Nancy Martin's Blog, page 16

Writer-Pants

By Joshilyn Jackson

I have to talk craft today. This will be writer-centric, but I think it applies in all the arts, and maybe past that into jobbishness and life? In any of those contexts, I'd love to chew it over here. You see, I got I a little inernetsian tiffsy over in Lydia Netzer's comments. It was kinda funny---got very E-PEENY and made me feel like I was 25, post-club-tiddley, and trolling the Prodigy message boards...AH MY MISSPENT YOUTH.

It's the age old INNER VOICE v/s OUTER EYES debate...As writers, do we listen to our inner voice or the outside voices of our critters?

One far-side says FOLLOW THE GUT YOU ARE THE WRITER FIGHT FOR EACH PRESHUS WORD. On the other extreme, you have BEND TO ALL SUGGESTIONS---EVEN IF IT MEANS SELLING OUT!

On one extreme side, I think GUT is too subjective to be wholly useful, unless you are one of your generations 2 or 3 Samuel Becketts, in which case, bully! Good on ya! but what works for the greatest among us is not true for the merely brilliant or talented or good. Gut alone stories generally only please one person, and they read it already. As they were writing it.

On the other side, 99% of the people I have met who claim they would be delighted to sell out aren't good enough writers for anyone to BUY...Most good writers, in all genres, want to write what they are writing, and make the people they love in their head be alive.

 

 
 In other words, one of these extremes is silly and the other is vile and mostly hypothetical. SO let's throw them out of the mix. No straw man arguments here.

The real question here is, how far do you bend? When your trusted editor or long-term crit partner says the crippled duckling is not working, do you obediently cut that duck, knife to sternum, dead duck, done? Or do you change him until he does work, maybe into handi-capable albatross? Or do you fight for his right to exist as he is, because your gut tells you so?

(Reading this hyper-extended politically-not-correct metaphor, did you think, WOW SHE HAS BEEN WATCHING GLEE? Because you were right. I have totally been watching Glee on the elliptical every day.)

Me? I say you bend. 90% of the time. You mostly will not break and cut him (though sometimes you should---knowing when is the trick) but even when you are not certain... yeah.

I say you bend.

 

Here is why: I have seen too many writers stick to an artistic vision that was SO STRONG in their heads, so glowing and lovely, that they were unable to see they had not managed to transfer that to the page. That the thing they were trying to do had not been done, that the words only worked as a short cut for THEM to enter their own world, and other readers were left outside of it.

But they were unable to hear that or take criticism, because the vision was SO real for them...

This is fine, if you are writing for yourself; I believe PERSONAL writing is a noble and worthy thing.

But if you are writing for publication, if your audience is greater than the sum of you, you need others to be able to enter your imaginary lands too; that means LISTENING to your trusted, smart critters when they tell you that they cannot, that you have blocked them out, that here and there you have muddied the way to your whole, real world.

One caveat---BEFORE you let editing eyes touch your creation, it better be wholly yours. You can't turn in a fetus and expect the animal who is eventually birthed to be anything but a mutant hybrid.

You have to get the spine and the heart and the brain of your novel wholly working and wholly yours BEFORE your editor/critters get aholt of it, and then, after that, editing is safe, changes are safe, finding new paths in is safe, because the animal IS what it IS.

Giving it a poodle cut or putting it in a bejoooooled collar won't change the animal.

Your beast is itself because of the heart and spine and brain, the magnificent biological WORKINGNESS and LIFE of it.

I believe you have to not be all up ons if someone suggests you change your creature's shoes.

And if the animal is WHOLE and ITSELF and BEAUTIFUL, that's what edits will boil down to. The world you create is yours---gut your way there. But when it comes to how you make paths in, you have to listen to the people trying to navigate your map.

SO here's my nutshell take: If you are blessed with a good crit group/editor, get over yourself a little, and err on the side of listening.

Yes? No? What do you think?

Hijacked!

 
By Elaine Viets

Monday I woke up and discovered I was selling Viagra all over the Internet.

My address book had been hijacked. My mailbox was crammed with more than 100 emails from people who were sympathic, amused, even outraged.

Friend and TLC back blogger Tom Barclay wrote, "Sorry to bear bad news, Elaine. Got something from your AOL address this morning that clearly was not from you. It contained a link I wasn't about to follow, and seemed to be copied to everyone in your mailbox. I bounced it back so you can see the link. DON'T click it."

I emailed Tom: "Yep, they got me. I've changed my password. I'm now off to the santeria store to buy a curse for the @#$% who did this. Apologies to you for the inconvenience. No chickens will be harmed in the creation of the curse."

