Yes, I'm nuts

So there I am in December, starting the 4th draft of my novel and thinking, Hoo-boy, this is truly bad in so many ways, and the chance to enter it in a contest comes up.

Suddenly I decide that I can not only make it a not-stupid book, but that I can do it in time for an early February (!) contest deadline, despite Christmas, houseguests and everyday life. I'm now thinking I belong in lock-up. Reformatting it for the rules turned into a whole, practically line-by-line, job by itself. Finished that yesterday, and only now can I even start entering substantive changes, from typos to genuine plot repairs. Oh and did I mention that I never completed the 4th draft edit before I started the reformat work?

All for something I haven't a prayer of winning, though that's not really a self-putdown. It has as much to do with my breaking a bunch of rules about what's commercially viable, as it does with writing problems. (Oh, well, yeah and with the fact that there might be 10,000 entries!) I'm pretty much doing what I want to do, not what "the market" prefers, But I don't mean to make it sound like I'm protecting My Terribly Important Artistic Vision from being commercialized. The story is pop fiction, meant to be fun, and even then, mainly to readers who give a hoot about the issues and angst of teenaged girls. All I care about is that I get to run my fictional world my own way. If I run it somebody else's way, the book becomes just a product and I fail to have fun.

Entering this contest sort of puts the book into fitness training. I see things in my writing, when I put it into public access, that I don't see when I'm still keeping it private. Posting an excerpt awhile ago showed me a major flaw that I'd missed when I was re-reading it only for myself. This contest is another chance to make me refine the thing.

Also - I'll be able to say I gave the commercial-publication route at least one fair shot.

Anyway, that's what I'm mired in these days. I and 9,999 other people who also cherish their novels. Yeah, mine could be one of 10,000 entries in this one contest. It doesn't do to take life too seriously!

The evangelism thing

In her comment on my bozo-bus post, my friend Catherine brought up some Big Questions : "How then can a Christian follow the Great Commission [Matthew 28:19] and still respect the beliefs of others? Can it be done? Should it be done?"

I think it's quite possible to respect others, but I have to say that I do not think it's possible to respect their beliefs, if I try to persuade them of another belief, no matter how lovingly or sincerely I do it. If it's a call to persuade others, that Commission, by its very nature, demotes their beliefs and places ours above.

To explain, I have to spout some AA 12-step philosophy because it's taught me the best way I've found to honor other peoples' views and still maintain my own integrity.

Here's what happens in a 12-Step meeting : I can be in tears over my boss, my love life, my money problems, whatever, but no one in the room will say, "Here's what you could do," or "Have you tried...?"

What I will hear is : "When I faced [ ]
what helped me was [ ]."

The difference becomes a LOT more obvious when it's about touchy subjects that are inclined to cause exchanges in which people judge or feel judged. I'm highly likely to slam down the mental receiver if someone issues a finger-pointy "you," much less the intrusive "should," but I can listen to some one say "It was like this for me," and not bristle, not close my mind. It's not something I need to rebel against.

The 12-Step way, that of telling how I see things, not how anyone else "should" see them, lets me be genuinely respectful of others, and still honest. About faith, or politics, or my friend's marital problems, or whether my brother should eat Ding Dongs [TM] , or anything else.

Carrying the message and persuading are not the same thing, and when I read the Matthew passage, I see an instruction to inform those who haven't heard the Christian tenets, not a responsibility to persuade people who have heard and rejected them.

I'm fully capable of saying, "This is my experience," but wholly incapable of making any experience, much less a particular one, happen for somebody else. People have certainly questioned my beliefs and had no impact at all. I've been told that the faith in which I was raised probably planted images in my mind that I clung to in time of trouble.

I'm actually fine with others thinking that. If it's supposed to either burst my alleged bubble or tee me off, I'm afraid it's done neither. Spiritual belief doesn't enter us through the mind, even if it does come to rest there. It's a watershed, heart(?) soul(?)...OK, OK, irrational! 8~) moment that is strictly one-on-one between that great Source and each of us, and if we -- yeah, I include myself -- need more enlightenment it too will come from the source.

It doesn't mean that I hide what I believe. It does not even mean that I tell about it only when asked. Nobody asked for my thoughts about anything, but I've been jumping into online conversations for years and I, um, did start a blog. I just decided to start yammering away, and about faith as well as any other thing I feel like pontificating about. This might even meet some people's criteria for "evangelism," but it's just being who I am.

I also can't ignore times past when I thought I was doing the right thing, the best thing, and later realized i had not one clue.

There's yet another Twelve-Step tenet, which is that we don't know everything, and that "more will be revealed." That is, when I think about it, literally the most comforting phrase I've ever encountered.

Probably no butterflies today

Marsh ice.
9:00 AM, January 17, 2009
28° f.

Somewhat different from the way
things were 12 days ago.

Contrast

We get winter, too. Not like some of my friends get it, but today's high made it up to freezing: 32° f. Tonight's low will be 15°.




Taken about 20 minutes ago: hose-shaped ice shards, which spurted out when Larry turned the water on to fill the birdbath.

We're all bozos on this bus.

Atheists, True Believers, everybody.

Yall are gonna have to forgive me for treating with dreary seriousness something started by a comedian.

I'm talking about the pro-atheism ad campaign, in which a lot of people apparently had nothing better to do with thousands of euros than fund atheist messages on public bus flanks, which kind of tells you where I'm at.

I actually see the intended pointed-but-gentle humor in the bus campaign, but what I fear some of the contributors do NOT see is that they've escalated this culture war. If they do see it and it's what they meant to do, fine, freedom of speech and all that. They have a right to annoy me, despite the fact that I have not attempted to annoy them by proselytizing. It's understandable that those who are fed the bleep up with the evangelical version of Christianity...

(God, I get so tired of trying to remind people that it's only one version)

...anyway, it's understandable that they'd take off the gloves and say "Two can play this game."

