Words from a Wordsmith

My 9-month-old great-grandson

2011-10-07T15:18:00.000-04:00

Write it right ~ plural words

2010-10-05T16:12:00.002-04:00

Why people can't spell

I've been teaching my writing classes why pronouns must agree with their antecedents. While reading blogs this morning, I ran across this sentence:

"...some artist risk their lives to create and speak in a hostile environment."

artist = singular subject
their = plural pronoun

The pronoun their refers back to artist. One or the other is incorrect. I read the whole paragraph and know the writer intended the plural artists, yet she consistently used the singular word artist instead;

"We learn about many Haitian artist."

many = more than one
artist = singular

I think the problem is not about spelling, but about hearing. It's hard to distinguish between the spoken words artist and artists, but they look different on a page. A careful reader should notice that one word has an "s" on the end and the other does not. People cannot spell correctly because they don't read and thus are unable to really hear what is said. Here are other examples of writers having problems with plurals that I've run across today:

"I may be one of the rare person who has not read this book."
"I picked up seven novels and six DVD."
"...a countless amounts of dreams..." (The whole phrase is a mess.)

Cheating in class

I discovered another reason why students may be confused about plurals. During yesterday's grammar test, one young man was was looking up something on his large-screen cell phone, which I confiscated until the end of class. I teach at a college, yet his screen showed me that he was looking up "PLURAL." Could you tell me the plurals of bird and baby? Those were two of the eight words on the test. It occurred to me that he didn't know the meaning of the word plural. Maybe I should start with vocabulary:

plural = more than one
antecedent = preceding

I told my early class yesterday their biggest writing problem was failing to listen to the instructions. A few minutes later one young man said, "Would you repeat that? I was working on something else." No one seemed to notice the irony, and I am rapidly losing hope that I can get through to some of them.

This is the first in a new series about words and writing.

What sparked your interest?

2009-10-15T08:42:00.001-04:00

How did you become interested in global warming, climate change, energy efficiency, alternative energy, renewable energy, and such?

When I was in elementary school, I learned about deforestation. I got the idea that we were losing all the trees in the world, and I love trees! So I decided then and there that I would have a tree of my very own. I'd put a fence around it so nobody could ever cut down "the last tree in the world."

Obviously, I had not yet learned that, without lots of trees, I wouldn't be there to save the last tree. Without trees, the world would be filled with carbon dioxide, lacking the oxygen I would need to breathe, to live. So now that I'm an adult, I want to save not one, but a world-full of trees. (Is "world-full" a word?) We need trees! While we breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, trees take in carbon dioxide and "exhale" oxygen. Pretty good system, huh? Your turn. What sparked your interest?

By the way, this post is part of Blog Action Day. There are more than 8,583 blogs in 148 countries taking part in this today, each posting something about climate change.

Blue-footed boobies

2009-10-15T01:09:00.001-04:00

"Scientists say abrupt and frequent changes in sea temperatures and the death of coral reefs near the islands show that global warming is taking its toll on local sea life."

I was looking for a hook, something to hang today's story on, when I found this article about how global warming is affecting the Galapagos. The first sentence gave me an image that appeals to me:

"Climate change could endanger the unique wildlife of the Galapagos Islands, and scientists are trying to figure out how to protect vulnerable species such as blue-footed boobies and Galapagos Penguins."

Penguins are cute, but I know nothing about blue-footed boobies. So I searched for a photo and found these at Wikipedia. (Click to enlarge photos.) I am fascinated by the blue feet. The blueness of their beaks doesn't show up as well in the picture above, but it's my favorite, maybe because of the ocean in the background. Wikipedia says the feet of these boobies range from a pale turquoise to a deep aquamarine, and the males and younger birds have lighter feet than females do.

What big beautiful wings you have, sir! This fellow is displaying, or in other words, I'd say he's showing off. Actually, he's probably dancing.

"When mating, the female parades and the male points his head and tail high to the sky and his wings are back to show off to the female. The male blue-footed booby also makes a high-piping whistle noise. Males do a dance to attract the females. The dance includes the males lifting their blue feet high and throwing their heads up."

So what's happening in the Galapagos?

Home for these boobies is a volcanic archipelago, about 600 miles west of the Ecuadorean coast. Islands are particularly vulnerable to climate change, and these islands have coral reefs. "The coral reefs create a habitat; they are like a forest, like the Amazon. They are home to scores of species. ... If the corals die we lose thousands of species that are associated to the coral," said German marine biologist Judith Denkinger, who is based in the Galapagos.

Everything is inter-related. Whatever affects one part of the eco-system affects all the other parts as well. I would hate for us to lose the blue-footed boobies. Or the Galapagos Penguins. Or any other species. Ultimately, that could mean us, the five-toed language-speaking species. We aren't above what happens to our world. We're part of it, and demise of a coral reef or two could affect us more than we now realize.

By the way, this post is part of Blog Action Day. There are more than 7,777 blogs in 140 countries taking part in this today, each posting something about climate change.

One more thing

On October 24th ordinary folks like you and me will come together in a series of events designed to bring awareness to an important number -- 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide. That's the maximum safe level for carbon in the atmosphere, at least if we want to keep living on this planet. Here are three of those events:

On the melting slopes of Mt. Everest, Pemba Dorje Sherpa, who holds the record for the fastest ascent of the world's highest peak, will be spreading banners and signs.

On the dying coral reefs of the Maldives, the government's entire cabinet will don scuba gear and hold an official underwater meeting to pass a 350 resolution to send to the Copenhagen summit.

On the shores of the fast-drying Dead Sea, Israeli activists will form a giant human "3" on their beach, Palestinians a "5" on theirs, and Jordanians a "0" - reminding us we need to unite on this vital issue.

Visit http://350.org to find an event near you.

Two roads diverged

2009-09-25T22:23:00.000-04:00

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Flamingos, anyone?

2009-09-18T14:16:00.004-04:00

Today's prompt at Weekend Wordsmith is Plastic Flamingos with this photo.

Tiel Aisha Ansari's response was Flannel Flamingo, one of the funniest short pieces I've read in ages. Take a minute and go read it.

I'm moving

2008-12-16T17:07:00.000-05:00

No, not my blog. My cat and I are moving into a gated community for seniors, and it may take me some time to get settled in. Tomorrow I'll sign the lease and start moving boxes over there each time I go. Too much is happening, so don't expect to hear from me anytime soon. I really am looking forward to this, so be glad for me, but moving (as most of you probably know) takes time and effort. I'll read whatever you say in the comments, but don't expect me to say much, if anything, until I finally get things in some sort of order. Kiki, my cat, won't be happy to have to go in the car, but maybe she'll be happy when she realizes the other cat (Sammy is my roommate's cat) won't be living in the same apartment with us. They both grew up as only-cats and resent each other. Sammy and Donna will be moving into a different apartment next week. Here's Kiki among the boxes:

What could she be thinking?

2008-10-08T16:35:00.001-04:00

I need help with the novel I'll be writing in November. Lilli, my protagonist, wants to time travel to the past. Nearly everyone she's told wants to know one of two things:

Why would anybody want to travel into the past?
... or ...
Wouldn't it be more interesting to go into the future?

So what reasons can anyone give for wanting to go either direction, instead of being satisfied to be here and now?

I need to know right away because Lilli thinks she's figured out what George Orwell knew and can get herself into the past without using his (or anybody else's) time machine. I don't want her to go until I find a way to go with her. After all, a character should share her thoughts with her author, don't you think?

The fanaticism of the writing life

2008-09-21T10:41:00.004-04:00

"It’s hard to throw your whole self into something when that self has another job."

David Gessner seems to be arguing with himself in his NYT article Those Who Write, Teach. What's a writer to do? On the one hand, he says, "It’s hard to throw your whole self into something when that self has another job." On the other hand, having a day job does pay the bills and put food on the table. "For most of us, the options aren’t teaching or writing all day in a barn but teaching or working at the Dairy Queen."

Gessner himself gave up full-time writing five years ago and became a professor of creative writing. By taking that job he entered "the real world," according to his father. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

"My father succinctly summarized his feelings about my choice to dedicate my 20s to writing fiction. 'You’re not living in the real world,' he said. I reacted with a young man’s defensiveness, but in retrospect his assessment seems less critical than a matter of fact."

Teaching has given Gessner a bonus: other people. And having folks around allows a writer to be interactive. But then what happens to the reading time a writer needs?

Gessner, author of six books and currently an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, says that his "inner monomaniac" would like nothing more than "to tear off his collar and sabotage the job that keeps him from running wild."

What about you? Does the writing life take all you have? Or do you have a day job? How do you think of the job -- as a way of observing "real life" or as a form of captivity? Does the job provide fodder for your writing? Or do you miss the obsession of closing yourself off into a world of your own making?

Word test for writers

2008-09-16T08:47:00.008-04:00

"Good communication is not necessarily about using an expansive vocabulary. It is about properly using the words and punctuation you already know."

I took the test at HelloQuizzy and came away with proof that public schools in the 1940s were really doing pretty well at teaching vocabulary and punctuation. Well, my teachers plus another sixty-plus years of reading and studying everything I could get my hands on. Plus degrees in philosophy and English and theology. Wanna see my results? (I wonder if "wanna" would get me busted by the vocabulary cops?)

Your result for The Commonly Confused Words Test...
English Genius
You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 100% Expert!
You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!
Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!
For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/.
Take The Commonly Confused Words Test at HelloQuizzy

Guess who wrote this little ditty

2008-09-13T22:12:00.001-04:00

"So the writer who breeds
more words than he needs
is making a chore
for the reader who reads."

My telephone story

2008-09-04T01:59:00.001-04:00

The story starter said, "If you only had one more day to live, what would you do?" I remember a day when I was reading a book while eating lunch at my desk and ran across an intriguing sentence: "If you had only one hour to live, what would you do?" That same day, I wrote what I now think of as the telephone story, describing what I thought I might do in that situation.

The book was Born to Win: Transactional Analysis with Gesalt Experiments, and I spotted it when I went out to grab a sandwich. From other thoughts I associate with that day, like taking my lunch and the book back to my tenth-floor office in the Chattanooga Bank Building, I think it may have been 1979. I was enjoying the book, not reading it straight through, but finding bits here and there that grabbed my attention. When I came across the question, "If you had only one hour to live, what would you do?" I thought, What, not even a whole day?

One of the possibilities that occurred to me was having my sister Ann spend that hour with me. She and I had decided years earlier that the one who died first would try to "appear" to the other. Yeah, I thought, I'd spend my last hour with Ann. So before the lunch hour ended, I picked up the phone on my desk and called her. The line was busy: "Brrrtt, brrrtt, brrrtt." I was stymied when I tried to "reach out and touch someone" as the phone company's slogan suggested. After my lunch break I got back to work, occasionally dialing Ann's number again. "Brrrtt, brrrtt, brrrtt." Over and over I got that busy signal and wondered who on earth she could be talking to for so long. Late in the afternoon I had one of those lightbulb moments when I realized, "I wasted the final hour of my life trying to call Ann!" If I'd truly had only one hour to live, I would have spent it unsuccessfully attempting to get through to my sister. I would have died alone!

After work I drove straight to Ann's house and learned that rain had knocked out the phones in her area. Water in the system caused a problem and the lines were out. Ann had not been talking an inordinately long time; she was marooned by a faulty phone line. And thus I "died" alone.

There's a metaphor in this story!

The phones we had thirty years ago were similar to the ones used to make the sheep pictured below. Interesting that I chose to write about a phone problem on the same day Susan, my blogger friend, sent me these photos. Synchronicity. Again. (Click to enlarge, and be sure to notice the feet.)

Laughing babies

2008-08-23T23:47:00.000-04:00

Weekend Wordsmith's prompt was Laughing Baby, and this online photo was perfect. It prompted in me a memory of my twin daughters laughing at each other, thus my title is "Laughing babies."

I had been told that very young babies don't really laugh, that what mothers think is laughter is really the baby's reaction to gas pains. Don't believe a word of that poppycock. I know better.

Whenever I would place them side by side, before the girls could reliably manage to turn their heads, they would work hard to make eye contact with each other. It was an effort, but those babies were determined. Wobbly heads jerked and turned. First one would see her sister and start laughing, and then the other would get her head in place and laugh along. Unless gas pains are contagious, my identical twins were LAUGHING. They were delighted to see each other. The only way they could make contact was visually, but it's no cliche to say their eyes did light up when they caught sight of each other. Seeing each other was a joy for them, and hearing them laugh was a joy those of us watching. Their laughter was contagious, and we laughed along with them. (My only video from 1960 is in my head, folks, sorry.)

This next part is my paraphrase from Snopes.com, which says the story is TRUE. Based on what I observed in my twins and their obvious joy in each other, I believe this story.

This "Rescuing Hug" photo accompanied a story about newborn twin girls. They were in separate incubators, and one was not expected to live. A hospital nurse went against hospital rules and put the girls in one incubator. When they were together, the healthier of the two threw an arm over her sister in an endearing embrace. The smaller baby's heart rate stabilized and her temperature rose to normal.

This is actually a true story. Kyrie and Brielle Jackson were born on October 17, 1995, each weighing two pounds. Kyrie put on a little weight in the next few days, but Brielle wasn't doing well and cried a lot, leaving her gasping and blue in the face. The NICU nurse, Gayle Kasparian, tried everything to calm her ... she held her, got her dad to hold her, wrapped her in a blanket, suctioned her nose ... but nothing worked.

Remembering a procedure from Europe that she'd heard about, the nurse put Brielle in Kyrie's incubator. Almost immediately, Brielle snuggled up to Kyrie. Her extremely low blood-saturation levels began to soar, she began to breathe easier, the frantic crying stopped, and her normal pinkish color quickly returned. She was allowed to stay with her sister, and over the next few weeks her health continued to improve. The last report Snopes had was when the girls were healthy preschoolers. This photo of them not only circulated for years on the Internet, but it was also published in Life and Reader's Digest.

Did love pull the wee one through? Yes. Were my twin daughters joyful about seeing each other? Absolutely. Were they laughing? You'd better believe it!

Un-cliche this

2008-08-14T03:49:00.003-04:00

So I use a non-verb to assign us the task of converting these cliches into something fresh. Can we do it? Pick one from the list, and see what you can do with it. Is this a contest? No, not really, but it is an exercise in creativity and thinking in new ways. Please leave an answer in the comments, to share with everyone what you have done with one of these tired, old sayings.

1. a dead giveaway
2. his eyes darted
3. take a deep breath
4. tell a tale
5. stealing a look
6. fluttered to the floor
7. looking smug
8. in hot water
9. in spite of himself
10. mentally playing with the words
11. trying to visualize
12. absently reached out
13. in his mind's eye
14. suddenly realizing
15. smorgasbord of possibilities
16. while away the time
17. worth getting excited about
18. eyes took on a faraway look
19. a yearning in his eyes
20. something oddly similar
21. a plan was forming
22. looking for a clue

Don't do anything rash

2008-08-05T08:29:00.002-04:00

I am terribly allergic to poison ivy and poison oak, having once had such a bad case that I had to farm out my children to my best friend and my mother and stay in bed, with eyes swelled shut, nostrils and earlobes and lips swollen, rash in the roof of my mouth, going to the doctor for shots and excising of extremely enlarged patches, which made the back of my left hand looked like the largest lump on this person's arm. That’s background info so you’ll know this is worth trying. Except for a rash on your face, this will help:

Run VERY HOT water over the rash, either under a faucet (for a small rash on a hand or arm) or in a shower, which I usually do. It must be RUNNING water, not just hot water you dip an elbow into (which doesn’t work). When I shower, I make the water as hot as I can stand it without burning myself, letting it pummel the rash (don’t you just want to beat it to death?). While you are under the rushing water, it will itch like crazy, but afterwards you will have relief for about three hours. Yes, truly, no itchiness for three hours. Only one of my doctors was already familiar with this treatment before I told him, but it really does work for me. None of the creams provides me much relief, but the hot water treatment helps it dry up faster than anything I’ve ever tried.

When my neighbor Michael and I were comparing poison ivy stories the other day, he told me he used to be a park ranger and would itch so badly that, on coming out of the woods at the end of a hot day, he would “burn” his itchy arms by laying them on the sizzling hood of his truck. He says it stopped the itching. I think you could really BURN yourself using Michael's method, while a shower covers itchy areas better, but my point is that heat also worked for him. And the best part? Hot water doesn’t cost nearly as much as salves and creams! And remember this:

"If leaves be three then let it be."

Why am I grossing you out with this? First, to provide you with a proven form of relief that works for me. Second, because of the "don't touch" prompt at Weekend Wordsmith.

Where does creativity hide?

2008-08-03T15:23:00.005-04:00

Amy Tan digs deep into the creative process, looking for hints of how hers evolved, in this 22-minute video: Where does creativity hide? I especially like "the uncertainity principle" that she mentions, along with the "eleven levels of anxiety" that operate at the same time.

Born in the US to immigrant parents from China, Amy Tan rejected her mother's expectations that she become a doctor and concert pianist and chose to write fiction instead. Have you read any of her books? I read The Joy Luck Club first, though I enjoyed later books more. I especially liked The Hundred Secret Senses, about which a Newsweek writer said:

"Tan has once more produced a novel somewhat like a hologram: turn it this way and find Chinese-Americans shopping and arguing in San Francisco; turn it that way and the Chinese of Changmian village in 1864 are fleeing into the hills to hide from the rampaging Manchus."

I hope you get a chuckle or two out of the video above. To access it, click on the underlined link.

Do schools kill creativity?

Sign of the times

2008-07-06T13:15:00.004-04:00

The prompt at Weekend Wordsmith this week is "It's a sign." This "joke" is more eloquent than I could ever be, so I'll let this photo be my "thousand words" for today.

Invitation to "Tell us a story"

2008-06-19T13:27:00.001-04:00

Do you like to tell stories?
Did you ever sit around a campfire listening to stories?
I've started a new blog, one where we will share our stories.
Check it out:
Tell us a story.

Green Short Story

2008-04-07T04:22:00.002-04:00

We are invited to write a GREEN short story of up to 2,000 words in length for Delta-Sky Magazine. It may employ any tone, from funny to apocalyptic, but must deliberately have some aspect of green as a prevailing presence, or even its theme. By "green" they mean the concern for our environment that is motivating people worldwide to take action to reverse its degradation. To waste less, for example, and to care more.

Click here for the official rules. There's only a week left before it's due on April 15th.

The Lost Ring ~ a meditation

2008-04-02T10:07:00.006-04:00

I want to meditate on the meaning of a story in Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth, but first I need to share the story itself:

"The Lost Ring"(pp. 38-41)
When I was seeing people as a counselor and spiritual teacher, I would visit a woman twice a week whose body was riddled with cancer. She was a schoolteacher in her midforties and had been given no more than a few months to live by her doctors. Sometimes a few words were spoken during those visits, but mostly we would sit together in silence, and as we did, she had her first glimpses of the stillness within herself that she never knew existed during her busy life as a schoolteacher.

One day however, I arrived to find her in a state of great distress and anger. "What happened?" I asked. Her diamond ring, of great monetary as well as sentimental value, had disappeared, and she said she was sure it had been stolen by the woman who came to look after her for a few hours every day. She said she didn't understand how anybody could be so callous and heartless as to do this to her. She asked me whether she should confront the woman or whether it would be better to call the police immediately. I said I couldn't tell her what to do, but asked her to find out how important a ring or anything else was at this point in her life. "You don't understand," she said. "This was my grandmother's ring. I used to wear it every day until I got ill and my hands became too swollen. It's more than just a ring to me. How can I not be upset?"

The quickness of her response and the anger and defensiveness in her voice were indications that she had not yet become present enough to look within and to disentangle her reaction from the event and observe them both. Her anger and defensiveness were signs that the ego was still speaking through her. I said, "I am going to ask you a few questions, but instead of answering them now, see if you can find the answers within you. I will pause briefly after each question. When an answer comes, it may not necessarily come in the form of words." She said she was ready to listen. I asked: "Do you realize that you will have to let go of the ring at some point, perhaps quite soon? How much more time do you need before you will be ready to let go of it? Will you become less when you let go of it? Has who you are become diminished by the loss?" There were a few minutes of silence after the last question.

When she started speaking again, there was a smile on her face, and she seemed at peace. "The last question made me realize something important. First I went to my mind for an answer and my mind said, 'Yes, of course you have been diminished.' Then I asked myself the question again, 'Has who I am become diminished?' This time I tried to feel rather than think the answer. And suddenly I could feel my I Am-ness. I have never felt that before. If I can feel the I Am so strongly, then who I am hasn't been diminished at all. I can still feel it now, something peaceful but very alive."

"That is the joy of Being," I said. "You can only feel it when you get out of your head. Being must be felt. It can't be thought. The ego doesn't know about it because thought is what it consists of. The ring was really in your head as a thought that you confused with the sense of I Am. You thought the I Am or a part of it ws in the ring.

"Whatever the ego seeks and gets attached to are substitutes for the Being that it cannot feel. You can value and care for things, but whenever you get attached to them, you will know it's the ego. And you are never really attached to a thing but to a thought that has 'I,' 'me,' or 'mint' in it. Whenever you completely accept a loss, you go beyond ego, and who you are, the I Am which is consciousness itself, emerges."

She said, "Now I understand something Jesus said that never made much sense to me before: 'If someone takes your shirt, let him have your coat as well.'"

"That's right," I said. "It doesn't mean you should never lock your door. All it means is that sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on."

In the last few weeks of her life as her body became weaker, she became more and more radiant, as if light were shining through her. She gave many of her possessions away, some to the woman she thought had stolen the ring, and with each thing she gave away, her joy deepened. When her mother called me to let me know she had passed away, she also mentioned that after her death they found her ring in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Did the woman return the ring, or had it been there all the time? Nobody will ever know. One thing we do know: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.

Is it wrong then to be proud of one's possessions or to feel resentful toward people who have more than you? Not at all. That sense of pride, of needing to stand out, the apparent enhancement of one's self through "more than" and diminishment through "less than" is neither right nor wrong -- it is the ego. The ego isn't wrong; it's just unconscious. When you observe the ego in yourself, you are beginning to go beyond it. Don't take the ego too seriously. When you detect egoic behavior in yourself, smile. At times you may even laugh. How could humanity have been taken in by this for so long? Above all, know that the ego isn't personal. It isn't who you are. If you consider the ego to be your personal problem, that's just more ego.

When I read this section on Sunday, the part that jumped out at me was the saying of Jesus that the woman quoted (seventh paragraph): "If someone takes your shirt, let him have your coat as well" (Matthew 5:40). Three things came to mind:

First, I heard a story at Sunday school that very morning about a man calling after a thief who had just stolen his wallet: "Wait, it's cold out here today; let me give you my coat." He removed his coat, saying, "And let me take you to lunch ... though you'll have to pay for it, since you have my wallet."

Second, I also heard that Rwanda has healed from the 1994 genocide by not focusing on the wrongs, but has forgiven and moved on. Can I verify this? No, but I had heard it not long ago, and it's on my mind.

Third, I recently finished a novel about forgiveness in South Africa, where those guilty of apartheid confessed their guilt. This form of forgiveness was said to allow closure because relatives could learn what really happened to those who disappeared. Thus the country could get on with living. The problem is that I know the oppressed in South Africa have not all put the anger and hatred behind them.

Read Crime comes home about an 82-year-old woman and her housekeeper, who were held up at gunpoint in their driveway by two thugs on February 8, 2008. Today her daughter said: "I learned from my mom that the case, following on her attack and robbery, has been closed for lack of evidence. And this less than two months after the incident. This is not the sort of thing that inspires any confidence in the police or the authorities’ ability to do anything about the rampant crime that plagues all of us in this benighted country."

So does this crime problem in South Africa mean that forgiveness doesn't work? No, I think we should look at it from another angle: An individual forgives a robber. A country forgives genocide, but have its citizens all done the same? Another country forgives apartheid, but are individuals still angry? And a broader question: Are there issues of systemic injustice still challenging the people of the land?

Ah, what lofty things the mind likes to ponder! And while I'm being so high-minded, I'm able to distance myself from what Tolle is trying to tell ME. The question I should be asking MYSELF is whether I would offer my coat in that situation, whether I could or would quit feeling angry if a relative had been tortured and killed during genocide or apartheid, whether I could release my anger and frustration if it were MY ring that had disappeared. Look at that: me, myself, and my. All indications of ego. Let's get personal here.

Though I haven't lost a ring in that way, I can relate to the feelings of the dying woman in Tolle's story. How long did it take me to "get over" the un-repaid loan of $500 to a friend? How long did I hold onto my righteous indignation about all the wrongs I attributed to my ex-husband? How long does it still take me to realize that someday I will have to let go of all "things" I consider MINE? Hmmm, when I reach that realization, maybe I won't have to keep paying monthly storage fees. That would be a good thing, wouldn't it?

St. Frances of Assissi

2008-03-29T07:03:00.010-04:00

There's a "typo hunt across America" going on, and I thought sure you'd want know about it. Here's a map of where the intrepid Typo Eradication Advancement League (TEAL) has been so far, and here's a link to the blog where Jeff and Benjamin (and others?) chronicle their typo-hunt exploits.

I especially enjoyed reading about St. Frances of Assissi. You know her, right?

