Ajax Minor's Blog, page 5

Captain marvel-ous!

As one of the ‘thousands’ who read this Blog every week, and especially to those who have read Books 1 and 2 of ‘The Ur Legend’, it should be obvious that I write about and admire strong women. In this Blog space I have written about Wonder Women and #MeToo, the women who competed in the Solheim Cup, one of the most riveting golf tournaments I’ve ever watched, Women in Sports Broadcasting, and posted the women’s historic Gold for the US in Nordic skiing, also known as Cross-country.

Growing up I was a comic book fan, during its Silver Age. True confession however, I was a DC comics guy (Batman topped the list, followed by the Flash). The only Marvel comic I read was the Fantastic Four. But the Silver Screen has introduced me to the adventures of Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor and now Captain Marvel. While I loved Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy, this flic features a solo female hero, as in the movie Wonder Woman; and given my preference for strong female characters, I sprinted to the box office with my wife, Linda, to see the film. I was not disappointed.

Okay, so, first the critique. The plot was pretty standard fare, unlike Wonder Woman, and it appeared to be without a romantic angle; also a big plus in the Wonder Woman story. The historical context was well done, placed in mid-90s USA. The strip malls were perfect replicas! However, once again Wonder Woman would have to get a big nod; it was set during the First World War, which was both unusual and riveting.

Away from the comparisons, Captain Marvel held its own. In particular, the script was instructive for those of us who write our stories by putting pen to paper, as I do for first drafts, or who use a word processor. Character development proceeded at a good clip in Marvel and I especially liked the ‘transactional’ aspects. This is a common technique that is very useful to authors trying to move a story along. I feel that the transaction between Veers and Fury, once Fury has bought into her story, was brilliant dialogue. Fast paced and smart and it not only drove the plot but developed the relationship between the two main characters. I’d say the only aspect missing was the deep romantic angle we found in Wonder Woman. But, hey, maybe in the sequel?

The only other critical comment I’d make is that Marvel’s powers seemed to be limitless. Most of my DC comic heroes had a limitation. As almost everyone knows kryptonite was Superman’s weakness, Batman was, well, HUMAN and Green Lantern had to recharge his ring his ring every 24 hours. Vulnerabilities are useful in creating more complex plots. Again, But hey, Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel was a real pisser anyway!

Bottom line: Go see it!

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Climate change and pinus radiata

The past week saw the horrendous devastation caused by tornados in Alabama and over the past couple of months we’ve had two major storms hit the Monterey Peninsula. The effect has been widespread destruction, but nothing compared with the damage done in the Southeast. Our hearts go out to the people who have lost friends, family and property. If we thought prayer would do any good we’d pray. But like the heroes, Jaq and Kate, of Sun Valley Moon Mountains, we have a pagan streak. So we offer our thoughts and hearts.

The Monterey Peninsula on the Central Coast of California is peculiar in more than one way. First, it is the coldest area in the continental U.S. during the summer months of July and August. The rest of the country’s summer is our winter! And while the rest of the country uses air conditioners, they are practically nonexistent here. Instead the generator is the preferred ‘appliance’. During the last storm ours ran for four days!

The Monterey Peninsula is also home to Pinus radiata, the Monterey pine. As I wrote last week in the short story, Wanda and the Winged Sea Serpent, “the Monterey pine is a very common, though not terribly attractive, species of conifer on the Peninsula.” I was generous. Most individuals are very tall and straight with only a ‘shock top’ of needles, which shed 24/7/365. There is a ‘dominant’ variety that actually possesses an attractive ‘habit’ but is far less common. In addition to being tall and gangly, the Monterey pine has a shallow root system. This makes it vulnerable to high winds common during storms.

The last big storm, of a type known as the ‘Pineapple Express’ (those come from the direction of Hawaii), took down over 300 trees in Del Monte Forest in Pebble Beach.

This baby was at the end of our driveway, over 80 feet tall and snapped in half! The tree below was uprooted, fell across the adjacent road and demolished a neighbor’s driveway gate.