But despite the amiable tone of the ads, and the careful insertion of the word "probably," i can't help but think it's a deeply stupid mistake. The people who built the bandwagon may be pretty lighthearted about it, but the jumpers-on are less so. Their outpouring of contributions sure looks like it has struck a nerve. An angry, "Let's take this outside!" nerve.

Ad-proponents could certainly point out that Christians dish out the proselytizing, so it's bloody well their turn to take it.

But evangelicals aren't the only ones who'll take it. Just as atheists who've never tried to inflict their views on others have been plagued for years by buttinski Believers who want them to change, so will we believers who've never supported proselytizing get our beliefs ridiculed. Wars always inflict collateral damage. Always.

What, exactly, makes the message telling us Believers that we're misguided and that belief impairs enjoyment of life (huh?) less condescending than the Christian message telling atheists that they're misguided? How does this atheist proselytizing help end the intrusiveness of proselytizing?

It perpetuates it. It rebels against an evangelical attitude problem --"The Smart Enlightened People Must Educate the Silly Dimwitted People!" -- by doing the exact same thing.

Did the Christian evangelicals start it? Did those who opposed the Christian Right's public intrusions fail to speak up? Is the atheism campaign a gentle one compared to the Christian Right noisemaking?

I won't attempt to answer those questions ("us" and "them" is as old as human consciousness) because even if every one of them merits a resounding "Yes!" payback takes things in the wrong direction. By saying, "If you do it then we'll do it," they have just acknowledged that proselytizing is a swell idea.

It means we've all retreated to the defeated position that my right to freedom and respect for my belief depends on the society around me thinking like I do. It follows that we each therefore need to try to remake society into one in which our beliefs are the default setting. May the best Force win. It's innocuous and vaguely amusing in its early stage, and that remaking of society into "correct" thinking isn't real obvious, but the sides are lining up.

Think about it. If you really do believe that it's not, and cannot be, a personal matter, that the community must establish a position on the God question, and that you must fight to make sure it matches yours, OK, your delight in this ad campaign is right on the money.

Make no mistake about it : it is your war, not ours. That term "you" will now embrace atheists and fundies. You've both decided to fight for converts. Me, I'm not ready to give up on freedom of thought. Real freedom, you know, freedom in which we all quit smirking or sneering at each others' beliefs.

But if you don't believe the game must be played and won...?

If you realize that recruiting, whether for Jesus or for physics-is-God, is by definition intrusive....?

If you still want humankind to outgrow evangelism...?

IMO this ain't the way to do it. It's a Three Stooges sketch. It's starting with a funny nose-tweek, but the stakes will inch higher, bones will crack. It feels like it's bringing balance but it's really bringing escalation.

Personally I think it's a monumental waste. That 200,000 bucks is globally tiny, and might not have changed the world. It won't rebuild a bombed-out city. It would feed X-number of hungry children for X-amount of time, then the problem would remain.

But it won't stop with that 200,000. And the evangelical effort will rise to meet it.

This is one battle that really really ought to have heeded the old poster:

What if they gave a war and nobody came??

Help out teh animals!

Downyflake, Graymatter and Scooter -- who rarely agree about anything -- do agree that ....




freekibble.com is one cool site!

Answer the trivia question of the day, correctly or incorrectly, and you contribute to the donation of pet food to animal shelters.

The People magazine article about sooperhero kid Mimi Ausland, who started it, can be found here! (PDF)

There's a dog page and a cat page, and you can donate at either or both, once a day.

Every day~!

Gaza

A voice from Israel:

Yes, I know, war is war. After all, they brought this on themselves. They are a terrorist organization and we are not. They want to destroy us and we seek peace. Still, is there nothing here that will stop this blood pipeline? Even those whose hearts are hardened by "moral righteousness" will have to momentarily halt the bombing machine and ask: Which Israel do we have before us? What will become of its standing in the world, which is now watching the events in Gaza? What are we inflicting on the moderate Arab regimes? And what of the simmering popular hatred we are sowing throughout the world? What good will emerge from this killing and destruction?

It is doubtful whether Hamas will be cut down to size as a result of this wretched war. Yet, the face of the state has been cut down to size, as have civilian elites who are apathetic and scared. The "peace camp," if it ever existed, has been cut down to size. Attorney General Menachem Mazuz authorized the Ghayan killing, regardless of the cost. Haim Oron, the leader of the "new left-wing movement," supported the launch of this foolish war.

The full text of the piece can be found here

OK, it's getting weird now

The Christmas photos have been piling up in my camera, unexamined until last night. I didn't think I'd succeeded at catching the yellow butterfly (December 26th) with the camera, but wow, there he is.



And then, there's today. January 5th. I have seen four butterflies today(!), though I only caught these two lookalikes "on chip."

The 2 that I did not get in photos were another yellow sulphur and an orange one.

And this is getting weird. They should all have disappeared a month ago. Today, it's 70°f, and that's strange in itself -- sure, 70° days pop up all year, but as exceptions, not as such regular events -- but where did the butterflies go on those 30° nights?!

The warm weather is lovely. It's cheering. It keeps our power bill down and that's extremely nice right now, but it is not normal.

I'll be home with a book, but....

Have a fun New Year's Eve, yall .... and a great new year!

8~)

Waiting [Update]

I've written before about my friend in Israel.

A few days ago, she and a group trying to get humanitarian aid into Gaza were stuck waiting for a way in. They had supplies, including things like medicines that needed refrigeration, things that could not wait.

The blockade was lifted on Friday. Last we heard from her in email, she said: "I will be at the border here, on one side or the other, for another few days, and then I am going home. I have a couple articles to write, and a sick cat to take care of."

Then the airstrikes started.

It's not unusual for us to hear nothing from her for weeks at a time. No idea if she was actually inside Gaza, or where she was, when the rockets started falling, but if any readers are inclined toward prayers, positive energy, or anything like that, I'm sure hoping she and her group are OK. The internet is a weird, weird thing. You find yourself caring about people you never met.