Since I am almost as flummoxed by apostrophe-s as they are, I could only smile at the before and after photos of the signs the two guys corrected.

I was curious about homemade deserts, but I don't think I want to be around whoever makes those deserts himself.

If you don't want pickels with your sandwich’s, then check this out.
__________

I learned about TEAL through a Verbatim post. Thanks, Karen!

Words make life interesting

2008-03-29T04:19:00.003-04:00

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), a controversial American writer known for her caustic wit, was challenged to use the word horticulture in a sentence. She came up with this now-famous sentence: "You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think."

When I was ten or twelve

2008-03-28T15:48:00.005-04:00

It's always fun to win a prize,
so every girl at camp was eager
to come up with a costume that somehow
represents the month that she was born.

I remember no ideas the others had,
though someone October-born
might think of treats ... or tricks.
Did December become a lighted tree?

September may mean back to school.
Fireworks betoken bright July.
February hearts would do the trick.
Did November's girl dress turkey style?

A long-tailed kite bespeaks March winds.
May flowers, not impossible.
Could June become a big green bug?
But how to show the August heat?

January's winter produces snowflakes,
but how, with no supplies?
We had no "things" we had not packed,
not knowing we must be creative.

With one foot sandaled, one clad in shoe,
sloppy shirt donned wrong-side out,
As April's child, sock on one hand,
my garb was really foolish and
I won the foolish prize!
__________
(P.S. I googled those 1970s campers to use with this Weekend Wordsmith prompt.)

Four things

2008-03-27T03:46:00.005-04:00

Four jobs I have had in my life:

1. stuffer ~ I helped work my way through college by stuffing comics and advertising flyers into our Sunday newspaper
2. file clerk ~ making 75-cents an hour, back in 1954, when I was in junior high school and working part-time
3. editor ~ of two inhouse publications, where I took all of the photos we published and wrote nearly all of the articles
4. freelance writer ~ one who, as Robert Benchley said, "is paid per piece or per word or perhaps"

Four books I would read over and over:
(formerly "four movies I would watch over and over," but I'm a reader)

1. Time and Again ~ by Jack Finney
2. Herland ~ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
3. The book of Genesis in the Bible ~ New Revised Standard Version
4. Tao te Ching ~ by Lao Tzu ~ translated by Stephen Mitchell

Four places I have lived:

1. in an apartment with a lovable gray cat named Duchess (plus my parents and siblings)
2. in a house with a gray and white Persian cat named Jack (plus my children and a dog)
3. in a house with a gray and white Manx cat named Hobbit (plus my mother)
4. in an apartment with a tabby-point Siamese cat named Kiki (plus my friend and her cat)

Four books I would recommend:
(formerly "four TV shows that I watch," but I'm not big on watching TV)

1. My Sister's Keeper ~ by Jodi Picoult
2. The Dispossessed ~ by Ursula K. Le Guin
3. Gnostic Gospels ~ by Elaine Pagels
4. Snowflower and the Secret Fan ~ by Lisa See

Four places I have been:

1. in hot water
2. in love
3. indisposed
4. in the know

Four people who email me regularly:

1. my daughter Barbara
2. my granddaughter Cali
3. Barnes & Noble
4. some guy from Burkina Faso or Cote d'Ivoire or Ghana, who claims he'll give me millions of dollars if only I'll help him get the money out of his country

Four of my favorite foods:

1. grilled salmon with lime juice, and maybe asparagus and a baked potato
2. fried okra
3. Greek salad
4. little green olives (and did I mention fried okra like my mother used to make?)

Four of my favorite drinks:

1. a tall glass of iced tea
2. cuppa hot tea
3. peach tea
4. green tea ... these all fit me to a "tea"

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. chatting with you over tea and crumpets (whatsa crumpet? ... hmm, looks like an English muffin to me ... that'll do)
2. stretched out on top of my bed reading a book
3. sitting beside 7-year-old Cady while she reads me a book we'll review together
4. at a book-signing, with my adoring readers lined up across the lobby waiting for me to sign my bestselling book

Four things that are very special in my life:

1. books
2. grandchildren
3. a cat who loves me
4. more books ... and the friends (and granddaughter) who discuss them with me

Four things I'm looking forward to in 2008:

1. book discussions with Book Buddies
2. book discussions with the belles of Bella Novella
3. book discussions with friends in the Alternative Book Club
4. reading books to review on my blog Bonnie's Books
5. reading Banned Books
(Oops! That's five! So ya gonna sue me 'cause I can't count?)

Spelling test

2008-03-20T01:57:00.011-04:00

One of my frustrations has been having to read my students' papers that are full of misspelled words. Daily Writing Tips has come up with a wonderful online spelling test we can take. Before offering it to you, I wanted to be sure I could spell. For the record? I made 100% on the spelling test!

Now it's your turn: DWT spelling test. When you finish, come back here and tell us your score.

Here are some words that may cause problems:

accept ~ except
loose ~ lose ~ loss
whether ~ weather
by ~ buy ~ bye
wreck ~ wreak
here ~ hear
to ~ two ~ too
for ~ four ~ fore
elicit ~ illicit
peace ~ piece
do ~ dew ~ due
know ~ now ~ no
knew ~ new
then ~ than
creek ~ creak
discussed ~ disgust
write ~ right ~ rite
cent ~ sent ~ scent
wear ~ where ~ were
there ~ their ~ they're
arc ~ ark
whose ~ who's
close ~ clothes
bare ~ bear
cite ~ sight ~ site
chilly ~ Chile ~ chili
affect ~ effect
aisle ~ I'll ~ ile
bored ~ board
advice ~ advise
decent ~ descent ~ dissent
choose ~ chose ~ choice
write ~ right ~ rite
bald ~ bawled ~ balled
holy ~ wholly ~ holey
alter ~ altar
here ~ hear
break ~ brake
lightning ~ lightening
meat ~ mete ~ meet
allowed ~ aloud
its ~ it's
of ~ off

One problem I haven't seen anyone else discuss is the word "of" misused like this:

would of ... instead of ... would've (would have)
could of ... instead of ... could've (could have)
should of ... instead of ... should've (should have)
must of ... instead of ... must've (must have)

Have you seen or heard (or used) any of these?

That's a mute point.
Don't take him for granite.
For all intensive purposes.
Bob wire fences.

But sometimes misusing a word can be fun, like in the bumper sticker that says, "Visualise whirled peas" ... or the poster shown above. Oh, you want the corrected sentences? Okay.

That's a moot point.
Don't take him for granted.
For all intents and purposes.
Barbed wire fences.

Wikipedia says, "Barbed wire [is] also known as barb wire."
These are called eggcorns:

a tough road to hoe (a tough row to hoe)
antidotal evidence (anecdotal evidence)
bread and breakfast (bed and breakfast)
fast majority (vast majority)
flaw in the ointment (fly in the ointment)
hone in (home in)
internally grateful (eternally grateful)
old timers disease (Alzheimers Disease)
on the spurt of the moment (on the spur of the moment)
outer body experience (out of body experience)
put the cat before the horse (put the cart before the horse)
throws of passion (throes of passion)
windshield factor (wind chill factor)

Click the link to learn about eggcorns.

Grace's story ~ part 21

2008-03-13T03:25:00.002-04:00

Read the first part of Grace's story here.

Grace started awake and realized she had been dreaming. Drained by the adreneline overload of this maddening day, she had collapsed in a heap at the roadside phone when Mike hung up on her.

She realized she couldn't stay here. Bastian might find her on the side of the road, not that far from the cottage where he'd left her. Grace was shaking when she slid into the driver's seat of the Mercedes and buckled up. Now she needed to sort out what had happened, what was real, what was not, and most of all, what to do next.

The need for action, the need to do something, anything, must have propelled Grace into that realistic dream of avenging herself against Asia. Where had that person come from, the one who thought to check the clip of a gun? Had she been watching too much television? Grace was afraid to trust her own thinking, but who else did she have?

Starting the engine, she drove off in the direction away from the cottage, trying at the same time to use the car's navigation system to figure out how to fly under the radar. She needed to make some decisions quickly before Bastian's henchmen figured out she had this car and found a way to use the car's own system to track her.

As she approached the city, she saw a Starbucks and decided coffee would give her the jolt she needed. And then she remembered she had no money, no credit cards, no way to do the necessary things for survival. Who could she call?

When she glanced into her rearview mirror, she realized that car had been following her for some time now and decided to make a few turns to get rid of it. When she turned left at an intersection, so did the other vehicle. When she turned left again, the car followed suit. Panic began to well up in her, constricting her throat. When she slowed down, the car zipped around her ... and then stopped so suddenly she had to slam on her brakes.

The man who jumped out of the car with his hands in the air looked familiar. Had she seen him with Bastian? Grace was terrified.

The man yelled, "Grace! It's okay!"

She had slammed the car into reverse and was starting to back up when he shouted, "Grace, it's me! It's Mike." And she started crying with relief as she recognized his face.

* * *

They abandoned the Mercedes behind a grocery store so that it was not visible from the road, and Mike was questioning Grace about everything that she had experienced since the day before. When she told him about ramming Asia against the wall and shoving the muzzle into her mouth to kill her, he looked at her gravely.

"That didn't happen," he said.

She began to doubt her sanity. "Did I dream it, as I thought earlier?"

"I don't know, but you didn't return to the cottage, so you didn't kill Asia. Unless she bled to death from the cuts sustained when the glass top of the table shattered," he said.

"I'm afraid to tell you about another phone call," she whispered, and he turned to look at her.

"What phone call?"

"I thought it was Bastian. The name 'Seb' showed up in the caller I.D."

"Seb?"

"Bastian."

"You're saying he called you?"

"No, he was calling Asia. The phone was ringing in her pocket, and I answered it."

"After you killed her?" Mike asked.

"Yes," Grace said tentatively, almost whispering.

"But that didn't happen," he reminded her gently. "If you didn't kill her, then you weren't there to answer her cell phone."

"What's happening?" Grace wailed softly. "Am I going crazy?"

"You are stressed out," he responded.

They drove several miles in silence, but he could see that Grace was beside herself. He knew he'd have to find a safe place to revive her physically and mentally, with coffee and some information.

Naming names?

2008-03-07T09:56:00.005-05:00

"Sticks and stones will break our bones,
but words will break our hearts."
~~ Robert Fulghum

Yesterday I ran across this quote from Robert Fulghum, a very pithy writer, and was struck by the truth it embodies. This morning I ran across this bit on verbal victimization from a book on psychology and began to question Fulghum's conclusion:

Most people these days think that nasty names "naturally" hurt folks. Such erroneous thinking is causing huge amounts of unhappiness.

The process of name-calling is typically based upon feeling not OK, and name-callers are trying to make themselves feel more powerful by using the process. If I call you a name and get you upset, then I temporarily feel more powerful because I had a powerful effect upon you. My self-esteem rises at your expense. I project my unhappiness on to you and you take it on if you allow yourself to be upset. If you do not get upset at my attempt, then I cannot dump my original unhappiness on you. Then I am left not only with my failure to successfully dump it on you but also with my original unhappiness to boot. Thus, if you're successful at being unbothered by my words, then I wind up more unhappy; and I'll probably quickly stop those words. This is a key element to understand, that name-callers will usually feel worse if you do not react to their name-calling. They will therefore be much quicker to stop such behavior than if you get visibly upset.

Ver-rrr-rry interesting. I'm a wordsmith, so I'm looking at this from the "wordy" point of view. At the same time, I've started reading Eckhart Tolle's book A New Earth to discuss with a group of seekers (we met for the first time last night). Tolle is predicting (and enabling through his books) a shift in consciousness, not just of a single person, but of a majority of people. Can we change our thinking? Why should we? According to Tolle, we are too bound up in ego (he calls it "egoic mind") and need to get over our collective dysfunction. For a start, he suggests that we recognize that we use words to label persons and things, and we've got to get past that.

Um-huh, if I'm not concerned about labels,
then your words can't break my heart,
like sticks and stones hurled at me,
'cause that ain't me!
(Now I wonder what other writers will have to say about "sticks and stones" over at Weekend Wordsmith.)

So you want to be a writer?

2008-02-21T00:49:00.003-05:00

Vanilla has written the very thing you should read on her Absolute Vanilla (& Atyllah) blog ... if you want to be a novelist, that is. She calls it A Novel Update, and it should frighten off the timid.

When you've read her account of what it takes to do the job, you should read what The Times says in the online article A novel idea may not be lucrative. If you are still with us after that, you may ... maybe, perhaps, and having been warned ... become a writer yet.

Sharing through blogs

2008-02-19T11:49:00.006-05:00

Not Quite What I Was Planning by Larry Smith was published February 5th. Ernest Hemingway, when asked to write an entire story using six words, proved it could be done by coming up with this: "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn." This book, sub-titled "Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Obscure and Famous," includes these two: "Found true love, married someone else" (Bjorn Stromberg) and "Wasn’t born a redhead; fixed that" (Andie Grace). The Weekend Wordsmith challenge is to write a 6-word memoir. Here's mine. Now it's your turn.
internal dialogue,
discovered blogging,
shared dialogue

Publisher of children's books

2008-02-18T00:26:00.007-05:00

"Sylvan Dell Publishing is a young company on a serious mission to create picture books that excite children’s imaginations, are artistically spectacular, and have educational value." All of their books start with fun, warm stories -- generally fiction with math, science, or nature themes -- and are brought to life by art. They also add a 3-5 page 'For Creative Minds' section that includes fun facts, crafts, vocabulary, and games to reinforce the educational value and to support National Science and Math Standards.

Their needs are very specific, and any manuscripts submitted must meet all of these criteria:

Less than 1500 words
Fun to read – mostly fiction with non-fiction facts woven into the story
National or regional in scope
Must be able to tie into early elementary school curriculum in some way
Must be marketable through a niche market such as zoo, aquarium, or museum gift shop

One of their newest releases is Kersplatypus, written by Susan K. Mitchell and illustrated by Sherry Rogers. You should take a look at it, along with the other books this company has published.

Research for free

2008-02-16T05:57:00.004-05:00

Research free at Harvard:

In a move to disseminate faculty research and scholarship more broadly, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) voted Tuesday (Feb. 12) to give the University a worldwide license to make each faculty member’s scholarly articles available and to exercise the copyright in the articles, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit. This will allow scholars and the general public from around the world access to scholarly works of FAS faculty. "By working, as individual faculties and together as a single University, we can all promote the free communication of knowledge," said Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and director of the University Library.

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2008/02.14/99-fasvote.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14arts-HARVARDRESEA_BRF.html?ex=1360645200&en=5f61a8a8256166f1&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss
__________

and through the Public Library of Law, a free online legal research site:

What is the Public Library of Law?

Searching the Web is easy. Why should searching the law be any different? That's why Fastcase has created the Public Library of Law -- to make it easy to find the law online. PLoL is the largest free law library in the world, because we assemble law available for free scattered across many different sites -- all in one place. PLoL is the best starting place to find law on the Web.

What is available on PLoL?

Cases from the U.S. Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals

Cases from all 50 states back to 1997

Federal statutory law and codes from all 50 states

Regulations, court rules, constitutions, and more!

PLoL also includes free links to paid content on Fastcase. PLoL is already the Web's largest free law library, but with additional links from Fastcase, it is one of the most comprehensive law libraries in the world.

http://www.plol.org/Pages/Search.aspx

Taking notes as an observer

2008-02-06T16:46:00.000-05:00

How Do You Become a Writer?
By Amanda Eyre Ward, author of Forgive Me

I remember going to hear Joyce Carol Oates read when I was in college. I wanted desperately to be a writer, and I hung on her every word. When she mentioned that she wrote by a window, I noted write by a window. When she said she drank tea, I wrote tea. Whenever I met a real writer, I asked them where they wrote, how they wrote, and when. I wanted to know the rules, how to organize my life in order to succeed.

I know now that every writer makes his or her own rules. The advice I give to beginning writers is to have faith, love the process, and to value writing, to put it in the center of their lives.

Having faith is hard as rejection letters and bills come regularly in the mail. But of my friends and colleagues who studied fiction writing with me at the University of Montana a decade ago, the only ones who have not published yet are the ones who gave up. The rest of us make a living now by writing. (Or writing and teaching.)

Valuing writing is the fun part. Set aside a desk for writing, set aside a day. Spend some money on your favorite tea, an important pen, a book you want to read. Play music, and feel proud when you’ve written a page. Take a walk if you need to. Get a sitter. Surround yourself with objects that inspire you. The rest of the writing life is difficult, and can be heartbreaking. This is what you get: a solitary morning, a cup of coffee, the luxury of bringing words into the world, the joy of a perfect sentence.

Putting writing in the center of your life is also challenging, when so many other important things beckon. Oprah and everyone else tells me I can make time for an exercise routine, but I can’t seem to do it. But living as a writer doesn’t always mean being alone. You can take care of children, or a job, or a spouse while you think about writing. When you see a movie, ask yourself why it is working or not. If you lose interest in a friend’s story, ask yourself what she could have done to hold you. What magazines are you reading, and why? What could be going on with the bank teller and her strange expression? Living your life as a writer is a way of participating fully, but also taking notes as an observer. It’s something that takes practice, but I have found it to be essential. I have been completely stuck in a novel, left it for the day, and then found my answer on the playground or at the library. I am always thinking about my novels.

And, thanks to Joyce Carol Oates, I always sit by the window.
__________
Amanda Eyre Ward is the award-winning author of How to Be Lost and Sleep Toward Heaven. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her family. Used with permission.

Grace's story ~ from the Shameless Lions

2008-02-04T11:56:00.000-05:00

Twenty installments have been published, and the story just took a MAJOR twist. So I think it's time to share our collective story with you again. All of it! Yes, all twenty segments are here today, in this post, taking an inordinate amount of space. But it's good! It's an exciting story. Authors of each segment are listed below.

The new watch that Grace's husband had given her the week before slipped inside the sleeve of her coat as her arm went up in the air. She felt she had no control over the movement, as though it were completely natural for her to be hailing a cab in the middle of New York. She felt as if she were being directed by remote control. 4:42pm, October 7. She made a mental note of the time, thinking it might be something she'd always want to remember.

"I just want you to drive," she said as she got in, avoiding the driver's eyes.

"Drive? Drive where, sweetheart?"

He sounded like he might be Middle Eastern, although the writing on photos and cards above his head looked like it could be Greek. She also noticed African music coming from the radio.

"I'll let you know. For now just drive anywhere. Wherever your instinct takes you."

"That is strange."

"Yes, it's strange. Please just drive. Anywhere."

"Whatever you say, sweetheart."

During the few minutes it took for the cab to rejoin the flow of angry traffic, she stared at the entrance to the subway that she'd been using to get home every night for the past 12 years. Ample time to change her mind. She turned off her mobile as the cab swung into Third Avenue. Happy trumpets played as a grainy picture of Sebastian and the two little ones faded into black. (1)

Grace sat back and tried to relax. All her muscles were tense. She moved her head a little from side to side to try and release some of the tension in her neck. She made an effort to relax her face muscles that she was sure were drawn up into a tight mask.

As the cab swooped along with the stream of homeward-bound traffic, a sudden gust of wind swirled fallen orange and red leaves into a mad dance. She found their dance mesmerising. It reflected her mood of being drawn into a wild dance, almost out of control. Where the dance would lead, she had no idea.

“Ok, sweetheart?”The cab driver sounded uncomfortable with his role of just driving anywhere.

She nodded, still not meeting his eyes. She wished he would stop calling her sweetheart. She didn't feel like anybody's sweetheart. She looked down at her tan boots and noticed one of the toes was scuffed. She fingered the money purse inside the large red shoulder-bag sitting beside her like an obedient pet. She would have to watch the fare. After all, she only had so much money to go on. She made herself stop biting her fingernails as she tried to figure out just where she wanted the taxi cab to drop her. (2)

Grace closed her eyes and thought of the gaping entrance to the subway that she'd just abandoned. It was a turning point; she'd finally turned away from him, but to what? Never back to the barren arctic mausoleum; that prison home that the train had returned her to for so many nights, so many years, devoid of warmth, of love, of anything she really needed. She refused to lose another precious moment of her life to it, she knew if she went back again, there would be no more life.

Her thoughts were a blizzard through which she could only take a step at a time; slowly, carefully, blinded by the unknown ... but feeling for it desperately, going anywhere as long as it was away. She had to escape. The storm of his loathing and anger raged around her in her mind and her heart began to pound, her pulse started to race and she knew this was it.

Reality seemed to fade into a dream and she fled the monster at her heels in uncertainty ... could she make it? Could she really leave and be free? At last? The thought of it beckoned to her like a distant star in her dark night and the shadow of an image began to take form and make its way to the forefront of her mind. Jack. It was her only chance.

The possibility of it was slim ... but, perhaps. She had to try. Leaning forward, she instructed the cab driver with urgent directions and he was relieved that she'd finally determined a destination.

For the first time in ages, she stood at the base of the stairs that led up to his door and willed herself to move. How many years had it been ... a hundred at least? What if he wasn't home? What if he didn't care about their friendship anymore? She'd let the winds of time carry it away in small fragments ... like the leaves swirling about her feet, that skittered on the air and vanished. Grace carried the weight of the world and the bulk of the past with her up the steps and hesitated before pressing the button by the large door of the brownstone.

Time never passed so slowly. Her heart pounded in her chest and blood rushed in her ears. She drew a shaky breath. He might be gone. Maybe he had company. He probably wouldn't even want to speak to her. What if he didn't recognize her? How could she even come here at all? What was she thinking? Certainly he must be angry that she'd let their friendship go. All those years ... best friends since they were children, and she'd let it go. How could she have done that for the monster she'd married? She began to breathe, shallow and quick. He had seemed so hurt the last time they'd talked.

She gasped and jerked her head up. He'd opened the door, shock and disbelief registering on his face. She froze.

"Grace?" He whispered her name like a prayer from the heart. There was more emotion in that one word than she'd felt from her husband in a year.

"Jack... I ..." she stammered, unsure that she should have come at all.

In a single movement he came through the doorway and pulled her into his arms tightly. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?" He only let her go long enough to cup her face in his hands and peer into it closely, searching for any sign of pain, as a parent might do to his long lost child. He saw it there and pulled her back into his whole embrace. Anxiety and hope filled her clenched lungs as she allowed herself to breathe deeply.

"Come. Come in and we'll take care of it," he said quietly, as he brought her into his home.

He sat with her on the couch and watched her, listening intently as she spoke.

"I'm so sorry to just show up like this ... I ..." She clasped her hands tightly in her lap and stared straight through them.

"Grace, please don't apologize, there's no need at all. We're best friends, and you know time can't touch that. It doesn't matter what brought you here, you are welcome to stay as long as you need to and you know that you are safe. No one can touch you here. I'll make sure of that."

She stared at his unwavering countenance. Into his bottomless, dark eyes. Time ceased to exist then, time that had passed and time that would have come after this moment. It was as if they'd never been apart even a day. She launched herself into his arms again.

"I've missed you so much, thank you."

"You are one of the strongest women I've ever met. You are unstoppable, vibrant and passionate, and you are so full of secrets right now! This is not the Grace that I know," he said skeptically, as he raised one eyebrow, and with his hand on her chin, turned her face from side to side. "Where's that wonder woman that could take on the world? Why have you hidden yourself away behind this mask?" He paused and whispered, "What happened to you, mon ami?"

Grace looked around for an answer to his question, as though the welcoming walls in the room might offer her the words that she could not find. She opened her mouth to tell him, but somehow the brave front that she had shielded herself with crumbled in this sanctuary where she knew she could finally fall on her knees and find solace. Tears carried the pain away as they streamed down her pale cheeks like a long overdue rain on parched land. Saying nothing, Jack drew her to his chest, held her close and stroked her hair until she cried herself to sleep. He laid her head on a deep pillow and covered her with a thick quilt. Grace drifted off into a deeper slumber than she'd had in months, and Jack watched her for a long time.

It was late when he reached for his phone and dialed the number. He spoke softly, his eyes never leaving her as she slept. "Sebastian, you won't believe this. Grace is here ... she finally came; she left him. Now she can begin." (3)

Sebastian replaced the receiver and leaned back in his chair. Twelve years was a long time and Jack sounded elated, almost triumphant. Poor Grace.

He picked his way through the darkened office and across the hall to the kitchen, avoiding the light switch so as not to wake up Amanda, who was snoring softly in the bedroom next door. It had been her night noises that had woken him and not the late night call from the nearly gloating Jack. Amanda was becoming far too much of a sexual habit, it was nearly time to call it a day, but that could wait. The past had just called him up and he knew that sleep was not going to be on the cards tonight.

He made a pot of strong coffee and returned to the office, rousing the computer as he placed his cup in its usual position. That was another thing about Amanda, he thought, she would love to fill his desk with any amount of gaudy clutter. He liked his apartment the way it was, free from everyday untidiness, useless objects that could remind him of useless memories.

The screen bounced into life and he once again admired the neatness of his files. He liked the order of a computer; it reflected his attitude to life, an attitude that had developed over the last twelve years. What he didn't like was the fact that his finger had now found a file called 'Unfinished business' and was busy opening it.

