tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3452549138781496202024-03-14T02:10:16.259-07:00TheArtofNotGettingPublishedAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.comBlogger386125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-60063945502960973752018-06-20T19:25:00.001-07:002018-06-23T19:58:50.535-07:00LET ME TELL YOU A STORY. In 1884 (most of the dates in this story come with the disclaimer "give or take a year"), a girl named Buntze was born in a shtetl inside the Russian pale of settlement. She grew up and married an orphan boy named Shmuel Don. In 1909 they had a daughter whom they named Gittel, and in 1911 they had a son, Avrum. Things were getting difficult in Russia for Jews; there were pogroms and killings, and many Jews were fearful that it was all only going to get worse for them. (They were right.) At some point shortly before or after Avrum's birth, Shmuel Don set sail for America, where the plan was for him to work and save his money until he could afford to bring over his wife and children. He had relatives in Bangor, Maine, so that was where he headed. He kept his bargain with Buntze, but it took him ten years.<br />
Meanwhile Buntze and the children lived with her parents, and Buntze kept a secret from her husband the whole time they were separated. When Avrum was born, the umbilical cord had gotten wrapped around his neck, and his brain was partially deprived of oxygen. It soon became apparent to Buntze that Avrum was mentally slow, but she never told her husband this for fear that he would abandon his family in Russia. If his son wouldn't be able to study Torah, Buntze probably reasoned, would Shmuel Don think that was worse than having no son at all? So for ten years Buntze wrote letters to her husband in which she invented achievements for Avrum, knowing that if Shmuel Don ever did send for them, he would find out the truth when they arrived, but apparently hoping that by then it would be too late for him to renege.<br />
At long last the summons came from America: working as a scrap collector, Shmuel Don had finally saved enough to pay for passage for his wife and children. But Buntze had one more trick up her sleeve. She announced that she wasn't going to leave Russia without her parents. Was this her plan for a safety net in case Shmuel Don did end up rejecting all of them once they arrived because of Avrum's (Abie's) condition, compounded by her own ten years of lies? In any event, Shmuel Don agreed to continue working until he had enough money saved to buy ship passage for five passengers traveling steerage, which meant being shoehorned into the bottom of the ship for a weeks-long journey.<br />
Buntze had heard about the questions they would be asked at Ellis Island, and about the fact that "feeble-minded" immigrants would not be welcomed. So she tried to teach Abie how to tell the strangers who would be questioning him what his name was, where he was traveling from, that he was nine years old. But this time her luck ran out. Abie could not fool his examiners. The rest of the family was admitted, but Abie was separated from them and detained alone at Ellis Island for weeks. Does this sound like a familiar pattern to anyone?<br />
It's hard to imagine the shock this all would have been to Shmuel Don, but he handled it. He waited with the rest of the family until Abie, the son for whom he had had such scholarly hopes, was released, and then everyone left together for Maine.<br />
Two more daughters were born in Bangor: Rose in 1923 and Sylvia fourteen months later. Within a few years, the family relocated to Scranton, Pennsylvania, a coal mining town in the Pocono Mountains, where they moved into half of a rented duplex and Shmuel Don bought a small grocery store directly across the street.<br />
Funny thing about Rose and Sylvia. Although they looked so much alike that they were often mistaken for twins, Rose grew up believing herself to be unattractive and clumsy, while Sylvia considered herself beautiful, and those self-assessments persisted throughout their lives.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuv72UAS63qGdwRNMLWMFAaO0w-3wf8wgvp3fc_PwIXD5jmunbue1BUchKJlonpmRqVt7NVepXIpnns-D72Og8dAWrPLp1EH6AUN1GYHr70MDNzBD2BRCJCvjs0EPvZMulUQUGO4Hgm68/s1600/Mom+%2526+Syl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1401" data-original-width="1600" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuv72UAS63qGdwRNMLWMFAaO0w-3wf8wgvp3fc_PwIXD5jmunbue1BUchKJlonpmRqVt7NVepXIpnns-D72Og8dAWrPLp1EH6AUN1GYHr70MDNzBD2BRCJCvjs0EPvZMulUQUGO4Hgm68/s320/Mom+%2526+Syl.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sylvia on left, Rose on right</td></tr>
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Rose was shy and studious; Sylvia was charming and vivacious. Rose was mortified when she was teased about having an older brother like Abie; Sylvia let it roll off her back. Buntze's three daughters were (appallingly) categorized as the good one (Gittel, renamed Geraldine in the new country), the smart one (Rose), and the pretty one (Sylvia). Education for girls wasn't a high priority in the family, but somehow Rose mustered the courage to leave the fold, move to New York and attend Hunter College, while Sylvia graduated high school in Scranton and then went to work for a friend of her father's.<br />
When the United States entered World War II, Sylvia had a serious boyfriend who was drafted. They had an understanding that when he came back they would get married, but he never came back. Rose worked as a teacher in New York and Sylvia as a bookkeeper in Scranton, and they both remained single well into their late 20s - perilously late, by the standards of the times.<br />
In 1952 Rose and Sylvia went on a vacation to Florida together, and there Sylvia met Jerry, who was from Brooklyn. Their relationship progressed fast. At some point Jerry said to Rose, "You should meet my cousin Eddie." She did. Eddie turned out to be the quiet, self-effacing counterpart to the brash and boisterous Jerry. Rose (at age 30!!) and Eddie got married in May 1953<br />
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and Sylvia and Jerry married a few months later.<br />
Eddie was the youngest of five siblings, and his father had died shortly before his bar mitzvah. He and his mother were very close. She died not long after he and Rose were married, and he fell into a deep depression which required hospitalization. Rose, who was pregnant with their first child, managed on her own until he was well enough to come home. Eddie's bouts with major depression proved to be cyclical, and recurred every seven or eight years throughout his life, requiring more hospitalizations. Each episode seemed to be more severe than the previous ones, and he was repeatedly given electroshock treatments in the hospital. Psychiatrists struggled to regulate his medication but no regimen seemed to prevent the recurrences.<br />
When he was well, Eddie worked as a social worker. Jerry started his own construction company. Rose, in New York, and Sylvia, in Scranton, each had two children, close in age: Bobby and Susan for Rose, Jeffrey and David for Sylvia. Sylvia had two more pregnancies after that, both ending in miscarriages. Rose went back to teaching once both her children were in school, and Sylvia kept the books for Jerry's business. Both families were Orthodox; they rigorously followed all the rules, ate only kosher food, kept the Sabbath and all the holidays, and sent their children to Jewish parochial schools.<br />
Jerry's business was successful. He and Sylvia bought a big house in Scranton, lived on the bottom floor and rented out the top floor. Rose and Eddie had a harder time making ends meet. Until their children were nine and eight respectively, they all lived in a one-bedroom apartment; the children shared the bedroom and the parents slept in the living room. It wasn't until Rose and Eddie had been married for over 10 years that they finally upgraded to a larger apartment and got their own bedroom. The kids had the other bedroom, with a flimsy dividing wall between their two halves.<br />
The two families got together often, always in the house in Scranton, where there was room for guests. The week of Passover was always spent together, as well as winter vacations and summer visits. Rose and Eddie didn't have a car, so the family of four would take the subway from Queens to Port Authority and then ride the Trailways bus to Scranton.<br />
The kids grew up and started their own independent lives. Jeffrey, the oldest of the four, got married and stayed in Scranton to raise his family, working at his father's business and eventually taking it over. Bobby, the next oldest, obtained a PhD, married young, became a father, and at the age of 23 moved to Jerusalem with his wife and toddler son. They had four more children there before his wife died of breast cancer at age 49. He and his children remained in Israel, where he was a university professor, and within two years he remarried. Susan, his sister, was the only one of the four children who stopped practicing Orthodox Judaism. She became a lawyer, got married, had a child, got divorced, married again, had a second child, and continued working as a public defender throughout. David, Jeffrey's younger brother, perpetually struggled to hold a job, but he married a steady and practical woman who kept their growing family afloat financially.<br />
Eddie died of his second heart attack when he was 59. His wife Rose, three years older, had a three-phase life: 30 premarriage years, 32 years married, and 33 years widowed. When Eddie died she was only 62. She left New York and moved back to Scranton to be near her sisters. She lived alone there until the age of 91, when she moved to Israel to be close to Bobby (now Bob), his second wife, and Rose's Israeli grandchildren, who were now young adults starting families of their own. <br />
Gittel, who was widowed young and raised her two children by herself, lived to be 100, although many of her last years were spent bedridden in a nursing home, so stricken by dementia that she couldn't speak, feed herself, or recognize anyone. Abie, a gentle soul in an always-frail body, lived with his mother until he died at 65. Sylvia, widowed for nearly 20 years, died at 94 this past March after years of dementia, much like Gittel. And Rose - my mother - died on June 1, 2018 at age 95. Despite her recent mental decline, she had been able to live in her own apartment with a full-time aide for the past year. On the last day of her life she kept complaining of being tired and just wanting to sleep. Her blood pressure had dropped and she was brought to the hospital, but before the doctors could decide on a course of treatment, she just closed her eyes and stopped breathing.<br />
My mother and I were never a good fit for each other. She once told me that I had been "good" until I was five years old. I've often wondered what a five-year-old could possibly do to permanently remove herself from the "good" category in her mother's eyes. She always had very specific and rigid criteria for what a daughter of hers should be and do, and I apparently met few of them.<br />
My mother taught me by example to work hard, to live simply, and to care about people who were less fortunate than myself. I'm grateful to her for all of those lessons. And although she never supported my striking out on my own and living the life I chose - well, she never would have admitted it, but I suspect she taught me that too. Thanks, Mom. Rest in peace. <br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-27965684411325185882018-05-20T18:28:00.002-07:002018-05-20T18:28:51.637-07:00I'M WAY AHEAD OF YOU, GOOGLE!! So today Google is celebrating cartographer Abraham Ortelius, which is fabulous, but I do feel compelled to mention that I told my blog readers all about Ortelius way, way back in April of 2015, during the A to Z Challenge, when my topic was MY SUPERSWEET SIXTEENTH CENTURY. It was a pretty good <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=345254913878149620#editor/target=post;postID=8630471089633938376;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=1;src=postname">post</a>, if I say so myself, and so were my other ones that month. Just saying. If you want to meet 26 fascinating 16th-century people, look at all my posts from that April! Because I'll share my little secret with you: deep at heart, I'm a 16th-century person who somehow ended up living in the 20th and 21st centuries, and I can't make heads or tails of either one of my "home" centuries, but follow me to the 1500's and I'll be the best guide you've ever had!<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-62514273057552660342018-05-17T04:53:00.000-07:002018-05-17T04:53:56.236-07:00BLOG HOP STOP: GUILIE CASTILLO'S "IT'S ABOUT THE DOG"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I got to know Guilie online a couple of years ago when we were both participating in the A to Z blog challenge. We admired each other's blogs and became online friends. Then I quit blogging for a year, and just when I had decided to start back up again, I heard from Guilie. She had a new book coming out and was inviting me to participate in her blog hop to publicize it! The timing was perfect.<br />
Guilie is not only a dog rescuer but also, as I just learned when I asked her my interview questions, a second-generation rescuer. Let me begin by saying that animal rescuers are heroes in my eyes. They're not the people who go to the shelter and adopt pets, who are pretty great also; they're the people who go out on the street, find homeless animals, patiently overcome the animals' fear and distrust, and coax them into a place of safety. And they often do so at their own personal risk and expense, and then they do it again and again and again, because it's their mission. It's not easy by any stretch, and it's not for everyone, but anyone who wants to know exactly what the experience is like need look no further than "It's About the Dog: the A-to-Z Guide for Wannabe Dog Rescuers."<br />
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Guilie is not only a beautiful person, but luckily for the rest of us, she's a beautiful writer too. Here's what some of her fans have to say:<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro";">IT’S ABOUT THE DOG<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro";">The
A-to-Z Guide for Wannabe Dog Rescuers<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Everytime
Press, April 2018<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro";">A hands-on, less-tears-more-action,
100% practical how-to introduction to help you—yes, you!—get a dog off the
street and to safety. From the gear you’ll need to how to know whether a dog
needs help(and how urgently);from an ode to veterinarians to a crash course on
how to gain the trust of a wary dog. In sho<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>rt, everything
you ever wanted to ask your friendly (or maybe not so friendly) neighborhood
rescuer and never quite dared.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro";">“This is a
must-have book on every would-be, could-be, and veteran dog rescuer’s shelf.
