Linda Maye Adams's Blog, page 90

The first sergeant, the private, and the potato

One of the events my company always had every year was organization day. Like the office Christmas party, except it was on the weekend and we were directed to attend. For this one, the new first sergeant, a woman, decided that a work detail was going to make potato salad in the mess hall. Since I was in a platoon of sergeants, I got the detail.

I was a mixture of worried and annoyed. Worried because I didn’t know how to cook that well. I didn’t exactly grow up in a cooking environment, and there are a few family horror stories (see my Thursday post for one). When I ate in the mess hall in basic training, I was shocked at how good food could taste.

And I was annoyed because the work detail was on the day of the mandatory party. I had to get up before dawn on the day when I usually got to sleep a little later. Grumble, gumble.

Half-asleep, I showed up at the mess hall, more zombie than human being. The mess hall was way too bright, even if the walls were dingy.

“First Sergeant,” I told her, “I don’t know how to cook.”

“Of course you do,” she said. I could hear it in her voice: Silly! All women know how to cook.

But I was stuck. The Army’s primary goal was ‘accomplish the mission.’ When we are told to do something, no one wants to hear why you couldn’t do it. They just wanted to know it was done.

“You’re all going to peel the potatoes,” the first sergeant said.

Oh, okay. I could do this. Just give me a potato peeler.

No potato peeler. The mess hall did not have any!

“Use this.” The first sergeant handed out chef’s knives with eight inch blades.

It was a big freaking knife! I’d never even seen one that large before. How I was going to peel potatos with it? So I studied the russet potato on the cutting board.

Ah ha! I had a solution. I turned the potato sideways and sliced off the end. Then I turned it again and cut off the side, and I kept turning it and cutting off where I saw potato skin. Soon I had this rectangular-shaped potato, and glue-like starchiness all over my hands, the blade, and the knife handle.

It was a slow process. Everyone else had piles of peeled potatoes while I was working on my second. By the time I finished it, the first sergeant saw how I was peeling and was quite horrified. Now she believed me.

The bad part? Two other people brought potato salad to the party, and no one touched the first sergeant’s version.

First Sergeant – 0; Private – 0; Potato – 1.

Filed under: Food, History, Military Tagged: Army, Cooking, Fort Lewis, potato salad

Ghosts of Wallpaper Past

I’ve actually had had wallpaper anywhere I lived. We always used paint in the house where I grew, which surprises me in a way. My father is colorblind (red/green, the most common form) and that influenced all the color choices of paint.

Translation: The interior was yellow. It was the one color he could see.

But wallpaper design certainly would have been something he could see. It was probably too much work to put up. If something got too complicated to do, he’d say, “This is turning into a project.”

Then there’s the wallpaper in the house my great-great father built. The house was built in the late 1800s, right when the Victorian era was a huge influence. The house itself is on the state historical register and the national register, and the family trust is trying to get it declared a national landmark.

This site has seven photos of the exterior.

Everyone describes walking into the house like stepping back into time. Every family member who lived in that house did not change anything (unlike other houses in the area where owners put a wet bar into the entrance way or remodeled to make it modern).

But all the walls are covered with handmade wallpaper.

And it’s textured!

My grandfather was a dry goods merchant turned future big business owner (Kimberly-Clark), so he had a good eye for textures. He hand picked all the wallpaper in the house.

So this video was fascinating to watch, even if it is about a process from 1968. The machine process probably came out of the hand making process, and there are some techniques done by hand were probably used in my great-great grandfather’s day.

Enjoy!

Filed under: History Tagged: Havilah Babcock House, Wallpaper, Wisconsin

An Officer and an Emu

PowerPoint’s a pretty big deal in the military. The program had just been introduced when I enlisted, and working in the training room, I had to do a quarterly training briefing. This was in the days before you could do all the steps electronically, so if someone said, “We’re changing the template!” horror ensued.

But sometimes the horror is something really unintentional.

I was working with an lieutenant, and we were doing a presentation being given to a senior officer. The lieutenant put this picture of this emu at the end of presentation.

We all kind of scratched our heads at the wisdom of this.

The lieutenant said he used it all the time in officer’s candidate school as a tension breaker. So we shrugged, since he had final say.

As we prepped for the briefing, I printed out the official biography of the senior officer, along with his photo. Gave it to the lieutenant . It was about half an hour before the senior officer was arriving.

Next thing I know, the lieutenant bolted back to change the briefing. Seems the senior officer looked a bit like the emu …

Filed under: Military Tagged: emu, lieutenant, Officers, PowerPoint

Password Day

Because I was snowed in by the blizzard, I used some of the time for a password day. The idea comes out a book called Perfect Passwords.

Pretty much, you change all your passwords in one day.

The purpose is to clean house, and especially get the old ones changed.

After so many hacks reported in the press, I wanted to make sure that it would be harder to guess what my passwords are. Unlike what we see on NCIS where they take three guesses and get it right, the hackers use a program to try different words, because most passwords are easy to discover.

