Barcelona Exhibit

Below is the link for the wonderful show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. We took in the show the day after the MWA Edgar Symposium.

http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={4A34EF20-80E9-4086-B9FD-986350F52872}

Also saw the new Greek and Roman gallery which is worth a trip to New York alone. New York City energizes me, so it's good to visit there a few times a year.

For a girl from Colorado who used to keep a street map of the city in her dresser drawer at the age of six, it's always sort of amazing that I'm actually riding a bus down Fifth Avenue, walking in Central Park, window shopping on Madison, or enjoying a fried cod sandwich and a glass of Pino Grigio by myself in an Irish Bar on Lexington Ave, and being called quasi endearments by the bartender, which sounded sort of cute, actually, while I eavesdropped on a conversation about Club Med by a senior gentleman talking to his junior. Tempted to join in, but didn't.

Barcelona was full of art movements, from Modernism to Cubism, and I think one called Centrism. The interesting thing about the Modernists is that every single painting spoke of alienation. Every one. The artists had a cozy community, Som Quatre Gats, meaning we are four cats, which translates to a small number of people gathered at a place or at an event. They weren't alienated from each other, but from society, and their art spoke of this.

The New York Times Book Review did not speak to me today. The dystopian novels are coming out of the woodwork. Well, with our global situation, both ecological and political (and they are related), it's small wonder. We are alienated from the earth and each other and nature and things are pretty bad, aren't they? And no amount of sucking it up will change that. But I digress.

No writing lately, just some rewriting, nothing very inspiring. I read lots of blogs and the energy levels are stratosphere high which is very inspiring. Why is the New York energy dissipated already? Only been three days ago.

I have a few more queries to send out. I really sucked on the Fur Fin and Fantasy or whatever the hell it was pitch posting. Mostly urban fantasy and I'm not even sure what that is, but I don't think I have them.

Off to balance the bank statements, oh Sunday, how boring thou art.

Grapeshot

Literary Musings: New York Times Book Review - 4/22/07

Playing catch up this week. Wonder how much the full page ad in the Book Review costs. Carol Higgins Clark, David Baldacci, Irene Nemirovsky, Alexander McCall Smith were so honored, as were Bose sound systems, the Sony eBook reader, and Baumen Rare Books.

Black & White by Dani Shapiro, and Easter Everywhere by Darcey Steinke both got BIG reviews. It’s interesting to analyze the author’s photos. Darcey Steinke’s is certainly arresting. Big tattoo, bad hair and a somber gaze. I really liked it. Carol Higgins Clark and Dani Shapiro each have a shadow of a smile. The photo of Leo Lerman raising his sunglasses is very cool. Alexander McCall looks like a nice guy—a “pleasant chap” photo, someone to share a few beers with, as it were.

Poet Ed Dorn is shown in profile looking at his image in plaster. Coal Black Horse author Robert Olmstead looks serious but approachable. It must be hard to photograph the author to show his writing. In the Crime section, Laura Lippman has a glamour shot. She has a breakout standalone novel that is getting good reviews and has edged into the best seller list. Couldn’t happen to a nicer lady.

Moving on to the Best Seller List, Mary Higgins Clark is #1, not unusual. Saw her going into the Agents and Editors Cocktail party on Wednesday, to present the Mary Higgins Clark award. It goes to a woman (usually) who writes suspense without gore, sex and bad language. Christopher Buckley making the list again. Funny man. This week’s list is a real mixed bag, from Islam (The Reluctant Fundamentalist) to Chick Lit (Shopaholic & Baby) to Danielle Steel to school shootings (Jodi Picoult). Kids, go buy a book, because there’s absolutely something for everyone this week.

The Paperback Best Seller List is headed by Cormac McCarthy, the man who doesn’t give interviews. The Road sounds like a riveting read, and I do plan to grab it soon. Mary Higgins Clark is #2 on the paperback list. My God, how the money rolls in. Janet Evanovich is #3 with Hot Stuff. She was a panelist at Wednesday’s Symposium (more about that later this week) as was Lee Child, #8 with The Hard Way. He is a funny and genuinely nice man, as it Harlan Coben, with Promise Me, #9. Harlan was also a panelist. Well, they bring the big guns out for the Edgar Symposium.

Tomorrow another Sunday Times comes out. That’s why I have to scramble, gone for 3 days and the whole week disappears.

Spring has sprung, the grass has riz, I wonder where the flowers is.

Grapeshot

April Is the Cruellest Month

In January, we had two weeks of 50+ degree weather and the bulbs thought it was spring and came out of the ground. This turned into a major disaster for my daffodils and grape hyathinchs. They were up too high to weather the winter blasts that followed.

The tulips came up and the rabbits ate all but one, chomped them right off at an inch from the ground. I'll have one tulip.

I thought the crocus would be all right, but the week of rain we had rotted the blooms before they had a chance.

It's really hard to suck it up about the spring bulb disaster. My plants are my babies. Everything else looks all right so far.

Some hideous rhododendrum (sp?) blight has visited the neighborhood and about half of them look dead. Oh what hath global warming wrought?