[P]acked with invaluable information gleaned from experts and experience, on
how to put good intentions into successful practice so you can provide real
help for four-legged friends in need.” ~ Lynne M. Hinkey, author of <i>Ye Gods! A Tale of Dogs and Demons</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro";">“Not only an
incredibly thorough and brilliant How-To, but a pull-at-your-heartstrings look
at the selfless world of dog rescuing—and a must-read for anyone who loves
dogs. This book will renew your faith in humanity.” ~ Robin Cain, author of <i>The Secret Miss Rabbit Kept</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro";">The author, Guilie Castillo Oriard, is
a Mexican writer and dog rescuer living in Curaçao with eight extraordinary
rescue dogs and an even more extraordinary man who puts up with them all. Her short
fiction has been published both online and in print. <i>The Miracle of Small Things</i>, a novel in stories, was published by
Truth Serum Press in 2015.<i>It’s About the
Dog: The A-to-Z Guide for Wannabe Dog Rescuers</i> is her first non-fiction
foray.She blogs about dogs at </span><a href="https://lifeindogs.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro";">Life In Dogs</span></a><span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro";">, and about everything else at </span><a href="http://guilie-castillo-oriard.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro";">Quiet Laughter</span></a><span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro";">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro";">The book will be [was] released by Everytime
Press on April 20<sup>th</sup>, 2018, in paperback and e-book. (Available at
major online retailers and, later this year, with select booksellers in
Curaçao.) To celebrate, starting on the day of release and until May 21<sup>st</sup>,
author and book will be on the Dog Book Blog Tour, making the rounds in the
blogosphere to talk dogs and rescue, even a little about writing. Come by and
share your insights and questions, and enter the Dog Book Blog Tour Giveaway! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro"; font-size: 10pt; text-align: center;">Find out more about
the Dog Book Blog Tour and the Giveaway at </span><a href="https://lifeindogs.blogspot.com/p/the-dog-book-blog-tour.html" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Life In Dogs</span></a><span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro"; font-size: 10pt; text-align: center;">, and about the book
at the </span><a href="https://everytimepress.com/everytime-press-catalogue/how-to-books-and-resources/its-about-the-dog/" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro"; font-size: 10.0pt;">publisher’s website</span></a><span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro"; font-size: 10pt; text-align: center;">. You can also follow
<i>It’s About the Dog</i> on </span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/Its-About-the-Dog-159500851405352/" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Facebook</span></a><span style="font-family: "adobe garamond pro"; font-size: 10pt; text-align: center;">.</span></div>
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Here is Guilie herself,<br />
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and here's the crew she has at her house, because some rescue dogs aren't easy to place in adoptive homes and so their rescuers end up as their parents.<br />
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<br />
Somehow amidst the madness of her book release, Guilie ended up finding the time to answer a few questions for me. Voila!<br />
<br />
<br />
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<!--[if !supportLists]-->1.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->When was the first time you rescued a dog? Was it an impulse rescue or had some
training/ planning gone into it?
Details, please.</div>
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My first rescue
happened when I was 8. Though, really, it was my mother’s rescue, so maybe it
doesn’t count as mine-mine. And it probably wasn’t the first—certainly not
hers; my parents fell in love while rescuing a dog from a freeway in Mexico
City. But it’s the first one I was involved with in any serious, meaningful
way, and it’s the one, I think, that definitively gave me a rescuer’s heart.</div>
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<br /></div>
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She was an Irish
setter, in need of a good bath and a brushing but apparently not too skinny.
“She must be lost,” was my mom’s conclusion. So we took her in, but left her in
the carport, in full view of the street. “Her family’s probably looking for
her. This way they’ll see her if they drive by.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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The dog wolfed down
as much food as we put in front of her, drank from the water bowl we set out
for her like there was no tomorrow. She was mild-mannered, the sweetest doe
eyes you’ve ever seen. I wanted to keep her, but my mom was convinced she
belonged to someone, somewhere. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Days passed, then
weeks, and no one claimed her. My father wasn’t thrilled about the new carport
lodger (we already had a dog), but she was quiet enough, made no messes,
destroyed nothing. Mostly she spent her days in the shade of the bougainvillea,
not too far from her food and water bowls, which we kept always stocked. She
was still eating enormous amounts.</div>
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<br /></div>
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And then, one
morning, we discovered the reason: eight puppies. She was so malnourished that
the pregnancy hadn’t even shown. And she had no milk.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The vet was called.
He took one look, and told my mom the best thing was to put them all down. “The
puppies will never make it,” he said. The mom probably had all sorts of
diseases; now that her belly was gone, she was all bones. And those big, big
eyes.</div>
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<br /></div>
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But my mom wouldn’t
hear of it. We bottle-fed those puppies, she and I. She took the graveyard
shift and the morning shift, while I was at school. As soon as I came home, I
headed to the laundry room (now the new family’s home) and sat there,
surrounded by puppies and one desperately grateful mom, and endless supplies of
milk.</div>
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<br /></div>
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They all lived. All
eight. The vet couldn’t believe it when we called him two months later to come
vaccinate them. And all eight found excellent, excellent homes. The mom,
however, we couldn’t bear to part with. My mother named her Cindy, short for
Cinderella—appropriate, I guess. She moved to the yard once her puppies were
gone and became best friends with our Boxer. They both slept in my room at
night. During the day, they chased squirrels (Cindy was a much better hunter
than Cookie, the Boxer) and slept in the shade of the jacarandas or on the
sunny terrace. She never wanted for anything, ever again. And she was loved. By
me, certainly, but for my mom she held a special significance. A special place.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]-->2.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Did you grow up in a house full of dogs?</div>
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<br /></div>
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Yes. And of cats.
