Linda Maye Adams's Blog, page 49
June 27, 2018
The Portal Room
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For my trip the the family house, I stayed in what we call The Portal Room.
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It’s called that because all the ghosts use the fire place as a portal to the house. Several family members have seen the ghosts of children here. The ghosts are friendly–they are past family members coming to visit.
I didn’t see any ghosts, or even experience the sensation of a presence or being watched. But there are three rooms in the house, all in the same area, where there is a lot of activity. The ghosts come in and move things around.
A few more pictures of the room…
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And a sign that’s in the room that you won’t see anywhere:
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June 26, 2018
Photo: Grace Lee Whitney from Star Trek
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My novel Crying Planet is coming out in Story Bundle tomorrow. The story is everything I liked about Star Trek–space, adventures, aliens, and maybe a little bit to think about. Plus military thrown in well, because. So I thought it would be fun to put up photos I took of actors from shows like Star Trek.
This one is of Grace Lee Whitney. It’s not dated, but I probably would have taken it in the 1990s at one of those cons. I was going to quite a few then and getting a lot of photos.
She was on the original Star Trek, of course. Not in that many episodes, but she was pretty memorable to all the fans. She passed away in 2015.
Pintrest has some nice shots of her. Mostly from Star Trek, but there’s a few bathing suit shots and some photos from her other roles. Someone even Photoshopped one of her in a mirror universe uniform!
June 25, 2018
Traveling by Air—Then and Now
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I’m old enough to remember what it was like to travel before everything changed so much. Most of my travel when I was growing up was flying from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I think I probably did a trip to San Luis Obispo a few times too.
We used PSA, the smiling airplane (had a big smile on the front of the plane). PSA stood for Pacific Southwest Airlines, and it serviced California. The uniforms for the flight attendants were pink and orange.
We got a paper ticket in a little envelope, well in advance of the flight. I was always terrified that I was going to lose that ticket!
If I was traveling by myself, my parents waited with me at the gate until I boarded.
We boarded the planes by walking out on the tarmac and climbing up steep aluminum stairs as the engines roared and the wind whipped around us. The cockpit would be open, the bright light streaming in from outside. I could see all the gauges—just wall to wall with them!
The seats were also pink and orange, made of cloth. The cabin was quite roomy. You can see some interior photos here—some pretty cool pictures. The bathrooms—ah, I don’t think there’s much difference between then and today.
When I got off the plane at the other end, I exited out of the gate and there was another family member like my grandparents waiting for me.
Meanwhile, I was just in Wisconsin the last few days. I flew over on American Airlines. I started the day with an email telling me my first flight was going to be delayed so I would miss my connection. I rebooked a new outbound flight and had to go to the airport immediately because I was now in the 2-hour window.
Race down to the airport in my car (which I so did not want to do; a taxi would have been much cheaper). I find the gate on the board, go through security, and then find the gate. A screen shows my flight.
Then it blinks and my flight is replaced with one from New York.
Wait! What happened to my flight? This did not bode well.
I went back to check the flight list. That still showed the old gate. DCA is pretty small (it started life as a regional airport), so another passenger and I check the other gates. This part of the terminal is packed with people, so we’re navigating around people and suitcases. Everyone is talking, so we can’t even hear the speakers.
Ah ha! We find the missing flight.
We’re barely there a minute when the flight blanks out and is replaced by another flight.
We start hunting for the flight again, and it’s back at the original gate again. I can feel my eyes crossing.
The flight attendants are courteous. But I feel like all the airline is treating me like I’m a dollar sign to them. The airlines charge to put the bags in the hold, forcing the passengers to try to bring everything on the plane. Since it’s a commuter plane, all the rollaway bags end up in the baggage hold anyway so the passengers aren’t charged. Really, how smart is this anyway? (I had a backpack since I know from past experience if I have anything even slightly bigger, I might not get it into the bins because everyone is bringing such big bags).
We’re herded onto the plane like cattle. I’m only 5’4” and the seats are too small for me. On one of the flights, I sit next to an overweight woman who spills over into my seat. She’s sunburned bright red from her knees down. On another flight, I end up at the window. Since getting out of my seat would require the passenger next to me to actually get up, I don’t get up to use the bathroom before we land (therefore, I really have to go when we do).
Flying is just chaos! What are your horror stories?
June 24, 2018
Photo: Lily pads
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This was taken at the Winkler Botanical Preserve, a name I only remembered because I associated it with Henry Winkler from Happy Days!
It’s one of those places where you have to be local to know where it is, and even if you’re local you might not even know it’s there. It’s not in any of the tour books–in fact, I drove by it for years and never knew it was there. I discovered it when I picked up a book on waterfalls and the writer mentioned it.
Wait? What? There’s a waterfall down the street? (It was turned off when I went.)
The preserve is located at the end of an apartment parking lot. Every single time I go there, I overshoot the left turn and have to come back down. It’s really not obvious.
Anyway, check out more pictures here.
June 23, 2018
Photo: Morro Rock, Morro Bay, California
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This is a photo from one of the settings in my mystery book. I went to California for a few years back and visited Morro Bay, where this was taken. That’s Morro Rock in the distance, though there’s a place where you can walk right up to it…just hard to get a picture of all it up close.
Guess what time of the year this is and see if you get it right. Answer is a bit below.
