Mike Jastrzebski's Blog, page 66

Spielberg and a cast of notables combine on new film version of Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea

by John Urban & the staff at Write On The Water

Word out of Hollywood is Ernest Hemingway's Noble Prize-winning book The Old Man And The Sea will make it to the big screen again, this time as a musical.

The project, which was initially shopped as an independent film, reportedly found a circuitous route to Stephen Spielberg's desk.  The news wire out of LA quotes Spielberg saying, "I was a skeptic at first, but a family friend insisted on taking me to a small off-Broadway showing of the musical and things clicked for me right away. I had a team in my office the next morning."

The Old Man And The Sea was initially published in 1952.  Featured in Life magazine, over five-million copies were sold in two days. The book became a best seller upon publication. The story features an old fisherman, Santiago, who is down on his luck. He eventually catches an enormous marlin, but the fish is devoured by sharks before he can land the catch.

Spielberg told reporters: "To pull this off we knew we would need a substantial score, strong acting, and realistic effects. When we made Jaws in the mid-70s, we didn't even dream about the kind of technology that's out now. The mechanical sharks and the marlin in The Old Man may well redefine how these types of movies are made."

Early on, Spielberg put a call in to his friend and Academy Award winning composer John Williams, who also worked with Spielberg on Jaws early in their careers. Williams said, "This was a return to the water for me. I suppose it's the same for Stephen."

Several songwriters were approached to write the lyrics to the John Williams score, but insiders say that from the very beginning they knew Jimmy Buffett was the right choice. A publicist for the project said, "Jimmy, like Hemingway, lived in Key West and he's also a fisherman.  Plus, Jimmy helps at the box office since he was able to modify some existing songs, including Come Monday and Fins, which will likely make the movie a draw for his substantial fan base."

A senior member of the production team told reporters that casting was the hardest challenge. "We had Hemingway's story, the score, lyrics, and a commitment from the Spielberg special effects people for the marlin and the shark.  Still, the movie centers on one character and we needed a mega-star who could carry the show."

(Jimmy Buffett, photo courtesy of CMT)

Apparently, the breakthrough came when a member of the production team lamented that Hemingway's appeal may be stronger with men than women. The source said, "That gave us the brainchild to cast Santiago as a woman. It was bold. We knew it was bold.  We immediately saw the implications. At that point the call went to Lady Gaga. We knew we had something special – the gender thing, the age thing, the sunglasses. It modernized the story, expanded the story. It's relevance became instantly apparent. Getting Gaga wasn't easy because of her existing commitments, but after several phone calls and a trip to Hemingway's home in Cuba, Gaga agreed." Look, too, for Scotty McCreery of American Idol fame, to appear as Santiago's young friend, Manolin.

Filming, which will take place under an agreement with the Cuban government, will begin in Havana this summer. Expect to see The Old Man And The Sea – The Musical! in 3D coming to theaters next spring.

The World Premier is scheduled for April Fool's Day, 2013.

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Finding my Affinity

My Rolex Ride

by Christine Kling

Last week I wrote about my first couple of days down in the US Virgin Islands as part of the press corps at the 39th Annual International Rolex Regatta, and how pleased I was to have found my boat. Little did I know just how much I was jumping the gun. Actually finding the boat turned out to be the greatest challenge of the entire trip.

The first day of racing, I was already committed to going out on the press boat, so I wandered down the dock with the rest of the crew and climbed aboard our sweet ride – a lovely little Hinkley picnic boat. The St. Thomas Yacht Club really knows how to treat the press right. Captain Benji was our skipper. That first day as we were racing to keep pace with the lead boats on the spinnaker run down the south coast of St. Thomas, I asked Benji what our speed was. We were doing 16 knots and the lead boats were running away from us! My heart was racing from the excitement of watching the awesome display of talent and power, and I couldn't wait until I could get on a boat and sail.

That night our hosts took us out to dinner at the Old Stone Farmhouse where they invited our entire party back into the kitchen to meet the chef and check out the many fresh and unusual items  the menu. I ordered a combination of bison and Italian sea bass in a Thai curry sauce. Honestly, I think it was the best meal I've ever had in my life. After a fantastic meal and good company, I went back to the hotel determined that I would sail the next day.

