Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 47

in the Ancient City

Gay and I took off late yesterday morning for St. Augustine, where, as she posted, I’ll be giving a talk today.  (“Setting the Scene,” at the library, for a writing group.)

We stopped at the traditional lunch place, Angel’s Diner in Palatka, just before the big bridge over the St. John’s River.  Good burgers and such – I had their specialty, the Black Bottom, a bunch of loose hamburger bound up in a fried egg.  Maybe better than it sounds.

We dropped our stuff at the Victorian B&B, which unsurprisingly is a big Victorian house, well maintained, with no obvious historical significance.  Then we walked the length of the Old Town’s commercial street, and down a couple of byways.

A nice quiet time.  Had a beer and listened to a bluegrass duet on mandolin and guitar for awhile.  Good name, the Grassy ‘Noles.  ( = Seminoles.)

Nice fish dinner with a glass of Pinot Grigio at the Columbian, which brought back memories.  We went to the original Columbian, in Tampa, back in 1970, with Keith Laumer and Gordon R. Dickson.  Its charming Spanish ambience,  ambiente, was part of a mosaic of factors that caused us to move to Florida later that year.  Can it have been 42 years?  Keith was always reserved and somewhat distant, but I can still feel Gordy’s humane friendliness and limitless optimism.

We wandered awhile.  I picked up a long-sleeved shirt against the chill.  Going down a side street,  we heard a couple of seriously good musicians playing guitar and fiddle in an open-air bar – two middle-aged women, gypsily yclept Maja Gitana, who obviously enjoyed their work.  We bought one of their CD’s and I had  a second and sinful third glass of wine through two sets.

The fiddler did something I’ve never seen before, a long sustained rising harmonic.  I can visualize the physics of it.  The bow has to touch the string at the precise midpoint between the fiddle’s bridge and where the left-hand finger is lightly resting, not pressing down, on the string.  Then the musician has to move both bow and finger very precisely, maintaining the midpoint relationship while shortening the “virtual”  string at a constant rate.  The distance between bow-point and bridge is of course critical.

Maybe this is something all fiddlers know about.  I don’t think I’ve seen it before.

Walked around at dawn this morning, cool and clear, the salt air damp but not uncomfortable.  Took some sunrise pictures, which I’ll download later – forgot to bring the little card reader.  Maybe tomorrow, if the weather holds, I’ll go out prepared and do a watercolor sketch.

See some of you at the library?

Joe

Joe in St. Augustine, FL

From Gay:   Joe will be speaking at the main library in St. Augustine, FL, tomorrow, Saturday, at 10 AM.  1960 North Ponce de Leon Blvd. (US 1).

blast in the past

Serendipity in the bookshelves!  I went haring off into my history / oversized books section looking for Foster-Harris’s The Look of the Old West, and although I didn’t find that, or haven’t yet, I came across a book I’d completely forgotten about, which I evidently bought at the Strand in New York, in 1999.  Remember George MacDonald Fraser, of Flashman fame?  He wrote a fascinating nonfiction book, The Hollywood History of the World. 

It fell open to the chapter “New World, Old West,” where Fraser laments the modernization of dialogue in Westerns.  He says “ . . . the convention [of macho dialogue] is so well established that I should hesitate to try to work into a screenplay the recorded exchange between Wild Bill Hickok and John Wesley Hardin in 1871:

                       

            ‘You can’t hurrah me.  I won’t have it.’

            ‘I haven’t come to hurrah you, Mr. Hickok.  But I am going to stay in Abilene.’

Kind of delightful to come across, since Gay and I are currently watching the postmodern Hickok in Deadwood – or rather, we were until the episode we saw last week, where he drew aces and eights and folded.

(There’s a clip of that scene at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0t1UmOL_Iw  )

