...but I'm back from my interplanetary adventure.
In a short while I will be publishing all of my thoughts, impressions, and experiences.
--DS
Saturday, November 23, 2024
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
My Friend Kaye
Nearly thirty-eight years ago I veered closer and closer to an emotional breakdown. Life presented me with challenges I couldn't handle. Even after engaging in my first period of psychotherapy I still did not understand how a clever fellow could make it through three decades and be so ill prepared for such common things as a failing marriage and finding that the arc of my story did not meet expectations I held since I was a teenager.
In the froth of my crises I found myself escaping into emotional isolation punctuated by casual affairs. In neither of these escapes did I need to figure out where I was, let alone where I was going. To put it another way, even though isolation might seem opposite engaging in an affair for me they became virtually the same thing. Neither one brought me into genuine relationship with someone, when what I needed the most was to devote energy and thought to discovering what a relationship is.
That February I escaped from the Washington, D.C., area to New York City. Soon I started feeling that I needed to escape from a pseudo-relationship there. In the summer my employer opened the escape hatch for me by sending me to join coworkers from across the country to deal with a big problem in Huntsville, Alabama. Grateful for an excuse to flee I hopped on a plane from La Guardia and let out a long sigh of relief.
Arriving in Huntsville we all plunged into an intense situation with long hours and impossible demands. The company's generosity (something unknown since the turn of the twenty-first century) kept us fed and housed very comfortably. In return we worked whichever ridiculous shift needed us most in a round-the-clock rush that had us sharing desks with others we would see only as one shift gave way to another.
Let me make a leap here from those old days to today, literally. This afternoon I received a message on one of the current social medium platforms that began, "I am a terrible Messenger friend," because someone had taken an extended time to reply to my recent message. She is wrong. And now we return to Huntsville and the past.
In that pressure cooker atmosphere we were spending a lot of time with our team members. Naturally we would find ourselves at the office sandwich shop with those we became friendly with, the ones becoming our pals. I had three pals there - Craig, a younger straight-laced engineer from rural Illinois by way of St. Louis; Wayne, a closeted big-city gay man fearful of discovery in the work setting; and Kaye, a local woman forced by work to spend much more time with the crew than anywhere else.
With Craig and Wayne I developed friendships that allowed me to open up, to talk about my difficulties while listening to the struggles that each of them faced. The fact that I had problems did not make me unique in this little group. With the help of my professional therapist and these friends, unpaid and unaware of their import, I found the benefit, both relief and comfort, that comes from letting my pals know who I was. The real me.
And I met Kaye with a new desire to be known. So I let her know me as I hadn't with anyone before. She let me know her with a transparency not offered by the women of my past. Our intimacy gave me a glimpse of what might lead to a solid relationship with meaning and significance for both people.
Circumstances limited the duration of our time together. Throughout our time I remained a work in progress, so to speak. Looking back with an additional thirty-eight years of progress under my belt I can see the gap between the way I was at that time and how I wish I had been. I had far to go.
Kaye's willingness to take me as I was, for as long as she could, deserves much credit for starting me on the path that has led me to where I am today. The consistency with which I can love my wife today is the result of steps I first took with Kaye. She was a friend - exactly the friend I needed at exactly that moment. My road hasn't been easy and I have had to review lessons many times. Still, Kaye set me on my way.
Kaye, in any sense, in Messenger or any other way, you are a friend. A good one.
In the froth of my crises I found myself escaping into emotional isolation punctuated by casual affairs. In neither of these escapes did I need to figure out where I was, let alone where I was going. To put it another way, even though isolation might seem opposite engaging in an affair for me they became virtually the same thing. Neither one brought me into genuine relationship with someone, when what I needed the most was to devote energy and thought to discovering what a relationship is.
That February I escaped from the Washington, D.C., area to New York City. Soon I started feeling that I needed to escape from a pseudo-relationship there. In the summer my employer opened the escape hatch for me by sending me to join coworkers from across the country to deal with a big problem in Huntsville, Alabama. Grateful for an excuse to flee I hopped on a plane from La Guardia and let out a long sigh of relief.
Arriving in Huntsville we all plunged into an intense situation with long hours and impossible demands. The company's generosity (something unknown since the turn of the twenty-first century) kept us fed and housed very comfortably. In return we worked whichever ridiculous shift needed us most in a round-the-clock rush that had us sharing desks with others we would see only as one shift gave way to another.
