Peter Prasad's Blog: Expletives Deleted, page 4
September 4, 2014
Tea & Crackers: Chapter 4-5
Tea & Crackers Campaign: Chapter 4
Veda was smart about making a graceful exit and leave her audience wanting more. She took another lap around the room, chatting with enthusiastic supporters. Dr. Spector followed behind her with an ice bucket asking for campaign donations. Marge got faculty wives to volunteer for committee work. She and Dr. Spector would officially run the campaign, as they spoke about filing dates and such things with Veda. I got busy with my email sign-up sheet again, and gave it to one of the faculty wives who made a copy by photographing it with her phone. Veda thanked them all again for their organization and support, and we headed out the door.
As we left Dr. Spector’s house, Veda and I had our first real conversation about the campaign. Now that I’d seen her in action, I had a better sense of what she intended to do. First we stopped at the bank so Veda could put her donations in the night deposit. I endorsed each check with Elect Veda Rabadel, District 28 Campaign, and the account number, and we kept the cash for gas and traveling money. Veda handed me a small notebook to use as a three column donations and expense log. Later she wanted the numbers copied into a spreadsheet. In all, she’d raised more than two thousand dollars, with five hundred coming from one donor, a sugar magnate, the dark haired man whose wife wore the diamond choker. We were far from the five hundred thousand dollars Tugg was sitting on, but it was a start. Veda reviewed my columns of entries, initialed and dated the page and I ran the envelope to the deposit box.
As we drove out of the parking lot, I asked her, “So how are you going to win?”
“Henna, I don’t know if I can, but we’ve got to try.”
“Why try if you don’t think you can win?” I fired right back.
“Well, some things have to be said, discussed in the public arena. At least I know I can do that and give a good public airing to the issues that concern me and some of the people you met tonight.”
“That’s like playing volleyball to make the air more breathable by knocking pollution out of the sky.”
“What?” Veda paused for a minute and laughed.
“So tell me again, how are you going to win?”
“Florida is a swing state,” Veda began again. “And lots of people are embarrassed by the way the governor and his Republican legislature have been running things. We need to capitalize on that dissatisfaction. Also, the district has been Democrat for generations. Then it got gerrymandered into a safe Republican district. Then the dumbest possible Republican got elected.”
“Gerrymander, like salamander, like alligators, right?” I asked, trying to keep it light.
Veda smiled and shook her head. “Look it up,” she said.
The immensity of her candidacy suddenly hit me. If it worked out, it would change my life. I assumed it would be a change for the better, but I really had no idea. I was lost in dreams of volleyball and working at the general store when Veda asked, “You want a job? You can be my campaign aid or researcher or something.”
I held up my list of fifty-three new email names. “Already on it.”
“So, to start, provide me some talking points and facts for my speeches, and do some competitive analysis on what the other side is saying and doing?”
“I get paid?”
“Free room and board.”
“I got that already,” but I said it with a smile.
“Well, I’ll buy you a laptop computer if you can give me facts to build into my speeches,” she offered, “and manage my email list to voters.”
“With your insurance money?”
“Yes, then you’ve got something that can take you to college other than a volleyball.”
“Balling is not so bad.”
“What?”
“Joking. Sure, I’ll do it. But Aunt Veda, I’m different than you.”
“I know you are. I’m doing it because some of these things have to be said. Your uncle was fond of saying it’s our human responsibility to the leave the world a better place than when we found it.”
“Yep, I guess so, but I’m a little too young for that. I’m a jock; you’re a teacher; Unc’ was a warrior for planet earth.”
“So how does that make us different?”
“Real simple,” I said. “I love you, but you’re mostly in your head. Me, I just want to win.”
“Well, I could do with some of that.”
“Then bring it on, Congresswoman. We have 144 days to slam-dunk Tugg. He’s such a mule-faced corn cob, he’s got no chance.”
“Please don’t talk like that.”
“Don’t worry, Aunt Veda, I’ll only tell the truth around you.”
Veda wiped away a tear. Maybe it was my mention of Unc’. That topic was emotional quicksand, and I’d have to remember never to remind her of her sadness. And it was her first tear all day; she was improving. She parked at a big box computer store outside Gainesville. “Let’s get you that laptop computer, then.”
Inside, we ran into the political science student whose shoe I spit on. He got excited when Veda pulled out her plastic. I had a shiny new laptop with an Internet subscription and a satellite dish to mount on the roof. Veda said she’d call one of the Askaloosa brothers to come over and install the dish. And that’s how I met my Jeeter. I could have climbed that ladder myself, but I was learning how a woman can act weak and useless to get a man to do her bidding.
As I was walking out, the pimple-faced kid insisted on carrying my laptop to the car.
“You a registered Democrat?”
“Not yet, but I intend to do it,” he said.
“Tell ya what,” I offered, “you register and get ten of your friends from the store to register too and I’ll put you on my campaign mailing list.”
“Deal,” he said.
“You ever won anything before?”
"No.”
“Great. I like working with political virgins.”
"Takes one to know one,” he said.
I smiled and shook his hand. Soon enough my smile would turn into a smirk, and my years of innocence would be over. Don’t worry; the pimply-faced kid had nothing to do with it, though he did prove to be a valuable geek resource. He got Veda’s campaign website built in three days.
Tea & Crackers Campaign: Chapter 5
My brain was burning and the information overload thrilled me. I’d been up most of three nights on the Internet, reading everything from Mother Jones to the Drudge Report and Wikipedia. Once I got into the Florida Secretary of State’s public campaign records, I began taking notes. I boned up on how to run a grassroots campaign, read about the birth of the Tea Party, where their money comes from, and who all of Congressman Tugg’s donors were – realtors, airplane manufacturers, the religious right and the tobacco lobby. I even got the address of his rental houses in Ocala and thought about lighting one on fire. When I mentioned that to Jeeter, he talked me out of it, saying Tugg was probably insured.
After seeing Jeeter up on the roof with his shirt off to install my satellite dish, I made sure I had his cell phone number. He even offered it, in case the satellite dish needed adjustment or a stiff wind turned it crooked. I couldn’t help myself; I began having little problems with dish reception on a daily basis which gave me good reason to chat with Jeeter on the phone.
I nailed the cardboard box from my new computer to the wall and used a magic marker to create a campaign calendar. The critical dates were August twenty-sixth for the primary election and November second for the general election. I also put a sign on my bedroom door: Congresswoman Rabadel’s Campaign War Room. Now, if the Tea Party wanted to shoot a missile at me, they’d know where to find me.
After one of my famous ninety minute cat naps, I went for coffee downstairs. Gramm was sitting at the kitchen table.
“Veda went out to another meeting. She said I was to let her research assistant sleep in.” Gramm was smoking a joint and polishing a tray of silver jewelry. She liked to dress up as a Seminole elder on Saturdays and sell trinkets to tourists up from Gainesville and from as far away as Tampa or Pensacola. If they bought a bangle, she’d let them take her picture for free.
I poured a cup of chicory coffee and made oatmeal. “I’m on a volleyball training diet until I pass the physical next week.”
“Decided who you’ll play for yet?”
“I think I’ll decide for University of Florida. I’ll be working the campaign in Gainesville this summer and I’m getting to know people on campus.”
"So be careful not to put honey on your oatmeal. I dissolve my magic mushrooms in the honey jar.”
I covered my oatmeal with brown sugar and a sliced banana. “Good to know, Gramm. College athletes get tested for all kinds of drugs.”
“So you’re going to help Veda win the election?” Gramm seemed surprisingly clear-headed.
“It’s my new summer job, helping with research and talking points. And I’m digging for dirt on Tugg. I’ve got a new need for political news. I like seeing Veda in campaign mode. She speaks well and gets people excited.”
"That she does. It’ll be a good way for you to learn how things work around here. The Rabadels have lived in Steinhatchee for generations, and we’ve always worked to make this part of Florida special.”
“Your husband started the marina, and sold it, right? And his father before him planted much of the citrus groves around here, right?”
“Right, and before that we were fishermen and farmers going back to the Seminole Wars. Rumor was a Rabadel ran with Andy Jackson but I’ve never been able to research that accurately.”
“Maybe I can do it on my computer, Gramm.” She smiled and offered me a pull on her joint but I waved her off. “I have to be careful not to get Veda in any trouble by being caught doing under-age drinking or things like that.”
"Hell, no one around here is going to arrest me.” Gramm grinned devilishly. I imagined that was true. She had her ways of flowing around obstacles and always landing on her feet. Also, she owned the Steinhatchee General Store and gave everyone credit. Most folks in the vicinity worshiped her for that. The store was the only place to get a cold beer for twenty miles, and no one wanted to lose that. I’d worked behind the cash register many a hot afternoon.
Gramm would occasionally throw some young kid out, and deny him service, usually for messing up the girly magazines. If she knew the family, she might threaten to cut off his older brothers too. That always brought a parent around with their child in tow to apologize. That’s how Gramm kept the peace hereabouts.
“It’s good for Veda to find something she has passion for. This election may get her fired up and bring her out of her sadness about losing your Uncle Leland. So we have to help her anyway we can, and be prepared. If she loses she might suffer a let-down.”
“Yes, it’s crossed my mind, but we’ve got to try. All of us. She did well with the folks in Gainesville and we’re getting organized.”
“And well you should be,” Gramm declared. “Old Tugg is going to bite into this district like an old gator and be tough as hell to beat. He’ll roll and scratch and bite like swamp vermin, and stay in the good graces of the crackers up north of here. We’ve got to get people riled up and willing to vote for change.”
“How do we do that, Gramm?”
“Don’t know yet, but keep a watchful eye out. The issues and opportunity will come along, and when they do, we have to jump aboard. Meanwhile I think I’ll start sponsoring some bingo and domino tournaments at the senior centers in the district.”
“Lots of those seniors like to vote absentee and mail their ballots early, Gramm.”
“Well, now you’re thinking, child. Maybe bingo for Veda will get people talking.”
“I like that, Gramm. Bingo for Veda.”
“Bingo for Veda,” she repeated and then cackled. She had a shine in her eyes by then. It made me feel good as I could see the Rabadel women getting organized behind their candidate.
Veda was smart about making a graceful exit and leave her audience wanting more. She took another lap around the room, chatting with enthusiastic supporters. Dr. Spector followed behind her with an ice bucket asking for campaign donations. Marge got faculty wives to volunteer for committee work. She and Dr. Spector would officially run the campaign, as they spoke about filing dates and such things with Veda. I got busy with my email sign-up sheet again, and gave it to one of the faculty wives who made a copy by photographing it with her phone. Veda thanked them all again for their organization and support, and we headed out the door.
As we left Dr. Spector’s house, Veda and I had our first real conversation about the campaign. Now that I’d seen her in action, I had a better sense of what she intended to do. First we stopped at the bank so Veda could put her donations in the night deposit. I endorsed each check with Elect Veda Rabadel, District 28 Campaign, and the account number, and we kept the cash for gas and traveling money. Veda handed me a small notebook to use as a three column donations and expense log. Later she wanted the numbers copied into a spreadsheet. In all, she’d raised more than two thousand dollars, with five hundred coming from one donor, a sugar magnate, the dark haired man whose wife wore the diamond choker. We were far from the five hundred thousand dollars Tugg was sitting on, but it was a start. Veda reviewed my columns of entries, initialed and dated the page and I ran the envelope to the deposit box.
As we drove out of the parking lot, I asked her, “So how are you going to win?”
“Henna, I don’t know if I can, but we’ve got to try.”
“Why try if you don’t think you can win?” I fired right back.
“Well, some things have to be said, discussed in the public arena. At least I know I can do that and give a good public airing to the issues that concern me and some of the people you met tonight.”
“That’s like playing volleyball to make the air more breathable by knocking pollution out of the sky.”
“What?” Veda paused for a minute and laughed.
“So tell me again, how are you going to win?”