The bird news is good. Finches, gold finches and chickadees at the thistle seed feeder, lots of activity at the suet (as always) and the regular bird seed is visited by one and all. We have robins, blue jays, titmice, woodpeckers (3 kinds) peewee, cat bird, juncos, sparrows (have not made identification but they aren't English) cardinals, and maybe a red winged blackbird singing in the slough. Not sure. Rabbits (grrr!), gray squirrels, red squirrels, chipmunks, and ducks in the slough. Looks like a deer might have been after the sedum. Could have been the men working in the yard. The chicadees have been pulling out pieces of the doormat for nesting materials. The spring peepers have hatched out and we have a soprano woodland chorus, modulated by some "regular" frogs that croak.

The chives look thick and lucious, but I mourn for my bulbs. It ain't fair!

The 2007 Edgar Award Winners

Here are the lucky, talented writers who won an Edgar Award at the MWA festivities in NYC this evening, April 26, 2006.

BEST NOVEL The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin (Farrar, Straus and Giroux
BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR The Faithful Spy by Alex Berenson (Random House
BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL Snakeskin Shamisen by Naomi Hirahara (Bantam Dell Publishing – Delta Books)
BEST FACT CRIME Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear by E.J. Wagner (John Wiley & Sons)
BEST SHORT STORY "The Home Front" – Death Do Us Part by Charles Ardai (Hachette Book Group – Little, Brown and Company)
BEST JUVENILE Room One: A Mystery or Two by Andrew Clements (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
BEST YOUNG ADULT Buried by Robin Merrow MacCready (Penguin YR – Dutton Children's Books)
BEST PLAY Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure by Steven Dietz (Arizona Theatre Company)
BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY Life on Mars – Episode 1, Teleplay by Matthew Graham (BBC America
BEST TELEVISION FEATURE/MINI-SERIES TELEPLAY The Wire, Season 4, Teleplays by Ed Burns, Kia Corthron, Dennis Lehane, David Mills, Eric Overmyer, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, David Simon & William F. Zorzi (Home Box Office
BEST MOTION PICTURE SCREENPLAY The Departed, Screenplay by William Monahan (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Off to the Big, Bad Apple and the Edgar's

Grapeshot, old girl reporter, is off to New York City to find out what's happening in today's field of crime writing, the good, the bad and the ugly.

Next post will be Thursday (if wine and celebrations do not interfere) and I still have my wrap up of the NY Times Book Review coming up.

Stay tuned.

Murder With Reservations

Author Elaine Viets is pictured above. She is a fellow crime writer and a classy lady who has had some miserable luck. Her new book is just out, and she was to moderate a panel at the Edgar's tomorrow and also be mistress of ceremonies at the Agatha awards this weekend. In spite of her youth, she had a serious stroke from which she is expected to recover, but these things take a LONG TIME. She won't be able to go on tour with her new book.

The crime writing community is a friendly, generous and compassionate group of writers, who are helping out with scheduled signings and trying to give Elaine and her writing a boost up while she is (temporarily) down. Kate Flora, another class act, likes to say that mystery writers are so friendly and nice because they get all the bad stuff out of their systems by killing off people in their fiction.

I met Elaine at an MWA meeting in Florida. She was friendly to a "new writer," which is another term for "total unknown." Her "dead end jobs" series is a well-written, light-hearted and intriguing.

Murder with Reservations: A Dead-End Job Mystery

The young couple looked like inept burglars sneaking through the lobby of Sybil’s Full Moon Hotel in Fort Lauderdale. They were both dressed in black, which made them stand out against the white marble. At their wedding two days ago, they’d been slim, golden and graceful, trailing ribbons and rose petals through the hotel. Now they moved with the awkward stiffness of amateur actors trying to look natural. The bride’s black crop top exposed a midsection sliding from sexy to sloppy fat. The groom’s black T-shirt and Bermudas failed the test for cool. They were boxy rather than baggy. He looked like a Grand Rapids priest on vacation. The honeymooners avoided the brown plastic grocery bag swinging between them, carefully ignoring it as it bumped and scraped their legs. That screamed, “Look at me.” They stashed the bag behind a potted palm while they waited for the elevator. “Red alert,” Sondra at the front desk said into her walkie-talkie. She was calling Denise, the head housekeeper. “The honeymoon couple just passed with a suspicious grocery bag. They’re getting out on the third floor.”

Elaine's friends and fellow writers are wishing her well, and helping publicize her book.

Grapeshot

The Edgar Awards

Grrrr. Blogger just lost an entire post. I know I should key them in word, but it's a pain.

So forget everything I said. Here is the link to the creme de la creme of crime writing awards which happens this week in the very big apple.

www.theedgars.com

I'll be there, at the symposium and the cocktail party, but not at the banquet. There will be a no holds barred report. Well, some holds barred. We are, after all, ladies and gentlemen.

You are the Worst Class Ever!

So I just deleted the previous whiny butt rejection blog.

Something in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye. The always complimented self-esteem generation is making its way into the work force, still expecting ego strokes for every little accomplishment, apparently because this generation is used to lots of petting and ego strokes. Sort of like my spoiled cats.

Let me tell you about my class. It started it junior high. "You are the worst class ever." We got it again in high school. And in college, 1000 miles away. Worst class ever. It became a badge of pride. I belonged to the worst class ever and our egos were whipped, not stroked. I couldn't tell you what we did or didn't do that was so bad. Attitude, acts, poor scholarship. No idea, but the teachers and administrators were angry! Indignant! They were bullshit! The Worst Class Ever!

The worst class ever is having a high school reunion this summer. Count me in. Born to be bad.