Let me make a leap here from those old days to today, literally. This afternoon I received a message on one of the current social medium platforms that began, "I am a terrible Messenger friend," because someone had taken an extended time to reply to my recent message. She is wrong. And now we return to Huntsville and the past.
In that pressure cooker atmosphere we were spending a lot of time with our team members. Naturally we would find ourselves at the office sandwich shop with those we became friendly with, the ones becoming our pals. I had three pals there - Craig, a younger straight-laced engineer from rural Illinois by way of St. Louis; Wayne, a closeted big-city gay man fearful of discovery in the work setting; and Kaye, a local woman forced by work to spend much more time with the crew than anywhere else.
With Craig and Wayne I developed friendships that allowed me to open up, to talk about my difficulties while listening to the struggles that each of them faced. The fact that I had problems did not make me unique in this little group. With the help of my professional therapist and these friends, unpaid and unaware of their import, I found the benefit, both relief and comfort, that comes from letting my pals know who I was. The real me.
And I met Kaye with a new desire to be known. So I let her know me as I hadn't with anyone before. She let me know her with a transparency not offered by the women of my past. Our intimacy gave me a glimpse of what might lead to a solid relationship with meaning and significance for both people.
Circumstances limited the duration of our time together. Throughout our time I remained a work in progress, so to speak. Looking back with an additional thirty-eight years of progress under my belt I can see the gap between the way I was at that time and how I wish I had been. I had far to go.
Kaye's willingness to take me as I was, for as long as she could, deserves much credit for starting me on the path that has led me to where I am today. The consistency with which I can love my wife today is the result of steps I first took with Kaye. She was a friend - exactly the friend I needed at exactly that moment. My road hasn't been easy and I have had to review lessons many times. Still, Kaye set me on my way.
Kaye, in any sense, in Messenger or any other way, you are a friend. A good one.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Maybe She Did Work A Day
But does she know what it means to hold a job?
Her husband has told us all she drives Cadillacs.
Her husband, by the way, made nearly half a million dollars a year in speaking fees – what he likes to call “not much” money. He also makes millions of dollars, maybe not every year but most, on investments.
She has worked, exerted effort. She raised children and volunteered in her community. However, she has not been compelled to fill out an IRS Form W-4 – that form one fills out when instructing an employer how much withholding tax to take out of her pay.
It may be wrong to say about this woman that she “never worked a day in her life.” But it is perfectly true that as an adult she never had to get a job. If she ever had to work overtime it was because she was tending to people she loved rather than foregoing time with people she loved. She never had to put up with a boss’s borderline abuse because she couldn’t jeopardize her paycheck or her children’s health insurance. If she needed a vacation she could afford a really nice one without worrying that she was using money the children would need for clothes when the next school year started.
She is a woman of privilege. She is not the person her husband should turn to for insights into the concerns of the vast majority of American women. For those multiple tens of millions of women control over their reproductive organs is very important. For them equal pay for equal work would make a huge difference. For them a car repair is a tougher choice than which Cadillac dealer to call and the color of the loaner car.
If her husband wants to lead us he better be getting advice from someone much closer to our reality than she is.
Her husband has told us all she drives Cadillacs.
Her husband, by the way, made nearly half a million dollars a year in speaking fees – what he likes to call “not much” money. He also makes millions of dollars, maybe not every year but most, on investments.
She has worked, exerted effort. She raised children and volunteered in her community. However, she has not been compelled to fill out an IRS Form W-4 – that form one fills out when instructing an employer how much withholding tax to take out of her pay.
It may be wrong to say about this woman that she “never worked a day in her life.” But it is perfectly true that as an adult she never had to get a job. If she ever had to work overtime it was because she was tending to people she loved rather than foregoing time with people she loved. She never had to put up with a boss’s borderline abuse because she couldn’t jeopardize her paycheck or her children’s health insurance. If she needed a vacation she could afford a really nice one without worrying that she was using money the children would need for clothes when the next school year started.
She is a woman of privilege. She is not the person her husband should turn to for insights into the concerns of the vast majority of American women. For those multiple tens of millions of women control over their reproductive organs is very important. For them equal pay for equal work would make a huge difference. For them a car repair is a tougher choice than which Cadillac dealer to call and the color of the loaner car.
If her husband wants to lead us he better be getting advice from someone much closer to our reality than she is.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Worms
Inscrutable necessities
This morning's bike ride started shortly before the sun came into view over the hills between here and Purcellville. The calm dry air hardly moved. The dry pavement hinted at no overnight rain. A wonderful time to be pedaling.
