I cannot find anything that shows when or if the sequel will be made. They sort of have to go through with it since they went to all the trouble to set it up, but the movie is no Harry Potter. I haven't read the books but the movie was interesting and fast-paced. Lyra is quite a handful and a very determined little girl, a real firecracker. I enjoyed the movie but feel it should have been either longer or more involved than it was. It felt like it skimmed the surface, although there was plenty of action and lots of explanation and the special effects were magical. I especially liked Ian McKellen as the armored bear Iorek Byrnison. I immediately recognized his voice and style. Should be interesting to see what -- if anything -- happens next. I definitely want to read the book so I understand all the hullabaloo about how much the Magisterium was toned down. Should be very interesting.

That is all. Disperse.

Minutiae

I finally saw I Am Legend with Will Smith. I enjoyed Will's performance immensely but I have to say the special effects and CGI weren't nearly as riveting and frightening as the 1971 version, Omega Man with Charlton Heston. There wasn't much interaction with the plague victims and all they did was roar and bite and climb up walls like they were monkeys on acid. The CGI effects were too visible and not sleek enough to make them anything but paltry next to Anthony Zerbe's menacing and intelligent leader of the "Family". Still, Will Smith's acting was very convincing and quite impressive, but it wasn't enough to erase the obvious computer generated effects. Sorry about that. Sometimes, the simple way is the best.

I have my taxes done and filed, but unfortunately, due to making a considerable sum of money from writing last year, I cannot e-file my federal taxes. At least the package is in the mail and I'm way ahead of most of the pack so it shouldn't take six weeks to get my check and they will deposit it directly into my account. I still could e-file the state taxes and it's a nice enough chunk of money that it will keep me in new geek toys at least until the feds come through. I'm just glad all the hard work is done and I can rest until next year while the rest of you wait it out until the last few hours before April 15th. I like getting the hard stuff over and done with as soon as possible.

I also got a notice from Adams Media about the first of the eight books coming out this year. It was from their publicity rep and it looks like I'm going to be doing interviews and book readings and signings for the next year or two. The nice thing, especially since stories in Cup of Comfort and Chicken Soup, both of which are owned by Adams Media and F+W Publications, is that even though the stories were work for hire and I got a one time payment, I am also being paid to do the publicity. As much as I hate doing publicity, I'll grit my teeth, read and sign books, answer questions, and send in my invoices to be paid. Even if I have to go out of town, if I have enough notice, I can schedule a book signing or two and Adams Media will stock the place with books and make sure press kits are sent, and I will be paid promptly. Since I have plans for next year that require a considerable amount of money, those events will definitely help out. The only thing is that my mother wants to come out and watch me do readings and signings. I think she thinks it will be some kind of media event and that's not the case. She's been watching way too much television. I'm not Patricia Cornwell or even John Cornwell, just one author among many who contributed stories to a few books. She'll have to wait until I'm on the NY Times best sellers list for what she wants to be a part of.

In the meantime, there are more books to read and review and more checks to cash, stories to write, reviews to post, articles to research and write and ham club newsletters and exam sessions to keep me busy. Life could be better. I could be living in a little mountain cabin high in the Rockies around 10,000 feet with a stream burbling close by where trout jump and swim and the wild life treks through my door yard and stays out of my garden. Life could also be a whole lot worse. There's always room for improvement -- and that's a good thing.

That is all. Disperse.

Casualties of war

Everywhere you turn these days the government, and quite a few people, have declared war: war on terror, drugs, cancer, etc. But what about the prisoners and casualties of these wars? What happens to them?

We have a vast vocabulary for war but not many words for peace and even less experience with peace. Our economy works best during war, when we are producing the materiel and foods to sustain war. During peace time, our economy flounders and founders after the first few years of prosperity in the wake of war reparation, leaving the sick and wounded and their families and friends bereft. I wonder if it's genetic or if we are addicted to the adrenalin rush and, like junkies, we crave action and discord. Whatever the cause, we need to establish and maintain a vocabulary and mind set for peace otherwise we will continue to go to war to ease the tensions of living at peace when everything inside us aches for the return of adrenalin-fueled violence.

One friend has been deep in the midst of a crushing depression because of such a domestic war. She was beaten down when she stood up for what was right and responsible and fought until she could fight no more. But her opponent was stronger and had many more years of experience with battle, having won for so long because of my friend's lack of desire to fight. It was easier to allow to step aside or lie down and stay quiet until the storm passed. Now she's dealing with the knowledge that she made a bad deal, that she put the idea of family ahead of everything else in her life even though there is no real sense or fact of family to protect. That's the way it is with children who are the products of alcoholic parents. If they don't turn into alcoholics themselves, and that fear is paramount in my friend's life, they become pleasers and caretakers who put themselves and everything they are or wish to be at risk. The end up with abusive spouses in most cases and feel they are the ones to blame because they're not generous enough, not quiet enough, no helpful enough, no loving enough, simply not enough. They carry the burden of the relationship emotionally, mentally and sometimes even financially struggling to maintain the illusion of family. A spouse and children do not make a family just like a house does not make a home. The intangibles are missing. The feelings of family and home aren't there. They go through the motions of family and home like children with bank accounts playing house but the real feelings, the very essence of home and family don't exist, and there is no way to create it because there is no love with which to create it.

When families fall apart after a death or divorce they aren't falling apart; they never existed in the first place. No amount of glue will hold them together. They might seem to be together, but the sense of common values and needs and the fact of love were never there. They were individuals who agreed to eat and sleep and visit and live together, but they were never a family, not really. Distance and personal concerns do not destroy a family; nothing destroys a real family.

