Statement of fact: Christmas is wonderful.
Way back in the early 50s. when my brother and I were mere children, Christmas was the biggest thing in our lives. I don't know what Santa went through to bring us the assortment of great toys and stuff in our stockings, but the old elf was pretty busy and we were never discontent. My mother often quotes that, after going through unwrapping all our stuff, one of us asked "is this all?" meaning, of course, having unwrapped so many presents, we didn't want to miss one. But, taken as parents are wont to do, they considered it ungrateful and greedy in that we wanted more. No. We just didn't want to miss something.
The house was full of candles of choir boys and plastic poinsettias and red and green. I remember my father putting the lights on the live tree and cursing because back in the old days, if one light bulb was dead, the whole string didn't work and he'd have to go through the replacement bulbs one by one to fix things. There never seemed to be the right bulbs and it took hours--or maybe it just seemed like that. The radio that was part of our television played Christmas music. Mom went nuts over the tinsel hanging. We never did it right, but she fixed it.
Oh, the food!
There were cookies everywhere. Thousands! In later years, she worked in the school cafeteria and the ladies baked their cookies there in the big trays, then would trade off. It's called a cookie exchange now, back then it was just friends sharing cookie recipes and baked goods. Mom liked her cookies on the small side. One bite, she'd say. We wanted something to munch on. Never happened. Mom was pretty strict about her baked goods. "Saving for company" was her watchword. And we did have lots of company back then.
My parents weren't big party givers, but when they did, it was special. I helped Mom make appetizers or hors d'ervors (please spell check fix this!) which meant putting a dab of cream cheese on a Ritz cracker and a slice of green olive on it. Sometimes I spread Kraft cheddar pimento cheese in a little jar on the Ritz. Sometimes it was the Roka Bleu spread! To my amazement, these delicacies are still made. Oh, and wait...sometimes there were curled up little anchovies from a can placed atop that cream cheesed Ritz. Come to think of it, there might not have been any other cracker back then that was suitable for company.
The parties sort of stopped when my younger brother came along. Dad worked rotating shifts because my older brother was ready for college. Mom was home with the kid. Only relatives showed up at Christmas. Or sometimes, we'd go to her mother's and father's house for Christmas dinner, after mass, of course. Grandma put out a lot of food. Sometimes she invited my other grandmother to join us. My uncle, single then, was always good for great presents. One year, he had a few drinks with the owner of the only jewelry shop in town and our presents were pretty fabulous!
But the smell of the baking cookies, the pine from the tree, the warmth inside and the chill outside (let there be ice skates under the tree, please!) and the joy, the out and out joy...these things made my Christmas season wonderful.
I don't know if I managed to do the same for my own children. I sure hope they have memories to equal or surpass mine.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!
Friday, December 12, 2014
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Gray day
So, not having written here in ages, I thought of something to write last night that was bound to bring comment after comment.
Only, come morning, I completely forgot what it was.
This happens more and more. Evenings when I am sitting around doing nothing but thinking, I come up with all these great ideas. Sometimes, I actually get up from the bed and write down a note or two, but mostly, since I am trying to go to sleep, I just lie there and stare at the ceiling or shut my eyes tightly and pretend that will get me to fall asleep.
It never works.
This morning at about 4:00 I woke up and ended up going downstairs to watch some television. Whatever brainstorm I had had went down the tubes.
So I decided to watch Phineas and Ferb and think. I did get tired enough to go upstairs, though. And I was supposed to go shopping for Christmas presents this morning but I found a good Canadian movie instead and watched that to the end.
Okay, enough procrastination.
I hand wrote a scene weeks ago that I ought to put into the computer before the new one comes and I lose everything.
It starts out with Lee offering to split 60/40 with Maggie if she will stay and help him run the hotel. Maggie considers the idea, but feels a little slighted after she makes a list of all she will be doing and all he will be doing.
It's quite a list.
I really, really have to work on finishing this story.
Only, come morning, I completely forgot what it was.
This happens more and more. Evenings when I am sitting around doing nothing but thinking, I come up with all these great ideas. Sometimes, I actually get up from the bed and write down a note or two, but mostly, since I am trying to go to sleep, I just lie there and stare at the ceiling or shut my eyes tightly and pretend that will get me to fall asleep.
It never works.
This morning at about 4:00 I woke up and ended up going downstairs to watch some television. Whatever brainstorm I had had went down the tubes.
So I decided to watch Phineas and Ferb and think. I did get tired enough to go upstairs, though. And I was supposed to go shopping for Christmas presents this morning but I found a good Canadian movie instead and watched that to the end.
Okay, enough procrastination.
I hand wrote a scene weeks ago that I ought to put into the computer before the new one comes and I lose everything.