For three days I fielded emails. Most people, like Mary, were understanding. "We've all been there, darlin' " she said. "Let me know how that curse works out. If you make it something physically specific we can all keep a lookout for the soon-to-be-party-favor."

One woman was rather snippy about the spam. A gentleman rushed to assure me that he didn't need  Viagra.

My agent, who's put up with me for more than a decade, wrote, "Hey, no need to apologize. I got some great drugs."

Some used the spam attack as a chance to get back in touch.

A retired newspaper colleague wrote: "At first I thought, 'Oh good, a message from Elaine.' Then I read it and thought, 'Well, Elaine must have decided that I'm a lonely old lady and need a little help.' "

But she'd had her own problems with hijackers. "Once I had someone send messages to everyone on my address list that I was stranded in London and someone had stolen my purse at gunpoint and I needed money to get home. Omigosh, people were calling me from all over the country asking, 'Are you OK?'

"Too bad clever people like that don't use their brainpower for good instead of evil."

Sandra wrote, "I always love to hear from you and of course read all your books, but this appeared in my mailbox and I thought it was strange. This was just a web address . . . Guess what I'm trying to say is either someone has invaded your email list or please introduce an unknown website so I know it is safe."

Some well-meaning souls sent me freebie sites that would scan the computer and remove the pests.

I tried two. Both of these free scans turned up more pests than a Florida flophouse – then they wanted $39.99 to exterminate them.

No, thank you.

If this was a virus, there's a lot of it going around. I could fill this blog with the names of people who've had their email addresses hacked recently. My Webroot Internet Security software had been driving me crazy blocking everything until I could hardly move around the Internet. I started over-riding the Webroot blocks.

That's how I let in the hijacker.

Yesterday, I emailed Webroot's support center that my computer had a virus.

Webroot's Mike B. emailed back, "If your email is sending out spam messages to other people in your inbox, that means it's been hijacked and someone knows your password to get into your email."

I'd already changed my password, like Mike suggested, but I followed his instructions to update the Webroot software and do another scan.

I think all the bugs are gone now.

But my curse is still out there, hijacker. If it gets you, even Viagra won't help.

 

The Margarita Mixer?

The Margarita Mixer? Or the Dyson?

by Nancy Martin      

Laurie, my hairdresser, was faced with a Hard Choice.  Her co-worker is getting married, and Laurie was asked to kick in to buy the co-worker a vacuum cleaner for a wedding present.

Laurie wanted to give a frozen margarita machine instead.  The vacuum cleaner, she felt, came with a bad message about marriage.  And about her friendship with her co-worker, too.

"Which would you give?" she asked me while giving me a trim.

Around the same time, friends of ours were throwing a graduation party for their son Brian. Brian is going off to study screenwriting.  (Why is nobody going off to study mechanical engineering anymore? I think it's because we've made screenwriting look like such an exciting career, when actually most of us around the TLC water cooler understand that writing is…..well, anything but glamorous.) 

But I digress.

My husband thought we should give Brian cash for graduation.  Boys need money in college—that was his argument.

Me, I figure cash gets blown on beer the first week of school, and then it's gone.

And vacuum cleaners wear out, burn up, or it becomes a gadget you and the spouse (whose blue eyes you gazed lovingly into while standing on the altar) end up arguing about who should be the one to use the damn thing, or you use it to sweep up the wet birthday cake somebody's misbehaving kid ground into the carpet on your sunporch and it immediately rusts inside, thereafter spreading rusty crud all over your floors and deep into the fiber of your living room carpet, but I digress again.

Are you a practical gift-giver? 

Or would you give the margarita mixer to your friend? Which I think is a decision that also involves wanting to be remembering for giving a memorable gift.

I can't explain why, because I'm not usually an organized kind of pack rat, but I saved the box of index cards from my wedding.  (Which took place this week in 1977—ye gods!) On the cards, I carefully wrote the names and addresses of all our wedding guests (why was my handwriting so pretty back then and so completely illegible now?) and what each guest gave us as a gift.  Lots of silverware from my mother's friends.  Place settings of china from my father's business acquaintances.  Eight pairs of pewter candlesticks.  (It was A Thing back then. I will admit to re-gifting a few of them—mostly to other newlyweds who were my husband's friends, not mine.  Shame on me.)  Waterford crystal from two of my aunts. Cash from another aunt and uncle, but I made sure we spent it on something specific, so I have a pair of paintings that I tend to believe came from them, even though my husband and I picked them out on our honeymoon.

I have a lot of those gifts still.  Even the address book given by a former employer, although the pages are a terrible mess of crossed out addresses and new, married names of friends.  A disconcerting number of friends are still in my address book, but no longer walk this earth. The inscription from the former employer is in the front of the address book, too---"best wishes" instead of a remark about my work habits, which I guess was a nice gesture.