When people, like my friend, get their emotional needs met from others in such a way that allows them to continue in an abusive and dysfunctional relationship, they miss the point. They are not doing themselves or their spouses and children any favors. They simply perpetuate the lie and the facade of being a family and they give the abuse spouse more power because they have given up their own power to stay. Unfortunately, I know far too many people like that -- people who stay in dysfunctional relationships for the kids or because they think they're too old to start over -- and as much as it pains me I have had to learn to walk away. I offer a hand up and advice, but most people don't want assistance, they want somewhere they can go, someone to whom they can go to get their emotional needs met so they can stay for the sake of appearances. They use their friends and the ones they love like copper top batteries, feeding on their energy, not to harm, but to exist, to stay, to feed the power hungry abuser to whom they cling. Being a battery for such a relationship is draining and it only makes things worse, but it's hard to walk away from someone you love.

I've learned to think of it as a friend who stepped into quicksand. I will keep holding out a hand while I'm anchored to solid ground only so long as they are willing to stay calm and help themselves out. If they continue to flail and sink deeper and deeper, as much as I love them, I have to let go or go down with them. I will miss them and I will grieve for them, but I will not let go of my own life to commit suicide with them. It's a hard decision to make -- the point at which you walk away -- and it never stops hurting, especially when you have to watch them sinking deeper and deeper in the muck, but they have a decision to make, too. They must either save themselves or continue to commit slow suicide. I choose not to watch.

Some casualties of war never recover, locked in nightmares and flashbacks of horrors beyond imagining. Some casualties of war make it halfway back and some make it all the way back only to give their lives and their resources over to greedy exploiters who never lost the taste for war while they consume all the resources and energy around them in every way possible. We need to learn to live with peace and find the strength inside us to cut off the resources and energy to the greedy hordes -- or even to one single greedy person bent on exploitation -- or they will destroy us all and there will be no one left standing to mourn the lost and dead.

That is all. Disperse.

Mud slinging before breakfast

It's too early in the morning for political mud slinging, but it arrived in my email box from a very good friend so I looked. Jeez, will these people ever get down to basics and business and leave the mud slinging out of it? Probably not. It's politics we're talking about. All this hullabaloo over whether or not Barack Obama is or is not a Muslim and whether or not he holds his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance. My whole family are fundamentalist Christians, but I'm not and yet I went to church and was once very active as a Xian during my teens and early twenties. That does not change the fact that I am a pagan and that is what I will remain. Get over it, people. I don't put my hand over my heart during the singing of the National Anthem, but you'll find tears in my eyes and my pulse racing. Does that mean I don't respect the flag or the national anthem? No, it means I put my hand over my heart during the Pledge and stand at attention during the Anthem. I guess that means, according to the current mud slinging, that I am an enemy of the U.S. and like to go terrorist at the first opportunity -- or when I get into office. I knew when I read the part that Obama refused to take his oath of office on the Bible that they had mixed things up with Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison. These people do what they do best, seek to inflame public opinion with half truths and misdirection. It's like putting whipped or shaving cream around a dog's muzzle and beating him then shoving him out into the street and yelling, "Mad dog!" Yeah, I'd be mad, too.

What really interested me was that the email said they got their news from Snopes.com and that's where I went to check it out. Despite the standards of some journalists, I actually check out sources to be sure. I wonder how many of the people who forward that email will do the same thing -- probably very few judging from the long list of people who actually forwarded it to me. I think with Obama's diverse and multicultural background he will make a good president and I'd vote for him over Hillary in a hot New York second. We have had enough Clinton for the next two or three millennia and don't need Slick Willy and his co-dependent wife back in the White House for another term. Get real people. She is an option just because she's a woman? If that was the case, why didn't she run before and not Slick Willy?

My views on Hillary are based on years of research and ferreting out tidbits of news from the gossip, but they were fixed forever when I checked out a story about her following 9/11. Hillary was invited personally to a memorial service for several of the 9/11 victims. The first thing out of her mouth was whether or not there would be press at the memorial. When she was told there was no opportunity for a photo op she said she wouldn't be there either because it wouldn't boost her career. She needed to be seen mourning for her fellow Americans not actually mourning for them. To her, the aftermath of 9/11 was a chance to win points for her bid for the White House and nothing more. She is a political animal and her tears after the Massachusetts primary were crocodile tears. I don't believe she cares anything about America or Americans except where it can further her own political aims.

Let's face it. Men and women like those who fought for our freedom from tyranny over 200 years ago are not going to be voted into office because they lack the money or the political savvy to do the job. The presidency is a contest based on who has the most money, the best policy spinners and is the best at mud slinging. It's not about duty or honor or leading the country any more. It is more about power and being able to further a career of graft and privilege at the expense of the American taxpayers and gathering the proceeds of $200 a plate dinners where you talk about crap and BS and pander to the money men and political machine. It's a sin and a shame that leading the country has become a rest stop on the road to power, fame and riches instead of a position of honor.

That is all. Disperse.

We're off and running

Actually, this is all because of all the writing I submitted last year, but I received two notices just a few moments ago. One is an article for national magazine, a profile, and the other is yet another story bought by Cup of Comfort books. Colleen Sell added, "You did it again !!!" in the subject line. We're getting to know each other quite well. So that is three sales altogether and this is just the 7th day of January. I can live with that and just in time for Elvis Aron Presley's birthday if he was still alive (that's tomorrow).

That is all. Disperse.