For the first time ever, I seriously wondered if I should stop trying to write crime fiction. Two rejections in one day (different books) hit my ego like a ton of bricks. I haven't sent anything out lately (too busy writing) and the hard carapace one needs to shoulder multiple rejections had softened. One of these days, a rejection will break the camel's back. I'll keep writing, of course, but not crime fiction.

Sucking it up mightily,

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Blood on the Borders

Clive James rates crime fiction from all over and damns with faint praise.

In the April 9th New Yorker, Clive James thinks that perhaps he should leave the difficulties of Henry James' novels for a walk down some mean streets populated by foreign crime writers. By the end of the article, he’s had second thoughts and cozied back up to Isabelle Archer and Kate Croy.

Clive James is a hard man to please although he seems to like Raymond Chandler well enough, but Chandler is an American. He says nice things about Simenon’s Maigret until he mentions there is not style in the writing. We read one of Simenon’s novels in 2nd year French. I still remember it. The book was short, the writing simple, Maigret was extremely wise and he always came home to smoke his pipe by the side of Mme. Maigret.

James travels to Scotland in his armchair and visits Rankin’s Rebus in Edinburgh. It is true that the modern day detective, like the Henry James heroine, is a conflicted character, although they usually behave much worse than Henry’s heroines. Jeez, this is somewhat complicated to write about Clive James talking about Henry James. Calling them Clive and Henry just doesn't cut it.

Clive James seems to waver about whether the detective novel as travelogue cum guidebook is a bad thing. Maybe not, as he states, “Ideally, an author should turn out a sequence of detective novels that will generate a bus tour in the city where they are set.” Every writer worth his word processor knows that setting can be a character, and indeed Clive James (not Henry) is unimpressed by Hakan Nesser’s “The Return” which takes in a generic Northern European country, “vaguely like Sweden.”

Crime novels set in Italy are never vague, according to James. Donna Leon, an American who has lived in Italy for years and sets her popular series starring Comissario Brunetti there, is in love with Venice. Well, who wouldn’t be? Coming down the Grand Canal for the first time is a life-changing experience. Too much travelogue, whether by Donna Leon, or the late Michael Dibdin is dangerous, because the action may stop, while the character admires the scenery. Dangerous, but not in the sense of moving the action forward. You have to move, move, move in crime fiction. Do not dither.

I have to confess I have committed Clive James’ cardinal sin, which is having the main character stand in front of a mirror, but probably not with “Rembrandt’s ability to depict himself.” In my last book, I did not commit that gaucherie, nor in World of Mirrors, but there is a tiny mirror scene in Promiscuous Mode. Not a full description, mind you, and certainly not worthy of Rembrandt.

Clive James, not Henry, nitpicks over several more crime writers, but he does like Gene Kerrigan, who wrote The Midnight Choir. Kerrigan’s Inspector Synnott is another conflicted character (we miss your ordinariness, Maigret). James likes the writing until he doesn’t like the writing, complaining, “Genre fiction that gets too far into the ambiguous, becomes,” my wording, sort of like literary fiction, and what the hell? Then read Literary Fiction! Henry James wasn’t so bad after all. Ye gods, we’re back where we started.

As a so-called crime writer, I should take umbrage, but the thing is, I’ve started and stopped so many crime novels lately, that I’m seriously wondering why I keep writing crime fiction. In fact the two books that are holding my attention right now are a Cuban writer and good old Marcel Proust. How can this be?

Maybe I’ll get a shot in the arm at the Edgar’s symposium in NYC next week. Maybe I’ll meet an agent. Maybe I’ll hit the lottery. Maybe I-95 will turn into the yellow brick road. Well, you get the drift.

The crime fiction I've liked reading recently is written by two authors: Jacqueline Winspear and Rebecca Pawel. Read them. Reread Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Now that, was a book!

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Lost in Translation

The United States is sucking hind teat when it comes to literature in translation. We’re positively isolationist.
These stats are from the Sunday New York Times, by Jascha Hoffman.
For example, Publisher’s Weekly, only reviewed 28 original books in translation last year. Little better than 2 per month. Totally dismal.

29 % of the books published in the Czech Republic were translations. 22 percent published in Italy. In the U.S. 2.62 percent of the books published were translations. Major works haven’t even been published here, such as Mario Vargas Llosa’s 1971 biography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This is a national disgrace.

Currently, I am reading Three Trapped Tigers, which is a translation, and Proust, which is also a translation. Recently, I read Measuring the World, translated from the German, a fantastic book. We miss so much. One bright note: Khaled Hosseni’s The Kite Runner was on the paperback best seller list for many weeks. I see that it has disappeared. Why are Americans so isolationist in their reading? It’s scary, that’s what it is.

This is the week of the London Book Fair where many deals are made for foreign rights. The world is buying us, but we are ignoring the world. At our peril, literary and otherwise.

Grapeshot

Eat Your Wheaties

What did you eat for breakfast today? A muffin? A bagel? Cereal? Pancakes? Toast? Chances are that your three squares will contain foods made with wheat. Did you ever wonder how that pizza crust got from a Kansas field to your table? Do you ever think about wheat at all?

The grain elevators which used to pierce the horizon of every Kansas town are called “the cathedrals of the plains.” In my grandparents small central Kansas town, “Bushels per acre” were the world’s most important statistic. Even more important that baseball stats. I thought about wheat a lot.

We lived in Northeastern Colorado and a drive to Kansas in early summer was a trip through the stages of the wheat harvest. We drove by golden fields ripe for threshing, past fields where a combine cut the wheat, and by stubble fields where the wheat had been harvested. Sometimes we got behind a combine en route from one farm to another, big lumbering machines that went very slow, giving a kid lots of time to think about . . . wheat.