And apparently the earthworms agreed with me: a great time to be on the road.
Thousands of earthworms had left their homes in the early morning hours and crawled onto the roads I often ride. Most of them were already desiccated* and had taken the twisted forms of commas, question marks and apostrophes - perhaps to punctuate my morning exercise. Others were still their squishy selves, crusted with road grit and struggling to get somewhere. A lucky few were flung from my tire onto various parts of the bike (and one onto me) for a somewhat quicker ride.
Okay, maybe they weren't really lucky, since each of these hitchhikers ended up dead, but let's face it: they were all going to die anyway.
Which makes me wonder: if they were going to die anyway, what the heck were they doing on a dry road in such numbers? I can imagine why a worm would come out of soggy rain-soaked dirt and find that a wet road is pretty comfortable. But what could possibly have driven so many worms out of the ground onto totally dry pavement.
Of course they didn't go to waste, except for the several still stuck to my bike and the one took off my shirt during breakfast. Crows have done a remarkable job of cleaning up the road.
*The Merriam-Webster online dictionary lists definition number 2 for desiccate as "to preserve (a food) by drying." I am thinking of the less culinary specific definition number 1, "to dry up."
Friday, February 24, 2012
Let's Honor the Troops With Accuracy
More foolishness on the internet
One of my Facebook friends, an artistic craftsperson with a generous spirit, recently posted a comment stating that the media has been overly absorbed by the late Whitney Houston and completely ignored a list of eleven names, "all Marines that gave their lives last month." He asked us all to repeat the post as a way of giving honor to the troops.
The post by my friend was studded with the " > " which often accompanies the body of a forwarded email, so I decided to look into it more carefully. So I did a Google search on the first name on the list: Justin Allen. I accepted Google's suggested refinement of "Justin Allen 23" which one could infer from my friend's original post was his age at the time of death.
The first item on the search results was a page at urbanlegends.about.com that mentioned exactly the same list of "Marines" being tacked onto a brief diatribe against Lindsay Lohan with a similar plea that we all copy the supposed tribute to the soldiers who have made the ultimate sacrifice. The date of the web page was September 26, 2010 - long before last month.
Like my Facebook friend I support our troops and encourage others to do so as well, even though my friend and I disagree on how best to manifest that support. However, I cannot help but think that eventually blindly copying and reposting inaccurate information will only hurt our cause.
Since the internet provides us with information so quickly we can take a moment to verify that what we repeat is true.
More foolishness on the internet
One of my Facebook friends, an artistic craftsperson with a generous spirit, recently posted a comment stating that the media has been overly absorbed by the late Whitney Houston and completely ignored a list of eleven names, "all Marines that gave their lives last month." He asked us all to repeat the post as a way of giving honor to the troops.
The post by my friend was studded with the " > " which often accompanies the body of a forwarded email, so I decided to look into it more carefully. So I did a Google search on the first name on the list: Justin Allen. I accepted Google's suggested refinement of "Justin Allen 23" which one could infer from my friend's original post was his age at the time of death.
The first item on the search results was a page at urbanlegends.about.com that mentioned exactly the same list of "Marines" being tacked onto a brief diatribe against Lindsay Lohan with a similar plea that we all copy the supposed tribute to the soldiers who have made the ultimate sacrifice. The date of the web page was September 26, 2010 - long before last month.
Like my Facebook friend I support our troops and encourage others to do so as well, even though my friend and I disagree on how best to manifest that support. However, I cannot help but think that eventually blindly copying and reposting inaccurate information will only hurt our cause.
Since the internet provides us with information so quickly we can take a moment to verify that what we repeat is true.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Saturday, December 10, 2011
How Small Were We?
Last evening on the way home from the movie theatre my wife and I chose to stop at the Leesburg outlet center to see if Gymboree had restocked its shelves. The day before she had been to Gymboree hoping to find something for her two nieces (aged five and two) and two nephews (ten and eight years old). What she found were nearly empty shelves.
We found stocked shelves and only a few patrons – precisely what my mental health needs while Christmas shopping.
Not being a parent, children’s clothing has never been a priority for me. And though my varied travels have brought me in contact with a wide range of people, never among them anyone involved in designing children’s clothing. In fact, aside from recognizing that children usually don’t run around naked I’ve hardly thought of children's clothing over the fifty years since I stopped wearing it.
