As a Baker . . . Nonfiction and Personal

Bad Kocka!

I know I always say I won't have cooking or crafting on my blog. This blog is about writing. But writing is story-telling. This is my story and I'm sticking to it.

With the probability of next year inaugurating reduced circumstances in our house, we decided to make Christmas gifts for the family. My husband has prepared various and sundry smoked and spiced pecans. Give that man a grill and he can do anything. (Including a beef loin roast that he's preparing for our close-family Christmas dinner.)

Because we're having our Christmas dinner Monday evening; my husband is leaving for Christmas in Oklahoma early Tuesday morning; and I'm a world-class procrastinator, I did the baking Sunday. He's had the pecans done for days.

First I put away all the items cluttering the kitchen counters. This goes down to the basement. That goes out into our so-called pantry in the garage. To the linen closet at the end of the hall. Into the office. And voila, I've got a place to work.

The butter and sugar are in the mixer, creaming nicely.

CRASH! Something bad in the entryway. KOCKA! Bad cat! He'd knocked a plant off its perch. There the cat-demon sat obviously amazed and pleased at the freshly watered soil spread across the floor.

I'm ranting and raving. My husband is ranting and raving. "That's why I don't want a cat," he says waving his arms at the cat trying to shoo him out of the dirt. "Cats belong in the barn." (We don't have a barn.)

I was planning to repot the plant anyway. Just not on baking day.

I brought the broom and dust pan in from the garage and went to get a proper pot from the back porch -- preferably one that wouldn't tip easily.

Kocka closely watched the whole plant-repotting and soil-sweeping process, staying just beyond my reach. When I finished, he fled down the hall and hid in the bathroom. Perhaps I look dangerous when I'm not actively cleaning up after him.

Back to baking. Add eggs and vanilla to the sugar and butter. I couldn't open the vanilla without using my handy-dandy bottle opener. I'd been fighting that bottle's lid for months and I was tired of it. I used to use the vanilla lid to measure out a teaspoonful. Approximately. And I knew the vanilla dried and effectively glued the lid in place so I'd started using a measuring spoon and wiping the mouth of the vanilla bottle. It still stuck.

So I decided to transfer the vanilla into a bottle with a lid I might more easily twist off. Found a bottle . . . a mead bottle. A not quite empty mead bottle. But it was after 8 in the morning here and 5 in the afternoon somewhere, so I poured it into a glass and drank it.

              

Perhaps, you noticed my fancy funnel. Couldn't find my regular one so my husband re-purposed a plastic wine glass by cutting off its stem. It worked very well, so it is freshly washed and living in the drawer where the AWOL funnel should be.

Four Cookies shy of a full sheet.

And where, you might ask are those four cookies? That was the second sheet of cookies to come out of the oven. I only recently learned the benefits of parchment paper when baking. From my beautiful daughter-in-law. (Who is also a good blogger. Click here.)

However, parchment paper has side effects. One of which is that it slides easily. And the cookies slide easily. Those four cookies slid off the cookie sheet. Onto the floor. Into the bottom of the oven. Through that crack at the bottom of the open oven door into the drawer at the bottom of the stove.

Kocka thought the cookie-mishap clean-up was pretty interesting, too. But he doesn't eat cookie crumbs. Where's a Dachshund when you need one?

By 10:30 a.m. I had achieved a repotted plant, a clean entryway floor, a clean kitchen floor, clean stove drawer, and some oatmeal cookies. Rice Krispie Treats, Spritz cookies, peppermint cookies, two apple pies, and some kolaches were yet to be baked. I know. You don't bake Rice Krispie Treats. Thank goodness for tiny mercies.

And I'd learned so much. Cats belong in barns and they don't eat cookie crumbs. Be extra careful with parchment paper. And as a baker, I'm a pretty good writer.

Using Real World Senses

Green Mountain December 18, 2015

A writer needs to involve all the senses to set a scene or build a character. A good way to prepare to do this is to just pay attention to your own senses in the real world.

I walk in my neighborhood and gather ample sensory fodder to use.

First the sense of sight. In the distance, Green Mountain is obviously white, but the blue sky over Green Mountain tells me this snow is past. And the view is clear -- no blowing snow to dim the view, no shadows identifying the nooks and crannies of the mountain so the sun must still be in the east or overhead.

And touch. If you could've seen me, you'd know that I was wearing a t-shirt. No coat. No gloves. No hat. When I touched the snow, it was cold enough to make my hands ache. And wet enough to hold the snow ball shape. Yet all the while, the Colorado sun is warm against my skin, regardless of the ambient temperature. Warm enough to be perfectly comfortable. And there is no wind, not even a light breeze, and the lack of moving air touching my face is as palpable as a 20 mph gust, if I'm paying attention.

I'm surrounded by sound. Children squeal with delight and call back and forth to each other as they sled down a nearby hill. A tree full of magpies sound off. Their raucous cries punctuated with the piping of chickadees and counted by the coo of a dove. Somewhere a dog barks. And I can barely hear the traffic noises from the distant interstate highway. Barely, but it's there. The melting snow sounds of running water, while it crunches under foot in areas where it refroze in the night.

But scent, that's the one that I think is most important and least described in most written material. It may not be obvious enough to grab our attention, but it's there. Sometimes soft, calming, like a newly bathed and powdered baby. Sometimes energizing like the air in my neighborhood. Clear and cold and smelling of winter.

Then as I walk, I smell someone's dryer exhaust redolent with the scent of their fabric softener sheet.
And it occurs to me that the smell of clean is different from one person to the next. That can tell a lot about a character. To one character, that dryer sheet smells clean. To another the smell of sun-dried laundry means clean.

And scent from a house where they've had bacon for breakfast stimulates my sense of taste and makes me hungry and ready to go home.

My husband adds a sixth sense, proprioception. That's the sense of the relative position of parts of the body and the effort being employed in movement. This sense is probably more developed in my dancer and athlete brothers and sisters than it is in me. But I'm learning.

Take away one of these senses from our character or our scene and I've got a disabled character or a diminished scene. Or a really good plot device.