And of birds. I had turtles and a couple of Beta fish. We had two rabbits at
one point. And a lot of these ‘lodgers’ happened because they were rescued,
straight off the street, by my mom and me. Almost all of them were meant to be
temporary; “Just until we find a home for them.” Famous last words. We did,
however, manage to find homes for a few, and even managed to keep them close
by: an Alaska Malamute puppy we rescued from a flooding yard lived a long and
incredibly fulfilling life with my piano teacher. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]-->3.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Do you have a “day job,” or does dog rescue take
up most of your time? Or maybe both?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: 0in;">
<br />
Back in 2011, I
quit my job (in the financial industry here in Curaçao) and became a full-time
writer—and rescuer, though that part wasn’t part of the plan. For a couple of
years now I’ve been considering going back to work; I even tried a part-time
gig last year—writing does not the big bucks make, or even the little ones. But
a side effect of rescuing is a houseful of dogs, and they’re not exactly the
friendliest of packs, or the most stable. Being out of the house for more than,
say, four hours at a stretch is asking for trouble (last year we lost a member
of the pack like this). </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: 0in;">
I’m the luckiest
girl, though. I have an extraordinary man as a partner, who not only is the
best cheerleader I have but also puts up with the houseful of dogs… He didn’t
even <i>like</i> dogs when we met. And now
he’s become an amazing dog dad: he insists on doing the morning feeding because
he feels it helps him bond with them; he keeps track (much better than I do) of
when their Heartgard is due; he’s even helped on several rescues when we needed
extra hands. A few years ago, when we fostered a litter of newborn puppies who
needed to be bottle-fed, he even volunteered to do feedings so I could snatch
an hour or two of sleep.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Like I said:
extraordinary man.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]-->4.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->In 50 words or less, convince anyone who reads
this interview why he/she should buy your new book.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: 0in;">
I don’t think this
book <i>is</i> for everyone. It was
specifically written for people new to rescue who want to help stray or
homeless dogs, and—as I kept telling the publisher back when the project
began—there aren’t a lot of those. Maybe someone who’s curious about rescue and
wants to know more about it, even if they’re not going to do much (or any)
rescuing themselves would also enjoy it. [Ooops—that was 72 words.]</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->5.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Now convince that same person in 50 words or
less why he/she should become a dog rescuer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: 0in;">
In my (admittedly
not always humble) opinion, rescue is a bit of a calling. Kind of like being an
artist, or a surgeon. You need to <i>want</i>
to be these things, and even before you get any sort of training you need to
have a feel for it, an affinity with it. (And there’s nothing wrong with you if
you don’t have it; there are plenty of ways to help, to make the world a better
place, without rescuing.) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: 0in;">
That said, rescue
comes with all sorts of positive consequences: a houseful of dogs, yes, but
also an enlargement of whatever organ it is that deals with compassion. One of
my favorite quotes (which I couldn’t resist using in the book) is from Prince:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;">
‘Compassion is an action word with no boundaries.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: 0in;">
If you do decide to
rescue, I can guarantee this: you <i>will</i>
become a better person. It won’t be pretty, it won’t be easy, and there will be
plenty of heartbreak involved—but humans are, made of carbon, after all, and
like carbon it takes the harshest of conditions to turn us into diamonds.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: 0in;">
Susan, thank you so
much for this lovely interview! It’s been a pleasure and an honor to become a
part of The Art of Not Getting Published, and I look forward to chatting with
you and your readers in the comments.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a></div>
<br />
* * *<br />
<br />
And, as a grand finale, Guilie agreed to answer one more question for me: Can you share the story of one particularly memorable rescue? Her answer follows.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
Every rescue leaves its mark on us, I think, but there’s one that became memorable not only for the happy ending but for the scale and the surprises it had in store for us.</div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p2" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
Someone had reported two stray female dogs, one of whom had possibly given birth in an empty lot in Sun Valley, a residential neighborhood here in Curaçao. Both were skittish and very afraid of humans, and no one had been able to catch them. No one had seen the puppies, either, which meant they were still too small to wander around—but puppies grow fast, and if we didn’t do something about this, they’d end up run over by a car or—maybe worse—as a pack of ferals, distrusting of humans, always hungry, always unloved.</div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p2" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
Five dark SUVs rolled into Sun Valley on a hot <span class="aBn" data-term="goog_174753719" style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(204, 204, 204); position: relative; top: -2px; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ" style="position: relative; top: 2px; z-index: -1;">Sunday</span></span> morning, like something out of Men in Black. Instead of top-secret nuclear weapons, though, the cars were packed with transport crates, towels, leashes, water containers, Tupperware-fuls of sausage squares, bags of kibble, Frontline spray bottles, alcohol, leather garden gloves, shears… <i>Alpha, this is Black Ops Rescue [static] — waiting for the go-ahead, over.</i></div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p2" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
The empty lot was large, maybe half an acre, and totally overgrown. Weeds waist-high, trees dangling impenetrable nets of wild ivy (not poison, at least) that also covered the ground so our feet sank up to the ankle—and disguised dips and gullies. We found them nestled in a hole on the side of just such a gully, protected by roots and branches, way at the back of the lot. The most inaccessible place, in short. (Smart mom.)</div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p2" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
Impossible to lower the crates to where the puppies were. Only one person at a time fit in the tiny space, and getting back up from there, carrying the precious cargo of a wiggly, fearful puppy, was no easy feat. So we established a puppy chain-gang. I perched at the top of the gully, straddling the remains of a brick wall there, and the person at the bottom handed the puppies to me, one by one. I swiveled and passed each puppy on to Cor, my partner, who was holding on to my legs so I didn’t fall head-first into the gully, and he passed the puppy on to the others, who were waiting to place them in the crates.</div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p2" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
Seven puppies. Eight. <i>Nine</i>. That must be it, we thought. No, another puppy came up from the gully. And another. And another. <i>Fourteen</i> in total. All apparently healthy, no visible issues or defects. Maybe three weeks old, and all well within the weight for that age. No way this was a single litter. Later, when we caught the moms—which ended up being the next day, and required not-so-small amounts of human blood (mine, gladly given) to achieve, but that’s a much longer story—we found out that it was two litters. Both females, probably mom and daughter, had given birth at about the same time, and had kept their puppies together, which is something I’d never seen before, especially not out on the street.</div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p2" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
The vet confirmed the puppies’ health. Aside from lice—they were <i>covered</i> in it; even now, just thinking about it makes me squirm—and the expected flea and tick population, they were in pretty good shape. Good weight, good energy, feisty even. But younger than we thought, so finding the moms became a top priority. In the meantime, an amazing woman named Karin stepped up to foster them—yes, all fourteen. She would eventually foster the two moms, too, so the whole family could stay together. And, from the first day, Karin fell in love with one of the puppies. She named him Bolo (for <i>Bolo Pretu</i>, the name of a cake made here in Curaçao for the most special occasions), and he is living a life of privilege and endless love with her.<span class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p2" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
The others found good homes eventually, too; even one of the moms. But one of the puppies, Harry, and one of the moms, Kristin, turned out to be too wild for most families. When adopter after adopter passed them over (or returned them), they were taken in by the DOG Foundation, run by a woman who has devoted her life to giving a home to the dogs no one wants: the elderly, the ones with health issues or behavior problems. She lives with upwards of 70 dogs at any one time, but that number is always changing: there are always more dogs than adopters.<span class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p2" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
For the last two years or so, I’ve been sponsoring Kristin and Harry. Every month I donate the equivalent of about USD 80 to cover their expenses, medical and food and whatever. There are others like me; DOG couldn’t function without what Djoeke calls ‘long-distance fosters’. (If you’re interested in <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://stichtingdog.org/welkom-bij-de-stichting-dog-curacao/&source=gmail&ust=1526601376813000&usg=AFQjCNHNvJ293k9RprV_Ajq_uZW1x0rz3w" href="https://stichtingdog.org/welkom-bij-de-stichting-dog-curacao/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">sponsoring a DOG dog</a>, or in contributing towards the creation of <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://stichtingdog.org/sanctuary-english/&source=gmail&ust=1526601376813000&usg=AFQjCNFh6aqmGH_I0tb58BPw6MjWZ6k30A" href="https://stichtingdog.org/sanctuary-english/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">the DOG sanctuary</a>—which will allow Djoeke to take in so many more dogs—you can find details on <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://stichtingdog.org/&source=gmail&ust=1526601376813000&usg=AFQjCNFID5NelJ6IgDE-b5XnCKW06n0U0A" href="https://stichtingdog.org/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">her website</a>.) And here is a video of the sanctuary: <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/embed/9ACvQ25DtVA&source=gmail&ust=1526601376813000&usg=AFQjCNFAQDQZzKJP3UZ43WcNIzjnhbyMJw" href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9ACvQ25DtVA" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/<wbr></wbr>embed/9ACvQ25DtVA</a>.</div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
* * *</div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
Thank you, Guilie! I'm so glad there are people like you and Djoeke in this world!!</div>
<div class="m_8270064129032177860gmail-p1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-29772809289960850232018-05-11T16:52:00.000-07:002018-05-11T16:52:24.831-07:00MY DAUGHTER THE BFA<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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That's Bachelor of Fine Arts, which she became on Monday!<br />
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As you can sort of see in the background, the graduation was at Radio City Music Hall. The event was sadly lacking in Rockettes, as well as being FOUR HOURS LONG, but that's neither here nor there. The important thing is that she made it through four sometimes difficult years of art school, became a seasoned New Yorker along the way, and is now ready to spread her wings and fly. Monday was a very proud day for the Amy Fan Club.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijFg6QoL1kibnyvG7PdE2gsE2qIaNzOoeVG1PrGVla5eeVqI8H9TQUL3a7Gcu4RiMY5-nqdFESVsgRyzIuTiTAbbcUKgpYVibWkqKb_KuUyLBBT_7CMOYZHZG7CG_YLT1qgBcWKqUFR2Y/s1600/amygrad8.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijFg6QoL1kibnyvG7PdE2gsE2qIaNzOoeVG1PrGVla5eeVqI8H9TQUL3a7Gcu4RiMY5-nqdFESVsgRyzIuTiTAbbcUKgpYVibWkqKb_KuUyLBBT_7CMOYZHZG7CG_YLT1qgBcWKqUFR2Y/s320/amygrad8.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Amy and Family</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Amy and Boyfriend</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ditto</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Amy with Boyfriend and Best Friend</td></tr>