My contact at the yacht club had told me that the Swan 48 Affinity docked at Red Hook, so early the next morning, I got dropped off outside American Yacht Harbor and began combing the docks looking for a black hulled Swan. No luck. Finally, I asked at the fuel dock and they told me that she had never returned to her slip the night before. They pointed to the empty slip and the dock lines and power cords. Clearly, the notorious party boat had decided to anchor out for the night. I called our driver and got a ride back to the yacht club and though I asked every launch driver, none of them were willing to drive me out to Christmas Cove where Affinity was anchored. Finally, I joined Benji and the rest of the press crew back on the Hinkley and we took off for another fabulous afternoon of shooting photos of the race off the south coast of St. John. But I really wanted to sail.

Sunday was the last day of racing, so I got to the yacht club early and managed to convince a nice young man with a fast dinghy to run me out to Christmas Cove. I saw a dark hulled boat, but as we approached the stern, the name was not Affinity. We checked all the boats in the crowded anchorage, but she wasn't there. Clearly, she had returned to her dock for the night. I apologized profusely for making him run me all the way out there for nothing, and when he dropped me back at the yacht club pier, I raced through the clubhouse. I found a taxi dropping off some crew members at the front door.

The Affinity crew

Breathless, I opened the passenger door and asked if he could take me to American Yacht Harbor. He got me up the hill and over the ridge and dropped me off outside the marina. This time, I knew where her slip was, and as I trotted down the dock, I saw a young man untying her lines.

"Affinity!" I called. "I'm Christine, the reporter who is supposed to sail with you!" And that was how I found Jack Drummond, the owner, and was invited aboard the "party boat." We motored out over to the yacht club and picked up the rest of the crew – almost a dozen of whom were gorgeous young women. While I might have thought I would get blender duty, in fact, as Jack assembled his crew for a pre-race pep talk, he said, "On Affinity, we like to have fun, but we take our racing seriously because the most fun of all is to win." I was assigned to join the all female "rail meat" crew, and I spent the next several hours sitting on the rail and scrambling over lines and winches to the other side every time the skipper called for a tack.

And Jack was right. We were first in our class across the line, and it wasn't until then that the blender started up.

I had a blast.

Finally, here are a few more of the photos I took while pretending to be a photo journalist. Enjoy!

 

Fair winds!

Christine

Author of CIRCLE OF BONES
Available for Kindle 
 
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Murphy was a Meteorologist

C.E. Grundler

I'd like to apologize to everyone for the unusual shifts in weather patterns that have been occurring over recent years, both here in the north east and beyond. Unfortunately, I predict that through the coming weeks we're all in for yet more abnormal fluctuations in temperatures and precipitation. I cannot say precisely what weather is headed our way during that period, only that whatever awaits will be either excessively hot or unusually cold, likely with periods of extreme rain/snow/hail and humidity as well. I know there are numerous theories, debates and scientific explanations as to why the weather's been so wonky, but I can sum it up quite simply and indisputably: it all ties directly to my proximity to my boat.

I know what you're thinking. There's no way one person and one boat can upset entire weather systems. For years I tried to tell myself that as well, to convince myself it was just my imagination, but the moment I attempt to work with any substance that requires specific setting conditions, my boat immediately transforms into the center-point of a bizarre weather vortex. You want snow in April? Ninety degrees in the same month? Torrential floods? Forty degrees at the end of May? I've made it all happen – I was going to work on the boat. Last October's paralyzing blizzard/ice storm? Same deal. I had the car packed with tools and clean Mix-n-measure containers waiting in the salon. The instant I so much as screwed the metering pumps into the West epoxy I was screwed as well, and the weather immediately reset itself to a temperature that fell outside the recommended working ranges. Varnish and high-gloss paints, I've discovered, would cause an even more unique meteorological effect. The weather would remain optimal through the first coats, just a little too optimal, in fact, ideal to stimulate the hatching cycles for swarms of gnats, right on schedule to launch themselves kamikaze-style into the flawless finish just as I've laid down that perfect final top coat. And don't even get me started on trying to USE the boat. Remember a few summers back, when New Jersey was deluged with rain nearly every day from spring to fall?