Best of Enemies -- a review

image from blu-ray.com

Best of Enemies, a 2015 documentary available streaming from Netflix, chronicles the 1968 televised debates between conservative William F. Buckley, Jr., and liberal Gore Vidal.

In 1968, three television networks vied for American audiences. CBS was first among equals, closely followed by NBC. ABC was a distant third. Those were your choices. No FOX. No CNN. No cable at all. Not even PBS.

CBS and NBC planned to cover the 1968 political conventions gavel to gavel. ABC couldn't afford to. They had to come up with something to draw ratings away from their two rivals. And as someone in Best of Enemies says "nothing draws an audience like the sugar of a fight."

Do I hear the names Jerry Springer and Donald Trump?

In 1968, ABC gave birth to modern political punditry and point/counter point political commentary with these end of the convention day debates between America's most television savvy intellectuals, both from Eastener aristocracy stock. Pompous, but well-spoken and mostly restrained, each was absolutely confident he was right and the rest of the world could acknowledge that or be damned.

1968's national political conventions found the United States mired in the Vietnam War. The Civil Rights Movement continued unabated. Women's Liberation and the youth movement further fractured the nation.

Everything happened on TV.

January 30, the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive.

March 31, sitting president Lyndon Johnson announced "I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term" as President of the United States.

April 4, Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee.

May 4, four students were shot dead by National Guardsmen on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio.

June 6, Robert F. Kennedy, a leading contender for the Democrat nomination for President, was murdered in Los Angeles, California.

And every evening on the national news no matter which network we watched the TV news anchors gave the numbers. How many Americans were killed in Vietnam. And how many North Vietnamese.

August 5, the Republican Party opened their four-day convention in Miami, Florida, to nominate their candidate for President of the United States. The leading contenders were former Vice President Richard Nixon and then Governor of California Ronald Reagan.

August 26, a demoralized Democrat Party opened their four-day convention in Chicago, Illinois, a city run by iron-fisted Mayor Richard J. Daly.

Best of Enemies mixes extensive footage of the actual debates between Buckley and Vidal with comments and clips from the conventions and the real world then swirling around the conventions. There are illuminating comments from people close to the political actors of the time and to Buckley and Vidal.

In Best of Enemies, we get to hear again the dulcet tones of Senator Everett Dirksen speaking at the Republican Convention. We see snippets of the luminaries of the times -- Walter Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley, Dick Cavett, the Kennedys, Norman Mailer. There's a clip from Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, the iconoclastic TV show that gave a comedic raspberry to the foibles of American society and introduced the American public to fringe, go-go boots, and psychedelic humor.

Best of Enemies reminds us that passionate political views can be expressed at reduced decibels, intelligently.

Janis: Little Girl Blue

Janis: Little Girl Blue, Official Trailer

Instead of a still pic of Janis, I'm putting up the Official Trailer. Give it a watch. I think you'll enjoy it.  For Janis, you need sound and color and motion. The Amy Berg documentary has it all and more.

I heard about Janis: Little Girl Blue on NPR December 1. I wanted to see it, but where was it showing? It supposedly aired on PBS's American Masters on November 25 which should mean that I could stream it on my TV at home. Easy-peasy, no driving. Wear what I'm wearing. Have a nice whatever I want to eat and drink. Sounded lovely. But it was not meant to be. Janis: Little Girl Blue doesn't show up on PBS's American Experience website.

Surely it'd be showing somewhere in Denver. Yup. December 4, 7:30, The Sie FilmCenter. Of which I'd never heard. Located on East Colfax which was somewhere downtown.

The Sie FilmCenter is separated from The Tattered Cover by a sort of alleyway re-purposed for outdoor dining. I've been to the bookstore several times, but had never noticed the theater. You get me near a bookstore or library and I can't see anything else.

Colfax is Denver's primary east/west surface street. I knew how to get there. Except, it was December 4, the first of two holiday Parade of Lights. The parade would cross Colfax west of the theater -- that was between me and my destination. An alternative route would be necessary.

No problem. I'd just go the way I go to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, my favorite place in Colorado. Cut north to Colfax and voila, I'm there.

Thank goodness, my daughter was with me, navigating. Who'd a thought the traffic would be so bad?! Guess it was Friday night in the big town with a parade that traditionally brought people into downtown by the hundreds, maybe thousands, from what I was seeing. And, like me, those folks weren't used to driving downtown in the dark with roads closed for a parade.

We got to the theater in plenty of time, took the elevated down from the parking garage to a subterranean theater lobby complete with bar and snack bar. And me, I thought I was so grown up at my regular movie theater where I can get a nice cappuccino and popcorn. Here I could get a nice margarita and popcorn.

We got to the window and Janis was sold out. BUT, we could take a number and see if anyone who'd bought a ticket online then cancelled or whatever, didn't show up, in which case we could buy those tickets, but we'd probably have to sit in the front row and may not be able to sit together. They'd let us know in about ten minutes.

I'd just driven through that traffic. The parade hadn't started yet and getting home would still be through that mess. The next showings of Janis: Little Girl Blue were sold out. My bad attitude was ignited and I wasn't about to come back downtown again anytime soon.

It worked out that we got two seats together and the front row seats have high backs so it was surprisingly comfortable to lean back and watch the show. And with the audience all behind me, it was as if they didn't exist. It was just Grace and I, our entire field of vision filled with the sights and sounds of my youth.

The documentary is very well-done. Lots of footage of Janis performing. It's matter-of-fact about the difficulties of being Janis Joplin, but not dreary. She did everything, be happy or be sad, full-tilt, just like she performed. And the film shows that.

Janis also has snippets from her letters to her family and interviews with her brother and sister that were enlightening and comforting. You get the idea that her family loved her and cared about her, kinda like the rest of us.

Janis: Little Girl Blue with its sights and sounds from an intense and turbulent time in our nation and lives brings back Janis's own passionate exhibition of that longing and laughter.

It was more than worth driving home in Downtown Denver traffic. All the lights and noise and people on the street just extended the experience.

P.S. I misread when Janis: Little Girl Blue will air on PBS's American Masters. It's next year some time. So we can all watch it again without the traffic.

P.P.S. Still glad I got to see it on the big screen.