Sebastian watched as the photo file revealed itself - row upon row of snapshots from another time, another place and one that he would rather not be reminded of. The photo at the top showed three friends, Jack, Mike and Sebastian, arms around each others shoulders, friends for life. The rest of the hundred or so meticulously captioned pictures ran through three years at college and showed only one woman, posed, un-posed, summer, winter, laughing, crying. Poor Grace. (4)

Sebastian leaned back in his chair, ran his hand over the stubble on his chin and afforded himself a thin smile. So, she had finally turned up in Jack's life again. Just like the proverbial bad penny. He flicked through the images on the screen. Grace laughing. Grace dancing. Grace lazing in the sun. His eyes ran over the curve of her body, lingering on the rise of her breasts, the pert roundness of her backside. Ah yes, Grace the Temptress. Grace who could have been anyone, had anyone. Grace who knew the world lay at her feet. And by god, she'd meant to conquer that world. Ultimately it hadn't mattered to her who she might trample on to grab her dreams.

Sebastian chewed his lower lip, remembering the advice he'd given her long ago. "Be careful what you wish and dream for, Gracie. Make your choices wisely." But she'd just laughed, ran a hand over his face and flicked his hair from his eyes – with that casual sense of ownership she had with every man who'd crossed her path.

Funny how things came full circle. From owning, she'd been owned. Strange that she should have fallen for Sebastian Carrebreu, the sauve Frenchman – his namesake. He had no doubt she'd long forgotten him, Sebastian Comptom – but at least she'd remembered Jack. He remembered the night she'd told them. He and Jack were on their way to the Hampton's to Jack's folks' place –Grace was supposed to join them. Instead she had waltzed into the apartment, her hair flying, her cheeks flushed and declared, "Boys, you're going to have to go without me!"

The smile on Jack’s face had crumpled. "Why, what's come up? Whatever it is, can't you cancel?"

"Absolutely not! See, I'm getting married, darlings!" The glittering diamond on her ring finger flashed as she thrust out her hand.

"To who?" He remembered how Jack had clutched the back of the sofa.

"To Sebastian!"

He remembered the pain, the betrayal in Jack's eyes as he'd turned to him, gasping.

"Not me," he'd said. "Dear God, she'd never marry me. Nor would I ever ask her." He'd noticed how she'd narrowed her eyes at him.

"Of course not. Don't be daft, Jack. Oh, no offence, of course, Seb." Her voice had been loaded with meaning. "No, I'm marrying Sebastian Carrebreu. Remember," she said, her eyes gleaming, "we met him at that protest and then at the conference his company gave."

"But you barely know him!" Jack cried. "You can't! He's ..."

"Why ever not?! Oh God, Jack, don't get all possessive on me now. That would be so tedious."

She'd blown air kisses at them and flounced from the room. Twelve years. It might have been yesterday. But now she was back ... and in Jack's arms. Oh how the mighty are fallen. Sebastian smiled. It was a cold smile which didn't reach his eyes. He took a last glance at the photographs in front of him, closed the images and glanced through the notes in the file. Unfinished business ... but not for much longer. He opened his email and began typing. (5)

Swimming out of her deep sleep, Grace stretched and saw Jack slumped in a chair across from her.

"Welcome back, sleeping beauty," he said quietly.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"Almost midnight."

"No!" Grace sat up, holding her head. "Then Sebastian knows I didn't come home."

"I suspect so."

"I have to..."

"Grace, wait!" Jack said, coming to sit beside her on the sofa. "Let's talk."

"I can't believe I did this with no more planning than..."

"It's okay."

"What? How can you say that? I haven't even told you why I'm here."

"I can guess, but I would rather you tell me about it."

Grace pulled back to take a good look at Jack's face. "You know something, don't you?"

He nodded. "I've sort of kept up with you over the years."

"Me? Why?"

"Because we knew the man you married, and we were worried about you."

"We? We, who?"

"Sebastian and Mike and I."

"Sebastian?"

"Oh, sorry, Sebastian Compton. Friends in college, remember? Not your Sebastian."

"You're telling me that someone I barely remember has been worried about me? That doesn't make sense." Grace lurched to her feet, with Jack right behind her.

"Grace, take a deep breath and listen for a minute." Jack raked his fingers through his tousled hair, wondering where to start. "We have files on your husband, files that could send his sorry ass up the river, but we sat on it until ... until ... you chose to leave him." Jack lowered his face to hers. "That is what you've done, isn't it?"

Grace closed her eyes. "I don't understand any of this. I didn't even know I was coming here until I was already in the taxi. Who are these people, Sebastian and Mike?"

"Have you totally forgotten my old college buddies? We used to hang out together, then Mike became a cop and Sebastian went to law school. Me? I'm ready to take over my dad's business when he retires, but mostly I'm the guy still trying to watch out for you, just the way I've done since kindergarten."

"But the others?"

"They think I'm crazy, but they're my friends," Jack said. "And we are so ready to take on your husband." (6)

“What do you mean Jack,” Grace inquired, the strain obvious in her weary voice. “Who exactly is going to take on Sebastian ... and why?”

Her voice trailed off to an exasperated whisper. The why was not so much a question, as an exhalation of confused frustration. She seemed to know the answer was much too complicated to address at this hour, and she was too spent, physically and emotionally, to want to hear it.

Grace turned away from Jack, head lowered. Her arms fell limp at her side, fingers splayed. She was trying her best to process what Jack was saying, to understand him –to understand the recent events that had brought her to this place in time ... to make sense of anything. Her head was spinning, and she could feel the fatigue deep in her bones.

She dropped back onto the sofa, half sitting, half lying down – an exhausted slouch. She felt paralyzed, thoughts racing through her mind – fragmented, disconnected thoughts.

She looked at her hands, palms down in her lap, her eyes glazing over. Her vision drifted to her wrists, her left wrist in particular — to her watch. Slowly it came into focus, and she realized she was staring at the broken crystal face of her Audemars Piguet Promesse.

Ever since Sebastian had given her this watch for their anniversary, her life had turned upside down – but it had also turned a corner. Fate had pushed her round that corner, and she would never turn back again. Her life as Mrs. Carrebreu was over.

She knew this, knew it as surely as she knew she missed her children. Something must be done to get them out of that house – his house. It could no longer be her home, but they would always be her children – and she feared for them. They had to be part of whatever direction fate was leading her.

It was fate that had broken the crystal – fate, and her quick reflexes, blocking Sebastian with her forearm as he struck out at her in anger, following their anniversary dinner.

He had apologized, explaining it away as the result of stress. “It will never happen again,” he’d said in his most gentle and sincere voice – but she was familiar with this empty promise. This was not the first time, and the incidents of abuse were escalating.

She’d only come into his office that evening to thank him again for the gorgeous timepiece. She thought this was where he’d retired after leaving the dining table. But she could see, in the subdued light, that he was not there. The mahogany paneled room was empty.

She loved the aroma of his Classic Port pipe tobacco that permeated the walls. Her father had also smoked that blend in his Barling Meerschaum, and the heady fragrance was comforting to her – so she lingered. That’s when she noticed it, on his desk, silhouetted by the light from the Tiffany lamp.

Her curiosity drew her to it. She’d just picked it up when Sebastian entered. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Put that god damned box down,” he’d shouted — then flew into a rage.

Why had her discovery of the leather box sent Sebastian over the edge? What were those letters that spilled out when she dropped the box upon being struck?

They’d looked terribly official, with their seals and embossing – and written in a language that she did not recognize. Sebastian certainly scrambled frantically to collect them from the antique Persian rug, and return them to the box. But she managed to conceal one, sliding it under her hips as she lay where she’d fallen after being struck.

Sebastian’s bizarre reaction to the correspondence scattered on the floor, and the strangeness of the language they contained, had piqued Grace’s interest. Instinct drove her to hide the envelope until she was able to fold and slip it into her pocket, as her husband hurried from the room, with the leather box in tow.

Grace felt it was important that she take this letter she’d spirited out of the room, and put it in safekeeping. She’d planned to somehow learn more about its origin and content.

It was again fate that lead her the next morning to the jewelers, seeking a new watch crystal. It was while standing at the counter, waiting to be served, that she’d spied Sebastian coming out of the restaurant across the street, in the company of a woman — a stranger to Grace. They had climbed into a waiting limousine.

Grace had broken from the counter in a hurry, and bolted through the door to get a better look. Unfortunately, as she’d reached the sidewalk and acquired a reasonable view of the vehicle, it had sped away. She had noticed markings on the door, and a license plate, a type she had not immediately recognized – but she could read neither.

Fate had revealed this convoluted mystery to her, but what was she to do with it. Where could she begin to unravel it? All this was flooding through her mind when she was startled back to the present by Jack, returning to the room with pillows and a blanket.

“I will take the sofa tonight,” he said, “You’re completely burned out. I’m putting you in my room,” he continued in a kind and caring tone. “My bed is amazingly comfortable, and you need sleep – lots of good, deep sleep.”

He reached down and took Grace’s hand, helping her to her feet. Gently wrapping his arm around her waist, he escorted her down the hall and into his room. Stopping just inside the door, he said, “You will be safe in here. We’ll talk about everything in the morning,” and he gave her a warm hug, stepped back into the hall, and closed the door.

Grace realized there were too many questions to answer, too many mysteries — just too damned much to even think about right now.

“Yes, in the morning,” she mumbled to the door.

Then, hugging her red shoulder bag with the mysterious envelope tucked safely inside, Grace shuffled across the room and collapsed on the bed. (7)

As he rolled over, he was startled awake by the absence of a warm body.

Sebastian Carrebreu couldn’t remember the last time he had woken up alone. Even on his frequent business trips he never needed an extra pair of socks to keep warm, and yet here he was, caressing an unwrinkled sheet.

He sat up slowly, his head weighing down his upper half like those fishing sinkers his English grandfather used to make — only Sebastian had used whiskey and rum and whatever else had been in the liquor cabinet instead of lead. Sure felt the same now though.

Nine thirty. I can’t believe she really stayed out all night, he thought, as he wrapped his silk robe around him and shuffled to the bathroom mirror. He turned on the hot water and stared into his dark grey eyes until the steam rising from the sink snapped him out of his trance.

As he looked down and stuck his fingers under the stream of water, he noticed something glimmering on the edge of the sink. The diamond necklace he had bought for Grace as a wedding gift — the necklace she wore every single day without fail.

“That bitch!” he yelled and splashed the scalding water on his face, making it only a shade redder than it had been a moment before.

He half-toweled off his face and went immediately to his cell phone in the nightstand. He turned it on, and a drop of water from his nose hit the number 5, taunting him with Grace’s speed dial position. He managed to dial anyway, or at least simply hit # and the number 1.

A recording told him that Armand wasn’t available and so Sebastian did the only thing he could do in response. He hurled the phone at the antique carriage clock on the fireplace. His arm wasn’t as strong as it used to be, though, and it fell just short of the mantle.

He smirked at his own ineffectiveness and breathed deeply and slowly on his walk over to the fireplace. He picked up the phone and turned it on all sides to inspect the damage. It was still turned on and it looked just fine so he dropped it inside his robe pocket and headed for the kitchen.

The maid was off, so there’d be no coffee. Goodness, did he even remember how to make coffee? As he scanned the counter for a container that might hold the beans, his phone rang.

Armand.

“She’s left me, Armand,” he said, without even a hello, and dropped his weight onto a stool at the bar. “And I think it’s for good this time.” As he glanced across the city skyline, nights of theatre, dinner and dancing flashing through his mind in an instant. He had never hated his window-lined penthouse more than at this moment.

His lifelong friend sighed and said flatly, “I know.”

“What do you mean you know?” Sebastian asked as he straightened his back and pulled a curtain across the window in front of him.

“Sebastian, it’s better if we talk about this in person. I know where Grace stayed last night, and you’re not going to like it — especially when I tell you what this friend of hers has been up to.”

“Armand, what ...”

“Not on the phone, Sebastian. I’ll be right over. Should I bring coffee?”

Sebastian eyed the empty liquor cabinet. “Sounds like I may need something stronger.” (8)

The next morning Jack started to fill Grace in on Sebastian's activities. Jack sat Grace down and started by stating the obvious.

"Grace, Jack is a very dangerous man, he ..."

Grace interrupted, "Don't you think I know that? Don't you think I have experienced that? Whatever he is up to ... I doubt he will get caught. He will kill you for interfering in our marriage. I don't intend to stay long. You don't know Sebastian."

"I know him well enough ... Seb and Mike have a lot of connections when it comes to getting information. It is not just your marriage that he has been cruel in.”

“What do you mean?”

“Grace, he will stop at nothing ... nothing ... even betraying the very causes he supposedly loves. All those protests and rallies ... merely a sham.

“Sebastian sees you as a valuable asset ... you protect his image of a perfect life. He is not going to let you go. He will hunt you down. We need to act quickly and expose him to the authorities and the media. Your only protection is to act quickly. Sebastian has been ..."

Just then there was the sound of a car pulling up.

“That must be Sebastian ... Compton. He is better qualified to explain. Sebastian, my Sebastian, is the only one that I can trust to keep you safe. Mike can not get too involved ... worried about his family. There are crooked cops on the force but we don't know who they are.”

“Whatever it is just tell me.”

“Okay.”

Jack stood up. Clearly he was very nervous.

“Sebastian has been ...”

Jack still wasn't able to grasp the words to explain how grievously Grace's husband had betrayed her. He knew Grace ... and knew she had a tendency to act unwisely when afraid. Too many lives were at stake for carelessness. He knew that once she knew the truth, she might think that continuing to be the trophy wife would make it all safe.

Just as he thought of how to explain, Jack's friend Sebastian Compton was pushed roughly into the room with Armand holding a gun to his back.

Jack froze.

"Leave him alone.”

Armand completely ignored Jack as he pushed Sebastian across the room. Sebastian tripped and landed on the sofa.

“I would choose better friends. You no longer have to worry about such matters though.”

Armand smiled as he fired the gun at Sebastian. Almost immediately there was a trickle of blood down Sebastian's face. Anyone could see that this was a fatal shot. Armand continued to smile.

Jack and Grace stared ... each temporarily frozen by fear and horror.

Armand looked at Grace with a commanding gaze.

"Mrs. Carrebreu, if you value the lives of your children as much as your husband insists you do, you will come with me immediately."

Grace screamed as Armand lifted his gun again and pointed it at Jack.

“Nothing personal actually ... you shouldn't have gotten involved.” Armand did not hesitate as he fired a bullet into Jack and grabbed at Grace's arm.

Grace struggled to look back as Armand forced her out the door. She could not tell if Jack was alive.

Armand yanked her out the door and across the lawn ... partially by the hair.

For Armand the encounter at Jack's house just wasn't long enough ... he enjoyed inflicting as much pain as possible. He hoped they would be able to dispose of this troublesome woman soon.

Grace's husband was waiting in the car. (9)

“Hello Grace.”

Sebastian’s voice, deceptively soft, sent a trickle of fear shimmying down her spine. She shrank away from him to the furthest corner, wishing that she could somehow dissolve into the leather seating, anything to be away from his oppressive presence.

“I missed you,” he continued in that silky tone, his smoky gray eyes unfathomable, as he peeled off his gloves. Without warning, he leaned towards her, his mouth mere inches away from her own, his hands moving, as if in slow motion, towards her neck.

A strangled scream lodged in Grace’s throat, a crippling fear squeezing every iota of rational thought from her mind. Her nails scratched jerkily at the door, vainly trying to find the button release. Its ominous click sounded like a death knell over the hum of the engine. Through the curtain of hair that had fallen into her face, she caught sight of Armand’s baleful glance in the rear view mirror. Whimpering, she pressed even harder into the unyielding seat.

Tenderly, slowly, Sebastian brushed her hair to the sides of her face, the heady scent of Classic Port tobacco, mingled with his expensive cologne, invading her senses. His breath fanned the wisps of hair at her temples. Strong fingers brushed lightly along the nape of her neck, as he murmured, “You forgot this”, before moving away swiftly to his original position. Glancing down, she saw the diamond necklace, his wedding gift to her, the one she had worn every day for 12 years. Except yesterday.

Dazedly, she stared unseeingly at the scenery rushing by into an unrecognizable blur. Jagged memories of the blood oozing down Sebastian Compton’s face, the empty stare in his eyes, and of Jack crumpling to a heap, haunted her. Never before had she felt so vulnerable, so trapped.

Feeling the weight of her husband’s gaze, she turned reluctantly to see that he was indeed watching her. Closely, like a hawk. Her mind tried to wrap around the fact that this brute was the same man who had won her heart and fathered their children. Images of their fairytale wedding and honeymoon rose up before her like a collage, taunting her. Who was this sinister stranger that had replaced the suave suitor and ardent lover? If he had hit her now, she would have welcomed the blows, rather than this eerie gentleness. It terrified her. He terrified her.

Once again, she turned her gaze to the scenery outside her window, and realized, with a start, that the surroundings were familiar. Several children swarmed the park grounds, several metres away from the road, some soaring into the air on swings, others playing catch or tag, all under the watchful gazes of their mothers or nannies. How often had she taken her children here, most times to gather her scattered thoughts while they played. Suddenly, her beloved Anna and Giovanni came into view. Her heart ached at the sight of their smiling faces, as they squealed with delight at the sight of their friends. Julia, their nanny, walked behind them, talking animatedly to another nanny.

The car slowed to a crawl. Grace hurled herself at the window, her mouth agape, palms flush against the darkly tinted glass. Suddenly she felt Sebastian’s warm breath against her ear, his hand rough in her hair. “Take a good look, darling,” he hissed softly. “You’ll never see them again.”

That’s when the scream freed itself from her throat, when she found the strength to shove him away, to lash out, fury in her fists. She saw, with pleasure, the blood that sprang to the surface, as her nails raked his face, felt sweet revenge as her other fist slammed between his legs, causing him to immediately double over with agony. Armand’s head swiveled around at the commotion behind him, a moment too late, as Grace lashed at him like a feral cat, digging her nails into his eye. He howled, momentarily losing control of the car. It swung drunkenly, tyres screaming.

Adrenaline galvanized Grace’s limbs into action, as she launched towards the row of buttons on Armand’s side of the door, and hit the door release control. His hand swung around, grabbing blindly for her arm, but she shrugged it off, and hit the button on her side of the door. She felt it give beneath her weight, saw the rushing ground inches away from her face, prepared herself for the tearing feel of clothes and flesh shredding. Instead, she felt her head being jerked back with a snap, the searing pain at the back of her head that wrenched a scream from her, saw a patch of her hair in Sebastian’s grip, felt his other hand tightening around her throat.

“Bitch!” Armand spat out, holding his face, as he righted the car and it picked up speed again. “Need any help around there?”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” Sebastian replied, stroking Grace’s hair with one hand, the other clamped tightly around her throat.

She wasn’t quite sure how much time had elapsed before the car slowed again, this time to a stop. The hectic pace of the city had been left behind, giving way to placidly rolling blue-green hills that walled the area like sentinels. The air was sharp, clean, fresh. A carpet of burnished gold, tangerine, and olive-green leaves crunched beneath her boots, as Sebastian pulled her out of the vehicle and led her to the entrance of the cottage, Armand bringing up the rear.

Inside, the rustic warmth and tasteful furnishings were lost on Grace, as they stood in the hallway, waiting. The strains of someone playing a classical piece on a violin wafted to them.

“Asia,” Armand called out. “We’re here.”

The music ended abruptly, the ensuing silence broken by the click of heels against the hardwood floor. Grace could barely contain the gasp that escaped her lips at the sight of the woman who emerged. Statuesque in an immaculately white, sleeveless, cowl-neck sweater, wine-red leather pants that hugged every contour of her lithe frame like a second skin, and boots, the dark chocolate hue of her flawless skin glowed in striking contrast. Her baldness accentuated the sleek roundness of her head and stunning, oval features. To say that she was a beauty was an understatement. Grace felt washed out and insipid in comparison.

The ebony beauty surveyed both men’s injuries, and then looked at Grace with renewed interest, an eyebrow arched elegantly. She spoke in a strange language to Sebastian, who replied in the same language. Her voice was rich, husky; her accent, thick. Her eyes ran over Grace again, this time insolently, from her disheveled head to her scuffed shoes.

Sebastian released Grace and strode over to the woman. “Asia, watch her until we return.”

Her almond-shaped eyes slid up to his. “How long will you both be gone?”

“Not long.” His hand, against the small of Asia’s back, they both walked a few steps into the adjoining sitting room, speaking in hushed tones. Grace watched as Sebastian reached into the depths of his jacket, pulled out a gun, and handed it to the woman.

Armand, who had moved closer to Grace from behind, noticed her dumbstruck gaze and laughed contemptuously. “She’s not to be messed with, that one,” he mocked. “She’ll cut your heart out before you know it.” He paused, and then leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “I hope she does.”

Grace ignored Armand’s taunts, her mind instead struggling to conjure up an elusive memory. Something about Sebastian’s and Asia’s familiarity with each other nagged at her. Something else was stirring in her subconscious, like the whisper of the changing leaves outside being rustled by the October breeze. Then, like the silent arrival of dawn, a certain scene swam before her. The jewellery store. Sebastian and a strange woman leaving a restaurant. The limousine with the unrecognizable licence plates and strange markings. The woman. Asia!

Grace inhaled sharply. Asia turned slightly, looked over her shoulder at Grace, and smiled slyly, exposing pretty, white teeth. But her eyes were ice. (10)

Nanny Julia stopped in mid-sentence and grabbed her friend Erica’s arm. The threat of kidnapping was ever present for children like those of her powerful employer and a dark, slow moving car wasn’t normal for midday. “Giovanni! Anna! Come to me now.”

“Shit, Julia, you scared me to death! I was just getting to the best part ...”

“Shhh. Look up there, and watch your mouth in front of the kids.” She watched Erica follow her gaze to the car and then opened her arms to catch the two children racing back to her.

Even at just four and six, Giovanni and Anna were and tall and slim with the same mahogany colored eyes and rich black hair of their father. But that is where the similarity ended. Grace’s children were sweet-tempered and affectionate like their mother.

“Nanny my friend wants me!” Giovanni fidgeted impatiently as he waited to hear why he’d been summoned away from his game.

“There’s a cold breeze picking up, you need to have your jackets on.” Julia dawdled at helping each of the children into their wind breakers, intending to keep them close to her just until the mysterious car had passed. Before she could finish zipping up Anna’s jacket she heard Erica gasp and looked up in time to see a face and two hands pressed against the car’s side window.

“That’s Mommy!” Giovanni yelled.

Julia grabbed his arm before he could race across the field to the slow moving car. “No, Gio, remember? Your momma is away visiting her sick mother. Your Daddy told you that just this morning.” She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the car and when it started swerving on the road and then sped off at break neck speed she could no longer ignore the niggling fear that Mr. Carrebreu’s story had been a lie.

“Could you see the license plate? I couldn’t tell who was in the back of that car, but I don’t think the lady was happy to be there,” Erica said before whistling for her own two charges to return to her side. “Too freakin’ creepy out here for me today, I think I’ll take my munchkins home for an afternoon in front of the TV.”

As loath as she was to return to the cold, rambling Carrebreu home, Julia agreed with her friend. She led the children back toward the house, her mind racing with images of her time as their nanny and the odd things she’d observed. Julia watched the children sadly climb the steps to the front door, disappointment at losing their park time evident even from behind them. For the sake of her young charges, she cleared her mind of gloomy thoughts.

“Who wants to make popcorn balls and watch Dumbo?” She called over her shoulder as she took the stairs two at a time to reach the door before the two children now squealing with laughter.

It wasn’t until bedtime that Julia again remembered the odd car at the park. Anna and Giovanni were both weepy and missing their mother as they said their prayers and she tucked them into their little beds. She found it odd that Mrs. Carrebreu hadn’t even called the children to wish them goodnight. Once both kids were breathing with the steady cadence of deep sleep, Julia slipped from the room and made her way through the silent house to the kitchen. In the center drawer of the cook’s desk, beside the wall-hung phone, she knew there was a list of important numbers. Doctors, dentists and family. She’d used the list to contact Grace’s mother just months before when her employers were away on a business trip. Julia fidgeted on the cold marble floors as she dialed the number and listened to the phone ringing.

“Answering service.”

“I’m sorry, I must have dialed the wrong number ...” Julia stammered.

“Who is the party you are trying to reach?”

“Elinore, Elinore Branigan?”

“And your name?”

“Julia, I’m Mrs. Branigan’s daughter’s nanny.” Julia felt her stomach turn with anxiety at this unexpected interrogation.

“Yes, Julia, you are on the authorized list. Mrs. Branigan has left for her annual pilgrimage to the holy lands; she’s expected to return in time for the Christmas Holidays. You may leave her a message or call back at that time.”

Julia slammed the phone receiver back on its base, fear gnawing at her conscious like a starving rat. Mr. Carrebreu had lied. Grace’s mother was out of the country. So where was Grace? And what would she tell the children? Before she could fully wrap her mind around these two questions she was startled by the sound of a slamming door. Cook ambled into the kitchen, hair in old fashioned curlers, her ample body swathed in a tent sized flannel nightgown.

“What has you up Miss Julia? Do you need a snack? Some warm milk maybe?”

Julia looked into the kindly face of the ancient old cook and told her everything that happened that day from the park up to the phone call to Grace’s mother. “I just don’t know what to do,” she said.