It turns out some of it is cute: little girls’ t-shirts that say “Sweet & SASSY” and chest-covering depictions of T-Rex on shirts for boys for instance. Now my mother would have died before letting my sister wear a “Sweet & SASSY” shirt even if “sassy” were in lower case or merely a footnote. And Hiroko wasn’t at all convinced that her ten-year old nephew would like a giant dinosaur on his clothes. I know she is wrong about this, but Christmas is no time to declaim that men come from Mars at a very young age.
But the real eye-opening discovery of my first ever trip to Gymboree was finding such small clothes. At one point I stood thunderstruck that a boy’s shoulders could fit in the narrow gap between the sleeves. Fold one of the little girl’s shirts once or twice and it would fit in a pocket. My hands, nothing noteworthy in my keyboard-using profession, looked huge over the seat of those empty blue jeans.
The young people wearing those little clothes are literally in our huge hands whether we be parents or Uncle and Auntie. Juxtaposing the power in our hands against the delicacy of those tiny bodies reinforces the responsibility to treat them with reverence. For within each of those small frames God has placed a delicate spirit depending upon us and preparing to shape our unfolding world.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Cell Phone Sanity
Would this work?
I understand greed. I'm just not sure why we are so supportive of it.
We all want to talk on mobile phones. Many of us want to surf and do email on mobile devices. Some want to use Droids, some iPhones, some Blackberries. All of that is cool.
But why do we put up with Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc, using our airwaves to provide competing services when we could have one system on which any manufacturer's phone could work. The carriers subsidize the phone purchase price to get us stuck with their service contracts, virtually none of which are understandable.
I'd rather have our taxes provide the service and let each of us choose which device suits our need - much the way we choose which cars to drive down the common highway.
Of course without Verizon Wireless and the others advertising heavily some other industry would have to pick up the tab for our TV shows. Maybe we can't win.
Would this work?
I understand greed. I'm just not sure why we are so supportive of it.
We all want to talk on mobile phones. Many of us want to surf and do email on mobile devices. Some want to use Droids, some iPhones, some Blackberries. All of that is cool.
But why do we put up with Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc, using our airwaves to provide competing services when we could have one system on which any manufacturer's phone could work. The carriers subsidize the phone purchase price to get us stuck with their service contracts, virtually none of which are understandable.
I'd rather have our taxes provide the service and let each of us choose which device suits our need - much the way we choose which cars to drive down the common highway.
Of course without Verizon Wireless and the others advertising heavily some other industry would have to pick up the tab for our TV shows. Maybe we can't win.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
The Prize Is Mine!
This year's award for the last yard mowed on our Street goes to me. I will spend the rest of this Easter Sunday basking in the good life that awaits me.
Even though I now work at home most days I have been assiduously avoiding yard work during the normal working hours. Do you think this was because I don't want anyone to see me working on the lawn when I should be in the office on the second floor? Nah, not really. It's because I just didn't want to do lawn work - perhaps a gift from Poe's imp of the perverse.
Over the past several weeks I've been in my office listening as a retired neighbor drove his lawn tractor around his yard cutting grass. The professional lawn service companies would come to other yards and work their magic. I'd hear their high-powered equipment droning. I'd give them a look through my street-facing window, and wonder if there was a chance in hell that they would come over and do my lawn also. That hasn't happened yet.
Finally on Wednesday evening the last neighbor with long over-the-winter grass got home early enough to ride his tractor over all of his yard. That meant that the prize was mine. All I had to do was mow my own lawn so that people would know that I wasn't dead or uninterested in the competition.
Today, Easter 2011, I rolled the Honda self-propelled mower from the garage, filled the tank and cut the grass.
My prize? You may be wondering what I won. A free at-home service call for my lawn mower? An azalea for that needs-something spot along the west side of the driveway? A glass of Gatorade?
No. There is no prize. In fact, there was no competition. I didn't attempt to win anything by taking so long to mow my lawn. I have just been too tired and lazy.
But having mown once in the season the next time will be (or at least seem to be) much less of an ordeal. Isn't that so often the case with those chores we put off over and over?
This year's award for the last yard mowed on our Street goes to me. I will spend the rest of this Easter Sunday basking in the good life that awaits me.