( Explanation )

image from blog.acronis.com

I had a dream. In my dream someone was talking about IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices) but when they handed me one, it was an MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) which exploded some kind of repulsive goulash all over everything. Without sound or smell. (Sometimes my dreams are like that. Visuals only.) But the feelings were there -- fear, revulsion, nausea, anger.

I live in Colorado and I love it here. Colorado is famous for world class skiing, majestic mountain scenery, and three-hundred-thirty days of sunshine annually.

And for mass shootings. (None involving Muslims.)

In the most recent here in Colorado, a man entered a Planned Parenthood Clinic in Colorado Springs and opened fire. During a snow storm. While the shooting was ongoing, the images on our television screens showed flashing lights, ambulances lined up waiting, military style vehicles. And people with ATF, CBI, CSPD, CSFD, etc. on their jackets moving through the snowfall. It was like a snow globe gone mad.

Somehow the letters made it all worse. It's like the world needs parenthetical explanation. And there is none.

Today the sun is shining. The air is clear and cold. I am going for a walk with friends who do not espouse hate, celebrate war, or speak in acronyms that need explanations.

Someone from Home -- Flash Fiction

image from saintpaulalmanac.com

"Know what you want?" she asked him.

He hadn't slept well since he got there. Hotel beds never felt right. Hotel cuisine was uninspiring and too expensive. "Home cookin'," he said.

"Depends on where home is," she said. "Ray there, bless his heart, is from Chicago so I guess it's Chicago cookin'."

He rubbed the stubble on his chin and turned the menu over to look at the breakfast offerings.

"Breakfast 'til ten," she said. "You've got three hours. Take your time."

"Not breakfast without grits and biscuits and gravy." He laid the menu down.

"Honey, you are so right." She laughed. "Where're y'all from?"

He laid the menu down and looked at her for the first time. "Tyler, Texas, ma'am. Rose capital of the world. Where're you from? Not Saint Paul with an accent like that."

"Accent? Why ever would you say that?" She looked down the counter to check her other customers. "Back in a jiffy." She grabbed a coffee pot and was gone.

He felt more alone that he'd felt the whole time he was up here. Just Thursday. Meetings all week and it wasn't Friday yet.This world was cold and windy and cloudy. And the snow looked like it would be here until April. He missed his family.

She returned to him taking up their conversation where she'd left off. "Greenville, Mississippi, by way of New Orleans. Ray can fix you potatoes any way you want 'em as long as you want hash browns."

"Okay. Hash browns. Coffee, black. Two eggs, over easy. Bacon. Whole wheat toast. You got Tabasco?"

"Does the Mississippi run east past St. Paul and New Orleans? Of course we got Tabasco." She relayed his order to Ray and poured him coffee.

"Does it run east past St. Paul and New Orleans?"

"It does," she said over her shoulder as she went to the cash register to take care of a customer.

She was taller and thinner than his wife. Probably about the same age, but Brenda was prettier. Both their girls looked just like her. He should be home in time to see Meagan's school Christmas play.

The waitress plunked his breakfast down in front of him and retrieved a bottle of Tabasco from her apron pocket. "Eat hearty, Tex."

"Ted, actually," he corrected her.

"Well, Ted Actually." She winked at him. "Enjoy your breakfast." And she was off again.

He hadn't thought about how he looked when he left the hotel. Sweats, a fleece lined hoodie, gloves, a knit cap. He'd gone for a run before breakfast. That's how he found Ray's Diner. He'd not showered or shaved. He felt good working up a sweat in this cold country.

When she smiled, she was pretty. Watching her take somebody else's order, he felt grimy.

She was back refilling his coffee cup.

"desJardin," he said. "Ted desJardin. How'd you end up in Minnesota?" he asked before she could go away again.

Still holding the pot, she put her other fist on her hip. "I'm a refugee," she said.

What could he say to that? She must have seen his confusion.

"Katrina, honey. The storm?"

"Can I have some ketchup?" he asked.

"Me and Gene just kept driving north. Neither of us wanted to get away from the river. We both grew up on it. We had a baby then and we've had two more since then. Kinda made a home for ourselves here. I'm even getting where I like snow."

The food was good. He ate slowly and watched the waitress work. He asked her questions as she passed back and forth. What kind of work did her husband do? Did she cook at home? What was there to do for fun in Minneapolis? But he didn't ask her what time she got off work.

She put his check in front of him and leaned her elbows on the counter.

"Listen hon. I get off at two. How'd you like to go for a late lunch?"

He didn't know how to answer that. He had afternoon meetings scheduled. He was leaving in the morning.

"I'm married," he said quietly.

She smiled and laid her hand over his.

Had he said it so quietly that she hadn't heard? Did he hope she hadn't heard?

"Why, honey, I am, too. But Mama Susie's Creole Cafe is just about five blocks from here and it's the only place I know of that you can get decent red beans and rice north of  Monroe." She patted his hand.

Maybe he could miss the last meeting of the day.

"Meet you there at three-thirty. Gene'll pick me up about five. That'll give us an hour and a half to have a good meal and talk about home."

Yes. It was all he could do to keep from pumping his fist in the air.

"Are you any kin to the desJardins over at Lake Chicot?" she asked.

He laughed out loud. He didn't think so. He didn't know where Lake Chicot was. And it didn't matter. He was going to have a late lunch with someone from home, no strings attached.

Art -- An Essay

image from mountainmusictrail.com

The definition of art, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is "1. Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature. 2a. The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium."

My definition of art is more what it does than what it is. It helps me experience my world.

It takes me places I've never been and where I'll never go. 

 Sometimes beautiful. 

Northern Lights, Iceland, 

photo by John Hilmarsson for National Geographic

Sometimes a disturbing view of a place half-way around the world
but very like where I grew up.
 
Vincent Van Gogh's Wheatfield with Crows

I can read Jack London's The Sea Wolf or watch the movie 'Perfect Storm,' and art will bring me close to experiencing a storm at sea without my ever stepping foot on a ship.

Art helps me feel and find my way within that nature ambiguously referred to as human nature. 

The Rolling Stones' Jumpin' Jack Flash makes me happy. I laugh every time I hear it. And I've never understood the words.