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Life with Amy can be maddening, hilarious, expensive, and/or fun, but one thing it never, ever is - is boring. And I don't expect her graduation to change any of that!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-84990848656091187632018-05-05T19:26:00.002-07:002018-05-05T19:27:04.704-07:00AND SPEAKING OF ELECTRICITY... I mentioned in my last post that I live in West Orange, New Jersey, the town where Thomas Edison lived and worked for years. But I didn't mention that my house is about a mile from the Thomas Edison Historical National Park, located in his original laboratory buildings. It's not what most people would think of as a National Park, situated as it is smack in the middle of a suburb, but it is one - park rangers and all!<br />
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Last Tuesday night the Park presented a very unusual concert, and my husband and I were there. A Tuareg musician named <a href="http://sahelsounds.com/mdou-moctar/">Mdou Moctar</a> performed on electric guitar with his band, which is a rather exotic experience to witness all by itself. The music had a haunting quality, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. But here's the kicker: their songs were being recorded live (by a uniformed park ranger) in a crank-operated 1909 recording device onto a wax cylinder - exactly like the ones on which Edison recorded music - and was then played back for the audience's listening pleasure on an antique gramaphone. Now there's something you don't get to hear every day, right?<br />
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As the ranger very knowledgeably explained it, music creates a disturbance in the air molecules around it. When the music is directed into the mouth of the horn, its notes create a pattern of air motion which causes a diaphragm at the bottom end of the horn to move in response. As the diaphragm moves according to the music's pattern, a knife affixed underneath presses onto the rotating wax cylinder over which it hovers, and the pattern of the air's movement is transmitted onto the cylinder, creating a tangible pattern of grooves out of the audible pattern of air waves. In other words - at least as far as I'm concerned - it's magic. And then when you remove the wax cylinder and insert it into the bottom of the gramaphone, the whole process is reversed, and the pattern of grooves cut into the cylinder is "read" by a ball rolling over it, and it reverts magically back into air waves that offer us through the amplifier at the top a somewhat buzzy, distorted form of the music we just heard live.</div>
Here, you can listen for yourself. Go to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ThomasEdisonNHP/">https://www.facebook.com/ThomasEdisonNHP/</a> and scroll down to the May 2nd recording. And by the way, Mdou Moctar is currently on a United States tour. Check out the tour dates <a href="http://sahelsounds.com/mdou-moctar/">here</a>, and maybe you can catch a live performance near you.<br />
I can assure you that none of this means that Edison himself wasn't a real jerk (see my previous blog post), because I've gotten the distinct impression that he was. But, for sure, he was one of the smartest jerks around.<br />
Okay. Since I'm still in an electrical mindset, I'll tell you what I'll do. Leave me a comment, I'll choose my favorite (assuming/hoping that there will be multiples), and the winner will get my very own like-new copy of "The Last Days of Night," a wonderful historical novel by Graham Moore (who wrote the screenplay for the movie The Imitation Game, among other things) which features all the key players in the Current War whom I mentioned in my last post, not to mention some other fun characters including a lawyer, an opera singer, and ... well, no more spoilers. The book is a delightful read, and all you have to do to get it free is to leave me a delightful comment!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-8466960644269216562018-04-22T09:06:00.002-07:002018-04-26T16:34:02.415-07:00THE CURRENT WAR <br />
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I admit that's an intentionally devious title. It's "current" as in electrical current, not "current" as in going-on-right-now. I'm trying to ease back into blogging after a year's absence, and I'm not nearly ready to talk about what's going on in the world, <i>right now.</i> So instead I'm going to write about a war I've been reading about lately that took place toward the end of the 19th century. No battlegrounds, no military maneuvers, no firearms, but it was a war all the same, and there were deaths that resulted from it.<br />
I just learned today, after I'd almost finished writing this post, that the Weinstein Company had shot a film called THE CURRENT WAR on this very same subject, and that it was supposed to have been released toward the end of 2017. But once the movie industry began actually acknowledging in public what it seems everyone in Hollywood had known for decades about Weinstein but hadn't had the guts to do anything about, it was decided by studio honchos that time needed to pass for the Weinstein taint to dissipate. So now THE CURRENT WAR isn't expected to be released until December 2018. But you might not want to wait that long to learn about the topic, and besides, the movie reportedly isn't very good anyway despite its Benedict Cumberbach star power. So I, who know very little about science, am going to try to explain things to you in the hopes that you know even less than I do and will find this subject as interesting as I do.<br />
As we all learned in school, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. Except that he didn't. Edison invented <u>a</u> light bulb - the first one that really worked without sooner or later heating itself up to the point at which it exploded. But he wasn't the first person to tinker with the idea of lighting homes and businesses through the power of electricity.<br />
Joseph Swan, an Englishman, patented a light bulb made of a heated carbon rod enclosed in a vacuum tube in 1878. When Edison tried to patent a light bulb with a carbonized cotton filament the following year, Swan sued him successfully for patent infringement, and Edison decided his best move would be to join forces with Swan. The two went into business together for a short time, although Edison soon went out on his own.<br />
Edison had started his electrical career working with telegraph systems, which ran on direct current (DC) - current that ran from one terminal to another. So DC current was Edison's natural choice when he began experimenting with electrical lighting. This worked fine when the wiring was run over short distances, but not so fine when longer distances were required. And that's where Edison's fatal flaw came in: he was so stubborn that he refused, then and for the rest of his life, to even consider the possibility that some other form of current might be able to do the job just as well and, in some regards, even better. And that's why Edison - a man who loved winning at least as much as he loved inventing - ended up (SPOILER!!) losing the current war.<br />
In 1880 Edison installed the world's first electric lighting system. It was done on a very small scale; the first beneficiary was a steamship. Other gradually larger individual projects followed until in 1882 he chose Manhattan as the site of his first electrical power station, and began wiring up the homes of wealthy New Yorkers.<br />
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Meanwhile, a young Serbian who had studied the brand-new field of electrical engineering in Europe had found his way to a job with the Edison Company's Paris branch. When he was offered a transfer to Edison's New York factory, Nikola Tesla was thrilled at the chance to work with The Great Man himself. But what neither Edison nor anyone else employed by him in New York knew was that Tesla had already invented - in his head, but not in a tangible model - a motor that would run on alternating current (AC).<br />
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Tesla was, by all accounts, somewhere on the autism spectrum. He worked and thought alone; ideas came to him in sudden bursts of brilliance. He expected to be compensated for them, but he had no real interest in acquiring money or power (and probably wouldn't have known how even if he had been interested). Tesla's life was a story of rags to riches and then back to rags again. He never married or had any intimate relationships. He didn't last long with the Edison Company, but he stayed in New York for the rest of his life, living alone in a series of hotels. For a while New York society found his particular combination of genius and lack of social skills to be adorable and he was wined and dined relentlessly, but it wasn't long before the novelty wore off. The glitterati got bored and dropped him. The man once celebrated as "The Wizard of Physics" and "Greater Even than Edison" died poor and alone in a hotel room, where his body was discovered by a maid. But I'm getting ahead of my story.<br />
The difference between AC and DC was that inside an AC-powered motor the electrical field would rotate and the resulting current would constantly be reversing course every fraction of a second. AC current produced higher voltages than DC; on the one hand, this meant that it could be transmitted over longer distances, but on the other hand, the high voltages caused many people (including Edison) to regard AC current as too dangerous to be of practical use.<br />
And here's where George Westinghouse, the third leg of this triangle, came in. Westinghouse, an affluent inventor and businessman, was willing to take a risk on AC current, and he had the deep pockets to set Tesla's ideas into motion. In fact, Westinghouse won the contract to illuminate the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, and it therefore featured AC current sparked by huge generators and distributed throughout the fairgrounds via wires. For a week, Tesla personally put on seemingly magical public demonstrations, including passing currents of enormous voltage through his own body with no ill effects. The Electricity Pavilion was the undisputed showstopper at the Fair.<br />
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But no sooner did Westinghouse enter the fray than Edison began a two-pronged attack against him: publishing pamphlets warning the public that AC current was deadly, while also suing him for patent infringement. When those tactics didn't stop Westinghouse, Edison secretly teamed up with a self-educated electrical engineer named Harold Brown. Brown's novel idea for proving that AC was deadly was to provide a series of public demonstrations in which he used AC current to kill animals by electrocution. This enterprise was every bit as ghastly as it sounds but, of course, it caught the public's attention. Most of the victims of the killings carried out in the name of the current war were harmless dogs, calves and horses.<br />
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But Edison and Brown still weren't satisfied. Electrocuting animals was for them only the means to an end: their real goal was killing off not animals, but the public demand for AC current once and for all.<br />
They saw their golden opportunity in 1888, when the New York legislature declared that from now on, capital punishment in that state would be applied via a very new invention: the electric chair. And somehow (Edison had very powerful New York connections) it turned out that the only electrical mechanism that could be applied was AC current.<br />
William Kemmler had killed his wife with an axe, confessed, and displayed no remorse. In May of 1889 he was the first person to be sentenced to death under New York's new Electrical Execution Act, and Kemmler was fine with that. In his opinion, the sooner the better. But he had to wait another year until the constitutionality of the Act worked its way up enough through the court system for the U.S. Supreme Court to declare that electrocution didn't qualify as cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. The execution was allowed to proceed.<br />
One morning in August of 1890 Kemmler was placed in a chair in the prison basement and electrodes were attached to his body. The current was turned on, Kemmler's body became rigid, and the current was turned off again. But while the chair's inventor was still congratulating himself to all those present on his wonderful new apparatus, spectators began to notice something: Kemmler wasn't dead. He wasn't exactly alive either; he was in some horrible state between the two. The current was hastily turned back on, and soon a terrible stench of burning filled the room. Kemmler finally died on the second try, but no one could deny that he had endured agony during the two-step process. Tesla later wrote that Kemmler had been "roasted alive." The New York Times said in an article entitled "Far Worse Than Hanging:" "Probably no convicted murderer of modern times has been made to suffer as Kemmler suffered."<br />
Finally the general public was nauseated enough by the spectacle of electrocuting living creatures to climb off the never-AC bandwagon; after all, AC current couldn't even properly kill someone when it tried. Soon most electrical engineers acknowledged that DC and AC both offered their own advantages. Anyway, by that point transformers and converters had become commonplace; voltage could effortlessly be stepped up or down, and AC converted to DC and vice versa. The two systems worked best in tandem. When Edison refused to accept this practical reality, the big money men of New York, principally J. P. Morgan, got together and ousted Edison from his own company, Edison General Electric. They even removed his name from it, and the General Electric company was born. Now, in 21st-century America, about 80% of our electrical power grid runs on AC.<br />