Poison pens

I turned in early last night after wrestling with the keyboard on my laptop that suddenly decided it needed to be cleaned. I pried a few keys off but it took a lot longer to get them back on again. Good thing I have so much patience or I'd have thrown in the towel, gritted my teeth and took it in to be serviced AGAIN. Not going to happen. I'm not afraid of taking things apart -- or putting them back together.

Instead, I went to bed with the founding fathers and found them infinitely amusing and thought provoking. In recent years, they have all come under fire for their various mistakes and foibles, basically, for their humanity, and being a middle-aged or aged white man was not a good thing. Christopher Columbus, it was decided, was a thief and a pirate who destroyed civilizations as if on a whim in order to get gold and find a western route to the Orient. All of Western civilization's men of vision and adventure were, in short, nothing more than evil men greedy for gold and fame, so I found the book I'm reading to review, Virtue, Valor, & Vanity a delightful surprise in so many ways. Yes, the founding fathers were human and all too human when their vanity and pride were -- they felt -- under siege, but they were also intelligent, interesting and visionary men.



John Adams, Washington's vice president and eventually the second president of the U.S. under the new Constitution (Washington was not the first president, since there were a few before him under the Continental Congress and before the Constitution was ratified by all the colonies) was jealous of nearly all his colleagues, most especially with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, although he intensely disliked Alexander Hamilton, who Adams felt was a preening peacock bent on fame at any cost. Adams didn't like his politics either. Franklin was too lazy as far as Adams was concerned and altogether too interested in fame and vain to the highest degree. Adams served as Franklin's associate in France during and after the Revolutionary War when Franklin was Ambassador to France.

Franklin's rustic clothing, fur hat and easy manners made him the darling of the French people and he made friends and conquests wherever he went. The French, those weather vanes of fashion, gave up their gaudy show of fashion to copy Franklin's rustic style, even to the point of copying his fur hat. Women swooned and vied for Franklin's attention and the men were just as captivated. Adams saw Franklin as a know-it-all and exceedingly pretentious and envied him with a keen and bitter jealousy. Franklin, more than thirty years older than Adams, had done a great deal during his 70+ years for the colonists and in pursuit of knowledge. Adams, by comparison, was prissy and jealous of everyone, hiding his contempt and anger in his journals and in letters to friends.

Adams and Thomas Jefferson had been very close friends until they clashed over politics during Adams's tenure as VP when Jefferson was Secretary of State. He considered Jefferson a threat to his position and a political enemy since Jefferson was a Republican and Adams a Federalist. Adams envied Jefferson's abilities and fame and railed against him whenever and wherever he had a chance, even to the point of blackening Jefferson's professional reputation in fit after fit of pique. Jefferson considered Adams's jealousies not at all and left Adams to himself, but Adams would not let the enmity die, carrying his jealousy nearly to his grave. He finally gave in and sent Jefferson a note wishing him a happy New Year and Jefferson, delighted to have his friend back, responded effusively, carrying on a correspondence with Adams until Adams's death.

Adams even envied Washington his fame and his figure, as he envied Jefferson's, because he was a short man by comparison. Standing next to such elegance and composure, he was eclipsed and felt as though he lived always in their shadows.He felt everything he did was tainted by association. Despite his bitterness and jealousies, Adams had a good mind and did a great deal for the furtherance of the American cause.

Reading the private thoughts and correspondence of men like the founding fathers, put me in mind of other more literary enmities and jealousies, some of which have spawned very creative tales and books, like Nathaniel Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter that he wrote because of his enmity with Dr. Wesselhoeft, a disagreement that included Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. The annals of literary history are full of enmities of people who were once friends and more often than not came to literary blows based on jealousy, envy and betrayals, and then there are those who attacked their colleagues to protect their secrets, calling the ones who held their secrets liars and attempting to blacken their professional reputations in order not to be found out. Most often, their attacks were based on the feeling that because they were assisted by someone they perceived to be more talented or knowledgeable, they could not truly call their successes their own, that everything they did was tainted because they had not succeeded alone and could not enjoy their success. Their jealousy ate them alive until it poisoned nearly everything they did because they were not content to see things in a more realistic and honest light. The anger and desire to destroy their colleagues crept into everything they wrote. Some of these literary feuds remain as fascinating and humorous tales.

It is said there is none more dangerous than a woman scorned, but I think such a woman is far less dangerous than an intelligent and talented person full of spite, envy and jealousy in pursuit of fame.

That is all. Disperse.

Time to vote

It's that time of the year when the Preditors & Editors nominations become the talk of the Internet -- at least for the writing community. There are lots of articles, e-books, editors, authors and wannabes vying for their spot at the top of the writing food chain. Until Tuesday, January 5th, you have the opportunity to nominate and vote for your favorites. Forget about all the hype and people begging for your votes and vote for what you like. You might even discover some new venues where you can submit your work. P&E brings them all out in force. Take a minute or two over the next ten days and see what is out there, what you like, who you like and what's available. There's no such thing as too much information.

That is all. Disperse.

Hot start to a cold new year

I was getting ready to unglue my backside from the chair at my desk and get something for dinner -- probably homemade hummus and raw vegetables. Mmmmm I checked my email and got a wonderful surprise. Common Ties new category of personal stories, 20 questions accepted one of my answers. They shortened my answer, but I don't have a problem with that since it means they're paying me $3 a word -- or thereabouts. With a start like this to the year, everything's going to be golden.

I had given up on them accepting any of my answers (I sent a few) because it has been a few weeks. First lesson of the year: Never give up no matter what.

Now, go and write and enjoy yourself. That's what it's all about.