Another took out a gatehouse onto 17 Mile Drive. No fatalities.

This was the worst storm some had seen in over three decades. So is Climate Change real? Sure. Did humans have something to do with this (secular or cyclical) change? Your call. I take a simple view. Carbon causes a greenhouse effect not because it is Republican or Democrat but because its structure allows heat generating UV radiation to penetrate the atmosphere and heat up the planet, and it blocks the infrared radiation (heat) generated during the day. Maybe humans didn’t cause the current warming and more violent weather, but since we can measure carbon levels in the atmosphere and in the oceans and we know they are rising it seems to me a big stretch to say we don’t add to the problem at the margin.

And warming could have counter-intuitive effects as we find inThe Girl from Ipanema (TGFI). Rather than the meteor strike in TGFI, we are seeing formerly land-supported glaciers flow then calve, or melt, into the ocean. If this were to happen in Greenland it might affect the Gulf Stream and cause a Big Chill, as happened on earth during the Dryas period some twelve thousand years ago, or happened in TGFI.

Everyone might have to trade out their AC’s for generators. Ironic huh?

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Golf on the monterey peninsula

Two weeks ago, the Monterey Peninsula, where Linda and I live, hosted the AT&T golf tournament. The event was won by Phil Mickelson, for the fifth time! I guess he likes it here. Besides its stunning links courses, the tournament is known for its wild and unpredictable weather. February is smack in the middle of the rainy season. Well, neither the tournament nor the weather disappointed, with the match tied and called for darkness and a playoff held Monday morning between Phil and England’s Paul Casey. Conditions were marked by wind, rain and hail! However on both the final day, a Sunday, and at the Monday playoff bright sun prevailed.

Rather than bloviate on the daily dirge of depressing events out there in the REAL world, whatever that is these days, I’d like to reprise a short story I published several months ago and that some of you may have missed: ‘Wanda and the Winged Sea Serpent’. I hope you enjoy it!

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Golf on the monterey peninsula: ‘wanda and the winged sea serpent,’ a fantasy

Two weeks ago, the Monterey Peninsula, where Linda and I live, hosted the AT&T golf tournament. The event was won by Phil Mickelson, for the fifth time! I guess he likes it here. Besides its stunning links courses, the tournament is known for its wild and unpredictable weather. February is smack in the middle of the rainy season. Well, neither the tournament nor the weather disappointed, with the match tied and called for darkness and a playoff held Monday morning between Phil and England’s Paul Casey. Conditions were marked by wind, rain and hail! However on both the final day, a Sunday, and at the Monday playoff bright sun prevailed.

Rather than bloviate on the daily dirge of depressing events out there in the REAL world, whatever that is these days, I’d like to reprise a short story I published several months ago and that some of you may have missed: ‘Wanda and the Winged Sea Serpent’. I hope you enjoy it!

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BlackFace

Recently there has been a flood of puerile blackface pictures coming back to haunt public figures. Race does not play a big part in ‘The Ur Legend‘ and I like to write about current events that are relevant to my story. However ethnicity is prominent and ethnic prejudice draws from the same well as racial prejudice.

But I really don’t want to give you my opinion on the specifics of the blackface phenomenon nor on the issue of racial prejudice in general. I simply want to offer up a reading list of what I consider to be the most insightful writing, for me, on the topic. Not ‘Soul on Ice’ nor ‘Black Like Me’ nor ‘The Confessions of Nat Turner’.

First, everyone has heard of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ but I’ve found that few have read it. READ IT. It is a book with messages on several levels for an audience today. It details the conflicting views about slavery in both the North and South in the 1850s. Augustine St. Clare is a Southern slave owner who abhors the institution and his sister, Ophelia, a northern abolitionist with a distinct aversion to blacks. Its eponymous character, Uncle Tom himself, is, I believe, one of the most misunderstood in all of literature. His name has become synonymous with the image of a black man exhibiting obsequiousness to whites. I came to look at him as something far from that pejorative characterization. Tom was a man of deep faith and a non violent and loving spirit. He wasn’t pliant to whites because he feared them but because he loved them and his god. Tom was non violent in the best tradition of King and Ghandi.