Typical things people do:

Start with a capital letter (particularly a problem for writers!)
Have a number at the beginning or end of the password (no doubt because that’s easier to remember).
Use the same password in multiple places.
Don’t change it very often, or at all. Passwords have a short shelf life, and bad passwords have no shelf life.

The first thing was gather all the passwords together in one place. I had some in a spreadsheet, some in in my planner, some in a steno pad, and some not even written down. It turned out to be a bigger challenge than I thought.

I have over fifty passwords!

No wonder I was having trouble with them.

As of the writing of this, I’m still finding new ones. It seems like every site requires a password. Especially for writers because we might have Duotrope or Submission Grinder for tracking submissions; Submittable for submitting to most sites; and some sites that have their own password requirement as part of the submission process.

The second thing was to come up with a list of passwords I could use. They’re long sentences (silly in some cases; I had blizzard brain):

“run for it! the snow plows are coming!” the snowman on the bike said.

(That’s from a photo International Thriller Writers posted on Facebook for a contest and not an actual password. But the passwords are like that, and that long.)

Believe it or not, the longer ones with spaces are easier to type, even with the special characters. They’re also easier to remember than some of the typical IT recommended ones: sW$br*FRUcag72uDra. Heck, I’m not even sure I could type that!

Most of the passwords I came up with were such that I could add symbols or numbers, depending on the individual site requirements. I left spaces in where I could, since a space is a special character. A surprising number of sites let me do that.

What’d I do is try typing out the original password and see if the site took it. Not all of them were good about their guidelines, and even the ones that had guidelines didn’t mention that I could use spaces. So sometimes I was pleasantly surprised, and sometimes it was “Grr!” Because the site had a 24-character limit, or you could only use these particular symbols.

But I only got through about 25 passwords—it took a lot more time to do them than I expected, and I actually ran short of them on my list. So my goal is to come up with an ongoing list of potential passwords that I can pluck new ones from. Then I can do the last batch over time, and start the whole process again in six months.

Filed under: productivity Tagged: Passwords, Winter, Washington DC, Snowzilla, snow

The Love Me Wall

When I was in the military, any of the guys who had an office had a “love me” wall, as it was called. The military gives out certificates for just about everything except going to the bathroom, and the love me wall is a place to display them.

Some of the guys would use only the more prestigious and nicer certificates. Those included discharge and re-enlistment certificates, because when you re-enlist, you are discharged from the military first. Those and the certificates for medals are pretty fancy. Color printing, embossed, nice paper. Made for display.

Then there were the guys who put them ALL up. Not just the prestigious ones, but the ones made on a copier for a class that was 4 hours. I looked at that one and thought it wasn’t worth the frame it was in. But the guy had it up anyway.

I’m guessing it’s like showing off the trophies that you won. Shows you won something. Though I’m not entirely sure how that equates to a 4-hour class. I suppose I could print all the certificates I’ve gotten over the years from work training, but really? On the wall to show I did it? Why?

Of course, it might be a gender thing.

So on the Desert Storm Facebook page, one of the guys asked if the women vets ever had a love me wall. None of us did. There are other things that are better to put up on walls.

Filed under: Military, Thoughts

The Beginner Culture of Writing

A few weeks ago, I got a personal rejection from a magazine because of my pacing.   So I went off in search of anything on pacing that might help. Typically, most resources said:

“Write short sentences.”

“Write short scenes.”

“Cut all out all necessary words.”

Well, first, I’m not writing a thriller, so a lot of short sentences isn’t going to help me, except during a fast-paced scene. The same goes for short scenes. The unnecessary words guidance is one of those bizarre ones that leads people to cut out information that’s important. I’ve seen writers under-describe a scene to try to be fast-paced.

In fact, it’s been hard finding anything on this topic. Odd, considering it’s one of the four that the professional publishers look for in stories (the others are story, setting, and characters).

Or maybe not.

Most of the craft advice out there is for beginners. And not any beginner; it’s for the ones starting their first book.

It’s like anyone else above that level doesn’t exist.

We see it in the writing magazine with articles that sound like fad diets: “Do these 10 Things to Get Published!” You know, eliminating adverbs, show not tell—well, you’ve seen them all before.

I was frustrated for a long time because I wanted to push into the more advanced areas, and there isn’t anything to tell writers what those are. If you figure out what those areas are, there isn’t much available beyond what a beginner would need to know.

Like pacing.

Anne Allen mentioned in her comments to me on her blog that beginners need the most help. That’s true, but when the craft information focuses nearly entirely on the beginner, it does a disservice to everyone. The beginner thinks they’ve learned all they need to—but doesn’t understand why they’re being rejected or not getting indie sales. The ones who want to push beyond the basics can’t find much. There is some out there, but it’s hard to find, and you have to constantly keep digging.

I think the most important thing though is recognizing that most of the craft advice is for beginners, and that everyone should not stay a beginner. Try one new non-beginner thing today.

Maybe pacing.

Filed under: Thoughts, Writing Tagged: Fiction Writing, Thrillers, Pacing, Editing

Military, Snowmen, and Washington, DC

After all the snow we had this last week, I ran across this fun photos from the DOD Website, courtesy of the Navy.