“Florida is a swing state,” Veda began again. “And lots of people are embarrassed by the way the governor and his Republican legislature have been running things. We need to capitalize on that dissatisfaction. Also, the district has been Democrat for generations. Then it got gerrymandered into a safe Republican district. Then the dumbest possible Republican got elected.”
“Gerrymander, like salamander, like alligators, right?” I asked, trying to keep it light.
Veda smiled and shook her head. “Look it up,” she said.
The immensity of her candidacy suddenly hit me. If it worked out, it would change my life. I assumed it would be a change for the better, but I really had no idea. I was lost in dreams of volleyball and working at the general store when Veda asked, “You want a job? You can be my campaign aid or researcher or something.”
I held up my list of fifty-three new email names. “Already on it.”
“So, to start, provide me some talking points and facts for my speeches, and do some competitive analysis on what the other side is saying and doing?”
“I get paid?”
“Free room and board.”
“I got that already,” but I said it with a smile.
“Well, I’ll buy you a laptop computer if you can give me facts to build into my speeches,” she offered, “and manage my email list to voters.”
“With your insurance money?”
“Yes, then you’ve got something that can take you to college other than a volleyball.”
“Balling is not so bad.”
“What?”
“Joking. Sure, I’ll do it. But Aunt Veda, I’m different than you.”
“I know you are. I’m doing it because some of these things have to be said. Your uncle was fond of saying it’s our human responsibility to the leave the world a better place than when we found it.”
“Yep, I guess so, but I’m a little too young for that. I’m a jock; you’re a teacher; Unc’ was a warrior for planet earth.”
“So how does that make us different?”
“Real simple,” I said. “I love you, but you’re mostly in your head. Me, I just want to win.”
“Well, I could do with some of that.”
“Then bring it on, Congresswoman. We have 144 days to slam-dunk Tugg. He’s such a mule-faced corn cob, he’s got no chance.”
“Please don’t talk like that.”
“Don’t worry, Aunt Veda, I’ll only tell the truth around you.”
Veda wiped away a tear. Maybe it was my mention of Unc’. That topic was emotional quicksand, and I’d have to remember never to remind her of her sadness. And it was her first tear all day; she was improving. She parked at a big box computer store outside Gainesville. “Let’s get you that laptop computer, then.”
Inside, we ran into the political science student whose shoe I spit on. He got excited when Veda pulled out her plastic. I had a shiny new laptop with an Internet subscription and a satellite dish to mount on the roof. Veda said she’d call one of the Askaloosa brothers to come over and install the dish. And that’s how I met my Jeeter. I could have climbed that ladder myself, but I was learning how a woman can act weak and useless to get a man to do her bidding.
As I was walking out, the pimple-faced kid insisted on carrying my laptop to the car.
“You a registered Democrat?”
“Not yet, but I intend to do it,” he said.
“Tell ya what,” I offered, “you register and get ten of your friends from the store to register too and I’ll put you on my campaign mailing list.”
“Deal,” he said.
“You ever won anything before?”
"No.”
“Great. I like working with political virgins.”
"Takes one to know one,” he said.
I smiled and shook his hand. Soon enough my smile would turn into a smirk, and my years of innocence would be over. Don’t worry; the pimply-faced kid had nothing to do with it, though he did prove to be a valuable geek resource. He got Veda’s campaign website built in three days.
Tea & Crackers Campaign: Chapter 5
My brain was burning and the information overload thrilled me. I’d been up most of three nights on the Internet, reading everything from Mother Jones to the Drudge Report and Wikipedia. Once I got into the Florida Secretary of State’s public campaign records, I began taking notes. I boned up on how to run a grassroots campaign, read about the birth of the Tea Party, where their money comes from, and who all of Congressman Tugg’s donors were – realtors, airplane manufacturers, the religious right and the tobacco lobby. I even got the address of his rental houses in Ocala and thought about lighting one on fire. When I mentioned that to Jeeter, he talked me out of it, saying Tugg was probably insured.
After seeing Jeeter up on the roof with his shirt off to install my satellite dish, I made sure I had his cell phone number. He even offered it, in case the satellite dish needed adjustment or a stiff wind turned it crooked. I couldn’t help myself; I began having little problems with dish reception on a daily basis which gave me good reason to chat with Jeeter on the phone.
I nailed the cardboard box from my new computer to the wall and used a magic marker to create a campaign calendar. The critical dates were August twenty-sixth for the primary election and November second for the general election. I also put a sign on my bedroom door: Congresswoman Rabadel’s Campaign War Room. Now, if the Tea Party wanted to shoot a missile at me, they’d know where to find me.
After one of my famous ninety minute cat naps, I went for coffee downstairs. Gramm was sitting at the kitchen table.
“Veda went out to another meeting. She said I was to let her research assistant sleep in.” Gramm was smoking a joint and polishing a tray of silver jewelry. She liked to dress up as a Seminole elder on Saturdays and sell trinkets to tourists up from Gainesville and from as far away as Tampa or Pensacola. If they bought a bangle, she’d let them take her picture for free.
I poured a cup of chicory coffee and made oatmeal. “I’m on a volleyball training diet until I pass the physical next week.”
“Decided who you’ll play for yet?”
“I think I’ll decide for University of Florida. I’ll be working the campaign in Gainesville this summer and I’m getting to know people on campus.”
"So be careful not to put honey on your oatmeal. I dissolve my magic mushrooms in the honey jar.”
I covered my oatmeal with brown sugar and a sliced banana. “Good to know, Gramm. College athletes get tested for all kinds of drugs.”
“So you’re going to help Veda win the election?” Gramm seemed surprisingly clear-headed.
“It’s my new summer job, helping with research and talking points. And I’m digging for dirt on Tugg. I’ve got a new need for political news. I like seeing Veda in campaign mode. She speaks well and gets people excited.”
"That she does. It’ll be a good way for you to learn how things work around here. The Rabadels have lived in Steinhatchee for generations, and we’ve always worked to make this part of Florida special.”
“Your husband started the marina, and sold it, right? And his father before him planted much of the citrus groves around here, right?”
“Right, and before that we were fishermen and farmers going back to the Seminole Wars. Rumor was a Rabadel ran with Andy Jackson but I’ve never been able to research that accurately.”
“Maybe I can do it on my computer, Gramm.” She smiled and offered me a pull on her joint but I waved her off. “I have to be careful not to get Veda in any trouble by being caught doing under-age drinking or things like that.”
"Hell, no one around here is going to arrest me.” Gramm grinned devilishly. I imagined that was true. She had her ways of flowing around obstacles and always landing on her feet. Also, she owned the Steinhatchee General Store and gave everyone credit. Most folks in the vicinity worshiped her for that. The store was the only place to get a cold beer for twenty miles, and no one wanted to lose that. I’d worked behind the cash register many a hot afternoon.
Gramm would occasionally throw some young kid out, and deny him service, usually for messing up the girly magazines. If she knew the family, she might threaten to cut off his older brothers too. That always brought a parent around with their child in tow to apologize. That’s how Gramm kept the peace hereabouts.
“It’s good for Veda to find something she has passion for. This election may get her fired up and bring her out of her sadness about losing your Uncle Leland. So we have to help her anyway we can, and be prepared. If she loses she might suffer a let-down.”
“Yes, it’s crossed my mind, but we’ve got to try. All of us. She did well with the folks in Gainesville and we’re getting organized.”
“And well you should be,” Gramm declared. “Old Tugg is going to bite into this district like an old gator and be tough as hell to beat. He’ll roll and scratch and bite like swamp vermin, and stay in the good graces of the crackers up north of here. We’ve got to get people riled up and willing to vote for change.”
“How do we do that, Gramm?”
“Don’t know yet, but keep a watchful eye out. The issues and opportunity will come along, and when they do, we have to jump aboard. Meanwhile I think I’ll start sponsoring some bingo and domino tournaments at the senior centers in the district.”
“Lots of those seniors like to vote absentee and mail their ballots early, Gramm.”
“Well, now you’re thinking, child. Maybe bingo for Veda will get people talking.”
“I like that, Gramm. Bingo for Veda.”
“Bingo for Veda,” she repeated and then cackled. She had a shine in her eyes by then. It made me feel good as I could see the Rabadel women getting organized behind their candidate.
August 26, 2014
Tea & Crackers Campaign: Chapter Three
Tea & Crackers Campaign: Chapter 3
It was nine months after Unc’s funeral that Aunt Veda and I drove to G-string Gainesville. She was coming out of her mourning. It was rough watching her work it out. There had been an inquiry, a funeral, an awards ceremony in Tallahassee for her to receive Unc’s distinguished service award in recognition of being killed in the line of duty. It was an open case when we drove to Gainesville.
It took forever for her insurance money to come through, but on the day it did, Aunt Veda stopped drinking vodka, filed for leave of absence from her job as a counselor at the junior college and began making plans to run as a Democrat in gerrymandered U.S. House of Representatives Florida district 28. The district was some bastard concoction from a pointy-head Republican in Tallahassee, where the politicians play with a marked deck that favors Republicans 60-40%. A hundred and fifty years earlier, our habit was to shoot Republicans at the Mason-Dixon line, but times have changed. I never knew Aunt Veda had so much martyr in her, and I doubted her campaign would ever get out of the quagmire with only fifty thousand dollars in financing. But that’s my aunt Veda, a do-gooder with no quit in her.
Her biggest advantage was that she was running against a first term tea party Republican named Earl Tugg. Tugg was a tall, boisterous man that always had a Bible quote chambered and ready to fire. He’d inherited a chain of liquor stores in north Florida, then found Jesus and a new wife. He sold off his holdings and became a tea-totaler with rental incomes. You might say he was a mouthpiece looking for a mantra because he memorized the tea party message lock, stock and barrel. He equated Washington with Hell and Obama with the devil, and he testified for a year in every neighborhood church that would have him, and he won. Then he got to Washington and did nothing at all except broadcast the message of Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.
My introduction to Tugg was a YouTube video of him working a tea party crowd in a tent at a north Florida fair. He squeezed out a tea bag and put it in his top pocket, where it left a dark stain on his sweaty blue shirt. He fired a fiendish grin at the camera and claimed his heart bled for America and would everyone join his fight to protect the Constitution. I thought it was a cheap stunt, but the crowd loved it. Tugg went back stage and changed his shirt. His campaign manager then auctioned off his tea-stained short for five hundred dollars. I suspect he had a shill in the audience that bid up the price.
The rain let up and the road dried off as we wheeled into Gainesville, a college town overflowing with students, gawkers and God-knows what, all young and excitable. Veda parked at the curb in front of one of those fancy buildings with a brick portico and Greek Ionic columns that made portions of the campus look a white-bread reform school. Two gawkers protected a parking spot for her beside a palm tree. Both had bad acne. I took them to be freshmen, and they didn’t disappoint me. Who else wore khaki slacks and yellow polo shirts? All my friends are the blue jeans and t-shirt crowd.
One of the pimply-faced college kids opened the door for me and eyed me hard as I straightened out my red hibiscus dress. He smirked, so I leaned forward and landed a tobacco juice goober right on the top of his yellow canvas shoe. My goober was nasty brown. He jumped back so fast he tripped on the curb and landed on his butt. I must have had extra juice that night; it’s rare I can knock a guy off his feet.
Once we got past the wrought-iron security gate and the brick portico, Dr. Thetis Spector and his wife Marge welcomed us into their stately Colonial door. Dr. Spector towered over his wife, a tall, gangly man with spidery long fingers and curly nut-brown hair bunched like a halo around his mostly bald dome. He had huge hands, a firm handshake, a red face and a rich, warm voice. I guessed he was in his sixties, and saw he needed to trim his nose hairs. Veda said he headed up the university’s political science department, and chaired the local Democratic Party. Marge was dressed in Birkenstocks, casual stretch jeans, a red silk blouse with a string of misshapen pearls and gold hoop earrings. Her hair was the same color, pecan-brown with lots more curls.