Originally, wheat was a wild grass. It first grew in Mesopotamia and in what is now Iraq almost 10,000 years ago. The Egyptians discovered how to make yeast leavened breads between 2,000 and 3000, B.C. The workers who build the pyramids were paid in bread.

Wheat is not native to this country. It was grown as early as 1839 in the area that became Kansas, but back then growing wheat was considered a hobby. Late in the 19th century, Russian Mennonites settled in Kansas from the Ukraine, bringing a wheat called Turkey Red Winter Wheat. Kansas and the Great Plains were soon awash in amber waves of grain.

Wheat, then and now
· The commercial bread slicer was invented in 1928.
· Sliced bread and the introduction of the automatic toaster had increased the consumption of toast at breakfast.
· During the Second World War rationing, the sale of sliced bread was banned in an effort to keep prices down.
· In the United States today, wheat is grown on more acreage than any other grain
· 42 states produce wheat
· There are six different classes of wheat, and each class produces flour with unique characteristics.
· More foods are made with wheat than with any other cereal grain.
· Wheat contributes between 10 – 20% of the daily caloric intake for people in over 60 countries.
· There are more than 1000 varieties of bread on the market.
· Between 1866 and 1900 U.S. wheat production increased from 175 million bushels to 655 million bushels.
· Today, less than 2 percent of all Americans are engaged in farming, a huge drop from the 1900’s.
· Getting wheat to the mills and markets was greatly improved by the advent of cross-continental railroad service.
· Despite having fewer farmers, the United States is second in world in production.
· China is now the #1 producer of wheat.


Harvesting has changed over the years as technology advanced. In the early days of the 20th century, getting the wheat harvest in was a communal effort.
“Threshing” was the word used to describe the harvesting of wheat.

The threshing machine was never widely purchased by small farmers. They were very large and too expensive for the average farmer. Usually they were used in custom operations going from farm to farm. Custom crews still travel from the harvest, from Oklahoma to Minnesota.
The threshing machines did four different tasks. They removed grain, separated the grain from the husk, cleaned the grain, and then gathered or stacked it. Despite great advances mechanically and in computer control, the basic operation of the combine harvester has remained unchanged almost since it was invented.
In the mid-nineteen hundreds, manual labor produced a bushel in four and a half hours. In the 1940’s, new technologies in threshing meant that producing a bushel of wheat took only sixteen minutes. The farmers could get the wheat harvested before the next rainfall. Rain is the great enemy is ripe wheat.
Now, the modern combine has many luxuries, such as stereo systems, comfortable seats, and full air conditioning.

Feeding the threshing crews was always a big job. “He ate like a thresher,” was how my grandma always described a man with a big appetite. On the farm, “dinner” was the noon meal, the big one.

Roy Webster of Hesston, Kansas remembers, “Eating threshing crew dinner was like eating Sunday dinners six days a week. Each man got fried chicken and ham, two helpings of mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, homemade bread and butter, a huge piece of apple or cherry pie, and a chunk of devils food cake smeared with a rich, creamy layer of devil’s food icing”

The farm wife and her helpers would rise at dawn to bake the pies and ham and fry the 6 -8 free range chickens. Drinks were coffee, cold tea, sweet milk, or butter milk.” These gigantic meals were transported out to the fields so the crew did not have to trek back to the farm house.

Now sometimes even the “Colonel” or Burger King caters the dinners, but there is still friendship, cooperation, sharing, and at the end of the harvest, large home-cooked communal dinners where the farmers celebrate bringing in the sheaves. We should celebrate them, too.

At your next meal, when you butter a role or a slice of bread, think for a moment of the Kansas wheat farmer, and all those generations who went before, casting their eyes to the sky, hoping it won’t rain on the amber waves until they are safe inside the grain elevators.


The Natural History of Wheat." Encyclopedia of Food and Culture. The Gale Group, Inc, 2003. Answers.com 15 Apr. 2007. http://www.answers.com/topic/the-natural-history-of-wheat

Roots: Continuing Generations John R. Hess, 1828 – 1897.

Kansas State Historical Society, Wheat People.

Cyberspace Ag: Visit a Farm: A Kansas Wheat Harvest

Hunger Strike!

Our veternarian perscribed cat food has been recalled, creating a household crisis, at least for the cats. The vet gave us something else, which they refused, and they have also turned noses up at the supermarket brand. The moist food purchased in desperation has been nibbled, but is obviously

not going to make it into the feline Guide Michelin.

The problem is that Annie, on the left, has recently been diagnosed with heart problems, and Thisbe, right is in recovery from feline diabetes. Both cats, indoor critters, are, shall we say, a little chunky and maybe need to lose weight but not on a hunger strike. So far they mostly eat the palm plant and the cat grass, with a few bites from the moist food. Thisbe makes her disgust known with loud meows and a constant inspection of her dish. The recalled food, Atkins for kitties as it is known in our house, was gradually introduced over weeks and has become very popular. Before that, they gained all the weight on a high-carb diet food.

"Eat some ants, a spider, or go outside and catch a chipmunk," I said. A churlish look was the response. It will be interesting to see how long this lasts. Right now, the hunger strike is in its third day with no signs of abating. Cats really know how to suck it up!

Sigh.