Anyway. It's wedding season!  What are you giving as gifts this year?

I gave Brian a screenwriting book that I refer to now and then.  And a copy of this book, which I think is amusing and therefore thoughtful for a young man going off to fend for himself until he finds a nice girl and starts planning a wedding. I think my husband stuck a $20 bill into the card, though.

The Center Cannot Hold

By Sarah

Well, it's over. Just a little over 235 years of democracy, a grand experiment placing power truly in the hands of the people, and we're through. Pack your bags. Turn off the lights. Start padding your caves. Pretty soon, it's gonna be each tribe out for itself.

What gets me is that it wasn't the more earth shaking principles that brought us down - slavery, emancipation, civil rights, trust busting and unions or, heck, suffrage. It was 24 hour news. 

Also, and this can't be stated firmly enough, incivility. 

In my little Vermont town, we get together the first Tuesday of every March to pass a budget. It's called Town Meeting and it's a New England tradition and while it might sound cute and folksy, it's really not, especially these days. Sure, there are the church ladies with their bean supper and homemade apple crisp. But there's also business to be done.

The town report comes in the mail a few weeks ahead of time. It includes the proposed budget along with reports by entities such as the road crew (to explain why they needed more salt than usual), births, deaths, the number of dogs licensed and who didn't pay their property taxes. (Everyone's favorite section.) We take it to Town Meeting and slowly work our way through the agenda following Roberts Rules of Order and the guidance of a town moderator who is half auctioneer/half comedian. 

We are Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Progressives, Socialists, Libertarians and nothing. A lot of us are old - they have the most to lose with each penny increase in taxes. Many are teachers. Too many stay home.

But lined up on folding chairs in the elementary school gym under basketball nets and first-grade murals of early Vermont life, we are all Middlesex residents who want the best for our kids and elderly. We're also broke. I don't know anyone, frankly, who's thriving in this piss poor economy. No one in my town is building a huge house or driving a big fancy car. Success is paying your fuel bill.

Each year gets tougher. Last year, out of mercy, the town split the tax bill in two so you could pay half in September, half in February. This alone merited over an hour of discussion.

Conservative old-time Vermonter Leroy Brett gets up and nitpicks the $55 increase in gas for the road crew. The question of whether or not to send $5,000 as a town to the Montpelier library is always heated. (We're all pissed at Berlin for chipping in nothing.)

Everyone's privately adding up the numbers and as the articles pass and an upgrade is approved here or there, people start shifting in their seats. 

But we keep it civil.

Just the concept of Town Meeting is a hard pill for many here to swallow. The meeting starts at 4 p.m. and while schools and state workers have the day off, most people don't. So that raises the class issue of whether this is some precious tradition that's being maintained by "flatlanders" - those from away who moved here to soak up atmosphere and, by the way, the best property.

Ouch.

The closest we got to nastiness was a "Take Back Vermont" movement, the implication being that flatlanders were swooping in with their Volvo stationwagons and trust funds and imposing on our state progressive ideas that the working family couldn't handle. Like health care. You cannot be denied health insurance in Vermont even with a preexisting condition. And a family of four earning $67,000 or less qualifies for discounted health care through Dr. Dynasaur. (Thank you, Gov. Dean.)

Despite the grumblings, so far, this state has kept it together. Being a population of only 600,000 helps. Those second home owners and their outrageous property tax revenue helps, too. 

But there's another reason. When that Town Meeting ends, we have to push back our chairs, stand up and face each other. We know that we'll meet again in the grocery story or on the high school fields where our kids play sports. (No fancy private school here.) We might have to give one of our cars a push out of the snow. Or ask for help when we slide off the road. (Cell reception's spotty.)

We can't afford to lash out with the vitriol that spews from our TV sets or radios. We can't hide behind anonymous monikers on web sites.

We need each other and because of that recognize and honor our neighbor's value. Leroy Brett and I don't see eye to eye on much. But I love that he keeps the Baptist church at the bottom of our road neat and tidy. I love his farm. He's a good hardworking man and, boy, you gotta respect that.

So the question is, if we bumbling, flawed average citizens in a tiny Vermont town can pass a budget every year, stick within our means, politely argue and, in the end, always compromise, why the hell can't the U.S. Congress?

Signed,

Disgusted in VT

 

Sue Thompson sang it right: "Sad Movies, Always...."

HANK PHILLIPI RYAN: I hate to cry. I know, people say, it's good to "get it all out" and "let your emotions flow." There's some sort of a cliché about "have a good cry," which I see only as an oxymoron. You know what I think? There's no such thing as a good cry.