Their spacious living room vibrated with a mix of passionate beliefs, loud conversation and Dave Brubeck jazz. Eager young couples crowded onto three orange couches around a coffee table covered with paper cups and bowls of pretzels. Behind them a few rows of folding chairs were mostly taken by keen young Democrats. Standing by a wall of glass windows were a group of senior men in suits. The air conditioning was turned up high and kept the room habitable. Outside, patio lights illuminated ferns and rose bushes, damp from the rain.
Aunt Veda followed Dr. Spector around the room, shaking hands and making small talk. She projected a calm concern and interest in everyone. Dr. Spector leaned in to give her background on each person she met. Dr. Spector acted like Veda’s advisor and mentor, which made me a little jealous. I began to worry about securing a safe position on Veda’s campaign. I was too young to vote and was afraid I’d get skipped over entirely.
Veda worked the room, rubbing elbows and getting the lay of the political landscape. I was surprised how many people she seemed to know. I’d forgotten about Veda’s years of working on steering committees, environmental groups and educational outreach, plus all the counseling she’d done. Now I could see her years of political activity were steering her toward trying to win the lottery. I guessed that most of the couples were university faculty, and all the singles were students representing various interest groups and campus clubs. I wandered over to the self-serve bar stocked with beer and jug wine.
This was my first proper political meet-and-greet. What galled me most was I felt over-dressed. In fact, Veda and I were the only women in dresses. I fetched Veda a bottle of spring water off the bar and poured myself a cup of beer.
Marge snuck up behind me and took it away. She didn’t say anything rude; instead she smiled at me. “I understand you’re quite the volleyball star,” she said.
I grunted and eyed a diet cola can. “Undefeated last year. I was co-captain of the Steinhatchee Bobcats.” I watched her hand my beer to another student who didn’t look much older than me. I wondered if Marge could remember back to when she had a teen-aged obsession for free beer.
“And you’ve got a couple of local colleges talking scholarship?”
“Yep, University of Florida and Florida State in Tallahassee, but I haven’t decided yet. I have to pass a physical exam scheduled for next week,” I said.
“That would be so wonderful for you,” Marge said, smiling brightly. “The University of Florida would be lucky to have you on their team.” When she said that, I decided I liked her. “You know we’re very fond of your aunt Veda. I think she’ll be a fine candidate for us.”
“Have you known Veda for long?”
“More than five years. I consider her and your uncle friends. Thetis was planning to run Leland in the race, but then with the accident, Veda stepped in.”
I gave her a sharp look. “It weren’t no accident. He was murdered. And one of my duties will be to catch the guy that did it.”
Marge took a step back, then reached out and touched my arm. “I am truly sorry for your loss. Your Uncle Leland was a wonderful man.”
“Yes, he was. We all miss him something terrible,” I said and looked down at my shoes. Marge squeezed my elbow again and let her hand linger there. I looked up and asked her point-blank, “So, do you think Veda can win?”
“It’ll be a tough race and lots has to go right, like not having a young member of Veda’s family get in trouble for under-age drinking,” Marge said. That’s when I looked at her and smiled and reached for the diet soda can.
“You know, Florida is changing, and the District is changing with it,” Marge said. “We have lots of retirees now, and young urban families that haven’t been represented by the old crackers in the boonies. If we can get those folks to vote for the future instead of for a party or a principle, we have a good chance. I believe Veda Rabadel can represent that spirit of change and made a solid run against Tugg.”
“My Aunt Veda is going to work her ass off,” I said.
“It’s nice to see a qualified woman elbowing her way to the table,” Marge replied. These political folks speak in metaphors that I’d have to learn. And if Veda needed someone to do some elbowing for her, I decided I wanted to do that too. Marge wandered off, with a fresh glass of white wine, and I watched Aunt Veda hop from one special interest group to another. She favored the women over the men, but was polite and interested in everyone.
Three gals in black leather jackets cornered Veda for a few minutes. One of them went off on her, rising her voice, saying her human rights were being violated. Veda nodded and asked her to be patient, reminding her that change takes time. Having met the candidate, the black leather jackets returned to the bar and finished the red wine. One of them smiled at me and looked me over pretty good. I saw too much hunger in her eyes, so I wandered back into the crowd. Later, each of the leather jacket gals dropped a twenty dollar bill into the ice bucket when Dr. Spector passed the hat.
I circulated among the Gator Nation t-shirts and met representatives from Open Internet, Environmental Gainesville, Save the Suwanee, and the medical marijuana initiative. Each ranted at me about their issue. “It’s critical to the voters and the District,” I was told. Each group wanted to know Veda’s position. I escaped each time by saying, “You’ll want to ask her yourself, but I’ll let her know you were here.”
The college crowd liked Aunt Veda. She didn’t go school-marmish on them and stuck to her positions: family, jobs, education and the environment. I stuck out like a sore thumb in my red dress, though three wives chatted with me and commented on how exciting politics can be. Each wanted a woman in the campaign and said they’d give Veda their support. No one offered me a drink, so I circled back for a bottle of spring water and managed to ditch my chaw by spitting into an empty cup when no one was looking.
Perhaps I was feeling some regret, so I walked up to the pimply kid that had saved a parking place for us. I handed him a napkin and pointed out that what was on his shoe didn’t belong inside the house. He mumbled, looked down, blushed and grew more red bumps on his face. I guessed he was a freshman there for brownie points with his professor. He didn’t have the good looks of a politician and had no charisma, being all Adam’s apple.
I handed him my email sign-up sheet. His name was Rusty, a political science major, so he was older than a freshman. Dr. Spector was his favorite professor, and giving extra credit for students that worked on Veda’s campaign. Rusty volunteered to build a website for Veda, and wanted to help me with the email list. I circulated for a while and collected fifty three names.
After small talk and mingling, Dr. Spector hushed everyone up, cleared his throat and asked for attention. As a professor, he couldn’t help but profess himself. He launched into a short lecture on the roots of America, the importance of the two party system, the need to represent all voices, and to create a government that represented all kinds of people. Most importantly, he stressed the value of a good education if you wanted a decent job, and he said the University of Florida was a great place to do that. Then he got around to introducing Veda.
“Many of you have taken time to meet Veda Rabadel by now, but let me introduce her to you again. Veda is a native daughter of District 28. She hails from down on the coast there at Steinhatchee. In fact her family go back several generations.”
“Aw hell, further back than that. She’s got Seminole blood. Plus some swamp skunk. You can tell by the white stripe in her auburn hair. So she’s ready to stomp that tea party carpet-bagger who’s making a laughing stock of our state.” The comment came from a tall, walnut-faced man leaning on the bar. He wore his black hair in a ponytail, and shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortable speaking in public. His dark jacket, hand-stitched with a bright pattern of horizontal stripes in a narrow zigzags, identified him as a Seminole Indian. Dr. Specter smiled at the interruption; Veda nodded at him and absent-mindedly patted her hair. I made a mental note to remember to ask her who he was.
“Veda Rabadel is an honored member of our community,” Dr. Spector said, back on track. “She’s been a school teacher, a junior college counselor, and is the widowed wife of a Florida state park ranger. She is a humanitarian, a people person, a true Democrat concerned with the well-bring of all Americans. And she is an environmentalist, having grown up in pristine swamp country. Tonight, Veda Courtney Rabadel is pleased to announce her candidacy for District 28’s US House of Representatives seat. With your help, and we need all of you, we can unseat incumbent Republican, Earl 'room-temperature IQ' Tugg.” Most of the crowd snickered at that. “If any of you have met Earl, then I know Veda Rabadel can count on your support.”
The gathering clapped, several hooted and Dr. Spector sat down. I nudged Aunt Veda forward and she sipped from her spring water. If she didn’t burst into tears, I knew she’d be all right.
“Firstly, let me thank you all for coming out tonight.” Veda took her time and made lots of eye contact. “While I may be new to politics, and some of you may wish it was my husband Leland standing here, I’m willing to take his place and be your candidate, and be your representative in Washington. I’ve been looking after Florida, her land and her people, all my life. I know the issues and I grew up in District 28. As a school teacher, I believe in the power of homework, and I’ve been done my homework. And, yes, I hope you’ll vote for me.”
I watched my aunt blink a few times, then I saw her face harden. In a stronger voice, she began again. “Our freshman representative, Republican Earl Tugg, is an embarrassment to us all. He doesn’t represent the interests of anyone in this room. He represents the do-nothing Republicans and the always-say-no tea party faction that has no platform and no agenda. He represents the special interests of a few billionaires that finance his campaign. He votes “no” on everything. Even worse, his tea party is holding the Republican Party hostage, and so we have gridlock in Washington. That’s unconscionable. When you elect a person to go do a job, they’re supposed to do it, not grandstand, make lunatic statements, and try to shut down government.
“Now many of you know politics is all about money. To date, Earl has half a million dollars in campaign funds from tea party PACs. Those PACs are funded by libertarian billionaires. He gets to keep it as long as he wins reelection and does what Karl Rove tells him to do.” I watched an elegant, dark complexioned man with brushed back black hair in a cream colored suit adjust his necktie and look uncomfortable. He sat next to the best dressed woman in the room. I squinted; she might have been wearing a diamond choker. I wasn’t sure; I’d never seen one before.
Veda continued: “Shut down government. Throw his weight around. Hold the middle-of-the-road Republicans hostage. Take no prisoners. Disrespect the President. That’s no way to represent the state of Florida. Earl Tugg wants to bankrupt social service programs, cancel your medical coverage, restrict the right to vote to property owners, and keep your head buried in the sand.”
Veda shook her head and sized up the room. I sensed she was getting ready to really let loose. This was more fire in her than I’d seen for months. “Earl Tugg is the absence of leadership. He thinks the Rapture is coming for him before his term expires. Well, I’d like to see him gone that quickly.”
People laughed at that. One of the gals in a black leather jacket folded her arms across her chest and shook her head. I saw her mouth the words, “Ain’t going.”
“I ache for our Florida. We’ve become the laughing stock of the nation by hanging chad, disenfranchising voters, gerrymandering districts, and running candidates with a ‘do-nothing’ agenda from the tea party. And now we find some of our local policemen are closet members of the Ku Klux Klan.” Veda stared at her audience and shook her head.
“That’s not public service. That’s not what we elect these people to go to Washington to do for us. And this has got to stop. So I want you to join me, get angry as all hell and tell your friends to vote for me.” The room burst into applause.
It was nine months after Unc’s funeral that Aunt Veda and I drove to G-string Gainesville. She was coming out of her mourning. It was rough watching her work it out. There had been an inquiry, a funeral, an awards ceremony in Tallahassee for her to receive Unc’s distinguished service award in recognition of being killed in the line of duty. It was an open case when we drove to Gainesville.
It took forever for her insurance money to come through, but on the day it did, Aunt Veda stopped drinking vodka, filed for leave of absence from her job as a counselor at the junior college and began making plans to run as a Democrat in gerrymandered U.S. House of Representatives Florida district 28. The district was some bastard concoction from a pointy-head Republican in Tallahassee, where the politicians play with a marked deck that favors Republicans 60-40%. A hundred and fifty years earlier, our habit was to shoot Republicans at the Mason-Dixon line, but times have changed. I never knew Aunt Veda had so much martyr in her, and I doubted her campaign would ever get out of the quagmire with only fifty thousand dollars in financing. But that’s my aunt Veda, a do-gooder with no quit in her.
Her biggest advantage was that she was running against a first term tea party Republican named Earl Tugg. Tugg was a tall, boisterous man that always had a Bible quote chambered and ready to fire. He’d inherited a chain of liquor stores in north Florida, then found Jesus and a new wife. He sold off his holdings and became a tea-totaler with rental incomes. You might say he was a mouthpiece looking for a mantra because he memorized the tea party message lock, stock and barrel. He equated Washington with Hell and Obama with the devil, and he testified for a year in every neighborhood church that would have him, and he won. Then he got to Washington and did nothing at all except broadcast the message of Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.