Grapeshot

My Take of the NY Times Book Review 4/8/07

Every Sunday when the Times comes, and I open the book review section, feeling like a kid with her nosed pressed against the glass display counter at the candy store. It's not that I want to have all the books, although there are many I would like, but it's the wistfulness of wanting publication and validation for my writing. So who am I to judge the other writers? A reader, an omnivous reader, always playing catch up. An opinionated reader. Can't be helped.

Not much to inspire this week, but the review of Derek Walcott's Select Poems was edifying. We are all "poets of exile," are we not?

The novel, Seizure, by Erica Wagner promises to be a good read. Wagner is the literary editor of the Times of London, so of course her first novel would be reviewed in major publications. She also has a book of stories out. The novel has a real plot and will go high on my TBR (to be read) list. Right now, I am reading Three Trapped Tigers, re-reading Proust ( the third time), starting The Warlord's Son, and another mystery with "blood" in the title. The mountain of books on my nightstand always grows, never shrinks, sometimes topples, scaring the hell out of me and the cat.

Naturally a super model's novel would get a big review, and Paulina Porizkova's did. A Model Summer. Sounds rather autobiographical. Not on my list, but probably a worthy beach read.

Ian Rankin has been getting tons of press about The Naming of the Dead. Have to confess I still haven't read him. Always playing catch up on the books in my genre. Bad. He has a conflicted character, Rebus, and it sounds nice and meaty. Meaty is good.

Clive James has a non-fiction book reviewed. He just recently crossed my radar with a rather snide article on crime fiction in the New Yorker. I was thrilled to see a serious article about the subject, but he actually panned crime fiction, or rather damned with faint praise.

Chain Reaction, by Nora Gallaher, set in New Mexico in the 1940's will also make my list. I have deep feelings about the southwest, and anything that combines those thrilling landscapes with atomic energy and a bit of skullduggery has my attention. Cool title, too.

Now we come to the hard cover best seller list. Jodi Picoult is another author I haven't read yet, but Nineteen Minutes sounds riveting. I suppose any well-written high school shoot up would be. Recalling high school, I'm surprised there aren't more, really. Shootings, not novels.

Lovely to see a fine crime writer, Laura Lippman at #10 on the list. She just keeps getting better and better. What the Dead Know has garnered beaucoup excellent reviews.

Maybe I need to take a year off from writing and read. On the paperback list, nothing to remark upon except that Jodi Picoult has hit that list, too. The Kite Runner has been on there 112 weeks, another novel on my TBR list.

I bogged down in The Warlord's Son, mostly because I absolutely didn't want to read any blood and gore in the cardiac waiting room. Somehow the first chapter seemed more riveting than the second. The American journalist is not terribly likeable, and there's already a lot of back story. It's so important to get on with the plot and fill the back story in later. Hard to do.

What has become crystal clear is that in spite of a dynamite plot kernel, there is no way I can write an Afghanistan book without a co-author, and the one I maybe had is a) back in Iraq, and b) kind of crazy, and c) probably never got within 100 miles of the borderlands. So whatcha gonna do?

I am gonna start the rewrite of Festival Madness. Today I kicked the broken IE 7 off my machine and reinstalled. This one actually works, and now I can think about redoing my web site. All of this sounds like work. In the meantime, this week I'm going to give a speech on threshing wheat in Kansas. Will the topic have the New Englanders and the foreign-born on the edge of their seats?

Stay tuned.

Grapeshot

Another Vonnegut Obit

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-vonnegut12apr12,0,3447222.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Below is the page that Vonnegut "edited" for me at the BCAE years ago. I recall being very nervous and maybe a little bit proud.

From The Shadow Warriors ©

In her old blue Opel, Marlies and I drove into the countryside where she knew a farmer who sold the freshest eggs. Holger sat enthroned in a car seat in back. Over and over he intoned in a singsong voice, "Laterne, Laterne, Sonne, Mond, und Sterne.".
What really chewed at my nerves wasn't Holger, but how to broach the subject of Georgi's warning. Instead of getting to the point, I described how to make Caesar salad, the little restaurant in Tijuana where it originated, the pros and cons of anchovies, the absolute need for raw eggs, homemade croutons, anything, anything, but say, "Marlies, don't talk to your ex-boyfriend in Berlin anymore, because the BKGB might kill us if the software exchange takes place."
I said it on the way back to town. After we bought the eggs. After Holger chased the chickens. After he sang "Laterne, Laterne, Sonne, Mond, und Sterne,” for the sixtieth time. I said exactly those words because they were the only ones I could think of.
Marlies braked the car to a standstill on the country road. In the distance, dark forested hills rose above Göttingen.
She turned and asked, "What are you telling me?"
"We have been warned. I just thought you better know."
"Who is warning ‘us’?" Her voice was icy, not scared.
"The people Luby was working for."
"I don't remember hearing such warnings when you were begging me to be the intermediary."
"I didn't think..."
"You didn't think!" She pounded her fist on the dashboard. Holger stopped singing and made a whimpering sound.
"You didn't think!"
"Jeez, Marlies, I'm sorry. Listen, I don't have any reason to believe that they know about you. It was just sort of a...generic warning. But he acts like maybe he knows who the negotiators are and I just thought..."
"You didn't think!"
"Yes, we've already established that." I said.
"What can I do?" She seemed to be asking the countryside, the hills, and the fields. Holger sang the lantern song again.
I tried to reassure her.
"Maybe this guy just likes to scare people. I don't actually know that he's ever hurt anyone...at least any woman,” I amended. "And of course as a foreign national he wouldn't want to get in trouble here. He's a professional, Marlies. He wants Luby. And Mittelstadt's software. We're just in the way."
"And that makes it all right?" Her voice dripped sarcasm as she turned on the ignition. We drove the narrow road in silence.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Of course." Her voice was bitter.