Edison nursed his wounds for a while, but he was by then a very wealthy man with an estate in West Orange, New Jersey (where I live!!) and a summer home in Florida. He had a stableful of electrical engineers who, through Edison's methodical trial-and-error process, could eventually figure out how to do almost anything with electricity. He got over losing the current war and moved on to the next big thing: motion pictures.<br />
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Edison's "Black Maria" building, West Orange, N.J.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-51251335330063300022018-04-08T10:51:00.000-07:002018-04-08T10:51:03.677-07:00Hi. It's me.My relationship with this blog - like my relationship with writing in general - had gotten so complicated by last April that I stopped posting and took a yearlong break. I'd been planning to reboot this month anyway, but (just in case I was going to back out) I got a much-needed fresh impetus last week: my dear e-friend Guilie Castillo, dog rescuer extraordinaire, got in touch to let me know that her new nonfiction book, IT'S ABOUT THE DOG, is going to be released on April 20th, and to ask me if I want to participate in her upcoming blog hop. OF COURSE I do!! So sometime within the next two or three weeks I'll be posting an interview I do with Guilie about the A to Z of dog rescue, and meanwhile I'll try to post about other things from time to time, working out the kinks. I'm excited, and nervous, to be back. Please stop back and say hello!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-40778781338970005232017-04-13T17:46:00.001-07:002017-04-13T17:46:57.924-07:00BURSTING WITH PRIDE Some people - like my amazing 21-year-old daughter - are born with a gift. And a smaller subset of those people - like my daughter - decide they want to use that gift to make the world a better place. Amy plans to be an art therapist.<br />
This is her art-school junior-year thesis project, based on the Herman Melville story, <i>Bartleby the Scrivener</i>. Her work is on display here at her school's show.<br />
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<span id="goog_351047198"></span><span id="goog_351047199"></span> Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-90167234835481830142017-03-26T07:40:00.000-07:002017-03-26T07:40:20.103-07:00TRUMPCARE First, the bad news: Trump remains in the White House, for now. But here's the good news: the horrific, cynical, murderous Wealthcare bill is dead (for now). Countless lives will be saved. And perhaps most importantly, Trump has been severely weakened. One of his Horcruxes has been destroyed.<br />
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Now, let's all get to work on destroying the rest of them.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-82684998422682254672017-02-20T12:00:00.001-08:002017-02-21T06:07:42.804-08:00UPDATE: NOT MY PRESIDENT'S DAY So, my friends, the app idea I described two posts ago is now officially on indefinite hiatus. Without funding, we can't move it forward. But, to my own surprise, I don't feel like curling up into a ball and sobbing for a week, <i>because there are other guides out there, and people are using them, and they're working</i>. Everyone who cares about these things knows about Indivisible by now, and what a phenomenal job that small group of dedicated young people has done in training the opposition to adapt and use Tea Party tactics against this administration. And remember how, shortly after the election, the ACLU tweeted that if Trump violated the Constitution, they would see him in court? Well, they were every bit as good as their word, and I have complete faith that they're going to continue to be. (Plus, as an added bonus for lawyers like me, they actually make our profession look heroic! How often does that happen??) <br />
As far as the specific purpose Call to Action was intended to serve - putting access to their Representatives at millennials' fingertips - there are other groups that are doing that. Check out Countable.com. That site has a lot of bells and whistles which millennials (and others) might find overwhelming, but it's full of valuable news and information, and if you do a little looking on the site it's not hard to figure out how to step up and make your voice heard. If you prefer to use a simpler tool, try <a href="https://5calls.org./">https://5calls.org.</a> It's not an app, but it does almost exactly what our app would have done: give the user up-to-the-minute information about the latest government outrages, and tell him or her the most productive options for getting involved.<br />
I'm sad about Call to Action, but much less sad than I would have been if there was a dire need for its existence but we couldn't get it off the ground. But people around the country - red states, blue states - are rising up and shouting: Not on my watch, Trump. If you want to go after the poorest, the sickest, the most vulnerable members of our society - and you've made it crystal clear that you do - you're going to have to go through me first. BRING IT ON.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-35247331776365266182017-02-05T14:57:00.000-08:002017-02-05T14:57:04.853-08:00AN UNFAIR COMPARISON<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Tomorrow it will be a year since we lost Murphy (top photo). Today we lit a yahrzeit candle for him and talked about how incredibly lucky we were to have him in our lives for almost 10 years. I've been trying to come up with a blog post for today, and then a little while ago the idea hit me: why not compare Murphy to Donald Trump?</div>
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For Murphy, "me" was not a concept (except for the half hour of his family's dinner time each night, when I have to admit he was really annoying). For 23-and-a-half hours a day, all Murphy thought about was "us." We were his pack, which isn't unusual for pet dogs. What was unique about him was the role he saw for himself within the pack. All day, every day, he saw it as his job to make sure that his humans knew exactly how much he loved us. </div>
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It was a job he took with utter seriousness. We took him and Finney for a hike almost every weekend, and as soon as we got into the car with them, Murphy would know where we were headed and would strain every muscle to reach our faces from the back seat so he could properly thank us. And once we were out on the hiking trail, he might exuberantly run ahead of us sometimes, but (unlike Finney) he would never voluntarily lose sight of us. He would turn around and check to make sure we were still following, and if one of us happened to fall behind, he would walk back and join us to make sure we were okay.</div>
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But he unfailingly thanked us for smaller things than hikes, too. Hugs, treats, belly rubs, walks on the leash - we got our faces and hands thoroughly scrubbed every time. He seemed worried that we would be sad, that we would think he didn't care. </div>
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Now let's talk about Trump. He's a man who doesn't understand the word "us." Dogs are pack animals, and Trump would never have made it as a dog because he wants to be the alpha without taking any responsibility for the rest of his pack. The only word he understands is "me." I was struck recently when I read about an interview in which he spoke (and possibly bragged - for him the two are almost indistinguishable) about how little of a role he played in his children's lives when they were younger; in fact, he never even took them to the park. Early in my career, I spent five years working as a law guardian for abused or neglected children. The most heartrending lesson I learned from that experience was that the more extreme the abuse or neglect these children suffered at the hands of their parents, the more fiercely they clung to them and protected them. They believed that the reason their parents had rejected them was that they (the children) had deserved it, and they unremittingly wore themselves out in futile efforts to be better and to deserve better. I see signs of this same syndrome in Trump's children. There doesn't seem to be anything they wouldn't do to gain their absent, self-adoring father's approval. And can you even imagine his thanking them? That would require a recognition on his part that they were separate entities, and he literally does not seem capable of that degree of insight.</div>
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And now, to my utter horror, this man has become the alpha dog of the United States. And unlike Murphy, he has no natural dignity or humility. He lacks the most rudimentary understanding of our tripartite system of government, of the role each branch must take to check and balance the roles of the other two. Yesterday he tweeted: "When a country is no longer able to say who can, and who cannot , come in & out, especially for reasons of safety &.security - big trouble!" He believes that <u>he</u> is the country - he alone, and not the judicial system, not the legislature, not even the rest of what passes for his executive branch. He believes that he is the reincarnation of King Louis XIV of France, and with every act he proclaims again and again, "L'etat, c'est moi." He takes credit for everything that goes right, even (especially) when it was the prudent leadership of <a href="http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/most-americans-wish-obama-was-still-president">the man most Americans wish were </a><u><a href="http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/most-americans-wish-obama-was-still-president">still</a></u><a href="http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/most-americans-wish-obama-was-still-president"> our President </a>that made it possible.<br />
Murphy was born a grownup. From his earliest days, he exhibited empathy and compassion, not least toward Finney, the 8-week-old juvenile delinquent we brought into Murphy's life when he was two years old, and whom he helped us to raise.<br />
Trump is 70 years old. He is pure ego with no modifying id, and that's who he will remain to the end of his days. He doesn't care about the future of Earth's environment because if he personally won't be around when we've managed to poison our planet until it can no longer sustain life, what does it matter? Is this a man you can picture caring about the world his own grandchildren will inherit, let alone anyone else's? He doesn't care about the wellbeing of anyone who opposes his policies; in fact, judging by his words and actions, he mocks them and seeks vengeance against them. The shallowness of his mind is on full display for all to see. In the midst of the extraordinary level of chaos he's unleashed on this country and on the rest of the world, to what subjects does he return obsessively? The size of his inauguration crowd. The fictitious voter fraud during the election which (as has been established beyond all reasonable doubt) Putin helped him win. The U.S., for all its many flaws, has been the leader of the free world for at least the last eight years, if not much farther back than that, and its current leader functions on the emotional level of a five-year-old.<br />
I miss you, Murphy, more than you could ever imagine. And God, how I miss the security of knowing that Barack Obama was in the White House. He was human; he made mistakes; but in those eight years combined, I never knew a fraction of the fear I've felt every waking minute for the last three months. </div>
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As I acknowledged in this post's title, the comparison between Murphy and Trump really is an unfair one. A ludicrous one, to be more precise. The caliber of these two beings is so vastly different. There are few humans - even among those who have consciences and a sense of morality - who could measure up to a noble creature like Murphy. Donald Trump? He never stood a chance.</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-14138924247772578932017-01-23T19:53:00.000-08:002017-01-25T17:55:01.749-08:00AN INTROVERT GOES TO WASHINGTON Here's my completely idiosyncratic take on Saturday's march in D.C. First, the good news: about half a million people showed up. Now the bad news: about half a million people showed up.<br />
After a ride on the D.C. metro that reminded me of the worst rush-hour crush on the NYC subway, my son and daughter and I arrived near the site of the march at about 9 a.m. and followed the throng to what we assumed would be a decent viewing area, since nothing was scheduled to start until 10. By 10:30 or so we realized that the speeches had begun but that we could see or hear nothing of them. The signs people were holding up around us were great, though. "I'm With Her," and arrows pointing in every direction. "America: What Were You Thinking??" "Why Are You So Obsessed With My Uterus?" Maya Angelou quotes everywhere. A small girl on her father's shoulders, wearing a cape that read "Not Up for Grabs." <br />