Saturday when the band on Garrison Keillor's radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, played and some in his audience sang La Marseillaise, I cried. And I do not understand the words to that song either. 

It doesn't matter that I don't understand the words, it's the feelings that count. And art does that. It lets the feelings count.

Art helps me find sense, and helps me find a way to accept senselessness if there is no sense to be found. A friend brought me a passage from Stephen P. Kiernan's novel The Hummingbird to help me understand PTSD.

     "If you kill a man," he continued, "whatever the circumstances, he is on your
     conscience for life. Whether you used a tomahawk three centuries ago, a
     bayonet two centuries ago, a rifle one century ago, or a drone last Tuesday,
     his death was violent, premature, and by your hand."

Art, whether it be visual art, music, dance, the theater, or literature, has always helped me understand my world. Sometimes it reinforces my own peculiar understanding. And, sometimes it utterly destroys my understanding, which opens the way for me to embrace a wholly new one. 

Sometimes I get caught up in the science of our world. But that's an art form, too. It's just that the languages of science are not as easily accessible to many of us, whereas the languages of art are. 

We are all artists whether we can draw the proverbial straight line or not. We must be artists to respond to it. And we do. All of us. Maybe not to all art forms. Maybe not to all expressions within any one art form, but we do all get it.

Art is as natural to human beings as breathing.

Friday the 13th -- Nonfiction

image from katsbookofshadows.blogspot.com

Okay, my kocka Kocka is not black, nor smooth coated, but I recognize the expression in those eyes. And it is Friday the 13th. It was most assuredly so until eleven o'clock this morning.

My husband has been trying to cure me of superstitions for many years now. And I use the plural for both superstition and year on purpose.

Most of my superstitions I inherited from my grandmothers. Black cats never figured into any of them. Probably because Grandma W. didn't like cats of any color anyway so bad luck never attached itself to any particular colored cat, as far as she was concerned. She taught me not to move a broom and to eat black-eyed peas on New Year's Day.

And Grandma H. had nothing against black cats. She liked animals in general without regard to their, species, color, religion, or gender. She taught me not to sew on Sundays, not to open an umbrella in the house, and not to put a hat on the bed.

Friday the 13th, however, never figured into our family superstitions. The fact that Grandma H.'s birthday, September 13, periodically fell on Friday may have played a part in our failure to adopt that particular superstition.

Until this morning, that is.

I couldn't find my purse. Now that, in and of itself, is not unusual. But it was nowhere in the house. It was not in the car.

The local news anchor reminded all who were tuned in that it was Friday the 13th. Just a silly superstition, I reassured myself.

Maybe I'd left it at the assisted care home where my dad lives. The last place I knew I'd had it. I called him and asked him to look. True, Daddy often cannot see what he's looking at. So, when he couldn't see it, I figured it must be there and I'd go soon to look for myself.

Then my father's Occupational Therapist called to discuss his blood pressure. I asked her to look for my purse. She did, but she didn't see it. And she still drove so I trusted her vision.

"If you left it here," she said, "it's gone. These places are notorious for theft."

I defended the home saying we'd never had that kind of trouble there. But she'd planted the seed. And it was Friday the 13th. And my husband was not here to remind me that I'm not superstitious nowadays.

My credit cards were in that purse. They'd have to be cancelled. I could go by the two banks I use and cancel them. But would they let me cancel them if I didn't have a photo i.d. to prove I was me? My driver's license was in that purse. I'm seldom ever in either of the banks so they probably wouldn't recognize me.

And what about getting a replacement driver's license. Would they let me pay for it with a check if I didn't have a photo i.d.?

Maybe I could use my Rec Center i.d. It has my picture on it. But it was in my purse, too. The people at the DMV certainly wouldn't recognize me. I've only been in there once almost four years ago.

And what if I got stopped by the police for something on the way to the DMV to get the replacement driver's license. I couldn't prove to them that I was driving legally which of course, technically I would not be because I didn't have my driver's license. And even if they checked the records to see if someone by my name is a licensed driver, I couldn't prove I was me, by any name.

And the bank may not let me get cash to pay the DMV to get a replacement driver's license so I'd have a photo i.d.

Friday the 13th, indeed!

What happens to a person who can not prove who they are? I was undocumented. To be on the street, unknown to anyone of authority. The people who could vouch for me were not easily available. My father, my husband, my children. They've seen my documents or even used them in one form or another. The rest of the people who "know" me, only know who I am because they've taken my word for it.

Things were not going well.

I needed to take Daddy's clean laundry to him, so I decided to go by the banks afterward to cancel the credit cards. I would just have to trust that they'd have a way to confirm I had a right to cancel said cards.

And that brought up another problem. My husband was out-of-town today. What if he needed to use his credit card for something? Like gasoline to get home. If I cancelled the credit cards, he wouldn't be able to use his. He wouldn't be able to buy gas. Or get home.

And as I thought about it -- Daddy's credit card was in my purse, too. If someone stole it, they could clean out his bank account. If someone had stolen all our cards they could clean us all out.

And it is the holiday season when people who don't have a lot of money are feeling the pinch. I could understand the temptation to take advantage of some woman's failure to insure her purse's security.

There was nothing for it. I just had to suck it up and drive to my dad's without a driver's license. I scrupulously observed every traffic signal and every speed limit. I was hypervigilant for any other driver who might involve me in an accident that would require I show my driver's license. I was a wreck -- trying to think of every possible danger.

I reminded myself that Friday the 13th is just a silly superstition. Of course, it is. Unfortunate things could happen any day. These particular unfortunate things never had. At least to me. But they could have.

Thankfully, the drive to my father's was uneventful.

And better yet. The moment I walked into his apartment I saw my purse exactly where I'd left it. Its contents intact.

I knew I was tense, but I had no idea how tense until the tension was released. I needed to eat. It's just a good thing there's a Panera's on my way home. Diet or no diet. Saving money or no saving money. I stopped there for lunch and paid with a credit card.

Happy Friday the 13th!