--

UPDATE:

In my inbox this morning (Tuesday, 12/30):

"Hello to all,

I am still at the border as things have gotten rather complicated. The humanitarian aid is being allowed in sporadically and there are complex and often confrontational negotiations involved, and that is one thing I am fairly good at."

--

So her group isn't in yet. I had pictured the aid groups as swarming in immediately when the ban was lifted, but it seems that it doesn't work that way. Still keeping my fingers crossed, for her work's success and for safety.

You guys are very very cool. And wow, so is she.

A Christmas Wish

May the people with whom you are spending your holiday be less annoying than the people with whom I am spending my holiday.

Sincerely,
Scooter

A conversation

Me: What's your favorite color?

Larry: Right here (points to a lovely shade of blue in a CT scan of the skull of Tutankhamen, in the current issue of Science Illustrated).

Me: Oh yeah, cobalt blue!

L: Why do you want to know?

Me: Catherine posted this husband quiz on her blog.

L: Oh. Well, let me know how I do.

Me: How you do...?

L: On the test.

Me: Oh, it's not a test of you, it's a test of me, to see how well I know you. And other general stuff, like how we met and things like that. Most of which I already answered in my post about our anniversary.

L: Like the fact that I proposed in a swamp.

Me: Hmm. It didn't ask where you proposed. I'll tell her she should add that.

--

I did know his love for cobalt blue. Really I did. See, he has a lot of favorite colors, depending on the item in question. Orange for cats. Crimson for the BMW Z-4 he wants. In clothing choices, he's been in a charcoal-gray phase for awhile.

The "swamp" is the wetland/tidal marsh we now live next to, though he first mentioned marriage over on the state park side of it, on the marsh walk. I like to call it proposing in a swamp.

Thing I love most about him: His compassion for any person or creature who's hurting.

His favorite music: Depending on the occasion: modern rock; '40's standards; classical trumpet; classical violin; Tchaikovsky.

His favorite food: most soups. Cream of mushroom especially.

A nickname for me? He wouldn't dare!

His age? Yes he will read this, so I wouldn't dare! 8~)

God laughs when you make a plan

I didn't dress for tree planting, and i obviously didn't provide myself with a hat or a hairband. We weren't going to do any yard work. All we were gonna do was sit out on a warm, though cloudy, afternoon and take a short teatime break.

Then, since the weather was amenable, Larry set out to do something he really had to do, something he'd warned me had to be done; cut down this tree.

It's the natural child of the local Live Oaks, and decided to plant itself right by the wall, where, as it grew, it would break the wall down. Two others did the same thing, but they were small and easy to move to better locations. This one had grown too big to transplant.

Well, I mean, no tree is too big to transplant if you have the digging and transporting ability.... OK, I have this tree problem. I'm no gardener, but I can't resist a tree. Three Charlie-Brown-type evergreens are planted at various spots around the house.

So another Christmas gift from Larry to me is to help me try to save this one. It was one Big Dig, to extract and to plant. While I started to dig it a new home, Larry managed the amazing feat of getting it out of the ground with 80-90% of its roots. We resettled it several yards away, both of us at work at the new site now, digging trenches going out 3-4 feet in several directions to accomodate the roots.



We'll keep an eye on it and help it through the transition.

I guess this favorite pair of jeans will be yard-work clothes from now on.

Christmas nostalgia

When I was in grade school, we made red and green construction paper chains at Christmastime, only a few feet long, to take home and hang on the tree.

Meanwhile Larry's family did a bigger version. His mom would set the kids to work making long chains to hang from the ceiling, corner-to-corner, with a red paper bell at the center. They'd add more rooms, and more chains over the years, till the house was festooned with them. They quit doing it in the '60's as the kids hit their teens.

This year, he came up with the idea to revive the tradition. He made a set for his parents and mailed it to them, a delightful box of nostalgia which made a big hit. Then we made our own. It's a good de-stressor activity for little patches of time between items on the to-do list. Throughout the day we'd each stop by the kitchen table periodically and add some links.

Finding those fold-out tissue paper bells was a real challenge. It seems like they used to show up everywhere ... until we wanted some! Consider this a plug for PartyCheap.com, where they carry every color, in every size, have nice prices, and fast, accurate delivery!

Total cost, with construction paper and bell - under $15.

December in SC

I wish I could prove that I took these pictures about an hour ago. But I did! I'm about as surprised as anyone. This is strange, even for coastal SC. We've had several frosts, and I had not seen a butterfly in 3-4 days. And today, there he/she was, meandering around and posing for a series of photos. How this marvel of a critter has lived through these freezing nights, I can't imagine, but I hope he (she?) made many many babies.



The sun directly on him makes him look white here,




but backlit by sunlight, he's a thing of great beauty. These yellow sulphur butterflies are common in fall -- I've always thought of them as the "September butterflies," though they're around much earlier ... and later!

A Christmas Season Saturday

Home Depot - I love you.

Our Christmas present to ourselves is a water filtration system. I remain unapologetic about drinking bottled water but it gets expensive, so we can cut down on that -- and on hauling the heavy flats of bottles, and on Recycle bulk -- by having a working system. That's meant several trips to The Depot.

I've tolerated Larry's love for the place in the past. I have to occupy myself while he examines boxes of nails or valves or doomaflahchies, but he endures my examining every book on bookstore sale tables, and every purse in the Kohl's accessories department, so it's the least I can do.

But the Depot has won me over. Because they are not (at the moment) playing Christmas music! Yesterday we were there and, while Christmas decor is all over the place, the muzak was everyday pop. OK, I thought, I need to check it out on Saturday. But nope, they weren't playing holiday yuck today either!

My gratitude is boundless.