That is all. Disperse

Pure camp

It has been some time since I read all of Jane Austen's novels and watching Persuasion and The Jane Austen Book Club again reminded me how much I have missed reading the stories. It's not that the movies aren't good, but I miss the language and the full scope of Austen's vision. I find more and more that I miss language and the exercise of reality and fantasy while I lose myself in a good story -- or even a mediocre one. It's like coming home tonight from running errands and the landlady asking me if I've ever heard of the movie, Barbarella. Of course I have and it's one of my favorite very campy movies, right up there with The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Flesh Gordon. Movies like that you can't find in a novel -- at least not that I've found, except for Motel of the Mysteries. Then again, one of the books I recently read and have yet to review borders on camp while maintaining the pretense of being a serious look at a historical personage with religious significance. Puts me in the mind of David Niven telling a cab driver who wanted Niven's honest opinion about his play about Abraham that he made Abraham sound like a butcher from Queens. Can a writer flout historical accuracy in order to make a point based on religious significance without pandering to accepted history or wounding religious cattle? Camp has its place but camp that pretends to be revelation of the inner working of ancient minds misses the point.

It's a fine line to walk, much like the tightrope that stretches between real friendship and sycophantic pandering.

That is all. Disperse.

I'm baaack!

And I'm rested but feeling the pinch of the coming weeks of work before I can take another day (or week) off. The snow was a beautiful sparkling expanse of endless white and the banks of the river edged with ice while the river rushed by in frothy spangled streamers of liquid light and dark. A stand of white pillared aspens naked in the pallid light marched off into the distance and I wandered among them swishing through the snow-covered drifts of seasons of leaves after a breakfast of fresh fruit and hot chocolate delivered to my door every morning. Another cabin stood nearby with a gravel walk that ended at the main house a half mile up the path and no one stopped by during my stay except to deliver breakfast and silently whisk the empty tray away while I walked.

It was difficult leaving but a growing sense of longing for the familiar confines of my own walls and books and furniture brought me back with a sigh of relief. The silence here is not as deep or as all pervasive but it's home and I'm comfortable here. I'll return to the cabin next year, maybe in late spring when the scents of warming earth and budding aspens are as intoxicating as the smoky smell of golden aspens quaking in a faint wind like Midas's coins, and will probably be just as glad to return home as I will be to arrive at the secluded cabin. There's nothing like travel to remind me of how much I enjoy being here among my things and sleeping in my bed where books lie beside me in tumbled disarray.

The silence was soothing and I luxuriated in a candlelit bathtub full of scented foam rising on wisps of steam with a mug of hot chocolate and a book or lying back in the warm waters while music swirled through the air to soothe and excite me in turns. It was a dream vacation that I will dream again and again, looking forward to the long nights and solitary walks as much as to the writing and reading without limits or restraint, often falling asleep with a book in my lap to awaken and pick up where I left off. There is so much to look forward to experiencing as though it is the first time and it will be a first each time.

That is all. Disperse.

Secret Santa

I was so anxious to begin writing this morning I turned on the wrong burner. Nothing like radicchio and micro greens in melted plastic for breakfast when all I really wanted was boiled eggs. The smoke and stench will clean in a week or two.

Santas past are on my mind, but especially the year I played Secret Santa for the vice-principal of Westmoor Junior High. For one week, I made, bought and creatively appropriated gifts for Mr. Spivey, but on the fifth day, the Friday before Xmas break, I was out of ideas. I had painted two pictures of English sailing ships for my mother: one in oils and one in watercolor and the watercolor painting looked the best, so I took it, wrapped it up and slipped it into Mr. Spivey's in box in the office. I also included a tag with my name on it, since that was the day we were to reveal ourselves as the Secret Santa. Mr. Spivey loved his gift. He had made ships in a bottle and loved sailing (I didn't know that) and he had the painting framed and hung it on his wall. Many years later (a couple decades or so) I was told it hung on his wall until he retired. But he isn't the only one who cherished that painting, so did Mom, and she has never let me forget that I gave her painting away. Reasoning with her that she had another one didn't cut any ice with her. She said it wasn't as good.

Well, I knew that, but didn't figure it would matter since she loves the paintings I didn't like. For instance, the large 3/4 length portrait in acrylics I did of Beanie. That's her favorite painting and she has decided that the painting will go to Beanie when she dies because she can't trust me not to burn it.

Still, the experience of being a Secret Santa was a lot of fun and I've enjoyed carrying on the tradition without ever revealing my identity. It's more fun to give a gift anonymously and let the person believe they are special if only for that day, and it doesn't have to remain solely a Yule province either. Throwing a Scrabble game to a game partner on New Year's Eve after they tried for a year to beat you isn't such a small thing to do and it makes them happy. Finding an inexpensive computer -- or putting one together from excess parts -- for someone who doesn't have one is a nice gift. After all, every writer should have access to the Internet if only for the research. A gift certificate for a manicure or massage for someone who needs a little pampering or a food basket for a family who has had a rough year are also nice. Or simply giving a few months of pictures, extra storage space or a paid LiveJournal account are also gifts, and don't forget to check out the virtual gifts.

At a time of year when the days are so short and the nights so dark and long and cold, a little anonymous cheer is a great way to help someone feel special, and it works the same for the other eleven months of the year.

So much of the time we think about all the experiences and people who have scarred us for life, the ones who broke our hearts and betrayed our faith. I prefer to remember the people who, in their blundering and insensitivity, also did me a favor. I can think of quite a few. I think of it as the silver lining to every dark cloud, even though I love dark clouds because they bring rain and snow and cool breezes on blistering summer days.

That is all. Disperse.

