Never give up

This is beautiful morning. Everything is going right.

I woke at six because I just couldn't sleep. Don't remember the dreams, but I felt a sense of urgency even though no place I need to go today was open at that hour. Bathroom, throw on a long T-shirt and check my email, all the time deciding whether or not to buy a new multifunction printer since my HP died. I checked online for deals and steals and found quite a few, but as my finger hovered over the enter button I hesitated--a lot. I checked more places, more sites, and even went to some auctions to find even better deals with add-ons, but as my finger hovered over the button I couldn't bring myself to send my money and my request into the cyber ether. What if I could fix the ailing HP? I closed the browser and went to the HP's side and took it apart.

Lo and behold, there was something wrong and it was a simple fix. Getting my tweezers, I removed a sticky label stuck in the gears of the paper feeder. One tiny piece eluded me because my tweezers didn't bend (they are after all for eyebrows) and weren't long enough, but just maybe... I fed in a sheet of paper, stuck a book on the copier bed, pressed copy, OK, and start and held my breath. It worked. The gears didn't clash and grind. The paper fed through and disappeared. Message said: out of paper. But where did it go? I looked around and noticed a clean sheet of paper on the floor. I forgot to put on the back of the machine. One more time into the breach.

Paper in the feeder, hit copy, OK, and start and . . . wonder of wonders I heard the printer element sliding over and over the sheet as the paper emerged from the bowels of the machine with . . . an image on it. It worked. I got my laptop, hooked up the USB, and got down to the business of printing everything I had held over the past month. I'd meet my deadlines and I didn't need to buy another multifunction printer.

However, I am still going to spring for the flash drive. It will save me so much time when it comes to getting minutes from the club secretary who waits until the last minute. Maybe I can even convince the president to write his monthly column by the date of the board meeting and kill three birds with geek fix. Anything is possible right now.

I have been sad and frustrated for about a month since my printer died, especially since some publications refuse to take articles and stories by email. I received a much needed and anxiously awaited substantial payment for my writing yesterday and paid up all pending accounts, with a little left over for a new printer, I had waffled about actually spending the money. A friend offered to give me a printer but I just didn't want to let go of the HP. It was a Yule gift to myself four years ago when I moved up to the cabin, bought with an unexpected windfall, that made my life so much easier, and it has helped out friends and neighbors when they needed copies or to fax something.

I haven't scanned anything recently, but I've decided to make use of all my resurrected machine's functions. I have a lot of clips to document and store. Now I can even afford to buy that DVD burner I've been eyeing for so long. Life is good, especially when I'm going to get paid for an article that will be received well ahead of deadline. Life is very good.

That is all. Disperse.

Just breathe

The greens are brilliant this morning and the sky a perfect Colorado blue. Sunshine lightens everything and shows up the rain-washed clean, warming the lilacs and spreading their scent everywhere while the breeze wafts it through the open windows. It's cold but not a sharp, bitter cold, rather a blunt-edged cold that hints at the warmth to come.

Time moves so quickly, the soft yellow-greens swelling to the brilliant growing green that will soon darken in the sun to a deep verdant green like sun-dappled pools where light is a stray fiery diamond shaft softened by its passage through the heavy canopy of the forest. This is one of my favorite times of year, when the air is soft and fragrant with new growth before the blaze of the relentless summer sun sears away the fragrance of earth and bursting seeds and spring petals that emerges only when rain releases what hides from the sun's brazen glare.

A few months after I moved here, I got caught in the rain. As I passed a towering full-figured pine in the middle of a parking lot, I caught the scent of spicy green. I stood and just breathed, surprised and pleased. As the sun burned away the clouds, the scent faded, going back into hiding until the rain would bring it out again.

There are moments like those, surprising moments when a sound or a scent or a flash of color, movement or light, remind me what a wonderful life I have. Some days, when the work seems endless and I've been hard at it until my eyes burn and a sharp pain bores relentlessly into my head, I'll catch a glimpse of a bird with scarlet feathers warbling on a branch in the squirrel porn tree in front of my desk or see the tarball twins--most likely the offspring of the female black squirrel that disappeared last fall--tumbling and carousing along slender branches or see birds and squirrels dining together at the now open all you can eat gutter buffet next door, and I am reminded there is something in life other than work . This is one of those days, a gift that makes me want to just breathe and enjoy the flowering wealth of earth, air and sky before I turn back to the necessity of work.

It isn't as though the days aren't full of these moments--every moment holds the same promise--but rather that I get so wrapped up in what I must do that I forget to pause and just breathe. I need these reminders and I'm glad they land in my trees or whisper through the open windows to catch my attention. Those moments are my little vacations, moments that make it easier to survive the seemingly endless working hours and just breathe.

News and views

I have created a new blog to document my experience with publishing my first romance novel. If you're interested, toddle on over to Eyes On Publishing and take a look. It may not be pretty, but it will be, as always, brutally honest. After all, someone needs to mark the trail and I'm fresh out of urine.

That is all. Disperse.

And now this...

It seems freelance journalists in America are no longer good enough--or cheap enough. Think I'm kidding? Check this out.

It isn't bad enough that writers are consider the bottom of the creative food chain, but now they're outsourcing writing jobs to India. What's next? Having your children watched on nanny cams by a nanny in India?

That is all. Disperse -- and purge.

At last

I was at the post office yesterday and the line was nearly out the door. The two people at the counter didn't go anywhere for nearly 15 minutes while everyone in the line chafed and shuffled and fretted. I was a little worried since the parking meter only had 26 minutes on it.

A very pretty young blonde with skin like new cream, black mascara ringing her pale blue eyes, and wearing a sarong and flip flops and a very short older woman, eyes deep brown nested in a wreath of smile lines, with short, wavy helmet hair threaded with silver and I stood at the end of the line. A short cranky bear of a man with a beard checked his watch every 15 seconds as we three women chatted and joked. The bear finally grumped off to go to "another post office where they aren't so &*$%*#*@ slow". We three looked at each other and smiled and then encouraged the people in front of us, one by one, to go to a faster post office, providing them with directions if they hesitated. Slowly we made our way to the head of the line.

"Why are they raising postage rates?" Blonde asked.

"Because they can," I said.

Silvered-hair and Blonde laughed. "Besides,"I added, "they need to be real snails to carry the mail. It's faster than using carriers." Everyone in the post office laughed.

We came to the head of the line and Blonde frowned. "He's so slow." She was about to get Papa Smurf, the guy with the blue fingers. "He's efficient," I said. "He's sloooow."

Silvered-hair got Terry, the lady whose husband died a year ago and I got Ed who is always smiling and glad to see me. Then I was out of there and to my car in record time with one minute still on the meter. And I thought it was going to be a quick trip.

The point of all this is snail mail (now with real snails). I just received an email from my publisher. After six weeks of waiting, my contracts finally arrived. That's priority mail for you. I now have lots of instructions and information and will soon meet my editor (virtually, of course) and we will begin the process of getting my book up and ready for bookstores everywhere, and I do mean everywhere because we already have an international tie-in, which means my book will soon be available, once it's edited and packaged, in Asia and Europe. I can hardly wait. My publisher said he was sending my copy of the contract and I should have it in about 1-1/2 to 2 weeks. I think he's being overly optimistic about those snails. Of course, where he lives it's much warmer than here and the snail tend to get frozen in their slime trails from time to time.

He also said the artist has been given my suggestions for the cover art; I was pretty explicit and detailed. I have a vision. They asked if I had any ideas . . . and I did. Now, whether or not they follow it is something else again. I'll just have to wait and see. Now for a question.

Do you like characters more who are vaguely described or intricately described?

We now return you to regular programming.

That is all. Disperse.

Shameless promotion

I just received word from Angela Hoy who edits and puts out Writers Weekly that my success story will be in the next issue. She's also publishing a letter I wrote to her in Letters to the Editor. She is also buying an article on freelancing, but the date of publication is still not determined. So keep an eye out for the Writers Weekly newsletter. It comes out on Wednesdays and if you haven't signed up yet, what are you waiting for. WW is a great resource for marketing and freelancing. Angela also runs Booklocker one of the premiere Print on Demand publishers.

And speaking of determined, the good news keeps coming. Byline has selected two of my articles for future issues and there may be another article in The Writer.

It helps to shake up the ant farm from time to time to keep them from their ruts becoming too well worn.

That is all. Disperse.

Keep the irons hot

Did you ever look through market listings and get an idea but thought you could hold onto it until you finished looking through the listings? You finished and got out your writing tools and . . . nothing.

It's happened to me a lot. I've missed deadlines that way by being unable to think what it was I had planned to write. The clock ticks on relentlessly and the deadline passes. No one noticed because no one was expecting my submission. There are always other books and contests down the road; so what if I missed one or two or an uncountable number of opportunities to be published?

I've found a solution.

When I go through the marketing listings I have pen and paper or my laptop close by. That way when I get an idea or something sparks (hopefully, without actually catching fire to the books on the bed or sofa or table) I make some notes or just write the piece. I can always edit it later, but I might not get the spark again. It also helps with getting ahead of deadlines. Nothing like being weeks or even months ahead of deadline so you can move on to the next deadline and the next market listing that strikes a spark.

The same thing works for reading the newspaper, magazines, hear a snatch of conversation, or see something that simply must be recorded (you can keep a camera handy for this--make sure you have batteries just in case). Keep a little notebook you can stick in a pocket or purse and a pencil and a pen (never know when the ink will cut out on you). Stop whatever you're doing and jot it down. It won't take long and the results are definitely worth it. Making a note or taking pictures helps capture the moment, but they also help set the information in your memory so it's less likely you'll forget. The boy and girl scouts had it right: always be prepared.