Next: a gripe. You will have a very very hard time convincing me that Chinese imports do a [BLEEPBLASTED] THING for the consumer. Why is a little girl's Made in China coat priced like this, and how exactly is the potential consumer benefitting? Speak not of shareholders nor of management - tell me why this quickly outgrown coat should cost working mom or dad, even if their jobs are intact, 80 dollars? And this, though it was the higher priced item (and no, not highest), was only $10 above the lower. Except for much lighter windbreakers, no truly warm girl's coat had a tag of less than $70.

Another note on the economy is the state of our shopping mall. A major tear-out of old walls and ceilings took place in 2007. Stores closed to make way for renovation work. A lovely mural of the future new and improved Inlet Square Mall was posted. Then the money ran out. The work stopped. Exposed wires and ductwork have hung there for a year. Old decorative tile was jackhammered up and has left raw concrete patches everywhere. And that was before the current financial meltdown.

I don't want our mall to expire, but it's happening to others, and with so much empty space, its financial viability is precarious. If it goes, all of us Inlet-ers have a longer drive in awful traffic to Myrtle Beach, for JC Penney, or for K-mart, both Inlet Square anchors. Our K-mart is a lifeline for local necessity shopping. Even Wal-Mart, though closer, is an unpleasant drive, plus I really hate shopping there.
On to happier thoughts - the filtration system is running! This took major plumbing work on Larry's part -- this is only the upstairs part; he had to work on basement water lines, too -- but he's built a car and a house from scratch at various times in his life, and....


...it's installed! It has to flush through a couple times, but we may have filtered water by tomorrow afternoon.

Domestic tranquility

So while Larry was helping me mop up the kitchen counter and floor

(Note to self: To add water to the stock pot on the stove, carry the water across the kitchen in a heavy glass measuring cup with a handle. Do not use a Dark Knight plastic cup from the convenience store)

we had the following conversation:

ME: I wish somebody would invent cooking for total incompetents.

L: You're not at all incompetent. You're a great cook. You make wonderful things.

ME: Yeah, I know that, but I can never do it without some big infuriating event happening, and going ballistic.

L: You're not incompetent. You just say you are because you hate it and that means you don't have to do it.

ME: That's a very insightful statement.

--

Understand, the whole "I have to do it" thing is not imposed on me by Larry or anybody else. I impose it on myself. My share of the cooking -- and he does a major amount of the domestic work around here -- could be accomplished with the small but reliable repertoire I've assembled over the years precisely to fit my abilities, with very little opportunity for disaster. One-dish meals, slow cooker stuff.

But I feel the need sometimes to push my limits and do the things I'm no good at. Why? Bleep knows. Boredom with the same 5 dishes. Bursts of Pioneer Woman Who Wastes Nothing fervor. Lingering Donna Reed Show-era damage. Or just that I hate to admit defeat. I like to think that I can do anything I put my mind to.

I'm an intelligent person. I can make a multilevel meal with a variety of tasks and timing.

Or: I can quit buying overpriced, prepared [cookies, piecrusts, whatever] and make them myself!

Or: I can make soup on the real stovetop -- all i have to do is remember to turn the heat down to "simmer" after it boils.

Yep. That's all.

Monitoring something drives me up a wall. (This also applies to recipes that cheerfully instruct me to "stir constantly until thickening occurs, 20-30 minutes." I. will. go. slowly. mad.) The boredom will either make me completely crack up, or drive me to pick up a magazine or, God forbid, a book, go online, even do laundry, just to keep my brain from shorting out and then, yep, it's time for the Brillo [TM] to get the blackened crud off the pot.

There are such things as kitchen timers. We have the technology. I have a real problem with being beeped and buzzed at. I hate being beeped or buzzed at. I hate ruining the product of all my chopping and measuring labor even more than I hate the beeper that prevents it, so my failure to set the timer is pure denial.

I don't need to subject myself to that frikkin' thing! I'll just check back in a few minutes..... Famous last words, and a guarantee that I'll have to make a mad dash to add water before it boils away.

But a timer isn't much help for for things that need to be watched constantly or frequently, not just checked on.

This invariably leads to an event that, in turn, causes the whole "warm cozy home with delicious aromas wafting from the kitchen" scenario to collapse. Larry is instead subjected to:

~BANG!~ *CRASH*
"I HATE &$%#ing COOKING!"

...and has to decide whether to come closer and see if I need help, or whether this would be a good time to go downstairs and find an hour-or-longer task to do.

The whole mess is now in the slow cooker where it shoulda been all along.

Poor Larry. He didn't get Donna Reed. He didn't even get Lily Munster.

Stupid butterflies

We've had several frosts during the past week, so I was amazed to see a bunch of butterflies today. They were there, I swear it. I tried repeatedly to photograph one. It's a conspiracy. They vanish while my shutter is lagging. I was Required to stop chasing butterflies and perform a Scooter-scratching, and while I was thus preoccupied a butterfly circled my head and took off by the time I'd picked the camera back up! Little bleepers.

But all the components of yesterday's drawing are really out and about as November wanes, and the others were more cooperative:

I had to give up on the butterflies but maybe you'll settle for ladybugs. 4 of them at various spots on the porch walls, but this was the only semi-clear shot.

All photos were taken this afternoon.

For these, and all Thy mercies

Thankful today.

Ple-e-ease blacken our Friday!

Nice big newspaper arrived this holiday morning.

Only they forgot to include .... the actual newspaper. This is all ads, except for the pre-printed "Neighbors" feature section.

I guess we'll get some news today, when they redeliver.

Track the tool bag!

Among my iGoogle gadgets, I have the one that tracks satellites. You can pick the one you want to track, and get an active map of where it is whenever you log on.

Today a new tracking option appeared -- The Tool Bag!

Tough times, new methods

You'll need to click these scans, to really see them!

I've tried to strike a balance between shrinking the files to manageable size and still making them large enough to be readable, but the original magazines are huge and the pix are just plain BIG.

I had a grandiose idea a couple years ago, about doing a whole website about comic strip ads. Small though my vintage magazine collection is, there are plenty of the ads and they always make me smile. Once I had a scanner, I looked into the matter of rights and discovered that ads are a whole different ballgame from other creative works. If we win the lottery, I might take my newfound leisure time and really get serious about it, but meanwhile I've obviously given in to my desire to share a few of them here.