I've begun to believe the only way the weather will ever settle back to some level of normalcy is to throw in the towel on boats altogether. In fact, in over twenty-five years, I can recall only one vacation where the weather was ideal. We'd spent several days in Denali National Park, in Alaska. Mount McKinley, or Denali, as it is known locally, is the highest mountain peak in North America – so high, in fact, that it creates its own localized weather. And that weather, we were told, usually included a thick shroud of clouds that obscure the mountain for much of the summer. But from the moment of our arrival to the day of departure, the clouds parted and the mountain remained in full view the entire time. From there we continue to Juneau, Alaska, reportedly North America's best guarantee of near-perpetual rain. Not one drop fell during our stay. Our vacation wrapped up with three days in Seattle… bright, sunny, Seattle, where not even a single cloud dared enter the sky for the duration of our visit. But it makes perfect sense – in no part of this trip was our boat a factor. I'm quite certain if that had been the case, the Pacific northwest may have experienced their first plague of locusts in recorded history.

Blog: cegrundler.com

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Still Riding The Wave

(Big wave surfer Laird Hamilton, photo by Tim McKenna)

Just over a year ago, I wrote a post entitled "Riding the Wave," one in which I made comparisons between the emergence of e-books and my experience in the cable TV industry.

Back when I started in cable, MTV, ESPN, and CNN were new services and people in the business wondered if you could make money extending cable into inner cities or leafy suburbs with low population densities. There was great uncertainty, but the business model was so sound that it felt we were being carried forward by a wave. The same wave appeared in the mid-1990s when cable modems were introduced.

The emergence of e-books gave me that same sensation and it is no less so today than it was last year when I posted "Riding the Wave."

I suspect that the people at Amazon know a great deal about e-books sales – they may even know something about my e-book sales – but they aren't talking. So in the interest of spreading one writer's experience, here is my report:



1. Independent authors can find their audience with e-books.

When I wrote my "Riding the Wave" post a year ago my novel, A Single Deadly Truth, had been on Amazon for just over two months and I had sold 289 copies. A year later, I've sold close to 30,000 e-books (to be exact, 29,458 as of today). In December alone, I sold more than 14,500 e-books while A Single Deadly Truth sat at #1 on Amazon's Best Seller list for Hard-boiled Thrillers.

2. Readers are embracing e-books and they welcome new authors.

Last May, Amazon announced that it is now selling more eBooks than it is selling print editions, a mere four years after launching the Kindle. The company then sold millions of Kindles over the holidays, and the Kindle App is downloaded on iPads and other tablets (Apple is expected to ship 12 million iPads this quarter alone). This news is especially good for genre writers as you can see by taking a quick scan of Amazon's Best Seller lists. Readers are embracing new authors, especially those who price their books at $3.99 or less.

3. E-book distribution – all books available to readers everywhere – is remarkable.

My firsthand experience with e-book distribution was evident when I spotted a nice review out of Austrailia for my short story collection, Urban Shorts. I had a similar experience when I learned of a reader ordering A Single Deadly Truth from down on Jost Van Dyke in the Britirsh Virgin Island.

4. The best way to market e-books is e-marketing.

I tried many alternatives. Without hesitation, I recommend you put every marketing dollar you have into one outlet: Steve Windwalker's Kindle Nation sponsorships.

5. It's not too late.

The wave continues. Just ask Christine Kling who saw here new book, Circle of Bones, rise up to the Top-50 books on Kindle and look for it to be back up there.

In the past year, members of the Write On The Water blog have shown that e-books are a valid way to sell books. We're not buying sports cars or yachts with our royalty checks and we still haven't figured out this business, but this gig is interesting as heck. If you have good content, you just might want to paddle out into these waters.

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Plans fall apart, naturally

April is around the corner and I wonder where January scurried off to! Let's see if I can make a long story short – a difficult thing for an Irishman to do.

Before I finished Stairway to the Bottom, I knew the ending I wanted, of course, but I also knew where the sequel would begin and take me. I'd never been that far ahead before. Usually the ending I planned on when I began and the ending that worked for the story were different.

Since I knew all this, I thought I'd spend a few months re-writing my third Mick Murphy Mystery, set in Mexico, as Tijuana Weekend is. I began writing it before moving to Key West and did most of the writing while visiting Tijuana, for the bullfights back in the early '90s. It would be the end of my pre-Key West trilogy.