Oklahoma Joe

blast from the past

I just came across this 1996 diary entry . . . .The Crash27 April 96Bon Secour, AlabamaMiles today -- 29.5Miles to date -- 606.9The bicycle trip ended in a split second on a badly designed road headed for the Dauphin Island Ferry. A three-inch-high asphalt slab with no shoulder.As near as I can reconstruct it, my front wheel slipped off the edge and the bike somersaulted. I made a two point landing, head and shoulder, shattering my helmet and breaking my collarbone, then cracking one knee. Plus some minor road rash.I could be a poster boy for bicycle helmets. Without it I would have suffered at least a concussion, probably a skull fracture, maybe death. It was like being thrown up against a brick wall at 18 miles per hour. My head wasn't hurt at all, just an incredibly loud noise, which might have been the collarbone breaking.I had just checked my rearview mirror and knew that there were cars maybe forty yards behind me. I managed crawling to drag my bicycle out of the road and stood up, fell down, stood up, fell down. I knew I was hurt pretty badly but would live.Six cars passed without stopping. I hope they all need help some day.Gay caught up with me and did wifely things and then retrieved my water bottle and map carrier from the road. Then an older man and his wife stopped to render aid. We managed to get my shirt off. He had some paramedical experience, I guess in Korea or WWII, and after some wiggling and prodding he said he thought the shoulder probably wasn't broken, but I'd better get it X-rayed. They offered to take me back into town, twenty miles, but I said no, we'd just wait for the RV. Then another good Sumerian stopped who had a cooler full of ice and a plastic bag, and improvised an icepack for it, which helped a lot.He was on his way back from a Little League game, and when Gay asked who won he said, "The kids. Who cares?" Good attitude.A few other people stopped, notably a couple who were obviously bikers of the motorcycle type, wearing stars-and-stripes coveralls. The guy smiled sympathetically and said "Crash and burn?" That's kind of ironic, since it's the greeting catch-phrase in the movie I wrote, not-my-title-ROBOT JOX.We settled in to wait for Rusty. Normally he wouldn't have been more than ten or fifteen minutes behind us, but we'd sent him to the grocery store with a shopping list, and we know he's slow and methodical.It was 1:30 and the Alabama sun is suspiciously like the Florida sun, stunning hot. I kept it off my bald spot for awhile with my busted helmet, but finally took my book and Gatorade and flopped down in the partial shade of a pine thicket. The book I've been reading during the intervals I wait for Gay is HEMINGWAY'S GENDERS, by Nancy R. Comely and Robert Scholes, and although it's a fascinating study, it's a little dense for reading to distract oneself from intense pain. I needed something on the order of a Batman comic book. After an hour, we were starting to worry. What if something had happened to Rusty, or to the RV? I was starting to feel rather worse. I'd taken 800 milligrams of ibuprofen, and with the side effects of that together with the still heat and warm Gatorade, I was getting badly nauseated. I don't think I'll try the Tart Apple flavor again any time soon.Gay wanted to send me back to the hospital with the next car that stopped to offer aid, but I said I should be good for another fifteen minutes, half hour. I had visions of repaying some stranger's kindness by barfing in his car.Rusty did finally show up, and they installed me in the back bed with some stomach settler. What I dearly wanted was an ice-cold Heinekin out of the fridge, but decided that would be a bad idea, since I didn't know what kind of medication they were going to give me. Rusty made me a glass of ice water and then helped Gay put the bikes up on the back.We found the hospital without too much trouble and did the usual hurry-up-and-wait routine, not as bad as you might expect on a Saturday. Gay gave me the book she was reading, Jack Dann's THE MEMORY CATHEDRAL, to distract me while I was wheelchaired from place to place, and it was perfect for the job -- fascinating opening chapter.I got six X-rays, a pretty painful process since I was stiffening up and had to un-stiffen to get in the right position for the rays. Turns out I managed to shatter the left end of my clavicle.It's not really serious; four or five weeks of discomfort. The discomfort is not just pain, but lack of mobility. A clavicle restraint is pretty complicated. Think of two shoulder holster straps connected in back with a tight X of elastic. That assembly is connected to a band that goes around the chest over the sternum, to which the left arm is attached by a Velcro strap around the bicep. Then the left wrist is immobilized by another strap over the sternum.I can release the left wrist, though, for limited mobility, and so I can use the keyboard. I think I'll even be able to play the guitar, if I capo it up about five frets and hold it in an odd position. And I paint right-handed, of course, so there's plenty to do while I wait for the thing to heal.Our immediate plans are to wait around until Monday, when the bone doctor is going to see me. Then we think we'll just go on vacation for awhile -- go to New Orleans as planned, but hang around a bit for the Jazz Fest. Then wander out to Texas for the Texas Star Party, and fly up to Toronto, as planned, for Mike Glicksohn's fiftieth birthday.The bike trip is temporarily suspended. Depending on what the bone doctor says, I might be able to put in a few weeks in June and July. Or maybe wait another year. But sooner or later, there's a spot two hundred meters west of Brigadoon Trail on Alabama 180, where I'm going to plant that bike and pedal on. And watch out for the God damned edge.Hemingway claimed that anything that doesn't destroy you makes you stronger. I've never thought that that was universally true; surely even Ernie knew people who had one bad card after another dealt, and finally lost interest in the game. But we're going to make the best of this, and have a good time moseying around Alabama and Louisiana. We don't have to rush anywhere, and the book is done. It could have been so much worse.(Resumed the ride the next spring, and eventually made it to San Diego . . . )

plowshares

(From a peaceful discussion in sffnet . . . )