We had little space to move around and no idea where to go even if we could, so at 11 or so we left the march site to get something to eat. We returned an hour or so later and stood around, waiting for the march to get going. At some point we realized that we were being funneled in a particular direction, but had no idea why. Then at about 1:30 the people around us began walking to, and then up, Pennsylvania Avenue, and we followed along. The march was fun, partly because it was such a relief to get moving, but more because it felt empowering to be among hundreds of thousands of people who were so determined to resist the pseudo-election of our pseudo-president and his very real, very threatening agenda and appointments.<br />
Most of the marchers were women - elderly women with walkers and canes (one of my favorite signs was "I marched in the 60s and now I'm marching in MY 60s"); middle-aged women in clusters, representing states up and down the East Coast as well as other regions of the country; young mothers with babies strapped to their chests or toddlers hoisted on their shoulders; knots of millennials focused on climate change and reproductive rights. But men were well represented too, many of them carrying signs that said things like "Quality Men Are Not Threatened By Equality."<br />
One sign I didn't see, but which my son told me about, really struck a chord with me: "Things Have Gotten So Bad, Even the Introverts Are Out Here!" Indeed. I'm so glad I had my kids with me for protection; they made me feel less overwhelmed.<br />
But now the marches are over and we need to turn to the question of what we can do next. Which brings me to the secret project I've been hinting about. It's no longer secret, but it might also be no longer viable, which is where YOU come in! My friend Julie, who designs websites and video games for a living, came up with the brilliant idea of creating a free app to make it incredibly easy for young people to become politically active via their phones. Here's how it works: the user will check off boxes to indicate the issues which are most important to them. The app will then send them an alert when a vote on a bill involving one of those issues is pending a vote in the House of Representatives. It will give the user contact info for his or her Representative, and provide a sample script for a phone call to the congressional office. That's basically it. Beautifully simple. The idea is that, until we can recruit other volunteers to help, Julie does all the tech stuff and I monitor pending bills and write short blurbs about them.<br />
Here's the problem. We have zero seed money. It costs money to develop apps, and so far Julie has financed everything by taking the money out of her savings. We're now at a point where the app development is on hold, and we need some kind of assurance that it will have a following before we proceed with development. Bottom line: we don't want to start a crowdfunding campaign until we have a reasonable number of followers first. If the app sounds like a good/great idea to you, could you please show your support by following the Facebook page, <a href="http://facebook.com/CalltoActionApp">facebook.com/CalltoActionApp</a>, and/or the Twitter account, @calltoactionapp? I want so badly to get this thing off the ground, and very soon, but we need supporters. Please help, and please tell your friends to help too! I will be eternally grateful. Thank you!!!<br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-38710563924339423722017-01-14T13:26:00.000-08:002017-01-14T13:27:49.122-08:00ORGANIZE. FIGHT. WIN. It's so strange. It's been so long since I've had the heart to post, and yet my blog stats (the number of views I get per day) remain steady. It makes me a little nervous to actually post something, to be honest. What if people like my blog better when it just sits there and shuts up?<br />
Ah, but having a blog isn't just about collecting hits. It's about communicating thoughts and feelings and, occasionally, even facts. So let me share this fact: I'm headed to Washington, D.C. this Thursday night, along with my daughter, to participate in the Women's March on Saturday. It does make things convenient when you have a son who lives there and whom you don't see nearly often enough. And when your daughter announces that he'll be kicked out of his bed for the three nights you'll be there and relegated to the couch so that she and you can sleep in comfort. But I would be going anyway, and I expect to have plenty to say here when I get back.<br />
I still can't talk about my Secret Project. It may or may not still be viable (having pretty much zero seed money doesn't help one bit). But there's something else I want to share.<br />
If you want to become politically active but have no idea how or where to start, you have to check out the <a href="https://www.indivisibleguide.com/">Indivisible Guide</a>. It's a very sensible, step-by-step manual designed and written by former congressional staffers for making your voice heard on a local level, and in a few short weeks it's gone viral. These millennials watched the Tea Party spring from nothing and grow to take over the Republican Party, and they want to share those successful tactics with individuals who are committing to fighting the Trump agenda. I saw one of Indivisible's founders interviewed last night by Rachel Maddow, and he said that Indivisible groups have now formed in <i>every Congressional district in the country.</i> There is power in numbers, folks.<br />
Every day the media report on new outrages, and it becomes easier to think that we're living inside a Twilight Zone episode. But we're not. All of this is really happening. Much of it is beyond our control, but I believe with all my heart that we can make a difference. Working together, we can bring down this vile pseudo-President and his vile henchmen. Please, please, leave me comments and let me know what you're doing to fight back!! And I'll let you know what I'm doing just as soon as I can.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-15486828706075498932017-01-01T14:19:00.000-08:002017-01-01T14:19:02.545-08:00HAPPY NEW YEAR?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Yes, this is what 2017 holds in store. But we can fight back. We must, and we will.<br />
It's been a rough few months. I haven't been steady enough to even post anything here since the end of November. But now I have something I can't talk about yet because it's still in its baby stages, but it's starting to bring me hope that all is not lost. Please stay tuned. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-68050535886874255702016-11-20T11:31:00.000-08:002016-11-20T11:31:41.714-08:00RESISTANCE It feels like eons ago since I last posted. It WAS eons ago. Aside from identifying my daughter's sketch the day after the election, I haven't been able to find words adequate to the task of expressing what I'm feeling. I've derived some grim satisfaction since then from being Bitter on Twitter (@unpubYA, in case anyone's interested), expelling short and mostly vicious bursts of sarcasm to describe the betrayal I feel at the hands of this country I've called home my entire life. But putting together a coherent paragraph seemed beyond my ability.<br />
I went to my doctor a week ago Friday for a long-scheduled annual physical. He told me my blood pressure was up, and started questioning me to figure out why. No, my diet hadn't changed, my salt consumption hadn't changed, nothing had changed except my lifelong belief that America could never become a fascist state. He suggested I was overreacting. "The environment will be irreparably harmed," I said, for starters. He waved that away as a minor concern; what was really important right now, he said, was that the country have a leader who would grow the economy, bring back the manufacturing sector. I talked a little more about the global economic abyss of eight years ago and the extraordinary job Obama had done since then to lower unemployment and lift us out of deep recession, but I gave up after a little while. My doctor clearly wasn't buying any of my arguments. He was a kind, intelligent, educated man who had obviously voted for Donald Trump, the most profoundly ignorant person who will have ever held the job to which he will ascent in exactly two months.<br />
Meanwhile, David Duke publicly exults at Trump's staff picks, a swath of hate crimes erupts across the country, and Trump repeatedly takes to Twitter not to condemn either of these things, but to excoriate both the press and private citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. Every pick he has named so far has been worse than appalling. The only way the nomination of Sessions as Attorney General could get worse would be if the Senate rolls over and approves him, thus cynically declaring that the fox would do a bang-up job of guarding the henhouse. <em>This is a man who believes that the concept of civil rights for minorities is un-American.</em><br />
<em> </em>I've tried to do a few things. I closed my Amazon and Macy's accounts, specifying that I was doing so because of their continued entanglement with Trump business interests. I've contacted both of my senators. I've signed onto my friend Julie's secret project which is going to be amazing and empowering. But I've spent a lot more time feeling enraged and powerless and hopeless.<br />
But last night I had an idea. I attended an SCBWI writing craft conference last weekend, and I came back knowing that I have a lot of work ahead of me to revise my current work-in-progress. A lot of cutting. Establishing more clearly right up front what the main character wants. And as I was struggling last night to implement some of these changes, I started thinking about how crucial diverse books are to the kidlit world, especially in these dark times. And I remembered everything I've read and heard from editors and agents about how much they'd love to see books that have diverse characters but that are not ABOUT diversity; the diversity is not a plot issue, it's simply part of the fabric of the story.<br />
I thought about all of this for a long time, and at the end I decided that I want my protagonist's best friend, whose ethnic identity is currently unspecified, to be Muslim. I want him to be part of a somewhat secularized American-Muslim family, but otherwise to basically remain unchanged from the person he already is. I don't plan to include any didactic lessons about inclusiveness. He'll just be a regular American kid, which is of course what Muslim kids are. But I'll know the difference. And maybe someday if and when this book gets finished and published, it will make some middle-graders think about the world a little differently than they otherwise would.<br />
I'm a writer. I am living in deep dread of the damage one hate-filled demagogue and his minions will be able to inflict on my country and on the world over the next four years.There aren't many things I can do single-handedly to change the outcome. But I can, and I will, change my book. <br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-77784934990985730642016-11-09T16:47:00.000-08:002016-11-09T16:47:18.439-08:00LIBERTY WEEPS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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(I commissioned this drawing from my daughter the artist. I knew she could execute what I was seeing in my mind's eye, and she did.)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-88733131784945081052016-11-03T16:58:00.000-07:002016-11-03T16:58:23.239-07:00CONTEST RESULT! Thanks to those who entered my giveaway contest for WRECKED! My favorite comment came from Jess at DMS. So Jess, email me your mailing address at muranosb(at)gmail(dot)com, and the book is yours! Congrats!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-37053704217896709252016-10-26T17:30:00.001-07:002016-10-26T17:30:14.347-07:00HEY, HEY, BOOK GIVEAWAY!!! <br />
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I haven't run a book giveaway contest in quite a while, and given what this book is about, the timing seems right. So read on! A free book awaits you!<br />
Have I ever mentioned that my husband's hobby is entering contests? He doesn't just do it for himself, either. He enters contests to win tickets to events in Washington, D.C., where our son lives; tickets to events in New York, where our daughter lives; and, for me, he tries to win books he thinks might interest me, particularly young adult novels. And I speak with authority when I say that if someone spends A LOT of time entering contests, they have a pretty fair shot at winning some of them. A couple of weeks ago we went to a movie for free, as a matter of fact. And now that you know about my husband's contest-entering fetish, it brings me to the subject of THIS contest.<br />
Through no action of my own, I am now the proud owner of a pristine copy of a newly-published YA novel entitled WRECKED, by Maria Padian (Algonquin Books, 2016). To me, the timing seems right to run a giveaway of this book because the subject is an allegation of sexual assault between two students on a college campus. A bookish freshman goes to a party one night, gets drunk, passes out, and wakes up to find herself being raped ... or does she? The novel examines a range of divergent people and their viewpoints: Jenny, the alleged victim; Haley, her roommate; Jordan, the accused; Richard, a housemate of Jordan's; Jenny's controlling parents; the college dean assigned to investigate the incident; and a number of other students, including Carrie, a volunteer for the school's sexual assault response team, and someone who starts an anonymous online conversation thread about Jenny called "Lying Bitch." According to the book's jacket flap, reading it "will leave you thinking about how memory, identity, and who sits in judgment shape what we all decide to believe about the truth."<br />