I also write stories and articles and then look for markets, but when I have nothing pending and I'm cruising the listings and contests, this method works really well. I have chalked up ten stories/articles/essays in the past two weeks. Being productive helps keep you productive and the ideas flowing. I've also landed four assignments, which means there will be checks in the mail upon publication or receipt. And none of this gets in the way of my regular work or reviews I already have slated.

In a way, it's like exercise, keeping the writing muscles and energies high and very flexible. Nothing wrong with filling the pipeline and keeping it filled. The end result is good for you and for your bank account.

What is your method for being creative and keeping creative?

That is all. Disperse.

Bruised egos

When a writer lashes out at a reviewer or has a review deleted it never works out. Case in point: Anne Rice lashing out at reviews on Amazon won her no new fans and showed a side of her that was monumentally embarrassing--for her. I wonder sometimes if that is why she shelved her Vampire Chronicles and not because she hid her scars and dents in the bosom of Mother Church.

The truth is that not everyone is going to like a writer's work. Granted, people will buy or not buy based on a reviewer's opinions and sometimes a review will create a few tempest in teacups like the one over Specfic Floozy's recap and column on the recent Hugo awards (that's science fiction for all of you who don't know).

Critics abound and, in a country where a Jewish lawyer defends the Ku Klux Klan in front of the Supreme Court, will and should have their say without censhorship. It takes a very small mind and an overweening ego to believe that their work is above criticism and cannot be improved upon. Too bad so many of such people are adept at hiding the truth and casting others in a negative light, especially when people refuse to listen or open their minds or see they are being used. Such has always been the case and, I'm sure, will always be the case. It is as common as geese drowning in the rain because they haven't figured out looking away from the rain is all it takes to save their lives.

That is all. Disperse.

What you don't expect

Birthdays have always been special to me, probably because my own birthday has been so ignored by most of my family and some of my friends. After so many years of being ignored, I have become used to the silence because the silence has become my friend. It's something I can count on. It's always there, wrapping me in soft folds of comfort and stability.

A young friend was pretty upset when a party she threw for her own birthday was a bust. No one showed up. She later said that she realized she hadn't spoken to or seen some of the people for six months or more. She was surprised.

Time gets away from us so quickly that we seldom recognize its passage. Caught up in chores and deadlines and demands made on our time by those around us in our families, at work, and even demands we impose on ourselves, we focus on getting everything done and not on what we're missing, like friends.

Someone once told me that a friend is someone who would give their life for you and everyone else is an acquaintance. Friendship is a stormy sea but if death is the only criteria for being a friend, it's no wonder no one shows up to celebrate the anniversary of our births.

Friendship takes tending like rare orchids and temperamental roses. It does not grow like weeds or crab grass, although some people are as just as determined to insinuate themselves in our lives. Some friends need less work than others and some demand every second of our time: free or not. Friends are as varied as snowflakes and as rare as a true blue rose, but they can also be as common as dust on the wind and just as hard to pin down or count on.

Someone can be as close as a twin sister and suddenly be as dangerous as a bear wakened too soon from its winter hibernation and there are those who stay at a distance and yet are as close as a shadow, appearing and disappearing with the passage of the sun and time. There is no rhyme or reason, only the vagaries and inconsistencies of life in an all too busy world.

The next time you look around for a friend, make certain you haven't been so caught up in your life you've forgotten to tend to theirs. Sometimes it is only a matter of listening when they need to talk or calling to say hello and remind them that you remember they're there. Nothing is so important and so earth-shattering that you can't put it off to spend a few moments chatting or send out a note to remind them you think they're special and are glad they stuck around. Friendship is like a smile; the more you offer yours, the more often someone else will offer theirs. It only takes a few moments, but it's worth the effort.

That is all. Disperse.

Food and writing

When I opened the fridge I realized I had eggs. Not such a surprise since I usually open the freezer to take out something to nuke or take fruit and vegetables out of the basket on the counter to fix dinner instead. There is even sometimes popcorn in the basket and the oil is always near the stove. (Truth be told, everything is near the stove in my kitchen. It's rather small, but comfortably so.) I also had some button mushrooms, which are not my favorites but were on sale, and, since I hate to throw out anything that has a bit of use in it, and it costs more to buy them dried when I can dry them (by forgetting they're there) in the fridge for less, I took them out. I also had half a still fresh onion and omelet was on my mind.

The reason I'm not all that fond of button mushrooms is because they have so little taste, not like porcinis and meaty portobellos and (my favorite) shiitakes. But the buttons were there and still edible, so I chopped them up and scooped them into the pan where the canola oil began to sizzle. I cut up half the half-onion and scooped that into the pan, whisked up some eggs with a little water, sea salt, and white pepper and, as soon as the mushrooms and onions were tender and the onions still slightly crisp, the eggs went into the pan. I already had oatmeal simmering on the stove, so while I waited I washed a few dishes--I hate just standing around waiting for things to happen and fiddling with the food. The smell was incredible and I began to wonder if I had misjudged button mushrooms.

I had.

As soon as I took the first bite I knew I was wrong. Button mushrooms don't have much taste when they're fresh, but let them dry out in the fridge and something wonderful happens. The taste isn't as pronounced and rich as a porcini or as fragrant as a shiitake, but it is good. Next time button mushrooms are on sale 2-for-1, I'll get a couple more packages and forget them in the fridge until they dry out. I'll bet dried buttons are a good substitute for flour in making gravy, too. I prefer dried, ground porcinis, but they're a little expensive. I think I need to buy some shiitakes and let them dry out, too. Could be that Portobellos would be good, too, although I prefer them with spices and pureed salmon baked in the oven or with chicken breasts or in veggie lasagne instead of meat.

Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not going completely vegetarian. I couldn't go totally without meat, especially an occasional juicy medium-rare steak with sauteed onions, but mushrooms make a great substitute without resorting to soy fillers. I wonder how they would taste in lentil chili. Hmmmm.

Since it's Saturday and I don't have a VE session in Woodland Park this weekend, I'm doing what I usually do on Saturdays: writing reading. I finished the review for The Cat Master last night, wrote and posted my review, so I don't have to start another review book right away. I have some personal reading time. I have a stack of books I want to get through and some literary, writing and specfic magazines to read. I'm not just enjoying myself, should that be what you're thinking; it's research and one of the writing rules: before submitting to any magazine or publisher you should know the competition and what they publish, get a feel for tone and type of stories and articles. Like I said: research.

I did have some good news this morning though. Angela Hoy of Writers Weekly is buying an article from me and, if my retool of another article flies, will buy a second article from me. Next Wednesday, 05/09/07, my letter will also be printed. I wrote in response to an article and Angela wrote back and asked if she could print it next week in the newsletter. How could I refuse? (only by being brain damaged) Since my name was already on her mind, and she knew my byline, I decided to take a chance and send her a success story and an article. She asked me to rethink a couple sentences and I rewrote the paragraph and sent it back. A check will be in the mail this coming week. The article is a little harder sell, but it's worth negotiating. If Angela doesn't buy it for Writers Weekly then I'll redo the query and send it to a couple other writing magazines. One of them is bound to buy it.

That's the thing about writing, it takes sweat and effort and moving outside your comfort zone. I was happy where I was, writing reviews and articles, editing and pitching magazines; it was safe and I was content. A writer should never become too safe or too content; it's bad for business. But not all writing is about business. Writing is about--writing, expressing yourself, your thoughts, feelings and observations. Publishing is secondary, but only if it's a hobby or you have no desire to see your work in print. Whichever path you choose doesn't make you any less a writer.

Make no mistake, reviewers and columnists and editors and ghostwriters are writers, too. They may not have a book on the shelves with their name on it but that makes them no less professionals and no less real writers. Like I said, a writer writes. No one would say Emily Dickinson wasn't a poet because she didn't publish her poems while she was alive, hiding them in the attic and keeping them to herself, except for a handful that were published during her lifetime, most of which were published anonymously. She wrote.

In this all too over-exposed world we live in, too many people have come to see success only when it is prominently displayed. I remember (misremember) a quote that says: "They also serve who stand and wait." Publicity is nice but publicity does not make a writer real. That is not the measure of success. Real success is in writing and continuing to write--whether it is in a private diary or journal, stories, books and poems you keep in a drawer or bound and hidden away, in a locked blog only you can see, or wherever you write--and continuing to evolve and grow, writing because not to write would drive you mad and render you miserable to be around.

The world measures success the way it measures faith, as something that can only be quantified in numbers and dollars and cents; that's a poor way of measuring anything. For me, it isn't about success in terms of recognition, although that would be nice; it's about writing. I am miserable when I'm not writing, unhappy with my life and tense and cross with the world around me. I live a half life when I'm not writing. And I am also selfish.

I do not want to share my time and my writing with a 9-5 job or any job. I begrudge the time and the effort, knowing I have no other choice if I am to continue living in an apartment instead of under a breezy and well traveled overpass or bridge.

I'm not a troll nor do I come from dwarf stock. So, while I like to visit caves and dank and dark places on occasion, I prefer living above ground in warm rooms with walls and furniture and amenities and, occasionally, food. In order to do that, I have to give up the reliable and constant companionship of unhappiness and the feeling of missing my life in pursuit of work and a paycheck, move out of my comfort zone (miserable as it sometimes is) and feed my soul by writing. I am a writer, a real writer; I can do no less and retain my sanity and my self respect. I no longer wish to spend all my energy and my time only on the mundane day-to-day pursuits. Work is necessary, but it's not everything. For me, there has to be writing . . . and occasionally food. It's who I am and what keeps me ticking.

