Malcolm R. Campbell's Blog, page 58

Briefly Noted: ‘The Fountains of Silence’ by Ruta Sepetys

I’m  amazed by the ability of some authors to blend the history of difficult times with accurate detail and fully realized fictional characters and create a story that puts the reader into the mix. While I have yet to read Sepetys’ I must Betray You, I’ve read all of her other novels and believe she’s at the top of the authors’ pinacle with gripping historical fiction.

I have just finished The Fountains of Silence and found it to be illumninating ( wasn’t aware of the selling of babies during Franco’s time in Spain) and haunting (a love story that twists the readers heart into multiple knots). Sepetys inserted quotations about Spain from multiple archives into the fiction in separately layed out pages, and while I found this a bit jarring at first, I ultimately saw the wisdom of it and how it brought fact and fiction together.

As the novel’s notes say, it is estimated that 300,000 babies were stolen in the years following the Spanish civil war and sold to couples who were considered potentially better parents than the birth mother and father. In many cases, this practice doubled as a punishment of those people who faught against Franco during the war. The novel brings out the tragedies of this practice and the crucial need people had to keep silent about it in order to survive.

Imagine this: You go to the hospital to give birth and after the pain and joy of it, the doctor tells you the child did not survive. But it did survive and ended up in an orphanage and baby-selling scheme in which multiple people were complicit. The parents never knew because records were altered and the adoptive parents were listed on the birth certiticates as the actual parents, assuming they had adopted an abandoned child instead of a stolent child.

This practice comes under the heading of those than cannot be forgiven. The novel, though, goes on my must-read shelf where I will ultimately read it again and shed new nears.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell’s more recent novels focus on characters fighting the Klan as it was in 1950s Florida.

On Location: Tallahassee’s John G. Riley Center & Museum

The John Gilmore Riley Center & Museum for African American History & Culture, Inc. is a historical and cultural gem that sits at the bottom of a hill in downtown Tallahassee, at the corner of Meridian and Jefferson Streets. The Riley House was constructed circa 1890 on the fringe of a community called Smokey Hollow. Its owner was a former enslaved man, John Gilmore Riley, rose to prominence as an educator and civic leader. – Museum Website

This beautifully restored Queen Anne house with its wrap-around porches serves as the perfect headquarters for this museum of African American History and Culture. One night say that the home once anchored the east-side community of Smokey Hollow which was lost due to so-called urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s.

Currently on exhibit, Legacy and Learning, an “intergenerational exhibit exploring the history and cultural traditions of everyday life.” Artifacts and art show how everyday appliances and other objects hve changed over time. The museum also features Heritage Education, tours, and history trails. Among the tours is the Smokey Hollow Commemorative Site and its “spirit home” models of the shotgun style houses that made up most of the community.

You might also enjoy the jogging and biking and trails at nearby Cascade Park.

If you live in and/or are visiting Tallahassee, all of this belongs on your things to do list. I was initially surprised when an individual in a Facebook group focusing on Tallahassee said he was born and raised there and had never heard of Smokey Hollow. I realized that the once-vibrant African-American neighborhood has been gone for about sixty years. Those of us who lived there sixty years ago knew about the community as well as the debates in government and the press about getting rid of it. But younger people very easily could be unaware of it. The park and the museum fix that problem.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of short stories and novels, many of which are set in the Florida Panhandle where he grew up.

Trying to be more like Papa Joe, are you Vladimir Vladimirovich?

Let’s suppose Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin woke up a while back in his latest palace with a woe-is-me attitude and thought: “Проклятиеn, I’m getting old and my life has turned into nothing better than vodka, syphilis, and anonymity with reduced odds of catching up with the great deeds of Papa Joe.”

With nothing on his resume since Crimea, he was tired of oligarchs asking, “So Vladimir Vladimirovich, what have you done for us lately?”