Dearest Pol -- Flash Fiction

image from heartwhispers.weebly.com

As a writer, I often use prompts to get me to write. The prompt from which this bit came was "Write from the point of view of a literary character who changed your life." It was not easy for me to choose just one. I've met so many -- both fiction and nonfiction -- who introduced me to ways of living and thinking that I would never have imagined on my own. This one is from my very early childhood and she has saved my life too many times to count. It comes from what I imagine her as a grownup to be like. She would have lived through both World Wars, which seems appropriate for this Armistice Day.


Dearest Pol, I love you.

She looked away from the letter. I love you, too. The thought came as automatically as she would have said it had Jim been there. She tried, but she couldn't think of a thing to be glad about.

I'm looking at a slip of a moon. I know that, if you are looking at it right now, it looks the same there at home. In a couple of weeks I'll be shipping out. I can't tell you where they're sending us, but the moon will be full there then, she read.

Hadn't she been through enough? She didn't remember her mother at all. She remembered her father teaching her the "glad game." She had so wanted a doll, but the only thing in the mission barrel for a child was a pair of very small crutches. He said she should try to find something to be glad about the crutches. Together they decided she could be glad she didn't need them. It didn't help much at first.

And then he died when she was barely eleven, the same age as her own Jenny. The Ladies' Aiders sent her half a continent away to live with her Aunt Polly whom she'd never met. Things got better and worse and better again as life had a way of doing. And most of the time she could find things to be glad about.

Aunt Polly died of the Influenza but Uncle Tom came home safe from the Great War. Then they made it through the Depression. And now her own dear Jim was going into this new war leaving her and their Jenny to do the best they could without him.

Remember the best way to play the game is when it's hardest to find something to be glad about, he wrote.

He was reading her mind. Finding something to be glad about him going to war had eluded her since before he left. He was right to go. She tried to be glad he was a doctor and could save lives, when what she was really glad about was that surely they wouldn't send doctors to the front. But that didn't feel right somehow and took away the "glad" part.

I don't know how soon you'll get this letter, but if you're having a full moon, show Jenny. I'll be enjoying it, too. Then we won't feel so far apart. Sometimes a thing to be glad about is not something hard to find, but something that's there all the time, if you just look.

Kiss our beautiful Jenny. I love you Pollyanna Pendleton. Your Jim

EDITED!!!

image from rsanews.com

So -- (Don't you hate it when someone starts an explanation with that innocent little single-syllable, two-letter word? It's like "like." Remember when everyone said "like" and "ya know" every time they meant "uh" or "er" to announce that they were trying to think of a real word to say. A second of silence would have given them the same amount of time to think even though it wouldn't have done them any good anyway. And while we're at it, how about everybody doing "up-speak" so they all sound like ditsy Valley Girls? Even guys? Nurses! Financial advisers! The most excellent young man who bags your groceries.) But I digress. Sorry.

So, I was looking for an image to top this blog post and it occurred to me that being edited was, like, ya know, getting busted. And there among all those images were these guys from Myth Busters, the Discovery Channel's show. They enjoy their job way too much. Explosions, high speed car chases, trashing an area. What's not to enjoy? Sometimes I wonder who's gonna clean that mess up. Anyway, they make me smile and once I saw them I couldn't see any of the other options.

  

See this page? This is what my short story looked like when I got it back from my editor. I'm used to my work looking like an ax murder victim, but come on. All the colors of the rainbow, too? Who's gonna clean up this mess?

My editor learned this in class. May the saints preserve us from exercise instructors who go to workshops and editors who take classes.

She did provide a Legend to go with the colors.

She said good writing is a mix of these categories. The following examples are all from my new short story "Jane's Way."

     Narration (Green):

            action, choreography
                    Gretzky motioned Simon to follow him.

            attributions for dialogue

                    ," she said.

            and often used in lieu of attributions for dialogue. 

                   ?" He jabbed the gun at the dead man.

     Exposition (Orange):  tells backstory or explains something

                    She was there when Rita's dad died. Two years ago from cancer, too.

     Description (Purple):  just like it sounds. It describes something or someone.

                    Blue-grays filtered into the reds eddying around him.

     Dialogue (Yellow):  anything between quotes
                    "You, girl. Don't go in there!"

     Interiority -- I know, it ain't in my dictionary either, but she's the editor and that's what it was
     called in her class and she likes it -- (Pink): This is what's going on inside the Point of View
     character's head.
                    What was the fool going to do? Simon wanted to shout, to rage.

I had one page that only had green and yellow on it. "This is more like a script than prose," my editor said. "You only have dialogue and stage direction on this page."

But I'm really good at dialogue.

Ah, yes. I am good at dialogue, but she was right. Don't you hate it when you pay people to help you and then they do?!

There was plenty of red ink on that edited manuscript, as well. Being a serious writer means cleaning up your messes. So I did. 

"Jane's Way" now passes muster and will soon be submitted -- somewhere. Wish me luck.

The Art of Misdirection

image from  ite.org

"The cat made a mess on the floor," my husband announces in disgust.

I am half asleep and, truth be told, I don't want to wake up. The bed is warm and I am snuggled into that perfect place where the pillow fits your head just right, the blankets are swaddled close so there are no drafts anywhere. And nothing aches. This early in the morning, any morning, having no aches is a miracle and I don't want to tempt fate by moving.

As you may know, I write murder mysteries -- Murder on Ceres. To begin the mystery, there must be a murder, or at least a dastardly deed. In this case a catastrophe. So I, the reader, am on the hook wondering exactly what has happened. And the misdirection is a simple lack of information. I'm allowed, nay encouraged, to imagine my own misdirections.

A mess? Without moving a muscle, my mind races through the possibilities -- in descending order the worst possibilities first.

Diarrhea. Cat diarrhea would surely be the worst. Kocka has never had diarrhea. (Kocka, pronounced kotch-ka with a long o. It means cat in Czech.) I know he hasn't had access to anything unusual to eat. Though I did see him toying with a small jumping spider. Would that upset his digestive system?

A hairball. The damned cat has long hair. Ooooh, I hate stepping on a fresh hairball, barefooted. No wonder my husband sounded disgusted.

I don't open my eyes. I don't ask what kind of mess. I just hope my dear, sweet, kind husband will clean it up and let me go back to sleep.