If it stings...

...it must be good for you.

That's what my grandmother used to say whenever she tended a hurt with some nasty spray or liquid that burned like fire. I knew she was attempting to make the pain worthwhile but it still hurt. The same thing goes for slights and nasty remarks that sting. If they don't sting, there is no truth in them. If, however, they sting...

Whenever someone slights us--and it's usually a friend or relative because they know us well enough to know what buttons to push--it is usually out of their own pique or pain. They need to make sure you hurt, too, and digging the spurs into your ego and psyche are the quickest ways to get there. It's mean, but it's effective, and you should thank them. If it stings...

Sometimes we get into a comfortable rut where it's safe and we are content. Little things will bother us, and that's guaranteed, but overall we are happy where we are. There's no need to exert any energy to maintain stationary orbit or climb up out of that ever deepening rut, so why bother? It takes grit and guts and a lot of energy to blast out of orbit and escape the strong pull of gravity or reach up to grab the edge of the rut and pull our comfortably padded rumps out, but the effort is worth it.

I climbed out of that rut. It was a good well worn rut but I left so much undone. I had stories and novels and proposals for books gathering dust buried beneath a growing stack of minutiae. It's what Apollo Creed called the eye of the tiger, that burning desire to be more than you are, to reach beyond yourself and achieve your dreams. I had lost it. I have it back and now the results are piling up.

There were times I had a bright idea and thought what a good story or article or essay it would make. I religiously read marketing newsletters and lists of contests and calls for submission, the ideas blossoming as I read, but I did nothing with them--other than writing them down or marking that place in my memory. Memory is not a good place to keep hot ideas; it has a tendency to become overlaid with bills and work and the minutiae of every day life, getting pushed out of the light to huddle under the bed or in a corner or behind a big heavy piece of mental furniture. The only time they're found is when you move (I'm not planning to move) or when it's time for spring cleaning (not going to happen this year) or when relatives come to visit (they live too far away), and then it's too late. There's a reason to strike while the iron is hot; it's much easier to mold and bend and shape. When it's cold . . . well, you get the idea.

I got stung. Then I got mad. Then I started to look at things and see it stung because it held a small poppy seed of truth. Then I got busy.

Time passes so quickly and the older we get time grows wings and then engines and then jet engines and then it's rocketing out of sight, leaving us gasping and coughing in its wake. Time does not wait. It is relentless, a construct of perpetual motion that soon becomes a juggernaut moving at unbelievable speeds leaving nothing in its wake but regret and a cloud of dust without even a hearty Heigh-Ho, Silver! Life is short and can end at any moment. Think not? Talk to the wife of the guy who was driving to work one day when an overpass collapsed on top of him or the athlete who was in tip-top condition and going out for his morning run when his heart stopped. Yes, these are extreme examples, but they are nonetheless true.

We don't need a fatalistic view of life. We need a realistic perspective. Every time we put something off or let something mundane take precedence over dreams and desire, we lose. We lose time. We lose the heat in the iron. We lose escape velocity. The result is inertia: safe, comfortable, going nowhere inertia. Gravity has taken hold and no matter how fast we run or how high we jump, there's no escaping it. The trick is to move and keep moving, keep evolving, and most of all, keep living. That's why slights sting and why they should sting--to remind us we could have had a V-8 have our dreams right now. All it takes is the eye of the tiger and a little bit of audacity.

So, thank you for all the insults and slights and nasty things everyone has ever said to me. It did the trick.

That is all. Disperse.

Roll out the barrel

I've been busy. The new schedule is working out very well and I'm getting a lot accomplished. I'm even typing more reports than before and my paycheck is about to get a boost right into the next tax bracket. Just as an example, I finished three stories for Chicken Soup this afternoon after typing as many reports in four hours as it used to take me seven hours to do. And that includes editing and proofreading the stories. I have to thank Marcia Golub's advice on scheduling and Elizabeth Lyon for inspiration. Of course, it doesn't hurt that Elizabeth Lyon has agreed to collaborate on a book with me, but that's another story for another time.

The only sour note in this ode to joy is my printer. The plastic innards that feed paper through it have decided to quit feeding. The copy function works, and so does the fax and scanner, but without paper, they won't do me much good. I actually had to hand print labels for the monthly ham club newsletter and my fingers still feel cramped. I don't write much by longhand since I got the laptop, which just celebrated its first year with me.

I probably should change the title of this post to roll out the printer, but it doesn't go well with barrel, especially since the ink is holding out. Too bad the printer won't allow any paper through its plastic teeth so I'd need to roll out the ink barrel, but into every life a little rain . . . et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I do know some things for certain: schedules make a difference, working until you drop is not necessarily productive (or lucrative) and when you leave some room for the spark of creativity to strike you're sure to burn brightly and often. A fire cannot burn in a vacuum and creativity cannot function with tired and depleted synapses incapable of generating a spark.

That is all. Disperse.

Blank slate

Saturday mornings are the best, especially lately. I awaken in darkness well before the sun hints it's up and realize I don't have to get up right away or at least I can go back to sleep once I take care of the morning water. A blank slate hangs before me. I have a few things I need to get done, but there is no clock ticking and no sense of time running out.

I watch the first colors tint the clouds and sky. As the light brightens, dark shapes coalesce from shadows into color and light. Birds twitter and call, singing up the sun. The blossoms on the tree next door brighten and the colors soften to shades of pink and rose when the light hits them. The breeze brings the scents of fresh, cool air and warming flowers. Sunshine filters through the leaves that seem to grow more profuse with every passing moment. I close my eyes and breathe and relax and drift in and out of sleep and dreams. It's Saturday and life is full of possibilities.

Family matters--or not

An old friend emailed and asked me if family was important. She's been having yet another go-round with her sisters and is feeling left out. Sometimes her sisters close ranks and gossip about her, passing around stories that have just a small poppy seed of truth that blossom into much more, thus alienating her from the rest of her family--and especially from her nieces and nephews.

Recently, one of her nephews stopped by and told her his sister moved back to Las Vegas. She had returned home to live but after three months found out it didn't work. She supposedly had cancer and full blown AIDS and had until October to live. When my friend contacted her, she said the tests weren't back and she's not going to worry until she is told differently. My friend thought she'd find her niece distraught and frightened; she wasn't.

My friend enjoys her nieces and nephews and she would enjoy her sisters if they weren't forever plotting and scheming and verbally abusing her. I've seen some of the abuse first hand. It's subtle but they certainly know how to set the barbed hooks deeply. Her sisters will make a comment that seems like a compliment on the surface; it's not. There's that sharp barbed hook barely hidden in the bait. My friend has learned not to rise to the bait but it means her sisters have less and less contact with her because she no longer gives them a burst of emotion to feed on.

This is what I told her:

I was thinking about family and how important--or not--they are just this morning. In fact, I was writing about it in the diary I keep on my laptop. I have a few of them, but that one sits on the bed on the side where I don't sleep and it's easy to pick up and type everything out, easier than writing it out long hand. Anyway, it all started with a shower yesterday afternoon. I was washing and suddenly the scent of Ivory soap came to mind. One of my aunts used it on her kids and I always associated the smell with her and with love. Dad told me one time that when her girls were little and came in from playing she'd wash their hands and faces in Ivory soap. Her bathroom always smelled of Ivory soap and I used to wash my hands very thoroughly when I went to the bathroom at her house so I could smell like her and her daughters. She never worked outside the home and I don't think she drove a car. She wore dresses all the time, simple cotton dresses--with sleeves for winter and without sleeves for spring, summer and warm days in fall. She didn't wear makeup or have fancy clothes and her house was always clean, but it was the kind of clean that was welcoming and homey, a place that smelled of love. When I was old enough to drive and had a problem I'd drive over to her house. No matter the time, she was always there for me and willing to listen to what I had to say.

Aunt Edith was family and she was important to me. But whether we like the people related to us or not, they have an affect on our lives and on making us who we are. In that sense the are important. In the sense that they should remain central in our lives and determine the course of the rest of our lives, no, I don't think they are important.

Family is a touchstone, a training ground, and a haven sometimes but family can also be a millstone dragging us down. There is the family you're born into and the family you make with the people who mean most to you, the ones who become your touchstone and your haven. In that sense, family is very important. Family is connection and we all need connections, just not the ones with which we come into the world.

Time's up; pencils down

For some reason memories often pop up without any reference to what I'm doing. One of those memories is a terrifying book by Joan Samson called The Auctioneer. I picked up the book as an impulse purchase and the story creeps into my nightmares from time to time. I wasn't dreaming when the book crossed my mind this morning. I had just finished writing another piece for the Chicken Soup books about cats.

The Auctioneer is one of the most horrifying books I've read. It creeps up on you and takes you over more with such a simple and innocuous start: an auctioneer comes to a rural community. What happens is insidious and will stick with you long after you put down the book. I read the story more than 20 years ago when it first came out. I haven't read it since, but it popped into my mind this morning. Then I went looking for the more books by the same author.

I didn't find them.

Like Harper Lee, Joan Samson only published one book. Unlike Harper Lee, Samson died the year after the book was published at the ripe old age of 39. She probably had a lot more books in her, but not much time. Her book lives on and is set for re-release August 2007. Now that is staying power. What's more, it has never been out of print.