Cook stared at the counter top and sighed. “The missus gave me instructions several years ago for just this kind of instance.” She heaved herself off the stool she’d sat on to hear Julia’s story and waddled to the desk. Cook lifted out the center drawer and pulled up a discreetly hinged flap of wood revealing a shallow drawer beneath. Inside this cavity, a single piece of paper inscribed with the name “Mike” and a phone number. (11)

As he sat in the SICU waiting room at St. Barts, fluctuating between livid anger and cynical hope that his childhood goomba, Jack Creighton, would come out of this intact, Michael Calcatera was mulling over the events of the past few hours.

I’m sitting in the office discussing the situation in Pakistan with the team, wondering where the hell Seb is, and my cell trembles in my right hand pants’ pocket: “Mike, Jack. Been hit. Seb dead. Hurry”. Click. Buzzzzzz.

I’m like, WTF! Jack? Not my Jack. “Hold on a sec. guys, I’ve got to check something out on this call.” Hitting recall, he sees Jack’s home number comes up. He thinks to himself, “Damn it, I just talked to him last night. He’d just put that brat, Grace, to bed, and said we could put our plan into action.”

Closing his cell, he looks at his team and says, “Folks, I’ve got an emergency that needs my attention right now. We’ll continue this discussion tomorrow. Tim, call the chief and tell him to call me in fifteen on my secure phone. Thanks.”

Tim says, “Do you want one of us to go with you Mike?”

“No, I think for now it's best if I check this out alone.”

“Is this a dangerous situation?”

“I don’t think so, at least not now.”

Taking the elevator to the company garage in the basement level, Mike checks his Glock and inserts a full clip. “Jack, Jack, Jack, what have you gotten us into now.” He thinks.

Mike goes to the office and signs out a black Honda, gets the keys from the attendant and walks over to bay 2L and gets in the car.

He knows this city like the back of his hand. Fast, but not reckless, Mike Calcatera, weaves his way through traffic to his friend’s apartment.

His secure company phone vibrates and he answers by Bluetooth. “Godfather here.” “Godfather, Endpoint here, what’s the story?”

“Received message; councilor may be erased. Will check shortly and will call you with details.”

“Waiting.”

Mike ends the call and thinks now about the e-mail he’d received from Seb last night.

----Mikey,----
Jacky boy is doe-eye over his Gracie again, or, still, I guess is the better word. Apparently she’s left that overdressed camel driver in French tweeds. We’ll have to confirm, but if it’s true we can make Carrerbreu’s file active and move quickly to get him to the house in Croatia.
Talk more at conference tomorrow PM.
‘All for one and one for all,’
Seb

He thinks: That was Seb, neat and tidy. Move quick and efficiently, no frills, straight to business. He didn’t like Grace but he disliked her husband even more. He said that, that is why he recruited me to the agency 12 years ago. He said we’d keep me on the force as a cover, but he needed my head to understand how the criminal mind worked.” I was offended at first, but he said that he meant no offense, only that he admired my way of seeing the situation clearly and without too much emotion.

I’ve got plenty of emotion now, but Seb’s right, I do see right to the heart of most situations. Ah, here we are, and look at that, a parking place: "What do you mean officer? What fire hydrant? Here let me show you some ID. Heh heh, everybody has privileges according to their job."

Climbing the fourteen steps to the door of Jack’s brownstone was like climbing Everest. He hurried as fast as his fifty pound overweight frame would allow him. Out of breath, he reached the door and using the spare key Jack had given to him years ago, he unlocked the door. Simultaneously opening the door, drawing the Glock from his belt holster and flicking off the safety, he stepped into the foyer. The archway to the living room was nine steps from the door, and on the left. Back to the wall, he peeked around the edge of the archway and scanned the room. Seb was lying on the cream colored couch, head askew against the light colored matching pillow, small dark spot, dead center of the forehead and a large blot of crimson/maroon staining the pillow. There, on the floor between the couch and the coffee table, lay Jack, unconscious but chest moving shallowly.

Listening for any sound he sidled into the room, Glock ready. There didn’t appear to be anyone else present. Moving straight to Jack’s side, Mike knelt down and put his fingers on the nearside of Jack’s neck over the carotid artery. He could feel a light thready and very rapid pulsation. Putting his cheek against Jack’s nose he could feel warm air touch his skin. He gently shook Jack by the shoulder and called his name. No response. Standing up and moving toward Seb, he took out his cell and dialed 911. He proceeded to follow the identical evaluation of his mentor but it was quickly evident that Seb had left the building.

The 911 operator answered and Mike directed her to send an ambulance to Jack’s address.

Taking out his secure cell he quick-dialed the chief. At the same time he continued to search the apartment. In the bedroom he spotted a large red woman’s handbag. As he combed through the contents, the chief answered. After identifing each other by code, Mike said, "Councilor erased. Important documents found to support our case. I’ll be in your office in one half hour." (12)

“You have no idea who Bastian is, do you?” Asia said with a smirk, as she walked across the room and poured herself a drink. Grace said nothing, as her gaze quickly shifted from the tall statuesque beauty, who obviously knew her husband intimately, to the gun still sitting on the table in the adjoining room. Asia swirled her drink and met Grace’s gaze, as the ice tinkled annoyingly against the side of the glass.

“You think you’re safe, because you’re the mother of his children, but you’re nothing but a damn fool! I don’t even know why ...” Grace cut her off with an astonished laugh and shook her head in disbelief, “Safe ... did you say safe!? I haven’t felt safe in years, and you’ve got the gall to come off like you know me, or anything about me?” Asia pounced; her face so close that the alcohol on her breath stung Grace’s eyes. She locked her arms on either side of Grace and dug her nails into the back of the couch.

“I know you’re what’s keeping us from being together; you and those goddamn brats of yours!” Asia spat, with venom in her voice. At the mention of her children, a rush of adrenaline shot through Grace and she shoved Asia with every ounce of energy, sending her stumbling backward and crashing through the glass top table that sat in the center of the room.

Grace stood, frozen in shock and fear, adrenaline still pumping and nausea welling deep inside, as Asia’s lifeless eyes stared straight ahead and a trickle of blood oozed from her mouth. Grace hesitated only briefly, before running into the other room, grabbing the gun and making a quick sweep of the house, before she picked up the phone and ... (13)

Who would she call? Who could she call? Jack was probably dead by now. If she tried to contact her children it could mean a death sentence to them. Mike. She had to contact Mike. She’d left a number with cook, and she didn’t have it with her. Her bag with her address book was at Jeff’s place.

She eased her back against the wall and keeping the gun in front of her, twisted into the front hall. She moved to the door and unlatched it. She was in a panic. Frantic movements took only moments but felt like hours. Flinging the door open, she stepped out onto the porch and surveyed the land. There was a Mercedes across the lawn.

Keeping low, she moved close to the hedges and then across to the first tree. No one seemed to notice her. There had to be a gardener or staff on the premises.

From the tree it was a low run to the Mercedes. Mercifully unlocked she dove into the front seat and grabbed for the ignition. No keys. She couldn’t be lucky. She placed the gun in the passenger seat and dove under the steering wheel. She only had to lift the drivers side floor mat to find the spare.

Key in ignition, turn. Engine started.

Now what? Which way out of here?

She pulled onto the driveway and followed it to the main road, about fifty feet. Looking in the rear view mirror she realized in horror that Asia had only been knocked out by the fall.

“Bloody hell!” she said as she hit the gas. The rear window of the Mercedes was blown out by an unheard gun shot.

“Damnit, damnit, damnit,” she said through thinly pressed lips as she drove down the dusty road at break neck speeds.

It was three long dark dusty miles before she came upon the ancient Sunoco station with the last known roadside telephone stand.

She pulled in and leaped from the car. She had no change.

Removing the receiver, she forced herself to start breathing normally, taking in great gulps of air to calm her voice.

She hit Operator.

“Operator.”

“I need to make a collect call, person to person.”

“Please give me the number.”

She did, and waited as she forced herself to calm down.

“There is a collect call from Grace to Cook. Will you accept the charges?”

“Wait one moment.”

There were some hushed movements. Then cook came on the line.

“This is cook. I will accept the charges.”

“Don’t say my name. This is a dire emergency Cook. Please don’t let on.”

“This is cook. May I help you?”

“There are two things I need you to do. I need you to give me Mike's phone number. You have it. I gave it to you years ago.”

“He has already been called.”

“Good. But I need that number, I’ve lost my bag.”

Cook retrieved the number and Grace wrote it on the back of her hand.

“Second. You must tell the nanny to get the children out of that house. Tell her to take them somewhere safe and do it now.”

“Where would you like to have that package sent?” replied the cook.

“Tell her to use her own discretion. Tell her I will call her in a few days on her cell to find her and my babies.”

“I will take care of it.”

“Anything else, sir?”

“Is Sebastian there now?”

“Yes, sir? Will there be anything else, sir?”

“Tell Julia to be careful, but please leave.”

“Yes, sir. Good night, sir.”

Hanging up the phone, Grace rested her forehead against it and prayed, “Please God. Please God.”

Then she lifted the receiver and dialed the operator.

“I need to make a collect call to this number, person to person. My name is Grace. I wish to speak to Mike.” (14)

The phone line burred softly as Grace waited for the call to connect. Time seemed to ooze past her like liquid seeping from an overturned bottle. The seconds involved in each soft burr seemed to roll further and gather themselves into minutes. “Come on, come on.”

The other end picked up.

“Collect call from Grace to Mike, will you accept?”

“Yes.”

Grace’s mind went into hyper-drive. The last time she’d spoken to Mike had been the day after she’d told Jack and Seb about her unexpected marriage. Marry in haste, repent at leisure – oh how the words rang around her head – twelve damn long years of repentance. She remembered Mike’s dark look at her words; he hadn’t said anything. He’d just looked from her down to his coffee cup and back at her, a tight controlled expression on his face, lips pursed, dark eyebrows pulled together. He’d pulled a sip of Americano into him and clicked for the check. She’d been so full of her own delight she’d not really considered the unspoken questions in his face or the shadow that seemed to flit across his face. Funny how hindsight allowed pieces to click into place so long afterwards, another more rational part of her mind thought. She began to speak into the receiver, a stutter of words.

Mike cut across her: “Don’t say anything, Grace. You’re in something a lot bigger than you have any idea. We need to get you somewhere safe. We’ll get a lock on your position in a few seconds: then you’ll need to hide.”

Grace gasped at his coldness. “But... my babies?”

“Grace, you need to understand – you’re the key. If we lose you, we lose the lot. The children too.”

Grace reeled for a second as images from the park swam through her head; Anna and Giovanni with Julia, their smiling faces. What if they were harmed? She desperately hoped that Cook and Julia were able to act on her garbled message. “Okay Mike. What do I...” The line clicked dead. (15)

The telephone jangled harshly, making Julia start. She snatched the ornate receiver from its golden cradle.

“Yes?”

“Get out of that house. Get out now. Do not wait to collect anything. Take the children and go!” A male voice, unfamiliar.

“Who is this? What do you mean.” Julia’s voice was shrill, cracking on the edge of a scream.

“No time to explain ... get the children and get out of the house. Mr C is coming home and he’s not happy!”

The phone went dead. Julia stared into the receiver as if the face of the caller would be etched there. Then she dropped it and ran out into the hall.

“Children!” she called as she sprinted up the stairs. “Children, we’ve just had a call. We’re going on an adventure!”

Anna and Giovanni tumbled out of their rooms, eyes bright, excited grins on their faces.

“An adventure?” Giovanni was impressed. Anna looked puzzled but followed her brother and her beloved Julia.

“Yes but it’s a bit of a mystery too! I can’t tell you where we’re going!” Julia pushed the children’s arms into their coat sleeves as she spoke. “Now, which car shall we take?”

“The Discovery!” Giovanni yelled. “Then we can go in the jungle!”

“The Discovery it is!” Julia’s voice was brittle, her smile stretched but the kids seemed unaware. They clambered into the vehicle, Julia’s fingers trembled as she fumbled at the fastenings of the children’s car seats.

Tyres scrunched on gravel. Julia froze. Someone had arrived. Car doors slammed and she heard footsteps approaching the front door of the house. If she waited until they were inside then she would have a head start. She looked back at the kids, eyes like full moons. She put her fingers to her lips.

The front door slammed. Julia clicked the remote for the garage doors. The huge sheet of metal slowly began to gate its way up. Too noisy. Too slow. Heart thundering, Julia slammed her foot on the gas. The engine screamed, filling the garage with fumes. In her rear view mirror, Julia saw the adjoining door swing open. Armand’s face glowed red in the rear lamps before being smothered by the exhaust fumes.

“Dammit!” Julia screamed and let the landrover go.

The doors were half open as the car ploughed into them, ripping the thin metal like tissue and cracking the screen. A dark figure leapt in front of them only to roll across the bonnet.

Julia gunned the engine, risking a glance in the rear view mirror. Exhaust fumes boiled from the wrecked garage door, Armand staggered out firing a wayward shot into the night. Julia allowed herself a small grin and hammered her foot to the floor.

“Are you allowed to do that to the garage, Julia?” Giovanni grinned.

“You’re not allowed to say dammit,” Anna pouted. (16)

Julia silently whispered a prayer, which she does whenever she is nervous but doesn't quite admit to it in public. Giovanni and Anna had heard the prayer before in elementary school and they joined in, assuming that's what people do before starting an adventure. They had never been on a real adventure before and were all too excited. Julia made a steep turn, got the SUV back on track and raced, as she had never done before.

Armand rose to his feet in amazement. Blood oozed out from a cut on his forehead. He tried to gain strength and aimed his modern combat pistol at the landrover, which was fast disappearing into the green fields. As Julia sped away she saw Sebastian stare at her from the corner of her eye. And the image of her angry master made her accelerate faster than ever.

No sooner did the red SUV disappear Sebastian rushed indoors to find the children. He wasn't sure if Julia had taken them with her. Armand followed, baffled and deep in thought. He was only thinking about Grace. If she was hiding in the car and went along with the children it was bad news for them. But optimistic and scheming as Armand was, he presumed that the mother had not met her calves yet and the longer they stayed apart, the easier it would be to slaughter them.

Sebastian called the cops and made a complaint about his missing children. He was too tired to talk much. He settled in an antique rocking chair, which Grace had picked up from an auction soon after they were married. Armand made two drinks and both remained silent for a while.

Julia didn't know where to go. She was sure Sebastian would have called the cops by now or sent his armed men on their trail. She turned around and looked at the kids. They were enjoying a packet of chocolate chip cookies. She felt her stomach growl. She wondered how they got that and then noticed Anna's adventure bag, which she always kept ready in case of unplanned trips. They are finally on a real adventure, she thought silently.

Then, suddenly, she remembered a trait of her favorite childhood fictional character: Miss Marple. She immediately saw an escape plan form before her. She took out a railway guide from the cabinet of the SUV. She was looking at Pennsylvania Railway Station, which was 5 kilometers away. She planned a trip to Baltimore but she knew she would be off with the kids mid-way and board another train to Boston. That way it would take Sebastian long enough to trace them. Shuffling was the key, she thought. That was her lifeline. She grabbed it as she knew it would keep the chase alive.

Relaxed, she turned and looked at the kids. "Having fun?"

"Yes Nanny! This adventure is going to be the best ever!" they yelled back.

Julia hoped (and prayed) so too.

Sebastian was staring at the ceiling rocking to and fro on his chair. He was thinking about Grace. Asia. The kids. He jumped with a start and rushed into his office. Seeing him disturbed, Armand followed. Sebastian frantically searched for the leather box which he had caught Grace with recently. He checked the draws, his file cabinet and the sleek sliding cupboard. It was nowhere to be found. Then he looked on his side desk, which was nothing but a heap of sheets. He finally found it buried under a few plastic files and CDs. Relieved, he opened it. He went through all the papers that were neatly sealed and looked "important". He remembered how Grace was curiously examining them. But his eyes began searching again. He rubbed his temples and scanned the papers with haste and impatience. Armand could see his eyes go cold with anger.

"The Radcliffe deed. It's gone!" he exclaimed. (17)

They got off the train in Boston. It was late afternoon and the children were out on their feet. They’d been travelling for hours and any sense of adventure had long since palled.

Julia picked up some milk and the makings of some sandwiches and then booked them all into a cheap and cheerful motel. She made the kids something to eat and then they all lay down.

Once Julia was sure the two exhausted children were sleeping soundly she flicked the remote for the battered TV on the high shelf in the corner of the room and avidly scanned all the news channels for any mention of their disappearance, or indeed a mention of anything to do with Sebastian Carrebreu.

There was no mention of either. Julia wasn’t sure what this meant, and she was too tired to try and figure it out.

She was woken early the next morning by the two youngsters complaints of hunger and Anna’s loud protests about the absence of her woolly monkey.

Julia realised just how caught up they must have been in the events of the previous day for little Anna to only now miss her beat-up comforter.

She washed the kids faces and cheered them up with promise of pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast. She paid the bored motel receptionist in cash from the wad of notes that Cook had pushed into her hand as they’d run from the house.

Then she steered the boy and girl towards the nearest diner where they both wolfed down a huge breakfast. After that she trawled them round a thrift shop buying a change of clothes for them all and a plastic bag to pack them in. And for once she was grateful at how easy it was to blend back into the invisible world of the have-nots.

Then she marched them all off to the bus station. They’d head for her
Grandma’s old cabin up in New Hampshire. It was wasn’t much, but it was remote enough to keep the kids safe until she could figure out what the hell was going on. (18)

Grace put down the phone and slowly slumped down to the ground. All strength to fight crept out of her and her thoughts wandered in the dark areas of her mind where she was always afraid to go. Why? she cursed herself. Why had she even thought that she could get way from it all and make a new life? All it had led to was death and pain.

Her dearest friends were dead.

Her children were in danger.

Her own life was doomed and the woman who had made her life hell was out there waiting for a chance to put a bullet through her head.

The stampede of thoughts trampled through Grace’s fatigued mind and something inside her snapped like a dry branch.

“Enough,” said the voice in her head.

“En-fuckin-ough.” The word struck like a hammer driving the nail of a decision deep in her head. Grace wiped a tear from her eye with her palm and smeared dust on her cheek; she had not even realized that she was crying.

“Not any more,” she said to herself.

She got up and walked to the Mercedes sitting idly by the side of the road. The gun sat in the passenger seat like a waiting pet; Grace picked it up and checked the clip. It was full. She re-inserted the clip and clicked off the safety. The time for safety is gone, she thought.

Then Grace reversed the car and drove back three miles to the place she had just run away from. As she neared the mansion she slammed her hand down on the horn and the car became a raging, raving beast headed for the mansion.

As Grace had expected, Asia came running to the porch looking for the source of the noise. Before Asia could raise her gun, Grace gunned the accelerator and drove straight into her. The car slammed into the wall of the porch, with Asia’s lower body sandwiched between the wall and the hood of the car. The airbag deployed and it took Grace a few seconds to get out of the wreck of the vehicle. Asia lay slumped on top of the car, her breath shallow and in gasps. A splatter of blood was smeared on the wall where she was pinned. Grace picked her head up by her hair and saw that life still swam in her eyes, but so did the hate and the cruelty.

Asia took a haggard breath and spat out the word “bitch” at Grace.

Grace sighed, closed her eyes, shoved the muzzle of the gun in Asia’s mouth and pulled the trigger.

As the report of the gunshot echoed through the empty mansion, the phone in Asia’s pocket began to ring. Grace pulled it out and saw the screen showing the name ‘Seb’. She smiled and pressed answer. (19)

"Grace you've made a huge mistake ... and unless we go back in time to undo this, there'll be big problems."

" I'm sorry ... who is this?"

" Asia was meant to live. In the future, a couple of decades from now, she's a key figure in Chinese politics. She negotiates a peace agreement between China and America at the crucial point of nuclear war."

" Who are you? You're not Sebastian."

" You don't know me. It doesn't matter. What matters is that you trust me. I'm using this phone to contact you from the year 2023. Time tremors have been registered ever since a certain watch got broken."

"You mean the gift from Sebastian?"

"That was no watch. It was an Electromagnetic Geostatic Time Cookie, or E.G.T.C., if you like. And the Radcliffe Deed ... that important peice of paper is none other than the vital Peace Settlement, sent from Beijing to Washington ... ooh, in approximately two hours from where I am now."

"But why is it here?"

"Because Jack changed history."

"Jack?"

"Jack is a time traveller who wanted to settle down. With you! But he didn't realise the significance of what he'd done. I, we, Sebastian, tried to explain - but he carried on. Cut himself off. Refused to believe that his actions would set up a chain of events that would subtly change the course of the world. The E.G.T.C was supposed to be a sort of monitoring or warning device.

"Should Jack mess up big time it would send frequencies that would enable us to track him and bring him back. As you know, the device was broken. It meant we couldn't keep tabs ... and ensuing events became increasingly violent and bizarre. And it will get worse. Grace. You've got to help us. You must come back with us to the year before you met Jack. Because it's important that you don't meet him. Ever.

"Grace, if you don't, then in a few years time this planet will be nothing but a lifeless radioactive ball of dust. Grace ... GRACE. Are you still there?" (20)

Authors so far:

(1) Seamus at Shameless Words
(2) Kay at As It Happens
(3) Wanderlust Scarlett at from the shores of introspect and retrospect
(4) Kate at Inner Minx
(5) Absolute Vanilla at Absolute Vanilla... (& Atyllah)
(6) Bonnie at Words from A Wordsmith
(7) Rob at Image & Verse Too
(8) Sognatrice at bleeding espresso
(9) The Bluest Butterfly at A Virtual Hobby Store and Coffee Shop
(10) Jamaican Dawta at Life, Unscripted, on the Rock
(11) Kat at Kat's Random Thoughts
(12) Rel at Under the Microscope
(13) Jill at wordsmith extraordinaire
(14) Roberta at Turn the Page
(15) Cailleach at Barbara's bleeuugh!
(16) Jon at Writing in a Vacuum
(17) Pure Sunshine at Virtual Crossroads
(18) Apprentice at My Gap Year
(19) Nothingman at A Story a Day
(20) Meloney at Meloney Lemon
__________

Where do you think the story should go from here?

Can you write ONE sentence?

2008-02-03T19:36:00.000-05:00

One Sentence is a fascinating blog for writers. One Sentence is about telling your story, briefly. Literally, in a single sentence. "Insignificant stories, everyday stories, or turning-point-in-your-life stories [are] boiled down to their bare essentials." Take a look at it. Be prepared to be inspired. Then go back and tell your story ... in ONE sentence.

If you have a favorite, please share it in the comments. Mine is a toss-up between these two:

"Actually, I do know where that new dent in your car came from." (Ahera, 2008-01-11)

"The young lady who bought my '78 Toyota Celica for three grand paid for it with fives and tens and four jars of linty coins." (Queen of Cupcakes, 2008-01-11)

Cause of death

2008-02-01T00:16:00.001-05:00

Some of you may remember my discussion about death back in August. At that time I had accessed a site that figured out when you would die, based on your answers to some questions. According to them, I'll be around until I'm 94, in the year 2034.

Now I think I've figured out the cause of my death. Nancy of Bookfoolery and Babble posted a link to a 1994 article entitled How to Tell if Your Head's about to Blow Up, a rare form of death caused by HCE, or Hyper-Cerebral Electrosis. Check it out; the article lists seven symptoms, and I am positive for four or five of them ... thus my "guess" that my overloaded brain circuits will make my head explode one of these days. Surely my having over a dozen active blogs told you I think entirely too much! Thanks, Nancy.

UPDATE from Nancy (via CJ): CJ sent me to Snopes.com to prove it was a hoax. And, I was having such fun with the thought. Sigh.

Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/humor/iftrue/chess.asp

Bonnie: Nancy, you mean thinking too hard won't cause a cranial explosion? Aww, shucks! And I had this whole thing figured out, when I would die (based on an online questionnaire) and how (based on my gigantic mental abilities causing such a series of cerebral electricity to swirl around that my head would explode). Darn! You have (er, I mean, CJ has) ruined my day. I guess that means I'll have to find some other way to die?

UPDATED update: Now see what you've gone and done, Nancy! I went back to check that Death Clock again, and now it says I'm gonna die on Monday, July 8, 2019. Hey! That's a full 15 years earlier than it told me in August! I must be going downhill fast.

The Magic of Ireland

2008-01-30T23:58:00.000-05:00

Both photos and music come from Seamus Kearney, a "a New Zealander, from Irish stock, now living in France." I am proud to say I am part of the Shameless Lions Writing Circle founded by Seamus. Now enjoy his latest creation, "The Magic of Ireland":

Tetris, anyone?

2008-01-24T04:57:00.000-05:00

Rubik's keychain

2008-01-19T22:30:00.000-05:00

. . .

I used to love puzzles. I was visiting my next-door neighbor, back in the 1960s, when she said, "Be right back; I need to put clothes in the dryer." To keep me busy while she moved a load of clothes from one machine to the other, she knocked apart the new Soma Puzzle that was sitting on her kitchen table. A Soma puzzle is a 3x3 cube, which is "cut up" into seven pieces of different shapes. Anyway, I followed my friend Robin into her laundry room, and we chatted while she got the dryer started. Then she turned to me and said, "I thought you were going to work on that puzzle." She looked a bit odd when I said, "I did." When we went back into the kitchen and she saw the completed puzzle, she confessed, "I've been trying for two days and cannot get that thing back into its cube shape ... I have to wait for my sons to come home from school and solve it." I had done it in less than a minute, roughly.