In his heart of hearts, such as it was, he thought of the joy Papa Joe must have felt while he was deporting residents of the Baltic countries to Siberia for real or imagined anti-Soviet behavior in 1941. Since most people didn’t know anything about that, history could safely repeat itself with a “cleansing” of Ukraine, those неблагодарные ублюдки (ungrateful bastards) who dare to turn their backs on the former USSR.

Or, there’s another possibility: he’s nuts. Several days ago, the “Daily Beast” wondered if “Putin Will Throw Mother of All Hissy Fits if Kyiv Attack Fails.” Chances are, he’s already having it even though Ukraine’s survival is looking more and more grim.

Ukraine has surprised everyone with its tenacity. If Putin hadn’t threatened a nuclear attack against anyone who intervened, would we have intervened. Probably not, though in spite of its middle ground posture, Israel might have had the guts to do it.

Putin’s ego(maniac) trip is about to change Europe and NATO forever. Too bad the syphilis didn’t kill him first.

—Malcolm

Take Bob, Spare Fido

When wives talk to wives and husbands talk to husbands, shocking things are often said about spouses, how bad they snore, eat with their hands, skip their daily showers, and line up their underwear in neat rows in the dresser drawers. When all this gets a bit much, it turns out–if you’re a fly on the wall listening–that if the angel of death gave a married man or woman a choice, they’d rather see their spouse taken away to the world to come rather than their precious cat or hunting dog.

“After all, Mabel won’t hunt, won’t swim out into the swamp and retrieve the ducks after they’re blasted out of the sky.”

And:

“Bob is never as considerate as Fido because Fido never leaves the toilet seat up or tracks mud in the front door.”

Seriously, though, people who don’t own gets don’t understand that a pet’s death is truly a death in the family. When pets are part of a household for years, they’re still part of the household after they cross the so-called rainbow bridge. So those of us who mourn the passing of pets have lots of empty spaces in our lives where the pets used to be–physically and in our hearts as well.

Sure, we can make nasty jokes about our spouses’ habits, but speaking ill of a pet–except in good fun–is a felony. Sure, the cat tore up the best chair in the livingroom and the dog tore up our favorite pair of boots, but when they leave us, we forgive them everything and remember them fondly.

For spouses, on the othe hand, it’s sometimes good riddance. Or so people say after a few drinks.

I speak from experience when I say that when a pet dies, it takes a while to come to terms with that just as surely as it does when one loses a spouse or brother or sister. The pain is less, but not insignificant.

I’m still trying to get used to he fact that our cat Marlo is gone. I expect to see her everywhere she used to be. It appears that our two other cats feel the same way. None of us are back to normal yet, so give us a little time to grieve even though we’re still stuck with Bob or Mabel.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of multiple novels and short stories, including “Conjure Woman’s Cat.”

Dare we hope or are we grasping at straws?

Sunflowers, the national flower of Ukraine.

We hear bits and pieces of good news. . .

Ukraine’s resistance to the invasion is stronger than expected. Putin’s not happy.

A Russian convoy ran out of gas somewhere and another turned around then confronted by civilians.

Protests within Russia are growing.

The EU, U.S., and NATO are on the same page.

Supplies are being shipped to Ukraine.

A U.S. spy plane flies above the country monitoring the war. Ukraine is receiving intel from the U.S. and others.

A growing number of organizations are protesting and/or finding ways to help.

Maybe these are all false hopes. Even so, they’re lights in the darkness Russia has brought to the world.

—Malcolm

I’m gone for a couple of days, and this blog is a mess. . .

Spam has piled up on the front porch, the gas tank is empty, and somebody drank all the wine.

We have no idea why Marlo often fell asleep in a pile of shoes

When our almost 20-year-old cat died, of old age, my wife an I felt like hiding from the world. That meant extra sleep, too much TV, and finding something to read. None of that really works because Marlo had more than her share of personality, stubborness, and all the other qualities that makes cats so catlike.