I flipped through the book but didn't read it, so I can't personally provide a recommendation. But you can learn about the author <a href="http://mariapadian.com/">here</a> and look at reviews of the book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_8?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=wrecked+maria+padian&sprefix=wrecked+%2Caps%2C250&crid=F3F1F6Z82WJX">here</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28110862-wrecked?ac=1&from_search=true">here</a>. You can also read a Q & A with the author on the publisher's website, AlgonquinYoungReaders.com. And honestly - it's a giveaway! As my husband might say: the price is right!! So now that you're convinced that you want to enter this contest, let's proceed to the rules, shall we?<br />
The Rules: the contest will begin as soon as I publish this post, and will continue until next Wednesday, November 2nd, at midnight, U.S. eastern time. In order to enter you have to do two things: (1) become a follower of this blog (or let me know in a way I can verify that you're already a follower), and (2) leave a comment on this post. That's it. How much simpler could it get? I'll choose my favorite comment and send the book to that person.<br />
Let the games begin! And may the odds be ever in your favor.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-8795966930148266072016-10-16T10:28:00.001-07:002016-10-16T10:35:59.687-07:00I'M AFRAID I haven't blogged directly about the presidential election until now. I felt that there were many very smart people who were expressing my sentiments better than I ever could. But I'm posting about the election now - not because I think I'm brilliant, not because I think I'm articulate, but because I'm haunted by fear and I just need to talk about it.<br />
Donald Trump is a serial abuser of women, and if that's what brings him down, I'm glad. His attitudes and behavior towards women and girls are degenerate. In his twisted mind, he has kingly authority over half the human race because he possesses wealth, power, and a penis. The fact that we as a society have finally advanced to the point where such Stone Age views can actually cost someone an election is heartening, but even that result isn't a sure thing, and of course if it does happen it's pathetic to even count it as a triumph. Still, no one will be happier than me to watch Trump crash and burn on November 8th because some diligent reporter discovered that 20-year-old videotape.<br />
But I am very frightened whenever I consider all the revelations about him that <em>haven't, </em>even potentially, brought him down. When Trump was a young man, he and his father were charged by the government with racial discrimination in their hiring practices, and former employees have given statements indicating that the policies did indeed exist and that they were blatant and deliberate. He has mocked a reporter with a physical disability, and reportedly referred to the actress Marlee Matlin as "retarded" because she is deaf. He proposed a ban on all Muslims entering the United States, and comes very close to equating all Muslims with - one of his favorite phrases - radical Islamic terrorists. In a supreme irony, he calls Mexicans "rapists." He is an outspoken fan of Vladimir Putin, whose critics in his country have disappeared with alarming regularity. In fact, Trump has invited Russia to hack into Clinton's emails - an invitation Russia appears to have accepted. He has threatened to jail Hilary Clinton, and makes no effort to silence his supporters when they speak of executing her. His major theme is that, due to the machinations of a vast ring of conspirators, virtually everything is wrong with this country, and that he alone is strong enough to fix it. In short, he is an <em>ubermensch</em>.<br />
Is it just me, or does this man remind you of anyone? Trump is proud of his ignorance, which does not mean that the rest of us can forget history. Have we learned nothing in this century about the dangers of following narcissistic, populist cult leaders/demagogues? Is it a coincidence that white supremacists and neo-Nazis deem Trump the first mainstream politician to whom they can pledge wholehearted support? Is it a coincidence that both Trump and his son have reposted items from white-supremacist websites? IS ANYONE LISTENING??<br />
I don't believe that it can't happen here, in this bastion of democracy. I believe that this country is in grave danger from Trump, his supporters, and the do-nothing bystanders in the Republican party. And I can't remember ever having felt so afraid.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-45772397768844651432016-10-05T18:21:00.000-07:002016-10-06T04:44:33.460-07:00AMERICAGive me your tired - your poor -<br />
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Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free -<br />
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The wretched refuse of your teeming shore -<br />
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Send these - the homeless, tempest-tossed - to me.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-49638683006530189612016-10-05T05:08:00.002-07:002016-10-05T05:08:40.947-07:00FINALLY HERE!! YVONNE VENTRESCA'S NEW THRILLER: BLACK FLOWERS, WHITE LIES!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
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<span style="color: #333333;"> Official blurb: Her father died before she was born, but Ella Benton knows they have a </span>mysterious <span style="color: #333333;">connection. When an eerie handprint appears on her mirror, she wonders if Dad’s warning her of danger as he did once before. Could her new too-good-to-be-true boyfriend be responsible? Or the grieving building superintendent? As the unexplained events become more frequent and more sinister, Ella becomes terrified about who—or what—might harm her. Soon the evidence points to Ella herself. What if, like her father, she’s suffering from a breakdown? Ella desperately needs to find answers, no matter how disturbing the truth might be.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;"> Full disclosure: I'm very proud to say that Yvonne Ventresca is my friend. We've known each other for years through attending SCBWI conferences. Yvonne has been a big supporter of both me and my writing for a long time, and I hope I've done half as much for her. But even so, I wouldn't lie about her book! There won't even be <em>white</em> lies in my review below! (And I didn't lie in <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=345254913878149620#editor/target=post;postID=6105344615121568136;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=11;src=postname">my review of her previous YA novel, PANDEMIC</a>, either.)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"> In keeping with its cover illustration, the novel opens in a cemetery. Ella is visiting the grave of the father she's never met, and her sadness permeates the reader's introduction to her like a mist and lingers through the pages. For the almost sixteen years of Ella's life, she's had only one utterly reliable person at her side: her mother. But in a few days, their two-person team is about to be broken up. Ella's mom is less than a week away from establishing her own new team; she's getting remarried. And as much as Mom tells Ella that no matter what, her daughter will always be Number One to her, Ella knows that as soon as Mom marries Stanley, things are going to start changing.</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333;"> In fact, the wedding hasn't even happened yet, and things are starting to change already. Ella and Mom have always talked to each other about Dad, but now when Ella brings up the subject, Mom seems impatient, as if she just wants to move on with her life. Easy for her! She's embarking on a new chapter, but Ella has never felt more alone or more vulnerable. From her perspective, it's not the perfect time for Stanley's son Blake, the new 18-year-old stepbrother Ella's never met before, to arrive from California as a houseguest, just before Mom and Stanley get married and then fly off to Paris for their honeymoon. </span><br />
<span style="color: #333333;"> It's not that Ella has no plans for the week. She's going to sleep at her friend Grace's house every night, and during the day she'll be continuing with her regular summer activities: working at Mom's bookstore in town and volunteering at the local animal shelter. And Blake seems friendly and con-siderate; he even seems to want to hang around with her sometimes while waiting for his freshman year to start at NYU.</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333;"> Everything is going okay until the night before the wedding, when Blake gets Ella alone and tells her that he wants the two of them to be completely honest with each other. And to set that course, he reveals a secret that Stanley has told him. Ella's dad didn't die in a car accident, as Ella's mom has always told her he did. He died as a patient in a psychiatric hospital.</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333;"> Mom would never have lied to Ella about something so important - would she? Why would Ella believe a stranger over her own mother? It's ridiculous. But Blake produces proof. And once Mom and Stanley leave for Paris, inexplicable things start happening to and around Ella. She's always believed in the supernatural to some extent, but these events are terrifying, and they leave her questioning not only Mom's truthfulness, but her own sanity. After all, isn't mental illness often hereditary?</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333;"> Ella goes through what feel like a lifetime of changes during the roughly two-week period that this book covers, but she never for a moment stops being a believable teen character, and the plot never bogs down. Your heart will be in your mouth as you gallop toward the conclusion, but you'll want to stay in the saddle every step of the way.</span><br />
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YOU’RE INVITED! Yvonne is celebrating the release of <i>Black Flowers, White Lies</i> with a book launch party at Words Bookstore in Maplewood, New Jersey, on Sunday, October 16th at 2 p.m. Here's a link to the evite: <a href="http://evite.me/BN1dwfsUjq">http://evite.me/BN1dwfsUjq</a> <sup><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></sup><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
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</sup></span><span style="font-size: large;"><sup> But because you won't want to wait until then to buy your own copy of <em>Black Flowers, White Lies</em>,<em> </em>here are the links: </sup></span><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781510709881"><u><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span lang=""><sup>Indiebound</sup></span></span></u></a><span lang=""><span style="font-size: large;"><sup> | </sup></span></span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Black-Flowers-White-Yvonne-Ventresca/dp/1510709886"><u><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span lang=""><sup>Amazon</sup></span></span></u></a><span lang=""><span style="font-size: large;"><sup> | </sup></span></span><a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/black-flowers-white-lies-yvonne-ventresca/1123362575"><span style="font-size: large;"><sup><u><span style="color: blue;"><span lang="">B</span></span></u><span style="color: blue;">HYPERLINK "http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/black-flowers-white-lies-yvonne-ventresca/1123362575"<u>&</u>HYPERLINK "http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/black-flowers-white-lies-yvonne-ventresca/1123362575"<u>N</u></span></sup></span></a><span lang=""><span style="font-size: large;"><sup> | </sup></span></span><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Flowers-White-Yvonne-Ventresca/dp/1510709886"><u><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span lang=""><sup>AmazonUK</sup></span></span></u></a><span lang=""><span style="font-size: large;"><sup> | </sup></span></span><a href="http://booksamillion.com/p/Black-Flowers-White-Lies/Yvonne-Ventresca/9781510709881"><u><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span lang=""><sup>BAM</sup></span></span></u></a><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><sup> You'll be reading in distinguished company! <em>Black Flowers, White Lies</em> was recently included at the top of BuzzFeed’s new "must read" books: </sup></span><a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/farrahpenn/ya-books-that-without-a-doubt-you-should-read-this-fall"><u><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span lang=""><sup><em>23 YA Books That, Without a Doubt, You’ll Want to Read This Fall</em></sup></span></span></u></a><span style="font-size: large;"><sup><span lang=""><em>. </em>I quote: "This suspenseful psychological thriller definitely won't disappoint." </span></sup></span><br />