My vintage magazine collection is small and haphazard. The dates are unevenly distributed, with big gaps. And at least for now, I'm just posting for fun and have done no research about any of this. So they in NO way provide "proof" of anything about the history of ads, but interesting observations stand out.

Ads in the style of a comic strip really don't exist until the Depression is well underway. The biggest stack I've got is 1920's magazines, and there's not a comic strip ad in any of them.

Modern ad methods are starting to appear. I love both of these: the graceful lines and the use of white space in the Lifebuoy ad (McCalls, Aug. 1926); and in the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce ad (Time, Sept 10, 1928), the energetic, stylized, rather jagged images that make me a little antsy, as an evocation of the "impatient age" should. Cartoon drawings abound, but not strips with word balloons that tell a story.

In the early 1930's, comic-strip ads appear and then they really seem to proliferate. Through the '30's (and '40's) there are several in every magazine. My Deep Thought Of The Day is that tougher competition for customers spurs innovative advertising methods. Advertising may be an industry that's valued more than ever during hard times, and primed by the economic-stress pump.

The earliest in my collection, come from Woman's Home Companion, November 1931. Two comic strips ads nearly identical in format and page placement. Not really terribly interesting as ads go, but the form was new and different!

A veteran's story [updated]

When we lived in New Jersey, ten years ago, Larry and I started a witers' group, and one of our members was WWII veteran David Wetherill. Dave was a wonderful man and a major asset to the group.

For this upcoming Veterans' Day, Larry has contacted David's widow and received permission to publish in his Ring of Life blog a true story that Dave wrote for his outfit's newsletter, about his quest to find out what had happened to the pilot who didn't make it home when they were shot down. It moved us deeply and you guys might like it too. You can find Part One (of 2) here, along with more about Dave. Larry will post the rest tomorrow and I will link that in an update.

And by the way, Dave and Jean's daughter is the youth novelist Susan Shaw.

--
UPDATE:

And as promised, Part 2 of Dave's story, Poppy Field Found, is now up.

Shelter From The Storm

In memoriam a troubled soul, 1952-2008. One of his favorite songs. He never found it in this life and I pray he's found it now.

All I can say is ...

...I hope she won.

"Competent" and "efficient" are very very important.

Heart gets weary

If you live in the south you fight the god damned Civil War and fight it and fight it and fight it. There's no rest for this war. And you are always on a side, because your race is assumed to correlate exactly with your stand unless you actively proclaim otherwise.

My slave-owning South Carolina ancestor came to SC with very little, started a lumber and shipbuilding business in the 1830's and began to accumulate his fortune. In 1861, a northern journalist made a tour through the Carolinas and devotes a few pages of the resulting book to him, among many others. It's still in reprint editions. I was amazed to discover that there's even a Kindle edition! It identifies G3 Grandfather only as "Captain B--" but every family member knows who it refers to and a copy of the book can be found in every senior family member's house.

The Captain was apparently an exceptionally kind master. He was both pro-slavery and a Unionist. The book quotes him as he argues with a secessionist:

"Who will do the work in your new Empire -- I do not mean the agricultural labor; you will depend for that, of course, on the blacks -- but who will run your manufactories and do your mechanical labor? The Southern gentleman would feel degraded by such occupation; and if you put the black to any work requiring intelligence, you must let him think, and when he THINKS he is free!"

My cousins have taken to renting and shooting off a bleepin' cannon on Confed'rate Holy Days. They vote for Republicans. We avoid some topics. And you might notice that in this entry I'm working to avoid searchable terms. Lily-livered, I know.

But there's a logic to people like Captain B's descendants feeling wistful about the mythical magnolia-scented Compassionate Conserv- I mean Confed'racy.

What I will never ever understand is why so many other white southerners share it.

The elite few mega-planters were happy to keep the poor whites poor and ignorant. Another big-time planter quoted in the book says: "To be candid, their presence is of use in keeping the blacks in subordination, and they are worth all they cost me because I control their votes."

The author asks him: "Build a free school at every crossroads and teach the poor whites, and what would become of slavery? If these people were on par with New England farmers, would it last an hour?"

And the planter agrees it would not: "The few cannot rule when the many know their rights. If the poor whites realized that slavery kept them poor, would they not vote it down?" and adds of schools, "Thank God they will not be there in this generation."

Slave ownership and resulting prosperity were within reach of the working farmer, early in the 19th century. G3 Grandpa got into it when it was still possible with hard work to become a "self-made man" building a slave labor force. Then as cotton plantations became the 19th century equivalent of today's sprawling mega-farms, that dream became accessible only to the wealthy. The cost of slaves skyrocketed out of most peoples' reach. Rich planters could cost effectively support a work force of hundreds of slaves, supporting the babies, the sick and the old in order to have the laborers, and did so by simple economy of provisions. A certain amount of good food and shelter kept laborers healthy enough to produce labor, but extras cut into profit.

They also hired out their slaves to others who paid the owner and still had to provision the hirelings. Small-scale farmers would have been better off paying wage labor than either paying over $1000 for one slave or hiring at whatever rate the owner charged. One guy who had to hire labor for a turpentine-gathering concern says to the author, "For my part, I'd like to see the n-----s free":

"White folks would be better off. You see, I have to feed and clothe my n-----s and pay a hundred and twenty and a hundred and fifty a year for 'em, and if the n-----s war free, they'd work for about half that."

As with many big social changes, perception lagged behind reality. The poor who had little but white pride still thought they could aspire to the same economic status as the rich guys. After all, the cotton-culture change in the economy was so recent that they knew wealthy plantation-owners who'd started out as poor as they, and thought it was still possible. Under those circumstances, the poor tend to fight for the rich folks' agenda, and share the dream of a "way of life."So it's understandable for the time.