Telling tales

A stranger who obviously read my post about Imelda and her clueless husband sent me a link and I followed it to The Story of Stuff. It's not another version of George Carlin's A Place for My Stuff, but the story of a linear system. If you're not interested in the environmental side of the story, skip down to the Consumption tab and start from there. The video takes 20 minutes but it's definitely worth the time to get a good look at what American consumers are doing to the environment, the world and themselves. Don't worry. It's not one of those boring, Green Peace videos. One thing is certain, the stranger who sent it obviously got the message. Nice to know someone reads my posts from time to time.



Tomorrow is the winter solstice and my nephew Cody's 17th birthday. He's Beanie's baby. He's also a regular teenager who's doing all the things most teenagers who collected edged weapons, love fantasy and wear black and long nearly white blond hair do. I wish I could be there to give him a big hug and celebrate his birthday but I'm leaving on Saturday for mountain solitude for ten days. I met someone who wants to help me celebrate Solstice so I said yes and we're getting together to do the Yule holiday up right. Looks like this is the beginning of a really great friendship.

I also decided to send out thank you cards to all the people who contributed articles to the ham club newsletter. It was a last minute thought and my hope is that they will feel better about contributing next year and for however long I decide to keep editing the newsletter. Nothing like a little timely holiday graft. It goes along with the email I received from a major national magazine interested in publishing one of my articles. Hitting the big time is always a great present no matter what time of the year it lands in my lap.

This holiday season has been hard for my family because of Dad's death earlier this year and they don't seem to be able to muster up the energy or the enthusiasm to celebrate the way they did when Dad was alive. Dad would hate it that they're missing the holidays he loved so much, but they all have to grieve their own way. I miss Dad, too, but I don't feel like he's gone. I feel him close to me most of the time like he's been freed from the limitations of his body and can be wherever he's needed and wanted most, like earlier this week when I opened an email from a plant nursery.

The ad offered free upgrades to expedited delivery and discounts on holiday gifts. The magnolia was beautiful with its glossy black leave and creamy ivory petals so I clicked and followed the link. Magnolias, decorated miniature live Xmas trees, holly bushes and a gorgeous Xmas cactus that took me back thirty years.

Dad had just bought a Xmas cactus with beautiful yellow blooms. Eddie, my middle son, was about three years old and he wanted to give me pretty flowers for Xmas, so he plucked all the blooms off Dad's cactus. Dad caught him and went ballistic. Dad was even tempered and calm most of the time, but messing with his plants was grounds for slow torture and a long, painful death. Dad was afraid the cactus would never bloom again and I don't think he ever forgave Eddie. Two years went by and the cactus didn't bloom but Dad never got rid of the cactus. Then, one year at Xmas, the cactus bloomed with gorgeous yellow flowers and it continues to bloom even though he is gone. All the plants he loved and tended and cared for are still alive and part of him lives on in every one of those plants and trees and tales like Eddie and Dad's Xmas cactus.

Dearth and death

I just received Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past in anticipation of nine days of peace, quiet and books, both read and written. For me, reading and writing go together and having no demands on my time and no technological intrusions, other than my laptop, is a long awaited mental retreat.

Proust arrived in a battered and retaped box from Amazon that UPS hadn't managed to destroy. The book was sealed in plastic on cardboard and rested safely within the bulging and opened box about to burst from its hastily applied cellophane tape reinforcement. I fondled the weighty book while reading about much lighter book technology, namely Kindle, also from Amazon (I do hope they protect it if it's going by UPS, especially since it costs $400). The debate from technogeeks, literary Luddites, and everyone in between has been interesting. The geeks decry it's price tag and antique (if anything from 1980 could be considered antique) functionality while the Luddites scream about the death of books and the sensory experience of knowing the heft, tactile sensation and intoxicating scent of dust and cloth and leather bindings embedded between pages that rustle when turned and are marked in the margins with notable quotes and passages. You can't have that with the Kindle. I haven't seen or held one but I do admire the concept of having hundreds of books available anywhere, any time just by touching a few buttons. I'm in the wait and see camp although I do understand and admire the Luddites' position on books while I cringe at the thought of tens of thousands of trees razed and made into books, although no one ever mentions how many trees it takes to made matches or toothpicks or toilet paper.

I want to go back to a time when rag pickers pulled discarded clothing from the streets and alleys and sold them to bookmakers to make the pages on which the classics (and not so classics) were written and survive intact and white as the day they were created instead of the crumbling, yellowed pages of paperbacks that eventually will succumb to the destructive power of the light and the noxious vapors from avid readers whose sticky and salty fingers eagerly turn the pages from chapter to chapter and so to the end. Even the printed word, depending on the quality of paper used, is temporary at best while the impact of the words remain in the mind long after the book is dust or landfill or wrapped around the detritus of life. Kindle may be onto something if it, as some believe, makes reading more accessible to those who prefer the cyberworld to the real world. Reading comprehension test scores, we are told, are declining in the schools and businesses are rife with ignorance. Good thing we have all these tests and measurements of literary ability nowadays so that we can decry the death of literacy publicly and flash the news around the world. Was it so different in the not so distant past?

While it seems the golden age of literature is behind us, I doubt there is that much difference. Children in rural communities went to one-room schoolhouses with the same children from their earliest days until they were released from winter imprisonment to work their families' fields. They could read the Bible and do sums but very few had the literary comprehension of a fifth grader in today's world of standardized tests and variable curricula. Yes, more people go to college today than in the past, but there are also more people in the world now than then. Businesses employed clerks (clarks in Olde England) who could add prodigious lines of sums and get them right every time, poring over crabbed lines of numbers while shivering at their elevated desks perched on tall stools reading by candlelight, but few of them wasted their precious light to read at home and lunch hours were unknown at the time. Some of the people went to lectures and symposiums, but they were either hungry for knowledge or wanted to seem fashionable in a world obsessed with class, caste and fashion. The centuries before the nineteenth were even more ignorant. Most people had a rudimentary education at best and only the middle classes could afford tutors for their children. More people read, but probably with average or below comprehension. And yet, the book did not die.