151217-N-OI810-080 YOKOSUKA, Japan (Dec. 17, 2015) Electrician’s Mate 2nd Class Godson Bagnabana, from Gadsden, Alabama, erects an inflatable snowman on the flight deck of the U.S. Navy’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76). Ronald Reagan provides a combat-ready force that protects and defends the collective maritime interests of the U.S. and its allies and partners in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Nathan Burke/Released)

You can find the original here: http://www.defense.gov/Media/Photo-Gallery?igphoto=2001326913

Snowzilla, The Aftermath

But the snow was anything but fun for us living in the Washington, DC, area. We had about 22 inches of snow where I was at, and the Federal government shut down for two days (that turns the area into a ghost town).

One of the problems of this area is that it’s a car culture. Everyone assumes you will drive everywhere (this, in spite of encouraging everyone to take public transportation). I’ve been out to some of the developments where construction companies build monster houses. The houses are in a maze of cul-de-sacs. No sidewalks, and pretty much out in the middle of nowhere. As I kid, I could walk to the library, to the grocery, to the drugstore, to the park. Here, I might have to take a car.

The result is that the sidewalks didn’t seem to be much of a priority to get cleared, even when the children went back to school. Mind you, I’m not talking down to pavement, but cleared enough that they were safe to access.

But there seemed to be a disconnect with the cities saying they wanted everyone to not drive so they could clear the roads, and then not realizing that people might walk instead.

I was getting my oil changed on Saturday. This is a full week after Snowzilla. The roads are pretty good, though there are places where we lose lanes. While I waited, I walked to one of the local department stores half a mile away. The sidewalks were buried under huge mountains of snow. I was forced to walk out in the street with cars going 30-50 miles an hour past me. Some of the drivers keep an eye out for pedestrians, but a lot of others are like, “You’re in my way, and I’m not slowing down.”

The good news is that a lot of the snow will melt off during the next week when we’re in the 40s and 50s. The bad news? Flooding.

Yup. That’s Washington, DC.

Filed under: Military, Personal Tagged: Japan, Navy, Snow, Snowzilla, Washington DC, Winter

Books About Women at War

This list of 25 books about women at war was posted to the women veteran’s list.  I remember coming back from Desert Storm and reading everything on war I could lay my hands on.  I wanted stories about women at war, and the best I could do was stories about men at war.

For this list, I was surprised both at what I didn’t know about and what got left off the list.  So I’m thinking of doing a list myself.  If you know of any titles, post them in the comments.

Meanwhile, here’s a few more:

A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of 26 Women Who Served in Vietnam.  This is the only one of two books I read that was about women following the war.  This book was used as the basis for the TV series China Beach.  I read this one over and over and over until I couldn’t read it any more.  It’s now available as an ebook.

Visions of War, Dreams of Peace: Writings of the Women in the Vietnam War.  This book came out in 1991, so right about the time I came back.  It contains poetry about Vietnam.

Women in Vietnam: The Oral History.  Getting the link on Amazon for this one turned up a lot more books.  I have this one in my collection, but I haven’t read it.

Women Vietnam Veterans: Our Untold Stories.  This is a new release for 2015 that showed up for the search for the one above.  Spiffy cover.

Side-by-Side: Photographic History of American Women in War.  A coffee table book with photos of women in war through history.  I was given a copy by the author.

I’m a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story.  The media made her into a big hero and then threw her away when the true story came out.  The result is that this book got a lot of bad reviews not because it was a good book or a bad book, but because of the politics.  It is a frightening story of when things go really wrong for a soldier.

She Went to War: The Rhonda Cornum Story: This one’s from Desert Storm, and the other book I read following the war (because that’s all there was).  This is about an officer who was captured during the war.

These last two books are one of the reasons I wrote Soldier, Storyteller the way I did, and also ePublished it.  The story about the war experience in both books was too short for a hardback coming out of New York.  The result was about half the books are on the soldier’s life before the war.  I remember reading Rhonda’s book, and every other chapter was why she became an officer.  I was skipping those chapters because I felt like they were filling space.

When I did mine, it was automatic to epublish it because then I could tell the story I wanted without having to fill in extra to make up for the costs.

 

Filed under: Books, History, Military, Thoughts, Writing Tagged: Desert Storm, Persian Gulf War, Vietnam War, women at war

Military to the Rescue

The military’s trucks pretty much are made to go anywhere.  The National Guard rescues a fire truck.

Filed under: Military, Videos

Snowzilla Update

This is what it looks like this morning. If you look to left, there’s a fire hydrant, which is barely visible.  It’s that thing sticking up out of the snow near the road.

The biggest problem in this area is the cars.  People commute everywhere, and there are always major traffic jams.  That makes it hard for state and county crews to treat the roads.

The federal government did shut down at noon to help clear the roads.  Even so, there was quite a bit of traffic at 5:00, and cars were still on the road after it got dark and the snow got worse.  This morning, it’s like a ghost town.

Filed under: Thoughts