Well, if God's plans go array like mine, than my sympathy goes out to God and the angels.

I'm sitting in a saloon (where do think I'd be?) with Jim Linder, my military intel contact discussing my sequel that, I told him, I probably wouldn't start until June sometime. A plane goes overhead, real close to the top of the Smokin' Tuna Saloon (an outdoor saloon that we're allowed to smoke cigars at) and Jim says it's a P51 and Freddy Cabanas is tree top flying. The P51 is a WWII fighter. He then brightens up and says using Freddy and the Conch Republic Air Force at the ending of my story would be the solution we were taking about.

Jim corrected my direction of the story on a few incidents that I found hard to believe. Not that he'd lead me in the wrong direction, but I'm a news hound and if all these things were true why isn't any of it on the news? (I learned I am gullible, like most Americans). My friend Captain Pat DeQuattro is the USCG commander in Key West – he is until his transfer in a month or so. I called Pat and we met for lunch at Finnegan's Wake (I know, another bar, but it serves good food and you'd know that if you'd ready Free Range Institution!)

I began by saying if he couldn't comment on what I was about to say, I'd understand. I told him the premise of my sequel (Nobody Wins, is the tentative title). When I'd finished explaining the story, I expected some kind of response that said he couldn't comment.

Was I surprised! He said my storyline info was correct and then went on to answer more questions I had about the USCG's response if such a situation arose.

For three days afterward, I couldn't work on the Mexican re-write. My mind was dumbfounded about what I'd been told by two credible sources. The fourth day, I got my green fold out and started making notes. Jotting down facts so I wouldn't forget them. The next day I began chapter one.

It's slow going, since, first of all, I begin in Norm Burke's voice because (if you've read Stairway to the Bottom you'll understand) Mick Murphy has gone off the deep end and is, shall we say, not in his right mind. The story begins in Fort Lauderdale, not Key West, and after some wild events the plot will make a turn and go to Key West and be told in Murphy's voice.

I decided to write the sequel now because as I research more and more about government agencies, I can't believe how easily the public is fooled with what is nothing but smoke and mirrors. I say that not as an anti-government statement, but the whole game works because the public (and the bad guys, I should add) don't really know what's going on behind the scenes.

Not that Nobody Wins will expose what is going on behind the scenes, but I hope it will make readers more aware of what they don't know. I will leave it up to the reader to decide if the secrecy it takes to protect us is acceptable, even constitutional. There's a lot to weigh and think about. There has been for me, anyway.

As I pointed out when this short version of a long story began, time flies! I am writing slowly and missing days because I am so involved with this story. If you are the two or three readers of my series, you will see a very different tone to the opening of the new book. My plan is to have it done and available by the end of the year. But all you gotta do is ask God how plans go and you may begin having doubts too.

My books are now available on Amazon.com

Chasin' the Wind

Free Range Institution

Tijuana Weekend

Revenge

Stairway to the Bottom

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Where do old sailors go?

By Mike Jastrzebski

Last week I mentioned that Mary and I were going up to Minnesota to visit our granddaughters and that along the way we were going to stop and visit some friends and the marina where Dog River Blues (A Wes Darling Mystery) was written. Both friends are ex-sailors and both have settled into different lifestyles.

Our first stop was in Columbia, Alabama where we visited with former sailor and writer Gerald Dowling. Gerald sold his boat a couple of years ago, bought an Airstream and a lot on the Chatahoochee River, and settled down to write and enjoy life. He built a treehouse outside his trailer, added a walkway, and began his new life. Here are a couple of pictures of his homestead:

Outside and inside the treehouse

      

The lot, the trailer, Gerald and me

  

The next stop was the Grand Mariner Marina, the real backdrop for Dog River Blues. Here's a picture of Barbara, one of the owners, and several of the regulars who have been gathering every evening since before we lived there eight years ago.

   

Finally we headed up to Iuka, Mississippi where our friend Barbara bought a house in a resort community near Pickwick dam. Here's Barbara on her front porch.

All of this makes us wonder where we'll end up after we get off the boat. Hopefully that will be a few years yet, but every once in awhile those thoughts creep in. If you're an ex-boater who has settled back on land, how about letting us know about your living situation.