Kurt Vonnegut

Sad to read that Kurt Vonnegut died. Slaughterhouse-Five , one of the seminal reads of the 20th century, is a most memorable book. Vonnegut had a hard and interesting life and the application of the old Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times," gave him that great novel, a gift, as it were, from his war experiences. Of course he had to take this "gift," a hideous experience he might well have elected to forego, and turn it into fiction. There is another saying which I don't actually believe, to wit, that nothing bad ever happens to a writer, because the writer can milk it into fiction or nonfiction. Think memoir.

Carson McCullers said that anyone who "survived childhood" had enough material to write for the rest of his/her life.

Quite a few moons ago, when I was desperate to publish The Shadow Warriors, some literary group in Boston, it may have been the Boston Adult Education bunch, had Vonnegut in town for some fol-de-rol, and one could submit one page of writing, and someone (don't think it was Vonnegut) selected the best pages to be publicly critiqued by the great man.

Of course I agonized over which page to send, and finally found one, which was picked by the committee (?) and read by Vonnegut, who said nice thing about the page as a whole. Maybe 12 of us were selected, and it was a great honor. Vonnegut offered a great bit of criticism. I had a reference to "the freshest, cleanest eggs, " and he said all eggs were clean unless they were smeared with chicken shit, and I should strike cleanest and go with freshest. I actually read that little scene at the Cambridge Public Library later on.

The Shadow Warriors was finally picked up by an Internet publisher, and there it languished as an e-book, with promises of POD which never happened, so I got my contract back and send it myself to the POD publisher, Booksurge. This made me self-published, and you know how much respect that engenders, but in the meantime, I had two editors from the Internet publisher and some royalties, and a nice letter from the Internet publisher who was actually good folks, but poor folks.

This e-publication enabled me to join MWA as an active member, which is as far as I can tell the only good luck I have ever had with respect to any of my writing.

I have a special spot for Kurt Vonnegut who liked my writing, and gave excellent advice. Here is his obit. You may have to register (it's free).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/books/12vonnegut.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The Cameraderie of the Waiting Room

Today I spent seven hours in the waiting room on the coronary floor of a major Boston hospital. I accompanied someone who had a "procedure." Has anyone but me noticed that hospitals now use that word, "procedure" as an all encompassing word--anything from an angioplasty to a colonoscopy. Why don't we call it what it is? Procedure? Offices have procedures, like for a customer order in the mail. Organizations have policies and procedures. Cooking from a recipe is a procedure. So what's with the hospital weirdspeak?

I took along a book about writing mysteries, the latest Bon Appetit and The Warlord's Son as reading matter, but first dug into the NY Times and then a Cosmo that was in the waiting room, so now I am up on all the techniques to make your boyfriend happy, as well as cook him a helluva good meal. According to Cosmo, the way to a man's heart is no longer through his stomach, and pot roast is barely mentioned. I won't be disingenous and say "who knew?"

Back to the hospital. The patient I was escorting came in with a trio of elderly sisters, one of whom was having the same "procedure," and I thought it was pretty cool that they both came to offer moral support and a keen driver. The other patient in "our" group was a man who didn't look over 40. I always think this is stuff for old folks. The variety of ring tones of the cell phones in the waiting room was as astonishing as they were loud.

A sextet of handsome dark-haired young men came in and waited to visit someone. They looked like the Lowell hockey boys I saw a couple years ago. What is it about dark and handsome and careless? Ah well.

A tearful young lady came in and snuffled into a box of tissues for a couple of hours until her family came. Pretty sure someone died, but not sure who. Whole big family arrived and wept. Felt very sad for all of them. Realized if it was me, there wouldn't be a room full of people, or even a trio, due to all family being away from this area and not that big of a family anymore.

A good friend of ours was buried today, who did have family around in her last hours. There's been a whole rash of deaths which is terribly depressing. Didn't feel like reading the Warlord's Son, but it finally came to that, as I had whipped thru the mystery writing book in a couple hours. The authors constantly refered to "your word processor," which sounded so dated.

So, the coronary unit is not a happy place, but my friend's outcome was good and I drove the patient home from the hospital. Tonight is leftover eggplant/chicken parm, the best of all possible parms. And red wine, of course. To keep the arteries clear. One thinks about such things after a day in the coronary unit.

So let's be nice to each other this evening. Spring needs a little nudge. Maybe some light joshing and a few smiles will hasten the good weather. You never know.

The Geeks and the Goons

As promised, here is the tale of the weirdest New Year’s Eve I ever celebrated.
When the kids were small, we would drive to New York (Long Island) from suburban Chicago. The company Significant Other worked for was headquartered on the island, and many of his co-workers were good friends. Usually, our hosts would have the party, but one year one of the company vice-presidents gave the New Year’s Eve party. With her sister. Naturally she invited her many friends and associates from work, including us. Her sister was, shall we say, “Married to the mob.” There were those who stated that the sister had no idea what he husband actually did, but I never bought that. Anyway, the sister invited her husband’s friends and co-workers.