Even though I now work at home most days I have been assiduously avoiding yard work during the normal working hours. Do you think this was because I don't want anyone to see me working on the lawn when I should be in the office on the second floor? Nah, not really. It's because I just didn't want to do lawn work - perhaps a gift from Poe's imp of the perverse.
Over the past several weeks I've been in my office listening as a retired neighbor drove his lawn tractor around his yard cutting grass. The professional lawn service companies would come to other yards and work their magic. I'd hear their high-powered equipment droning. I'd give them a look through my street-facing window, and wonder if there was a chance in hell that they would come over and do my lawn also. That hasn't happened yet.
Finally on Wednesday evening the last neighbor with long over-the-winter grass got home early enough to ride his tractor over all of his yard. That meant that the prize was mine. All I had to do was mow my own lawn so that people would know that I wasn't dead or uninterested in the competition.
Today, Easter 2011, I rolled the Honda self-propelled mower from the garage, filled the tank and cut the grass.
My prize? You may be wondering what I won. A free at-home service call for my lawn mower? An azalea for that needs-something spot along the west side of the driveway? A glass of Gatorade?
No. There is no prize. In fact, there was no competition. I didn't attempt to win anything by taking so long to mow my lawn. I have just been too tired and lazy.
But having mown once in the season the next time will be (or at least seem to be) much less of an ordeal. Isn't that so often the case with those chores we put off over and over?
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Poetry and Song Writing Workshop for Young People
January 17 at Shamrock Music in Purcellville
January 17 at Shamrock Music in Purcellville
The Young Voices Foundation will be presenting a poetry and song writing workshop for middle and high school students at Shamrock Music in Purcellville, Virginia. The workshop will run from 8:30 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon on January 17, Martin Luther King, Jr., Day.
Bobbi Carducci, co-founder of the Young Voices Foundation, says this is the third of five workshops the foundation has planned to coincide with school holidays this academic year. Bobbi and her husband Mike established the foundation to provide opportunities through which young people might find encouragement for written expression.
In addition to the workshop series the Young Voices Foundation sponsors writing contests for writers from elementary through high school. More information about the foundation can be found at their website: www.youngvoicesfoundation.org/.
Tuition for the Poetry and Song Writing workshop is $60. Interested parents should contact Bobbi at (540) 338-5064.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
NaNoWriMo on the Mend
Division of Labor Rebalanced
My characters and I have gotten back on the same page. We have decided that they will still compose the novel, and that I will do the typing. As you can see from the numbers to the right this arrangement has been working out pretty well for the past several days.
We still have a lot of ground to make up, but we're running at a rate that will get us to the finish line (50,000 words) just on time.
Thanks to all of you for your good wishes and monetary help.
Division of Labor Rebalanced
My characters and I have gotten back on the same page. We have decided that they will still compose the novel, and that I will do the typing. As you can see from the numbers to the right this arrangement has been working out pretty well for the past several days.
We still have a lot of ground to make up, but we're running at a rate that will get us to the finish line (50,000 words) just on time.
Thanks to all of you for your good wishes and monetary help.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
What a disaster!
I should have seen this coming.
How many times have you been talking with other writers and you've heard someone say about their short story or novel, "Oh, the characters just took over and wrote themselves." Must have been hundreds of times, right?
We should all be so lucky to have characters like that.
This is November, National Novel Writing Month, although not through some act of congress or anything like that. And I'm writing a novel. The working title has been "The Glitch." Anyway, things were going pretty well for a few days. It's a sort of Sci-Fi thing with nice characters, a few really cordial people.
So, a few days into this, maybe around the 5th or 7th of the month, one of them, Rod, says to me, "Hey, man, you are really on to something here. The story is slammin' and the guys, and Tabby, and I are having a really good time. It's like I've known these people for years."
Well, actually he has, because they have all been working in the same lab for a long time. Not the brother nor the guy who lives on the hill. Not Earl Weaver, either. But there are a bunch of lab rats who do get a lot of face time in the book. Rod is one of them.
"We've been talking," he said to me, "and we all sort of agree that we could actually write this thing ourselves."
What? This really happens where characters take over a story? I thought it was a metaphor or something, but it's real.
So I say, "This is so cool. I'm glad you're all getting along and I'd be glad to 'step back and let the story take on a life of its own' as writers like to say."
And that's what I did.
This weekend I started getting curious about where things were headed. My wife was sleeping and I had to find something to do, you know? I turn on the computer and take a look at the file.
