Rolf Margenau's Blog, page 7
July 1, 2013
A modest suggestion
To date, literally thousands of readers have downloaded a free, promotional copy of Master Gardener on Amazon.com. I'm guessing some Goodreads members were involved. So, here I am, shivering in front of a dwindling wood fire, hand-cranking the generator to coax enough electricity to run the computer for moments at a time, awaiting the handful of reviews such interest in the book should generate. But there aren't any.
Please help sustain me.
Write a review.
Please help sustain me.
Write a review.
June 27, 2013
Roses and Bitsy Crangle
Monthly gardening columnist in the Master Gardener novel, Bitsy Crangle, advises, "fill a large mouth jar with soapy water (dish soap is good) and shake the Japanese beetles on your roses into the jar. Do it quickly so they don't have a chance to fly away."
June 10, 2013
Review - Master Gardener
It appears I have finally been blogged about. A web reviewer more than "liked" the book; it received an "A." Don't believe it? See http://blogcritics.org/?submit=Search...
May 28, 2013
Book Expo America
I am very pleased to report that both Pistils and Poetry and Master Gardener will be featured at this event at the Javits Center in New York this week.
May 16, 2013
Korea Today
It is unfortunate that the current unsettled situation in North Korea is threatening the 28,000 United States troops stationed in South Korea. I was there last fall, almost 60 years after serving there, and was impressed with the capability and vulnerability of the fine service people we met. Also, those of us who served in the early 50's can take pride in the staggering growth of South Korea. For example, there is a gleaming KIA auto factory located where the 7th Infantry Division had its headquarters near the DMZ - and no sign of the mud and wattle village nearby then. In any case, there is more interest this spring in my novel about the War, Public Information. Among other things, it explains what it was like to serve there during combat and after - a tremendous contrast to how our troops live and work there now. Because of that interest, I have lowered the price of the soft cover book for the next month or so to less than $20. It's available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.Public Information: A Novel about the Korean War
April 15, 2013
Master Gardener book
Quite a number of people seem to want to read this book. Just to be clear, it isn't a gardening book, although there are some good gardening tips written by Bitsy Crangle, my somewhat dispepsic alter-heroine. It's really about what is happening in the agri/chem/business world and how all this stuff can be dangerous to our health and our world. I'm told it is sort of funny, too. And it has a happy ending.
February 14, 2013
Next novel - High Andes
It is my belief that the gap between the haves and have-nots in our country is an extremely dangerous social and economic malady. It challenges American "exceptionalism" in almost too many ways to count and threatens to turn us into a second rate country.
That being said, how does one make that point in fiction? I explored the dangers and benefits of agribusiness in Master Gardener using my background as an attorney and gardener. What background material could I use to document the consequences of a society polarized by social and economic repression of the majority?
I had the good fortunate to be involved in business dealings in Peru that afforded me and my family an opportunity to climb its mountains, study its culture and forage in places tourists do not go. I love the country for its geographic diversity and am saddened by the decades of political turmoil is has suffered.
In the 80s, Peru was assailed by two communist inspired insurrections. They destabilized the government and placed certain parts of the country under terrorist control. The insurrection was tied directly to the economic plight of the "99 percent." What happened there can be a fictional metaphor for potential risks in America.
I like my alter ego, Wylie Cypher, reluctant hero of my first two novels. He will be featured in High Andes as well. Story elements will involve him in the battle with the "Sendero Luminoso," Shining Path guerillas, antiquities smuggling, fleeing the military (responsible for numerous "disappearances"),trekking the Andes with a daughter and generally trying to avoid numerous difficulties I will devise for him.
A central character in the novel is the mummy of an Inca child, preserved for centuries in the thin air of the Cordilleras Blanca. Her story opens the book and is excerpted below. I would love to know whether that might encourage a reader to turn the page to a new chapter.
1525
The special child seemed almost weightless in his arms as he reached the last plateau beneath the niche in the rocks above, where he intended to place her. He was an embalmer in the region of Hauraz, a servant to the Inca ruler, Huayna Capac. The body of the three-year-old girl he carried was the daughter of Cuca, wife of Maita Capac. Cuca herself was now sick with the plague that lay like a dark hand on the people of the white cordillera. That disease had quickly taken the life of her first-born, the lively and adored Cocohuay, named for the turtledoves kept in a dovecote outside her window.
The sickness spread almost faster than the noble runners could report it. There was news about strange white people at Tumbes in the north. They wore silver jackets and sat on huge four legged beasts, three times the size of the largest llama. They had huge wooden houses that went on the sea and sticks that carried thunder. The plague began at Tumbes, and it was said that the wooden houses left two of the strange men there and sailed away. Huayna Capac sent to have them brought to him but they were lost along the way. Now the ruler’s people settled in Chavin de Huantar were dying. The embalmer’s services were in high demand.