I read murder mysteries -- John Lescroart is my favorite. I watch murder mysteries on television -- Midsomer Murders, which my husband refers to as the Gilligan's Island of cop shows. Mysteries use misdirection.

To make a good story, misdirection must be done properly. Like the picture at the top of this post. The misdirections must let the reader imagine several directions, gradually moving through the possibilities.

The best misdirections do not seem contrived. They don't flash like neon No Vacancy signs. They just offer a nod toward the husband as the killer. If the misdirection were too obvious, we Americans would be convinced it was a red herring.

(Having been raised on Oklahoma Prairie and now living at the foot of the Rocky Mountain foothills, I don't have a clue what a herring is -- red or otherwise. I do know it's a fish of some kind. Not a trout or a farm-raised catfish, both of which are tasty, tasty.)

Maybe I should write a murder mystery involving a husband who not only is the most obvious killer -- BUT who, in fact, done the dirty deed. Oooooh. Then the misdirections would have to be tasty, tasty. He'd be so aggrieved -- mostly. And solicitous of his poor, dead wife's family -- maybe a little too solicitous of his wife's younger, blonder sister.

"He's shredded paper," my husband declares, merely disapproving.

That's not so bad, I think.

Maybe this is the most devious misdirection of all. A possibility that it's not a crime. Maybe an accident. Suicide. I can relax a bit. Have some sympathy for the poor widower -- errrr, cat.

And then the mystery writer drops the hammer. Our hero is about to be bludgeoned in the dark, dank basement.

Did I leave one of those checks from the insurance company where Kocka could get it? Or is it the latest iteration of  my last short story. Have I backed that up? What changes had I made? God, I hope it's not really my "last" short story. Surely I can write more.

In the end, the solution to the mystery must be congruent with the general direction of the story. Nothing out of the blue.

"It's toilet paper," my husband says.

Toilet paper? But my husband is discussing a mess the cat made at the door into the hall. Our bathroom is all the way across the bedroom. Kocka is famous for unrolling the toilet paper beside the toilet, but how could he get toilet paper from the bathroom unrolled all the way to the hallway door?

I can't lay in bed any longer.

Indeed, my husband is standing over a mostly shredded, one-quarter-full roll of mangled, only slightly damp, toilet paper.

Oh, I see.

A couple of days before I'd discovered that same partial roll of toilet paper in the toilet in the main bathroom. No doubt knocked into the toilet by a certain long haired cat. I'd fished it out (the toilet paper not the cat) and dropped it into a plastic basin on the counter beside the sink, intending to return soon and dispose of it properly. (What is it they say about the road to hell?)

The main bathroom door is a scant two feet down the hall from our bedroom door. Figure maybe four more feet to where the basin in question -- now empty -- rested upside down on the floor. Kocka carries things in his mouth. (Maybe he was a dog in one of his last lives.)

No more misdirection. Mystery solved. In fact, two mysteries. We'd heard a muted crash in the night, my husband and I. We both said, "The cat." Rolled over and went back to sleep.

What Kind of Animals Are We?

                                                                         image from confidentcameramoms.com

Once Upon a Time
In a Galaxy far, far away
A Mouse chewed through a Lion's bonds
And a Father prepared a feast for his profligate Son.

Is there one of these stories you do not know?

Like many humans I've thought about what separates us from the other animals on our planet Earth. I always argue with myself and others that humans are simply one among many animals. Yet I continue to look for that which sets us apart. And, truth be told, makes us special. Of course being a human makes me want us to be special.

Many years ago I met Jane Goodall. She was speaking to a group at the University of Oklahoma, home of the Institute for Primate Studies. Dr. William Lemmons and researcher Dr. Roger Fouts were studying primate behavior and communications to better understand the development of human communication.

You may remember that Dr. Fouts worked with the famous chimpanzee Washoe teaching her American Sign Language for the Deaf. And that's an interesting story in itself -- but maybe for a different day.

Back to Dame Goodall.

Being me, I hurried out and bought her book In the Shadow of Man and read it before I went to hear her speak. She documented observations of chimpanzees making and using tools. Most particularly modifying twigs to fish for termites and leaves to absorb water for drinking from a source too difficult to access directly with mouth or tongue.

Before that I had accepted, as had many better educated than I, that the thing that makes humans different is their ability to fashion and use tools. Oh, I was so smug because I am a member of such a superior tribe.

Hah! Have you watched videos of crows doing what crows can do. Click here. Okay, the crow in this video did not make any tools, but he certainly  used tools to get his treat. And, shoot! The crow is not even in our Class -- taxonomically speaking. You know -- Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, etc.

And that brings us back to the opening lines of this blog post. Stories. My daughter pointed out to me this morning that humans are story-telling animals. It's how we understand ourselves and the world around us. It's how we teach our children what they need to know to be successful or even just so-so humans.

I know who I am because I know my stories. And I know who you are because of the stories you tell me about you. Sometimes we tell stories about other beings to explain ourselves.

And we find those stories in as many ways as there are us.

We hear stories in music. Think of Sergie Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf," or John Williams' scores for the Indiana Jones movies and the Star Wars movies.

We see them in dance. "The Nutcracker" is the first to come to my mind. And if you've never seen Dubstep, click on it and watch a few minutes. This young man is amazing.

The visual arts tell some of the best stories. In fact, sometimes when we see sculptures or paintings or photos we see our own stories -- my immigrant ancestors arriving in New York Harbor and the average-joe farm families they founded.

                            

                                     image from en.wikipedia.org      image from madisonartshop.com

We tell scary stories about fictional creatures to safely test how we might deal with terror. We tell scary true stories to learn how our brothers and sisters have dealt with terror. We tell our stories to people we do not know who do not know about our world. We listen to their stories and get to know a little more about them and their world.

And, in the best of both worlds, we discover how much we have in common and how much we are all deserving of respect and admiration.

We are story-telling animals. We humans.

The Martian -- a movie review

image from wallpapershome.com

My husband and I went to the movies this afternoon. We saw "The Martian." To see it regular would be $5.15 per ticket, 3D $8.15, and 3D XD $15.15. We opted for the plain 3D, 'cause I like 3D but not $10 worth.