My introduction to Tugg was a YouTube video of him working a tea party crowd in a tent at a north Florida fair. He squeezed out a tea bag and put it in his top pocket, where it left a dark stain on his sweaty blue shirt. He fired a fiendish grin at the camera and claimed his heart bled for America and would everyone join his fight to protect the Constitution. I thought it was a cheap stunt, but the crowd loved it. Tugg went back stage and changed his shirt. His campaign manager then auctioned off his tea-stained short for five hundred dollars. I suspect he had a shill in the audience that bid up the price.
The rain let up and the road dried off as we wheeled into Gainesville, a college town overflowing with students, gawkers and God-knows what, all young and excitable. Veda parked at the curb in front of one of those fancy buildings with a brick portico and Greek Ionic columns that made portions of the campus look a white-bread reform school. Two gawkers protected a parking spot for her beside a palm tree. Both had bad acne. I took them to be freshmen, and they didn’t disappoint me. Who else wore khaki slacks and yellow polo shirts? All my friends are the blue jeans and t-shirt crowd.
One of the pimply-faced college kids opened the door for me and eyed me hard as I straightened out my red hibiscus dress. He smirked, so I leaned forward and landed a tobacco juice goober right on the top of his yellow canvas shoe. My goober was nasty brown. He jumped back so fast he tripped on the curb and landed on his butt. I must have had extra juice that night; it’s rare I can knock a guy off his feet.
Once we got past the wrought-iron security gate and the brick portico, Dr. Thetis Spector and his wife Marge welcomed us into their stately Colonial door. Dr. Spector towered over his wife, a tall, gangly man with spidery long fingers and curly nut-brown hair bunched like a halo around his mostly bald dome. He had huge hands, a firm handshake, a red face and a rich, warm voice. I guessed he was in his sixties, and saw he needed to trim his nose hairs. Veda said he headed up the university’s political science department, and chaired the local Democratic Party. Marge was dressed in Birkenstocks, casual stretch jeans, a red silk blouse with a string of misshapen pearls and gold hoop earrings. Her hair was the same color, pecan-brown with lots more curls.
Their spacious living room vibrated with a mix of passionate beliefs, loud conversation and Dave Brubeck jazz. Eager young couples crowded onto three orange couches around a coffee table covered with paper cups and bowls of pretzels. Behind them a few rows of folding chairs were mostly taken by keen young Democrats. Standing by a wall of glass windows were a group of senior men in suits. The air conditioning was turned up high and kept the room habitable. Outside, patio lights illuminated ferns and rose bushes, damp from the rain.
Aunt Veda followed Dr. Spector around the room, shaking hands and making small talk. She projected a calm concern and interest in everyone. Dr. Spector leaned in to give her background on each person she met. Dr. Spector acted like Veda’s advisor and mentor, which made me a little jealous. I began to worry about securing a safe position on Veda’s campaign. I was too young to vote and was afraid I’d get skipped over entirely.
Veda worked the room, rubbing elbows and getting the lay of the political landscape. I was surprised how many people she seemed to know. I’d forgotten about Veda’s years of working on steering committees, environmental groups and educational outreach, plus all the counseling she’d done. Now I could see her years of political activity were steering her toward trying to win the lottery. I guessed that most of the couples were university faculty, and all the singles were students representing various interest groups and campus clubs. I wandered over to the self-serve bar stocked with beer and jug wine.
This was my first proper political meet-and-greet. What galled me most was I felt over-dressed. In fact, Veda and I were the only women in dresses. I fetched Veda a bottle of spring water off the bar and poured myself a cup of beer.
Marge snuck up behind me and took it away. She didn’t say anything rude; instead she smiled at me. “I understand you’re quite the volleyball star,” she said.
I grunted and eyed a diet cola can. “Undefeated last year. I was co-captain of the Steinhatchee Bobcats.” I watched her hand my beer to another student who didn’t look much older than me. I wondered if Marge could remember back to when she had a teen-aged obsession for free beer.
“And you’ve got a couple of local colleges talking scholarship?”
“Yep, University of Florida and Florida State in Tallahassee, but I haven’t decided yet. I have to pass a physical exam scheduled for next week,” I said.
“That would be so wonderful for you,” Marge said, smiling brightly. “The University of Florida would be lucky to have you on their team.” When she said that, I decided I liked her. “You know we’re very fond of your aunt Veda. I think she’ll be a fine candidate for us.”
“Have you known Veda for long?”
“More than five years. I consider her and your uncle friends. Thetis was planning to run Leland in the race, but then with the accident, Veda stepped in.”
I gave her a sharp look. “It weren’t no accident. He was murdered. And one of my duties will be to catch the guy that did it.”
Marge took a step back, then reached out and touched my arm. “I am truly sorry for your loss. Your Uncle Leland was a wonderful man.”
“Yes, he was. We all miss him something terrible,” I said and looked down at my shoes. Marge squeezed my elbow again and let her hand linger there. I looked up and asked her point-blank, “So, do you think Veda can win?”
“It’ll be a tough race and lots has to go right, like not having a young member of Veda’s family get in trouble for under-age drinking,” Marge said. That’s when I looked at her and smiled and reached for the diet soda can.
“You know, Florida is changing, and the District is changing with it,” Marge said. “We have lots of retirees now, and young urban families that haven’t been represented by the old crackers in the boonies. If we can get those folks to vote for the future instead of for a party or a principle, we have a good chance. I believe Veda Rabadel can represent that spirit of change and made a solid run against Tugg.”
“My Aunt Veda is going to work her ass off,” I said.
“It’s nice to see a qualified woman elbowing her way to the table,” Marge replied. These political folks speak in metaphors that I’d have to learn. And if Veda needed someone to do some elbowing for her, I decided I wanted to do that too. Marge wandered off, with a fresh glass of white wine, and I watched Aunt Veda hop from one special interest group to another. She favored the women over the men, but was polite and interested in everyone.
Three gals in black leather jackets cornered Veda for a few minutes. One of them went off on her, rising her voice, saying her human rights were being violated. Veda nodded and asked her to be patient, reminding her that change takes time. Having met the candidate, the black leather jackets returned to the bar and finished the red wine. One of them smiled at me and looked me over pretty good. I saw too much hunger in her eyes, so I wandered back into the crowd. Later, each of the leather jacket gals dropped a twenty dollar bill into the ice bucket when Dr. Spector passed the hat.
I circulated among the Gator Nation t-shirts and met representatives from Open Internet, Environmental Gainesville, Save the Suwanee, and the medical marijuana initiative. Each ranted at me about their issue. “It’s critical to the voters and the District,” I was told. Each group wanted to know Veda’s position. I escaped each time by saying, “You’ll want to ask her yourself, but I’ll let her know you were here.”
The college crowd liked Aunt Veda. She didn’t go school-marmish on them and stuck to her positions: family, jobs, education and the environment. I stuck out like a sore thumb in my red dress, though three wives chatted with me and commented on how exciting politics can be. Each wanted a woman in the campaign and said they’d give Veda their support. No one offered me a drink, so I circled back for a bottle of spring water and managed to ditch my chaw by spitting into an empty cup when no one was looking.
Perhaps I was feeling some regret, so I walked up to the pimply kid that had saved a parking place for us. I handed him a napkin and pointed out that what was on his shoe didn’t belong inside the house. He mumbled, looked down, blushed and grew more red bumps on his face. I guessed he was a freshman there for brownie points with his professor. He didn’t have the good looks of a politician and had no charisma, being all Adam’s apple.
I handed him my email sign-up sheet. His name was Rusty, a political science major, so he was older than a freshman. Dr. Spector was his favorite professor, and giving extra credit for students that worked on Veda’s campaign. Rusty volunteered to build a website for Veda, and wanted to help me with the email list. I circulated for a while and collected fifty three names.
After small talk and mingling, Dr. Spector hushed everyone up, cleared his throat and asked for attention. As a professor, he couldn’t help but profess himself. He launched into a short lecture on the roots of America, the importance of the two party system, the need to represent all voices, and to create a government that represented all kinds of people. Most importantly, he stressed the value of a good education if you wanted a decent job, and he said the University of Florida was a great place to do that. Then he got around to introducing Veda.
“Many of you have taken time to meet Veda Rabadel by now, but let me introduce her to you again. Veda is a native daughter of District 28. She hails from down on the coast there at Steinhatchee. In fact her family go back several generations.”
“Aw hell, further back than that. She’s got Seminole blood. Plus some swamp skunk. You can tell by the white stripe in her auburn hair. So she’s ready to stomp that tea party carpet-bagger who’s making a laughing stock of our state.” The comment came from a tall, walnut-faced man leaning on the bar. He wore his black hair in a ponytail, and shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortable speaking in public. His dark jacket, hand-stitched with a bright pattern of horizontal stripes in a narrow zigzags, identified him as a Seminole Indian. Dr. Specter smiled at the interruption; Veda nodded at him and absent-mindedly patted her hair. I made a mental note to remember to ask her who he was.
“Veda Rabadel is an honored member of our community,” Dr. Spector said, back on track. “She’s been a school teacher, a junior college counselor, and is the widowed wife of a Florida state park ranger. She is a humanitarian, a people person, a true Democrat concerned with the well-bring of all Americans. And she is an environmentalist, having grown up in pristine swamp country. Tonight, Veda Courtney Rabadel is pleased to announce her candidacy for District 28’s US House of Representatives seat. With your help, and we need all of you, we can unseat incumbent Republican, Earl 'room-temperature IQ' Tugg.” Most of the crowd snickered at that. “If any of you have met Earl, then I know Veda Rabadel can count on your support.”
The gathering clapped, several hooted and Dr. Spector sat down. I nudged Aunt Veda forward and she sipped from her spring water. If she didn’t burst into tears, I knew she’d be all right.
“Firstly, let me thank you all for coming out tonight.” Veda took her time and made lots of eye contact. “While I may be new to politics, and some of you may wish it was my husband Leland standing here, I’m willing to take his place and be your candidate, and be your representative in Washington. I’ve been looking after Florida, her land and her people, all my life. I know the issues and I grew up in District 28. As a school teacher, I believe in the power of homework, and I’ve been done my homework. And, yes, I hope you’ll vote for me.”
I watched my aunt blink a few times, then I saw her face harden. In a stronger voice, she began again. “Our freshman representative, Republican Earl Tugg, is an embarrassment to us all. He doesn’t represent the interests of anyone in this room. He represents the do-nothing Republicans and the always-say-no tea party faction that has no platform and no agenda. He represents the special interests of a few billionaires that finance his campaign. He votes “no” on everything. Even worse, his tea party is holding the Republican Party hostage, and so we have gridlock in Washington. That’s unconscionable. When you elect a person to go do a job, they’re supposed to do it, not grandstand, make lunatic statements, and try to shut down government.
“Now many of you know politics is all about money. To date, Earl has half a million dollars in campaign funds from tea party PACs. Those PACs are funded by libertarian billionaires. He gets to keep it as long as he wins reelection and does what Karl Rove tells him to do.” I watched an elegant, dark complexioned man with brushed back black hair in a cream colored suit adjust his necktie and look uncomfortable. He sat next to the best dressed woman in the room. I squinted; she might have been wearing a diamond choker. I wasn’t sure; I’d never seen one before.
Veda continued: “Shut down government. Throw his weight around. Hold the middle-of-the-road Republicans hostage. Take no prisoners. Disrespect the President. That’s no way to represent the state of Florida. Earl Tugg wants to bankrupt social service programs, cancel your medical coverage, restrict the right to vote to property owners, and keep your head buried in the sand.”
Veda shook her head and sized up the room. I sensed she was getting ready to really let loose. This was more fire in her than I’d seen for months. “Earl Tugg is the absence of leadership. He thinks the Rapture is coming for him before his term expires. Well, I’d like to see him gone that quickly.”