Am I bragging? No, I think some people are born with the ability to "see" things spatially. Others are not. Take my friend Donna, for example. She knows she can't place things in space, including herself. We hadn't known each other long when she warned me, "If I ever insist we should go to the right, go LEFT." I should have listened to her. Once we met in a town halfway between our cities and spent a couple of days getting acquainted. We were on our way back to the motel after dinner in my car when she said, helpfully, "Turn right," and I did. We entered a divided highway and had to drive miles and miles before we could exit and turn back. The way we should have gone, of course, was left.

I'm not sure the Rubik's cube is quite the same as the Soma, even though both (in the original Rubik's version, anyway) are 3x3 cubes. I was part of the Rubik's craze back when it first came out. I needed help to understand a couple of basic things, but after that, the puzzle wasn't that difficult for me.

One day I noticed a cute keychain my teenage son had in his hand. When he let me see it, I was fascinated that it was a working model of Rubik's that was tiny. Tiny! I asked him about it and he said, "I ran across this and got it to give to whoever I find that can solve Rubik's cube the fastest. Oh, ho! This was a challenge, of course, and what puzzler can ignore a challenge? The teensy tiny Rubik's cube was not easy to work, so I got my own regular-sized version. Did you know that using vaseline makes the parts twist and spin easily? True. So I said, "Time me!" and started working the cube that my son had diligently messed up as thoroughly as he could. Flip, flip, spin, turn, and wham! All done, in 37 seconds flat. Loved that look on my son's face ... lol ... when he said, "Here, Mom," and handed me my new Rubik's keychain.

Mwah!

2008-01-04T09:32:00.000-05:00

What a way to start the new year on this blog! With a MWAH! from Jenn in Holland (Something to Say).

Jenn said:

So, the point (and I do have one) to this post is motivated by my desire to hand some of that love and kindness back around to those who have been so very, very, very good to me in this bloggy world. My hope is that those who receive this award will pass it on to those who have been very, very, very good to them as well. It's a big kiss, of the chaste platonic kind, from me to you with the underlying 'thanks' message implied. I really do appreciate your support and your friendship and yes, your comments. ... Mwah!

So.......
Mwah! to Colleen of Loose Leaf Notes
and.....
Mwah! to Nancy of Bookfoolery and Babble
and.....
Mwah! to Dewey of the hidden side of a leaf
and.....
Mwah! to Absolute Vanilla of Absolute Vanilla ... (& Atyllah)
and.....
Mwah! to Susan of Patchwork Reflections
and.....
Mwah! to Stephanie of Confessions of a Bookaholic
and.....
Mwah! to Maxine of Crabby Road

You are all very, very special people and have made the blogging experience very special for me. Many thanks to each of you and ... Mwah! ... to all my readers.

Do you want to read part of it?

2007-12-03T23:48:00.001-05:00

The novel is still a draft ... and the end is not yet in sight ... so it will take a lot of writing, polishing, and re-writing before most of it is worth showing to anyone. However awful they are, I did put up three excerpts from different parts of my draft, which you can read by going here:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/212741

You may click around that page and see my stats (showing a chart of word count), my writing buddies and their results, information about me, and those three excerpts. Have fun.

Keep an eye on him

2007-11-30T14:19:00.000-05:00

My baby brother was in his stroller, and Mother and I were walking along the sidewalk up 34th Street. I'm a couple of years older than he is, so I was probably not over four years old.

When Mother stopped to talk to Mrs. England at the corner of 8th Avenue, she said to me, "Keep an eye on your baby brother."

I remember wailing back at her, "How can I keep an eye on him? Do I take out my eye and put it on him?"

This was a serious problem for me, how I was supposed to do what my mother asked, but she and Mrs. England laughed. They did -- they laughed!

You wouldn't laugh at me, would you?
__________

The prompt at Weekend Wordsmith this week is EYE.

I'm a winner!

2007-11-29T16:05:00.001-05:00

50,099 words

The End ~ a note for WriMos in their final week

2007-11-28T12:00:00.000-05:00

“The End”As we approach the end of the month – and hopefully the end of our novels – we hear the roar of the crowds up ahead as others cross the finish line and earn their bright purple winner’s widget. Chris Baty seems to think this energizes us, but I’m finding that I am slogging along in a funk, wondering which way is the finish line. I am more tired than I expected to be, less sure (not more) that these words come close to being a novel at all. But it truly is almost over. If we can hold on three more days – today, tomorrow, and Friday – we will have survived a crash course in writing. A novel? Maybe some day. A first draft? At the moment I’m not even sure mine is that. A bunch of words? Okay, a bunch of words that may or may not be something that can be polished into a work of art. But … but …

I have exercised my imagination muscle in ways it never thought it could move!

And now I can imagine being a “real” writer. Ahem, let me explain that. A writer is one who writes, right? And we have all been doing that. Hurray for us! “The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on.” That’s a quote from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which I have posted on the sidebar of my Weekend Wordsmith blog, here:
http://weekendwordsmith.blogspot.com/

Having writ, as Omar Khayyam says, it is now almost time for us to move on. Some of us will move on to revision of our masterpieces; some of us will simply move on. If it turns out, upon close inspection, that we have not written the greatest novel of the twenty-first century, then we are free to pick a fragment from this month’s efforts and expand on that … or write about any idea that crosses our expanded minds … because we can all say now that we are writers. Try it. Repeat after me:

“I am a writer!”

There! Didn’t that make you feel better?

Colleen's Dream for President Bush

2007-11-26T23:10:00.000-05:00

I want everybody to read the poem Colleen wrote in November 2002, before we invaded Iraq: Dream for President Bush. She is quite a poet, isn't she? I hope you tell her so.

Blogalization

2007-11-23T08:08:00.000-05:00

Let me teach you a new word, in case you haven't already read it: blogalization. Isn't that a mouthful? I found this quote from Gallimaufry on Global Voices:

Gallimaufry said: "I think the best thing about blogalization is that it involves using technology (which used to be perceived as something maybe sort of dehumanising and impersonal) to make things more personal and make people more connected - to make us all more human to each other, which draws us closer together."

All of you who read this are part of the blogosphere (another mouthful), so let's talk about it. Does blogging bring you closer to people in distant places? If so, do you think this kind of connection makes us more human to each other?

My opinion: Yes, I feel closer to Margreet and Jenn in the Netherlands, AV in South Africa, Marg in Australia, Marylyn in Korea, Sharon in Malaysia, Pamela in England, Amy in Spain, Simrit in India, Seamus in France, Catherine in New Zealand, Kelly in Canada, Carole and Stephanie and Dewey and Colleen and Susan in the United States.

Through these people -- and many others I have not named -- I have learned about summer in the southern hemisphere while we in the northern hemisphere have winter, I've learned more concretely the opinion Europeans have of the United States, and I've learned to think of all the world's people as being in the same boat. Some of these things I knew intellectually, of course, but talking with friends in various parts of the world makes these things come alive so that I feel it in my gut. If we are all in this together, then we MUST save the planet from the global warming caused by ... US.

Do I believe changes in attitude will happen overnight? Of course not! But it's a start.

I found a NaNoWriMo widget

2007-11-20T01:08:00.000-05:00

Light green and red show where I was above or below the goal for the day, bold green and red are reserved for days where I did exceptionally well or monumentally badly.

I'm happy to say that I am fewer than 100 words below where I need to be by Tuesday evening. In other words, I'm ahead. Yes, ahead of schedule. I'm surprised, but very pleased.

NaNoWriMo ~ word count

2007-11-15T00:25:00.000-05:00

Day 01 = 1,708
Day 02 = 3,337
Day 03 = 4,469
Day 04 = 5,402
Day 05 = 6,912
Day 06 = 7,227
Day 07 = 8,191
Day 08 = 10,805
Day 09 = 11,192
Day 10 = 13,181
Day 11 = 15,103
Day 12 = 18,237
Day 13 = 20,166
Day 14 = 22,008

Do you want to know what surprised me the most about writing this novel? Let me take you to the answer in a round-about way:

It turned out that Chattanooga, the fourth largest city in Tennessee, had no official group because we had no "ML" ... which stands for Municipal Liaison. You know me, and you probably know what I'd do, right? I'd get a group of us together one way or the other. It turned out that someone who had been an ML several times would be in Chattanooga during November. She volunteered (Tennessee is called the volunteer state, so she fits right in) to be our ML, and two minutes into November she was made our official liaison! Hurray for us! She won't be here next year, so I volunteered to be next year's ML. She thought that was a great idea ... until she learned this is my very first year, which means my very first attempt to write 50K words in 30 days. Yes, that's 50,000 words. Since we were in the flush of week one, she advised that I hold off.

Week Two arrived, and I (along with every other NaNoWriMo newbie, most likely) wondered why I had thought I could do this. At one point during Week Two, my word count was behind almost 4,000 words ... counting the 1,667 needed per day to make the total by the end of the month. Nevertheless, I was trying to do all the events the ML set up for Chattanooga, even though everyone else arrived at the write-ins with laptops ... and I had my tablet and pens. I figured the write-ins were making things worse for me, since I could be home using my computer to blast away at the word count.

I've been to three write-ins so far, but ... SURPRISE !!! ... I am catching up on the number of words written! Even at the write-ins I scrawled out more words than I thought could be written by hand. There were 15-minute word wars, where we tried to beat our previous 15-minute count, and ... SURPRISE ... I wrote faster and faster each time. I discovered that the fellowship of others with the same goal of writing 50,000 words inspired me to keep going. I have now almost caught up with the daily count, and our ML said the final week brings a rush of words. She says we can make it even if we don't hit 20,000 words until November 20th. Look at my word count above. See that? I have already passed 22,000 words.

Thanks to all of you who keep posting a sentence or two, telling me you think I can do it, that I can make it to the end and actually have 50,000 words when I finish the day on November 30th. You know what? I'm doing it!

The story of my children's hands

2007-11-12T02:17:00.000-05:00

The prompt at Weekend Wordsmith this week is HAND. "Whose hand comes to mind when you think of hands? What was it about that hand? Or simply take a look at Escher's two hands above, the two hands drawing each other; how did he come up with such a fascinating idea? Let's give a hand to all those who share a story this weekend!"

This photo reminds me of the hand prints in plaster of paris that my twin daughters made in kindergarten. Their impressions were a bit deeper and more defined, but the color is the same and probably the hand shown above is about the size of their little hands at the age of five. Their kindergarten teachers very wisely inserted a wire (paperclip?) at the top of each plaque so they could be hung on the wall, and that's what we did at our house. The two matching hands were hung below our spice rack, just about eye level with a two- or three-year-old child.

Their brother was three years younger than the twins, and he was left alone at home with Mom when they went off to kindergarten and school. He wanted so much to be able to go to school when they did. One day when he was looking at their hand prints on the wall, I told him, "When your hands are that big, you will be able to go to kindergarten." Oh, how he wanted to become a big boy and go to school! He was probably two or three when I told him that, and his pudgy little hand had a long way to go to be as big as those prints.

The twins were getting to go to school when he was two, when he was three, when he was four. And five years old seemed so far away to him. He was four when he asked me why I hadn't gotten HIM a twin, and I replied, "It doesn't work that way." "Then get me one NOW," he insisted. "It doesn't work that way, either," I told him, imagining having to birth a child the size of my big-for-his-age son.

He began to measure his hand inside the prints of his sisters' hands, and one day he came running to tell me, "I can go to school now! I can go to school!"

"Not yet," I said.

"Yes!" he insisted. "Come and see!"

He ran ahead of me into the kitchen, put his hand into the hand prints on the wall, and said, "See? My hand is big enough!"

Oh, the tears when I had to explain that he was bigger than his sisters had been. His four-year-old hand was as big as their five-year-old hands had been. He still had many months -- almost a full year -- before he could go to kindergarten.

"But you promised!" he cried. "You promised!"

Who could have predicted this sort of situation? Not me, obviously. I felt awful for having misled my little boy. And my son lost faith in his mother's promises.

4 down ... 49,996 words to go

2007-11-08T22:54:00.000-05:00

No, not quite that bad, I'm happy to say! I am a bit behind, but today's word count moved me considerably closer to being on target for making the 50,000 words by the end of November. Oh, for those of you who don't know, I'm a part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for the first time. We try to write a 50,000-word rough draft FROM SCRATCH during the thirty days of this single month. I have almost 11,000 words now. The main thing keeping me going is the agony of having to admit defeat after telling all of you I'm doing this. Really. And that is part of the strategy. I can't quit because I'd have to face YOU. Therefore, I'll make it to 50,000 words, won't I? Yes, I'm determined.

Latest on the collective short story

2007-11-07T15:13:00.000-05:00

Thanks, Seamus, for coming up with this button for the sidebar. The size of the story had grown WAY too large to fit comfortably here in a post, and this makes it so much easier for my readers to know how to follow the story. Me, too, for that matter.

Dear readers, click on either button (in this post or on the sidebar) and go see how our collective short story has progressed. I find it hard to believe it is holding together as well as it is.

NaNoWriMo ~ report

2007-11-03T14:33:00.000-04:00

In two days I wrote 3,337 words, exactly three words over and beyond the minimum of 3,334 needed (at 1,667 per day) to make it to my 50,000 word goal by 11:59 pm on November 30th. However, on this third day of the month, I have looked over those 3,337 words and found it all to be conspicuously egregious! (Well, those were Roary's words when he snorted near my ear earlier today. Unfortunately, I agree with him.) Now what? I have also thought of a two-part problem that may "fix" the faults before this novel runs into a ditch ... and I may be able to salvage some of what I've written. Probably a lot of it. Maybe. Gotta see what happens next. Gotta get busy writing.

Today I have been inspired by Absolute Vanilla, who has discovered a thinking toaster who reflects its thoughts! Yes, indeedy, one must consider all angles when trying to write a novel. If an errant toaster is helpful, so much the better! And thanks again to Ab Vanilla for this idea: "Bonnie - there'd be a great children's story in the magic toaster with thoughts of its own..." I took a look at my toaster, painted white, and it doesn't seem to have a mind of its own at all. Oh, well.

Goodbye, dear readers

2007-10-31T11:58:00.000-04:00

I hope that title got your attention because I'll be mostly "gone" for the whole month of November. I am taking on something that seems absolutely ridiculous, but may actually push me in a new direction, somewhere I've never gone before. I'm taking on NaNoWriMo. That, my friends, is short for National Novel Writing Month.

Click on the icon if you want to learn more about it. This is the first one I've ever done, so I have no idea how busy I'll be. I hope, first of all, to make it through the entire month. (Wish me luck ... or stamina.) Second, I hope to write 50,000 words of a novel. I have never done fiction before, so I don't expect my novel will be all that wonderful. No, no, no! Wait!! Let me start over: I have never done fiction before, so I will be amazed at how well it goes. Yeah, that's the spirit!
___________

Oh, yeah, Absolute Vanilla has awarded this to her readers. That includes me, so I guess I just hafta accept it. Thanks, Vanilla! I do truly try to read thoughtfully, and with your blog, that's an easy thing to do. You really SAY things, making it worth our while to read thoughtfully.

Go fly a kite!

2007-10-23T16:51:00.000-04:00

When I hear "go fly a kite,"
I remember my Daddy helping us fly a kite
when we kids were too small to do it alone.

One day we had a red kite high in the sky,
really really high up in the sky,
and the string broke.
Daddy had us all jump in the car to chase it.

As it danced in the sky trailing its rag tail,
we kids kept an eye on it,
following it all the way to Ridgedale,
at least a couple of miles from where we started.
And then we lost it.

It escaped and we never found it,
but that kite has remained floating in my memory
for more than sixty years.

Collective short story ~ with 8 parts completed

2007-10-18T07:57:00.001-04:00

The new watch that Grace's husband had given her the week before slipped inside the sleeve of her coat as her arm went up in the air. She felt she had no control over the movement, as though it were completely natural for her to be hailing a cab in the middle of New York. She felt as if she were being directed by remote control. 4:42pm, October 7. She made a mental note of the time, thinking it might be something she'd always want to remember.

"I just want you to drive," she said as she got in, avoiding the driver's eyes.

"Drive? Drive where, sweetheart?"

He sounded like he might be Middle Eastern, although the writing on photos and cards above his head looked like it could be Greek. She also noticed African music coming from the radio.

"I'll let you know. For now just drive anywhere. Wherever your instinct takes you."

"That is strange."

"Yes, it's strange. Please just drive. Anywhere."

"Whatever you say, sweetheart."

During the few minutes it took for the cab to rejoin the flow of angry traffic, she stared at the entrance to the subway that she'd been using to get home every night for the past 12 years. Ample time to change her mind. She turned off her mobile as the cab swung into Third Avenue. Happy trumpets played as a grainy picture of Sebastian and the two little ones faded into black. (1)
__________

Grace sat back and tried to relax. All her muscles were tense. She moved her head a little from side to side to try and release some of the tension in her neck. She made an effort to relax her face muscles that she was sure were drawn up into a tight mask.

As the cab swooped along with the stream of homeward-bound traffic, a sudden gust of wind swirled fallen orange and red leaves into a mad dance. She found their dance mesmerising. It reflected her mood of being drawn into a wild dance, almost out of control. Where the dance would lead, she had no idea.

“Ok, sweetheart?”The cab driver sounded uncomfortable with his role of just driving anywhere.

She nodded, still not meeting his eyes. She wished he would stop calling her sweetheart. She didn't feel like anybody's sweetheart. She looked down at her tan boots and noticed one of the toes was scuffed. She fingered the money purse inside the large red shoulder-bag sitting beside her like an obedient pet. She would have to watch the fare. After all, she only had so much money to go on. She made herself stop biting her fingernails as she tried to figure out just where she wanted the taxi cab to drop her. (2)
__________

Grace closed her eyes and thought of the gaping entrance to the subway that she'd just abandoned. It was a turning point; she'd finally turned away from him, but to what? Never back to the barren arctic mausoleum; that prison home that the train had returned her to for so many nights, so many years, devoid of warmth, of love, of anything she really needed. She refused to lose another precious moment of her life to it, she knew if she went back again, there would be no more life.

Her thoughts were a blizzard through which she could only take a step at a time; slowly, carefully, blinded by the unknown ... but feeling for it desperately, going anywhere as long as it was away. She had to escape. The storm of his loathing and anger raged around her in her mind and her heart began to pound, her pulse started to race and she knew this was it.

Reality seemed to fade into a dream and she fled the monster at her heels in uncertainty ... could she make it? Could she really leave and be free? At last? The thought of it beckoned to her like a distant star in her dark night and the shadow of an image began to take form and make its way to the forefront of her mind. Jack. It was her only chance.

The possibility of it was slim ... but, perhaps. She had to try. Leaning forward, she instructed the cab driver with urgent directions and he was relieved that she'd finally determined a destination.

For the first time in ages, she stood at the base of the stairs that led up to his door and willed herself to move. How many years had it been ... a hundred at least? What if he wasn't home? What if he didn't care about their friendship anymore? She'd let the winds of time carry it away in small fragments ... like the leaves swirling about her feet, that skittered on the air and vanished. Grace carried the weight of the world and the bulk of the past with her up the steps and hesitated before pressing the button by the large door of the brownstone.

Time never passed so slowly. Her heart pounded in her chest and blood rushed in her ears. She drew a shaky breath. He might be gone. Maybe he had company. He probably wouldn't even want to speak to her. What if he didn't recognize her? How could she even come here at all? What was she thinking? Certainly he must be angry that she'd let their friendship go. All those years ... best friends since they were children, and she'd let it go. How could she have done that for the monster she'd married? She began to breathe, shallow and quick. He had seemed so hurt the last time they'd talked.

She gasped and jerked her head up. He'd opened the door, shock and disbelief registering on his face. She froze.

"Grace?" He whispered her name like a prayer from the heart. There was more emotion in that one word than she'd felt from her husband in a year.

"Jack... I ..." she stammered, unsure that she should have come at all.

In a single movement he came through the doorway and pulled her into his arms tightly. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?" He only let her go long enough to cup her face in his hands and peer into it closely, searching for any sign of pain, as a parent might do to his long lost child. He saw it there and pulled her back into his whole embrace. Anxiety and hope filled her clenched lungs as she allowed herself to breathe deeply.

"Come. Come in and we'll take care of it," he said quietly, as he brought her into his home.

He sat with her on the couch and watched her, listening intently as she spoke.

"I'm so sorry to just show up like this ... I ..." She clasped her hands tightly in her lap and stared straight through them.

"Grace, please don't apologize, there's no need at all. We're best friends, and you know time can't touch that. It doesn't matter what brought you here, you are welcome to stay as long as you need to and you know that you are safe. No one can touch you here. I'll make sure of that."

She stared at his unwavering countenance. Into his bottomless, dark eyes. Time ceased to exist then, time that had passed and time that would have come after this moment. It was as if they'd never been apart even a day. She launched herself into his arms again.

"I've missed you so much, thank you."

"You are one of the strongest women I've ever met. You are unstoppable, vibrant and passionate, and you are so full of secrets right now! This is not the Grace that I know," he said skeptically, as he raised one eyebrow, and with his hand on her chin, turned her face from side to side. "Where's that wonder woman that could take on the world? Why have you hidden yourself away behind this mask?" He paused and whispered, "What happened to you mon ami?"

Grace looked around for an answer to his question, as though the welcoming walls in the room might offer her the words that she could not find. She opened her mouth to tell him, but somehow the brave front that she had shielded herself with crumbled in this sanctuary where she knew she could finally fall on her knees and find solace. Tears carried the pain away as they streamed down her pale cheeks like a long overdue rain on parched land. Saying nothing, Jack drew her to his chest, held her close and stroked her hair until she cried herself to sleep. He laid her head on a deep pillow and covered her with a thick quilt. Grace drifted off into a deeper slumber than she'd had in months, and Jack watched her for a long time.

It was late when he reached for his phone and dialed the number. He spoke softly, his eyes never leaving her as she slept. "Sebastian, you won't believe this. Grace is here ... she finally came; she left him. Now she can begin." (3)
__________

Sebastian replaced the receiver and leaned back in his chair. Twelve years was a long time and Jack sounded elated, almost triumphant. Poor Grace.

He picked his way through the darkened office and across the hall to the kitchen, avoiding the light switch so as not to wake up Amanda, who was snoring softly in the bedroom next door. It had been her night noises that had woken him and not the late night call from the nearly gloating Jack. Amanda was becoming far too much of a sexual habit, it was nearly time to call it a day, but that could wait. The past had just called him up and he knew that sleep was not going to be on the cards tonight.

He made a pot of strong coffee and returned to the office, rousing the computer as he placed his cup in its usual position. That was another thing about Amanda, he thought, she would love to fill his desk with any amount of gaudy clutter. He liked his apartment the way it was, free from everyday untidiness, useless objects that could remind him of useless memories.

The screen bounced into life and he once again admired the neatness of his files. He liked the order of a computer; it reflected his attitude to life, an attitude that had developed over the last twelve years. What he didn't like was the fact that his finger had now found a file called 'Unfinished business' and was busy opening it.

Sebastian watched as the photo file revealed itself - row upon row of snapshots from another time, another place and one that he would rather not be reminded of. The photo at the top showed three friends, Jack, Mike and Sebastian, arms around each others shoulders, friends for life. The rest of the hundred or so meticulously captioned pictures ran through three years at college and showed only one woman, posed, un-posed, summer, winter, laughing, crying. Poor Grace. (4)
__________

Sebastian leaned back in his chair, ran his hand over the stubble on his chin and afforded himself a thin smile. So, she had finally turned up in Jack's life again. Just like the proverbial bad penny. He flicked through the images on the screen. Grace laughing. Grace dancing. Grace lazing in the sun. His eyes ran over the curve of her body, lingering on the rise of her breasts, the pert roundness of her backside. Ah yes, Grace the Temptress. Grace who could have been anyone, had anyone. Grace who knew the world lay at her feet. And by god, she'd meant to conquer that world. Ultimately it hadn't mattered to her who she might trample on to grab her dreams.

Sebastian chewed his lower lip, remembering the advice he'd given her long ago. "Be careful what you wish and dream for, Gracie. Make your choices wisely." But she'd just laughed, ran a hand over his face and flicked his hair from his eyes – with that casual sense of ownership she had with every man who'd crossed her path.

Funny how things came full circle. From owning, she'd been owned. Strange that she should have fallen for Sebastian Carrebreu, the sauve Frenchman – his namesake. He had no doubt she'd long forgotten him, Sebastian Comptom – but at least she'd remembered Jack. He remembered the night she'd told them. He and Jack were on their way to the Hampton's to Jack's folks' place –Grace was supposed to join them. Instead she had waltzed into the apartment, her hair flying, her cheeks flushed and declared, "Boys, you're going to have to go without me!"

The smile on Jack’s face had crumpled. "Why, what's come up? Whatever it is, can't you cancel?"

"Absolutely not! See, I'm getting married, darlings!" The glittering diamond on her ring finger flashed as she thrust out her hand.

"To who?" He remembered how Jack had clutched the back of the sofa.

"To Sebastian!"

He remembered the pain, the betrayal in Jack's eyes as he'd turned to him, gasping.

"Not me," he'd said. "Dear God, she'd never marry me. Nor would I ever ask her." He'd noticed how she'd narrowed her eyes at him.