For the first time in known history, there are more literate people in the world. Being literate doesn't mean always comprehending what is read, but for the first time in millennia the written word is available to more people. No longer is literature the sole province of religion and money; anyone can learn and everyone can own a book or pick one up at a library. Kindle is, at this point, not the printing press that freed the written word from painstaking copyists in monasteries nor is it the first working and affordable home computer, but it is the first reading machine that is easy on the eyes if not on the pocketbook. It is doubtful Kindle is saving the written word and books from death or the world from a dearth of literary comprehension, but it is at least a stab in the right direction.

People who want to read will find a way, whether that means saving money to cruise the local second-hand bookstore or buying leather bound books with gilt edges from a company that sells the classics, new and old. It isn't technology that has degraded literary comprehension or hastened the death of books, but it may be technology that makes books more accessible to those who prefer technology to lugging around their own hefty copy of Proust to read at bus stops, restaurants and breaks at work, or just in bed or on the sofa. Granted, the Kindle's hefty price is a strike against it, but the iPod and MP3 players that made it possible to download and create personal musical mixes once cost quite a bit and they're more affordable now. Give Amazon time to build up its literary database, clean up the clunky look, add color and bring down the price and Kindles may start popping up at restaurants and bus stops more and more, but whatever happens the book and reading will never die.

We may end up in an Outer Limits world where books are data easily accessed by a world-wide networked brain implant but there remain a few hardy souls visiting ghostly libraries to run their fingers lovingly along the edge of pages as they turn them and lose themselves in worlds and realms of fantasy and time among the printed word. When you get right down to it, knowledge comes in many forms and books are just one more form, a form I heartily endorse and enjoy. As long as there are people to tell the stories, they will find a way to pass them along because ultimately it's not the book that matters but the story.

That is all. Disperse.

Where Technology Takes Us

Hollywood has always been about illusion, the original dream factory, but somehow over the years people have become the illusion and Hollywood the fantasy everyone wants to make real. It has lost the quality of fantasy and blurred the lines between real and make believe. It's obvious when you look at the movie and TV stars who spend so much money and time on trainers, nutritionists and plastic surgery so they can take their fantasies into the real world. It's the story Rita Hayworth always told, that men went to bed with Gilda and woke up with her, confusing the fantasy with reality and unable to understand the difference.

In a world where fantasy is more real than reality comes Beowulf and we're back to fantasy again where talent is not forsaken in the face of cinematic beauty. That's the one thing that has been lost in the march to Hollywoodize the world, talent. That's not to say there aren't talented actors who look good (and sexy) naturally without plastic surgery, trainers and nutritionists or that there isn't value to treating your body well -- well, except for the plastic surgery -- but movies are all about fantasy.

The star of Beowulf is nowhere near the buff, gorgeous figure of Beowulf. Ray Winstone is overweight and paunchy and getting older. If Beowulf was a live action movie instead of computer generated, Winstone would not have been chosen to play the part, nor could he have done so without at least a year of intensive training and diet and a bit of plastic surgery. That's not to say he isn't talented, because he is, but Hollywood has finally found a way for talent to take center stage alongside real fantasy.

The movie isn't that good, but it's interesting because it remodels the actors' bodies into whatever the part requires (like Anthony Hopkins' huge paunch and bloated face) without the actors having to change their appearance. It is their talent that shines forth and not chameleon changes by knife. It doesn't matter that Winstone is 50 years old and Beowulf is in his early twenties. It works. Granted, the technique needs some refinement before it can take the place of real live actors, but it's getting there. Unlike Looker where models once perfected by plastic surgery were killed so their computer generated clones could take their places or The Stepford Wives where perfect robots made to order with the right bra size and figure killed their living templates, there is no need to walk blindly into the future Michael Crichton envisioned when technology replaces people. Technology can mold the physical without the use of plastic surgery or grueling training and starvation diets or Botox or any of the surface things actors do to fit the part and retain the spark of talent and genius that makes an actor worth watching. It can't be long before computer generated movies move into the realm where fantasy mimics reality without the need for fantasy to take over and supplant reality. Hollywood will have reclaimed the dream factory without sacrificing humans on the bloody altar in the name of money cloaked in the guise of art.

Bottom line? Actors can get old, can succumb to illness, gain a little weight and sport their wrinkles, stretch marks and saggy butts and knees without ending their professional lives and the dream factory can give them immortality, youth and beauty while borrowing their voice and acting talents without using them up and tossing them aside like old Kleenex. Somehow that seems like a much better and healthier world, although the gossip rags will suffer since no one will care about dimpled asses or deep wrinkles. Wouldn't that be a shame?

I'm a realist who knows that talent is not only contained in a plastic package and can be found in even the ugliest creature, as Stockard Channing illustrated in The Girl Most Likely To. Beauty isn't everything and when these plastic beauties die and their bones are dug up centuries from now by some curious archaeologist, their bones will tell a different tale than what was made from them when the actor was alive.

That is all. Disperse.

Hooked

When I discovered online bookstores like Amazon.com I was in heaven. Millions of books and all I had to do was sit at my computer and read and choose and buy, that is until I discovered the wish list and other online bookstores. I have dozens bookmarked and visit them regularly, some even send me emails about what's new and exciting and I am always hooked like a greedy catfish biting down on a chewy, misshapen dough ball hiding a double barbed hook.