It starts out with Lee offering to split 60/40 with Maggie if she will stay and help him run the hotel. Maggie considers the idea, but feels a little slighted after she makes a list of all she will be doing and all he will be doing.
It's quite a list.
I really, really have to work on finishing this story.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Blog share with a recipe!!!
My friend Anastasia Pollock, aka Lois Winston, asked me to post something on her blog, but it had to include a recipe.
So I tried to think of something in my new novella that was food, other than Halloween candy, and I came up blank again.
Until I remembered that Jim Ryan gets to eat some coconut cake. Now, I don't have a recipe for that, but I do have a recipe for delicious coconut cream pie.
So I tried to think of something in my new novella that was food, other than Halloween candy, and I came up blank again.
Until I remembered that Jim Ryan gets to eat some coconut cake. Now, I don't have a recipe for that, but I do have a recipe for delicious coconut cream pie.
Monday, September 15, 2014
Thoughts old and new
And Jim Ryan appears distracted. He keeps thinking about the woman he loves, trying to get her dead sister's life in order back in New Jersey. He's not himself, really. But in his life, he has to be sharp at all times, his senses amped up to max level. No thoughts of a warm body next to his should stray into his mindset.
But they do. And he'd better do his job because Charleston is full of vamps!
Friday, August 29, 2014
Revisionist history
My WWII story, still in progress VERY slowly, takes place during the last 9 days of WWII. That includes the bombing of Hiroshima and three days later, Nagasaki.
I needed to look up the American reaction to the second bombing. After Hiroshima, the American public was thrilled at the power and supremacy of our nation. We were hot stuff, we'd probably gotten the Japs to their knees and were the leaders of the world. Europe and some of Asia had been ravaged by the Japanese. China had suffered incredibly...like the rape of Nanking, I think it was, where the people were slaughtered without mercy. Hitler had done his own fair share of slaughtering innocents with a true purpose in mind. He liked it. He was an animal. He had no conscience, and apparently, neither did the Japanese military.
There are films of young schoolgirls training to fend off the enemy with sharpened poles. They were told to hate us and they did.
If we were going to win the war, we had to do something drastic, not wait for Stalin to somehow get across the vast expanse of Siberia to join in the war and obliterate the Japs who were in Manchuria and Korea and other places.
So, we dropped a bomb...not just any bomb, but the most destructive force in the world.
The rest is history.
Or is it?
I looked up stuff today about the reaction to the dropping of the bombs. I had seen photos of how the people reacted when they heard about the atomic bomb and Mr. Truman's speech that fateful day to all Americans. But I wanted to find out if any fuss was made over the dropping of the second plutonium bomb, Fat Boy, on Nagasaki.
All I could find was second thought, revisionist history in which people born probably well after the war was over wrote about how big a mistake it was to drop either bomb. How unnecessary it was. How there was no need for a land invasion that would kill a million American forces. It was, in their opinions, a bunch of lies. The Japanese were on their knees already. They had no army left. They deserved to be treated differently.
Yeah. It's easy to sit in the comfort of the future and say what an unnecessary, perhaps even evil thing we did.
How is it that, seen through the cataracts of time, it was a horror?
Yes, it was brutal and we wouldn't do it now because we've made our peace with our enemies, but then, when how many brave men died for the cause of freedom, it was justified.
War is hell. Yes, it is a horror show and evil and bloody and destroys so many lives, not to mention property, because it's the lives we're concerned about. There is nothing good about war--any war, whether a Crusade or Vietnam or this mess we find ourselves in today. But it continues to happen and we continue to rise to the bait and use power against power to see who comes out on top.
What bothers me most is how these historians condemn what was done through the benefit of hindsight. Give me a break. There is nothing good about war, and absolutely nothing good about trying to excuse the outcome or what anyone does in a war. Certainly words written 60 years later will not make anything better. It won't make Hiroshima or Bataan or Burma or Saigon or any of those mud hut towns in faraway places better.
To change history is a mistake. It's not 1984, we can't make up facts, but we can change how they are reported. Facts are. They can't be erased to make people feel less guilty. No confession of evil absolves anyone.
If you can find a veteran, ask him or her how they feel about putting their lives on the line so historians can try to change their reality.
Go ahead.
Try.
Just don't ask one from our more recent conflicts. You might get decked.
I needed to look up the American reaction to the second bombing. After Hiroshima, the American public was thrilled at the power and supremacy of our nation. We were hot stuff, we'd probably gotten the Japs to their knees and were the leaders of the world. Europe and some of Asia had been ravaged by the Japanese. China had suffered incredibly...like the rape of Nanking, I think it was, where the people were slaughtered without mercy. Hitler had done his own fair share of slaughtering innocents with a true purpose in mind. He liked it. He was an animal. He had no conscience, and apparently, neither did the Japanese military.
There are films of young schoolgirls training to fend off the enemy with sharpened poles. They were told to hate us and they did.