"Of course not. Don't be daft, Jack. Oh, no offence, of course, Seb." Her voice had been loaded with meaning. "No, I'm marrying Sebastian Carrebreu. Remember," she said, her eyes gleaming, "we met him at that protest and then at the conference his company gave."

"But you barely know him!" Jack cried. "You can't! He's ..."

"Why ever not?! Oh God, Jack, don't get all possessive on me now. That would be so tedious."

She'd blown air kisses at them and flounced from the room. Twelve years. It might have been yesterday. But now she was back ... and in Jack's arms. Oh how the mighty are fallen. Sebastian smiled. It was a cold smile which didn't reach his eyes. He took a last glance at the photographs in front of him, closed the images and glanced through the notes in the file. Unfinished business ... but not for much longer. He opened his email and began typing. (5)
__________

Swimming out of her deep sleep, Grace stretched and saw Jack slumped in a chair across from her.

"Welcome back, sleeping beauty," he said quietly.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"Almost midnight."

"No!" Grace sat up, holding her head. "Then Sebastian knows I didn't come home."

"I suspect so."

"I have to..."

"Grace, wait!" Jack said, coming to sit beside her on the sofa. "Let's talk."

"I can't believe I did this with no more planning than..."

"It's okay."

"What? How can you say that? I haven't even told you why I'm here."

"I can guess, but I would rather you tell me about it."

Grace pulled back to take a good look at Jack's face. "You know something, don't you?"

He nodded. "I've sort of kept up with you over the years."

"Me? Why?"

"Because we knew the man you married, and we were worried about you."

"We? We, who?"

"Sebastian and Mike and I."

"Sebastian?"

"Oh, sorry, Sebastian Compton. Friends in college, remember? Not your Sebastian."

"You're telling me that someone I barely remember has been worried about me? That doesn't make sense." Grace lurched to her feet, with Jack right behind her.

"Grace, take a deep breath and listen for a minute." Jack raked his fingers through his tousled hair, wondering where to start. "We have files on your husband, files that could send his sorry ass up the river, but we sat on it until ... until ... you chose to leave him." Jack lowered his face to hers. "That is what you've done, isn't it?"

Grace closed her eyes. "I don't understand any of this. I didn't even know I was coming here until I was already in the taxi. Who are these people, Sebastian and Mike?"

"Have you totally forgotten my old college buddies? We used to hang out together, then Mike became a cop and Sebastian went to law school. Me? I'm ready to take over my dad's business when he retires, but mostly I'm the guy still trying to watch out for you, just the way I've done since kindergarten."

"But the others?"

"They think I'm crazy, but they're my friends," Jack said. "And we are so ready to take on your husband." (6)
__________

“What do you mean Jack,” Grace inquired, the strain obvious in her weary voice. “Who exactly is going to take on Sebastian ... and why?”

Her voice trailed off to an exasperated whisper. The why was not so much a question, as an exhalation of confused frustration. She seemed to know the answer was much too complicated to address at this hour, and she was too spent, physically and emotionally, to want to hear it.

Grace turned away from Jack, head lowered. Her arms fell limp at her side, fingers splayed. She was trying her best to process what Jack was saying, to understand him –to understand the recent events that had brought her to this place in time ... to make sense of anything. Her head was spinning, and she could feel the fatigue deep in her bones.

She dropped back onto the sofa, half sitting, half lying down – an exhausted slouch. She felt paralyzed, thoughts racing through her mind – fragmented, disconnected thoughts.

She looked at her hands, palms down in her lap, her eyes glazing over. Her vision drifted to her wrists, her left wrist in particular — to her watch. Slowly it came into focus, and she realized she was staring at the broken crystal face of her Audemars Piguet Promesse.

Ever since Sebastian had given her this watch for their anniversary, her life had turned upside down – but it had also turned a corner. Fate had pushed her round that corner, and she would never turn back again. Her life as Mrs. Carrebreu was over.

She knew this, knew it as surely as she knew she missed her children. Something must be done to get them out of that house – his house. It could no longer be her home, but they would always be her children – and she feared for them. They had to be part of whatever direction fate was leading her.

It was fate that had broken the crystal – fate, and her quick reflexes, blocking Sebastian with her forearm as he struck out at her in anger, following their anniversary dinner.

He had apologized, explaining it away as the result of stress. “It will never happen again,” he’d said in his most gentle and sincere voice – but she was familiar with this empty promise. This was not the first time, and the incidents of abuse were escalating.

She’d only come into his office that evening to thank him again for the gorgeous timepiece. She thought this was where he’d retired after leaving the dining table. But she could see, in the subdued light, that he was not there. The mahogany paneled room was empty.

She loved the aroma of his Classic Port pipe tobacco that permeated the walls. Her father had also smoked that blend in his Barling Meerschaum, and the heady fragrance was comforting to her – so she lingered. That’s when she noticed it, on his desk, silhouetted by the light from the Tiffany lamp.

Her curiosity drew her to it. She’d just picked it up when Sebastian entered. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Put that god damned box down,” he’d shouted — then flew into a rage.

Why had her discovery of the leather box sent Sebastian over the edge? What were those letters that spilled out when she dropped the box upon being struck?

They’d looked terribly official, with their seals and embossing – and written in a language that she did not recognize. Sebastian certainly scrambled frantically to collect them from the antique Persian rug, and return them to the box. But she managed to conceal one, sliding it under her hips as she lay where she’d fallen after being struck.

Sebastian’s bizarre reaction to the correspondence scattered on the floor, and the strangeness of the language they contained, had piqued Grace’s interest. Instinct drove her to hide the envelope until she was able to fold and slip it into her pocket, as her husband hurried from the room, with the leather box in tow.

Grace felt it was important that she take this letter she’d spirited out of the room, and put it in safekeeping. She’d planned to somehow learn more about its origin and content.

It was again fate that lead her the next morning to the jewelers, seeking a new watch crystal. It was while standing at the counter, waiting to be served, that she’d spied Sebastian coming out of the restaurant across the street, in the company of a woman — a stranger to Grace. They had climbed into a waiting limousine.

Grace had broken from the counter in a hurry, and bolted through the door to get a better look. Unfortunately, as she’d reached the sidewalk and acquired a reasonable view of the vehicle, it had sped away. She had noticed markings on the door, and a license plate, a type she had not immediately recognized – but she could read neither.

Fate had revealed this convoluted mystery to her, but what was she to do with it. Where could she begin to unravel it? All this was flooding through her mind when she was startled back to the present by Jack, returning to the room with pillows and a blanket.

“I will take the sofa tonight,” he said, “You’re completely burned out. I’m putting you in my room,” he continued in a kind and caring tone. “My bed is amazingly comfortable, and you need sleep – lots of good, deep sleep.”

He reached down and took Grace’s hand, helping her to her feet. Gently wrapping his arm around her waist, he escorted her down the hall and into his room. Stopping just inside the door, he said, “You will be safe in here. We’ll talk about everything in the morning,” and he gave her a warm hug, stepped back into the hall, and closed the door.

Grace realized there were too many questions to answer, too many mysteries — just too damned much to even think about right now.

“Yes, in the morning,” she mumbled to the door.

Then, hugging her red shoulder bag with the mysterious envelope tucked safely inside, Grace shuffled across the room and collapsed on the bed. (7)
__________

As he rolled over, he was startled awake by the absence of a warm body.

Sebastian Carrebreu couldn’t remember the last time he had woken up alone. Even on his frequent business trips he never needed an extra pair of socks to keep warm, and yet here he was, caressing an unwrinkled sheet.

He sat up slowly, his head weighing down his upper half like those fishing sinkers his English grandfather used to make — only Sebastian had used whiskey and rum and whatever else had been in the liquor cabinet instead of lead. Sure felt the same now though.

Nine thirty. I can’t believe she really stayed out all night, he thought, as he wrapped his silk robe around him and shuffled to the bathroom mirror. He turned on the hot water and stared into his dark grey eyes until the steam rising from the sink snapped him out of his trance.

As he looked down and stuck his fingers under the stream of water, he noticed something glimmering on the edge of the sink. The diamond necklace he had bought for Grace as a wedding gift — the necklace she wore every single day without fail.

“That bitch!” he yelled and splashed the scalding water on his face, making it only a shade redder than it had been a moment before.

He half-toweled off his face and went immediately to his cell phone in the nightstand. He turned it on, and a drop of water from his nose hit the number 5, taunting him with Grace’s speed dial position. He managed to dial anyway, or at least simply hit # and the number 1.

A recording told him that Armand wasn’t available and so Sebastian did the only thing he could do in response. He hurled the phone at the antique carriage clock on the fireplace. His arm wasn’t as strong as it used to be, though, and it fell just short of the mantle.

He smirked at his own ineffectiveness and breathed deeply and slowly on his walk over to the fireplace. He picked up the phone and turned it on all sides to inspect the damage. It was still turned on and it looked just fine so he dropped it inside his robe pocket and headed for the kitchen.

The maid was off, so there’d be no coffee. Goodness, did he even remember how to make coffee? As he scanned the counter for a container that might hold the beans, his phone rang.

Armand.

“She’s left me, Armand,” he said, without even a hello, and dropped his weight onto a stool at the bar. “And I think it’s for good this time.” As he glanced across the city skyline, nights of theatre, dinner and dancing flashing through his mind in an instant. He had never hated his window-lined penthouse more than at this moment.

His lifelong friend sighed and said flatly, “I know.”

“What do you mean you know?” Sebastian asked as he straightened his back and pulled a curtain across the window in front of him.

“Sebastian, it’s better if we talk about this in person. I know where Grace stayed last night, and you’re not going to like it — especially when I tell you what this friend of hers has been up to.”

“Armand, what ...”

“Not on the phone, Sebastian. I’ll be right over. Should I bring coffee?”

Sebastian eyed the empty liquor cabinet. “Sounds like I may need something stronger.” (8)
__________

Authors So Far:

Part 1 ~ Seamus at Shameless Words
Part 2 ~ Kay at As It Happens
Part 3 ~ Scarlett at from the shores of introspect and retrospect
Part 4 ~ Kate at The Inner Minx
Part 5 ~ Vanilla at Absolute Vanilla... (& Atyllah)
Part 6 ~ Bonnie at Words from a Wordsmith
Part 7 ~ Rob at Image & Verse too
Part 8 ~ Sognatrice at Bleeding Espresso

The on-going story can be found on the Shameless Lions Writing Circle blog.

Niceness and mischief

2007-10-17T07:23:00.000-04:00

Wanderlust Scarlett from the Shores of Introspect and Retrospect has introduced a whole bunch of blogs full of niceness and mischief ... along with a bunch more blogs that make her smile. Go check it out.

Think GREEN today

2007-10-15T01:21:00.000-04:00

On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. The idea is to get everyone talking towards a better future. Follow this link and take a look.

Today I plan to WEAR GREEN and offer TIPS and CHALLENGES and IDEAS (like these) on my blogs:

Ideal Bite offers daily TIPS ON BEING GREEN.

Diane of Big Green Purse has a CHALLENGE:
Her "One in a Million" Campaign is urging a million women to shift $1,000 of money they'd spend in a year anyway to green products and services that can help protect the environment. It's important because:

Manufacturing to meet consumer demand drives pollution and climate change.
Pollution and climate change affect our health and safety.
If we use our consumer clout to improve manufacturing, we protect ourselves and the planet, too.

Because women spend $.85 of every dollar in the marketplace, we have the clout to make a difference. Hybrid cars? Organic food? Safe cosmetics? Green shopping has already had an impact.

Women are finding all kinds of ways to swap out "brown" products for "green."

Erin, a Green Purse Alerts! subscriber, joined the One in a Million Campaign at the beginning of this year. She recently sent the balance sheet she downloaded from the Big Green Purse website to help her track her eco purchases and report back on her pledge. It only took her six months to become "One in a Million." Her secret? She bought two water saving toilets for a total of almost $600, then made up the difference in organic groceries, safe cleansers, and organic potting soil.

For IDEAS on how you can swap your current purchases for green ones that would make a difference, visit the One in a Million campaign web page.

Some of the most important options (and ones that should be readily available in your neighborhood as well as on-line) include:

____ Organic, locally grown food (reduce pesticides)

____ Energy-efficient appliances (stop global warming)

____ Phthalate-free cosmetics (protect your health)

____ Fuel-efficient car (save energy, clear the air)

____ Fair trade, shade grown coffee (protect rainforests)

____ Non-toxic cleansers (protect your health, reduce toxins)

Book meme

2007-10-14T23:56:00.002-04:00

Absolute Vanilla has tagged me for a book meme.

1. Total number of books owned

I should have an inventory because I owned a bookstore, but I confess that our new system to inventory books never got a chance to get the job done. It was a USED book store, which means we got the books our customers traded in, then priced and shelved them. The very expensive inventory system had to wait until we started making enough to pay for it, but the very unfriendly economy didn't give us enough time to get all the books into the inventory before we closed the store. Great fun while it lasted, but I now have four (yes, FOUR) storage bins full of boxes of books. How many? I don't have a clue. May I just say THOUSANDS and let it go at that? At home books fill the shelves and, yes, breed not just more books but more PILES of books. And there are piles of books on every flat surface, including the floor. Thousands, yea thousands more! Have I read them all? No, of course not, but I'm trying!

2. Last book bought

I rarely buy one book at a time, so this is like trying to remember the last potato chip I bought. Hmm, let me see, The Assault on Reason by Al Gore was among the last books I bought.

3. Last book read

This is a little easier because, even though I have several books going at any one time, I finish them one at a time. The most recent two books I completed were Merle's Door by Kerasote and I Never Saw Paris by Harry I. Freund. I'll have both books reviewed by tomorrow evening.

4. Five books which mean a lot to me

Time and Again ~ by Jack Finney
The Social Construction of Reality ~ by Peter L. Berger
Honest to God ~ by John A. T. Robinson
The Altered I ~ by Ursula K. Le Guin
Gnostic Gospels ~ by Elaine Pagels
Ishmael ~ by Daniel Quinn
To Love as God Loves ~ by Roberta C. Bondi
Worlds in Collision ~ by Immanuel Velikovsky, 1950
The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity ~ by Hyam Maccoby
Stranger in a Strange Land ~ by Robert A. Heinlein
Agape Love ~ by John Templeton
Genesis Revisited ~ by Zecharia Sitchin, 1990

(Five, a dozen, who cares? You do? So sue me.)
I'm tagging anyone who wants to do this meme.

And the collective story goes on

2007-10-13T02:22:00.000-04:00

The Shameless Lions Writing Circle has a project going, with those of us who are willing taking on the writing of a collective short story. So far I've shared parts 1-5 in one post and part 6 in another post. This is part 7, and all the writers are listed at the bottom, along with the next writer nominated.

“What do you mean Jack,” Grace inquired, the strain obvious in her weary voice. “Who exactly is going to take on Sebastian ... and why?”

Her voice trailed off to an exasperated whisper. The why was not so much a question, as an exhalation of confused frustration. She seemed to know the answer was much too complicated to address at this hour, and she was too spent, physically and emotionally, to want to hear it.

Grace turned away from Jack, head lowered. Her arms fell limp at her side, fingers splayed. She was trying her best to process what Jack was saying, to understand him –to understand the recent events that had brought her to this place in time ... to make sense of anything. Her head was spinning, and she could feel the fatigue deep in her bones.

She dropped back onto the sofa, half sitting, half lying down – an exhausted slouch. She felt paralyzed, thoughts racing through her mind – fragmented, disconnected thoughts.

She looked at her hands, palms down in her lap, her eyes glazing over. Her vision drifted to her wrists, her left wrist in particular — to her watch. Slowly it came into focus, and she realized she was staring at the broken crystal face of her Audemars Piguet Promesse.

Ever since Sebastian had given her this watch for their anniversary, her life had turned upside down – but it had also turned a corner. Fate had pushed her round that corner, and she would never turn back again. Her life as Mrs. Carrebreu was over.

She knew this, knew it as surely as she knew she missed her children. Something must be done to get them out of that house – his house. It could no longer be her home, but they would always be her children – and she feared for them. They had to be part of whatever direction fate was leading her.

It was fate that had broken the crystal – fate, and her quick reflexes, blocking Sebastian with her forearm as he struck out at her in anger, following their anniversary dinner.

He had apologized, explaining it away as the result of stress. “It will never happen again,” he’d said in his most gentle and sincere voice – but she was familiar with this empty promise. This was not the first time, and the incidents of abuse were escalating.

She’d only come into his office that evening to thank him again for the gorgeous timepiece. She thought this was where he’d retired after leaving the dining table. But she could see, in the subdued light, that he was not there. The mahogany paneled room was empty.

She loved the aroma of his Classic Port pipe tobacco that permeated the walls. Her father had also smoked that blend in his Barling Meerschaum, and the heady fragrance was comforting to her – so she lingered. That’s when she noticed it, on his desk, silhouetted by the light from the Tiffany lamp.

Her curiosity drew her to it. She’d just picked it up when Sebastian entered. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Put that god damned box down,” he’d shouted — then flew into a rage.

Why had her discovery of the leather box sent Sebastian over the edge? What were those letters that spilled out when she dropped the box upon being struck?

They’d looked terribly official, with their seals and embossing – and written in a language that she did not recognize. Sebastian certainly scrambled frantically to collect them from the antique Persian rug, and return them to the box. But she managed to conceal one, sliding it under her hips as she lay where she’d fallen after being struck.

Sebastian’s bizarre reaction to the correspondence scattered on the floor, and the strangeness of the language they contained, had piqued Grace’s interest. Instinct drove her to hide the envelope until she was able to fold and slip it into her pocket, as her husband hurried from the room, with the leather box in tow.

Grace felt it was important that she take this letter she’d spirited out of the room, and put it in safekeeping. She’d planned to somehow learn more about its origin and content.

It was again fate that lead her the next morning to the jewelers, seeking a new watch crystal. It was while standing at the counter, waiting to be served, that she’d spied Sebastian coming out of the restaurant across the street, in the company of a woman — a stranger to Grace. They had climbed into a waiting limousine.

Grace had broken from the counter in a hurry, and bolted through the door to get a better look. Unfortunately, as she’d reached the sidewalk and acquired a reasonable view of the vehicle, it had sped away. She had noticed markings on the door, and a license plate, a type she had not immediately recognized – but she could read neither.

Fate had revealed this convoluted mystery to her, but what was she to do with it. Where could she begin to unravel it? All this was flooding through her mind when she was startled back to the present by Jack, returning to the room with pillows and a blanket.

“I will take the sofa tonight,” he said, “You’re completely burned out. I’m putting you in my room,” he continued in a kind and caring tone. “My bed is amazingly comfortable, and you need sleep – lots of good, deep sleep.”

He reached down and took Grace’s hand, helping her to her feet. Gently wrapping his arm around her waist, he escorted her down the hall and into his room. Stopping just inside the door, he said, “You will be safe in here. We’ll talk about everything in the morning,” and he gave her a warm hug, stepped back into the hall, and closed the door.

Grace realized there were too many questions to answer, too many mysteries — just too damned much to even think about right now.

“Yes, in the morning,” she mumbled to the door.

Then, hugging her red shoulder bag with the mysterious envelope tucked safely inside — Grace shuffled across the room, and collapsed on the bed. (7)
__________

Authors so far:

Part 1 ~ Seamus at Shameless Words
Part 2 ~ Kay at As It Happens
Part 3 ~ Scarlett at from the shores of introspect and retrospect
Part 4 ~ Kate at The Inner Minx
Part 5 ~ Vanilla at Absolute Vanilla... (& Atyllah)
Part 6 ~ Bonnie at Words from a Wordsmith
Part 7 ~ Rob at Image & Verse too

The on-going story can be found on the Shameless Lions Writing Circle blog:

The Shameless Lions Writing Circle: A Collective Short Story

The You Make Me Smile Award

2007-10-12T15:01:00.000-04:00

Susan of Patchwork Reflections said, "Comments make me smile! So all of you who were nice enough to comment here are officially presented with the 'you make me smile' award! Congratulations!" On her blog she added this verse:

Smiling is infectious,
U can catch it like the flu.
Someone smiled at me today,
And I started smiling too,
Now I am passing it on to you!

If I were as talented as Susan, I would versify my name before passing it on. However, if would be quite awful and isn't worth the time I'd spend trying. So without further ado, here are some people who make me smile:

Jenn in Holland who has Something to Say
Karen of Verbatim
Nancy of Poppet's Magnificent Traveling Adventure
Scarlett from the shores of introspect and retrospect
Vanilla of Absolute Vanilla... (& Atyllah)

And I'll end this post with a quote from Phyllis Diller: "A smile is a curve that sets everything straight."
__________

UPDATE: This post has been viewed by three colorful characters named Poppet, Nicole, and Violet. See their uniquely angled point of view on the blog called Poppet's Magnificent Traveling Adventures.

My worst fear

2007-10-12T12:06:00.000-04:00

Michelle at Scribbit has a write-away contest each month. I've never entered any of her contests, until now. The Write-Away Contest for October is about "Things That Scare Me." I'm not at all a fraidy-cat, so I was ready to pass on this contest too, until I remembered my worst fear. By now you have seen the photo, so you know what I fear. You know what causes chills to run up and down my spine. You know WHAT, but you don't (yet) know WHY.

My baby brother was born after World War Two, and we moved into housing that had originally been a military barracks. The absolutely worst part about it was that we couldn't get rid of the cockroaches, which crawled from one apartment to the other, probably through the attic or the space between floors. To me they were merely bugs, nothing I couldn't deal with. Until ... argghhh, I'm shivering again!

One night I hung my little green jacket on the back of my baby brother's high chair, which had been left with crumbs from his chubby fingers. The next morning I got ready for school and, rushing to get out the door, I grabbed my jacket and shoved my arms into the sleeves. I must have been really, really fast because the roaches didn't have time to escape. A couple of them ran down my arms and out the sleeves, but one must have been inside the coat. He ran up the back of my neck {{{shiver}}}, across the top of my head {{{quiver}}}, and flew!

I screamed.

I scrunched my neck down into my blouse, shook off that horrible green jacket, and kept screaming!

I was ten; now I am 67, but I can feel those cockroaches on my arms and on my neck even now. And I sit here and shiver-quiver like jello as I remember. *Dad gum* this contest, anyway! Some things I don't like remembering!

In case you don't believe my story, in case you think my memory is faulty, let me link you to the story where I found the above photo: Meet your new neighbor, the Asian cockroach.

Ewwwww, I can't stand it!

Nice matters

2007-10-10T09:46:00.000-04:00

Absolute Vanilla is such a nice person. And now she's told me I'm nice, too: "Bonnie, who is nicely enthusiastic, supportive, thoughtful and kind." Thanks! The nicest part is that I get to pass this colorful award along to other nice bloggers, like:

Beth of Blue Ridge Blue Collar Girl
Colleen of Loose Leaf Notes
Dewey of the hidden side of a leaf
Nancy of Bookfoolery and Babble
Stephanie the Bookaholic
Susan of Patchwork Reflections

Now (to quote Vanilla) go and stick it on your blog and play it forward. Spread the love and the niceness! Let's make the world a happier and brighter and nicer place!

Wiki Wednesday ~ a madrigal

2007-10-10T02:45:00.000-04:00

Let's learn something!
1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Click on "Random article" in the left-hand sidebar box.
3. Post it!
This is what I got:

(1) Now is the month of maying is one of the most famous of the English madrigals, by Thomas Morley published in 1595. It is based on a text used by Orazio Vecchi in 1590.

Two verses of the soprano lyrics are as follows:

Now is the month of maying,
When merry lads are playing,
Fa la la la la.

Each with his bonny lass,
upon the greeny grass,
Fa la la la la.

(2) Madrigal (music), a musical form of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

(3) Madrigal Singers for 2007-2008

I love this photo! Click to enlarge the picture and look at the smiles on the faces of these young people, so young, so fresh. And something about these authentic costumes appeals to me. Examine the shoes and leggings, which appear to be quite authentic. And don't these merry lads look like they would enjoy maying, each with his bonny lass?

A collective short story ~ continues

2007-10-07T22:51:00.000-04:00

Click here to read the first five sections of the collective story being written by the Shameless Lions Writing Circle. I have been chosen to write the sixth part.

Swimming out of her deep sleep, Grace stretched and saw Jack slumped in a chair across from her.

"Welcome back, sleeping beauty," he said quietly.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"Almost midnight."

"No!" Grace sat up, holding her head. "Then Sebastian knows I didn't come home."

"I suspect so."

"I have to..."

"Grace, wait!" Jack said, coming to sit beside her on the sofa. "Let's talk."

"I can't believe I did this with no more planning than..."

"It's okay."

"What? How can you say that? I haven't even told you why I'm here."

"I can guess, but I would rather you tell me about it."

Grace pulled back to take a good look at Jack's face. "You know something, don't you?"

He nodded. "I've sort of kept up with you over the years."

"Me? Why?"

"Because we knew the man you married, and we were worried about you."

"We? We, who?"

"Sebastian and Mike and I."

"Sebastian?"

"Oh, sorry, Sebastian Compton. Friends in college, remember? Not your Sebastian."

"You're telling me that someone I barely remember has been worried about me? That doesn't make sense." Grace lurched to her feet, with Jack right behind her.