So, when all that disappears, things feel empty because they are empty. When you have cats, and we’ve had quite a few, you know you’ll lose all of them sooner or later

I can escape missing Marlo for short periods of time with an old book. This one by Ruta Sepetys, Out of the Easy, is pretty good even though it’s not in the same league as Salt to the Sea. You can tell by the title and the cover art that this one’s set in New Orleans where a teenager is earning college money (or, perhaps, her “escape money” by working as a parttime maid at a whore house mainly because her mother works there as one of the girls.

I actually like New Orleans quite a lot. A family vacation there when I was in high school got me hooked. One can become fat just making the rounds of the famous restaurants–which we did. Fortunately, I’m a fan of Cajun food and find that Popeye’s restaurants don’t quite give me an Antoine’s or Galatoire’s kind of experience.

And then there’s the catastropic Ukraine mess which me must more or less watch helplessly since Putin has threatened nuclear war if we intervene. He’s finding conquering Ukraine more difficult than he expected. Naturally, all the nearby countries are wondering if they’re going to be next. I think the world is rather caught in the headlights to have a Hitler-like madman show up right after two bad years of pandemic the aftermath of which continues to wreck our economy while (apparently) contributing to more unrest on city streets.

So, this post is rather a downer, but–for the most part–writers are human, too, and have the same kinds of reactions to bad news and sad times as everyone else.

—Malcolm

Where I used to live: what have they done to the place?

I recently wrote a post about how nice it would be to have an age feature on Google Maps so writers and other researches could see what streets were around twenty years ago. What I have done with Google Maps is use the street view feature to see how the neighborhoods where I used to live have changed.

I remember most of the addresses of places where I lived after leaving home. I know earlier addresses because my folks always put the family’s address in our Christmas letters. In most cases, I’m pleasantly surprised to find that the houses are still there and that nobody built a tar factory in the vacant lot next door.

Crap, it didn’t look like this when we left.

After my parents died, we sold the house in Tallahassee (where I grew up) in the 1980s. When I look at it now with street view, I’m horrified to see that the front yard has basiclly been paved ovee with a circular driveway. What an eyesore. Maybe I should write the owners an anonymous letter, “Dear Homeowners, you ignorant sluts, what have you done to the once-beauful front yard?”

In most cases, what I find is more of a natural progression over time of homes going back to when I was in kindergargarten. The trees are larger. Flower beds have been added. Sometimes paint colors have changed. Sometimes the usage has changed. An apartment I lived in in San Francisco has been converted with the other apartments in the building into a residence; the same is true for my aunt’s apartment just up the hill.

I don’t know whether looking at these old places is craziness, nostalgia, or a writer’s typical curiosity. But in looking at the old places, I can sometimes see the notion is correct: one can’t go home again. That’s because subsequent owners have screwed up the place.

—Malcolm

One of the short stories in this collection is set in the house where we lived in Tallahassee. There was a large wooded area behind the house. As I grew older, I figured the families who lived there in several houses would eventually sell out and my playground would become a subdivision. In “real life” that’s what happened (as Google Maps shows me). In the short story, the woods are left alone. I like my version of reality better.

Speaking of pencils

I’m a firm believer in #3 pencils because they make crisper lines on the page than the teachers’ favorite #2 pencil and don’t smudge as badly if you accidentally rub your hand across the paper or while pryring homework out of a dog’s mouth.

These days, most people don’t know what a pencil is, much less what the numbers on pencils mean. Miniature golf courses still hand out pencil so you can keep an accurate score card. Everyone but braggarts does crossword puzzles with a pencil. Bankers told us never to write checks with a pencil because evil-doers could change a $10 check into a $100 check. But that’s about it.

My daughter and granddaugters have been doing a lot of sketching lately, so when I saw them last Thanksgiving, they had boxes of multicolored pencils. These pencils come in colors I’ve never heard of and cannot be used to take standardized tests or write checks or sign wills.