Cuca, not yet ill, had called him about her little daughter when she died. As wife of the regional administrator, she was highly placed and her demands took priority. Not that he would have denied her anyway. Once he saw the child’s suddenly frail little body carefully arranged on the low table among sweet smelling grasses and flowers, and noted the florid marks on her face and body, his heart went out to the grieving mother. He would do all he could to care for the little girl.
It took him two days to prepare her. First he selected a series of elongated hooks that he inserted in her anus to remove her internal organs. He had difficulty in locating her heart and, once found, it was removed in pieces. He placed the organs in a finely made pottery jar with a lid, to accompany her to the place of eternal sunshine. Then he carefully began to treat the skin. He mixed oil from llama wool with bees wax and a bit of wood ash and slowly rubbed the balm onto the skin with a pad of alpaca hair. He paid particular attention to her head and treated her still glossy black hair as well. Once the skin was treated, he placed cotton in her facial cavities. She retained her childlike features, except for the dark marks from the disease.
Her body was free of rigor, so he carefully placed her limbs so she was in a sitting position. To keep her upright, flat, thin boards were placed at each side, to be removed later as the first layer of fine cloth was wrapped around her little body. However, before she was covered, he placed a necklace with three silver triangles around her neck and slipped a silver bracelet adorned with doves on a tiny wrist. Cura sent cloths decorated with birds and pumas for her daughter, and he bundled her in those fabrics. Her mother had ordered that she not be placed in a pottery urn. She wanted her daughter to experience the clear radiance of the high mountains on her journey to everlasting light.
He picked up the bundle that was Cocohuay. It came just to his knee and seemed no heavier than a melon. He gathered it along with a leather bag of corn, a little fur jacket, the ceramic vessel with her organs, and a water gourd. On his belt he carried a small pot with brilliant red paint. It was early morning, still cold and damp. He could see mists rising from the valley below as he began his ascent to the sacred place, the high peak among the highest mountains of the white cordillera. They called it Huallpa, Sun of Joy.
With life-long knowledge of these mountains, he gauged his ascent carefully. Care was necessary, as the war with the Chimu was not yet settled. They still sent out raiding parties even as far south as Hauraz.
Completely adapted to the thin air of the mountains with his barrel chest and short, sturdy legs he carried his bundle upwards. When he felt the sun fully on his shoulders, he surveyed the snow-capped peak ahead. He could see the plateau just below the sacred place of the mummies. He would be there when the sun remained at its zenith.
A short climb above the plateau was the opening to a large cave that was home to ancestors from a time before time, before the puma that bore his tribe. There was room for the little bundle there, but he knew of a better location, a place that would please Cuca. He picked his way to a shelf of rock where the last snow of winter yet remained in the shadow of a stone promontory above. He placed what he carried on the shelf and began to remove loose stones and shale from the mountain’s face, creating a little niche for the dove girl. When he was satisfied, he dipped fingers of his eating hand into the little pot of paint and traced outlines of a bird, a deer and a llama on the clean stone. They would be companions to his small charge. The bag of corn, pottery jar, and drinking gourd were there to help on her journey.
Satisfied that all needful things had been supplied, he placed Cocohuay in the niche so her face was turned to the east, where she would be first to see the rising sun. He used the stones removed from the face of the mountain to build a wall around the small bundle, filling the chinks with dirt and pebbles. He left the top open. He did not want to obstruct her view.
The embalmer descended from the sacred place soon afterward.
Cocohuay remained undisturbed in her aerie for centuries, untouched by anything other than the sun and thin air of the High Andes.
Then a tomb robber discovered her and she began a journey unimaginable by any of the people of the white cordillera.
That being said, how does one make that point in fiction? I explored the dangers and benefits of agribusiness in Master Gardener using my background as an attorney and gardener. What background material could I use to document the consequences of a society polarized by social and economic repression of the majority?
I had the good fortunate to be involved in business dealings in Peru that afforded me and my family an opportunity to climb its mountains, study its culture and forage in places tourists do not go. I love the country for its geographic diversity and am saddened by the decades of political turmoil is has suffered.
In the 80s, Peru was assailed by two communist inspired insurrections. They destabilized the government and placed certain parts of the country under terrorist control. The insurrection was tied directly to the economic plight of the "99 percent." What happened there can be a fictional metaphor for potential risks in America.
I like my alter ego, Wylie Cypher, reluctant hero of my first two novels. He will be featured in High Andes as well. Story elements will involve him in the battle with the "Sendero Luminoso," Shining Path guerillas, antiquities smuggling, fleeing the military (responsible for numerous "disappearances"),trekking the Andes with a daughter and generally trying to avoid numerous difficulties I will devise for him.