"Grace, take a deep breath and listen for a minute." Jack raked his fingers through his tousled hair, wondering where to start. "We have files on your husband, files that could send his sorry ass up the river, but we sat on it until ... until ... you chose to leave him." Jack lowered his face to hers. "That is what you've done, isn't it?"

Grace closed her eyes. "I don't understand any of this. I didn't even know I was coming here until I was already in the taxi. Who are these people, Sebastian and Mike?"

"Have you totally forgotten my old college buddies? We used to hang out together, then Mike became a cop and Sebastian went to law school. Me? I'm ready to take over my dad's business when he retires, but mostly I'm the guy still trying to watch out for you, just the way I've done since kindergarten."

"But the others?"

"They think I'm crazy, but they're my friends," Jack said. "And we are so ready to take on your husband."
__________

Next nominated writer: Catherine of Still Standing on Her Head

Doing it in style

2007-10-05T03:34:00.000-04:00

Sometimes it's hard to know what to write about because I have SOOoooooooo many interests:

people
nature
metaphors
animals
dreams
science
ideas
global warming
word origins
books, etc.

But I doubt if many of you would suspect I'm also interested in style. Style? Me? Yep, but let me explain. My kind of style includes:

Chicago Manual of Style
MLA Style Manual
Elements of Style
Turabian's many books on style

And now you are REALLY confused, aren't you? Unless you are a writer, professional or otherwise. Wikipedia defines it this way:

"Style guides (or style manuals) are prevalent for general and specialized usage, for the general reading and writing audience and for students and scholars of the various academic disciplines, medicine, journalism, the law, government, business, and industry. Publishing house style guides outline standards for design and writing for a specific publication or organization."

Defining it succinctly, however, I'd say a style manual is a book telling writers how to use the right punctuation and grammar. I haven't had occasion to pick up a style book in over a decade. So why, I wonder, did I have a dream like this?

I was there when one woman showed another a homemade booklet of folded pages stapled together and seemingly well-thumbed and often used. She said, "This is what he uses." And she pointed in the direction of a young man a few yards away working on a car or truck motor. Why I thought it was any of my business, I don't know, but I walked toward him thinking I'd tell him about style manuals. And ... IN MY DREAM ... I was deciding which to recommend to him, thinking to myself: White's Elements of Style and Turabian's book. I woke up to the phone ringing ... while I was telling the fellow the names of those two books.

When I went blog hopping, I started with Colleen's Loose Leaf Notes. It was Thursday, so she had written her usual Thursday Thirteen post with 13 points. I was reading along, enjoying it as usual, learning a lot and having fun ... and then I read #12: "I want to keep track of THIS writer’s resource that I found at ... so I’m posting it here." The resource? The Chicago Manual of Style Online! Now THAT is just freaky! I woke up today from a dream where I had just dreamed of telling a young man he needed to get White's Elements of Style (my dream self totally forgot Strunk) and that, even better was Turabian's style book. Turabian, in case you didn't know, was the person who basically WROTE the Chicago Manual on Style that Colleen was saving as part of her T13. It gets even crazier: In the post following the one where Colleen found information about the online style stuff, the other blogger had written this sentence:

Rounding a corner, the ground was suddenly white.

What is wrong with this picture? "Rounding a corner, the ground was suddenly white"? The writer needed a style manual ... or a book about grammar. "Rounding a corner" is a phrase modifying the subject of the sentence, which is "the ground." If we are to believe what she wrote, the ground came around a corner and suddenly turned white. Hmm, makes me wonder if something frightened the ground, who blanched. No, the writer meant: When WE rounded a corner, the ground was suddenly white ... (and reading on) ... because it was covered with white chicken feathers. Whew! And THAT is why writers need style books.

Wiki Wednesday ~ El Misti

2007-10-03T07:38:00.000-04:00

Time to learn something!
1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Click on "Random article" in the left-hand sidebar box.
3. Post it!
This is what I got:

El Misti (5,822 m) is a stratovolcano located in southern Peru near the city of Arequipa. This city, second largest in the country, lies at the foot of El Misti in a fertile valley located 2,400 m above sea level. El Misti has become the city's enduring symbol. Most of the city's colonial buildings were constructed from El Misti's white volcanic stone (sillar). The volcano's last known eruption was in 1784.

With its snow-capped, perfect cone, El Misti stands at 5,822 m and lies between the mountain Chachani (6,075 m) and the volcano Pichu-Pichu (5,669 m). These impressive mountains, located northeast of Arequipa, are visible almost year-round, but especially during winter (May-September).

El Misti has three concentric craters. In the inner crater fumarole activity can be seen. Near the inner crater six Inca mummies and rare Inca artifacts were found in 1998 during a month-long excavation directed by the archaeologists Johan Reinhard and Jose Antonio Chavez. The finds are currently stored in the Museo de Santuarios Andinos in Arequipa.

There are two main climbing routes on the volcano. The Pastores route, which is more used, as its starting point is nearer to the city of Arequipa, starts in 3,300 m. Usually a camp is made in 4,500 m at Nido de Aguilas. The second route, the Aguada Blanca route, starts at 4,000 m near the Aguada Blanca reservoir and a camp is made in 4,800 m at Monte Blanco (the name of the camp comes from the fact that it has more or less the height as the summit of Mont Blanc). Neither climbing routes presents technical difficulties but both are considered strenuous because of the steep loose sand slopes.

Nasa three-dimensional perspective view of El Misti:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?img_id=1109

Now for the spooky part ... last week my random article was about Arequipa, the city at the foot of El Misti!

A collective short story

2007-09-28T00:22:00.000-04:00

It's been awhile since I last mentioned the Shameless Lions Writing Circle, so you may be interested in knowing that something's happening over there. We are writing a collective short story. It will be written by all of us members, with each member called on to add to the developing story. Who knows where it will end up? I'm sharing this here so you can tell me what you think. Where is the story going? Is the idea working so far? Are you hooked yet? Here's the story so far:

The new watch that Grace's husband had given her the week before slipped inside the sleeve of her coat as her arm went up in the air. She felt she had no control over the movement, as though it were completely natural for her to be hailing a cab in the middle of New York. She felt as if she were being directed by remote control. 4:42 pm, October 7. She made a mental note of the time, thinking it might be something she'd always want to remember.

"I just want you to drive," she said as she got in, avoiding the driver's eyes.

"Drive? Drive where, sweetheart?"

He sounded like he might be Middle Eastern, although the writing on photos and cards above his head looked like it could be Greek. She also noticed African music coming from the radio.

"I'll let you know. For now just drive anywhere. Wherever your instinct takes you."

"That is strange."

"Yes, it's strange. Please just drive. Anywhere."

"Whatever you say, sweetheart."

During the few minutes it took for the cab to rejoin the flow of angry traffic, she stared at the entrance to the subway that she'd been using to get home every night for the past 12 years. Ample time to change her mind. She turned off her mobile as the cab swung into Third Avenue. Happy trumpets played as a grainy picture of Sebastian and the two little ones faded into black. (1)

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Grace sat back and tried to relax. All her muscles were tense. She moved her head a little from side to side to try and release some of the tension in her neck. She made an effort to relax her face muscles that she was sure were drawn up into a tight mask.

As the cab swooped along with the stream of homeward-bound traffic, a sudden gust of wind swirled fallen orange and red leaves into a mad dance. She found their dance mesmerising. It reflected her mood of being drawn into a wild dance, almost out of control. Where the dance would lead, she had no idea.

“Ok sweetheart?” the cab driver sounded uncomfortable with his role of just driving anywhere.

She nodded, still not meeting his eyes. She wished he would stop calling her sweetheart. She didn’t feel like anybody’s sweetheart. She looked down at her tan boots and noticed one of the toes was scuffed. She fingered the money purse inside the large red shoulder-bag sitting beside her like an obedient pet. She would have to watch the fare. After all, she only had so much money to go on. She made herself stop biting her fingernails as she tried to figure out just where she wanted the taxi cab to drop her. (2)

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Grace closed her eyes and thought of the gaping entrance to the subway that she'd just abandoned. It was a turning point; she'd finally turned away from him, but to what? Never back to the barren arctic mausoleum; that prison home that the train had returned her to for so many nights, so many years, devoid of warmth, of love, of anything she really needed. She refused to lose another precious moment of her life to it, she knew if she went back again, there would be no more life.

Her thoughts were a blizzard through which she could only take a step at a time; slowly, carefully, blinded by the unknown... but feeling for it desperately, going anywhere as long as it was away. She had to escape. The storm of his loathing and anger raged around her in her mind and her heart began to pound, her pulse started to race and she knew this was it.

Reality seemed to fade into a dream and she fled the monster at her heels in uncertainty... could she make it? Could she really leave and be free? At last? The thought of it beckoned to her like a distant star in her dark night and the shadow of an image began to take form and make it's way to the forefront of her mind. Jack. It was her only chance.

The possibility of it was slim... but, perhaps. She had to try. Leaning forward, she instructed the cab driver with urgent directions and he was relieved that she'd finally determined a destination.

For the first time in ages, she stood at the base of the stairs that led up to his door and willed herself to move. How many years had it been... a hundred at least? What if he wasn't home? What if he didn't care about their friendship anymore? She'd let the winds of time carry it away in small fragments... like the leaves swirling about her feet, that skittered on the air and vanished. Grace carried the weight of the world and the bulk of the past with her up the steps and hesitated before pressing the button by the large door of the brownstone.

Time never passed so slowly. Her heart pounded in her chest and blood rushed in her ears. She drew a shaky breath. He might be gone. Maybe he had company. He probably wouldn't even want to speak to her. What if he didn't recognize her? How could she even come here at all? What was she thinking? Certainly he must be angry that she'd let their friendship go. All those years... best friends since they were children, and she'd let it go. How could she have done that for the monster she'd married? She began to breath shallow and quick. He had seemed so hurt the last time they'd talked.

She gasped and jerked her head up.
He'd opened the door, shock and disbelief registering on his face.
She froze.

"Grace?" he whispered her name like a prayer from the heart. There was more emotion in that one word than she'd felt from her husband in a year.

"Jack... I..." she stammered, unsure that she should have come at all.

In a single movement he came through the doorway and pulled her into his arms tightly. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?" he only let her go long enough to cup her face in his hands and peer into it closely, searching for any sign of pain, as a parent might do to his long lost child. He saw it there and pulled her back into his whole embrace. Anxiety and hope filled her clenched lungs as she allowed herself to breathe deeply.

"Come. Come in and we'll take care of it." he said quietly, as he brought her into his home.

He sat with her on the couch and watched her, listening intently as she spoke.

"I'm so sorry to just show up like this... I..." she clasped her hands tightly in her lap and stared straight through them.

"Grace, please don't apologize, there's no need at all. We're best friends, and you know time can't touch that. It doesn't matter what brought you here, you are welcome to stay as long as you need to and you know that you are safe. No one can touch you here. I'll make sure of that."

She stared at his unwavering countenance. Into his bottomless, dark eyes. Time ceased to exist then, time that had passed and time that would have come after this moment. It was as if they'd never been apart even a day. She launched herself into his arms again.

"I've missed you so much, thank you."

"You are one of the strongest women I've ever met. You are unstoppable, vibrant and passionate, and you are so full of secrets right now! This is not the Grace that I know," he said skeptically as he raised one eyebrow and with his hand on her chin, turned her face from side to side. "Where's that wonder woman that could take on the world? Why have you hidden yourself away behind this mask?" He paused and whispered, "What happened to you, mon ami?"

Grace looked around for an answer to his question, as though the welcoming walls in the room might offer her the words that she could not find. She opened her mouth to tell him, but somehow the brave front that she had shielded herself with crumbled in this sanctuary where she knew she could finally fall on her knees and find solace. Tears carried the pain away as they streamed down her pale cheeks like a long overdue rain on parched land. Saying nothing, Jack drew her to his chest, held her close and stroked her hair until she cried herself to sleep. He laid her head on a deep pillow and covered her with a thick quilt. Grace drifted off into a deeper slumber than she'd had in months, and Jack watched her for a long time.

It was late when he reached for his phone and dialed the number. He spoke softly, his eyes never leaving her as she slept. "Sebastian, you won't believe this. Grace is here... she finally came; she left him. Now she can begin." (3)

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Sebastian replaced the receiver and leaned back in his chair. Twelve years was a long time and Jack sounded elated, almost triumphant. Poor Grace.

He picked his way through the darkened office and across the hall to the kitchen, avoiding the light switch so as not to wake up Amanda, who was snoring softly in the bedroom next door. It had been her night noises that had woken him and not the late night call from the nearly gloating Jack. Amanda was becoming far too much of a sexual habit, it was nearly time to call it a day, but that could wait. The past had just called him up and he knew that sleep was not going to be on the cards tonight.

He made a pot of strong coffee and returned to the office, rousing the computer as he placed his cup in its usual position. That was another thing about Amanda, he thought, she would love to fill his desk with any amount of gaudy clutter. He liked his apartment the way it was, free from everyday untidiness, useless objects that could remind him of useless memories.

The screen bounced into life and he once again admired the neatness of his files. He liked the order of a computer, it reflected his attitude to life, an attitude that had developed over the last twelve years. What he didn't like was the fact that his finger had now found a file called 'Unfinished business' and was busy opening it.

Sebastian watched as the photo file revealed itself - row upon row of snapshots from another time, another place and one that he would rather not be reminded of. The photo at the top showed three friends, Jack, Mike and Sebastian, arms around each others shoulders, friends for life. The rest of the hundred or so meticulously captioned pictures ran through three years at college and showed only one woman, posed, un-posed, summer, winter, laughing, crying. Poor Grace. (4)

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Sebastian leaned back in his chair, ran his hand over the stubble on his chin and afforded himself a thin smile. So, she had finally turned up in Jack’s life again. Just like the proverbial bad penny.

He flicked through the images on the screen. Grace laughing. Gracing dancing. Grace lazing in the sun. His eyes ran over the curve of her body, lingering on the rise of her breasts, the pert roundness of her backside. Ah yes, Grace the Temptress. Grace who could have been anyone, had anyone. Grace who knew the world lay at her feet. And by god, she’d meant to conquer that world. Ultimately it hadn’t mattered to her who she might trample on to grab her dreams. Sebastian chewed his lower lip, remembering the advice he’d given her long ago. "Be careful what you wish and dream for, Gracie. Make your choices wisely." But she’d just laughed, ran a hand over his face and flicked his hair from his eyes – with that casual sense of ownership she had with every man who’d crossed her path.

Funny how things came full circle… From owning, she’d been owned. Strange that she should have fallen for Sebastian Carrebreu, the sauve Frenchman – his namesake. He had no doubt she’d long forgotten him, Sebastian Comptom – but at least she’d remembered Jack…

He remembered the night she’d told them… He and Jack were on their way to the Hampton’s to Jack’s folks’ place – Grace was supposed to join them. Instead she had waltzed into the apartment, her hair flying, her cheeks flushed and declared, "Boys, you’re going to have to go without me!"

The smile on Jack’s face had crumpled. "Why, what’s come up? Whatever it is, can’t you cancel?"

"Absolutely not! See, I’m getting married, darlings!" The glittering diamond on her ring finger flashed as she thrust out her hand.

"To who?" He remembered how Jack had clutched the back of the sofa.

"To Sebastian!"

He remembered the pain, the betrayal in Jack’s eyes as he’d turned to him, gasping.

"Not me," he’d said. "Dear God, she’d never marry me. Nor would I ever ask her." He’d noticed how she’d narrowed her eyes at him.

"Of course not. Don’t be daft, Jack. Oh no offense, of course, Seb…" Her voice had been loaded with meaning. "No, I’m marrying Sebastian Carrebreu. Remember," she said, her eyes gleaming, "we met him at that protest and then at the conference his company gave."

"But you barely know him!" Jack cried. "You can't! He’s…"

"Why ever not?! Oh God, Jack, don’t get all possessive on me now. That would be so tedious."

She’d blown air kisses at them and flounced from the room. Twelve years… It might have been yesterday. But now she was back…and in Jack’s arms. Oh how the mighty are fallen. Sebastian smiled. It was a cold smile which didn't reach his eyes. He took a last glance at the photographs in front of him, closed the images and glanced through the notes in the file. Unfinished business... but not for much longer. He opened his email and began typing. (5)

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Authors so far:

Part 1 ~ Seamus at Shameless Words
Part 2 ~ Kay at As It Happens
Part 3 ~ Scarlett at from the shores of introspect and retrospect
Part 4 ~ Kate at The Inner Minx
Part 5 ~ Vanilla at Absolute Vanilla... (& Atyllah)

UPDATE on October 7 at 9:00 p.m. I learned that the Next Nominated Writer is Bonnie at Words From A Wordsmith ... it's MY turn ... because Verilion at A Wanderer in Paris and Maht at The Moon Topples both said, "Pass."

Time to BLAG

2007-09-28T00:15:00.000-04:00

The blogosphere is evolving, this time from BLOG to BLAG ... as in ... BLog + mAGazine = BLAG. There's a new bloggy magazine just out in the UK called Opening Chapter. If you want to read it, click here: http://www.openingchapter.co.uk/blag/

Wiki Wednesday ~ Arequipa

2007-09-26T02:18:00.000-04:00

Time to learn something!
1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Click on "Random article" in the left-hand sidebar box.
3. Post it!
Here's what I got:

Arequipa is a large city in southern Peru and the nation's second most important city. It is 633.8 miles from Lima and lies in the highlands at the foot of the snow-capped volcano El Misti. El Misti is currently inactive, but erupted strongly between 1438 and 1471. Several smaller eruptions have occurred since then, most recently in 1870.

Arequipa has many fine colonial-era Spanish buildings built of sillar, a pearly white volcanic rock used extensively in the city, and from which it gets its nickname La Ciudad Blanca ("the white city"). The historic center of the city was named a UNESCO world heritage site in 2000, in recognition of its architecture and historic integrity. The photo above shows the Plaza de Armas (click on photo to enlarge it).

The city is located at an altitude of 2,380 meters (7740 feet) above sea level. Arequipa has experienced many earthquakes. It was almost destroyed by one in 1868, and on June 23, 2001, Arequipa was badly damaged by an earthquake of 7.9 on the Richter scale. The city is located at the foothill of three mountains and is dry and sunny all year long.
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Notable people from Arequipa include
Mario Vargas Llosa, a renowned writer. Since I recognized his name, I looked him up. The Bad Girl, a novel by Llosa, will be published in October 2, 2007. That's this coming Tuesday. He's the author of eight previous novels, most recently The Way to Paradise (2003), and was the recipient of the PEN/Nabokov Award in 2002. He lives in London. Ha! I have found a writing connection.

Wiki Wednesday ~ Thurmond, West Virginia

2007-09-19T19:35:00.000-04:00

Time to learn something!
1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Click on "Random article" in the left-hand sidebar box.
3. Post it!
Here's what I got:

Thurmond is a town in Fayette County, West Virginia, U.S., on the New River. The population was 7 at the 2000 census. During the heyday of coal mining in the New River Gorge, Thurmond was a prosperous town with a number of businesses and facilities for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. The town was the filming location for John Sayles' 1987 movie Matewan since it still possesses many of the characteristics of a 1920s Appalachian coal mining town. This first photo shows downtown Thurmond.

Today, much of Thurmond is owned by the National Park Service for the New River Gorge National River. The C&O passenger railway depot in town was renovated in 1995 and now functions as an NPS visitor center. This second photo shows the depot and and New River bridge. As of the census of 2000, there were 7 people, 5 households, and 1 family residing in the town. During the June 14, 2005 city elections, six of the city's seven residents sought elected office.
__________
I found the article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurmond%2C_West_Virginia
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Wait, wait, wait! I was in the New River Valley those times I went to Dublin, Virginia, and I think Colleen has mentioned it on her blog. A little more Wiki research and I found this map:

Aha! The New River flows through all three areas: Floyd and then Dublin in Virginia, and then Thurmond in West Virginia. The river must get deeper or wider by the time it flows from North Carolina, through southwest Virginia, and through West Virginia ... just take a look at the bridge that crosses the gorge near Fayetteville, WV.

What are your strengths as a writer?

2007-09-18T11:47:00.000-04:00

Colleen has tagged me to come up with something positive ... my five strengths as a writer. Here's what Colleen wrote about herself as a writer.

I hope I can come up with some answers to this question! Although you can't see it, there are very long pauses between each of these sentences as I sit and think ... and think ... and ponder ... and consider. It isn't easy to dig into one's psyche and say nice things about oneself. (LOL ... how pompous is THAT sentence?) Okay, I can think of ONE thing; now if I can just do it one ... by one ... by one until I reach five.

1. First would have to be my lifelong fascination with words. A wordsmith has to be very comfortable with words. When I discovered philosophy is all about WORDS, I majored in philosophy for my first degree ... and I loved it! Along the way I added another major, getting the second part of my double-major in English Language and Literature because of people like e.e. cummings, who wrote poems using words like a philosopher:

one's not half two. It's two are halves of one ...
one is the song which fiends and angels sing:
all murdering lies by mortals told make two.

My interpretation? We are all ONE, but when we lie-cheat-steal-murder we separate ourselves from other people. Oh, I love words!

2. Other writers inspire me, and I am good at taking note of what they say. Currently, I have three quotes to inspire me:

At the top of Bonnie's Books: "Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow." ~~~ Lawrence Clark Powell

At the top of Words from a Wordsmith: "The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself." ~~~ Albert Camus

Posted beside my computer: The secret to writing a book? I think it's this: Take good notes and write often enough that it starts to accumulate." ~~~ Colleen Redman

3. I have a very active imagination! The other day Colleen, having noticed the plethora of blogs I have (don't ya just love words like plethora, meaning "extreme excess, an embarrassment of riches"?), wrote to me:

Hi Bonnie, Are you over here thinking up themes for new blogs?!

Yep, I admit it. Before you can DO it, ya gotta THINK it, and I'm definitely a thinker, a dreamer, a midnight schemer.

4. Next strength? Persistence. Another word for that is stubbornness, but I'll say persistence because it sounds better. Once upon a time I called that strength stick-to-it-iveness. I stick to my writing until I have polished it to the rhythm I want. I edit, I say it out loud (or more often, in my mind) until the flow pleases me. And not only with poetry, but with prose. I don't want to stumble over a word that just SITS there in the middle of a sentence, getting in the way. So I keep tightening my writing, tweaking it here and there, giving it another syllable or two, taking out the fluttery useless words, finding a slightly better way of expressing myself. I hang in there, trying not to hang myself with any loose threads hiding among the words.

5. And the last one for today ... translating stuff into understandable language. When I was a new pastor out visiting, one woman said something that has stuck with me, partly because she inadvertantly STUNG me with her words:

Now HE was a good preacher! He was so smart that he used BIG words nobody understood. Really smart man.

First reaction was thinking, "She thinks I'm not as smart as that guy!" Second thought was, "No, he wasn't smart, but STUPID and I am smart enough to use words people understand!" Another person who was telling me about their former pastors said of one:

He would knit together a pretty good sermon, but he didn't stop there. No, he kept going until he unraveled what he had said and I couldn't figure out his point. But Bonnie, I remember your sermons!

Toward the end of my years as pastor, I was asked to preach for the community's joint Thanksgiving Service. Having just the day before preached on a text that was perfect for that setting, I decided to use it again, thinking it would be a couple of months later and people from my church would have forgotten most of what I'd actually said ... and those who remembered would forgive me. At the end of the service as people were filing out and shaking my hand, one mother whose ten-year-old stood there beside her grinning, said to me:

He remembers you preached that before, and he noticed the parts you had changed!

It had been so memorable that even a ten-year-old remembered it months later! Translating the big words into understandable language IS a strength, right? Right, so I claim it, even if I don't always sound erudite.

What are your five strengths as a writer? Feel free to answer in a comment. I'm tagging Dewey, Nancy, Absolute Vanilla, Tricia, Scarlett, and YOU. If you choose to do this meme and post the answers, let me know so I can come by and read them ... and so I can post links here for all my readers to come see what you say.
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9-24-07 Bonus tag: Wendy at Caribousmom. I just today read some of her writing and know how skilled she is at it. Go read her article about guacamole, and you'll see what I mean. Sooooooo..... Wendy, I'm tagging YOU.
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UPDATE:

Tricia's response: http://missrumphiuseffect.blogspot.com/2007/09/writing-meme.html

Scarlett's response: http://wanderlustscarlett.blogspot.com/2007/09/cinco-grande-or-big-five.html

Dewey's response: http://deweymonster.com/?p=387

Wendy's response: http://caribousmom.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2007/9/24/3249967.html

Vanilla's response: http://absolutevanilla.blogspot.com/2007/09/writing-strengths-meme.html

Sit and spit

2007-09-14T23:10:00.000-04:00

My friend asked, facetiously, in a poem: "Am I too old to skip or sit on the sidewalk?" My reply was, "Oh, no, no, no! Now you are getting somewhere near old enough to look for a new metaphor, to go from Peter Pan to this poem."

Warning
by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and a pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We will have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.

See? When you get "old" enough, you may not only sit on the sidewalk, but also learn to spit! I'm all for making up for the sobriety of my youth. Now, would you like to join our red hat circle?

She responded, saying, "I was actually thinking about that poem when I wrote that line. I don't care much for spitting, but I do like to skip, something you just don't see mature adults do that much of."