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January. Yup. That’s winter.
June 22, 2018
Photo: Stairway into the Woods
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This was taken at the Dora Kelley Nature Park. The stairs are eerie and beautiful when all the trees are blooming. And it goes really quiet out here, except for the birds and the sound of the streams below.
The stairs are quite hard to manage. They’re rather steep and not evenly spaced, so it takes a bit of work to get up and down them. At the bottom is a stream, and several walking paths.
Very pretty this time of the year.
June 21, 2018
Where Army Tanks Go to Die
I never thought there would be a tank graveyard, but there is one.
It’s out at Sierra Army Depot in California. Check out some pictures here.
June 20, 2018
How We Used to Travel
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I’m doing a story set in 1940s Los Angeles, and the unexpected things muse pops up with has been doing some interesting research. One of them is how we traveled then. I’m going to have a trip coming up. I have a nylon bag with recessed wheels. It’s serviceable.
But nothing like what was used in earlier times. My grandparents had one like the Samsonite Silhouette in this article.
I still remember the ones we used when I was growing up. They were large and flat—because suitcases held suits. The outside was hard and sturdy. You could use them as a seat…they were that sturdy.
The case opened up like a book and laid out flat. The lining and pockets were cloth. We folded up our clothes and laid them inside, then fastened a divider over the top that kept the clothes from moving around. The divider was made out of cloth, too.
They lasted forever and made travel feel like an adventure.
June 19, 2018
Science Fiction Becomes Military Fact
There’s been rumors for a while that the White House was talking about creating a six military branch, called “Space Force.” Now there’s an official announcement.
It’s happening!
I remember when the first shuttle was announced. The Star Trek fans got together and wrote NASA to name it after the starship Enterprise. And NASA did!
The Enterprise shuttle was a test shuttle and never went into space. It probably got more play on all the Star Trek series that followed, and actually was in the opening credits of Enterprise.
But the invention of the shuttle was a major milestone. They were intended to be reused. The earlier rocket ships of the 1960s could only be used once.
But I was disappointed when the shuttle program was abandoned. It just felt like everyone gave up and decided it wasn’t possible to do more than go out to a space station. Some of the things we use on a daily basis are because we had to be inventive for zero G.
In the hands of the military, this is going to be very interesting It looks like Air Force is going to have the command. I’m just hoping Army gets some space travel. When I was writing Crying Planet, I put an Army colonel in charge of the space cruiser because all I’d ever seen was Navy on spaceships. I wanted Army to have some adventures! But when I was telling someone about the book, she told me, “Oh, no! You can’t have Army in command. They don’t have the skills.” Immediate panic set in. It was my book! I wasn’t going to change something that I’d intended. So I came up with a reason for this person to get command, and it reshaped the story in some interesting ways.
This is all very exciting though. Where do you think they will travel to? Hoo-ah!
June 18, 2018
Losing Track and Finding it Again
It’s hard to believe that when I grew up, I typed a novel on my mother’s manual typewriter. It was one of those Royal typewriters that you see commonly associated with writers. I went from that to an electric, to a Heathkit H-89 to a Commodore 64.
This week I’ve been tackling a big project: the paper copies of the stories and non-fiction I wrote.
It’s part of that black hole of my closet that I’m cleaning up. They’ve been long stuffed into plastic boxes, out of sight in the box, but the box itself always in view. So it’s a form of clutter.
I pulled everything out and started going through it. What did I already have in digital form…yeah, somehow I had printed versions of the stories and digital versions. In some cases, I had multiple copies of revisions printed and stored. And for some stories, they were either before Microsoft Word or, for whatever, reason, I only have the paper version.
It was just easy to lose track of what I had because it was in a file folder. There’s a long history of everyone struggling with forms of the data, for as long as we’ve had data.
My grandmother was in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. The film was shot out where she lived in Northern California. Assuming her memory is correct for the title, this is likely the film. She would have been two at the time. She tried to find the film in later years, but it no longer exists. A lot of those films were done on nitrate, and then put into storage once the studio went onto the next release. By the time places like UCLA got in there to transfer to safety film, the reels had disintegrated. Or caught fire, since nitrate film was pretty flammable.
Then there’s Motown. When I was doing temp work in Los Angeles—my Google-fu tells me it was probably 1983 or 1984—I got a job documenting inventory for Motown. They were being sold, so we had to inventory all their music. They gave us stacks of music reels, which were about the size of pizzas. We would open the boxes up see what was written on the reels, and then type that on the inventory. Massive inventory, and they had no idea what they had.
But what I’m doing now is kind of fun and nostalgic to look it. It’s my life at the time, and where I was at as writer. It’s also some of the things I liked. There’s an article I write—might post it here if anyone is interested—on meeting William Windom in 1997. It was for an anthology call that never happened. But I enjoyed writing it, and I enjoyed meeting him. I have photos, but those are in another box I haven’t cracked open yet.
It was at Starcon, which was the big gathering of actors at that time. I believe it was over 100. Most notably, it was the only gathering of most of the actors from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (Allan Hunt, Del Monroe, and Terry Becker. Bob Dowdell turned it down, and David Hedison was unavailable. Richard Basehart had passed away).
It was early in the day, and I was just roaming the aisles to see who was there. He flagged me over, and guess what we chatted about?
We were both veterans!
Very cool.