Next, to understand the culture of the South and have an appreciation of its pushback against Northern moralizing, which is not fed by racial bias, read Chapter 14 of ‘Go Set a Watchman’ by Harper Lee. Sure, most people have read the book ‘To Kill Mockingbird’, or seen the movie, and been inspired by the character of Atticus Finch. If you read the reviews of ‘Watchman’, you know many were disappointed, to put it mildly, at the older, more ‘prejudiced’ Atticus in ‘Watchman’. But read the conversation between Scout and her Uncle in Chapter 14 of the book. It speaks of the origins of Southern culture and is a more than instructive for us who were raised in the North. It dilutes our feelings of moral superiority.

Finally, there is a running dispute about the causes of the Civil War. There are those who believe that the conflict was not really about slavery but rather about liberty. Or at least ‘negative liberty’, the freedom from being told what NOT to do, and elucidated by Scout’s uncle, Atticus’ brother, in ‘Watchman’. A Utilitarian might wonder what if the North had not pressed the issue of slavery and just let it die from natural causes, as it surely would have. That decision would have saved a quarter of a million lives at the expense of one generation of slaves.

Just one generation. Easy to say. But the reality is that it would have done no such thing. U S Grant once remarked that once Texas was admitted to the Union a Civil War was guaranteed. Why? Because it expanded the area of slave ownership beyond the original 11. And with that was born the Missouri Compromise, Bloody Kansas and the demand of the South to be able to take their ‘property’ straight to the Pacific. Even if the Union had let the South secede peacefully there would eventually have been a conflict over territory in the Western U.S.

To gain more insight get ‘Battle Cry of Freedom’ by James McPherson, a brilliant book that served as the inspiration for Ken Burns’ seminal ‘Civil War’ documentary. If you’re not all that interested in the ‘Rebellion’ as the Confederacy called it, read Chapter 3, ‘An Empire of Slavery’. It’s a real eye opener. Some of the more radical in the South at that time envisioned an ’empire of slavery’ stretching west to the Pacific and South all the way to Patagonia.

Enough of my writing. Time for you to READ!

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Snowbound

No, not the poem by John Greenleaf Whittier. This is a true tale.

Linda and I love the winter and winter sports. It is interesting that I never worked that affection, like our love of fly fishing, into my books. Go figure. And we moved from Colorado to California five years ago. Why would a couple of snow hounds do something like that? Not sure.

Anyway, we traded the Rockies for the Sierras, which are a very diferent deal. The storms that come from the West over the Pacific are heavily moisture laden. Two years ago we went up, with the best of intentions to ski, and found ourselves, snowbound. All roads to and from the lodge where we stayed were closed and NONE of the local ski areas were open. Over twenty years we lived in Colorado I don’t believe a ski area ever closed. However, two feet in the Colorado mountains is a big storm. The snow is drier, as the storms deposit moisture on their way east and there is less of it than in the Sierras. But on that particular trip, the region received twelve feet in three days!

Consequently, we’ve paid more attention to forecasts and generally go up at the last minute when we know there are no big storms in the offing. On our most recent trip the weather was supposed to be clear for the week, with the exception of a mere five inches on the Sunday we drove up.

Well, as hard as it may be to believe, meteorologists sometimes get it wrong. We planned to ski at Kirkwood (I planned, as Linda is recovering from foot surgery and decided snowshoeing a better option). The drive took us past Kirkwood, the area we had targeted. Well by the time we passed it conditions were near whiteout and we found the road closed in both directions due to avalanche danger.

Kirkwood has only one lodge and, as it was MLK weekend, it was full. We settled for two couches in a day lodge and were not in ecstasy but were at least warm and dry. I should mention that the staff was remarkably helpful and polite. Next morning we headed for our cabin at Sorensen’s a few miles east.

As we were near Donner pass, we thought about what it must have been like to try to survive a winter under those conditions. But not all snowbound stories ended as tragically as did the Donner Party’s.

