Poem of the Week--"Nostalgia"

Nostalgia

for the lady who told me I wrote too often about nostalgia

I don’t like my socks
They’re too hard
Although they’re all made of cotton
And the elastic in them is good
They’re hard not soft
Like socks used to be

I think I need all new socks

Other people complain about Kids These Days
And Prices and
How You Can’t Go See a Movie Because It’s Downright Embarrassing
And They Don’t Make (Fill in the Blank) Like They Used To
But I think They Don’t Make Socks Like They Used To

They’re too hard

Darn them.

--Dan Verner

Advice for Writers--the Tangled Web

This week I finished reading reading Stephen King's 11/22/63, which is about an attempt to go back in the past and prevent John Kennedy's assassination, so I am thinking more than usual of the various events and waypoints in time that bring us to where we are. I'm sure we've all played "what if" with our lives. What if my parents have never met? What if I had been born sooner or later than I was? What if I had not met my spouse? What if I had not taken the way home that resulted in someone running into me at a traffic light? It's a tangled web we weave, and one that can go off in a number of different directions. (Ray Bradbury has a terrific short story about this phenomenon called "A Sound of Thunder." You can read it at:

http://www.lasalle.edu/~didio/courses/hon462/hon462_assets/sound_of_thunder.htm

I recommend it highly if you haven't read it.)

There's a principle called the Butterfly Effect, that says even a small thing (such as a butterfly flapping its wings) can cause large changes (like creating a hurricane). And writers of fiction, at least, seem to agree that in spite of their characters' best efforts to change things for the better, all in all things may turn out worse. As the little guy with the big ears said on the Kaiser Permanente commercial, "It's complicated."

It's also complicated for writers who try to mirror reality (or an alternate reality). My novel, which is now in revision, had a character die at a certain point. A friend who is a wonderful writer told me that I should not kill the poor fellow off so soon in the interests of several characters' development. She was right, so I just badly injured him so he was around for a couple of years longer. But--everything is connected to everything else,  in fiction as in life, so I had to go through and change every reference afterward to him being dead. It took some doing, but the book is the better for it.

When I was making the changes, I first was thinking, "But this isn't the way it happened." Then, of course, I realized that it could happen any way I wanted it, unlike reality. Probably under the influence of King's book, I was thinking of the steps that led to my having another flat tire last week. I was fixing Becky's piano lamp and found it needed a new socket. So I took myself off to Rice's Hardware, one of my favorite places. To avoid traffic, I can go down a couple of streets in my subdivision, cross a semi-main road, go through an alley behind the shopping center, swing around the end and there I am.

As I was coming up to the entrance to the alley, I found it was blocked by a tree company's truck clearing a tree damaged by Sandy the storm so I couldn't use my customary entrance. I turned left and got into the alley at the next entrance down. While driving behind the shopping center, I hit an almost invisible pothole and knew instantly I had killed the tire. So, it was off to the tire place to get a new tire. At least the rim wasn't bent.

And so I thought, what if I had deferred my trip to the hardware store? What if I had gotten out on the main road instead of the alley? What if I had seen the pothole and avoided it? Maybe I could have avoided a ruined tire, but on the other hand, I very well could have had a head-on with a tractor trailer on the main road and had damage much worse than a bad tire. Mark Twain's story, "The Mysterious Stranger," is about trying to change life for the better and making it worse.  Here's a link to that story:

http://www.shsu.edu/~eng_wpf/authors/Twain/Mysterious-Stranger.htm

So, whether it's life and reality or a novel, we as people and as writers need to make the best choices we can and then see what happens. Perspective helps; good friends help; practicing faith, hope and love all help. We're all in this; we're all in this together; and we're not in it alone.

Technology Wednesday--The Machines Are Revolting, Part III (I Think)

I wrote a while back about how various appliances in my house keep conspiring to break and also incite their mechanical/electronic colleagues to follow suit. I wrote about the keyboard on the the desk top ("big" computer, as we call it) giving up the ghost and how I replaced it with a wireless model that installed itself.

Well, the machines weren't done. One day this past week I could not get my laser printer to work. It has been a great printer, with none of the fiddling and groaning and screeching of the deskjets that made me want to throw them out the window, even if they did print in color (when they printed.). But the laser printer wouldn't print anything. This is a problem for a writer trying to print a draft of a novel.

I ran through the troubleshooting checklist, re-did all the connections, re-installed the software, and tried some other things suggested by my colleagues on the Write by the Rails Facebook page after I had moaned about my recalcitrant printer. Nothing worked. After trying all day to get the thing to work, I finally concluded that the printer itself overdosed on voltage when the lights flickered during the storm a week ago Monday. I have the printer on a filter, but apparently it wasn't enough. So, I bid farewell to Mr. Laser Printer and ordered a replacement. It came in a couple of days; I installed it, and I am in laser printer heaven once again. I just hope the printer part of the All-in-One doesn't make any suggestions to the faxing or scanning part!