Now the company Significant Other worked for was scientific and technical, and the co-workers were a somewhat cerebral bunch, low key and well, nice. This party was a VERY long time ago, and held in the rec room in the basement. Part of the decorations were some black lights. These lights were not kind to black clothing. Either you looked like you had a terminal case of dandruff, or your dress became transparent. Fortunately, I just had the “really needs Selsun Blue” look.

At first the two groups didn’t mix, but then people introduced themselves, and mix we did. We met Frank and Sal and a guy who asked, “How are t’ings in Chicago?” which because a family saying. The “family” was sociable and of course they didn’t talk shop, although I’m sure S.O.’s co-workers did.

At one point in the evening I was dancing with one of the gents, and he was talking about a wonderful get-away-from-it-all place in upstate New York, which much later I realized was Appalachia. Big mobster hide out. My take at the end of the evening was that, hey, the Mafia is very much like you and I.

To a point, of course. Last night, watching Tony Soprano get into with his brother-in-law, I realized I had never in my entire life witnessed a family fight, as in people shoving and punching and swearing at each other. Never.

My grandpa was reputed to be a fierce fighter and spent time in Alcatraz for drunken brawling when it was an army prison. Think that broke him of it. Bad boys were sent there to cool off, strange as it may seem. He was a hell raiser when he drank which was not often.

Does this story have a moral? Maybe don’t drink too excess if you have a bad temper. When my group of crime writers visits the local prison, that’s the first thing we learn. Booze and drugs and poor impulse control are a really bad combination.

I know the readers of this blog always behave like ladies and gentlemen. You do, don’t you?

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Easters Past

Being caught up in time past lately, I remembered a few Easters of yore. As a kid, I was always the recipient of a new "Easter outfit." This included a hat, coat, dress and shoes. Worn to church and dressy events for the rest of the season. Unthinkable to go without one. This lasted even into high school. Those pictures that I won't post, because you would laugh yourselves silly, maybe even sick.

We were at Wrentham Mall and I wondered if folks were Easter shopping. It was so freaking cold we looked for sweaters. Found really cool ones at the Nautica outlet, and a nice hooded sweatshirt at Gap Kids.

For years as a kid I composed a "Hallelujia" for the piano every year. Still have the composition, but not the piano. This is kind of touching. I like my old self more and more, the self with no carapace, no irony and many illusions. Youth!

In junior high, our Sunday School teacher, Mrs. Ohlssen, who was a WCTU member and a farm wife, always invited our class for an Easter Sunrise Breakfast. This was in Colorado and we usually ate outside. Not in Boston, you wouldn't. She had fantastic sticky buns, made from scratch I'm sure. The farmhouse was right on route 6 between Brush and Ft. Morgan. I don't recall a Mr. Ohlssen, but there must have been one. We watched the sun rise over the high plains and pigged out. There must have been prayers and Bible reading, but that's not what I remember.

A friend who emailed after a long absence recalled eating an Easter dinner at our house in Wellesley many moons ago. My mom was there. The friend brought a fellow batchelor, and it must have been some gathering. I always collected strays at holiday gatherings. Lots of conviviality and sharing. We had a ham, of course, and the friend was a picky eater, but very keen on ham. Today we're having a smoked pork butt from an old NY Times recipe. It's cooked, sliced and baked again on a bed of creamed spinach with a sprinkling of bread crumbs and parmesan cheese on top. Drizzled with butter. We're having asparagus and broccoli with it and a fruit salad for dessert, doing penance somewhat for a week of eating high on the hog, wherever that is.

Yesterday we trekked to the Border Cafe in Harvard Square. Catfish tacos that can't be beat, and they allow me to substitute corn for flour tortillas. Pretty good margaritas, too. And everything cheap. Good guacamole. What more do you want?

Tonight is the beginning of the last season of the Sopranos. My next post will deal with mob related stuff. Personal and kind of interesting, I think. After that we'll talk about today's NY Times and some articles from this week's New Yorker. I read the whole Atlantic yesterday. Still reading Three Trapped Tigers, so it's been a literary week with no writing but some thinking.

Happy Easter.

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Go in with a Plan

To break up the log jam of short stories and novels that are floating around in my head, there's now a plan of action.

To wit: write a first page for each. Allow myself to write crap if that's what comes out. Then, see which one(s) I feel an urge to continue. Go with the flow.

The short stories are good fodder for Amazon shorts, where I 've been pre-approved. One is even a kid's story.

Robot Fish
Baby Hippo
Cat on Ice
Crack House
Bus Robberty
Plane Crash

Afghanistan thriller
1928 California Noirish

Surely something will speak to me. 25 years in information systems needs finishing, too. Non-fiction. Kind of memoirish, but not confessional, if you know what I mean.

We had one of those old sixties meals tonight: Beef Stroganoff, the old recipe from the New York Times cookbook. Very tasty. French toast tomorrow a.m., and then the company leaves.

Just remembered I have to cut a photo out of today's NYTimes. Afghans. Got to start paying attention to details.

Too busy right now to suck it up.

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A Drink Berfore the War

With apologies to Dennis Lehane.
Walking along today between CVS and Bank of America, thinking what a dry spell I'm having as a writer. No short stories. No beginning of California book. No thriller. Nada. Null. Zip. The thought enters my brain that maybe I should become a serious drinker, like Faulkner and Fitzgerald. Would that help? Am I too old to become a serious drinker? What would be the point? Would the booze ferment my brain? Maybe, but probably not. Better to suck it up and get down to business.