My eyes get puffy, I feel sad for days afterwards, there's some sort of residual thing that happens so that even when I've stopped crying, and I'm not even sad anymore, it still feels like I'm about to cry.

  The problem is, I cry at EVERYTHING. Yes, the Hallmark commercials and anything where there's a soldier, or a little kid, or anyone leaving anyone. I can't discuss The Old Man and the Sea. Once, on a road trip, I read the whole thing out loud to my driving boyfriend. Buy the end, I was sobbing. THE WHOLE FISH WAS GONE! I wailed. Oh, nooooo.

Don't even talk to me about the music from Candide ("And watch our garden grow.." Can't even type about it.)  Defying Gravity, from Wicked. Nope. I'll lose it. In Les Miserables, "bring him home, bring him home, Bring Him HOME!"  They almost had to carry me out of the place. I could go on.

Remember the movie Sling Blade? Jonathan and I went to see it, like our first date. We had planned to see something else, but it was sold out, and we really didn't care, we'd known each other for a week and "dinner and a movie" was just an activity that one had to do. So we're like, yeah, what movie has seats? And it was Sling Blade.

  Remember, Jonathan barely knew me at this point.

So about ten minutes into the movie, I start to sniff. I am trying so hard not to cry, but I know the whole thing is futile.

 Jonathan leans over, whispers: "Do you have a cold? Do you want some Kleenex?"

I say, "No thank you, I'm crying."

"Huh?" He's worried. "Are you okay?"

"Yes. I'm crying at the movie."

The look on his face. Utterly utterly baffled. "Why?" he whispered. "It's not sad."

I whispered back "I know. But it's going to be sad."

 Oh, yes, and indeed it was. I cried all the way through our Chinese dinner. It's a wonder J and I are still together. He still doesn't understand why I get so sad.

 Which of course, requires me to protect myself from things that I know will upset me. If there's a movie we might want to see, or a play, or whatever, I ask—"Is it triumph of the human spirit?" If so, I'm not going.

I ALWAYS cry at triumph of the human spirit.

 So. No Beaches. No Schindler's List. No Fried Green Tomatoes, no Terms of Endearment, No Steel Magnolias, Marley and Me. No Philadelphia, no Boy in Striped Pajamas. Nope nope nope. Not doing it.

 No Pearl Harbor, no Band of Brothers (you kidding me?) no Saving Private Ryan.

 I couldn't resist To Kill A Mockingbird, ofcourse. Exception. An Affair to Remember, okay, l loved it. Cried like mad at both. I cried in You've got Mail, and Sleepless in Seattle and –anything that has any element of Cinderella or the Ugly Ducking. (I think I cried at Maid In Manhattan, okay?) (Psychiatrists, you're having a field day, right?)

The saddest movie I've ever seen? Maybe it was—what's the title? It's Italian (not Life Is Beautiful, not a chance I'm going to that) but it's the one where the little boy hangs out with the film projectionist, who has to cut all the kissing out of the movies, and in the end, he finds all the edited bits, all spliced together, in kiss after kiss? What was that? Oh, yes. Cinema Paradiso. Sad. Lovely. But sad.

 There was just a survey, which said The Champ is the saddest movie ever. I didn't see it—of COURSE—but if you have, you know why. I did see the number two sad movie, Bambi, which, indeed is sad. But is now kind of annoying, since it seems—creepy to show that to kids.

 ET! Now that was sad. And Old Yeller. And A Night to Remember, yikes, I saw that as a kid and was permanently traumatized. Still, I find its easier if I know what's gonna happen. Tell me the end, I always plead. It'll be easier to handle.  They die? They lose? They die, but the planet is saved? Okay, I'll get myself ready for it.

We had brunch this weekend with a bunch of pals, six of us all together, a pretty diverse group if you consider there were criminal defense attorneys AND trust and estate attorneys. But I asked—what's he saddest movie you've ever seen? And do you seek them out? Or avoid them? They were all—analyzing what "Sad" means. Sad, like, you cry at the end? Or sad like, it's sad along the way, but happy at the end?

 Whatever, I said. Just whatever you think sad is. Love Story, a man said. He admitted he broke  down at Love Story. Someone else said The Bicycle Thief. Sophie's Choice. The Green Mile. (Oh yeah, FORGET about it. I read the book. That was enough.) Bonnie and Clyde isn't. Thelma and Louise isn't. There was dissent over Titanic.

We decided  "sad" was: unintended consequences. People just trying to do what was right and th en it goes wrong. War. Mistakes. Unfulfilled love. Missing someone, or departures. Saying goodbye. Bravery. Sacrifice.