People laughed at that. One of the gals in a black leather jacket folded her arms across her chest and shook her head. I saw her mouth the words, “Ain’t going.”
“I ache for our Florida. We’ve become the laughing stock of the nation by hanging chad, disenfranchising voters, gerrymandering districts, and running candidates with a ‘do-nothing’ agenda from the tea party. And now we find some of our local policemen are closet members of the Ku Klux Klan.” Veda stared at her audience and shook her head.
“That’s not public service. That’s not what we elect these people to go to Washington to do for us. And this has got to stop. So I want you to join me, get angry as all hell and tell your friends to vote for me.” The room burst into applause.
New novel: The Tea & Crackers Campaign
The Tea and Crackers Campaign
Insane antics in a Florida election, 2014
Here is Henna Rabadel’s coming of age journey, a wry and witty look at the evolving American spirit. Over the summer of 2014, Henna struggles to help her Aunt Veda win election in Florida’s fictional US House District 28. This raucous uphill battle opens her eyes to all that is politics today. Henna’s tale is told with keen observation, outrageous characters and prescient insight, framed in a murder mystery. If you enjoy the blood sport of political campaigns, then join Henna as she matures to realize laughter is her favorite elective balm.
Dedication
Extremism in defense of virtue is no vice. – Barry Goldwater, US presidential candidate 1964. A small man who talked like a tiger, scion of a department store fortune, Arizona senator, first man to put an electronic sun sensor atop his flag pole so the Stars & Stripes rose to salute the dawning day.
Chapter 1
It was wicked hot and unnaturally dark outside as if the stars closed up early. I lifted my head from a sweat-damp pillow and sat up in my own bed at Aunt Veda’s with the window open. Maybe what I heard was a trick of the wind or the whisper of old Seminole spirits. It happened at two o’clock, I know because I looked at my wristwatch. It was a night with no moon in October 2013, nine months before Aunt Veda announced her candidacy.
I swear I woke up before I heard the shot that got Uncle Leland Rabadel, but that’s almost impossible to say. Sound travels for miles on a still night over the swamp, echoing around hammocks and bouncing off the flat shallows. It was a high-powered rifle, that’s what I heard, and the coroner confirmed it, dead center behind the ear, so we had a closed casket ceremony and suffered through nine months of misery.
It was hardest on Aunt Veda, that’s for sure. And I’m confident Unc’s ghost comes by to look in on us now and again. Sometimes I’ll see his face in the wrinkle of a window curtain or sense his presence by how a voter rolls his shoulders before asking a question. Uncle Leland may have leaned on some voters for Veda’s benefit, or plain spooked some into standing in long lines to cast their ballot, at least that was the fruit of my prayers.
Uncle Leland was out in his Boston Whaler with the two Merc engines, cruising at low idle, using his high-beam spotlight to patrol the Tide Swamp a few miles up the coast. He knew the swamp; he knew what he was doing. As a Florida state park ranger, his patrol quadrant covered the wildlife management area around Steinhatchee.
Often he’d patrol down to the Chassahowitzka refuge by Weeki Wachee Gardens, but most nights he stayed close to Deadman Bay. That’s where the big gators were. The name Deadman Bay shows up on old Spanish charts for this section of the Florida Gulf coast, so the bay wasn’t named after him. Unc’ made money for the state by enforcing hunting permits and putting fines on poachers. He always said his job was to use awareness and help interpret man’s foolishness for God’s understanding. But that night the swamp reared up and chewed off his head. Was it poachers, gator hunters or pot runners? It was fifteen months later, after the primary and a nasty general election, that I learned the truth.
It was a hellacious time for all of us Rabadels, pushing a boulder uphill with a bunch of junior varsity retreads, you might say. On the other hand, I did some important growing up. Fact is, it made me a woman. And once I got ahold of my guy -- his name is Jeeter -- it weren’t bad a’tall. Here’d how it all came to be.
***
Aunt Veda’s creaky green breadbasket of a Jeep caterpillar-crawled around another rain pond on the asphalt highway. Had I been driving, I’d be scorching the tarmac and rooster-tailing the dank behind me. The wipers slapped overtime as lightening gutted the sky. I tugged at my bra strap under a red and white hibiscus print dress, the first time I’d worn it since Easter Mass and my high school graduation and the funeral before that. I consider it my misery dress, even though my graduation had been fun. Normally I live in a sports bra and shorts.
Hereabouts in West Florida, the land is dead flat. Aunt Veda drove by hopping from one dry patch to another. It’s no way to outrun a gully-washer in late afternoon. My motto: if you see a dry patch ahead, floor it. But Aunt Veda didn’t drive like that, more like she hikes up her skirts and tippy-toes. For my taste, a good drencher rarely lingers long enough to make a proper flash flood that uproots trees and undermines sinkhole cave-ins. All that downpour drains off into the swamp and out to the Gulf by the next day anyway. And the thunder-drenchers always drag in ferocious heat and humidity behind them, bare-foot and in chains.
A Hare Krishna chant reverberated from Veda’s speakers, all whining harmonium, thumb-tapping drum and dippity-do chanting. Strapped tight in a seat next to Veda, I shimmied and weaved my elbows and shoulders to stay tuned into Kali, the destroyer of worlds. Lord knows, I could have been a belly-dancer in another life. I bet God would have bought a ticket to see me peel through a scarf or two.
Veda didn’t know it but I had a small chaw up under my lip. It made me feel armed and dangerous. Since the age of twelve, five years now, I’d lay a hock of tobacco spit at a guy’s feet and he’d back right off. It works every time, even when I land some on his shoe, especially when we’re outnumbered and about to be grabbed at by a boys’ team at a volleyball tournament. Hell, half the girls on my volleyball squad are chawed up when we board the travel bus. We’re the undefeated warriors hereabouts with a district reputation to maintain. Being called the scary witches of Steinhatchee works for us, plus spitting is fun.
God bless the Steinhatchee Bobcats. I finished my senior year as co-captain. ‘Hammer the Slammer’ my team mates called me, though Henrietta Anthrop Rabadel is my birth certificate name. My friends call me Henna, like the ancient organic hair mix, because I have flaming red hair. Like my forbearers, I have an inch-wide streak of white flowing back from my widow’s peak. It’s genetic, so we can tell who’s who around here.
The Hindu chanting was cranked loud so I didn’t have to sit still. I lifted my hands in a parade of Balinese hand mudra, like egrets rising from the knobby knee of a mangrove tree. It didn’t bother Aunt Veda, she drove wearing large black headphones, ensconced in her affirmations for a better tomorrow. I could have been listening to Prairie Home Companion, it wouldn’t matter. Veda was focused on driving and mouthing platitudes from her latest self-esteem CD from Club Audio Oprah. Maybe it made her feel chawed up in her own way, but never as belligerent as me.
She had a two-handed white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel as a rain squall buffeted the Jeep. A howling black hat lightening licker of a storm was trying to blow us off the road. Aunt Veda powered through it, heading for G-string Gainesville, where all the sinners lived. My Aunt Veda, she’d get up extra early to drive across our little redneck town of Steinhatchee, so as not to upset the egg lady. It was the opposite of me, I’d replicate Sherman’s march to the sea, but I loved her for it.
Insane antics in a Florida election, 2014
Here is Henna Rabadel’s coming of age journey, a wry and witty look at the evolving American spirit. Over the summer of 2014, Henna struggles to help her Aunt Veda win election in Florida’s fictional US House District 28. This raucous uphill battle opens her eyes to all that is politics today. Henna’s tale is told with keen observation, outrageous characters and prescient insight, framed in a murder mystery. If you enjoy the blood sport of political campaigns, then join Henna as she matures to realize laughter is her favorite elective balm.
Dedication
Extremism in defense of virtue is no vice. – Barry Goldwater, US presidential candidate 1964. A small man who talked like a tiger, scion of a department store fortune, Arizona senator, first man to put an electronic sun sensor atop his flag pole so the Stars & Stripes rose to salute the dawning day.
Chapter 1
It was wicked hot and unnaturally dark outside as if the stars closed up early. I lifted my head from a sweat-damp pillow and sat up in my own bed at Aunt Veda’s with the window open. Maybe what I heard was a trick of the wind or the whisper of old Seminole spirits. It happened at two o’clock, I know because I looked at my wristwatch. It was a night with no moon in October 2013, nine months before Aunt Veda announced her candidacy.
I swear I woke up before I heard the shot that got Uncle Leland Rabadel, but that’s almost impossible to say. Sound travels for miles on a still night over the swamp, echoing around hammocks and bouncing off the flat shallows. It was a high-powered rifle, that’s what I heard, and the coroner confirmed it, dead center behind the ear, so we had a closed casket ceremony and suffered through nine months of misery.
It was hardest on Aunt Veda, that’s for sure. And I’m confident Unc’s ghost comes by to look in on us now and again. Sometimes I’ll see his face in the wrinkle of a window curtain or sense his presence by how a voter rolls his shoulders before asking a question. Uncle Leland may have leaned on some voters for Veda’s benefit, or plain spooked some into standing in long lines to cast their ballot, at least that was the fruit of my prayers.
Uncle Leland was out in his Boston Whaler with the two Merc engines, cruising at low idle, using his high-beam spotlight to patrol the Tide Swamp a few miles up the coast. He knew the swamp; he knew what he was doing. As a Florida state park ranger, his patrol quadrant covered the wildlife management area around Steinhatchee.
Often he’d patrol down to the Chassahowitzka refuge by Weeki Wachee Gardens, but most nights he stayed close to Deadman Bay. That’s where the big gators were. The name Deadman Bay shows up on old Spanish charts for this section of the Florida Gulf coast, so the bay wasn’t named after him. Unc’ made money for the state by enforcing hunting permits and putting fines on poachers. He always said his job was to use awareness and help interpret man’s foolishness for God’s understanding. But that night the swamp reared up and chewed off his head. Was it poachers, gator hunters or pot runners? It was fifteen months later, after the primary and a nasty general election, that I learned the truth.
It was a hellacious time for all of us Rabadels, pushing a boulder uphill with a bunch of junior varsity retreads, you might say. On the other hand, I did some important growing up. Fact is, it made me a woman. And once I got ahold of my guy -- his name is Jeeter -- it weren’t bad a’tall. Here’d how it all came to be.
***
Aunt Veda’s creaky green breadbasket of a Jeep caterpillar-crawled around another rain pond on the asphalt highway. Had I been driving, I’d be scorching the tarmac and rooster-tailing the dank behind me. The wipers slapped overtime as lightening gutted the sky. I tugged at my bra strap under a red and white hibiscus print dress, the first time I’d worn it since Easter Mass and my high school graduation and the funeral before that. I consider it my misery dress, even though my graduation had been fun. Normally I live in a sports bra and shorts.
Hereabouts in West Florida, the land is dead flat. Aunt Veda drove by hopping from one dry patch to another. It’s no way to outrun a gully-washer in late afternoon. My motto: if you see a dry patch ahead, floor it. But Aunt Veda didn’t drive like that, more like she hikes up her skirts and tippy-toes. For my taste, a good drencher rarely lingers long enough to make a proper flash flood that uproots trees and undermines sinkhole cave-ins. All that downpour drains off into the swamp and out to the Gulf by the next day anyway. And the thunder-drenchers always drag in ferocious heat and humidity behind them, bare-foot and in chains.
A Hare Krishna chant reverberated from Veda’s speakers, all whining harmonium, thumb-tapping drum and dippity-do chanting. Strapped tight in a seat next to Veda, I shimmied and weaved my elbows and shoulders to stay tuned into Kali, the destroyer of worlds. Lord knows, I could have been a belly-dancer in another life. I bet God would have bought a ticket to see me peel through a scarf or two.