From what I could find out, the book was once optioned for a movie that was never made. With the new release of the book in hardback (again), I hope some director has enough intelligence to put this one on the fast track.

If you want true horror, check out the book. Buy it, rent it, borrow it from the library or get it second-hand at Amazon or Alibris. You won't regret it.

I'll bet Joan Samson thought she had more time to write more books, but the sand had run out of her hourglass.

Writing well

I've been up since about 1 AM. I don't have insomnia. I just went to bed early because I'm trying out something I read in I'd Rather Be Writing by Marcia Golub about schedules and scheduling time to write. With one book contract and two other books in contract negotiations I needed to find a way to make better use of my time since I have a job that takes up a huge chunk of my time. The idea is to stick to a schedule for seven days and see if things aren't better and I am more productive. I have to admit I'm writing more and that's a good thing, but that little boost of confidence and energy came from a task I completed this weekend past. I did something I haven't done in a couple years; I entered the Writers Weekly 24-hour short story contest (short as in less than 1000 words). From noon (central time) on Saturday to noon on Sunday you have 24 hours to write a short story based on the prompt they email on Saturday. I am very pleased with the results and I came in just under one thousand words with a story that has a beginning, middle and satisfying end but leaves room for a longer story if I decide to go on with it--and maybe another novel. It wasn't what I first started plotting but what I came up with is better and not quite so mundane. At any rate, I'm still working out the kinks in this schedule thing.

I've decided to split up my working day because I can't sit still for eight hours straight, even with a break for lunch and going to the bathroom. I feel antsy and uncomfortable. So, I decided to work from 4-8 (yesterday it was 5:30-9:30), take a break until 1 or 2 PM and then work another 3.5-4 hours. In between times I'd shower and eat and run errands--and I'd write or work on writing projects, like marketing and proposals and submission. So far so good, except I decided to go to bed early last night and woke up at 1. Instead of getting to work I felt like writing. Something kept cycling in my mind that started in the shower and wouldn't let go, so I went with it. It's more a stream of consciousness, but I know from what happened this weekend that it's a process that works for me.

I started with an idea, a prompt of sorts (in this case Ivory soap), and I let it take me down memory lane to all the associations it brought up. I was surprised at some of the things that came out of that little freewriting session (something else I do on occasion--mostly in this journal). I had forgotten one of my cousins was married to Bill Howard who is the younger brother of Frank Howard who lived in a big stone house plucked right out of the medieval English countryside, complete with turret, that sat on the corner opposite Schiller Park in German Village in the Brewery District.

We lived in German Village just one block east of the park for a while. I went to Armstrong School just around the corner from the house my grandparents owned. We had just come back from Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland and were on our way to Panama in a few months after Dad got things settled and found us a place to live. I was in the second grade and I walked to school and home on my own every day. I don't think I realized my Aunt Edith lived just a few blocks south of us on Reinhard past the Howards' house with the turret or that one day I would stand in Schiller Park as Juliet's nurse in Romeo and Juliet a couple decades later or ice skate on the pond in the winter after driving across the city with my kids just to spend time in that particular park even though Westgate Park was closer and much more familiar. There is something magical about Schiller Park and the brick streets of German Village where so many grand old houses live.

But I am behind schedule this morning and the stories will keep a while longer, marinating in memory and the senses they stir, until I take my morning break and dip my fingers into the writing well again.

That is all. Disperse.

Hungry Bear

One of my friends is depressed--again. She was happy about a week ago. She smiled and laughed and told her awful jokes and everything was right in her world . . . until the world crashed down on her. She wasn't in an accident and no one died. Nothing broke and needed to be fixed and she didn't get hit with any unexpected expenses. The hungry bear came out of her cave.

There are some people who cannot stand to see anyone else happy, especially not someone they know. They feed on misery and depression and they're never satisfied until they've destroyed every last smile and real feeling of happiness. Only then is the bear's appetite sated. The bear can handle the occasional obligatory empty smile, the smiles that never light up the eyes or make anyone else who sees it feel light and happy. They don't mind laughter as long as it's hollow. But let the bear see a single ray of happiness or a contented smile or catch the faintest scent of hope and she charges out of the cave and devours every single morsel of joy until there is nothing left but depression, anger and sadness.

The bear is a subtle creature. She will start an argument or make some snide comment questioning competence, honesty or commitment to those around you, nagging and niggling away at the brightness until only dull and insipid smiles and thoughts remain. Insidious, the bear strikes without warning while her prey is lost in a fog of pleasure, sending her prey's bright dreams and fond memories plummeting into the dark abyss.

There are only two ways to deal with the hungry bear. Either learn to hide the smiles that come with true happiness or get out of the bear's territory where her keen senses can no longer discern the faintest whiff of joy. The only other option, and it's the coward's way, is to lock away every memory of happiness and joy and give the hungry bear what she wants: hopelessness, sadness, loneliness and depression.

The King and I

Strange dreams plagued me this morning. Stephen King was sending me money because he believed in my talent. Instead of sending the last check, which was a really large amount, he brought it himself. It wasn't one check but a whole bunch of checks from a lot of different accounts, all small amounts. He said it was to hide it from his accountant and his wife. The stack of checks was enormous, filling a box. What was really strange was that he brought the checks because he wanted to make me his mistress but when we ended up in bed together (his shirt was off and we were kissing when he guided my hand lower--much lower) it wasn't King but someone with whose anatomy I am very familiar.

What's up with that?

Busting out all over

"Spring is busting out all o-over."

I love musicals: the singing, the dancing, the color and excitement. I've even did a turn as dancer, actor and singer once upon a time, but like so many things it fell by the wayside to be practiced and enjoyed alone. At least I always thought I was alone. I wasn't. There is always someone near or passing by when we least expect it, and oftentimes we don't even know it.

When I lived at the cabin higher up in the mountains there were other houses and cabins nearby but they were usually empty, the owners weekenders or seasonals. Very few people lived up there full time. The cabin was screened by trees and set down into a fold of the mountain hidden from casual view. Unless you knew it was there, you wouldn't see it despite it's orangey-brown stained color.

After I moved back to the city, I didn't think about the habits I had formed while I lived in solitude. I sang and danced out on the deck in the sunshine and in the snow, serenading the animals, clouds and trees without thinking about it. I felt free. So free, that when I moved here I kept on singing and dancing, but not out on the deck. I don't have one. My landlady and Pastor heard me through the windows, open to catch the warm spring breezes, and mentioned it a couple days later, saying the house liked my singing--and so did they. The other day the landlady mentioned she doesn't hear me singing any more. "Pastor lies out on the deck looking up at your windows. He's waiting for you to sing. It's time again," she said. "You don't sing much any more."

No, I don't. I sing now and then when I shower and on the weekends when I get dressed to go out, but not like I did when I moved here. Responsibilities and work have silenced me.

"We hope you start singing again," the landlady said. Pastor leaned against me, nosing my hands, urging me to pet him. "Pastor misses it." She turned to go back into her apartment and stopped. "I do, too."

I miss those long slow days full of books and singing and dancing and quiet. I love it here in this neighborhood between the parks, amid the laughter and voices of children and friends. Still, there is something quieter about my life here despite being surrounded by sounds and noise and voices. I am no longer free, fitted as I am into this homey niche in the city, one sound lost among so much other sounds.

Nel just finished her shower and the landlady and Pastor have gone to the dog park for their morning walk. The scent of coffee lingers in the air from the landlady's apartment, just a whiff of richness and home. A breeze stirs the cords on the blinds and the whoosh of cars passing in the street below drifts up. Birds call and warble while crows voice their harsh raucous caws. Cooper barks next door and the hum of computer and refrigerator underlay it all. Every voice, every sound, every noise weaves music, a different music I have become used to hearing, a music that reminds me of the softer music of those long slow days.

I miss the music, too. I miss the magical sound of one voice busting out all over with excitement and hope and freedom.

Between the covers

As a book reviewer, I am obligated to read every book from cover to cover whether I like it or not. Sometimes it's a chore and sometimes it's a blessing in disguise. Normally, I race through a book in hours. Sometimes I race through a book in days or even weeks because it is that horrible. Then there are books that seem wonderful in the beginning but lose my interest somewhere after the first third or even the first half, but I finish the book regardless. I do the same for books that start out horrible and become wonderful. That's part of the beauty of books--and writers; you don't always know the real story until you read the whole thing. The book I just finished reading and reviewing is a case in point.

This last book was a mystery. The first few chapters were horrible, the dialogue cliched with cookie cutter bad guys doing bad things and the good guys drinking coffee and eating donuts on the way to the scene of a crime in progress. The good guy has been tracking the bad guy for years and the bad guy plays with the good guy like a cat with a mouse until he finally decides to take the good guy out and ends up in a ditch. Ho hum.

Every time I started reading the book all I could think about was putting in some extra time with work or watching a DVD or picking up something interesting to read, like anything in the piles of books that teeter in tower of Pisa piles and over flow boxes and are heaped on furniture and floor. Anything not to have to finish the book. But it's my job and I do get paid regularly and fair well for reading even awful books. The only thing that would have made this book worse was doing it for free. Earning a fee for reviewing puts a short time limit on how long I can take reading any one book. Most of the time I finish three or four books a week even when I'm working a lot of hours; I sleep less so I can read. It's worth it. And then there are times when it isn't worth it and I'd rather clean the toilet or wash the dishes than finish the book. I thought this last book was the latter. I was wrong. It was awful at first but one-third of the way through became really good with a surprising ending.