Nothing had been written! I couldn't believe my eyes. These clowns, the characters who were going to write this on their own hadn't written a single word!
Now I'm way behind and have to work like a motherfucker to get up to 50,000 words by the end of the month.
If you ever in your life hear an author say that her characters wrote their own story, tell her and everyone else in the room that she's full of shit.
I should have seen this coming.
How many times have you been talking with other writers and you've heard someone say about their short story or novel, "Oh, the characters just took over and wrote themselves." Must have been hundreds of times, right?
We should all be so lucky to have characters like that.
This is November, National Novel Writing Month, although not through some act of congress or anything like that. And I'm writing a novel. The working title has been "The Glitch." Anyway, things were going pretty well for a few days. It's a sort of Sci-Fi thing with nice characters, a few really cordial people.
So, a few days into this, maybe around the 5th or 7th of the month, one of them, Rod, says to me, "Hey, man, you are really on to something here. The story is slammin' and the guys, and Tabby, and I are having a really good time. It's like I've known these people for years."
Well, actually he has, because they have all been working in the same lab for a long time. Not the brother nor the guy who lives on the hill. Not Earl Weaver, either. But there are a bunch of lab rats who do get a lot of face time in the book. Rod is one of them.
"We've been talking," he said to me, "and we all sort of agree that we could actually write this thing ourselves."
What? This really happens where characters take over a story? I thought it was a metaphor or something, but it's real.
So I say, "This is so cool. I'm glad you're all getting along and I'd be glad to 'step back and let the story take on a life of its own' as writers like to say."
And that's what I did.
This weekend I started getting curious about where things were headed. My wife was sleeping and I had to find something to do, you know? I turn on the computer and take a look at the file.
Nothing had been written! I couldn't believe my eyes. These clowns, the characters who were going to write this on their own hadn't written a single word!
Now I'm way behind and have to work like a motherfucker to get up to 50,000 words by the end of the month.
If you ever in your life hear an author say that her characters wrote their own story, tell her and everyone else in the room that she's full of shit.
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
NaNoWriMo Marches On
Productivity on pace for completion
Here I am at the end of NaNoWriMo Day Three with 5164 words in the bank.
My characters are having a good time chatting among themselves. They don't have any idea what kind of clothes to wear - other than motorcycle jackets and lab coats. Some lamb stew has been eaten. And without giving too much away I can say that two of them enjoy playing "Jutland."
A one dollar prize has been posted and will be snared by the most unlikely of winners.
Other than that, I'm keeping things to myself.
Productivity on pace for completion
Here I am at the end of NaNoWriMo Day Three with 5164 words in the bank.
My characters are having a good time chatting among themselves. They don't have any idea what kind of clothes to wear - other than motorcycle jackets and lab coats. Some lamb stew has been eaten. And without giving too much away I can say that two of them enjoy playing "Jutland."
A one dollar prize has been posted and will be snared by the most unlikely of winners.
Other than that, I'm keeping things to myself.
Monday, November 01, 2010
National Novel Writing Month Starts
Good Start
November is National Novel Writing Month, a month during which thousands of novelists across the nation will forsake bathing, returning calls, walking the dog and raking leaves, just so that they can string together 50,000 words they will call a novel.
That's a lot of word stringing in 30 days.
Sixteen hundred and seventy words each day will get that done.
Those of us taking the challenge look forward to entering December with a pile of characters, situations, and actions that might eventually turn into something that others will eventually read.
Day one comes to a close and I've got a three hundred word cushion.
Good Start
November is National Novel Writing Month, a month during which thousands of novelists across the nation will forsake bathing, returning calls, walking the dog and raking leaves, just so that they can string together 50,000 words they will call a novel.
That's a lot of word stringing in 30 days.
Sixteen hundred and seventy words each day will get that done.
Those of us taking the challenge look forward to entering December with a pile of characters, situations, and actions that might eventually turn into something that others will eventually read.
Day one comes to a close and I've got a three hundred word cushion.
Friday, September 03, 2010
Long Autumn Journey
Can a theatre critic read a play?
Today I picked up a copy of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey into Night" with the plan of actually reading it. The particular edition I found at the Blue Ridge Hospice thrift shop has a foreword by Harold Bloom.
Over the next several weeks I will be reading the play and commentary as an experiment in play reading - something I've rarely done in spite of having seen many plays. Through this blog I'll be keeping track of my progress and impressions as this new activity unfolds.
Can a theatre critic read a play?