Veda didn’t know it but I had a small chaw up under my lip. It made me feel armed and dangerous. Since the age of twelve, five years now, I’d lay a hock of tobacco spit at a guy’s feet and he’d back right off. It works every time, even when I land some on his shoe, especially when we’re outnumbered and about to be grabbed at by a boys’ team at a volleyball tournament. Hell, half the girls on my volleyball squad are chawed up when we board the travel bus. We’re the undefeated warriors hereabouts with a district reputation to maintain. Being called the scary witches of Steinhatchee works for us, plus spitting is fun.
God bless the Steinhatchee Bobcats. I finished my senior year as co-captain. ‘Hammer the Slammer’ my team mates called me, though Henrietta Anthrop Rabadel is my birth certificate name. My friends call me Henna, like the ancient organic hair mix, because I have flaming red hair. Like my forbearers, I have an inch-wide streak of white flowing back from my widow’s peak. It’s genetic, so we can tell who’s who around here.
The Hindu chanting was cranked loud so I didn’t have to sit still. I lifted my hands in a parade of Balinese hand mudra, like egrets rising from the knobby knee of a mangrove tree. It didn’t bother Aunt Veda, she drove wearing large black headphones, ensconced in her affirmations for a better tomorrow. I could have been listening to Prairie Home Companion, it wouldn’t matter. Veda was focused on driving and mouthing platitudes from her latest self-esteem CD from Club Audio Oprah. Maybe it made her feel chawed up in her own way, but never as belligerent as me.
She had a two-handed white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel as a rain squall buffeted the Jeep. A howling black hat lightening licker of a storm was trying to blow us off the road. Aunt Veda powered through it, heading for G-string Gainesville, where all the sinners lived. My Aunt Veda, she’d get up extra early to drive across our little redneck town of Steinhatchee, so as not to upset the egg lady. It was the opposite of me, I’d replicate Sherman’s march to the sea, but I loved her for it.
June 21, 2014
REVIEW: Tracking Bodhidharma, a journey to the heart of Chinese culture
Rarely does an author cut through the mist of confusion and ignorance as does Andy Ferguson in this book. It is many things, like a multi-faceted jewel capturing rainbow light: a travelogue, a history, a social examination, a pilgrimage, a review of the evolution of Buddhism back to its roots.
This is not dry, didactic scholarship; it is wry humanistic Zen about one of the most important beings in human history. It’s about Ferguson’s efforts to pick up a backpack and peel back the layers of the onion. Yes, it’s easy to spout crazy Zen and be bazaar and witty, but Ferguson does not do that. He walks the walk, the fruit of a dozen trips to China (he speaks and reads Chinese). Genuine achievement is humility with insight, and Ferguson shows us the way.
Imagine walking from India to China in 500AD so lit with your realizations, commitment and determination that you’d wait nine years in a cold cave for your students to ripen to where they could hear you. That’s human kindness. That’s Bodhidharma.
From Christmas Humphreys to Dogen, I’ve read many modern authors in the Buddhist pantheon. And retreated to seshin in Kyoto temples too. Yet, Ferguson takes me on a journey I never knew existed. Buddhists like pilgrimage, coming to oneness in sacred places, and Ferguson introduced me to an abundant new realm of hallowed spaces.
I met Ferguson for lunch. We had noodles. He’s working on another history of Bodhidharma. I want to read it. He knows more about Zen Buddhism than any author I know, and he knows it from the seat of his pants and the soles of his shoes. In a Western context, he is a dedicated student, genuine, sincere and with the clarity of a razor blade. No robes. No koans. No glib jive. No magical mystery tour. This is a heart-felt labor of love searching for the historical truth about the man that transformed Buddhism back to its beginnings.
My generation was taught to fear the Red Menace and the Yellow Peril. It was residue from the Korean War and jingoistic war hawks seeking industrial- sized military budgets. The noise continues today – same rant, new targets. I have a neighbor who goes off on racist diatribes about losing jobs to China. Well, this book helped me purge that kind of stinking thinking too.
If you are a student of travel, history, cultures, philosophy, psychology, or just want to wake up in this short, sweet life – this book is for you. I’ve sat with teachers in temples around the world for forty years, and now I sit in awe of the scholarship of Andy Ferguson. Please read this book, seek to animate wisdom and kindness in your life, and do what you can to help others. Ferguson’s book has helped me. Anahata, mon ami!
http://www.amazon.com/Tracking-Bodhid...
This is not dry, didactic scholarship; it is wry humanistic Zen about one of the most important beings in human history. It’s about Ferguson’s efforts to pick up a backpack and peel back the layers of the onion. Yes, it’s easy to spout crazy Zen and be bazaar and witty, but Ferguson does not do that. He walks the walk, the fruit of a dozen trips to China (he speaks and reads Chinese). Genuine achievement is humility with insight, and Ferguson shows us the way.
Imagine walking from India to China in 500AD so lit with your realizations, commitment and determination that you’d wait nine years in a cold cave for your students to ripen to where they could hear you. That’s human kindness. That’s Bodhidharma.
From Christmas Humphreys to Dogen, I’ve read many modern authors in the Buddhist pantheon. And retreated to seshin in Kyoto temples too. Yet, Ferguson takes me on a journey I never knew existed. Buddhists like pilgrimage, coming to oneness in sacred places, and Ferguson introduced me to an abundant new realm of hallowed spaces.
I met Ferguson for lunch. We had noodles. He’s working on another history of Bodhidharma. I want to read it. He knows more about Zen Buddhism than any author I know, and he knows it from the seat of his pants and the soles of his shoes. In a Western context, he is a dedicated student, genuine, sincere and with the clarity of a razor blade. No robes. No koans. No glib jive. No magical mystery tour. This is a heart-felt labor of love searching for the historical truth about the man that transformed Buddhism back to its beginnings.
My generation was taught to fear the Red Menace and the Yellow Peril. It was residue from the Korean War and jingoistic war hawks seeking industrial- sized military budgets. The noise continues today – same rant, new targets. I have a neighbor who goes off on racist diatribes about losing jobs to China. Well, this book helped me purge that kind of stinking thinking too.
If you are a student of travel, history, cultures, philosophy, psychology, or just want to wake up in this short, sweet life – this book is for you. I’ve sat with teachers in temples around the world for forty years, and now I sit in awe of the scholarship of Andy Ferguson. Please read this book, seek to animate wisdom and kindness in your life, and do what you can to help others. Ferguson’s book has helped me. Anahata, mon ami!
http://www.amazon.com/Tracking-Bodhid...
June 19, 2014
GUT-CHECK GREEN, a Climate Fiction Thriller
Happy Summer! Enjoy a rapid-fire climate fiction thriller set in California wine country.
Gut-Check Green
dances with diabolic characters. It explores the future of veterans’ services, drug dependence and our food supply. It raises disturbing questions about the drift toward GMOs and fertilizers.
Here is a conspiracy so plausible it will rattle your dinner plate and change the way you sip chardonnay. Eco-terrorists use mayhem and murder to YouTube an agro-chemical company on product responsibility.
Sonoma P.I. Jake Knight goes undercover to identify and capture them. Before they are brought to justice, he must face a ruthless killer, the Pencil Man. You may find yourself cheering for the bad guys.
“This is Gut-Check Green, the defenders of Mother Nature, checking in. Dirt-ball corporations: we rank them, spank them and prank them. Lasso makes poison and now you’re all going to die. Remember to love your planet. This is Gut-Check Green, checking out.”
GUT-CHECK GREEN is FREE this weekend, June 20-22. Please tell your friends. Happy Summer!
http://www.amazon.com/Gut-Check-Green...
If you like it, please write a short review, as wild and wicked as you like. It makes me a better writer. THANK YOU!
Here is a conspiracy so plausible it will rattle your dinner plate and change the way you sip chardonnay. Eco-terrorists use mayhem and murder to YouTube an agro-chemical company on product responsibility.
Sonoma P.I. Jake Knight goes undercover to identify and capture them. Before they are brought to justice, he must face a ruthless killer, the Pencil Man. You may find yourself cheering for the bad guys.
“This is Gut-Check Green, the defenders of Mother Nature, checking in. Dirt-ball corporations: we rank them, spank them and prank them. Lasso makes poison and now you’re all going to die. Remember to love your planet. This is Gut-Check Green, checking out.”
GUT-CHECK GREEN is FREE this weekend, June 20-22. Please tell your friends. Happy Summer!
http://www.amazon.com/Gut-Check-Green...
If you like it, please write a short review, as wild and wicked as you like. It makes me a better writer. THANK YOU!
June 14, 2014
How to Let Your Voice Out
So let’s assume you have a voice yodeling inside that compels story telling. Agreed? Then you want to be a writer, a dancer with verbs, or maybe one who checks into a beltway motel with a dictionary, a yellow pad and a bottle of name-your-poison.
The voice wants out and will plumb your thoughts and springboard through your emotions as it burrows a hole straight up.
Now don’t go gopher on me. Instead, work your imagination into a fertile field and aerate the soil of your soul. Get it right and we all breathe better.
Last century, I’d read The Paris Review of interviews with authors. I wanted to know how they worked, the tools, the body position, how they tuned in and found the channel. It was all short wave to me. Recently I found more threads of this weave in a 1986 column by William F. Buckley, once editor of the National Review. Trust me, he used to be famous. Here’s what I learned. Yes, I’m plagiarizing.
Anthony Trollope rose at 5 every morning, drank his tea, performed his toilette and looked at the work done the preceding day. He would then begin to write at 6. He set himself the task of writing 250 words every 15 minutes for three and one-half hours. Indeed it is somewhere recorded that if he had not, at the end of 15 minutes, written the required 250 words he would simply ''speed up'' the next quarter-hour, because he was most emphatic in his insistence on his personally imposed daily quota: 3,500 words.
Erle Stanley Gardner dictated his detective novels nonstop to a series of secretaries, having previously pasted about in his studio 3-by-5 cards reminding him at exactly what hour the dog barked, the telephone rang, the murderer coughed. He knew where he was going, the plot was framed in his mind, and it became now only an act of extrusion.
Margaret Coit wrote in her biography of John C. Calhoun that his memorable speeches were composed not in his study but while he was outdoors, plowing the fields on his plantation. He would return to his study and write out what he had framed in his mind. His writing was an act of transcription.
Albert Jay Nock's book on Thomas Jefferson proved that he made fewer corrections on an average page than Buckley would write into a typical 600-word column. Clearly Nock knew exactly what he wished to say and how to say it; prodigious rewriting was, accordingly, unnecessary.
Buckley Jewels:
1) It is not necessary to know how your protagonist will get out of a jam into which you put him. It requires only that you have confidence that you will be able to get him out of that jam.
2) You are, while writing, drawing on huge reserves: of opinion, prejudice, priorities, presumptions, data, ironies, drama, and histrionics. And these reserves you enhance during practically the entire course of the day, and it doesn't matter all that much if a particular hour is not devoted to considering problems of your work-in-progress.
3) You can spend an hour playing the piano and develop your capacity to think, even to create; and certainly you can grasp more keenly, while doing so, your feel for the priorities of your storytelling.
So, there you have it. So, have at it.
You might want to follow along behind you beast with a bucket of soil, some seeds and a strip of typing white-out in your pocket. Life is worth living, and now that summer is here, worth living with bare feet.
My Kindle is open and begging to see how your voice sails through my imagination, spinnaker billowing like the America’s Cup races on San Francisco Bay, the carbon fiber pontoons groaning, sail lines slapping the mast. I want to be up on a rail with you, going flat-fast with contrails of ocean spray in our wake. Happy summer.
On’Ya, dear readers & writers.
And now a word from our sponsor: Celebrate for me. My climate fiction thriller and next in the Sonoma PI Jake Knight series, GUT-CHECK GREEN, launches June 20th Amazon willing. There will be contrails, figuratively speaking.
The voice wants out and will plumb your thoughts and springboard through your emotions as it burrows a hole straight up.
Now don’t go gopher on me. Instead, work your imagination into a fertile field and aerate the soil of your soul. Get it right and we all breathe better.