That's part of the wonder and magic of books. Sometimes you see the book's cover, read the blurbs on the back and a short synopsis on the fly leaf of the dust jacket and can't wait to start it. Other times, the blurbs are the best part of the book. There are times when choosing any book by a new author is a crap shoot that more often than not pays off. Some books have rocky middles and are good or bad at the beginning and the ending or some other combination of good, mediocre and bad.

The saying goes, "As above, so below." It applies also to books.

I've met people who were wonderful on first meeting but the longer I knew them the less wonderful they became. The cover was nice and the blurbs and synopsis were great, the inside left a lot to be desired. The same is true for people who rubbed me the wrong way the first time we met, and for many subsequent meetings, but then something clicked or we found something in common and we've remained friends ever since; in a few cases we've been friends for many decades (yes, I am that old).

There will always be people who live up to first impressions: good and bad. You can spend years with someone who struck your fancy right off the bat and somewhere along the line they changed or you changed or some piece of the human puzzle that wasn't immediately visible clicked into place and you found yourself stuck. Some people have rocky patches in the middle (and sometimes a few rocky patches) but what drew you to them in the first place keeps you hanging around, waiting for the opportunity to pick up where you left off and go on to a satisfying ending. Life is magic, too.

Because I'm a reviewer I have no choice but to finish whatever book I promise to review: good, bad or indifferent. When I'm not reviewing and a book doesn't pan out or shows no signs of getting better, I put it down, take it back to the library, give it to someone who might like it or donate it--anything to get it out of my hands. I have been surprised sometimes but not often and it gives me a new understanding of the publishing business when time is of the essence and there is a room full of manuscripts to read. The author doesn't get more than a page or two, and sometimes only a couple paragraphs, before their fate is sealed.

Part of what kept me reading that awful beginning of a mystery was a glimmer of something in the writing, a hint of a promise of something good. That's why I wait for some people to get clear of the rocky times--there is a glimmer of hope, a hint of something special between us and tossing them aside without sticking around for the ending would be a big loss--for both of us. I'm glad I finished that awful beginning of a book for whatever reason. It was worth it. I know people like that, too. Don't you?

Cold strawberries

I like to start the morning with fruit. Strawberries are my favorite. Bananas are a close second and sometimes I mix the two. First, I have a banana and then some strawberries. I ran out of bananas yesterday and now all I have are strawberries. I'm not complaining. I love strawberries.

However, strawberries taste so much better when they are warm, at least room temperature. The best of all possible tastes is a strawberry picked fresh from the vine and eaten while still warm from the sun. All the strawberry taste and sweetness are at their peak of perfection. Organic store bought strawberries run a close second but they wilt pretty quickly. Keeping them in the refrigerator makes them last longer and it's almost an agony smelling their luscious scent and waiting for them to get to room temperature. Microwaving for a few seconds makes them warm but then the strawberries taste slightly off. I don't understand why, especially since dipping them in warm chocolate enhances the intensity of the sweetness and strawberry-ness. It just does.

I have a bowl of strawberries this morning and I've already eaten a few still cold. I don't want to wait, but as I taste the hint of sweetness that would be so much better if I did wait I slow down and make each cold berry last, staving off the desire to devour them all without stopping until only a few pips and a bit of juice are left. Waiting makes so many things better.

Society as a whole is geared to instant gratification. Credit makes it easier to get everything from cars and houses to DVD players and computers. For a small fee (and sometimes a very large fee) we can have whatever we desire without the wait. All we have to do is make the payments.

I just paid off my digital camera, bought on credit, and have only this laptop and my living room furniture to pay off. When I called and made my payment last week I paid off the camera. The manager asked what I would like to get next. "Nothing," I said, "and I'm paying off the rest by July."

"You have to get something," Joe the manager said.

"I don't need anything else."

"A big screen TV?"

"I have a nice TV and I use it to watch DVDs. I neither need nor want a bigger TV."

"A new DVD player?"

"Mine works just fine and I have a backup."

"How about bedroom furniture? You bought the bed but you don't have the rest. I'll make you a great deal." Joe was working hard.

"I don't think so. There would be too much to move around when I paint the bedroom. I think I'll wait."

"Keep us in mind," Joe said. He gave me the authorization number on my payment. "I'm sure you'll find something you need before July."

I could use some bookcases and a new desk that gives me enough room for my sewing machine and radio equipment and computers, but I don't need them now. I could also use a dresser, but what I have works just fine. I could use a lot of things, but I don't really need anything. I'm waiting for the day when what I owe is paid off and I don't have to make any more payments. I can save a little money and eventually get what I could use later. It will be nice not having to worry about what I owe. I know I'll always have the phone and electric and rent to pay and food to buy, but I can live with that. I can wait.

So many things are worth the wait, like seeing and being with good and dear friends. Every time I see a friend who has been absent from my life for a while it's like the first time when we realized what a great connection we share. It's like cold strawberries that taste so much better I wait for them to warm up. The waiting is agony at times, but the result is absolutely worth the wait.

We are the Organians

A couple years ago a good friend gave me Conversations With God. I decided to read it and found I agreed with a lot of the philosophy. I decided to borrow Nel's copy of the second book in the series and I read a little bit of it at a time since I have a lot of other books I have to read. I'm finding some of the information and philosophy interesting.

Hitler went to heaven, according to the book. It's not as strange as it sounds, but it does turn what most people term right and wrong inside out.

We are taught to believe, and indeed most religions teach, that there is right and wrong, good and bad, light and dark, etc. Everything has an opposite. Rules are laid down and if we deviate from those rules then we are wrong and should be punished. Indeed, most religions teach we will be punished--in one way or another: hell, karma, the law of return, etc. What if the rules laid down don't apply and there is no punishment except what we decide for ourselves?

The question reminds me of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and the Nicaean Council when they decided not to put in any mention of reincarnation because they believed you couldn't control people who believed that they would be born again into this life (and yet they talk about being born again . . . in a spiritual sense--another topic for another time). The eldest brother, Mitya, believes that there is no right or wrong and to certain men the laws do not apply. There is no devil and no hell and no punishment, just the exercise of choice (in a nutshell). When he finds himself face to face with the reality of his philosophy he has to face the "evil that men do" and the evil that sprang from his thoughts.

If there is no punishment for defying the dictates of societal law, can you control the people? Should you? Are laws and heavenly retribution and hell and karma and all the other names for punishment what keep us in line and make us unwilling to commit what we consider heinous acts? Does it really matter?

According to Walsch's dialogue, we are not here to learn or right wrongs or live out karma, but simply to experience. We are extensions of the Eternal--in the words of some religions, the Universe figuring itself out--the physical manifestations of a greater Presence created to create and internalize experience--all experience. Thinking that way puts a different face on everything we think we know and understand. If someone causes me pain or hurts me in any way, who is at fault? Does it really depend on right and wrong or just perception? Does it even matter?

If Walsch's supposition is right, then it doesn't matter and there is no right or wrong, only the experience. It's a difficult concept to grasp. Nothing we do here matters in and of itself and is only grist for the experience mill, a manifestation of reality that does not exist except as it contributes to the greater whole of knowledge.

When the colonists in the New World rebelled against their sovereign king the colonists believed they were in the right to fight for their freedom because they felt they were being oppressed. The king, and indeed his subjects in Britain, believed the colonists were terrorists and criminals who should be punished because they refused to pay their taxes and their sovereign his due. Who was right?

Take the Civil War/Norther War of Aggression, indeed any war. Each side believes they are in the right and God's backing. Do they? There is a line from Cold Mountain when Inman says he's certain God is tired of being called down on both sides of the fight.

Take any situation, even the situation in a family. A parent sets rules and expects the children to obey. One child does not obey because he felt he was being oppressed and it is right to rebel against an oppressor. The parent enforces the punishment laid down for disobedience because the parent has the power, but is it right? Does it really depend on perspective? Do the circumstances change how the outside world views the situation? For instance, if the child who is being beaten has been told not to leave the house and they leave the house to get away from the beatings, who is right: the parent or the child? What if both are right and there is no wrong?

Does it all come down to who has the power and who sets the rules?

We agree to follow certain guidelines. When we find out someone else broke the rules, didn't follow the guidelines, is it moral outrage against wrongdoing that moves us to anger or censure or is it just that someone got away with something we didn't have the nerve to do? We certainly feel pain when someone close to us is hurt, when someone we know has been wronged, but it doesn't sting quite so much when we have no stake in the outcome or relationship with the one who has been "hurt". Does our lack of involvement lessen the rightness or wrongness of the situation? Is there really right and wrong? If we follow this reasoning, does it mean chaos will reign? Do we really need guidelines to tell us what we do and do not want to experience? Do we need someone telling us what to do and how to do it?

Putting this whole idea in another light for me it comes down to how I view the actions of others interacting with me. I see things one way and they see them another. Are we both right or both wrong? If one is right and the other wrong, who decides? Certainly, we cannot pass judgment since our views are fixed. He is wrong and I am right. We cannot trust the judgment of those nearest us, people who know and like us, because their judgment is tainted by association and by not knowing both sides of the situation. They know only what they have been told and cannot weigh both points of view. People side with their friends; it is a matter of loyalty. I begin to see the wisdom in a judge and jury and why friends and relations are not allowed to be part of the jury. Can't be impartial when you have a stake in the outcome. If here is no right and wrong, only experience, then it doesn't matter. We have served our purpose. We have experienced being hurt and doing the hurting and no one is really to blame. It's simply cause and effect dictated by the guidelines we ourselves set.