The wish list is a safe way to save links to all the books I want; mine runs to several pages. I used to store them in the cart for later, but that list was getting too long and I can't search for just books or DVDs or whatever else I have put aside. You can't do that at the bookstore because they frown on you making piles of books and leaving them without paying. I would rather pay for them but that depends on my budget, especially nowadays since I became interested in buying actual food and cooking utensils to fill my empty cupboards. I figured that since I'll soon celebrate my third anniversary in this apartment -- a prodigious feat in itself -- I should begin filling the cabinets and freezer with something other than frozen dinners, which requires that I buy pots and pans and spatulas and all kinds of things to cook and serve the food. The wish list is no essential because it gives me a feeling of having access to the books I want to buy without feeling deprived and cutting into the food budget.

And now I'm going to have to fit bookcases into the budget somewhere since I can't leave all the books I now own in stacks on the floor or in boxes in the living room, bedroom and closets. I don't have that much closet space and it's time I established more than a squatting presence here now that the two-year curse has been lifted. In the past, books were more portable and didn't spoil as quickly as food and pots and pans and cooking utensils just seem sad without food and they have to be washed to be reused. Dried and fly-specked pots and dishes tend to smell up the trunk and draw vermin, not to mention how looking at them turns my stomach into a rumbling cement truck mixing gravel, sand and water just before it spits the brownish-gray slurry onto the ground. People tend to frown on dumping slurry on their shoes or all over their nice clean roads without a permit.

Nothing is more soothing or satisfying than spending hours perusing the descriptions and reviews of books that may or may not make it to the wish list and eventually to the shopping cart before they land on my front porch and all over my floors in serried ranks along the walls so they don't impede walking in the middle of the night when the lights are out. I would probably get more chores done if the books didn't call to me from their shelves and floor spaces to pick them up and dive into their pages for an hour or eight, but nothing and no one has been more faithful and more helpful than my books when I'm sad or depressed or just need to escape for a few hours at the end of a particularly grueling week of work. And they do like company. Nothing is sadder than a lone book on a shelf surrounding by knick knacks or pictures whose pages and spine are so stiff I'm sure they've never been handled, caressed and opened even once, not since they were exiled and left to stand alone and unloved simply because they looked good on the shelf and made people think the owner had taste. Sometimes a dish looks good but it tastes like cardboard sludge. Looks aren't everything and nothing is sadder than a brand new book without a little wear and tear up and down its edges or a crease or two along the spine to show it has been, like the velveteen rabbit, loved.

Winter at last

There's still snow on the ground and on the bare branches of all the trees. Smoke curls up from frosted roofs all over the neighborhood and cars whisper through the streets cutting dark pathways through the white. Winter finally arrived in a hushed whisper and I thought it would never get here. In this sheltered lee, we don't get much snow. While the areas around our little valley get pounded with drifting feet of snow, we get mere inches, but at least we finally got some inches that stayed around all weekend.

The apartment is cold and the space heater is running almost all the time, keeping the little green shoots in the sun room, otherwise known as my office, warm and comfy while they reach up through the dark, moist peat toward the sun streaming through the windows, and they are growing quickly now they've broken through the surface. I decided to plant a little herb garden so I'd have fresh herbs all the time and have anxiously watched for he first signs of life. I have not been disappointed.

Six little peat plugs with their green burdens remind me of the rows of clay pots and flats of seedlings that sat in the living room of the cabin in front of the deck windows during winter's cold that yielded all sorts of herbs and greens and pretty flowers now dried and in dark glass jars in the medicine cabinet of the bathroom. The chamomile is long gone, the honey scented blossoms still faintly perfuming the empty jar that remind me of fleeting summers when hummingbirds swarmed at my whistle in the morning to dip their darting tongues into the sugar water of their feeding station or perched on the picnic table on the deck where I ate my breakfast in golden dawns. In about a month, I'll begin to harvest some of the fresh herbs and the apartment will smell like spring and summer while outside the world is frosted in white. At least I know the seeds are still good and its time to get a planter or two and some soil to fill the sun room with chamomile and herbs and flowers growing in terra preta in the middle of winter.

Let's play 20 questions

Actually, it's Common Ties that is now devoted -- for now -- to 20 questions. They have suspended all poetry and essay submissions until further notice. If you're into art and would like to submit something for the Orphans they have quite a few waiting. Orphans are stories that have no art. CT even offers descriptions to give artistic creativity a boost. Looks interesting and if I had the supplies I would give it a shot. I might consider putting together some friends and acquaintances and doing a little photo shoot -- if I can find the time between now and Yule week since I'm going to be out of town and incommunicado for a week or so.

I did check out the questions and came up with eleven answers this morning. Since I've published with them before I have a very good chance of having a few of my submissions selected. The really hard part was telling a story in 50 words or less. Talking about paring down prose.

After a few weeks of dithering and letting the creative juices flow, I've decided to try a bit of flash fiction since there is a wide open market and the chances of being published are greater than with full length fiction and novellas. It's also a great way to make a first sale to a tough market as long as a story can be told in 500-1000 words (sometimes even less) and still retain the descriptive impact and flow of the story. I have a couple of stories kicking around in the back of my brain that have been nudging me and telling me they're flash fiction. I guess we'll see. One more thing to add to my writing to-do list during my vacation.