There are two kinds of science fiction -- hard science fiction and soft science fiction. Hard science fiction emphasizes scientific and technical possibilities consistent with our current understanding of science and technology. Soft science fiction plays fast and loose with the science. That leaves it free to tell whatever story it wants.

I love science fiction movies where the movie makes no pretense to serious science. The Star Wars and Star Trek franchises come to mind. They're exciting, visually stunning, and explore themes of universal human interest.

I write hard science fiction -- Murder on Ceres. It's available as a paper back and on Kindle. Check it out.

I would love to see science fiction movies that explore real possibilities. Stories that stay within the realm of scientific and technological possibility. We live in an age when we should be able to see movies like that. We really will be sending astronauts to Mars. The science is available. It is not beyond the normal human being's capacity to understand. And it is more amazing and thought provoking than the misrepresentations presented in "The Martian."

I guess that gives away my rating on this movie. I give it a 57 1/2 because you can dance to it.

Let me tell you what I liked about the movie first. Then you can stop reading if you don't want to know what I didn't like about it.

What I did like:

The visuals -- especially the Mars scapes. Broad empty land with dramatic rock formations. Reds and ambers, The deep blackness of space sprinkled with stars. They did distance very well. I liked the vehicles, too. (At least before the modifications which can only be described as dumb. Think visqueen and duct tape. Seriously? Seriously!)

Sorry. I was going to do the positive stuff first.

I loved the spaceship Hermes. Matt Damon does a good job acting. And Benedict Wong represents the JPL well. I always like JPL being mentioned whether in the news or movies. And NASA is my favorite government agency.

You know what? I'm not going to rant about the lights inside their helmets -- you already know how hard it is to see out of a car at night if the dome light is on. And surgical staplers don't sound like staple guns. And jumping up and down on a roof at Earth gravity does not equate to jumping up and down on a vehicle's roof at Mars gravity. (Mars gravity is 0.38 of standard Earth gravity. So a 185 pound Matt Damon on Mars would weigh 70.3 pounds -- not quite as much weight to throw around.) And hydrogen doesn't burn yellow.

But it makes sense that you could grow potatoes the way they do in the movie. And the movie does seem as long as it would actually take to travel to and from Mars.

I restrained my urge to laugh until the last ridiculous stunt. I mean with broken ribs? Come on.

But then when the movie was finally over, my husband took me to Barnes and Noble where I had a lovely cappuccino and chocolate mousse in their Starbucks. 

And I eagerly anticipate the next Star Wars movie.

9/11 at Red Rocks

My cousins Dennis and Rita visited from Texas in September of this year. Our time for sightseeing was limited to excursions my 90-year-old father could make with us. We ate at my favorite restaurants -- Lucille's Creole Cafe and Tequila's.

And things we could do while Daddy's care-giver was working -- We walked at Kendrick Lake and Stone House Park where Dennis spotted trout in Bear Creek. Leave it to a fisherman. To be honest, I'd never noticed the trout.

And of course I wanted them to see Red Rocks. We were lucky that they were here September 11 and we all got to witness the Annual 9/11 Stair Climb.

On September 11, 2005, five Denver firefighters climbed the equivalent of 110 flights of stairs at the 1999 Broadway building in downtown Denver to commemorate the 343 New York City firefighters killed in the line of duty at the World Trade Center, September 11, 2001.

The memorial stair climb moved to the Qwest Building and by 2008 it had grown to 343 the maximum that facility could accommodate. A fitting number, but there were hundreds from throughout Colorado on the wait list who could not participate.

By 2009 a second and simultaneous memorial stair climb was taking place at Red Rocks Amphitheater. The stair climb is open to all. They make nine counter clockwise laps in the amphitheater.

This year more than 1,000 peopled did the Red Rocks stair climb. From arm-babies to grandparents.

They walked down the steps on the south side

across in front of the stage

and back up the north side to the top.

Red Rocks Amphitheater is an open-air concert venue. Performers first started coming there in 1906. The City of Denver purchased it in 1927, and in 1936 the city enlisted the aid of the Civilian Conservation Corp and the Works Progress Administration, two of President Franklin Roosevelt's programs to help pull the United States out of the Great Depression, to build the amphitheater as it is now. 

The amphitheater seats 9,450 people and has presented a Who's Who among musicians from opera singer Mary Garden in 1911 to Rock and Roll greats like the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix in the 60's. 

An incident occurred during a Jethro Tull performance in 1972 dubbed "Riot at Red Rocks." Gate-crashers and police and tear gas -- oh my. Hard rock was banned for the next five years. 

Pop took over -- like The Carpenters, Carol King, and John Denver (of course.)

A law suit and court order restored Rock and Roll to Red Rocks. This summer's concert series included Joe Bonnamassa and Death Cab for Cuties as well as Country and Western stars like Tim McGraw.

But on September 11 every year, in the midst of the summer concert season, Colorado's people remember those New York City Firefighters who lost their lives in 2001. And all our nation's fallen firefighters.

I Have a New Friend

I am older now than my mother was when I thought she was old. Being old is like being a child again, but with permissions.

"Momma, I have a new friend."

"That's nice, dear," Mother would have said. "What's her name?"

"Lou."

"Lou what?"

"Don't know," I would say with a shrug.

"Where does she live?"

"Over behind King Soopers somewhere."

"What does she do?" Mother would have asked.

"She's retired."

"From what?"

(I remember that mothers ask lots of questions. My mother did. I did.)

"Don't know exactly. Maybe she was like me. Did lots of things."

"You don't know much about her, do you?"

"Guess not. But I like her."

Mother would have laughed. "And what is it you like about your new friend?"

"She likes books."

A Book Signing

image from tatteredcoverbookstore.blogspot.com

Diane Mott Davidson 

Diane Mott Davidson, writer of culinary mysteries, signed books at Mountain Books in Conifer, Colorado, October 2.

She is gracious, delightful, and entertaining whether you're listening to her speak or reading her stories. And she makes a mean batch of Scout's Brownies from her book, Dying for Chocolate. 