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A Rolex virgin

My room's view

by Christine Kling

I'm always up for a new challenge. And lately, I've been in serious need of a distraction, a reason to get out on the water.

So, when the invite came via email asking if I would be interested in heading down to the U.S. Virgin Islands to report on the Rolex Regatta, my first response was, duh! Do seagulls crap on boats? Of course I'd love to go back down to the islands on a press junket.

But then I started to have second thoughts. I'm a cruiser, not a racer. And I haven't written straight magazine articles in a very long while. Could I do this? In spite of my doubts, the allure of returning to St. Thomas helped convince me that I could pull this one off, and here I am masquerading as a member of the "yachting press" and writing this blog to the sounds of the Caribbean surf beneath my balcony here at the Sugar Bay Resort.

Press Pool Party at Sugar Bay Resort

When I first arrived Wednesday evening, we journalists were invited to the press party down by the pool, and I began my first foray into the world of yacht racing journalism. At first, I walked around with my complimentary cocktail in hand and merely observed the crowd. I began to think that due to my natural shyness, I was never going to transform into CK, girl reporter. Remarkably, by the second drink, I found myself joining fellow sailors and writers, introducing myself and learning all about the yacht club volunteers,  race committee members, and judges who make a regatta like this run. By the time our hosts from the tourist board escorted us onto the veranda table for dinner at the restaurant, I was a veritable chatterbox. Thank goodness for Cruzan Rum.

Today, we journalists were invited to take a tour around the island in the open air truck/taxi owned by Campbell Ray, our own personal driver for our stay here on St. Thomas. As the rain blew in from St John, Campbell worked the gears to get that truck up the near vertical mountain roads, driving with one hand and narrating in the microphone with the other.  "This area is called Anna's Retreat," he announced. "They have the best voter turn out of any neighborhood on the island – it averages 200%" It didn't matter that squalls were strafing Pillbury Sound, and we were driving through the fog of cloud cover on the mountaintop. Campbell had us laughing and our hostesses were handing us Banana Daiquiris, and I was deciding that thanks to a little more rum, maybe I could handle this journalism gig after all.

Lunch at Glady's Cafe

After a spectacular lunch in downtown Charlotte Amalie, we headed out to the Yacht Club for the skippers' meeting and opening party. If ever I was going to be found out to be the fraud I am, I knew it would happen there. I wandered among the beautiful young deck crews and the distinguished sun-tanned owners wondering where I was going to find the stories that would earn my keep, and whether any of these rock star sailors would be willing to let a cruiser go sailing with them for a day. I finally struck up a conversation with some folks while waiting in line for the free Mount Gay rum samples, and discovered that some of these beautiful racing folks were also cruisers. I was scribbling away in my journalist's notebook and beginning to feel like I might belong.

A serious Rolex racer

While all the other journalists were vying to get on the grand prix boats with crews fresh off the Volvo, I told our sponsors that I would like a ride on a non-spinnaker boat. Surely, I figured, there's got to be a place here where I won't get in the way. When it was my turn to find out if I would get to go sailing, the regatta director smiled and said he had just the boat for me. "It's a Swan 60, and the owner is very laid back. He likes to invite all his friends for a terrific sail and they're looking for someone who can pour the rum and run the blender." Rum, I can handle.

I've found my boat.

Fair winds!

Christine

Author of CIRCLE OF BONES
Available for Kindle 

 

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Thanks for the inspiration, but…

C.E. Grundler

I've been described as a lot of things. Dark, twisted, warped, skewed…and I'd suspect there are plenty of other terms not said directly to my face. I've been told there is something inherently distorted in my outlook on life. And while many might not see these attributes in a positive way, I take them as compliments, which I do realize says something in itself about my personality. I'll be the first to admit it: behind the curls and cheerful smile lurks an evil mind. Happily, these days my writing lets me embrace these particular qualities – more than that – to focus them productively onto the pages of my stories. And as readers discover the unusual ways my characters meet with harm, there's one question I hear more and more often.

"How do you come up with this stuff?"

(I also get a surprising number of inquiries about my husband's well-being, which always gives me a laugh. Yes, he's alive and well. But back to the first question.)