I have found that making up a To-Do list with deadlines, subjects, etc. is a great way to kick start the creative engine by giving me deadlines. I only put paying markets on my list and most of them are high paying markets. It's the high jump of writing and publishing, but you never get over the high bar without quite a bit of practice and perseverance, and the list provides that. As it nears the end of the year (I started the list a few months ago), I have made more submissions in the past six months and sold more stories than I have in a long time, so at least it works for me. Now it's time to get back to the reading. I have more reviews to write this weekend and I might even come up with a couple more submissions for the 20 questions.

That is all. Disperse.

Let it snow

A little fell last night and now it's snowing again, soft bits of down and sugar sifting out of the sky and covering everything. It's about time. I've waited for this for a couple of months and I'm glad it finally arrived. I'm definitely a swan when it comes to the cold.

For the first time in two years I'm getting comments about the newsletter. There were two corrections -- I can always count on those coming in first -- and more positive comments about the latest issue. It's a big one at 42 pages, but that's only available through E-mail and as a download on the web. The print version is a much smaller (only 12 pages and two are throw aways) issue. One ham wrote to thank me for cleaning up his grammar and making the article flow. It's what I do. I clean up everyone's articles, even the president's monthly column. These are hams (engineers mostly) and not writers so their command of written English is not up to par -- at least not on my course -- which is why the newsletter has won national awards and recognition over the past two years. Nice to know someone is reading it outside the city and the local ham club group. From what I've been told, there are more people downloading the newsletter than ever before, probably to see what I'm up to each month. I stayed in the background until recently and have written more articles and profiles and have begun writing a monthly column to let readers of the print edition know about the changes and differences between print and online versions, and also to make some much needed points about volunteerism, responsibility and recognition. One comment mentioned my inciteful and insightful editorial, writing that what I wrote needed to be said and couldn't have been said better. Nice to know someone was paying attention.

This month will be a month of birthdays and deaths once again. Beanie's oldest boy turned 21 on the 2nd, the same day my granddaughter, Savannah, turned six. The 21st is Beanie's youngest boy's birthday and he will be 17 and already more than a handful. will celebrate her birthday on the 17th and I don't want to forget her or a one-time friend who moves deeper into 40-something territory. Any birthday, even a frenemy's birthday, should be celebrated and remembered, especially in the wake of the alternative.

My brother-in-law, Tommy Baker, just 68 years old, died yesterday and I got the new by email. I haven't seen him in years and probably the last time was at a funeral, which seems to be the only time our families get together any more. Tommy's death leaves his brother Jerry the only one of their family still around. Tommy was the good one, the smart one, and Jerry was, well, Jerry. Tommy will be missed and it's sad to know so many of my family are falling prey to time and tide this year.

As the snow sifts silently down and covers everything in a hushed white blanket of cold, it is a reminder that at another time and in another place it would be life giving rain nourishing crops and providing drink. The water is locked in delicate crystals but will eventually change beneath the sun's warmth and become water once again, swelling rivers and creeks in a rushing white wake that will take it back to nourish field, flock and folks where it will be recycled over and over again as rain and eventually as snow, ever changing and ever living, a prism to reflect the light in colored arcs or white field struck with gem bright sparks.

We don't need you...

...and we're not sure we need you either.

An old friend mentioned something yesterday that made me stop and think. He said more and more women are staying single because they don't need men to support them. I guess you could say that marriage is a buyer's market and the buyers have changed. Too bad men haven't changed, and that may be the whole point.

Women have put men through their paces since they became financially independent and the whole women's movement in the sixties seems to have disenfranchised men in a lot of ways. What it all comes down to is that men probably aren't much different now than they ever were and women are willing to put up with less since they don't need men to support them, making women the buyers instead of men. Once upon a time, men were the buyers choosing which women would give them the best chance of propagating their species -- or continuing their line, if you prefer. Rich men wanted not only a good breeder but a woman who looked good, a beautiful ornament for their arm or their table. Now the tables have turned and women want someone who looks good, a beautiful ornament for their table or on their arm, and a good income sweetens the pot. They also want men who make them feel good and don't give them too much trouble. Kind of puts things in a different perspective.

Since divorce is not only legal but fairly easy to get, it's like the sword of Damocles over a couples' heads and hovers dangerously over the head of the weaker partner in a relationship, except the weaker partner isn't always the one with control of the purse strings. Makes an interesting situation, no? Definitely something to think more about.

That is all. Disperse.

Tin Man Lacks More Than Heart

I'm a little behind in my TV watching but that always happens when I'm busy and it's only part of the beauty of downloading shows to my laptop because I can watch them when I have the time. I'm not chained to a network schedule. Anyway, I watched part one of Tin Man this morning before the first yawn of doom dawn. The show is interesting but lacking.

Tin Man turns L. Frank Baum's Oz on its ear and unzips its head, metaphorically and actually, that is, if Oz actually had an ear or a head. Dorothy Gale has become D.G. and the familiar trio of companions (scarecrow, tin man and cowardly lion) have become a head case, tin man and basket case. The basket case sees the past and the future, a hairy psychic. D.G., played by Zooey Deschanel (yes, her name is actually Zooey) has the emotional range of someone on Thorazine whose face was recently injected with Botox. She's active and physical in a mousy way, but her facial expressions and vocal range of emotions are barely perceptible and blunted. She is pretty and petite, but looks aren't everything, especially in this role where someone with real presence is needed. She is not, after all, playing a patient in a mental ward strapped into a strait jacket in a padded cell and shot full of Thorazine, or at least she shouldn't be.

Other than that, the landscape, characters and props are worth watching, especially Richard Dreyfuss as the Mystic Psychic, aka the Wizard of Oz.

That is all. Disperse.