A central character in the novel is the mummy of an Inca child, preserved for centuries in the thin air of the Cordilleras Blanca. Her story opens the book and is excerpted below. I would love to know whether that might encourage a reader to turn the page to a new chapter.
1525
The special child seemed almost weightless in his arms as he reached the last plateau beneath the niche in the rocks above, where he intended to place her. He was an embalmer in the region of Hauraz, a servant to the Inca ruler, Huayna Capac. The body of the three-year-old girl he carried was the daughter of Cuca, wife of Maita Capac. Cuca herself was now sick with the plague that lay like a dark hand on the people of the white cordillera. That disease had quickly taken the life of her first-born, the lively and adored Cocohuay, named for the turtledoves kept in a dovecote outside her window.
The sickness spread almost faster than the noble runners could report it. There was news about strange white people at Tumbes in the north. They wore silver jackets and sat on huge four legged beasts, three times the size of the largest llama. They had huge wooden houses that went on the sea and sticks that carried thunder. The plague began at Tumbes, and it was said that the wooden houses left two of the strange men there and sailed away. Huayna Capac sent to have them brought to him but they were lost along the way. Now the ruler’s people settled in Chavin de Huantar were dying. The embalmer’s services were in high demand.
Cuca, not yet ill, had called him about her little daughter when she died. As wife of the regional administrator, she was highly placed and her demands took priority. Not that he would have denied her anyway. Once he saw the child’s suddenly frail little body carefully arranged on the low table among sweet smelling grasses and flowers, and noted the florid marks on her face and body, his heart went out to the grieving mother. He would do all he could to care for the little girl.
It took him two days to prepare her. First he selected a series of elongated hooks that he inserted in her anus to remove her internal organs. He had difficulty in locating her heart and, once found, it was removed in pieces. He placed the organs in a finely made pottery jar with a lid, to accompany her to the place of eternal sunshine. Then he carefully began to treat the skin. He mixed oil from llama wool with bees wax and a bit of wood ash and slowly rubbed the balm onto the skin with a pad of alpaca hair. He paid particular attention to her head and treated her still glossy black hair as well. Once the skin was treated, he placed cotton in her facial cavities. She retained her childlike features, except for the dark marks from the disease.
Her body was free of rigor, so he carefully placed her limbs so she was in a sitting position. To keep her upright, flat, thin boards were placed at each side, to be removed later as the first layer of fine cloth was wrapped around her little body. However, before she was covered, he placed a necklace with three silver triangles around her neck and slipped a silver bracelet adorned with doves on a tiny wrist. Cura sent cloths decorated with birds and pumas for her daughter, and he bundled her in those fabrics. Her mother had ordered that she not be placed in a pottery urn. She wanted her daughter to experience the clear radiance of the high mountains on her journey to everlasting light.
He picked up the bundle that was Cocohuay. It came just to his knee and seemed no heavier than a melon. He gathered it along with a leather bag of corn, a little fur jacket, the ceramic vessel with her organs, and a water gourd. On his belt he carried a small pot with brilliant red paint. It was early morning, still cold and damp. He could see mists rising from the valley below as he began his ascent to the sacred place, the high peak among the highest mountains of the white cordillera. They called it Huallpa, Sun of Joy.
With life-long knowledge of these mountains, he gauged his ascent carefully. Care was necessary, as the war with the Chimu was not yet settled. They still sent out raiding parties even as far south as Hauraz.
Completely adapted to the thin air of the mountains with his barrel chest and short, sturdy legs he carried his bundle upwards. When he felt the sun fully on his shoulders, he surveyed the snow-capped peak ahead. He could see the plateau just below the sacred place of the mummies. He would be there when the sun remained at its zenith.
A short climb above the plateau was the opening to a large cave that was home to ancestors from a time before time, before the puma that bore his tribe. There was room for the little bundle there, but he knew of a better location, a place that would please Cuca. He picked his way to a shelf of rock where the last snow of winter yet remained in the shadow of a stone promontory above. He placed what he carried on the shelf and began to remove loose stones and shale from the mountain’s face, creating a little niche for the dove girl. When he was satisfied, he dipped fingers of his eating hand into the little pot of paint and traced outlines of a bird, a deer and a llama on the clean stone. They would be companions to his small charge. The bag of corn, pottery jar, and drinking gourd were there to help on her journey.
Satisfied that all needful things had been supplied, he placed Cocohuay in the niche so her face was turned to the east, where she would be first to see the rising sun. He used the stones removed from the face of the mountain to build a wall around the small bundle, filling the chinks with dirt and pebbles. He left the top open. He did not want to obstruct her view.
The embalmer descended from the sacred place soon afterward.
Cocohuay remained undisturbed in her aerie for centuries, untouched by anything other than the sun and thin air of the High Andes.
Then a tomb robber discovered her and she began a journey unimaginable by any of the people of the white cordillera.