 They all said they were happy going to sad movies. Didn't avoid them. Me, I do. Avoid them. How about you? Any movies you wish you hadn't seen? What's the saddest ever?

It has no life . . .And then it does

 

By Dana Cameron    
 

Even though the heat wave has broken for some of us, I think we're all feeling a little oppressed by this summer on many levels.  So here's a chill for you:  puppets.
Get a little frisson there?  A shiver up the spine?  I did.  It was brought back to me last week, when I was touring with the editor and several of the contributors to Cape Cod Noir (http://tinyurl.com/4yk6h9c).  We had four fun events, and talked about the despicable and hateful things our characters did, or compared them with the desperate and violent things other authors' characters did.  I talked about the amoral — or is she just misunderstood? — Anna Hoyt and her latest adventures "Ardent" and "Disarming," now a podcast (http://tinyurl.com/3hzm96q), and the terrible, mortal choices she faces. No one batted an eyelash.  
 After the events, Mr. G and I went looking for dead things washed up on the beach, and visited the Edward Gorey House museum (http://tinyurl.com/ybz5f53), to see the home of the illustrator known for macabre and wonderful illustrations, most of which deal with wasting death, mourning, and what's hiding under your bed. So like most of you reading this, it's not like I'm unacquainted with the ooky or grim, but stepping into one room of the Gorey house, I was brought up as short as if I'd accidentally wandered into the Arachnid Hall of Fame. 
 Before I even saw them, something made me start to edge to the door.  There they were.  Along the opposite wall, was a row of doors, and on top of the doors were a line of hand-made puppets.  I was just about able to note that they were obviously Gorey-esque.  I broke out into a sweat.  I didn't run, but I kept one eye on them at all times, uneasy until I left the room. 
 I don't know what it is.  Maybe it's the human-like faces.  I think part of it is the shell of something waited to be animated by another force.  It has no life...and then it does ... and then after, it's an empty piece of cloth again.  Just ... waiting.
 ::Shudder:: 
 Sure it's an existential thing, but I write about vampires and werewolves, the mutation of flesh, sex, power, and pure evil.  Hell, in my latest story (http://tinyurl.com/3zdmsf2), I write about a vampire having sex while she fights pure evil.  Why the hang up over cloth or papier mache?  I'm not the only one:  Joss Whedon, among others, has revisited the horror of puppets repeatedly, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel the Series, and, arguably, in Doll House.  There's even a word, pupaphobia, for the extreme fear of puppets (and not as I first thought, fear of puppies). 
Irrational, yes, and I can hear some of you saying:  But Dana ... we've seen you with puppets. In my defense, that started as a joke: I cheekily announced at a convention I would be doing interpretive dance, pole dancing, or sock puppets at another session. I opted for interpretive dance that day, but brought sock puppets another time (I'm only glad there wasn't a pole in the room). I've even bought finger puppets for friends.  But here's the thing: I don't like looking at them when they're not in use. I have puppets in the house, but I don't keep them where children can accidentally stumble over them.  Like the scenes in the Toymaker's apartment in Blade Runner, or the idea behind Being John Malkovich, you should have a little warning before you encounter puppets.
 Puppets are bad, but don't get me started about clowns.  Talk about chilling...
 No, seriously, talk about chilling.  What gives you the creeps?

                                        ****

  Dana Cameron's Fangborn story "Swing Shift" was nominated for an Agatha, an Anthony, and a Macavity this year; her third Fangborn story, "Love Knot," appears in "The Wild Side" August 2. Her third colonial noir adventure, "Ardent," was published in June. When not exploring the dark colonial past and the violent but hopeful lycanthropic present, Dana tries to avoid puppets, spiders, hot peppers, and big dogs.

 

 

The Scam Collector

Hi, Elaine Viets here. Let me introduce you to Thomas Kaufman, an Emmy-winning director/cameraman who also writes mysteries.  His first book, DRINK THE TEA, won the Private Eye Writers of America/St Martin's Press Competition for Best First Novel.  His second book, STEAL THE SHOW, comes out this July.  You can see the rest of his blog tour here.

By Thomas Kaufman

I'm interested in scams. Sometimes I think there are as many ways to scam as there are people. Today I thought I'd write about two different scams – one in Africa, and one here in the US.

A few years ago I was in Ghana, shooting for a WGBH documentary called SCIENCE ODYSSEY. The producer, Larry Klein, and I had spent about ten days filming in Tamale (pronounced TAH-ma-lay), about 120 miles south of the border with Burkino Faso. Here's some clips from that shoot:

 

Ghana Journey from Thomas Kaufman on Vimeo.