What I don't get is their descendants romanticizing it now. Now. Today, when we supposedly know not only how vile slavery is in theory but how it kept everybody but the elite down.

I marched against the Confed'rate battle flag's presence on the SC state house in September 1994. What Captain B would have thought of this, I can't say. The book's ardent abolitionist author tells us that "Being obnoxious to the Secession leaders for his well-known Union sentiments, he was onerously assessed by them for contributions for carrying on the war," and adds that he had 5 of his ships seized by the Union. Each side penalized him for ties to the other. Two of his sons fought in gray and one died. I'm probably overidentifying, based on that sad and weary look he has in the photo, to think he felt as I do, that both sides were horrendously stupid, and none of it need have happened.

Thankfully the other son, G2 Grandpa, survived capture by the Yankees or I wouldn't be here to march and blog, and risk outraging some readers. Blacks are expected to oppose the battle flag, but I'm sure some flag-proponents would, maybe aggressively, think me a traitor to my own people. The roadside jeering when we marched was quite unsettling.

I admit I was unprepared for the strictly racial lines the issue seemed to take. Honest, I thought the march would be majority black but not that I would be one of only 5 (if I recall correctly) white people in it. I really thought it was more of a liberal/conservative divide. Boy did I learn different. When the New York Times reported on the march it identified the two sides of the flag issue as "white" and "black." Mind-bogglingly true.

Is ardor for one's Confed'rate heritage really racism covered over with blather about states' rights and economics and the Constitution? If the descendants of those whose opportunity was ruined by the slavery-based system are still calling the Confed'racy their heritage, can it be anything else?

Yet so many of my cannon-shootin' neighbors and relations are no such thing.

I have SC roots back to the bloody 17th century, I'm one of them, and I don't understand either them or the whole Confed'rate Heritage phenomenon. I do know, however, that root causes really can get lost in history.

O gawd here comes another of my Meaningful Analogies.

In elementary school we made Christmas ornaments one year, by blowing up balloons and wrapping a filigree of string around them. Then we coated the web of string with spray starch. Once the starch dried, we popped the balloons and pulled them out, leaving a lacy open sphere. Mine collapsed anyway, either portending my departure from my heritage, or proving I'm just lousy at crafts.

It's absurdly naive to think that racial identity isn't a key element in the Confed'rate heritage thing, but I know non-racist southerners, educated, friends of diversity, who cling to it. I can only think that once the arguments about states' rights and economic suppression got wrapped around the Confed'rate nostalgia, time and education could remove -- in some of us -- the racial identity component and leave the structure of legal arguments intact. That may well be the exception and not the rule.

It's difficult to determine whether a battle-flag waver is: a racist; not a racist; or infected with racism so subtle he/she isn't aware of it. The feelings are complex, built of layers and layers, old stories, old dreams of people who died 100 years ago, the grandparent you loved or feared, or both, teacher and playmates and preachers, and the person who was kind or cruel or scary to you at some forgotten moment when you were 5.

But unless the Confed'rate Heritage people really are all descended from the elite of the plantation era, then it still looks to me like descendants of 18th century French peasants pining for life under Louis XVI.

Work clothes

In 1995 I quit my library job under disagreeable circumstances, and burned a couple bridges as I left. This was during my divorce and once I moved to Wilmington, NC, I went in search of support groups and counseling, and found an absolutely delightful counselor, a Methodist minister with a weird sense of humor.

In one session I complained about one of the more trivial annoyances in my old job, the wardrobe thing. For some reason, my boss had decided that we should dress like corporate execs. Kind of. We were expected to wear a jacket over every slack-or-skirt ensemble. I've never before or since set foot in a library in which librarians dressed like the cast of Law & Order.

I thought this was absurd, but I dutifully put together a tasteful working wardrobe with jackets. In the final report that the boss wrote up on me, she wasn't content to accuse me of insubordination and similar offenses, but had to throw in a bizarre statement that I refused to dress as ordered. Considering that I'd done exactly as ordered and, in this case, had the credit card balance to prove it, I was still fuming about this as well as about other matters, some months later in the shrink's office in Wilmington.

My counselor said simply, "Why don't you send them to her?"

I gave him a confused look.

"After all," he explained, "you bought them for her. Why not send them to her?"

How I wished I'd thought of it, but it delighted me. With glee I did exactly that. I just happened to have the perfect box, one from the library's book supplier -- anyone who worked there had a garage full of Baker & Taylor boxes -- and I neatly folded most of my ensembles with their coordinated jackets, placed my 10-year county service pin on the lapel of the top one, and shipped them without explanatory enclosure or return address to my former boss. At work.

This apparently caused something of a stir. There was no doubt that I was the sender; my clothes were recognizable. I only wanted to make sure nobody could easily send it back as "refused." So the boss and some of her underlings went through the box, but found no note or explanation. A short while later a friend of mine, with whom they all knew I was still in touch, got pulled aside on a library visit and asked, sotto voce, "What do you know about the clothes??" He feigned utter confusion, then happlily told me about it.

All that for a post about cleaning out my closet. When I mailed off the Mystery Clothes box in 1995, I kept a few items I really liked, but their fashion day is too long past. The short version is that the towering plastic closet shelf was close to collapsing, and has led to a complete closet dismantling and a general cleanout of stuff I'll never wear again.

Flowery droopy skirts and long, boxy 1990 blazers. Gone.

Pleated slacks with tapered ankles - gone.

Lacy collars, 1980's L. L. Bean dress, Wednesday Addams dress? Time to go.

Elaine dress...? Well, I loved my Seinfeld dress-like-Elaine era. I confess, it stays.

I love my dumb baggy Forenza pants and there's a very nice poor girl's version of the black Princess-Di-Dancing-With-Travolta formal that I just can't part with. Most qualify more as "costumes" than as clothes now, but that's OK. They say the '80's are becoming a theme for costume parties.