Which brings me to a remarkable story about an immigrant from Telemark, Norway in the nineteenth century called ‘Snowshoe Thompson‘ (nee John Rue). You can read the entire bio. But I will just mention that he carried the mail from Placerville, CA to Nevada for twenty years. He would make the trip to NV in three days and return in two. He carried no blanket and no gun. He simply kept moving; and he claimed he never got lost even in blizzards. Finally for all his trouble he was never compensated. Talk about community service!

Thompson carried eighty to a hundred pounds of mail, on foot, while we were in an SUV full of gas and with nowhere to go! How did he do it? How did he manage? I suppose because, even though conditions were far more difficult in the nineteenth century, humans are very adaptable.

All of which is a roundabout way of asking you to read or to reconsider ‘The Girl from Ipanema‘. How would our society fare in a mini Ice Age? Would we fall apart like the USA did in my novel. More importantly consider how YOU would fare in such an environment?

A couch and a sleeping bag anyone?

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‘cassandra heeded’ by N W Moors: a review

‘Cassandra Heeded’ is Book 2 of N W Moors’  Second Chances series. If you have always loved Greek myth and legend, as well as ancient history, don’t bother to read any further. Just buy the book. If not, stick with me, then buy the book anyway. 

N W Moors has cleverly placed human figures from the past in a modern setting. Specifically a small town in Connecticut, the state where she and I grew up. They are persons who have, arguably, been dealt a bad hand by the gods. Now they have a chance at redemption. In Book 1, ‘Icarus Rising’, Daedalus’ son, Icarus, flew too close to the sun on man-made wings and offended Apollo. He was banished to Hades with a pair of wings painfully embedded in his back. Cassandra was a priestess in ancient Troy who could foretell the future, whose curse was that no one would ever believe her prophesies. You can read more backstory in the novel, but suffice it to say Apollo once again was chapped. Seems as if he had a very thin skin.

Cassandra was raped by Ajax Minor, the smaller, swifter version of the Ajax Major we all know and love, after the fall of Troy.  Then she was carried off by Agamemnon and subsequently murdered on the way back to Greece. The gods took a measure of pity on her and let her exist for eternity in the Elysian fields. She was spared Hades. But she became horribly bored after two thousand years of bliss. Apollo shows up and offers her the chance to shed the curse of prophesy. But as in ‘Icarus’, Cassandra must recover an object for Zeus. Cassie, as she is called in contemporary Connecticut, decides to take the risk. 

I’ll won’t discuss the plot but will tell you that Russ (Icarus) and his girlfriend, Eve, appear again as important characters in the tale. As does Artemis, Apollo’s sister and goddess of the Hunt and the Moon, who works, quite happily, in the kitchen of Eve’s Bookstore/Café. No spoiler but she is very good at baking and thoroughly enjoys it! Go figure. Athena is also in the story, enjoying the modern world immensely as a high-powered financial dynamo. That you can figure.

As with ‘Icarus’, the book is just plain fun to read. Unlike ‘Icarus’, in which Russ and Eve had to pull off a heist to satisfy Zeus, ‘Cassandra’ is more subtle. And as we are introduced to Hephaestus, the lame god of Fire and Forge, it can also be touching. The main characters, Cassie Troi (clever) and Jack Burnett, reveal more of the inner workings of their psyches than did Russ and Eve.  

This is something not uncommon to novelists who write a series. As with many things, authors grow along with their stories. I’ve found this to be the case with my own ‘Ur Legend’ series. I write under the pen name Ajax Minor and my story is about a second chance as well. Ironic, huh?

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Global Freeze and ‘the Girl from Ipanema’

As I have stated, I want my fantasies to have some basis in fact. Since they are fantasies, I guess those facts could be appropriately tagged: ALTERNATIVE. In any event I don’t go in for magic rings or stones or wands: PRESTO! ABRACADABRA!