Bob Tale--Uncle Jim and the Ark

My college friend Bob’s stories about his Uncle Jim might have given the impression that the man totally lacked any sense at all. Bob told us that, despite lapses from time to time, Uncle  Jim was an intelligent, widely-read man who was a prize-winning farmer.  His livestock and crops on his land in western New Jersey consistently won awards, and other farmers in the area sought his advice.  It was just occasionally he had one of his ideas.

Bob went to the farm during fall break one year to find Uncle Jim in the middle of one of his brainstorms.

“Bob,” he said, “Are you still dating that young woman who was here some last summer”

Bob had a series of rather attractive girlfriends although he looked like he was dressed by a committee and had few social skills beyond telling outlandish stories.

“No,” said Bob.  “I’m between girlfriends right now. Why?”

“Hmm,” said Uncle Jim. “I had been looking for a way to thank people in the area for their kindnesses to us over the years and wanted to have a living Noah's Ark pageant for Halloween.

"Noah's Ark pageant?" Bob asked.

“Yep, got everything I need right here—animals, people, a barn we can make look like an ark. Kids will love it.  Older people will, too.”

At that moment Dot shouted from inside the house: “I am NOT playing Noah’s wife!” She knew from a literature course that Noah's wife in medieval pageants was a notorious scold. Which Dot was not.

Uncle Jim sighed and went back into the barn. Over the next few days the elements of the pageant came together. Uncle Jim was to be Noah and Bob one of his sons. The idea was that they would give visitors a tour of the ark. They only had one horse, and Uncle Jim wanted to put a mirror in its stall to make it look like two horses, but Dot refused to let him take one out of the house.  She did agree to sell tickets, and all the money they collected would go to charity. They put up signs at the farmers’ co-op and other places they frequented in town.

Bob and Uncle Jim fixed up some old boards to look like a prow of a ship on the end of the barn and built a ramp for people to walk up. Uncle Jim insisted on putting a sign over the door which read “Noah’s Ark,” although Bob told him Noah probably did not name his boat.

The first night of the pageant they were ready.  They had their horse, cows, pigs, chickens, goats and a couple of ducks. Uncle Jim was disappointed that his daughter Emily, who had moved to the city when she finished college, no longer was there with the doves she raised when she lived at home. They rigged lights along the length of the stalls so everyone could see the animals.

Uncle Jim and Bob dressed in their costumes they had made from feed sacks. Jim had a beard left over from the time he portrayed Abraham Lincoln in a Fourth of July pageant. They took their stations inside the ark and waited for their visitors.

One feature of the tour that Uncle Jim had come up with was to fill four or five 55-gallon drums with water and send it coursing down the length of the stable.  Bob pointed out that the flood was outside the ark, not inside, but Uncle  Jim said he liked the effect.  Who was to say that there wasn’t some water inside the ark?

Their first guests of the evening happened to be a Brownie troop of about twenty little girls. Bob and Uncle Jim could hear Dot talking to them. The troop walked in, herded by their leaders.

“Welcome to Noah’s Ark!” exclaimed Uncle Jim. “I’m only dressed as Noah—I’m still Uncle Jim.” Uncle Jim was nothing if not honest.  “This is my son Shem, who is actually my nephew Bob.” That was Bob’s cue to go around and pull the lever that would tip the barrels of water.

The troop of Brownies was about halfway down the line of stalls when the barrels fell over with resounding crashes and about 2500 gallons of water came rushing along the floor. It wasn’t enough to wash even the smallest girl away, but it frightened them. And they did what frightened children do: they screamed.  The animals, startled by the high unearthly noise, slammed against their stalls. With strength born of panic, they broke out and stampeded down the ramp.  Fortunately, the girls were far enough removed from the larger animals not to be harmed by them.  They were still shrieking as their leaders removed them.

Bob and Uncle Jim straggled out of the barn. “Flood must be over,” Dot observed.  “Guess it’s time for Noah to round up his animals.”

Bob and Uncle Jim gathered up what animals they could that evening, and the rest came back when it was feeding time. Uncle Jim’s only comment was that they wouldn’t have to clean the barn floor that week. Bob was glad.

Acorns and Principles for Living

A Korean dish made from acorn meal. Yum, yum!

We have a number of oak trees on our suburban lot and, as a consequence, we have a number of acorns that fall this time of year. I know I should be a naturalist for making such a connection. In fact, the acorn showers we have are so bad that if I have to do something in the yard under the trees, I wear a hard hat. No kidding. An acorn, as small as it is, can leave a mark when it falls a distance of 40 or 50 feet and impacts even my hard head. Here's the math involved that I carefully worked out:

Let's see, the weight of an acorn is typically about  2.9 to 6.8 grams, or on average, 4.9 grams. The formula for an object dropped from a height, let's say 50 feet is h = -16t ^2 + s where h is the final  height, t is the time in motion in seconds and s is the initial height. (Are you impressed that I am so mathematical? So am I!) So, if an acorn is dropped from 50 feet, its time to the ground is 0= -16t^ +  50. that gives us a time to fall of  1.8 seconds. Ignoring air resistance (because I don't want to fool with it), the velocity of the acorn as it hits the ground about 58 feet per second, or about 33 miles an hour. Not too shabby for a lazy little acorn! It hits whatever it hits (the ground, a squirrel, a car, my head) with enough force to hurt. (Technically, the amount of force is 0.048069 newton, more or less. Now you know.)