There is no right and wrong, only experience. Just as power is neutral, so, too, is life. We are given life in this plane of existence so we can experience whatever we choose to know, to feel, to be, to create. Even when we think we have hurt someone or someone has been killed or died, they really haven't. Who they are, what experiences they accumulated, are still part of the Universal Consciousness. Energy (experience) can never be destroyed, only its form changes. Takes a little--or a lot--to understand.

I am reminded of the Organians on Star Trek. No one was hurt or killed because you cannot destroy energy. The energy may take the form of a person or an object or a living beast or plant, but it is at its root still energy, just as we are energy given form. No matter what I think has happened to me, no matter who I have believed hurt me, none of it really exists except as an analog of experience, the experience of disappointment, betrayal and emotional pain, and therefore there is no one to blame or punish or dislike. They in themselves do not matter because they were the tools necessary to create a specific experience. They served their purpose. Kind of puts things in a different perspective . . . one I'm still working on understanding. I still do not see how knowing this--if it is true--will pay the bills or keep me from having to pay a fine for disobeying society's laws. I'm getting closer but I'm not there yet. Still, pondering this makes it easier to forget all the hurt other people, in my perception, have done to me, and that's worth something.

That is all. Disperse.

Mark of the volunteer

I had a very enjoyable morning yesterday. We had 19 candidates for ham radio license exams and most of them passed the test with flying colors, thanks in no small part to Mike Anderson who is chairman of the education committee. He does a fantastic job teaching the courses and giving everyone a good grounding in electronics theory and radio operation. Mike does have a problem using sharp and pointed objects and shouldn't be allowed to use them without constant supervision, but that's another story entirely. There was one other woman at the exam session yesterday and she was testing.

Over the past two years I have spent a lot of Saturday mornings with most of these guys and since I became newsletter editor (a job I was tricked into taking--but more about that later) I have gotten to know them all a lot better. We laugh and joke and tease each other and get along great. I like them all even when they tell really awful jokes, as one of the guys inevitably does. He does love his puns and plays on words and I had to hit him a couple of times with a paper folder to get him to behave.

One of the examinees came up to me as he walked out the door with his paperwork. When I first saw him as we checked everyone in and made sure they had all the proper identification, etc., I thought he was a woman. His face was smooth with no sign of a beard and he wore two little gold hoops in his left ear. He wore a baseball cap, but then so do I most of the time. It has my call sign on it and it's brand new. He stopped and told me his name and that it was nice to finally meet me. He was the guy who called me a couple months ago just after I returned from Ohio, having been told I was the head of the ham radio club. I'm not. I'm just the newsletter editor, but the owner of Ham Radio Outlet in Denver gave him my name and number; it's on the newsletter, but so are the names of all the board members and president. I guess he figured I'd know where to go. I sent him to Mike and he passed his test and got his first ham radio license (technician) at 70+ years of age. It was a pleasure meeting him and flirting with all the guys.

Yes, I flirt with the guys. I smile and laugh at their jokes and tease them about their tee shirts and ball caps and such. I am the only female on the team here in Colorado Springs so it's my job to remind them that women are ham radio operators, too, and we aren't trying to be men. We just like science and math and electronics--and we look really good in ball caps.

One VE team member made a point of showing me his tee shirt. It was a relic from 1988 that reminded me of the west side of Columbus on the Hilltop where I lived after Dad retired from the Army. Made me a little nostalgic for Westgate park where I picnicked, fished in the pond in the spring, summer and fall, played tennis and baseball, walked through the trees and around the track, necked with my boyfriends and ice skated in winter. It was a special place for me, somewhere I could go and feel a bit of freedom. I walked there when I wasn't old enough to drive and drove there when I was . . . usually in the company of my current boyfriend so we could talk, walk, kiss, hold hands and do all the things teenage boys and girls do without going so far we'd be embarrassed and arrested by the cops who patrolled the area. My piano teacher lived a couple blocks down the street from Westgate park and I always stopped at the park and breathed in the pine-scented air, especially after it rained, before I walked the three or four miles home. In the winter, I caught the bus and walked home from Sullivant Avenue, just three blocks, but when it was nice I walked down the side streets and through the neighborhoods and never thought twice about it. Neither did my parents.

After everyone testing had gone and we finished cleaning up and having a two-minute meeting, we walked outside into a sunny and warm spring day. We stood outside talking for a while until there were only two of us left, chatting about what had happened since the last time we saw each other and had enough time to catch up. About that time a little tarball, a black male squirrel, came over. He stood on the little grassy spot around a tree and looked at us. He's the second black squirrel I've seen but evidently he and his friends and relatives have taken up residence in Black Forest, which is a few miles away from where we were standing yesterday. He was a bold little fella and he wasn't afraid of us. He kept getting closer and closer, stopping every once in a while to sit back on his haunches. That's how I knew he was a male. He came straight for me, but before he got all the way over to me (must have been the way I smelled) my friend and I said goodbye and went our separate ways to run Saturday errands.

I haven't been to quite as many exam sessions in the past few months and I miss them. I miss being with my friends and the guys on the team. Someone always has a story or joke to share and it's just funny watching the guys sheepishly look at me as they go for their third or fourth or tenth donut or cookie. I don't eat the cookies or the donuts but the guys never pass them up . . . not even after having a big breakfast over at the Hungry Bear up in Woodland Park 15 minutes before. They may not be able to eat that third stack of pancakes, but they always have room for donuts. Okay, so I'm exaggerating a little; they can't eat the second stack of pancakes, but the pancakes are HUGE.

I have made a lot of good friends, the kind that like to tease and don't mind being teased. One of those friendships resulted in a brand new flat panel monitor for my work computer. When I get it and hook it up, the two big old monster monitors (17" and 19") on my desk are going to Mike Anderson to use for the computers he puts together from spare parts for people he knows who can't afford to buy one. When I get all the information off the three hard drives I have, I'll give him two of the extra computers for parts to help the cause. That should give me a little room in the living room closet next to my stash of keyboards (I go through about two a year). I can't wait to use the new monitor and I'd still be saving the money for a really nice one if it weren't for these wonderful and generous ham radio operators.

Oh, yes, I said I'd explain about these wonderful and generous hams who tricked me into becoming editor. Well, it wasn't all the guys, just one: Jim Harris. One Saturday I helped a fellow ham put up his new antenna tower. He took us to lunch at a nearby Denny's and Jim was part of the group. I wasn't a member of the local ham radio club (PPRAA) then and my only knowledge of them was through exam sessions as a (volunteer examiner) VE. My first session as a brand new VE was for the PPRAA. Anyway, the talk turned to needing a newsletter editor right after I answered the question about what I did. I should have looked at their eyes instead of eating my lunch, because I'm sure they lit up like Chernobyl.

"You're a writer?" they asked innocently. "What kind of writing do you do?"

"Articles, stories, editing, newsletters. All kinds of writing."

And then Jim lowered the boom. I never saw it coming. "I was considering taking the job but since you're a writer . . ."

Everyone looked at me.

"Well, I did want to get to know the community and local hams better," I ventured. After that I never had a chance.

"You should be a member of the PPRAA, but we'll work around that."

"Who do I talk to?" I didn't know it but I had already talked to the right person.

Three months later at a VE session in Woodland Park, one of the other VEs congratulated me on being the new PPRAA newsletter editor. "I beg your pardon," I said.

"I heard it at the club meeting last month."

These wonderful and generous guys had so wonderfully and generously hooked and landed the new fish--me. I went to a board meeting, found out I had to become a member to be on the board (the newsletter editor is not voted in but serves on the board as long as they are editor--in my case, I got life), paid my dues for the next year (they threw in December for free) and took up the position that everyone assures me I do beautifully. I think I'm being hornswoggled yet again but I do know that they're not about to let me walk away, and I'll bet running isn't an option either. I'm sure the speediest grapevine in the world has already put out the word that no one is to step up to the plate and volunteer to become editor. They'll tell me about it just before I die. I know that for certain.

Just like that furry little tarball who checked me out yesterday and decided I was the one who'd give him a nut or a treat, the guys in the PPRAA checked me out and decided I was the perfect mark. I feel like the only guy left standing alone when the rest of the battalion takes a giant step backward when the captain asks for volunteers for a long and possibly dangerous mission. I avoided the squirrel but I'll have to be a lot quicker to avoid the guys in the PPRAA. They have radios everywhere and they are not afraid to use them.

Until then, I'll keep making changes and shaking things up until I find out just how far they'll let me go before they volunteer someone else.

That is all. Disperse.

Blizzard...not

Tomorrow is going to be a very early day. I need to do a load of laundry before I leave for the VE session so I can get some done since the rest of the day I'll be running errands. We were supposed to get a blizzard, but down here in the valley at the foot of Pikes Peak, we got a bit of snow (and very pretty it was) but not much at all on the roads. Most of it was gone fairly early even in the weak sun that winked now and again through the clouds. It's cold outside (good thing, too, since not even cold showers are cooling my spring fever) but not too cold.

The landlady called this afternoon asking me if I wanted some food. She'd been cooking and baking again and needed to get rid of some of the food. I couldn't very well say no. Besides, she makes very good vegetable soup and black beans. I even got some sweet and sauerkraut into the bargain, and I love sauerkraut. The only thing that would make it better is kielbasa, but I won't quibble about that.