I suppose, if you boil it down, I'd have to say I've spent too much time around boats. You see, I have a knack for visualizing worst-case scenarios. I can look at a situation and envision endless variations of possible catastrophe. And boats, by their nature, are the ideal setting for Murphy's law to prevail. Even with the best preparation, things can and do go wrong. And once you let diligence slide, Murphy is there, just waiting for the opportunity to demonstrate how very, very wrong things can and will go.

I see a carelessly placed shore power cord running from a non-GFI outlet and chafing raw at the dock's edge, and my writer's brain contemplates how I could conveniently bump off a character in an effectively electrifying way. That whiff of propane drifting down the dock…hmmm. Are fumes settling in that boat's bilge? On the fictional front it could be useful, and I'd already filed that one for a future book, even as I try to locate the owner of the prospective mushroom cloud docked upwind of mine. The fellow down the dock who simply climbs aboard and fires up the engine, never even pausing to run the blower or glance into the engine room to sniff around or inspect fluids. The oil pressure alarm clamors away and he casually informs me, "Oh, that always stays on. I can't figure out how to disable it," while the bilge pump spews out a soup of water and oil that puts the Exxon Valdez to shame. Or the runabout up on a trailer, hull plug out and the bilge steadily draining a glistening puddle with a stench of raw gasoline from what is likely a leaking fuel tank or line. It doesn't take much to imagine how that boat, and anyone aboard, could end up consumed in an inferno of melting fiberglass and barbequed crew. Yet, most horrifying of all is how the boat's owner appears completely oblivious to the situation, and equally unconcerned when I bring it to his attention.

As the author of novels filled with nautical mayhem, these potentially disastrous recipes for electrocutions, fires and explosions provide a multitude of wonderfully creative and entirely plausible options for disposing of characters in gruesome yet proven ways. But the same elements that make for wonderful fiction, are in reality the stuff of nightmares. And while, from a writer's perspective, I do appreciate the never-ending abundance of ideas these owners and their poorly maintained and operated boats provide, as a boat owner, I'd really prefer they be docked somewhere else.

Blog: cegrundler.com

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An Arms Deal…

The other day I had an black market arms deal go down. I was approached in regards to the arms deal from a long time client. I said why not and went along for the adventure. We were to meet at 9:45am last Wednesday by Bayside in downtown Miami. We had the cash; they had the arms. When we arrived, I received a call that alerted us to a black Subaru Forester parked along the curb towards the parking lot and facing out to Biscayne Blvd. The caller told us to follow the car to an unknown destination.

My anonymous friend and I drove along behind the car as we meandered through the sprawling streets of Miami. After 20 minutes in who knows where, we stopped at a red light. Next to us another black Subaru Forester stopped in mid-traffic and put down its wind shield; we did the same. They threw the arms into our vehicle; we threw back the sack of cash into theirs. Then they sped off. When the light turned green, we drove on. No sirens went on. No one took notice.

The above might be a story I should not write about when blogging about my life as a yacht broker.

My essential purpose in writing is to more deeply understand the knowledge and skills I acquire while in yacht sales. I do not have many readers, and the pay is as poor as here at WOW. I write about market trends I see which clearly show such changes as an increase in the popularity of multihulls (growth from 20% to 30% of sailboat market since 2004) and the dominance of over 100′ motoryachts in the Fort Lauderdale market ($1.6 billion of the $2 billion total value of yachts for sale). I write reviews of yachts which I have represented, seatrialed, sold, or delivered such this today's review of the Gozzard 36. I write descriptions of the geography of cities and countries where I travel. All the research and writing I do helps me get an edge to make the best decisions in an ever changing market.

All these rather typical articles are heavy filtered. Part of the yacht sales business is privacy; another part is persuasion. In my writing, I have to always be thinking about what information not reveal which feels counter intuitive. Sometimes the most exciting and entertaining details such as an arms deal or a more benign catastrophic survey/seatrial are obscured because revealing them would compromise people I have a responsibility to protect. A friend of mine and magazine writer once told me that he quite the brokerage business "to have freedom of expression." I enjoy the challenge of writing in such a medium though sympathise with his perspective.

