Carlene Havel's Blog: Carlene, page 17
August 3, 2012
1960s
Starting today, I'll be serializing a short story about a 1960s high school adventure. Enjoy!
Every girl in my high school wanted to belong to the popular clique, but that required being pretty and appealing to the opposite sex. There was also a group of girls we called fast. Fast girls wore piles of makeup. Some bleached their hair. Most smoked an occasional cigarette in the girls’ bathroom, and all were rumored to have done it. I wasn’t sure what “it” was, but no matter. My hawk-eyed parents would never let me wear enough makeup to run with this crowd. By default I drifted into a small group of self-styled smart girls. We thought of ourselves as studious, since never having a date leaves a lot of time for hitting the books. Smart girls did homework during study hall instead of passing notes to reveal who liked whom.
Athletes wore their letter jackets on the day they were awarded. For the remainder of the year, the jackets would be worn by the popular girls. A boy who wore his own jacket in the hallway thereby signaled he had broken up with his popular girlfriend. In a week or so the trophy would pass to another member of the in-crowd. The previously disgraced male of the species could resume hauling a double load of books. He would again fit in.
Every girl in my high school wanted to belong to the popular clique, but that required being pretty and appealing to the opposite sex. There was also a group of girls we called fast. Fast girls wore piles of makeup. Some bleached their hair. Most smoked an occasional cigarette in the girls’ bathroom, and all were rumored to have done it. I wasn’t sure what “it” was, but no matter. My hawk-eyed parents would never let me wear enough makeup to run with this crowd. By default I drifted into a small group of self-styled smart girls. We thought of ourselves as studious, since never having a date leaves a lot of time for hitting the books. Smart girls did homework during study hall instead of passing notes to reveal who liked whom.
Athletes wore their letter jackets on the day they were awarded. For the remainder of the year, the jackets would be worn by the popular girls. A boy who wore his own jacket in the hallway thereby signaled he had broken up with his popular girlfriend. In a week or so the trophy would pass to another member of the in-crowd. The previously disgraced male of the species could resume hauling a double load of books. He would again fit in.
August 2, 2012
Reading Memories
Age two and a half: I sit on the floor watching my mother read a paperback novel. Her eyes move across, then down. Across again, and down again. Occasionally she turns a page. If I want to know what is in my little picture books, I have to ask someone to read to me. It makes me jealous that Mother is so absorbed in her book. Age three: I climb into my grandmother’s lap with my Little Golden Book “Kerry the Fire Engine Dog”’ in hand. “Read to me?” I plead. After a few pages, I point out that she skipped a page. “If you have the book memorized, there’s no point in me reading it to you,” she says, dumping me out of her lap. Age five: “I don’t like spinach,” I impertinently remind my mother. “Those are mustard greens. Eat them.” “No,” I argue, “this is spinach. I can tell.” She digs a can from the trash. “Look,” she says, “mustard greens.” I know I am defeated. “All right,” I agree sullenly, “I’ll eat this because I can’t prove it’s spinach. But next year I’m going to learn to read. Then I’ll know that can says ‘spinach’ on it. And after that, I won’t ever eat this stuff again.” I eventually learned to love spinach, but never recovered from that wonderful obsession with reading.
August 1, 2012
Who said it?
Who said: "Let me have men about me who are fat…"? Very often the answer to that question comes back “Caesar” or “Julius Caesar”. Actually the quote comes from the play Julius Caesar. Those famous words were put in the character’s mouth by none other than William Shakespeare. I doubt Willy is spinning in his grave when he fails to get credit for this great line. More likely, he would smile to realize he created a character so believable we think the Roman emperor actually said what the writer imagined.
July 31, 2012
King James
Oh how I love thee, King James. Thy poetry, thy imagery, thy enduring truth—what can rival thee? In what other volume is the 23rd Psalm infused with such surpassing beauty? Would that other refuges of my childhood remain as faithful as thee. Verily do I now read from more contemporary translations, but with thine exquisite Elizabethan loveliness thou art and shall ever remain my first literary love.
July 30, 2012
The Gift of Reading
I wonder if we fully appreciate the great gift of reading. A reader can pick up a book written by someone who lived centuries ago and read about that person’s ideas, point of view, and experiences. If someone’s legacy is in musical notation, it needs no translation. A violinist can pull out a score that may not have seen the light of day for four hundred years, written by someone whose speech the musician would not have understood. Yet through the phenomenon of written communication, the song written by some long-dead composer lives. What a miracle.
July 29, 2012
Giveaway-A Hero's Homecoming
Please sign up for a free copy of "A Hero's Homecoming".
July 28, 2012
Is Print Dying?
“Print is dead.” That line usually got a big laugh when audiences heard it declared by Egon (played by Harold Ramis) in the 1984 movie Ghostbusters. The laughter fades as the humorous dialogue becomes closer and closer to reality. I have become quite comfortable with my eReader, now wondering why I ever thought it was a good idea to lug a bag of books along to every vacation destination. Fewer people extol the virtues of turning the pages of a “real” book when they consider the price differential between a hardback and the same work in electronic format. The financial benefits of ebooks in academic settings could be staggering. Imagine a world where high school students had a fully loaded eReader instead of a backpack full of heavy hardbacks. How many trees could be saved? How quickly could updates to a text book be implemented, pushed out to eReaders instead of waiting for thousands of revised paper books to be printed? Schools could perhaps eliminate student lockers, freeing up space and reducing the need for drug-sniffing dogs to roam the halls checking for contraband. Egon is morphing from amusing to prophetic. Who knew?
July 27, 2012
Huh?
I just saw a book rated PG13/Erotica. Excuse me? How can one book be both? Surely no one is writing books with explicit descriptions of sexual behavior for young teenagers. I can only hope the categorization is a mistake that will soon be corrected. What really puzzles me is that several books by the same author were similarly catalogued (not on Goodreads I'm happy to report).
July 26, 2012
Fortune Cookies
I don't believe in fortune-telling, so why am I upset when I go to a Chinese restaurant and the cookie contains something that sounds more like a quote from Poor Richard's Almanac than a prediction of the future? I think it's the false advertising. "It is best to think before one speaks" is a fine maxim, but it's not a fortune!
July 25, 2012
A Rush!
UPS left a box on my porch this morning--printed copies of "A Hero's Homecoming". I love my kindle, but there's nothing quite like holding an old-fashioned honest-to-goodness book in my hands, with my own name on the cover as the author.