Last century, I’d read The Paris Review of interviews with authors. I wanted to know how they worked, the tools, the body position, how they tuned in and found the channel. It was all short wave to me. Recently I found more threads of this weave in a 1986 column by William F. Buckley, once editor of the National Review. Trust me, he used to be famous. Here’s what I learned. Yes, I’m plagiarizing.
Anthony Trollope rose at 5 every morning, drank his tea, performed his toilette and looked at the work done the preceding day. He would then begin to write at 6. He set himself the task of writing 250 words every 15 minutes for three and one-half hours. Indeed it is somewhere recorded that if he had not, at the end of 15 minutes, written the required 250 words he would simply ''speed up'' the next quarter-hour, because he was most emphatic in his insistence on his personally imposed daily quota: 3,500 words.
Erle Stanley Gardner dictated his detective novels nonstop to a series of secretaries, having previously pasted about in his studio 3-by-5 cards reminding him at exactly what hour the dog barked, the telephone rang, the murderer coughed. He knew where he was going, the plot was framed in his mind, and it became now only an act of extrusion.
Margaret Coit wrote in her biography of John C. Calhoun that his memorable speeches were composed not in his study but while he was outdoors, plowing the fields on his plantation. He would return to his study and write out what he had framed in his mind. His writing was an act of transcription.
Albert Jay Nock's book on Thomas Jefferson proved that he made fewer corrections on an average page than Buckley would write into a typical 600-word column. Clearly Nock knew exactly what he wished to say and how to say it; prodigious rewriting was, accordingly, unnecessary.
Buckley Jewels:
1) It is not necessary to know how your protagonist will get out of a jam into which you put him. It requires only that you have confidence that you will be able to get him out of that jam.
2) You are, while writing, drawing on huge reserves: of opinion, prejudice, priorities, presumptions, data, ironies, drama, and histrionics. And these reserves you enhance during practically the entire course of the day, and it doesn't matter all that much if a particular hour is not devoted to considering problems of your work-in-progress.
3) You can spend an hour playing the piano and develop your capacity to think, even to create; and certainly you can grasp more keenly, while doing so, your feel for the priorities of your storytelling.
So, there you have it. So, have at it.
You might want to follow along behind you beast with a bucket of soil, some seeds and a strip of typing white-out in your pocket. Life is worth living, and now that summer is here, worth living with bare feet.
My Kindle is open and begging to see how your voice sails through my imagination, spinnaker billowing like the America’s Cup races on San Francisco Bay, the carbon fiber pontoons groaning, sail lines slapping the mast. I want to be up on a rail with you, going flat-fast with contrails of ocean spray in our wake. Happy summer.
On’Ya, dear readers & writers.
And now a word from our sponsor: Celebrate for me. My climate fiction thriller and next in the Sonoma PI Jake Knight series, GUT-CHECK GREEN, launches June 20th Amazon willing. There will be contrails, figuratively speaking.
June 7, 2014
GUT-CHECK GREEN. Due in 13 days. Read All About It.
Enjoy a controversial, fast-paced bio-thriller set in California wine country. Gut-Check Green dances with diabolic characters and an action-packed plot to explore the future of veterans’ services and our food supply. It raises disturbing questions about the drift toward over-dependence on fertilizers and GMOs. Here is a conspiracy so plausible it will rattle your dinner plate and change the way you sip chardonnay.
Sonoma's own P.I. Jake Knight goes undercover to chase a vicious group of killers that evade a terrorist task force. With a raid on a corporate wine dinner, they launch a chain of events with world-rattling repercussions. Only Jake can bring them to justice, but first he must face a ruthless killer, the Pencil Man. As Jake closes in, he discovers the shocking secrets that make these terrorists so desperate. Does their message have truth or is it all madness? Guilty, yes, but sacrificial lambs, maybe, too?
“Millionaires aren't supposed to die like this, Jake. So, fix it.”
“So you’d poison your children to make a quick buck?”
“Lasso is the future of agricultural engineering.”
“Lasso is suicide for future generations.”
Target launch date is June 20th to celebrate summer. Hope you're running around barefoot with your Kindle or e-reader; I am. On'Ya dear readers.
Sonoma's own P.I. Jake Knight goes undercover to chase a vicious group of killers that evade a terrorist task force. With a raid on a corporate wine dinner, they launch a chain of events with world-rattling repercussions. Only Jake can bring them to justice, but first he must face a ruthless killer, the Pencil Man. As Jake closes in, he discovers the shocking secrets that make these terrorists so desperate. Does their message have truth or is it all madness? Guilty, yes, but sacrificial lambs, maybe, too?
“Millionaires aren't supposed to die like this, Jake. So, fix it.”
“So you’d poison your children to make a quick buck?”
“Lasso is the future of agricultural engineering.”
“Lasso is suicide for future generations.”
Target launch date is June 20th to celebrate summer. Hope you're running around barefoot with your Kindle or e-reader; I am. On'Ya dear readers.
June 5, 2014
Language Made Lyrical
There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Artic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.
And so begins ‘The Cremation…” by Robert Service.
In a bygone era without benefit of newspaper print, folks preferred to listen for news, yarns, stories and tall tales spent near warmth after chores and before exhaustion.
And so our imaginations burned, soaked in dime novels and penny dreadfuls, before comic books and radio, when we braved the monster in the machine and as we found all to familiar in ourselves. That was 130 years ago.
Since then, well…
So rekindle, relight, remember, re-evoke and tell more jokes, present company excepted. On’Ya readers.
And so begins ‘The Cremation…” by Robert Service.
In a bygone era without benefit of newspaper print, folks preferred to listen for news, yarns, stories and tall tales spent near warmth after chores and before exhaustion.
And so our imaginations burned, soaked in dime novels and penny dreadfuls, before comic books and radio, when we braved the monster in the machine and as we found all to familiar in ourselves. That was 130 years ago.
Since then, well…
So rekindle, relight, remember, re-evoke and tell more jokes, present company excepted. On’Ya readers.
June 3, 2014
GUT-CHECK GREEN Cli-Fi Thriller, chapter one
GUT-CHECK GREEN by Peter Prasad
A climate fiction thriller of vigilante justice. “This is Gut-Check Green, the defenders of Mother Nature, checking in. Dirt-ball corporations: we rank them, spank them and prank them. Lasso makes poison and now you’re all going to die. Remember to love your planet. This is Gut-Check Green, checking out.”
SET-UP: P.I. Jake Knight goes undercover to chase a vicious group of killers, skilled at evading a terrorist task force. With a raid on a corporate wine dinner, they launch a chain of events with world-rattling repercussions. Only Jake can bring them to justice, but first he must face a ruthless killer, the Pencil Man. As Jake closes in, he discovers the shocking secrets that make these terrorists so desperate. Does their message have truth or is it all madness? Guilty, yes, but sacrificial lambs, maybe, too?
Enjoy a controversial, fast-paced thriller set in the heart of California wine country. Gut-Check Green dances with diabolic characters and an action-packed plot to explore the future of our food supply. It raises disturbing questions about the drift toward over-dependence on GMOs. Here is a conspiracy so plausible it will rattle your dinner plate and change the way you sip chardonnay.
DEDICATION: I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. It is the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose hearts are firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death. - Leonardo da Vinci
CHAPTER 1
Their dance with the Grim Reaper had arrived. After tonight, there’d be no turning back. Pencil, Lizard Bill and Brandy Wine huddled on the tattered bench seat of a smelly plumber’s van. Rain drops tattooed the windshield in an empty car park on Petrified Forest Road outside Calistoga, a hot springs resort town at the top of the Napa valley.
Pencil heard a motorcycle echo on the mountain road and paid it no attention. The heater roared but he shivered anyway. Dim light from the dash-mounted GPS guided his hand into a bag at his feet. He peeled off the VA prescription label and filled the syringe. Living with the effects of exposure to an Agent Orange dioxin was his permanent pain. He’d been within inhalation range of a dirty bomb sometime during his career for the red, white and blue, all off the record in lands far away. He injected the cocktail of anti-viral meds. He had so many cancers, he was metastasizing to a cold grave.
He bagged the meds and wiped his nose on the dirty sleeve of his blue overalls. His hands rarely stopped trembling. He longed for a pain killer, a skin pop of the Dilaudid, his favorite hydromorphone, but he denied himself. Tonight he had work to do.
“It’s about frickin’ time. Lasso Corporation is going down.” Brandy spoke from the driver’s seat with a fervent fire in her eyes and stared at her two soldiers. Her voice ratcheted to a war cry. “We’ll get the attention of the kids, the campuses, the future farmers and foodistas, and we can change the world.” She smacked the steering wheel and pushed her clenched fist toward her partners.
The rabid zeal in her voice embarrassed Pencil. He turned to face her, his ice-cold eyes catching every gesture. He’d heard it before in a dozen briefing rooms and war zones. It was stupid to go into battle with emotions over-amped. But Brandy gave the orders, and Pencil needed her. She was the mother of his craving, so he went along.
Her flushed cheeks glowed red; her bugged-out eyes animated a sad, drooping face. She chomped on a wad of gum. He guessed she was high on amphetamines, with a chaser of nicotine gum. She motor-mouthed her insecurities when she got like this. He knew she drew on a festering ache. This was personal for her.
“Last go for Lasso. Ready to raise the flag?” Brandy howled. She needed to hear them say it one more time. She had a habit of seeking reassurance every thirty minutes, despite being the smart one.
Pencil groaned and knew, for her, it was another kind of need. Brandy had never killed, but Pencil had, too many times. She identified targets and left the execution to him. Lizard was the PC whizz, the creative one, back-up for supply and logistics. It was Pencil who got the killing done. He leaned forward and tapped out a drum roll on the dashboard. He wanted to get his blood up. Every command-post jockey needed to hear her foot soldiers say ‘Oorah’.
“Do or die and maybe both,” Lizard chimed in and bumped fists with Brandy. His laughter turned into a hacking cough with a wheezy rumble deep in his chest. Pencil lived with that sound. He often debated with Lizard about who was sicker.
Pencil extended his fist to bump brotherhood. “I’m dead already,” he said. “Tonight decorates my tombstone.”
“So what if we’re all sick puppies,” Brandy said. “I refuse to let Lasso Corporation poison my planet.” Her jaw chain-sawed at the gum. Pencil cringed; it was like she was auditioning for a Rambo movie.
“Lasso’s wall of lies gets plowed under tonight.” Brandy bounced up and down in her seat like a demented juvenile. “I want to see a sweet harvest for these chemical monsters.” She was wound up higher than a soap box. Chemical monsters? Sure they were; Pencil had a grudge he could extend to any target at any time.
“College campuses will rise up. Society will hear us.” Brandy’s voice overcame the hum of the heater, the engine and the rain. Pencil was afraid to look. He suspected she might be foaming at the mouth. “We the people will know,” she screamed. “And a certain class of assholes goes on notice. Take responsibility for your products, or die. You can’t pump that poison any longer. We, the people, won’t stand for it.”
Pencil wondered if Brandy’s speech qualified as end of life counseling. It made her feel better, and she made him feel better, so what the hell. Then the flash of police lights splashed across the ratty interior and caught him unprepared.
Strobes of red, blue and white flooded through the vehicle in a rapid flicker that sickened him. He closed his eyes, pressed down on his stomach and exhaled slowly. No way could the cops have an alert out already, he thought. He’d stolen the plumber’s van off a job site that morning in San Jose, a hundred miles south, and changed license plates. It had to be routine, or worse, a curious rookie cursed with the helpfulness disease.
“Oh god, Pencil, deal with it,” Brandy shrieked. Her bravado evaporated. She slid down in her seat and moaned like a wounded animal. The flashing colors bounced off her golden locks. She looked wicked old, paste-white skin and sunken eyes. She folded under a chocolate colored party dress and clutched her legs to her chest. Pencil saw the toes of her red stiletto heels hang over the edge of her seat.