Now our shoot was over and we were flying back home. It took eight hours to drive south on roads that looked like they'd been used for mortar practice. We finally got to Accra, the capitol city of Ghana. After a good night's sleep in a hotel, we had time to kill before our plane left. It was Sunday morning, and at a local market I picked up two Dashikis that had Kente cloth from a village where we'd filmed. I was walking back to the hotel with Larry, when a young man brushed past us.

Larry took another step, stopped, looked at his wrist, then asked me if he'd been wearing a watch when we left the hotel. Larry's wrist was bare, except for a tiny red dot in the center, just about where the metal prong of the watchstrap's buckle would be.

So what we had just witnessed, without knowing it, was a young man adept at stealing watches. When he brushed into Larry, he undid Larry's watchstrap so fast that the metal prong went into his skin. By the time Larry knew what had happened, the kid was long gone, along with Larry's watch.

Now, do you need to go to Africa to get scammed? Not if you live in Washington, DC.

It's a great place to live, a small southern town of 800,000 hard-working people that happens to have the federal government squatting on top of it. Kind of like the flying saucer that squats on a DC baseball field in DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL.

While that great movie had a lesson for all mankind, the only lesson I've found from living in DC is to watch your back. This place has its share of scam artists, and not all of them are members of Congress.

Last winter I'd finished an outdoors film shoot, so the producer and I went to a small place for lunch. We'd been in the freezing cold for hours, and my hands and feet felt numb. It was nice to get someplace warm. What came next was classic DC:

We pay the bill, and as we walk outside a man intercepts us.

"Hey, man, I'm driving that cab over there. Can you tell me how to get to New York Avenue and 7th?"

Was he serious? I took a look at this guy – African American, about six feet, plaid shirt and jeans and green camo jacket. "It's over that way," I say, putting doubt in my voice. How could a DC cabdriver not know that?

"Thanks. You got a twenty for two tens?"

Okay, let's stop a moment. A twenty for two tens? This guy doesn't want to break a big bill into smaller ones – just the opposite. What was he up to?

"Sure," I say. I open my wallet, find a twenty, and he gives me two tens. We're done now, right?

Not quite. The man takes a step away, a big giant step, kind of a cartoon step, it's that exaggerated. Then he stops. He makes sure I see him stop. Then he says, "Hey. Wait a second. I gave you two tens, you gave me a one." He shows me the one in his hand.

It's the only bill there.

He had switched the bills when he took his cartoon step, palming the twenty and substituting the one. Not bad, except that I hadn't had a one in my wallet to hand him.

I take another look at this guy. His shirt is thin, the plaid colors worn away. His hands are hard and callused. They wouldn't get that way driving a cab.

And it's winter. DC doesn't get really bad winters, but as the temperature drops, there's a rise in homeless deaths due to hypothermia. Yes, we have homeless shelters in DC, but they can be dangerous places. I've known plenty of homeless people who'd rather take their chances sleeping outside on a heating grate, than risk the shelter.

Hence the scam – he gives up two tens, plus a dollar, and gets two twenties back, netting nineteen dollars. For that much, he can get a meal, and find a warm place to hole up and sleep for two or three days.

I hand him a second twenty. He gives me the dollar. Now we're done. I look him in the eye, I want to tell him it's okay. But to do that means I've seen through it, that his scam sucks (and it really does). Instead, I nod at him. He nods back and heads off to his imaginary cab. I say goodbye to the producer and drive home, where my wife and kids are listening to music and playing a board game.

I'm nineteen dollars poorer, but I don't feel poor at all. Just the opposite.

How about you? Have you ever been scammed?

The Great Summer Chicken Saga

(Nancy P. here.)  Dear TLC readers, it is my great pleasure to introduce to you one of the nicest, most interesting and talented authors I know, Susan Wittig Albert. Today, she's going to take us where I suspect this blog has never gone before, and I don't mean Texas. . .

The Great Summer Chicken Saga

By Susan Wittig Albert

 It's been hot this summer. Very hot. Very, very hot.

But you already know this, because it's been hot where you live, too—unless you live in the Pacific Northwest, in which case we will be glad to send you some of what we have way too much of.

But the heat is not the main feature of my summer, here on the 31 acres of Texas Hill Country that Bill and I share with two cows (a longhorn and a half-horn), two dogs, a cat, coyotes, deer, armadillos, wild pigs, possums, raccoons, and skunks.

No. The main feature of my summer is chickens. Twenty-four of them. Twenty-four "Cornish roasters," to be precise. But let us be clear from the outset. These are not chickens that will lay gorgeous brown eggs and become beloved family pets. These are chickens that become fried chicken, chicken fricassee, chicken á la king, and chicken salad. Vegetarians, avert your eyes and cover your ears. These are chickens that are destined to be eaten.

