Things are not going too well with the world.
War still going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel and Syria and Iran all hate each other. The king of Saudi Arabia died yesterday...he was stable at least.
Let's see. What else is messed up?
Our new pots and pans were made in China. We purchased them over the ones made in America because the set included a 12 inch frying pan that husband wanted. I hope the workers in Pennsylvania forgive us if their kids go hungry.
I joked today that we were in the 1%. The cashier kid didn't have a clue what I meant. Oh, well.
It is supposed to snow or rain or snow then rain, or rain and rain and rain tomorrow, with rain or snow on Monday.
The Russians are still in Eastern Ukraine.
People in McDonalds in Japan found inedible crap in their chicken nuggets.
Ebola is still ravaging Africa and scaring the shit out of us here. Measles are another worry. I think we're safe, but there's a wicked stomach virus going round and I think Mom has it.
Brush fires in Australia.
Have I touched every continent? No? I left out South America. Isn't anything bad happening there? No?
Let's move.
Oh, wait.
Husband is learning how to make ice cream.
I will stick around a little longer.
Friday, January 23, 2015
Thursday, January 1, 2015
Goodbye 2014
Here I shall attempt to list the best things that happened in the previous year.
1. Nobody I loved dearly died.
2. I went to two book signings!
3. The front of the house was completely redone without pain and suffering on my part...and it got finished in about two weeks.
4. Sandy came from Las Vegas for a visit.
5. Sally came to visit with Sandy.
6. I do not have breast cancer.
7. Elyse still has her job and did a great job of promoting herself.
8. Karyn still has terrible migraines, but she's doing her artwork again, which is wonderful.
9. Herb promised to quit his financial duties at the post.
10. We went to Wildwood, had a good time.
11. Worked for other people, made some dinero.
12. Sharknado
13. Georgia family here, except for Matt and Kelley.
14. Posted new novella.
15. Running out of things that were good.
All in all, if I just count these events, it wasn't too bad. But the older I get, the less time I have to have great things happen to me. Bless us all.
Friday, December 12, 2014
Holidays in our house
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!
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!
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)