Because of the landlady's attack of kitchen fever I only have to get nonfood items at the store--and the fruit I've been craving: apples, oranges, pears, strawberries, pineapple and bananas. Grapes would be nice, too. And I was going to get some nice portobello mushrooms and fresh salmon to make a dish I saw in the monthly magazine I get from the health food market. I'll have to stop at the liquor store and buy a bottle of wine that, except for one cup I need for the recipe, will sit in the fridge until the next time I decide to make the recipe, but that's not a bad thing. I might even splurge and buy a bottle of hearty red wine and chicken to make coq au vin. Who knows? I could decide to buy the ingredients to make cheesecake and thank the landlady with a food gift of my own. She might have company next weekend and it would be nice (if she can stop eating it even when it's frozen) to share a little dessert with her spring fever dessert companion.

It's days like this I remember how good it is to seize the moment and enjoy myself, to just let go of all the excuses and rational thinking and embrace the simple pleasures: good food and time with good friends. Moments like those are fleeting and opportunities like that don't come along every day, so whenever a chance presents itself I throw caution to the wind, close my eyes, take a deep breath and let myself go. I may regret it tomorrow or next week, or maybe I won't, but I will at least have another delicious and enjoyable memory to savor.

I could run into someone this weekend who would like to share a little dessert. I have plenty and I'm fond of sharing.

Plague of dreams

It's snowing outside. I didn't think the ground was cold enough for the snow to accumulate, but I was wrong. It's building up fast and that means putting on some warm clothes and venturing out into the coming blizzard to stock up on food and run a few errands before I shut the door and huddle in front of the space heater, which right now is not doing very good at heating the apartment. Cold seeps through infinitesimally small cracks, making me wonder how many of my clothes I can put on at once before I can no longer move my arms, hands or legs and still be warm.

I worked until about 6:30 this morning and dropped into bed like a stone. I didn't think I'd dream. I was wrong again. And what a dream it was. It's probably why I've avoided going to bed at night, since every time I do, now that I've caught up on my rest, my dreams are highly erotic. The cast is always the same but the action is different nearly every time. It's as if someone has hacked into my dreams and wants to drive me crazy with desire . . . as if I needed help in that department. And it's not just when I'm sleeping either. Sometimes when I'm waiting for work to download or upload I get a flash of images and sensations and feelings that make it very difficult to keep my mind on work. It's probably a good thing this house is full of women or I'd be knocking on someone's door. Even if there were men in the house, it wouldn't help because they're not in the dreams. If I see him I'm not sure I can control the urges that are building to Mount St. Helen's pre-eruption force.

It's a good thing I'm a civilized and controlled individual . . . or at least that is what I keep telling myself.

I am civilized. I can control my desires.

I wonder how many times I have to repeat that before I can safely venture out of this house? Even though I have to go out and bring in supplies to carry me through the storm, I'm not sure it's cold enough yet to cool me down. Even though it's cold here in the apartment, even with the space heater running, I'm sweating. I don't think that's a good sign.

Is it?

I have been damned

I am constantly fascinated by the people who read my journal and by the people who trawl for dirt. When I earlier posted the You Are Damned website because I found it interesting I had a feeling it wouldn't be long before one of the shadow lurkers would come out of hiding just long enough to send their love. I was not to be disappointed as one person proved. You will find me by my real name, Jackie Cornwell, on the wall of the damned, courtesy of said lurker, whose personal proclamations say it all.

Thank you, lurker, for proving me right. Too bad you have the wrong end of the stick--yet again. You have to wonder about someone who has only two friends on their friends list, one of whom is a known lurker. It does, however, prove that I continue to be a source of interest to you and your shadow lurking cronies. All I can say is: read on.

That is all. Disperse.

You are damned

It's that time of the year again when the Webby Awards nominees are announced. Being the curious type, I decided to check out the nominees and found this site. Talk about well laid out with amazing colors and good sound effects and functions. Someone bugging you? Don't want to tell them to their face but need to get it off your chest? Check it out and damn a soul. A chance for redemption is also offered. What a great way to get rid of some hostility. That's how to let go.

I offer one warning. Damning a soul does require an email address, but giving your name is optional.

Now, who's been bugging you lately? Tell them and let them know what they can do to redeem their soul or remain on the wall of the damned for all eternity. Bwahahahahaha

That is all. Disperse.

Finally, sun

The snow is melting as the sun rises this morning, falling like rain past the window from trees, roofs, bushes and leaves. The bitter cold that has gripped us this week past is loosening its hold. Forsythia blooming next door beneath my sun room windows is still as bright and yellow as it was when snow and ice locked them away under a white sky. The twigs and branches, leaves and buds glisten with jewel bright colors in the warming light and I remember what my grandmother used to say. "When the forsythia blooms and it snows three more times, it's spring." I think it's finally spring.

I am amazed at the resilience of nature and how, despite arctic temperatures and the sun locked behind a dense pallid sky, the buds and leaves come back stronger and brighter and more beautiful than ever. Some will die, but there will be new buds to take their places. Hopefully, it will be the same for me.

My dreams have been locked in the ice of work and worry and a lack of sleep, my body taking me into a dreamless realm where nothing and no one can reach me so I can rest and heal. My body doesn't need healing (well, not much), but my soul does, having been battered and tossed on stormy arctic seas these past weeks and months. My spring is coming; I can feel the sap rising. Dreams will follow, those that come to me and those I reach out and create, and they will be more welcome for their absence.

Like the green shoots and tender buds, I need the sun, that warm, bright golden ball high in a deep blue Colorado sky, smiling down and warming my heart and soul.

Death country

In discussing a post by spikesleman I was reminded of Sun-Tzu's Art of War when he talks of pushing the enemy into death country, something he wrote should be avoided at all costs.

Death country is where the enemy is pushed to a point where there is no way out. In death country the enemy becomes more dangerous, almost to the point of madness. In the biological vernacular, there is no flight, only fight. When death is the only option there is nothing to do but take down as many of the opposition as possible before dying.

America is headed for death country.

James Dobson pointed his evangelical finger at Fred Thompson, former senator from Tennessee and actor, and said "I don't think he's a Christian." Thompson, who plans to "...leave the door open for a presidential run," may just have been dealt a death blow. Dobson's statement cast a religious pall over Thompson and has placed all Americans on a very slippery slope. Focus on the Family, based here in Colorado, is Dobson's home base and his fingers are in a lot of non-evangelical pies, most notably politics. In 2004 when he endorsed President Bush for re-election, he mobilized six million (6,000,000) evangelical votes and changed political history.

It isn't as if we haven't seen the Religious Right focus on the highest office in the land before--Rev. Jesse Jackson and Pat Robertson leap rabidly screaming to mind--but in the current climate with a president in office who uses religion as a mandate to wage war and a yard stick by which to measure loyalty and service to the people, Dobson's influential statements and President Bush's actions put America on a parallel course with Ayatollah Khomeini and Al Qaeda and Hitler, among far too many others. This is what the founding fathers feared and why they wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights the way they did. They knew what religious persecution had done and they wanted none of it here on American soil.

When most people think of Christianity they think of Jesus's soft spoken words of peace and how he lifted up the lowest, the despise, the disenfranchised, preaching that all were equal under God. People tend to forget the way Hitler used Jesus's attacking the money lenders as a banner to make the idea of war to preserve peace and promote prosperity palatable and even logical to the German people. And Hitler found a a friendly ally in the Roman Catholic church.

The Roman Catholic church had their militant arm in the Jesuits and the various orders of knighthood, galvanizing a world wide purge of all religious beliefs that could not be swallowed whole and adapted. Thank the Roman Catholic church and her vicars of Christ for the single-handed destruction of most of the codices and writings in South America--the New World. What the Vatican could not use it destroyed by fire and sword. Not quite the picture of Christ's soft spoken teachings of peace or the message of the Sermon on the Mount, and it certainly wasn't the religion of slaves, a religion kept alive by women until it became more powerful than Rome's military might, so powerful Emperor Constantine knew it was adapt or be crushed.

When Americans, and indeed most of the Western world, think of evil we think of Muslims and their determination to exterminate all unbelievers. We think of the Incas and their Pyramid of the Sun where victims' hearts were ripped beating from their chests and the Mayans with their games that ended in death for the losing teams. We think of Native Americans raiding peaceful farming and ranching settlements and the wholesale slaughter of innocents in Africa and New Zealand and Asia. We think of the Mongol hordes and the Vandals and the Vikings putting their enemies to death by sword and battle axe and burning the rest. Think again.

Some Christians would argue they are purging themselves and their lands and believers of an evil influence, an incipient and insidious infection that would poison them and enslave their souls, making them unworthy of whatever reward they will receive in that idyllic afterlife that waits for them if only they hold true to their beliefs. Guess what? Near every religious belief is founded on the same shifting sand on a slippery slope headed for the fire and destruction of chaos and paranoia is the siren song that will lure these religious lemmings to their deaths--and ours--as they force the unconvinced unbelievers, their brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, children and grandchildren into death country.

Tolerance is a Utopian concept. It is difficult, if not downright impossible sometimes, to live. No one wants to see themselves as intolerant . . . unless religion is at the root of their intolerance. Christians damn Muslims who damn Christians who damn Buddhists and pagans and Wiccans and even other Christians if they don't follow the same rigid rules and interpretations of their bibles. Most people see their religion as the only true religion, and they the only ones with god's mouth to their ears giving them the unvarnished, unexpurgated and holy truth. They are on the broad and wide and well traveled road to chaos and destruction.