But even chickens fated for the frying pan deserve to be chronicled. So here, in brief, is their story.

 Week One

Chickens that are called to be cuisine don't start off life looking anything like company dinner. They start off looking like adorable little balls of golden fluff. Which is exactly what they were when I opened the box that arrived at our post office on the morning of June 6. "Mrs. Albert," the plaintive voice on the phone had said, at seven on that Monday morning. "Please, pretty please, come and get your chickens. They are making a LOT of noise. They are driving us CRAZY." And of course nobody wants to drive a postal employee crazy.

 

 Week Two

These adorable balls of fluff are making themselves at home in our second bathroom, right next door to my writing studio. In the bathtub. Yes, the bathtub. What better place to keep baby chicks? Handy to water, to electricity (they need light to stay warm), and to me, Chicken Mama. I can write, dash into the bathroom to check on the chicks, dash back out and write. Repeat on the hour, every hour. Of course, this naturally slows down the book (The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose) so that I have to ask for an extension, which my editor generously grants. I don't tell her why. 

Week Three

The limits of the bathtub brooder, while ideal in many respects, make themselves crystal clear when the chicks, by some miracle of nature, begin to grow. They are now able to withstand a low temperature of 70 (oh, I wish the temperature would drop that low!), so they can move out to their new chicken coop, where they may enjoy the pleasures of their chicken yard and eat to their hearts' content. Unfortunately, the coop is an 80-yard round trip from the house, which slows down the book even further. I ask for another extension.

 

Week Four

Of course, because the chickens are eating so much now, they grow. Faster. And bigger.

 Weeks Five and Six

 And even bigger. Did you know that 24 chickens can eat 50 pounds of chicken food in one week? Now you do.

 Week Seven

  In fact, these chickens are eating so much and growing so grossly obese that by their seventh week, they have turned into Chicken Couch Potatoes, content to do nothing but sit as close to the feeder as possible. The heat may have something to do with their laziness. This week, our average daily high was 105. Lordy, lordy, it's hot.

 Week Eight

Well. All good things come to an end, and this saga is coming to an end soon. How do I know? Because the pullets (the girl chickens) will achieve frying chicken weight this week, and the cockerels (the boy chickens) will be roaster size about a week later. At which point, they are cordially invited to a processing party. When that's over, they will go to a place where they will be very, very cool. The freezer.

 And so ends the Great Summer Chicken Saga—but not quite. For even after the heat of summer has faded (it will, I hope!) these chickens will provide tasty, organically-grown food for our table. Yes, I know—it's easier and cheaper to go to the grocery and buy a whole rotisserie-broiled chicken in a cute little chicken-shaped plastic box, or drive another mile to Whole Foods and fork over a week's pay for a three-pound fryer. But I was lucky enough to grow up on a farm, where I was introduced to the pleasure of growing my own food. Chickens—whether I'm raising Rhode Island Reds for their lovely brown eggs or Cornish for their plump thighs and delectable breasts—are an important part of my life.

 The way I see it, if you're lucky enough to be able to grow your own chickens, you're lucky enough.

 

Susan Wittig Albert is the author of the China Bayles mysteries, the Cottage  Tales of Beatrix Potter, and the new Darling Dahlias series. She blogs at www.susanalbert.typepad.com/lifescapes. Her website: www.susanalbert.com.

 

 

 

I'm really sorry to have to do this, but. . .

By Nancy Pickard

I hope you'll forgive me, but I'm going to call you some bad words now.  Oh, god.  I feel terrible about this, but you deserve it, you really have it coming.  Believe me, you'll be better for it when I'm finished.  So don't hate me, okay?  I'm only saying these things as your friend, for your own good.  Okay.  Deep breath.  Ready? Here goes. . .

"You. . .you. . . reliable person you!  You are talented and tremendous. . .and, and, and. . . influential!" 

Offended yet?  You would have been if you'd been the poet Coleridge back in 1832, when he proclaimed that the word "talented" was "barbarous."  ( SUCH a great word and not used nearly enough outside of the British Parliament, imo.  I'm going to email it to the President and suggest he find a place for it in his next address.  "It's barbarous!" the President thundered!  Okay, maybe this President wouldn't thunder, and since when did thunder become an intransitive verb anyway?)  But I digress.

No, really, I don't digress, or at least not much, because this is about words that morph from one part of speech to another--morphing words, morphed words, morphly morphative morphonomous words.  I made a few of those up, but which ones? And does anybody know what a "morph" is when it's at home?  I think maybe it's a small furry caterpillar with an insecurity complex. . .or why else would it keep changing like that?