If we were going to win the war, we had to do something drastic, not wait for Stalin to somehow get across the vast expanse of Siberia to join in the war and obliterate the Japs who were in Manchuria and Korea and other places.
So, we dropped a bomb...not just any bomb, but the most destructive force in the world.
The rest is history.
Or is it?
I looked up stuff today about the reaction to the dropping of the bombs. I had seen photos of how the people reacted when they heard about the atomic bomb and Mr. Truman's speech that fateful day to all Americans. But I wanted to find out if any fuss was made over the dropping of the second plutonium bomb, Fat Boy, on Nagasaki.
All I could find was second thought, revisionist history in which people born probably well after the war was over wrote about how big a mistake it was to drop either bomb. How unnecessary it was. How there was no need for a land invasion that would kill a million American forces. It was, in their opinions, a bunch of lies. The Japanese were on their knees already. They had no army left. They deserved to be treated differently.
Yeah. It's easy to sit in the comfort of the future and say what an unnecessary, perhaps even evil thing we did.
How is it that, seen through the cataracts of time, it was a horror?
Yes, it was brutal and we wouldn't do it now because we've made our peace with our enemies, but then, when how many brave men died for the cause of freedom, it was justified.
War is hell. Yes, it is a horror show and evil and bloody and destroys so many lives, not to mention property, because it's the lives we're concerned about. There is nothing good about war--any war, whether a Crusade or Vietnam or this mess we find ourselves in today. But it continues to happen and we continue to rise to the bait and use power against power to see who comes out on top.
What bothers me most is how these historians condemn what was done through the benefit of hindsight. Give me a break. There is nothing good about war, and absolutely nothing good about trying to excuse the outcome or what anyone does in a war. Certainly words written 60 years later will not make anything better. It won't make Hiroshima or Bataan or Burma or Saigon or any of those mud hut towns in faraway places better.
To change history is a mistake. It's not 1984, we can't make up facts, but we can change how they are reported. Facts are. They can't be erased to make people feel less guilty. No confession of evil absolves anyone.
If you can find a veteran, ask him or her how they feel about putting their lives on the line so historians can try to change their reality.
Go ahead.
Try.
Just don't ask one from our more recent conflicts. You might get decked.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Obscuring the Obvious
Back in 1956, a woman named Grace Metalious wrote the novel of her lifetime, Peyton Place. It had it all...rape, incest, promiscuity, money, poverty, New England (four towns thinly disguised) and murder. Instantly, it became a bestseller, sitting on the NYT bestseller list for 59 weeks. Just goes to show you what the reading public wanted back then.
Move ahead to 1957 when it was dramatized for television. So many characters, so many threads, so many arcs to follow, but one sticks in my mind.
Recently widowed, Constance MacKenzie comes back to her hometown with a baby girl, Allison. She is beautiful and tries to live the quiet life...for a reason. Her widowhood does not bear close examination because Allison was born out of wedlock...way out of wedlock and back then, in 1957, by all accounts, that was enough to have a scarlet letter sewn on her dress. She hides her daughter's illegitimacy by buying a framed photograph at Woolworth's of a soldier and standing it on the mantel of their fireplace.
Time passes. Allison (Mia Farrow) grows up, goes to high school. She is pursued by the son of the richest man in town, Rodney Harrington. Now, in the book, old Rod is killed in a car crash. He lives quite well in the TV show, played by the actor who now plays Bones's father (Ryan O'Neal) on the show of that name. He has a younger brother, but the father, the richest guy in town, of course favors his older son, much to the regret of the younger. That comes into play later.
Allison doesn't know she hides a Big Secret. She would LOVE to marry Rodney, but somebody shows up who knows either 1. she's fatherless or 2. also bought the same picture frame at Woolworth's. The jig, as they say, is up.
Allison is crushed to learn she was born on the other side of the blanket from her mother. Her tiny New England town would be aghast and certainly, Rodney will shun her along with everyone else for this fact.
Little does she, and the other people in town know what the truth about marriage among the Puritans was really like.
You see, back in the old, old days, despite the bundling boards and that nonsense, something like 2/3 of all marriages took place because the woman had already conceived the intended's child. It was proof that she could bear children and thus help out on the family farm or enterprise in the future. As long as the couple were married within a certain amount of time (when were shotguns invented?) the child would be deemed legitimate. This is historical fact, though well hidden by the Victorian/American morality that was to follow our puritanical forebears. I'll try to find something to cite here, but I can't remember where I heard this or read it, so it might take awhile. (Blossoms in the Dust w/ Greer Garson as Edna Gladney)
Now, look at today. The TV censors wouldn't blink at this situation. It was hot stuff back when I had to ask what illegitimacy meant. My mother produced my father's 1918 birth certificate that had in the corner, a check box for legitimate or illegitimate. Hers, from 1920, did not have this. Thanks to someone who cared about children, this was taken off all birth certificates in the US by 1926, so that these little babies would not suffer the sins of their parents. There was a movie based on the woman responsible for this, can't remember the name, though.