Today I picked up a copy of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey into Night" with the plan of actually reading it. The particular edition I found at the Blue Ridge Hospice thrift shop has a foreword by Harold Bloom.
Over the next several weeks I will be reading the play and commentary as an experiment in play reading - something I've rarely done in spite of having seen many plays. Through this blog I'll be keeping track of my progress and impressions as this new activity unfolds.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Driven in by The Heat
Seeking cool refuge in the Barnes & Noble reminds me of the summer of 1970. Many July and August days found me in the air-conditioned comfort of the Silver Spring library reading Hemingway and thinking about a woman in France.
Both she and autumn returned. Cooler.
I've recovered, mostly.
Seeking cool refuge in the Barnes & Noble reminds me of the summer of 1970. Many July and August days found me in the air-conditioned comfort of the Silver Spring library reading Hemingway and thinking about a woman in France.
Both she and autumn returned. Cooler.
I've recovered, mostly.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Whites Ferry On The Loose
Ferry Drifts on Potomac's Strong Current
On scene report from Whites Ferry, March 20, 2010.
On Saturday, March 20, at 4:09 pm the Gen. Jubal Early came loose from its cable and drifted downstream from the course between Virginia and Maryland at Whites Ferry.
Shortly after the boat left the Virginia side workers on board could be seen working to free the craft and its cable from a piece of floating debris that appeared to be a log. After coming to a complete standstill in the Potomac the ferry proceeded toward Maryland for a very short while before beginning to drift with the current, still stronger than usual.
Within a few minutes the boat had drifted several hundred meters downstream while continuing to make way to the Maryland shore. Workers on shore quickly launched a small blue tug boat that helped pull the ferry upstream to the ramp. Eventually the ferry's bow was secured.
The full load of cars on board could still not disembark because the boat remained out of alignment with the ramp. Workers on land used a tractor to pull the stern upstream, finally allowing the autos to drive off. The ferry was secured and emptied by 5:12 pm.
Ferry service had just restarted several hours earlier after a protracted outage due in part to debris on the river.
It was unknown when service would resume after this latest incident.
Ferry Drifts on Potomac's Strong Current
On scene report from Whites Ferry, March 20, 2010.
On Saturday, March 20, at 4:09 pm the Gen. Jubal Early came loose from its cable and drifted downstream from the course between Virginia and Maryland at Whites Ferry.
Shortly after the boat left the Virginia side workers on board could be seen working to free the craft and its cable from a piece of floating debris that appeared to be a log. After coming to a complete standstill in the Potomac the ferry proceeded toward Maryland for a very short while before beginning to drift with the current, still stronger than usual.
Within a few minutes the boat had drifted several hundred meters downstream while continuing to make way to the Maryland shore. Workers on shore quickly launched a small blue tug boat that helped pull the ferry upstream to the ramp. Eventually the ferry's bow was secured.
The full load of cars on board could still not disembark because the boat remained out of alignment with the ramp. Workers on land used a tractor to pull the stern upstream, finally allowing the autos to drive off. The ferry was secured and emptied by 5:12 pm.
Ferry service had just restarted several hours earlier after a protracted outage due in part to debris on the river.
It was unknown when service would resume after this latest incident.
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Ghosts
Still haunting us
This week I completed an article dealing with haunted places in the Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia area. When I got the assignment I told the editor that I was not a believer, to which she said okay, that doesn't matter.
It has been at least 50 years since I could say that ghosts in the poltergeist fashion exist. I'm not sure what convinced me way back then that there was no need to bother myself with the possibility of ghosts. Most likely, an evening of gentle kindness in the arms of my loving father eased me into a life without ghosts.
Later, but not too much later, the religious side of my intellect rejected the whole notion of ghosts on new grounds: Jesus freed humans of ghosts. That notion evolved over time, eventually becoming: Christ's life - in spite of the possession story in the Gospels - makes ghostly spirits meaningless. Sometime in my early twenties I blended my understanding of Christianity with my understanding of Whitman's "oversoul" and realized that there was no place on Earth (or elsewhere in the universe) for ghosts, again, of the poltergeist fashion.
Of course, a very good reason for having a world view that does not include ghosts lies in the fact that there are no haunted physics laboratories. No physics experiment in a laboratory has ever been influenced by the action of ghosts. That would be enough, even if I hadn't experienced the love of my father and the Christ.