I know I am not alone. Tom Tripp wrote in a piece sometime ago about the challenge of magazine writers writing reviews of manufacturers who advertise with them. It is a tough deal to disparage the models of the person who essentially writes your pay check. I think every writing medium requires compromises. Even in novels, you must handle the inclusion of details from your personal life that may complicate your relationships with friends and family. Maybe the true novelist is the one who can throw care to the wind; I do not know.

I think the true artist in business blogging is the one who can manage the politics of all these stakeholders and still manage to grow as a writer and contribute worthwhile information to the sum of human knowledge.

Please feel free to see how I fared politically this week writing a review of the Gozzard 36.

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Joyce Holland on poetry

By Joyce Holland

Is there a writer out there who hasn't tried his or her hand at poetry? We all know there is no money in the endeavor, but for those of us who give it a whirl, it's something we can't resist. I've tried it all, from jingles, to free verse, to serious Freudian blather, childish rhymes, and even a stab at Haiku. Although I've had more than a few published, and it's about as lucrative as writing a novel, I can't stop myself. I do it when the mood strikes me.

Let's face it, boaters are dreamers in the best sense of the word. We're escapists who make good on our fantasies. I may not have been on the water in a while, but my heart is sailing the far horizons with the rest of you. Poetry does exactly that for me. It sets me free to explore uncharted waters. When it doesn't sing, the words dribble to a halt and I back up and reach down until I find another way. It's tighter than prose that way, you're squeezed until you make music out of words.

I grew up with a father who loved Robert Service, he could recite many of the most famous ones. He also had a dirty version of Dangerous Dan McGrew that made us all cringe. It's recalling the joy on his face that inspired me to start writing poetry. I'm working on a book I call Ballads From the Flim Flam Saloon. I'm no Robert Service, but I do have a lot of fun trying to write like him. Here is the first ballad in the book, Long John Jones. It's been published twice.

LONG JOHN JONES

Long John Jones was a dangerous man,
mean clear through to his bones,
and the number of people who wanted John dead
could jam the Red River with stones.

John like to single out weaker men
and make them the butt of his wit.
Their fighting back only fired John up,
and once riled, he'd never quit.

When Long John Jones caught a bullet in the brain
not a soul in the valley cried.
Even the sheriff didn't bother check
to see at whose hand John had died.

Long John's presence wasn't missed by the town,
it was celebrated by most.
They thought themselves better off than before,
until they encountered John's ghost.

They say John appeared in the Flim Flam Saloon
one night in the middle of May.
and declared to the patrons surrounding the bar
that for his demise, someone would pay.

Now Charlie Malone was without a doubt
the smartest man in the county,
so the town folks talked it over that night
and offered Charlie, John's bounty.

If Charlie could manage to keep Long John Jones
from haunting the Flim Flam Saloon,
the people would pick up his bar tab for life.
The deadline was Friday, come noon.

For days Charlie fought with Long John Jones.
He threatened, cursed and cajoled.
Charlie knew that he had to win this fight,
'cause no bar tab for life was worth gold.

But at ten o'clock on the deadline day,
Charlie still sat at the bar.
Fighting and screaming would not do the trick,
or at least they hadn't so far.

So Charlie stopped and communed for a bit
with the bottle of Red on his right.
The solution, Charlie suddenly thought,
was with brains and not with a fight!

Charlie Malone downed his bottle of red
and called out to Long John Jones,
"If I tell you who did you in that night,
will you go back and rejoin your bones?"

"Malone, I swear on my mother's grave,"
Long John lied at his best.
"All I want is the name of the villain
who laid my body to rest."

Charlie took paper and wrote on it,
then folded it up real tight.
He stuffed it in the bottle of Red
and told John, "it's your right."

"The name of the man who drilled your head
is written on the note inside.
You must climb in the bottle, Long John Jones,
to learn at whose hand you died."

Long John rose like a tendril of smoke
and slithered down into the spout,
and Charlie Malone slammed home the cork
so Long John couldn't get out.

Charlie took the bottle holding Long John Jones
and threw it in the river that night.
Then he stood there laughing beneath the moon
'till the vessel drifted from sight.

So the next time you're walking on some distant shore,
should you chance on a bottle afloat,
be very careful if you look within
and happen to see, a note.

Long John Jones may just be inside,
and you soon may not be alone,
if you pull out the cork and read these words:
You were shot by Charlie Malone.

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