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.