‘Sun Valley Moon Mountains‘ (SVMM) created a fantastical world based on the ‘superposition’ of Quantum Theory onto Cartesian Rationalism. Certainly a stretch conceptually, but I thought it beat a magic sword. The premise for the global chill, an asteroid, that drives the story in ‘The Girl from Ipanema‘ (TGFI) has an historical basis in an event, called by geologists the Younger Dryas, which occurred about 12,000 years ago during an Interglacial Period, a warming phase of the ice age. A huge ice dam in western Canada gave way, as temperatures rose, and spilled the contents of a massive lake called Agassiz. Check the link and you will find that it may have drained into the ocean and cause a mini ice age, lasting between 100 and 1000 years. The mechanism was the relative densities of fresh and salt water. Salt water is ‘heavier’. So the fresh water that poured into the Atlantic would have diluted seawater and possibly caused the Gulf Stream to shut down, precipitating a deep freeze in the Northern Hemisphere.

How likely is this to have happened and might other events have dumped fresh water into the oceans? In TGFI, I postulate a meteor strike on Greenland that melted a part of the icecap and drained the resulting melt water into the Atlantic, disrupting the Gulf Stream current. Last summer a fireball was identified over a US military base in Greenland that was most probably a meteor. Check it.

But this was really a baby, much smaller than the meteor that exploded over the Russian town of Chelyabinsk in 2013. Certainly it was not large enough to have caused the climate catastrophe in TGFI. But recently a massive crater was identified by NASA’s Operation Icebridge, which measures changes in the Greenland ice sheet. A lot of analysis must still be done, but as the article explains, such an impact may have melted enough water to compromise the Atlantic ocean currents and precipitated a deep freeze.

As a fantasy writer, I find it great fun to base my stories on some sort of credible fact. Unfortunately credible facts are in short supply these days! It is also fun to speculate about scenarios that might upend current thinking. The planet appears to be warming up. Certainly recent data support this. But the Earth’s history is full of quirky surprises. Ask the Dinosaurs!

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‘Sandcastle and other stories’ by Justin bog: A review

Indie authors, like myself, need all of the help we can get. One of the things that surprised me when I began the grim work of selling my books was that very little love came back at me from Indie bookstores. I mean, you’d think…

But there were a few kind souls out there that welcomed my work onto their shelves. Pilgrim’s Way in Carmel, CA, Tattered Cover in Denver and Chapter 1 Bookstore in Sun Valley, ID, where my novel Sun Valley Moon Mountains is set.

Last October Linda and I took a fishing trip to Ketchum. On our ‘rest day’ we ambled over to Chapter 1 and met Cheryl Welch Thomas, the owner. She is a charming, bright and attractive lady who happens to love books. She had stocked SVMM but not yet ‘The Girl from Ipanema’. I introduced myself and thanked her for putting SVMM on on her shelves. I told her that I had published Book 2 in the Ur Legend series, ‘The Girl from Ipanema,’ and would she consider stocking it. On the spot she ordered several copies.

Having thanked her, I talked a bit about the struggle to get your work in front of people, as an Indie author. She replied that there were several wonderful Indies whose work she carried. I asked her to select a couple and I would buy them and review them. Reviews, even bad ones sometimes, are gold to authors. Following is a review of Justin Bog’s ‘Sandcastle and Other Stories’.

Justin Bog has a great pedigree. He majored in English at Michigan and received an MFA from Bowling Green. Certainly a CV that I lack. And besides, he’s a pretty damned good writer.

If for no other reason than to experience the short story ‘Sandcastle’, I would recommend the book highly. Justin claims he writes ‘psychological stories’. HELLO? Talk about understatement. Sandcastle will blow you away. You will not be able to even remotely guess the tale’s denouement. Does Brenda, the main character,have some psychological issues? No, she’s just plain psychotic, though ‘free ranging’. ‘Nuff said about Sandcastle since we want no spoilers.

Jaqueline, in ‘Cats in Trees’, is also psychotic but more closely watched by her family. It is a VERY short story but the author again waits until the end to the reveal the extent of Jaqueline’s trauma. And, in ‘Under the Third Story Window’, Megan, who has suffered abuse, makes you actually feel her pain and isolation.