Anyhow, with so many acorns falling, I got to wondering about acorns. I know that mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow, which is a kind of life principle whether it applies to businesses or my weight through my lifetime. I found out that a lot of different animals eat acorns, including squirrels, which is why we have so many squirrels around our neighborhood. I tried putting out bird food for a while, but the squirrels ate it. I used "squirrel proof" feeders and found that there is no such thing as  squirrel-proof feeder--squirrel resistant is about as good as it gets.

People eat acorns too, but that doesn't mean I'm going to start fighting the squirrels for a taste. They are used as food in several cultures.Acorn meal can be used in some recipes calling for grain flours. 

In Korea, an edible jelly named dotorimuk is made from acorns, and dotori guksu are Korean noodles made from acorn flour or starch. In the 17th century, a juice extracted from acorns was administered to habitual drunkards to cure them of their condition or else to give them the strength to resist another bout of drinking. Or to swear off drinking so they didn't have to drink acorn juice ever again.

Acorns have frequently been used as a coffee substitute, notably by the Confederates  in the Civil War and the Germans during World War II (when it was called Ersatz coffee).

Unlike many other plant foods, acorns do not need to be eaten or processed right away, but may be stored for a long time, as done by squirrels., Native Americans sometimes collected enough acorns to store for two years as insurance against poor acorn production years.Acorns were a traditional food of many indigenous peoples of North America, but especially those in California,,where several species of oaks overlap, increasing the reliability of the resource.

After drying them in the sun to discourage mold and germination, women took acorns back to their villages and cached them in hollow trees or structures on poles, to keep them safe from mice and squirrels.

So, I suppose you could make a little acorn meal and whomp up some acorn meal muffins. If your dinner guests don't like them, you can always feed them to the squirrels. 

(Information on acorn recipes and more information on acorns in general from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn )

Poem of the Week: Anticipating Sandy by Mary McElveen

Anticipating Sandy 

Ready! Set!

Arriving tomorrow!

The 24/7 Cassandras

with all their techno-toys

predict a big one:

the biggest, strongest,

highest, lowest, most destructive,

longest, widest, tallest

monster wind and wave

extravaganza.

An epic storm, a perfect storm,

a storm of the barely-begun

century.

Just one day left, so

board up your windows,

batten the hatches,

raid the markets,

and lock up your daughters!

Stock up on water, find your flashlights,

and where are the batteries?

Gas up your car, and tie down the cat.

Charge and charge again

electronic devices that govern your lives.

Pack your bags; prepare to run.

Is this what we've become?

Masters of the universe,

but fearful of the wind? 

Mary McElveen

(Mary is my friend, colleague and the former Poet Laureate of Alexandria,  Virginia. She blogs on alexpoet. blogspot.com. My thanks to her for letting me share this poem.)

Advice for Writers--Listen to Your Readers

One of the best things about writing, besides the writing itself, is hearing from people about something you've written. Readers comment on my columns most often, even if that meant nearly being strung up because I don't care for encyclopedias. And I heard from a couple of people who used to fly out of the old Manassas Airport, located where the Manaport Shopping Center is today. These people have talked to me in person, but I also have written comments here and on the FB link to the blog.

My advice to writers is to listen to your readers. More often than not, they will share part of their story, and that's a gift to you and to them.

I have told just a few people about my novel-in-progress, Wings of the Morning, which is about a boy growing up on a Wisconsin dairy farm in the 1930's who becomes a B-17 pilot stationed in England.  One lady told me her father was a gunner on a B-17 which was shot down. He spent eighteen months in a POW camp. Another lady told me her father was a P-51 (fighter) pilot who was also shot down and spent the rest of the war in a prison camp.

When I happened to mention the novel to one of our Chorale sopranos, Kay Evans, she told me an incredible story about her father. He was born into a "railroad family" in Iowa and his father expected him to work for the railroad. Berle Robinson was one of the fastest telegraphers around and could have worked through the war for the railroad since it was considered a necessary part of the war effort. He wanted to fly, though, and joined the Army Air Force at 15, which was the only service young men could join without their parents' permission.

Berle's father was extremely upset at his son's decision, and before he left, told him that he would never come back and that he had to surrender his car, typewriter, and railroad watch.

Berle came back, married, and the couple had Kay. He and his wife hosted a reunion in 1981 of the crew. Below is a statement he made about the number of missions he and his crew flew It is an incredible document.

And so, listen to your readers. They can give you so much.

My thanks to Kay Evans for sharing her father's story with me and for giving me permission to share it here.