When Rome was tolerant of all religious beliefs, adopting some and ignoring others, they were a juggernaut of power and military might that conquered the majority of the civilized world (civilized in their eyes). But when they adopted Christianity as the state religion, burning temples, putting unbelievers to the sword, and outlawing any other religion, Rome began to crumble and eventually fell. Christianity was not the major contributor to Rome's fall, but Rome's lack of tolerance for other religions and the adoption of one true religion to the exclusion of all other faiths and religious practices.

Intolerance breeds contempt for others who are different and a rigid way of thinking that excludes anyone who does not conform to the ideal. Intolerance may start with religion but it always ends with entitlement and a sense of privilege and power that eventually ends in destruction.

The Roman Catholic church lived on and spread its doctrine and beliefs throughout the world, putting unbelievers to the sword and burning the rest and they began to crumble and fall apart when Martin Luther and John Calvin and many other men and women questioned the approved religion and broke away, running eventually to the New World where they could practice their beliefs without persecution, and where they could destroy the beliefs of the indigenous peoples if they could not convert them. Some people of different faiths didn't get away from the Vicar of Christ, suffering unbelievable torments for their beliefs, like the Carolingians, the Templars, the Jews, the Incas and many others.

It isn't religion that is at fault, but the people who control religions. It's that old demon, Absolute Power, and the way it corrupts absolutely, poisoning everything at the root. It's not the belief but what is done in the name of that belief that has caused more wars and death and poverty and destruction and chaos than any disease known to man. The Black Death didn't do as much damage, neither has HIV and AIDS.

Dobson and President Bush, swollen with their victories and the belief that they have a mandate from on High to force their religious faith down everyone else's throat, are dangerous, as dangerous as the Ayatollahs and Al Qaeda and Idi Amin and Qaddaffi and Hitler and every other religious or political zealot who has risen to power. America may yet pull out of this ideological tail spin since another presidential election is nearly upon us, but if Americans do not wake up and see they are headed for death country we may see the Apocalypse first hand in full and bloody, flaming living color. It will give a whole new meaning to reality television. Think it can't happen here. Think again.

The Founding Fathers' worst nightmares are coming to life. Tolerance and equality are being measured and weighed by a religious agenda that is no different from what we are supposed to be fighting in Iraq and in our war against terrorism. Terrorism does not always wear a foreign face. Terrorism wears the faces we see on and in the news and walks the halls of power as long as America remains in a bloated and drunken stupor of self righteousness. As our freedoms and choices dwindle in the name of safety and security, when the politically correct religious beliefs, as dictated by Dobson and President Bush and their like, become the standard by which to measure loyalty and Americanism, and when tolerance becomes nothing more than a word for anarchy, America is in death country.

That is all. Disperse.

Honestly, officer

I don't know how I got there. I was minding my own business doing my usual Saturday reading and checking out humor writers and there I was eyeball to wedgie with Beyonce on the cover of Sports Illustrated. I was so stunned I forgot how I got there. Maybe if I retrace my steps...

While reading my weekly issue of Long Story Short I began wondering why exactly these writers had won first place. It's not that the stories weren't good--there were some very good pieces--but I enjoyed the also rans so much more, thus proving it's completely subjective and not necessarily about talent once again. Many of the also rans (Honorable Mention) made me laugh and cry and touched me so much more than about 99% of the winners, and that doesn't even take into account the horrid grammar and rampant type-Os that failed to be edited or corrected. I know how those things fall through the cracks.

The more I read, the more I clicked to read other writers, stumbling dazedly upon the humor writers. I really needed a break from having my heart strings plucked, played and otherwise twanged. One or two of the top rated writers winkled a chuckle out of me, but the losers also rans made me laugh so much I had to break frequently for the bathroom, wondering once again why I don't stock up on Depends when I'm in the writing/reading/research mode (going to the bathroom is often a nuisance at these time.), but then I'd have to take the time to put them on. Waste not, want not, but I digress.

Anyway, I lurched into Jennifer Brown, a writer who has pulled off the unbelievable coup of winning the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition not once but twice. I wanted more--much more--so I checked Mrs. Brown out (Oops, wrong Mrs. Brown, but a really great movie with Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer of As Time Goes By). At any rate, I found out the American humorist, Mrs. Brown, offered classes in humor writing, citing her miraculous (not so miraculous when you read her Erma-like humor) and unprecedented twin EBWC wins as proof of her ability to teach what she does, thereby disproving the axiom that those who teach can't do what they teach.

Sorry, off track again.

I read more of Mrs. Brown's writing and followed her to the KC Star and into the back roads of the neighborhood news where she has written a few more If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? guest columns. That led me to a search for her columns and a search through the KC Star because the links Mrs. Brown provided didn't get me to what I wanted--her humor.

Aha! I think I've finally found the twisted thread that led me to the Beyonce wedgie.

I searched the KC Star and something colorful pulled my focus. Must have been the tears in my eyes when I was laughing. It was the words Vogue and full figured. That's what did it. Vogue and full figured just don't go together. Anna Wintour, she of the razor cut hair and razor thin figure who was allegedly not the model for Miranda Priestly of The Devil Wears Prada, made Oprah lose twenty pounds to appear on the cover of Vogue. Evidently, full figured does go on the cover of Vogue because Jennifer Hudson made it to the cover of the March 2007 issue. The picture isn't that flattering and there was talk of Photoshop and Annie Leibowitz's use of perspective and bad taste in all the pictures of the spread. That led to reading about the hotly debated cover and pictures and that's when it happened.

That's it. That's how I got to Beyonce's wedgie. It's easy to understand once I retraced my steps. That's what happens when I have a laptop computer, enough V-8 to keep my stomach from noticing I haven't eaten in about 12 hours and a fast Internet connection. One thing leads to another and humor leads to wedgies. A day in the life. That is what happens when I work all night so that when I fall into bed I sleep like the dead. I haven't had a dream for days--or nights. I miss my dreams. They're so much better than the memory of that image out of my seared and bruised brain. Sometimes the mind is a terrible thing to paste haste taste baste -- aw, hell, wedgie.

That is all. Disperse.

You are what you...

Someone once told me she didn't buy expensive food or go to good restaurants because whatever you eat or drink it ends up in the toilet. I had to stop and think about that one--for a minute, but only for a minute. That's like saying there's no sense buying good clothes that last because they just wear out or that buying anything that is made well and might cost more isn't worth it because it will inevitably end up in the trash or at the dump. It sounds almost like a good idea but then another minute ticks by and common sense rushes in--at least it did with me. It's a very negative way of thinking.

What she fails to see is that eating good food, even when it costs more, means your body is getting better nutrients. Food breaks down and nourishes the body, keeps us alive, and some part of the food--the inedible part--ends up as waste. Even waste has use. Better food--even when it costs more--means a better ultimate form of energy to repair and strengthen the body. Cheap food with lots of additives will keep you alive but you're wasting your money because it isn't good for the body. It's the same with clothing or cars or anything worth having. Buy better made clothing and it will most likely cost more because the materials and labor cost more, but the clothing will last longer. Same for cars and everything else. You get what you pay for.

McDonald's and other fast food restaurants are cheap but they're not going to supply the body with what it needs and will supply more chemicals and additives that will break the body down. Cheap clothing wears out faster. Cheap cars break down more often. But cost isn't the only measuring stick. There are lots of expensive things made and manufactured of cheap material with even cheaper labor. It pays to look closer.

Back in my youth I sold vacuum cleaners (Rainbows) door to door. I knocked on the door of a chicken coop wondering why the office made an appointment for me with chickens. I knew people must live there, but if they couldn't afford anything better than a chicken coop I was wasting my time.

I was wrong.

The inside of the chicken coop was very nicely furnished and showed evidence of taste and style. The couple bought the Rainbow and paid cash for it. They didn't have a lot of floor or upholstery to drapes to use it on but they bought it anyway. I didn't quibble about making a sale, but I was curious why they lived the way they did. I asked.

They told me they lived there because it was well made and inexpensive to heat and cool and because it was paid for. It was part of the land the husband's father had owned for generations and the only part of his family's once vast holdings he still owned. Taxes and bad management had eaten away at their holdings until almost nothing was left but he was determined to hang onto what he still had and eventually buy back the rest.

He and his wife worked for years, scrimping and saving, denying themselves every luxury--and even children--until they had the money to buy back the land. It was too late. They were in their 70s and they finally realized they had used up their whole life looking toward some day and they forgot to live. They had no family to inherit the land but they had a lot of money. They decided to spend the money fixing up their home and buying all the things they denied themselves over the years. The couple were happy and seemed well suited to each other. There was an easy sense of familiarity in their demeanor and actions.

"I didn't give my wife much luxury over the years and she never complained. She worked right by my side the whole time. I was a fool," he said.

His wife patted his hand and looked up at him with such devotion and love. "Doesn't matter. You're still my fool."

Looking only at the outside of things is usually a mistake. When you look at the cost and not at what you're getting or what you're giving up, you're looking at the wrong end of things. Everything you eat doesn't end up in the toilet. Everything you buy to wear or use or drive isn't going to end up on the scrap heap or in a land fill. Some things last. It's getting harder and harder to figure out what will last, but it's definitely worth the effort finding it.

The saying goes that we are what we eat. It's much more basic than that. We are what we choose . . . and sometimes we get a chance to trade a bad choice for a good one.

That is all. Disperse.