Personally, I’ve always thought large pencils were better than small pencils and–unlike carpenters’ pencils–they had to be round. (See photo) During the days when I was forced to wear church clothes to work, one needed a large pencil to scare away the riffraff.

When I was younger, I bought pencils in tourist attraction giftshops. When I was in the Navy and told to carry a pen or pencil at old times on the off chance the top brass said anything important, I ended up with a surplus of U.S. Governent pens and pencils at home. This wasn’t intentional. You left the base, drove home, and took the pencils and pens out of your pocket. The next day, you forgot about them and so you needed a fresh pen and pencil once you got to the office.

Navy chiefs loved catching people without sharp #2 pencils. Especially in boot cap, the chiefs wanted you to constantly be taking “a good set of notes.” So, we all wrote stuff down because we’d get demerits or would be put on report if we were caught not writing stuff down.

Many wartime casualties occured because sailors were writing down “abandon ship” rather than getting the hell off the ship.

Out of curiosity, does anyone reading this post even own a pencil?

—Malcolm

Since my father was a journalist, I learned to type before I learned what a pencil was for. This means I don’t write my books one a yellow legal tabled with a pencil. 

Dear Google Maps: Here’s what writers need

Dear Google,

I know you don’t make your online maps for writers, but they sure come in handy when I’m researching city streets  or the routes between cities for a story or novel set in the present day.

But I want more. I want to be able to “age” those maps to see what the streets and highways looked like 5, 19, 15, 20, etc. years ago.

Most older city and county maps aren’t very legible when viewed online. Or, if you’re looking for them on eBay, you’ll find them folded up. (No help there.) Buying paper copies is time-consuming and expensive.

I’ve found apps that show what the land around my house looked like in the past–sometimes for hundreds of years back. But streets and highways, nothing, unless I want to drive to a dusty archive and get them to allow a Xerox of their ancient paper maps.

I’m not really sure how it helps Google to post current maps and directions online. And then to maintain them year by year. So probably for a one-time investment of several million bucks, your crack staff could merge in older and older paper maps to give us an aging application.

Just a thought.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the Florida Folk Magic Series that beings with “Conjure Woman’s Cat” and extends through three more novels to “Fate’s Arrows.”

New look because I got bored with the old look

My wife and I once had a friend who had a lot of free time on her hands after work and spent most of it giving the inside of her house a new look. Every time we went over there, the walls and ceilings were adorned with fresh paint and the shelves and tabletops and walls were freshly accessorized like the re-done homes on HGTV. She was constantly bored with the old look so consistenly that when her husband–who traveled on business–came home, he must have wondered if had drunkenly staggered into the wrong house.

When HGTV’s home and hearth designers swoop in and re-do a house, the finishing touch is decorating every thing with knicknacks which–while they give the rooms a high-end look on TV, probably end of in the attic within months because they aren’t the look and feel the homeowners are used to and, when it comes down to it, take up a lot of room.

I wonder if our decorating-oriented friend found a Knicknacks to go kind of business where she could swap out rooms filled with old clutter for brand new clutter.

I take that approach to my blog and website, but prefer that my house looks like my house from month to month and year to year. Writers are supposed to find a niche for every component of their online presence and stay there because, as the gurus tell us, doing that builds audiences. When readers arrive on a site, they know where they are rather than wondering if they typed the URL incorrectly or drunkenly staggered into the wrong online enclave.

If I thought one look and feel forever and ever on my website would sell books, I might keep it. And if I kept it and sold more books, I could afford professional designers to keep each place fresh, yet comforting to readers who like exciting stories in the novels they read while reading them on the same frayed old couch.

I guess I should put a warning on the homepage of my website that says: “Youve probably been here before though you won’t rememeber it because I got bored with the old look again and don’t even recognize this place myself. Get used to it.”

—Malcolm

Click on my name to see what my website looks like today, but maybe not next week.