What I found most intriguing about Bogs’ stories was that the female characters leapt off of the page and grabbed you by the throat. There seemed to be remarkable insight into the female psyche. Interestingly, his male characters fell a bit flat for me. Oh, the stories went somwhere but the destination was far less intriguing and revealing. I write about strong women in my books. I wonder what women think about the way Bogs and I sketch the female point of view. Are we on point or just ‘mansplaining’?

In any event I believe we both think we understand women. But Bog’s women, and characters, seem to be isolated. My characters are always trying to connect. Curious how we both can both delve into the individual psyche from two very different points of view. I suppose that is what makes writing, and reading, such fun.

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The ‘golden years’

As you all know by now, The Ur Legend Series was inspired by our daughter Katherine’s life and death. Mothers and Fathers, Daughters and Sons. The relationships become complicated as individuals mature and change.  They change even, and maybe especially, when the child is given a second chance at life and the parents a second chance to become, well, parents. We will be posting about the topic this week. But having just returned from Florida to spend Christmas with my 92-year-old Mom, I thought it fitting to share some random thoughts.

92, Phew! Linda and I have been fortunate, in a way. Neither of our dads succumbed to long and lingering illnesses. My father passed away after a short bout with pancreatic cancer and Linda’s dad had a brain bleed and was gone within hours. (BTW, why do people now say ‘passed’ instead of ‘passed away;’ all I can think of when I hear ‘passed’ is gas.)

Linda’s mom battled Alzheimer’s, but she was in Cali with Linda’s dad and a full time aide, and we were living in Colorado at the time. Unlike many people, we were not forced to deal with her situation on a weekly basis. Having been a ‘caretaker’ (aka, nurse) for both my daughter and for Linda on several occasions, I can understand, and have witnessed, the toll that constant care takes. Kids who are there for their parents on a continuing basis deserve medals, or at least combat ribbons for the theater of war known as old age.

Parents, also, must deal with separation from their kids when they decide to strike out on their own. And children must deal with parents as their abilities begin to decline and, of course, with the ultimate separation of death. But what to do during those ‘not so golden years?’ Parents often become more stubborn as they age. Advice is rejected, sometimes unpleasantly. Maybe vehemently. What to do when they become like kids but can’t be spanked? This is a problem even when the parent is still in command of their faculties (BTW, ‘their’ is now accepted in place of the more awkward his/her handoff from sentence to sentence; I’ve always used ‘their.’)

I believe the thing to remember is that being ‘in command of their faculties’ doesn’t mean that their mental states don’t change. Once when Linda and I met with our attorney to update our wills we talked about ‘aging.’ Our attorney had seen more of this than we had and offered her perspective. As people age they seem to become less interested in, even averse to, dealing with detail. It’s in this area that we can be helpful in offering assistance with legal and financial matters. I’ve noticed that I, even, put off tasks sometimes that I would have completed immediately a few years back.

My mom, who had been an ardent pool-goer to water aerobics classes, began to blow them off. Too cold out, I’m sore from the last class, etc. Now her stability is failing. She may have to go into Assisted Living. On our visit we gently encouraged her to come out with us and ride around for 9 holes of golf. She was gung-ho then begged off since it was too windy, although she relished the idea of some ‘fresh air.’ So we took her instead to a wildlife refuge nearby and got her to walk for 20 minutes. At first she had trouble with her breath, but by the end she said she wanted to climb a set of stairs rather than take the easier ‘ramp.’

In my case, gentle persuasion, offering alternatives and never condescending, while being totally honest with my mom has paid off. She knows she may have to go into Assisted Living one day. This is often the real mess in which kids find themselves. Her attitude: “I’ll do what you think is right. A lot of parents give their kids a hard time but I won’t do that and will trust your decision.”

That’s the goal. I know there is no cookie cutter solution and we’d like to hear about other experiences, both better and worse.  To all who have aging parents, and those who don’t yet or have had: HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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