I still skip occasionally, so we can do it together.

Spitting isn't my thing, either, but I'm glad it's in the poem. In the summer of 1998, when I was exhausted from 24/7 caring for my mother whose Alzheimer's was advancing, the first-ever Alzheimer's Camp came to my rescue. With one-on-one counselors, they took twelve AD patients to camp for a week. Mother died in 2004, but I have a video of her that a film crew put together, showing the dozen campers swimming, dancing, playing games, smiling, enjoying themselves. One man and my mother are the only speaking campers on the video because they were still able to speak more or less coherently. The video ends with Mom saying something like, "We all just do the best we can, right?"

Now to explain the spitting. There were contests at the camp, and every single camper won an Olympics-type medal for something. My dignified 80-year-old mother was so proud of hers that she wore it for months afterwards, sitting in her recliner wearing the wide, red-white-n-blue ribbon around her neck, with her award dangling at the bottom of the V. She even wore it to church. I still have her medal and stop to look at it once in a while. And what contest did she win, you ask? The one for watermelon seed spitting! She managed to spit a watermelon seed farther than any of the others. Obviously, somewhere along the way, my mother learned to SPIT.

How to revise your book

2007-09-12T14:09:00.000-04:00

How to revise a book is a recent post on Maureen Johnson's blog. I have never heard of her, but this information may come in handy some day. I especially like the last part of the article, about this photo:

I tend to hack the book into all of its component pieces, spread them out, and then systematically (don’t ask me what kind of system that matically refers to) rearrange them and delete them. From there, I reshape the story and write it again. Here, as an example, is what Suite Scarlett looks like right now [the photo above].

I can write a rainbow.

Those are the different story events, color-coded by type, arranged into working sections. It is very pretty. I enjoy looking at it. It is behind my head right now as I type this, and it reassures me. I started doing this because, somewhere around the third draft of 13 Little Blue Envelopes, I tore off the entire first third of the book and changed a major portion of the plot. From then on, I needed to see everything at a glance and track all the big movements. But I write every book differently. I'm really glad I'm not alone in this. Here's the frighteningly wonderful Holly Black talking about how she reinvents her style with each book.

This is one of the exciting things about writing. Everyone does it differently. Maybe the Writer's adventures will be helpful to you, maybe not. My only real, hard piece of advice about the writing process is this: if anyone tells you that there is just one method or a correct way of getting it done (few people would, but there's always someone), they're wrong. If you want to revise your book completely backwards, while hanging upside down covered in bees . . . feel free. Choose your teachers carefully. In the end, you'll teach yourself anyway.

NaNoWriMo ~ coming in November

2007-09-07T23:50:00.000-04:00

Today I told my friend Emily about NaNoWriMo, a marathon dash to complete a novel in a month. Since the chosen month is November, I was thinking about the mad dash of writing a full 50K novel in 30 days. That would be a 50,000-word novel, written from beginning to end in a mere month. And November is a 30-day month! Let's see, doing the math ... 50,000 words divided by 30 days ... hmmm, that would be 1,667 words a day. As a teacher who has graded many papers, I know that a double-spaced page of regular-sized type is about 250 words, more or less. So I'd have to complete a 7-page paper every day? Aaaaiiiieeeee! My students complain about having to write a 3-page paper by next week! Tonight I was reading articles from the New York Times and ran across this:

Paddles on the Potomac, History on the Shore
It's a travel piece about kayaks in Maryland, which begins like this:

ON a morning heavy with summer, our five candy-colored sea kayaks sliced almost silently over a dead-calm section of river, cleaving wavy lines through pewter folds of water. Gauzy clouds hung motionless in the pale sky. Not a breath of air stirred as we paddled rhythmically along.

What does this have to do with NaNoWriMo? Well, as I said, I was thinking about the mad dash of writing a full 50K novel in 30 days. I happen to like the opening of this article. I don't have a clue what my novel will be about ... or who my characters will be ... or anything really. But I like this opening. And I like the title, too. So I ran the title through my brain's word processor and came up with a play on the NYT title:

Puddles on the Pavement, Footprints on the Floor

Okay, I've never heard of a novelist starting her story with the title. And what in the world would I do with puddles, pavement, footprints, and a floor? I dunno, but I'm thinking about it. That's probably the first step, right? For now, though, the title is simply purple prose, in a puddle. Or would that be, in a muddle?

If you want to read the NYT article, click on the title. If you are interested in writing a novel, click on NaNoWriMo.

Wiki Wednesday ~ sun dogs

2007-09-06T00:02:00.000-04:00

Time to learn something!
1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Click on "Random article" in the left-hand sidebar box.
3. Post it!
Okay, okay, I know it's Thursday this time, but I was in the mood and I found something. Here's what I got:

Vädersolstavlan (Swedish for "The Sun Dog Painting") is a painting depicting a halo display, an atmospheric optical phenomenon, observed over Stockholm April 20, 1535. It is named after the sun dogs (Swedish: Vädersol, "Weather sun") appearing on the upper right part of the painting. While mostly mentioned for being the oldest depiction of Stockholm, it is arguably also the oldest Swedish landscape painting and the oldest depiction of sun dogs.

The original painting, which was produced shortly after the event and traditionally attributed to Urban Målare ("Urban [the] painter"), is lost, but a copy from 1636 by Jacob Heinrich Elbfas is still hanging in the Stockholm Cathedral. Previously covered by layers of brownish varnish, it was hardly discernible until carefully restored and thoroughly documented in 1998–1999.

The painting was produced during an important moment in the history of Sweden. The establishment of modern Sweden coincided with the introduction of Protestantism and the break-up with Denmark and the Kalmar Union. The painting was commissioned by the Swedish reformer Olaus Petri, and the resulting controversies between him and King Gustav Vasa and the historical context remained a well-kept secret for centuries. During the 20th century, however, the painting became an icon for the history of Stockholm, and is frequently displayed whenever the city is commemorating itself.

I found this article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4dersolstavlan

See Beth's REAL photo of a sun dog on her Blue Ridge Blue Collar Girl blog in a post about Looking Up.

Wiki Wednesday ~ whimsical holder

2007-09-05T22:50:00.000-04:00

Time to learn something!
1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Click on "Random article" in the left-hand sidebar box.
3. Post it!
What I got was toilet roll holder; I'm sharing the best part:

In recent years, increasing attempts have been made to create clever alternatives to traditional toilet roll holders. This whimsical design, "Splash" (2004), is by the American industrial designer Brad Ascalon.

Wiki Wednesday ~ Miss Piggy

2007-08-29T21:11:00.000-04:00

Time to learn something!
1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Click on "Random article" in the left-hand sidebar box.
3. Post it!
Here's what I got:

Miss Piggy, herself! Miss Piggy began as a minor character in The Muppet Show TV series, but gradually developed into one of the central characters of the show. She is a pig who is convinced she is destined for stardom and nothing is going to stand in her way. She presents a public face of the soul of feminine charm, but can instantly fly into a violent rage whenever she thinks she's insulted or thwarted. Kermit the Frog has learned this all too well since he is the usual target for her karate chops. When she isn't sending him flying through the air she is often smothering him in (unwanted) kisses. (This photo shows her being moved on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.)

She spawned a huge fad during the late '70's and early '80's and eclipsed Kermit and the other Muppets in popularity, selling far more merchandise and writing a book that (unlike any of Kermit's books) wound up on top of the New York Times Bestseller List. In an interview with the New York Times in 1979, Frank Oz (her voice) outlined Miss Piggy's biography: "She grew up in a small town in Iowa; her father died when she was young and her mother wasn't that nice to her. She had to enter beauty contests to survive, as many single women do. She has a lot of vulnerability which she has to hide, because of her need to be a superstar."
____________________

So I googled for photos of Miss Piggy and found this ever-so-wonderful poster. Yeah, Miss Piggy, I like your motto!

Guide to literary agents

2007-08-28T09:00:00.000-04:00

I've found an editor's blog entitled "Guide to Literary Agents" that looks good. Read an interview with Michelle Andelman, an agent of Andrea Brown Literary Agency. She suggests, for one thing, that those interested in the teens and tweens market should consider joining the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI).

Untitled poem ~ by Bonnie Jacobs

2007-08-27T20:28:00.000-04:00

What’s hiding in the back of my mind?
One sneaky fear of what happened
A couple of unshed tears
A cry that never cleared my throat
Persistence in loving life
Unanticipated determination
And the courage to keep hanging on
Extra pounds, unacknowledged
A story that's not yet told

Wiki Wednesday ~ Abbey Falls

2007-08-22T11:52:00.000-04:00

Time to learn something!

1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Click on "Random article" in the left-hand sidebar box.
3. Post it!

Here's what I got:

Abbey Falls (also Abbi Falls) (Kannada: ಅಬ್ಬೆ ಜಲಪಾತ / ಅಬ್ಬೆ ಫಾಲ್ಸ್) is in Kodagu, in the Western Ghats in Karnataka. It is located 10 km from the town of Madikeri and 270 km from Bangalore.
__________
Since Bangalore is in India, that's where we are today. I kind of like having the foreign script in the article, so I left it there. I especially like when my random article has a photo in it, and this one of the falls is beautiful.

Discussion about Death

2007-08-21T13:20:00.000-04:00

Earlier today, I posted this comment on Colleen's Loose Leaf Notes blog, in response to what she had written about death:

Colleen, I think we all "want to KNOW what happens next." When I was 14, I wrote a poem for a neighbor who was worried about death (sorry, I don't know where that notebook is, so I can't share the poem with you). Because of that woman, who is still alive today, I have thought carefully about death for over half a century. One thing I have noticed is that older people don't seem to fear death as much as younger people. Of course, there are exceptions, but I have reached a point that I am ready to discover whatever that adventure is that takes me beyond this that we know. I doubt if any of our religions have it figured out, but it does seem likely to me that there is something more. And this is my thinking:

(1) Things we need for life (like air, food, shelter, warm sunshine) are available for us in this life.

(2) That sounds like something GOOD to me.

(3) Why would that change when we make the next transition?

(4) Therefore, whatever we need after death will be available for us then.

(5) When the elderly die, they are usually less physically able than when they were young and virile ... and some are diseased or injured or in great pain.

(6) When an injured or very sick person dies, people often say, "At least he isn't suffering any more." (And most of us would even put an animal out of its misery.)

(7) Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I have heard people say, "Now she is able to walk again ... and even dance!" Or, "Now he is able to use his legs again!"

(8) Therefore, death is not a bad thing, but could be seen as something good ... like moving on to something better.

Okay, this is kind of unorthodox, but it's my thinking at this point in my life. And I don't dread what's beyond our present KNOWING. I'm not rushing toward it, since I want to experience all I can HERE before moving on, but I do look forward to it as a positive thing.

Curious about when you'll die? I'm not, really, but I'm posting this for the shock value: According to The Death Clock, my "personal day of death" is September 4, 2034. This seems a bit odd, especially since all three of my children are "supposed" to die in the same decade.

I have posted this because I'm curious about what others might say about death and dying. Please leave a comment, even if you are a stranger to me. This is something that affects all of us.

If you want a tombstone, google "tombstone generator" and you'll get at least these two that I found. Now I guess I should REALLY decide what I would want mine to say, huh? I like the looks of the top photo, but I couldn't get as many words on it as on the bottom one.
__________

UPDATE: And now I've got the cause of death all figured out, too.

Wiki Wednesday ~ Midlist

2007-08-15T02:07:00.000-04:00

Time to learn something!

1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Click on "Random article" in the left-hand sidebar box.
3. Post it!

Here's what I got:

Midlist is a term in the publishing industry which refers to books which are not bestsellers but are strong enough to economically justify their publication (and likely, further purchases of future books from the same author). The vast majority of total titles published are midlist titles, though they represent a much smaller fraction of total book sales, which are dominated by bestsellers and other very popular titles.

Authors who consistently publish acceptable but not bestselling books are referred to as Midlist authors.

Midlist publications were negatively affected by the US Supreme Court decision in the case Thor Power Tool Company v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, which changed how book publishers have to account for and can depreciate unsold inventory each year. This has been somewhat mitigated by the development of online bookselling, which makes less popular titles more accessible to average readers.
________________________________________

Here's a little "fun" reading for writers about what it feels like to be a midlist author. Click on this title, The confessions of a semi-successful author, to read a scathing article by "Jane Austen Doe" about being a midlist author; it's from Salon.com. Here's the blurb:

"I've published several books, won adoring reviews, and even sold a few copies. But I've made almost no money and had my heart broken. Here's everything you don't want to know about how publishing really works."

Under the weather

2007-08-11T00:33:00.000-04:00

Why do we say we're "under the weather" when we're sick? I have no idea why, but it got me thinking about weather ... and googling for photographs of storms and lightning. That's when I found this absolutely awesome photo of a tornado AND a bolt of lightning. I had no idea something like this was possible. Looking at it makes me shiver!

What I really want to write about, though, is the understory. No, not under a story. The understory of a forest is the group of small trees, shrubs and vines that grow under the taller trees or, specifically, under the canopy of tall trees. Once I had a book about Oregon and my memory says the book's title was Understory One or something like that. Now I cannot find the book, which is probably in a box way back in the stacks in storage. If anyone is familiar with this book, please tell me the title so I can find it. I would like to include it in our Book around the States list for Oregon. Thanks.

This bird lives in the understory of Panama. Isn't it beautiful? It's called a green-honeycreeper, as it says along the bottom of the print. Click on the photo to make it larger.

Wiki Wednesday ~ Clean Slate Program

2007-08-08T03:58:00.000-04:00

Time to learn something!

1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Click on "Random article" in the left-hand sidebar box.
3. Post it!

Here's what I got:

The Clean Slate Program is an interdisciplinary research program at Stanford University which aims to consider how the internet would be redesigned with a "Clean Slate." It is based on the belief that the current Internet has significant deficiencies that need to be solved before it can become a unified global communication infrastructure, and that the Internet's shortcomings will not be resolved by the conventional incremental and backward-compatible style of academic and industrial networking research. The program aims to focus on unconventional, bold, and long-term research that tries to break the network's ossification. To this end, the research program is characterized by two research questions:

(1)"With what we know today, if we were to start again with a clean slate, how would we design a global communications infrastructure," and
(2) "How should the Internet look in 15 years."

They aim to measure success in the long-term: looking back in 15 years time to see significant impact.

Haiku ~ point of view

2007-08-06T04:12:00.001-04:00

by Bonnie Jacobs

white clouds bleach the sky
beaten path runs through the grass
brooding woods awake

The Cloud, 1896, by Prince Eugen
Swedish, 1865-1947, Oil on canvas, 119 x 109 cm
Waldemarsudde, Stockholm

Thoughtful

2007-08-03T02:42:00.001-04:00

Wanderlust Scarlett says I'm thoughtful ... hmm, does that mean I'm full of thoughts? Hey, I'll agree with that!

Seriously, thanks for this Thoughtful Blogger Award, Scarlett (and Viaggiatore). Now I get to award this to another five folks:

Nancy at Bookfoolery and Babble
Colleen at Loose Leaf Notes
Dewey at The hidden side of a leaf
Susan at Patchwork Reflections
Stephanie at Confessions of a Book-a-holic

If any of you already have it, consider yourself doubly thoughtful! I decided not to award this to ALL my thoughtful friends ... which would be ALL of you ... because, after all, these I've chosen need SOMEBODY to pass the award to.

Wiki Wednesday ~ India

2007-08-02T00:45:00.000-04:00

Time to learn something!

1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Click on "Random article" in the left-hand sidebar box.
3. Post it!

Here's what I got:

Allahabad Fort at Allahabad, India was built by Emperor Akbar in 1583. The fort stands on the banks of the Yamuna near the confluence site. It is the largest fort built by Akbar. In its prime, the fort was unrivaled for its design, construction and craftsmanship. This huge, majestic fort has three magnificent galleries flanked by high towers. At present is used by the army and only a limited area is open to visitors. The magnificent outer wall is intact and rises above the water's edge.

Since I just completed reading Beneath a Marble Sky, a novel about the building of the Taj Mahal, this is a very interesting article to find so serendipitously! (Okay, Karen, I'm still having fun.)

Whatever floats your boat

2007-07-31T07:04:00.001-04:00

by Bonnie Jacobs

The round sun rises red above the foothills outside my window
as I contemplate the red sky in this photo of Bermuda
with a melting pat of butter left of that day's sun.

My trees are as dark and still as this boat's sails.
Without so much as a gentle breeze,
the sailors cannot sail into the sunset
even if they wish.

"Whatever floats your boat," the saying goes,
but my boat was sold years ago
after damaging storms battered the yacht club.
Now no wind can move me across the water,
no water float my boat.

===========================
Oops! It must have been Bonnie's BOOKS blog, and not her WRITING blog, where she's giving out those kitty treats. I don't think I like all this water.
===========================

Wiki Wednesday ~ Greece

2007-07-25T22:36:00.000-04:00

Time to learn something!

1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Click on "Random article" in the left-hand sidebar box.
3. Post it!

Here's what I got:

This photo shows the Ambracian Gulf, as seen from the Space Shuttle in November 1994.

The Ambracian Gulf or Gulf of Arta, is a gulf of the Ionian Sea in northwestern Greece. It is one of the largest enclosed gulfs in Greece. The entrance to the gulf is through a channel between Aktio (ancient Actium, where the famous Battle of Actium was fought in 31 B.C) on the south and Preveza on the north; a recent road tunnel connects the two. The gulf is quite shallow, and its shore is broken by numerous marshes, large parts of which form an estuary system. The Louros and Arachthos (or Arta) rivers drain into it; for this reason it is warmer and less salty than the Ionian Sea, and a current flows from the gulf into the sea.

Actually, this was fun! I love geography and was unfamiliar with the Ambracian Gulf, and I love history. The history lesson in this article is the Battle of Actium, the main conflict in the Roman civil war between the forces supporting Octavian and those supporting Mark Antony. You've heard of those guys, haven't you? Here's more:

Octavian's fleet was commanded by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, and Antony's fleet was supported by the fleet of his lover, Cleopatra VII, queen of Ptolemaic Egypt. The victory of Octavian's fleet enabled him to consolidate his power over Rome and its domains, leading to his adoption of the title of Princeps ("first citizen") and accepting the title of Augustus from the Senate. As Augustus Caesar, he would preserve the trappings of a restored Republic, but historians generally mark his consolidation of power and the adoption of his honorifics flowing from his victory at Actium as the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire.

When Caesar was killed ("Et tu, Brute?") on the Ides of March (the 15th) in 44 BC, Octavius was in Apollonia, Illyria, studying and undergoing military training. Rejecting the advice of some army officers to take refuge with the troops in Macedonia, he sailed to Italia. After landing, he learnt of the contents of Caesar's will ... having no legitimate children alive, Caesar had adopted his great-nephew Octavius as his son and main heir. Owing to his adoption, Octavius assumed the name Gaius Julius Caesar.

Okay, I won't bore you with more, but I'm having fun with this. Thanks, Karen, I got something good after all ... and on the very first click. Click here to see Karen's Wiki Wednesday.

X-ray hearing

2007-07-24T17:10:00.001-04:00

X-rays penetrate and make known what is beyond our sight, and we usually relate x-rays to seeing the unseen. Today I am dreaming of x-rays for our other senses. How about x-ray hearing? What would it be like to hear love flowing between persons? I want to smell love, and taste love, and touch love. Does love smell more like hyacinths or clover or pizza? Does love taste more like chocolate or vanilla or fried okra or walnuts? We think we already know what love "feels" like, though maybe it's more prickly than we suppose. But today I'm especially interested in hearing love.

I want to hear not only the love between you and me, but the love between furry persons and us. Yes, I just called an animal a person, but don't we do it every day? Whether we like to admit it or not, humans are animals too. And don't we love our pets? It's only a single step from there to saying they love us back, right? If you agree with me this far, then perhaps you also attribute personhood to your pet. And another baby step takes us to the wider world of animals. If my cat who lives with me shows me love, then why not animals who live in what we like to call "the wild"? (My friend Roary is writing something on THAT subject at this very minute, if you are interested.)

Since the animals don't speak our language, wouldn't it be nice to hear love being purred and barked and quacked and trumpeted all over the world? What a cacophony!

The perfect writer's room

2007-07-19T21:01:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Frank Wilson at Books, Inq, I have found the perfect room for a writer. Look at the walls of books! What a wonderful table, though I would want a more comfortable chair. This is the room where Colm Tóibín writes. I'll let him tell you about it himself, here. I want a cave like this!

____________
ADDENDUM: I happened to run across a review of one of Colm Toibin's books here: http://tragicrighthip.blogspot.com/2007/02/10-master.html
Since I've never read anything by Toibin, it's nice to know someone considers him a good writer.

Me?

2007-07-19T15:04:00.000-04:00

The prompt at Weekend Wordsmith says this:

YOURSELF ~ What is it about you? Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Do you know yourself? Tell us about you.

Never have I had any trouble telling people about me! Does that make me egocentric? Maybe, but I hope not. Usually telling someone something about me reminds them of something about them, and I learn more about my friends that way.

In high school we were required to write an autobiography in English class. An autobiography about a teenager? Yeah, right! All we could write about was our family and how we fit into it. I was named Bonnie for my mother's only sister and Lillian for my father's only sister, and therein lies the problem. Lillian's mother, my grandmother, could see the writing on the wall, that I would be called Bonnie because that name came first. So she set out to nip that little problem in the bud. How? By giving me a nickname. I don't know how many nicknames she tried, but I do know about Teensy and Bitsy. Those were suggested because I weighed only five pounds when I was born and could "sit" in my father's hand. (No, that isn't a photo of MY toes ... we didn't have color photos in the olden days.)

Bitsy stuck, but please don't call me Bitsy. I hated the name, especially when I grew taller than the other children, many of whom had to crane their necks to look up, up, way up at me. On the first day of first grade the teacher called each of us up to her desk and asked, "And what are you called?" The mothers were standing around the wall, and mine assumed I'd go into a long story (as I'm doing here). But no! I said, simply and distinctly, "Bonnie!" And I've been Bonnie ever since.

Zippo bubblegum

2007-07-18T05:05:00.001-04:00

Once upon a time when I used to go to summer camp, I ended my letters home with this and similar "radio commercials" about made up products:

"This program has been brought to you by Zippo Bubblegum, the only gum with the built-in zipper. You'll never again have pink gum popped all over your face when you use Zippo, the only gum with the built-in zipper!"

Can you imagine a big pink bubble with a zipper along the side? I guess you can see I was always a little bit weird, maybe more than a little bit.

FLIP ... are these words?

2007-07-02T12:07:00.000-04:00

I typed two sentences into a FLIP converter and got this:

.uʍop ǝpısdn sɯǝǝs ǝɟı1 uǝɥʍ sʎɐp ǝsoɥʇ ɹoɟ ʇɔǝɟɹǝd ǝq p1noʍ sıɥʇ ¿sıɥʇ sı 1ooɔ ʍoɥ

Being a smart alec, I copied that and pasted it into the FLIP space. Guess what? It doesn't convert the sentences back to what was originally typed, but into something even stranger.

ɥoʍ ɔoo1 ıs ʇɥıs? ʇɥıs ʍou1d bǝ pǝɹɟǝɔʇ ɟoɹ ʇɥosǝ dɐʎs ʍɥǝn 1ıɟǝ sǝǝɯs upsıdǝ doʍn.

Are these words? Want to play? Go here:

http://www.revfad.com/flip.html

Sorted Books

2007-06-26T23:32:00.000-04:00

The Sorted Books project began in 1993 and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging from private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence.

Akron Stacks from the Sorted Books project
C-prints, each 12.5 x 19 inches, 2001

The Akron Art Museum in Akron, OH commissioned a book sorting project in 2001, based on the holdings of the museum's own research library. Their book collection had extensive materials and catalogs from various contemporary art exhibtions, as well as many large-format, hardback monographs. There was a special section on the business and fundraising side of museum administration. The books from the library did not circulate to the general public, and the library itself was so separate from the main exhibition areas that most visitors had no idea there was a library there at all. When the sorting project was complete, thirteen book clusters were brought to the gift shop located behind the front desk and integrated into the displays.

Shark Journal from the Sorted Books project
C-prints, each 12.5 x 19 inches, 2001

Shark is a journal of art and poetics based in New York. The two editors, a poet and a painter, publish the journal from a home office lined wall-to-wall with books. Following an invitation from the editors, the book sorting took place in Spring 2001 as a project to be published in Shark. The most intriguing part of the library was the extensive collection of contemporary poetry, where many books had particular, unusual titles. Grammatically, many of these titles were quite unorthodox, consisting of words like an isolated adverb or sentence fragment.

What do your book titles say about you or your work? You may post a series of titles in the comments of this post. If you post something on your own blog, please come back here and tell us where to find it.

Keep it simple, silly

2007-06-21T17:47:00.000-04:00

Writers often attempt to demonstrate their dexterity with language by using overly inflated words. Below is one example, which would be much more effective with less pompous words. How would YOU rephrase it?

A trio of rodents with defective eyesight,
Observe how they perambulate rapidly.
They all pursued the agriculturist's spouse.
She dismantled their appendages with a carving utensil.
Have you ever witnessed such an exhibition in your existence
As a trio of rodents with defective eyesight?