Does it not say in the Bible "Ye shall beat thy swords into plowshares, and thence beat thy enemy to shit with the plowshares"?Gay forwarded this interesting article  on color perception.    http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2...  I enlarged the two samples and did see the mixing phenomenon, yellow-blue more strongly than red-green, and it was more prominent when I used only one eye.  It seems to me that what you’re seeing is not a true color, but rather a superposition of a color with the sensation that the eye creates when its complement saturates part of the visual field.  Like if you stare fixedly at a red thing for a minute and look away, you see a greenish ghost of that thing.  The color-mixing illusion seems to blend the ghost with its complement.   Googling, I find all kinds of fascinating diagrams and vocabulary buzzing around these notions, but right now don’t have time to study them.  I want to come back and look at them especially with respect to the so-called “iridescent” watercolors that I’ve used, sold by Daniel Smith.  I think they use some similar principle.Joe

slogans

I have won a kind of secondary immortality in this headline from truthout:

The Crash and Burn Future of Robot Warfare: What Seventy Downed Drones Tell Us About the New American Way of War

“Crash and burn” was the wry motto of the robot warriors in my movie-not-my-title ROBOT JOX.  I took it from a greeting between motorcycle riders in Daytona Speed Week.

Joe

Aieieieieie!

Gay found this amusing bit of movie lore –

The Wilhelm scream:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdbYsoEasio

Joe

fancy eats

Yesterday Gay and I went out into the blustery cold just two blocks, to the nearest restaurant, and enjoyed light Japanese/Chinese fare there.  Came back and I did two panels:  “Do we need a new definition of literacy” (answer:  yes and no) and “You are responsible for your own career.”  Writing career, of course.  Both of them went pretty well.

Jim Minz, a Baen editor, took us out to dinner at what I suppose is Raleigh’s best restaurant, and indeed it was impressive.  The Second Empire (I can’t find out which empire that refers to), it’s a century-old Victorian mansion with quiet spacious dining rooms.  The food was expertly prepared and impeccably served, although the dishes were more complicated than they had to be.

Examples:  For my first dish I had Butter Poached Maine Lobster and Yukon Potato Phyllo Cigar with ewephoria Gouda, pickled beet carpaccio, roasted butternut squash compote over fennel and snow pea salad with corn and lemongrass vinaigrette.

That would have made a meal, actually.  But then came Crispy Pan-fried Chesapeake Bay Striped Bass over grilled prosciutto ham, grain mustard spaetzle and Brussels sprouts, malted saffron leeks, smoked cauliflower slaw with red cherry and poblano jus.

With it I had two glasses of a refreshing bright Pinot Gris.  Then split a desert with Gay along with a small glass of ruby port.  Yum.  Good company and good eats.

Joe

in the frozen North (Carolina)

Uneventful flight up to North Carolina yesterday, absorbed in Carol Sklenicka's fat biography of Ray Carver.  It's an odd experience to read a biography of a person you knew pretty well.  I've only gotten up to 1967; we met in 1974, when he came to the Iowa Writers Workshop to teach.  (He'd been there as a student, pretty much on the same terms as I was, a decade later -- "If you give me an assistantship, I can afford to come.")We settled into the Doubletree outside of Raleigh, in the college-town suburbs.  Feels like a good neighborhood.  Three of the convention organizers took us out to a good dinner at Irregardless, a place with good food and good music.  A fifties-feeling jazz band with two saxes, string bass, traps, and a lovely acoustic-electric guitar.  Came back to the hotel for a locally brewed brew, dark and coffee-flovored.Got up this morning, had a good buffet breakfast and went out to scout out a place to work.  But it was too windy and cold for exploring, so I turned back after a couple of blocks and worked in the lobby until it was time for Gay to get up.Joe

a can't-agorical imperative

Do you ever get annoyed by characters on teevee holding a pistol sideways to shoot, because that’s more cool than aiming?  Good little article on it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side_grip.  (Maybe we don’t want it to become common knowledge, though; I’d just as soon have hoodlums get their education in such matters from idiotic sources.)

Shooters call the deviation from vertical “cant,” I remember from an article in American Rifleman that I read more than fifty years ago.  Guns were not allowed or even discussed in my house when I was growing up, but a friend’s father was an enthusiastic hunter, and I would read his magazines avidly.  The memorable title of that article was “You Can’t Cant.”

(There’s probably been an article in a home-makers magazine entitled “You Can Can.”  Or was that in Journale Danseuse?)

Joe