Lizard went all spastic, clutching Pencil’s arm, his hands bad with tremors. “I’m begging, bro. Time to do your thing.”
Pencil took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, pushing his pain away. “For fuck sake, get a grip, we haven’t started yet,” he said as he rolled down his sleeve and pried off Lizard’s hand.
“But it’s over if they catch us now,” Brandy wailed. She had burrowed into the frilly skirts of her taffeta gown. Hiked up on the seat, her skinny stork legs were bent at the knee, covered in sheer stockings with a pattern of chocolate hearts. She looked like the action end of a sex doll.
Pencil had an idea; the cop would go all fixated as soon as he looked in on her. Pencil pulled at Brandy’s knee to spread her legs. He pushed Lizard’s head down into the crotch of her panty hose. “Stay like that and don’t look up, no matter what,” he said.
Pencil popped his door open and slipped out, not letting it click shut. He heard the cop tap once on Brandy’s window. “Hey, you…” he commanded, then, sure enough, he went quiet. Lizard’s leg kicked at the dashboard as he twisted and pushed his face in deeper. The van started rocking gently. Pencil imagined the cop was getting an eye full. He wanted this trooper flustered and embarrassed.
Pencil snuck around the back, past the motorcycle with its lights flashing. He peered around the van to size up the trooper. In tall black boots and raingear, the patrolman watched the imagined action between Lizard and Brandy. The visor of his helmet was up. He was leaning in close and his breath steamed the window. He stared intently at what he thought was the climax of orgasm. Brandy must have figured it out, because she started to moan.
Pencil saw the cop was a few inches taller, so he allowed for that. With the flashing lights behind him, the cop wouldn’t see his face. He patted the pocket of his overalls for a number two lead pencil, long, yellow and sharp. He eased it out with his right hand and squeezed tight on the eraser end.
“Officer,” he hollered as he stepped out. “It’s my van. I’m right here. Just wandered away so my crew could have some hankie-do. You want my license and ID? I got it right here.” Pencil steamed forward, his left hand held out where the cop could see it.
He felt the tingle, the old familiar rush of adrenalin, the gas that gooses a killer’s spirit. He inhaled and moved forward, not too fast, closing the gap in three steps. “No worries,” he said. “Sorry to interrupt your evening. Pissing down tonight, hey?”
The cop jerked back and twisted away from the window. His pale face was blushing, his mouth open. He stopped licking his lips. Pencil saw the parade of lights splash off his teeth. The trooper raised a hand to shield his eyes. He held a club-like flashlight in his hand.
“You don’t want to be watching that kind of kinky love,” Pencil said with a chuckle. “It’ll rot your brain.”
DUE JUNE 20th to Celebrate Summer
A climate fiction thriller of vigilante justice. “This is Gut-Check Green, the defenders of Mother Nature, checking in. Dirt-ball corporations: we rank them, spank them and prank them. Lasso makes poison and now you’re all going to die. Remember to love your planet. This is Gut-Check Green, checking out.”
SET-UP: P.I. Jake Knight goes undercover to chase a vicious group of killers, skilled at evading a terrorist task force. With a raid on a corporate wine dinner, they launch a chain of events with world-rattling repercussions. Only Jake can bring them to justice, but first he must face a ruthless killer, the Pencil Man. As Jake closes in, he discovers the shocking secrets that make these terrorists so desperate. Does their message have truth or is it all madness? Guilty, yes, but sacrificial lambs, maybe, too?
Enjoy a controversial, fast-paced thriller set in the heart of California wine country. Gut-Check Green dances with diabolic characters and an action-packed plot to explore the future of our food supply. It raises disturbing questions about the drift toward over-dependence on GMOs. Here is a conspiracy so plausible it will rattle your dinner plate and change the way you sip chardonnay.
DEDICATION: I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. It is the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose hearts are firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death. - Leonardo da Vinci
CHAPTER 1
Their dance with the Grim Reaper had arrived. After tonight, there’d be no turning back. Pencil, Lizard Bill and Brandy Wine huddled on the tattered bench seat of a smelly plumber’s van. Rain drops tattooed the windshield in an empty car park on Petrified Forest Road outside Calistoga, a hot springs resort town at the top of the Napa valley.
Pencil heard a motorcycle echo on the mountain road and paid it no attention. The heater roared but he shivered anyway. Dim light from the dash-mounted GPS guided his hand into a bag at his feet. He peeled off the VA prescription label and filled the syringe. Living with the effects of exposure to an Agent Orange dioxin was his permanent pain. He’d been within inhalation range of a dirty bomb sometime during his career for the red, white and blue, all off the record in lands far away. He injected the cocktail of anti-viral meds. He had so many cancers, he was metastasizing to a cold grave.
He bagged the meds and wiped his nose on the dirty sleeve of his blue overalls. His hands rarely stopped trembling. He longed for a pain killer, a skin pop of the Dilaudid, his favorite hydromorphone, but he denied himself. Tonight he had work to do.
“It’s about frickin’ time. Lasso Corporation is going down.” Brandy spoke from the driver’s seat with a fervent fire in her eyes and stared at her two soldiers. Her voice ratcheted to a war cry. “We’ll get the attention of the kids, the campuses, the future farmers and foodistas, and we can change the world.” She smacked the steering wheel and pushed her clenched fist toward her partners.
The rabid zeal in her voice embarrassed Pencil. He turned to face her, his ice-cold eyes catching every gesture. He’d heard it before in a dozen briefing rooms and war zones. It was stupid to go into battle with emotions over-amped. But Brandy gave the orders, and Pencil needed her. She was the mother of his craving, so he went along.
Her flushed cheeks glowed red; her bugged-out eyes animated a sad, drooping face. She chomped on a wad of gum. He guessed she was high on amphetamines, with a chaser of nicotine gum. She motor-mouthed her insecurities when she got like this. He knew she drew on a festering ache. This was personal for her.
“Last go for Lasso. Ready to raise the flag?” Brandy howled. She needed to hear them say it one more time. She had a habit of seeking reassurance every thirty minutes, despite being the smart one.
Pencil groaned and knew, for her, it was another kind of need. Brandy had never killed, but Pencil had, too many times. She identified targets and left the execution to him. Lizard was the PC whizz, the creative one, back-up for supply and logistics. It was Pencil who got the killing done. He leaned forward and tapped out a drum roll on the dashboard. He wanted to get his blood up. Every command-post jockey needed to hear her foot soldiers say ‘Oorah’.
“Do or die and maybe both,” Lizard chimed in and bumped fists with Brandy. His laughter turned into a hacking cough with a wheezy rumble deep in his chest. Pencil lived with that sound. He often debated with Lizard about who was sicker.
Pencil extended his fist to bump brotherhood. “I’m dead already,” he said. “Tonight decorates my tombstone.”
“So what if we’re all sick puppies,” Brandy said. “I refuse to let Lasso Corporation poison my planet.” Her jaw chain-sawed at the gum. Pencil cringed; it was like she was auditioning for a Rambo movie.
“Lasso’s wall of lies gets plowed under tonight.” Brandy bounced up and down in her seat like a demented juvenile. “I want to see a sweet harvest for these chemical monsters.” She was wound up higher than a soap box. Chemical monsters? Sure they were; Pencil had a grudge he could extend to any target at any time.
“College campuses will rise up. Society will hear us.” Brandy’s voice overcame the hum of the heater, the engine and the rain. Pencil was afraid to look. He suspected she might be foaming at the mouth. “We the people will know,” she screamed. “And a certain class of assholes goes on notice. Take responsibility for your products, or die. You can’t pump that poison any longer. We, the people, won’t stand for it.”
Pencil wondered if Brandy’s speech qualified as end of life counseling. It made her feel better, and she made him feel better, so what the hell. Then the flash of police lights splashed across the ratty interior and caught him unprepared.
Strobes of red, blue and white flooded through the vehicle in a rapid flicker that sickened him. He closed his eyes, pressed down on his stomach and exhaled slowly. No way could the cops have an alert out already, he thought. He’d stolen the plumber’s van off a job site that morning in San Jose, a hundred miles south, and changed license plates. It had to be routine, or worse, a curious rookie cursed with the helpfulness disease.
“Oh god, Pencil, deal with it,” Brandy shrieked. Her bravado evaporated. She slid down in her seat and moaned like a wounded animal. The flashing colors bounced off her golden locks. She looked wicked old, paste-white skin and sunken eyes. She folded under a chocolate colored party dress and clutched her legs to her chest. Pencil saw the toes of her red stiletto heels hang over the edge of her seat.
Lizard went all spastic, clutching Pencil’s arm, his hands bad with tremors. “I’m begging, bro. Time to do your thing.”
Pencil took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, pushing his pain away. “For fuck sake, get a grip, we haven’t started yet,” he said as he rolled down his sleeve and pried off Lizard’s hand.
“But it’s over if they catch us now,” Brandy wailed. She had burrowed into the frilly skirts of her taffeta gown. Hiked up on the seat, her skinny stork legs were bent at the knee, covered in sheer stockings with a pattern of chocolate hearts. She looked like the action end of a sex doll.
Pencil had an idea; the cop would go all fixated as soon as he looked in on her. Pencil pulled at Brandy’s knee to spread her legs. He pushed Lizard’s head down into the crotch of her panty hose. “Stay like that and don’t look up, no matter what,” he said.
Pencil popped his door open and slipped out, not letting it click shut. He heard the cop tap once on Brandy’s window. “Hey, you…” he commanded, then, sure enough, he went quiet. Lizard’s leg kicked at the dashboard as he twisted and pushed his face in deeper. The van started rocking gently. Pencil imagined the cop was getting an eye full. He wanted this trooper flustered and embarrassed.
Pencil snuck around the back, past the motorcycle with its lights flashing. He peered around the van to size up the trooper. In tall black boots and raingear, the patrolman watched the imagined action between Lizard and Brandy. The visor of his helmet was up. He was leaning in close and his breath steamed the window. He stared intently at what he thought was the climax of orgasm. Brandy must have figured it out, because she started to moan.
Pencil saw the cop was a few inches taller, so he allowed for that. With the flashing lights behind him, the cop wouldn’t see his face. He patted the pocket of his overalls for a number two lead pencil, long, yellow and sharp. He eased it out with his right hand and squeezed tight on the eraser end.
“Officer,” he hollered as he stepped out. “It’s my van. I’m right here. Just wandered away so my crew could have some hankie-do. You want my license and ID? I got it right here.” Pencil steamed forward, his left hand held out where the cop could see it.
He felt the tingle, the old familiar rush of adrenalin, the gas that gooses a killer’s spirit. He inhaled and moved forward, not too fast, closing the gap in three steps. “No worries,” he said. “Sorry to interrupt your evening. Pissing down tonight, hey?”
The cop jerked back and twisted away from the window. His pale face was blushing, his mouth open. He stopped licking his lips. Pencil saw the parade of lights splash off his teeth. The trooper raised a hand to shield his eyes. He held a club-like flashlight in his hand.
“You don’t want to be watching that kind of kinky love,” Pencil said with a chuckle. “It’ll rot your brain.”
DUE JUNE 20th to Celebrate Summer
June 1, 2014
Oh my, Maya
"The kindnesses … I never forget them. And so they keep one from becoming bitter. They encourage you to be as strong, as volatile as necessary to make a well world. Those people who gave me so much, and still give me so much, have a passion about them. And they encourage the passion in me. I'm very blessed that I have a healthy temper. I can become quite angry and burning in anger, but I have never been bitter. Bitterness is a corrosive, terrible acid. It just eats you and makes you sick."
Maya Angelou said that. And she lived it. May her spirit live in my heart. Yours too, if you want. On'Ya.
Maya Angelou said that. And she lived it. May her spirit live in my heart. Yours too, if you want. On'Ya.
Expletives Deleted
We like to write and read and muse awhile and smile. My pal Prasad comes to mutter too. Together we turn words into the arc of a rainbow. Insight Lite, you see?
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