Enough with the present tense

The oddest things annoy me. One is this [insert creative phrases that would ruin my cuss-o-meter score here] trend of writing novels in the present tense :

She opens the letter. The handwriting looks familiar but she cannot place it. It is unsigned. "What's that?" asks Floyd. He puts down his gun and looks over her shoulder.

I used to love Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta mysteries. But sometime in the past few years she quit writing normal and started the whole walk-through thing.

(Well, OK, I also got sick of Scarpetta pining for Benton Wesley or Wesley Benton, or whatever her dreary mopey boyfriend's name is. Even emotionally-anesthetized psychiatrist Alex Delaware and his emotionally-unavailable eternal girlfriend Robin are functional compared to that pair. But I probably would've stayed with the series just because the plots are often interesting. I still read Kellerman's novels and no matter how much Robin irritates me, Kellerman never present-tenses his books.)

Present tense has ruined for me other books that I ordinarily would love. I like historical mysteries, lapped up Instance of the Fingerpost, which dragged for some people, heard about Crimson Petal and the White and couldn't wait to read it. Then I saw it was a walk-through. I put it back and moved on.

Why am I calling present-tense novels "walk-throughs"?. Because I think I have diagnosed the origin of this virus which is now running rampant through publishing. It's rooted -- just my opinion -- in gaming. Originally, in Dungeons & Dragons player manuals, then in guides for video gamers which include blow-by-blow "walk-throughs." Present-tense fiction is not a new invention, but it has mushroomed in the past few years, or so it seems to me. Something's up. I diagnose it as an attempt to sell fiction to gamers.

I never got into video games much, though I did find Need For Speed hysterically funny. But Larry did for awhile and I therefore have read enough game walk-throughs to see the similarity :

Enter the cave. Straight ahead, you see a door. Do not open it! Dick Cheney will shoot you! Look right. You see a freezer. Open the freezer and remove banded bundles of cash. Turn around and walk toward the curtained doorway in the far wall. Six trolls come through the curtain. Quickly throw blocks of frozen cash at them and escape up the silver ladder to your left.

Publishers may be seeking novels that they think may appeal to the gaming population. That's -- I grudgingly admit -- smart. Cultivating a market that's still going to have both pulses and disposable income in 40-50 years is smart business, and might even get more young people reading books.

Anyway, dislike of present tense fiction may be a peculiarity of my own, but it irritates the bejeezus out of me, and here it came again this week. I was ordering something for Larry and had a choice between paying postage, or adding another book to get the over-$25 free shipping. Yeah, I know, like I need more books. Well, anyway, I ran across Away, by Amy Bloom. It looked tailor-made for my taste; female protagonist on a journey through 1920's America. Raunchy, some reviewers warn, but I like dirty books I don't object to explicit passages when a novel has literary merit. Then I checked the text. Present tense.

Why this annoys me so much is kind of a mystery to me. 30 years ago Ordinary People really grabbed me, and that as-it-happens structure worked like a charm. But something changed. Now I want to be told what happened after it happens. First versus third person? Don't care, like 'em both. But the tense matters.

Do I like "knowing" that the events I'm reading about, fictitious though they are, are over before the author tells me about them? Do I find some feeling of security in that?

That's not it though. I can enjoy following an as-it-happens story if it's written in past tense. There must be a literary term for that. What I mean is, each passage is written as though it just happened, but as though the next one hasn't yet. Like this:

Chapter 4

Elizabeth walked into my office and threw a pie at me today.

Chapter 5,

This morning Bingley told me that it was Elizabeth's parking space that I stole yesterday.

It really is the present tense itself that bugs me.

I'm going to order Away and give it a chance, but I still wish more reviewers would mention this tense thing while they're earnestly telling us what to expect if we buy this book. Not all books have enough searchable text to reveal it. Sheesh, doesn't everybody understand that if it's important to me then it's just plain important?

Making do in 1934

Here's one you really need to click for a larger view.

Magazines were BIG back then!

Magazine ad in the comic strip style, from Pictorial Review, August 1934, acknowledging higher prices for goods as a result of FDR's Recovery Program. Interesting use of "Okeh" instead of "Okay"!

This NRA was the National Recovery Administration.

Here's a full close-up of the magazine's advice centered at the page bottom:

October 9, 1978, or: If It's Monday, This Must Be Stonehenge

It's rare that I'm able to document the date on which I took a picture, but in this case I had a trip diary!

(And I owe my ability to post the picture in this quality -- I took it with your basic '70's Instamatic -- to Larry who was able to make me a digital image from the original negative.)

--

EXPANSION posted 10/10/08:

The trip was a wonder to take, for one as provincial as I was, but very typical-tourist to tell about. Mom and I went. She'd been crossing the state of NC every week, trying to help her parents manage at home after her dad's stroke. I was between college and library school, and was due for a vacation after a year on the job answering phones at the local art museum. My brother was a senior in high school, plenty involved in his own, mostly environmentalist, activities, my grandparents were doing OK. It was a now-or-never opportunity that we had to jam into 2 weeks.

That Salisbury day trip was the most memorable single day for three reasons. One was Stonehenge, with a wonderful, druidically gloomy sky overhead (the photos are pinking-out - I need to preserve them). Recent discoveries indicate that Stonehenge wasn't really so gloomy, but I still loved the mood the stormy clouds imparted.

Second and third things that made 10/9 special were both in Salisbury Cathedral, where I got to see an official copy of the Magna Carta, and the oldest working clock in the world. That was cool!

Other highlights: Tower of London, where I was touched by Lady Jane Grey's name carved probably by her equally young (though rather whiny) husband, Guildford Dudley, while they were imprisoned for treason : a mournful little "IANE" in the stone wall. I'd played her in a one-act play during high school, and look the part too, so she always kind of intrigued me.

This rosary bead, in the British Museum, blew me away, huge for a "bead" (that photo may be enlarged a bit from life, but not a lot!) yet carved in such detail that the delicacy of the carving was breathtaking.