The reason Coleridge loathed "talented"people  was not professional jealousy.  Or, at least, as far as I know, it wasn't, though you do have to wonder about a guy who thought opium was dandy but "talented" was uncivilized.  Do you remember the legendary "Person from Porlock" who allegedly interrupted Coleridge as he wrote  "Kubla Khan"? Maybe that Person from Porlock was talented, and that was what really pissed off the poet, ha.

 But no.  According to a recent article in the BBC News Magazine, Samuel Taylor Coleridge loathed the word because it was an abomination borrowed from us, the United Statesians.  (That was for you Canadians who get sick of hearing us claim "American" all for ourselves.)  We, you see, had morphed it from its proper "talent."  One might have talent, but no lettered gentleman would use the vulgar, "talented."  Similarly, one might exert influence, especially if one had attended Cambridge, but only the crass would describe a man as "influential."  Shudder. I haven't found out why "tremendous" was so offensive, but I think it might be because its meaning had turned upsidedown at some point, morphing from something that was dreadful enough to cause trembling, to something great and glorious.  The nerve of those language upstarts! 

As for the dread "reliable," BBC Magazine says:  "A letter-writer to the Times, in 1857, described 'reliable' as 'vile.'"

Ha!  Perhaps the letter-writer was a young woman who liked Bad Boys.

Butch and Sundance.  Unreliable as hell, and definitely not vile.  :)

But we'd never do this, right?  We'd never take umbrage (oooo, nice!) at mere morphages of words?

Maybe you wouldn't, but if I never hear "gift" used as a verb again in my lifetime I will consider it a gift. 

"Darling, let me gift you with this toaster oven."

"Sweetheart, let me brain you with this club."

Do you have pet peeves about words that used to stand as straight and tall as a knight, words as good and pure as a Lady, and which have been dragged through the putrid slime of morphification?  And if you don't, give us a poem, Mate, give us a poem, a poem with words, frabjous words!

 In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately Pleasure-Dome decree,
Where Alph, the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea--

"Oh, Bloody hell!

"Jeeves?! Was that the bloody doorbell?"

 

 

Kitchen Gadgets

Margaret Maron

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about world-changing gadgets and how I disagreed with the list that the History Channel thought were most important. (Lots of you did, too.)  That set me thinking about how we might rank the gadgets in our own kitchens, excluding the refrigerator, the range, and the dishwasher.

I have two drawers devoted to the usual assortment of gizmos: potato peeler, lemon zester, butter curler, garlic press, can opener, tongs, scissors, baster, etc. and I use them all fairly frequently . . . well, no, maybe not the butter curler.

I give cupboard space to a waffle iron, toaster, espresso machine, and deep fryer, but these seldom come out of the cupboard more than once or twice a year and that's usually when we have houseguests (with butter curls for their waffles!)

 

A blender and a crock pot live in that same cupboard, but the blender's a summer gadget—frozen margaritas and canning tomatoes—and the crock pot makes hearty stews in the winter so both get a lot of use in their seasons.

The toaster oven and microwave sit side-by-side on their own open shelf above a counter and each gets used two or three times a day.  As does the coffee maker that is important enough to merit space on the countertop itself.

All these gadgets are useful and make my life easier, but if I were told I could only have three gadgets and the rest would have to go, which three would I save, which would I sacrifice?

This is not Sophie's choice.  We're not talking children, one's own flesh and blood, nor even an unblemished lamb, but it did make me think a bit.

Okay, I could give up the crockpot, toaster oven and microwave.  They are efficient, work well and quickly, but my gas range could handle their functions and surely I'd eventually start remembering to take things out of the freezer two hours earlier?

The coffeemaker?  Again, I know how to make stovetop coffee in a saucepan.

Spoons and knives could do the work of most of the gadget drawer's contents.

So which three would I most hate to do without?

#3 – our electric coffee grinder. (Are you listening, Twist?) Beans freshly ground to the desired fineness is a true luxury that has become a necessity in this house ever since a friend sent us this Cadillac of grinders.

#2 – a hand mixer.  As someone who grew up without an electric mixer, I can't tell you how weary you can get trying to whip egg whites into stiff peaks or make smooth mashed potatoes or even mix up pancake batter with only a wire whisk.

#1 – our 13-year-old food processor.  It can, if absolutely necessary, do most of what a blender can (very, very small margaritas though) and I bless it every time I need to slice carrots, dice onions, chop nuts, or make cole slaw, an integral part of Southern cuisine.

If you had to strip down your kitchen, which gadgets would they have to pry out of your protesting hands?