Today, none of this would matter, not really.
Movie stars, rock stars, government officials...they are affianced to their baby mamas and baby daddies. Nobody blinks.
Poor Allison. She left town and Rodney in shame. Here's where Rodney could have died in a car crash, though. If she could just have held out a little longer, or possibly killed the person who knew her deep, dark secret! And then her mother, because she knew, too. Now that would have been pretty dramatic, even in 1959.
Move ahead to 1957 when it was dramatized for television. So many characters, so many threads, so many arcs to follow, but one sticks in my mind.
Recently widowed, Constance MacKenzie comes back to her hometown with a baby girl, Allison. She is beautiful and tries to live the quiet life...for a reason. Her widowhood does not bear close examination because Allison was born out of wedlock...way out of wedlock and back then, in 1957, by all accounts, that was enough to have a scarlet letter sewn on her dress. She hides her daughter's illegitimacy by buying a framed photograph at Woolworth's of a soldier and standing it on the mantel of their fireplace.
Time passes. Allison (Mia Farrow) grows up, goes to high school. She is pursued by the son of the richest man in town, Rodney Harrington. Now, in the book, old Rod is killed in a car crash. He lives quite well in the TV show, played by the actor who now plays Bones's father (Ryan O'Neal) on the show of that name. He has a younger brother, but the father, the richest guy in town, of course favors his older son, much to the regret of the younger. That comes into play later.
Allison doesn't know she hides a Big Secret. She would LOVE to marry Rodney, but somebody shows up who knows either 1. she's fatherless or 2. also bought the same picture frame at Woolworth's. The jig, as they say, is up.
Allison is crushed to learn she was born on the other side of the blanket from her mother. Her tiny New England town would be aghast and certainly, Rodney will shun her along with everyone else for this fact.
Little does she, and the other people in town know what the truth about marriage among the Puritans was really like.
You see, back in the old, old days, despite the bundling boards and that nonsense, something like 2/3 of all marriages took place because the woman had already conceived the intended's child. It was proof that she could bear children and thus help out on the family farm or enterprise in the future. As long as the couple were married within a certain amount of time (when were shotguns invented?) the child would be deemed legitimate. This is historical fact, though well hidden by the Victorian/American morality that was to follow our puritanical forebears. I'll try to find something to cite here, but I can't remember where I heard this or read it, so it might take awhile. (Blossoms in the Dust w/ Greer Garson as Edna Gladney)
Now, look at today. The TV censors wouldn't blink at this situation. It was hot stuff back when I had to ask what illegitimacy meant. My mother produced my father's 1918 birth certificate that had in the corner, a check box for legitimate or illegitimate. Hers, from 1920, did not have this. Thanks to someone who cared about children, this was taken off all birth certificates in the US by 1926, so that these little babies would not suffer the sins of their parents. There was a movie based on the woman responsible for this, can't remember the name, though.
Today, none of this would matter, not really.
Movie stars, rock stars, government officials...they are affianced to their baby mamas and baby daddies. Nobody blinks.
Poor Allison. She left town and Rodney in shame. Here's where Rodney could have died in a car crash, though. If she could just have held out a little longer, or possibly killed the person who knew her deep, dark secret! And then her mother, because she knew, too. Now that would have been pretty dramatic, even in 1959.
Sunday, July 27, 2014
The vacation
To me, a vacation is doing something I really want to do with boring times stuck in between the good things. It means writing my story, researching and contemplating while relaxing, perhaps visiting a museum or touring different countryside.
It does not mean being stuck in a place where I can't do any of these things. That, I would say, is more like being in prison.
I need quiet. I need time to think. I need a space to write and create. I need some small diversions other than eating.
We just got back from vacation.
I actually managed to hand write three legal size pages of drek. That was all I could do.
If watching the last half of Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark could be considered research, well, that's my research.
I could say a few choice words, all of them blue, because my lovely ideas and plans did not come to fruition. Now, I have to settle down and get with the story.
Oh, just one little bluey stuck in here.
Shit.
It does not mean being stuck in a place where I can't do any of these things. That, I would say, is more like being in prison.
I need quiet. I need time to think. I need a space to write and create. I need some small diversions other than eating.
We just got back from vacation.
I actually managed to hand write three legal size pages of drek. That was all I could do.
If watching the last half of Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark could be considered research, well, that's my research.
I could say a few choice words, all of them blue, because my lovely ideas and plans did not come to fruition. Now, I have to settle down and get with the story.
Oh, just one little bluey stuck in here.
Shit.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)