Harrod's. Plays. I noticed at the time that almost all the plays were of British origin but there were few musicals on and most were US imports.

We attended magnificent Sunday services in Westminster Abbey, and i remember the graves along the cloister, especially a group of monks who died of the plague in 1349. We also had trouble finding a place to eat lunch! So many places were closed on Sundays, which I found odd for a major city. Wonder if it's still that way. We ended up in, I'm not making this up, The Tennessee Pancake House.

And I learned never ever to get caught in a rain shower in Trafalgar Square without cleated shoes, because the thick layer of pigeon droppings turns into a slick more treacherous than standard mud.

Mom was an English and creative writing major, I was an aspiring writer and we did not go to Stratford-Upon-Avon! It was closed. Well, I mean, you know, not closed, but off-season, no events, tour days didn't work with our very tight schedule. "We'll just do that next time," we said, 30 years ago.

It was a fast, richly experienced couple weeks. I may eventually post more pictures but the quality is very low, and Larry, would have to spend a day working on them for me (my scanner won’t do negatives), so....eventually. And eventually I'll get one of those wonderful CoolPix thingies too.

Don't let the calendar regulate your activities!

Great example of the classic comic strip style ad. From Better Homes and Gardens magazine, April, 1937. This really is the complete ad. And two interesting things jump out at me: the product itself is not shown; nor is the pharmaceutical company named.


Bayer owns the brand now but other ads at Mum (a website full of "OMG I remember that!" moments for us females) reveal it was then offered by the General Drug Company, first as a pain reliever, then as a remedy for hiccups!

Um ... Question!

It's not the most important Palin issue out there, but on this last night of Banned Books Week, it's worth looking at, since it's full of -- to me -- unanswered questions.

Did Sarah Palin ever ban a book? No, never. Did Palin ever even target a book and try to ban it? Why no! Certainly not!

Wait though! Just one more question ...

Did Palin fully intend to override proper book-challenge procedure, to the extent of firing a librarian who openly stated that she would prove an obstacle to such an action?

I strongly believe that Palin, or anybody, must be held innocent until proven guilty. I feel almost as strongly that heroes should get credit where it's due, and it is clear to me that the Wasilla librarian deserves credit for a bold stand. And the people of Wasilla do too, for standing up for that librarian. Democracy rocks.

I won't pretend to have all the answers, but these questions won't lie down:

Palin claims that quizzing the librarian in a town council meeting about how books could be banned was "rhetorical," and a "professional question being asked in regards to library policy." Was it?

Palin had discussed book banning with Emmons before this. Palin had also sat in council meetings as a councilwoman the year before that, when a book was challenged. She was actually quite familiar with the procedure.

Next question: Did Palin had every intention of stepping outside ethical, if not legal, boundaries as mayor and bypassing that procedure?

As mentioned above, Palin knew the book challenge procedure already. That fact, taken alone, does not mean that Palin was issuing a challenge to Emmons in the meeting. Palin had been elected with the support of local conservatives including the very conservative Assembly of God, whose members were behind the challenges to Go Ask Alice and other books. She'd naturally want to go on record with attention to their issues, which is only politics, not a step out of bounds.

But as a former librarian, I was initially baffled by Emmons' somewhat belligerent reply. I was ... um ... not known for my diplomatic skills but even I know there's a script you follow. If the council meeting was merely an on-record demonstration for the public, Emmons would have been equally savvy about that, and would normally just take her own opportunity to demonstrate that she and her staff would be responsive to patrons' concerns.

She'd say, "Of course materials may be challenged, we have a procedure that ensures all the questions are addressed, we are always willing to hear and carefully consider the concerns of community." Describe what it entails. Go home and eat all the Frusen Glädjé.

A rookie might have gotten defensive, maybe, but Emmons had been Wasilla's Librarian for 7 years, had dealt with many a local elected official, had fielded book challenges before. She was president of the state library association. She knew the political game. Why, I wondered, was Emmons so undiplomatic as to bring the drama out into the open? It only makes her look like the aggressor, it only works against her, doesn't it?

Not necessarily.

If the much-interviewed citizen, Anne Kilkenny, can be trusted to report accurately (and I accept that this is not a given, but others' actions support her version), Palin asked how she could get books banned. Via personal fiat. Emmons answered the question Palin asked.

If actual mayoral book-ban efforts were on the way, Emmons would want that out in the open before the fact. She'd have no reason to talk tough, other than the knowledge that Palin was serious about banning books and wasn't just making an "I tried!" show for her conservative constituents.

See, if you get fired, and then you say, "It's because I opposed an injustice," people get skeptical. They think, "Yeah, everybody's a victim. We don't know the real story." But if the specific nature of the conflict was public before the firing, then the reasons you're giving look a lot less like Disgruntled Employee.

Is that why Palin fired Emmons?

Go ahead, tell me that Palin fired Emmons over Other Issues. Loyalty to the administration may have been the stated reason, and in Wasilla any department head might technically work at "the pleasure of the mayor."

But a librarian serves the public directly. Other government offices certainly deal directly with the public, but they are doing it to further the town's (county's, etc.) agenda: they process business licenses, gather taxes, enforce laws. Libraries are for the people's use and pleasure, with a direct mission that makes what the individual wants or needs the end product. There's not much a library does that either supports or opposes a mayoral agenda. Well, I mean, unless that mayor wants approval-rights over the books purchased. Emmons was duty bound to protect the Constitutional rights of her readers.

Emmons had also demonstrated that she understood those rights to include questioning the propriety of a book. She was, in fact, pushing for a review board to hear book-challenges, a method that would give the citizenry, including the Assembly of God congregants, more power in book challenges than the previous method gave them.

Palin saw Emmons' strong local support and never pulled any book-bannings, which is one reason I've thought all along -- despite her fumbles during early Q&A's in her VP race -- that she's a very smart woman.

But having Palin for a boss sure sounds like one Dilbertian nightmare to me.

It's something we can all get behind