That's the first book of hers that I read. Her main character Goldy is a mother, a good friend, a domestic abuse survivor, an amateur sleuth, and a caterer -- in that order of importance. As the series continues she adds wife to that list -- I would say tying for slot number 1.

In Dying for Chocolate, we meet all the main characters. Goldy, of course. She is happily divorced from The Jerk whose only positive contribution to her life is their son Arch. She has turned her passion for food into a career as a caterer. 

Marla is the Jerk's second ex-wife and Goldy's best friend. Marla has an extraordinary talent for collecting the town gossip which proves invaluable to Goldy's avocation as amateur detective solving local murder mysteries.

You know that info on the back of books? I seldom read that. Or book reviews. I read books because a friend recommends it or I hear an interview with the author on National Public Radio. But Dying for Chocolate I saw in the library and being notoriously addicted to chocolate, I checked it out based solely on its title.

Like all of her mysteries, it's set in the imaginary town of Aspen Meadow, Colorado, which is very like her town of Evergreen.

I was innocently reading along when I turned a page and there, in the middle of the murder mystery, was a recipe. That was on page 75. Then on page 98 there was a recipe for Scout's Brownies. To the kitchen! Murder mystery on hold, I baked them. They were delicious. 

Lucky for me because I lived in Oklahoma at the time, Ms. Mott Davidson had amended her high altitude recipe for us low altitude readers. I didn't find that out until the book signing. 

I've read all her books since. She inspired me to write Murder on Ceres. I took her a copy of my book as a gift.

I found out on Monday about her Friday scheduled book signing at Mountain Books in Conifer (from Colorado Public Radio, our local NPR station) and, of course I had to go. I'd never been to Conifer. I knew it was in the mountains and it would likely be dark when it was over, so I set about trying to enlist people to go with me. Daughter had to work. Husband had to work. Friends had other commitments. Well, shoot.

Conifer, Colorado. Google said thirty minutes away from my house. Four-lane highway. How bad could it be?

I left home at 4:00 pm to be sure I'd have plenty of time to find the book store and a parking place. After all, I clearly remembered my experience in February at Neil Gaiman's book signing in Ft. Collins,

There was a bit of rush hour traffic. It always amazes me how many people live up in the mountains and commute into Metro Denver for work. Needless to say, it was all uphill and curvy. Exits marked roads named "Raven Gulch" and "Sourdough Drive" and "Alpine Meadow." Of course they did.

The drive up? No problem at all.

Mountain Books is a wonderful bookstore. It's small and stuffed to the gills with books, new and used. Jesse, the owner, has been in this location for 18 years. His space is divided into categories -- Science Fiction, Mysteries, Religion, etc. and the books are shelved within those categories alphabetically by author. That pleases my library-trained heart.

His dog Sasha welcomes customers and keeps an eye on everything. Of indeterminate ancestry, she's a mature dog, about 30 pounds, mostly white with a lovely black patch over her right eye. Her coat is medium length and her tail is elegantly feathered. Most of the customers are local and they obligingly toss her ball for her to fetch.

Jesse suggested I walk over to the shopping center where there are several eating establishments. Of course he did. Everybody in Colorado walks. I'm getting used to it.

Weather Underground  forecasted possible thunderstorms for Conifer. Clouds were building, but to the east. 

They might drop rain out over the prairie but it wasn't likely I'd see anything from those clouds. And the aspen are responding to our changing fall daylight, their leaves bright as sunshine shimmering in the wind.

I bought Mott Davidson's latest, Goldy's Kitchen Cookbook, a collection of the recipes from her culinary mysteries, and sat down to wait. 

More fans filtered into the bookshop and we visited. One lady told me I was brave to drive in the mountains after dark. I decided to see what other books of interest to me Jesse might have. I found a Stephen Jay Gould I didn't have and one by Neil deGrasse Tyson -- both used for only $5 each.

One of the ladies said she got to hear Tyson speak at Colorado School of Mines a couple of nights before. How cool is that!

Another woman said I should be careful driving after dark because of deer on the highway. And elk are bigger than deer. Another said she'd seen a bear dead on the road the night before. Several agreed they'd heard someone hit a bear. "Do you know who?" they asked each other. "A bear?" I asked. "But they're not as dangerous as hitting a deer," they reassured me. Or an elk "because deer and elk are so tall, they'll come right over the hood into your windshield." 

Which brought on one woman's husband's experience with a deer leaping through his pickup truck's side window and going halfway through the windshield. "It was dead, of course." Of course, I thought. Then someone offered the wisdom that it would have been more dangerous if the deer had not died -- "flailing around in the moving truck."

Deer and elk and bears, Oh my.

To my relief, Diane Mott Davidson arrived bearing freshly baked Scout's Brownies. And signed our books. She talked about who inspired her villains -- which brought to mind Twain's warning that you ought not start a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. She explained that her husband Jim is nothing like the Jerk. And Arch is so believable because she has her three sons to draw on. 

Her husband is an aerospace engineer and has worked for NASA. She thinks he'll enjoy Murder on Ceres. Not only a wonderful writer, but she's kind, too.

And then it was time to drive home. In the dark.

When you see those yellow diamond highway signs showing a downward tipping truck above the percent grade you're coming to, you know you're in the Rocky Mountains and it's going to be steep. And yes, I do know to take those long, steep hills in Low gear, so my brakes don't overheat and fail.

After a half mile of 5% grade, (Doesn't sound like much, does it? But it is very steep.) I encountered an official Department of Transportation sign that read "ALL DRIVERS DON'T BE FOOLED 5% GRADE AND SHARP CURVES NEXT 5 MILES." Scared me, I'll tell you.

But then, it's like my husband says, it's not quite so scary when you can't see how far down it is. And in the darkness I couldn't see anything past the edge of the road. That's because the ground fell away to my immediate right and there was nothing there to be caught in my headlights.

At least I didn't have to worry about a deer or an elk or a bear leaping in front of the car from that side of the road. I just had to keep reminding myself that if one of those critters did come out of the darkness to my left, I should probably not swerve right to miss it.

I was relieved when I saw the 65 MPH speed limit signs. I knew I was out of the mountains and almost home.