I read this week that it is impossible to write if you are seriously depressed, because au fond, all writer's are hopeful. Thirteen years with 5 manuscripts and not much else to show. Yeah, a hard copy of a decent book. One worthless manuscript which I canabalize when needed, three more novels, two not selling. Hopeful? Is that another word for gullible, maybe even stupid? Beating on against the current in any event.

Good, but too long a program on public television last night: Dreiser, Wharton, Steinback, and others. Should have been broken into two segments. Steinback had a lot of false starts before he could actually write The Grapes of Wrath. I am not a literary writer. Could have been, but took a different path. Don't think I could even "do" literary these days. Doesn't matter. Nothing to say in that department. Running on empty, as it were.

Alors,

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Two Shakes of a Lamb's Tail Tale

I grew up in a farming community, but not on a farm, although two of my protags were farm girls and like to harken back to their roots. It's always been apparent that there is a lot of agricultural illiteracy running amok, but I sense the same applies to animal husbandry. We are viewing the new born lambs at Old Sturbridge Village. I seem to be the only person present who understands that their tails have been docked, and that's why they have orange painted on them (iodine or the like). And "docked" is the proper word, I believe.

No one must read Thomas Hardy or Willa Cather or D.H. Lawrence even Little House on the Prairie when commonplace farm events are mentioned. Today at Shaw's a woman came up to me and pointed to the Raddichio. I told her what it was, and mentioned a few facts about it. She thanked me profusely. For a while, the supermarkets had little cards identifying the produce with notes about the vitamin and mineral count, that sort of thing. Bring them back.

It's lambing season. Read this blog. http://www.countryhome.com/blog/2007/03/lambing-season.html . Try to understand the natural world around you. It's spring people, and stuff is happening outdoors. Take a walk. Sniff. Look. Amazing what you might see.

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Get Me To The Vet On Time

We have a nagging suspicion that perhaps Thisbe's diabetes is back. To make matters worse, "Atkins for kitties" has been recalled and we have to switch the felines to a higher carb cat food. We scheduled a blood test for today. Now we have a small house guest this week, so Thisbe, being a Fraidy Cat, has been biding her time under the bed. A warm, safe private space. Sometimes she'll come out a schmooze a bit with me. Not today.

S.O. and the young guest left the house so that Thisbe would know she was alone with me. I sneaked the cat carrier upstairs, put it on the bed and opened it EVER SO Quietly. Then I peered under the bed and had a conversation with Thisbe. Offered catnip. Offered a brushing. She was having none of it. Inched her way toward me a bit, but did not venture forth.

Finally I had to grab her by the scruff of the neck which somehow, maybe the way she was lying, did not work very well. Thirty seconds of pure hell between determined owner and clawing freaked out cat until she was finally shoved with no ceremony at all into the carrier. She was outraged and I was panting.

Off to the vet where she behaved somewhat better except when the "nice lady" picked her up. Claws go forth. I have a puncture wound on my arm, but that's all thanks to a heavy sweater.
Back at home, and all is forgiven. I hope. Except that I am wearing about 1/4 lb. of cat fur in various tortoise colors on my black slacks.

It could have been worse. A woman came into the vet's with a large black dog. She explained that the cat, also due for an appointment, had spotted the cat carrier and disappeared. Looked in all the hiding places, and did not find the cat. We have noticed that there is usually at least one spot in the house where a cat can REALLY hide. Thisbe's was under a stair in the basement storage room, and we had to board it up, because we could not get to her in there.

Wouldn't it be easier if one could have an intelligent conversation with one's animal companions? Maybe read Proust together? Go for a swim? Share a bottle of Beaujolais?
Should I write cat mysteries. Cats do have a sense of things. How else would she have known the carrier was on the bed?

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Days of Yore

Sunday we visited Old Sturbridge Village. After all these years in New England, this visit was our first. It's a step back into the past, where I have been living lately , partly with Oglethorpe in Georgia. That was 1735. Sturbridge is more like 1835. Again, one asks oneself can the people of our time, the Bridezillas, the Darth Vader hockey parents, the worshippers of American Idol, the computer game addicted, the gamblers who trek to the casinos weekly: do they have the right stuff that our forefathers and mothers had? I don't think so. It's kind of scary.

For a look at a few people not that far away from the farm, and the necessity to work hard, take a look at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tremain_calm/

Of course, some of the photos are from the 60's and those people already look sort of useless, in a comme il faut sort of way. I don't know. I don't know.

We took a bunch of books to the book drop at the dump on Saturday, and unfortunately picked up a few, too. Hard to resist books. I found a moderately old (1968) encyclopedia and brought home volume "A" and read what it had to say about Afghanistan, unpolluted by Taliban, Russians, and the like. A whole new view, as it were. NO mention of the opium poppy back then. Pashtuns mentioned, along with nebulous border, also bad feelings about where the border with Pakistan was and tribal lands being split. What goes around comes around and stays for dinner.

At the dump book drop I found a Helen McInnes book. I used to devour those, all the good chases across Europe with the bad guys invariably a few jumps ahead of the running couple. It didn't quite grab me yet, but I'll read a few more chapters.

Enjoying Three Trapped Tigers. Wondering if there's a plot anywhere or just a babble of voices. Time will tell. Right now I just listen to the voices, which have a vibrancy and life that is very compelling. Three Trapped Tigers indeed. Pre-Castro Havanna. The decay and the debauchery. Yes!