So, here I am: not just a skeptic but one who knows that ghosts do not move things around or glow or create chill drafts in old houses.
Having read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I cannot get into this discussion without recalling the passage in that book in which Robert Pirsig and his son ride through the Dakotas, I believe, and Pirsig says something about the Indian ghosts. The son thinks he has caught his father in the untenable position of having told the son there are no ghosts and now speaking of the Indian ghosts as though they are real. What I don't recall is the exact way that Pirsig explained this apparent internal contradiction to his son, so I suggest to my readers that they read the book and find out from the original source.*
Anyway, I know there are no ghosts such as the ones that inhabit our European-dominated American ghost stories. And I just assume that anyone would agree with me. Now, I am learning that I assume incorrectly.
At my writers group meeting tonight each of the other three in attendance said that she does believe in ghosts. This astounded me. I was asked, as if my disbelief in ghosts needed to be explained rather than the opposite, if I hadn't ever been in a bad place - not referring to the wacky relationship that I endured far too long many moons ago. My fellow writers told me of places where people had died and that since we are energy the energy of the dead must still be there. I heard them speak of places that generated eerie feelings, strange sensations, discomfort, as though that might convince a reasonable person of the presence of lingering spirits.
All of a sudden I felt like I had followed Alice down the rabbit hole. Why was it up to me to accept the absolute lack of evidence of supposed phenomena as evidence of those phenomena? Why was I supposed to abandon the scientific method so that I might rejoin others clinging to notions that I had discarded in my first decade?
Are there any answers out there? Please post if you have one.
*Should one of my readers know how Pirsig responded (either at this time or after reading the book) I would be pleased to see an explanatory comment here.
Still haunting us
This week I completed an article dealing with haunted places in the Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia area. When I got the assignment I told the editor that I was not a believer, to which she said okay, that doesn't matter.
It has been at least 50 years since I could say that ghosts in the poltergeist fashion exist. I'm not sure what convinced me way back then that there was no need to bother myself with the possibility of ghosts. Most likely, an evening of gentle kindness in the arms of my loving father eased me into a life without ghosts.
Later, but not too much later, the religious side of my intellect rejected the whole notion of ghosts on new grounds: Jesus freed humans of ghosts. That notion evolved over time, eventually becoming: Christ's life - in spite of the possession story in the Gospels - makes ghostly spirits meaningless. Sometime in my early twenties I blended my understanding of Christianity with my understanding of Whitman's "oversoul" and realized that there was no place on Earth (or elsewhere in the universe) for ghosts, again, of the poltergeist fashion.
Of course, a very good reason for having a world view that does not include ghosts lies in the fact that there are no haunted physics laboratories. No physics experiment in a laboratory has ever been influenced by the action of ghosts. That would be enough, even if I hadn't experienced the love of my father and the Christ.
So, here I am: not just a skeptic but one who knows that ghosts do not move things around or glow or create chill drafts in old houses.
Having read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I cannot get into this discussion without recalling the passage in that book in which Robert Pirsig and his son ride through the Dakotas, I believe, and Pirsig says something about the Indian ghosts. The son thinks he has caught his father in the untenable position of having told the son there are no ghosts and now speaking of the Indian ghosts as though they are real. What I don't recall is the exact way that Pirsig explained this apparent internal contradiction to his son, so I suggest to my readers that they read the book and find out from the original source.*
Anyway, I know there are no ghosts such as the ones that inhabit our European-dominated American ghost stories. And I just assume that anyone would agree with me. Now, I am learning that I assume incorrectly.
At my writers group meeting tonight each of the other three in attendance said that she does believe in ghosts. This astounded me. I was asked, as if my disbelief in ghosts needed to be explained rather than the opposite, if I hadn't ever been in a bad place - not referring to the wacky relationship that I endured far too long many moons ago. My fellow writers told me of places where people had died and that since we are energy the energy of the dead must still be there. I heard them speak of places that generated eerie feelings, strange sensations, discomfort, as though that might convince a reasonable person of the presence of lingering spirits.
All of a sudden I felt like I had followed Alice down the rabbit hole. Why was it up to me to accept the absolute lack of evidence of supposed phenomena as evidence of those phenomena? Why was I supposed to abandon the scientific method so that I might rejoin others clinging to notions that I had discarded in my first decade?
Are there any answers out there? Please post if you have one.
*Should one of my readers know how Pirsig responded (either at this time or after reading the book) I would be pleased to see an explanatory comment here.
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