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<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.buzzfeed.com/farrahpenn/ya-books-that-without-a-doubt-you-should-read-this-fall&source=gmail&ust=1475606877655000&usg=AFQjCNF9SRcgUvGZtBkCUcXCHu0vSfB6rg" href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/farrahpenn/ya-books-that-without-a-doubt-you-should-read-this-fall" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Picture" class="CToWUd" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEiav_36A3ICEQlJp_PJksrK_MdqmuL7VmxAlYZ2E-t8JyFxh12giPz4dZJF7fEngiOX5NTxBvGAyGT1_VSfg-8E_VTnQJmZdO4BR8pfoLzAovQRZm47VTiGgTSliYqmfW9z2Xr8Ky4mIjTsVpoXjb4jKuSXLCj_DbxVi2VcSOVyfo109o2rWA=s0-d-e1-ft" style="max-width: 100%;" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"><sup></sup></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><sup>Yvonne's debut YA novel about a deadly bird flu outbreak, <i>Pandemic</i> (Sky Pony Press, 2014), won a regional Crystal Kite Award from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Her other credits include a short story in the YA dystopian anthology, <i>Prep for Doom</i>, and two nonfiction books.</sup></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><sup> </sup></span><br />
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<span lang=""><span lang=""><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ7WpMqxfeUh7Hne5vDwycjADXaCUIJRBs7tiHBGsehLbSlLoEUr6K_hRLvFX1MgfX7QYGM6_Per1f4SsPBAuPAIBhcHWdiNmI8hzK6o6VfX8v6CjiAWKkOXrjtJy7kAUXqu7hp_T5jUk/s1600/Yvonne+Ventresca+Author+Photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ7WpMqxfeUh7Hne5vDwycjADXaCUIJRBs7tiHBGsehLbSlLoEUr6K_hRLvFX1MgfX7QYGM6_Per1f4SsPBAuPAIBhcHWdiNmI8hzK6o6VfX8v6CjiAWKkOXrjtJy7kAUXqu7hp_T5jUk/s320/Yvonne+Ventresca+Author+Photo.jpg" width="266" /></a></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><sup>To connect with Yvonne: </sup></span><a href="http://www.facebook.com/yvonneventrescaauthor"><u><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span lang=""><sup>Facebook</sup></span></span></u></a><span lang=""><span style="font-size: large;"><sup> | </sup></span></span><a href="http://twitter.com/YvonneVentresca"><u><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span lang=""><sup>Twitter</sup></span></span></u></a><span lang=""><span style="font-size: large;"><sup> | </sup></span></span><a href="http://yvonneventresca.com/blog.html"><u><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span lang=""><sup>Blog</sup></span></span></u></a><span style="font-size: large;"><sup><u><span style="color: blue;"><span lang=""> </span></span></u>| </sup></span><a href="http://www.instagram.com/yvonneventresca/"><u><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span lang=""><sup>Instagram</sup></span></span></u></a><span lang=""><span style="font-size: large;"><sup> | </sup></span></span><a href="http://www.pinterest.com/yvonneventresca"><u><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span lang=""><sup>Pinterest</sup></span></span></u></a><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span lang=""><sup> | </sup></span></span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28695529-black-flowers-white-lies"><u><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span lang=""><sup>Goodreads</sup></span></span></u></a></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span> </span><br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-75207345341954053342016-10-03T17:48:00.001-07:002016-10-03T17:48:11.591-07:00HI! CAN YOU COME BACK IN TWO DAYS?Because that's when I'll be participating in Yvonne Ventresca's blog hop to celebrate the release of her new psychological thriller,<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW3fhFCB7gQr-YgbI6oTTGcGN7qQaEalaZ8w6Imqxf1jdufjW9Tfiabypx-_GnbXXlb4SIOoenCQr-zQdKsWetxIbfKbf0xUkqHhq4e8bCrTz0hDqegbTqoI43zbeTN2SPCysVRYzOKkk/s1600/BlackFlowersWhiteLies+Cover+Final.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW3fhFCB7gQr-YgbI6oTTGcGN7qQaEalaZ8w6Imqxf1jdufjW9Tfiabypx-_GnbXXlb4SIOoenCQr-zQdKsWetxIbfKbf0xUkqHhq4e8bCrTz0hDqegbTqoI43zbeTN2SPCysVRYzOKkk/s640/BlackFlowersWhiteLies+Cover+Final.jpg" width="442" /></a></div>
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... and it won't be the same without you there!!!!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-57844335829397521992016-09-21T18:14:00.001-07:002016-09-21T18:14:09.298-07:00NO WORDS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Skittles.<br />
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Refugees.<br />
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Any questions?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-61843011862182495682016-08-28T18:14:00.001-07:002016-08-28T18:16:19.143-07:00I SPENT THREE DAYS AT A MAGIC LAKE HOUSE (and all you get is this lousy blog post...) My friend Julie the Nomad agreed to touch down long enough to spend three weeks house-and-dog-sitting for her family friends while they're traveling, and she invited me to visit her at the Magic Lake House for a few days for our own exclusive little writing retreat.<br />
You may ask: what made a lake house into a Magic Lake House? The main requirement was for me and Julie to decide that it was, because both of us had hit snags in our writing and really needed some magic. But there were other components too: remoteness, quiet, and beautiful surroundings.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisG07xLfHSDjLJDQIIPlb1DdphEsu8aSUZURG9pPRswpIViVXg2oPNsv5nmYUfhSgUKasEIQjNhFYDpUlB6DzGVFko67oJpYofoIp00y-cpIpHYwGF-RqqZ0s2BzDWNSyClEfL759HGWI/s1600/MLH+the+lake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisG07xLfHSDjLJDQIIPlb1DdphEsu8aSUZURG9pPRswpIViVXg2oPNsv5nmYUfhSgUKasEIQjNhFYDpUlB6DzGVFko67oJpYofoIp00y-cpIpHYwGF-RqqZ0s2BzDWNSyClEfL759HGWI/s320/MLH+the+lake.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihKGxC2cTCFuGqSlgPhyphenhyphenqJGkvSotxB9aefDUMqWJTc51CL4dFyGonh1NIVtEMgeibjrYSL0ctFlxe_PxqYV5putp-RMODiZVdR5SEls2aqvZPOGFQF6E05MLS5j2jPpzT8B-yaVcv7UKE/s1600/magiclakehouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihKGxC2cTCFuGqSlgPhyphenhyphenqJGkvSotxB9aefDUMqWJTc51CL4dFyGonh1NIVtEMgeibjrYSL0ctFlxe_PxqYV5putp-RMODiZVdR5SEls2aqvZPOGFQF6E05MLS5j2jPpzT8B-yaVcv7UKE/s320/magiclakehouse.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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and dogs.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRJvw-TQCczlji_Mxpcwi6AkdV9agSmUAeevGocOx979Tck-X3MjC5oB7I4WPhzr87dKczoH3xwRwstoIrdhS-n8SaXKYGNya9-ea4Uu1n6lPhoHHnit-mAfjBGg7A_InJrn4HonNOnvg/s1600/MLH+julie+%2526+fred.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRJvw-TQCczlji_Mxpcwi6AkdV9agSmUAeevGocOx979Tck-X3MjC5oB7I4WPhzr87dKczoH3xwRwstoIrdhS-n8SaXKYGNya9-ea4Uu1n6lPhoHHnit-mAfjBGg7A_InJrn4HonNOnvg/s320/MLH+julie+%2526+fred.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>
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and kayaks.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj20U_Q6tb_ZSYtCRIb-AILSCQHN7CKexrVR3YTP2fy1kac-1quZrUYDtqFjiXMnRqHwzXXb-IFhdN6eXxsdDF_x3-uGho7P8BDlTvptRWfgz6x3pIxJMU9VHJGriroH9OlRLCJFhavhuo/s1600/MLH+me+kayaking.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj20U_Q6tb_ZSYtCRIb-AILSCQHN7CKexrVR3YTP2fy1kac-1quZrUYDtqFjiXMnRqHwzXXb-IFhdN6eXxsdDF_x3-uGho7P8BDlTvptRWfgz6x3pIxJMU9VHJGriroH9OlRLCJFhavhuo/s400/MLH+me+kayaking.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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and a koi pond.<br />
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Julie had already set up her writing station, which I call Still Life with Paint Cans, in the kitchen<br />
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and she graciously ceded the master bedroom to me for two nights and moved herself into the guest room downstairs. And the Magical thing about the master bedroom was the attached sitting room.<br />
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That's where I wrote, and this was my view from the window as I wrote:<br />
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And every bit of it was Magic. We both wrote steadily. I solved a major problem with my book that had been frustrating me for weeks. And Julie and I talked about our books and our writing ambitions and a whole lot of other subjects too, and we cooked and swam and petted the dogs, but mostly we wrote and we helped each other write.<br />
And I took a lot of pictures because even though I'll probably never visit this MLH again, I'm going to carry this visit with me in my mind and heart for a very long time.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345254913878149620.post-24225978565220704642016-08-22T04:11:00.000-07:002016-08-22T04:11:59.445-07:00IT'S MY PIPER MORGAN BLOG TOUR DAY!!<span lang=""><span lang=""></span> </span><br />
I signed up for author Stephanie Faris's blog tour to help promote the two first books in her new middle-grade Piper Morgan series, both of which were just released from Simon & Schuster a couple of weeks ago.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1ZJyHRt32Z0o4TaZlx4tgPTb5ufbQcpgBKDIshyphenhyphenPF1y1OE_0RK4MwOA0cKI0o7sHAa4T1Mpg5PNpkTBn-SYDA16kWJnXooAt2IzVc8XOMuhutoonam_OUIdLKSBWled0jie1nPfRQT40/s1600/PiperMorgan+Joins+the+Circus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1ZJyHRt32Z0o4TaZlx4tgPTb5ufbQcpgBKDIshyphenhyphenPF1y1OE_0RK4MwOA0cKI0o7sHAa4T1Mpg5PNpkTBn-SYDA16kWJnXooAt2IzVc8XOMuhutoonam_OUIdLKSBWled0jie1nPfRQT40/s320/PiperMorgan+Joins+the+Circus.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwLy5ksZ6PH9icQJCWuDlS5NGUK6ec_XlbB6zPU2MbAbcFvu-qmq7445sorjlNNaW2WphRfNAwW2ZY7ST34fk9JA4vizxP022pmJ2m0RexmWJI-qqKZTAipWAE6oY1Hc1IZat-yQ6GhJY/s1600/Piper+Morgan+In+Charge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwLy5ksZ6PH9icQJCWuDlS5NGUK6ec_XlbB6zPU2MbAbcFvu-qmq7445sorjlNNaW2WphRfNAwW2ZY7ST34fk9JA4vizxP022pmJ2m0RexmWJI-qqKZTAipWAE6oY1Hc1IZat-yQ6GhJY/s320/Piper+Morgan+In+Charge.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
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Aren't those great cover illustrations? Piper looks like she's ready to charge (or get pushed!) right off the page! What middle-grader would be able to resist buying the book to find out why Piper is riding an elephant or (evidently) running an office? I'll give you a hint, since you're probably not a middle-schooler so this can't count as a spoiler: Piper and her mom make up a two-member family. They move around a lot, and Piper's mom keeps getting interesting new jobs in each new place. But although Piper has to deal with the same difficulties all kids do when their families relocate often, she also gets a lot of opportunities to get in on the action in each new setting.<br />
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I e-met Stephanie when we both participated in the Blogging From A to Z blog tour over the last few Aprils. This is Stephanie: <br />
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And here's her bio:<br />
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<span lang=""> <span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Stephanie Faris knew she wanted to be an author from a very young age. In fact, her mother often told her to stop reading so much and go outside and play with the other kids. After graduating from Middle Tennessee State University with a Bachelor of Science in broadcast journalism, she somehow found herself working in information technology. But she never stopped writing. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> Stephanie is the Simon & Schuster author of 30 DAYS OF NO GOSSIP and 25 ROSES. When she isn't crafting fiction, she writes for a variety of nonfiction online websites. She lives in Nashville with her husband.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">And here is my interview with her!<br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"> 1. Hi Stephanie! So, in real life you write
articles about information technology, and in unreal life you write
middle-grade fiction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;">Is that how you
manage your left brain/right brain split?<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">Good question! Maybe so. I do feel that the
variety keeps things interesting. If I was just doing one or the other all day,
every day, I don’t think I’d appreciate my “fun writing” as much. (Fun writing
is the fiction stuff, in case you’re wondering!)<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">2. Piper Morgan is a little girl whose mom
sounds like a free spirit, flitting from place to place and having adventures
everywhere she goes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;">I read on your blog
one recent Mother’s Day that your own beloved mom sounded a lot like Piper’s.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;">How much of the Piper series is a love
letter to your mom, and how much of it is something else entirely? <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></b></div>
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</span><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">I think being raised by a single mom
definitely gave me a background to pull from as I wrote Piper’s story. We
didn’t move around as much, but we did move a couple of times when I was younger.
It was interesting that no matter where we lived, my mom made it “home.” I’ve
realized, as I’ve gotten further into writing this, that this is really what
the series is about. Piper is always longing for a place she can call home, but
over time, she’ll come to realize that “home” has little to do with where a
person lives.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">3. Which comes first for you in writing a
story: characters or plot?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;">Can you give
a thumbnail sketch of your typical book-inventing process (if you have one)? </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;">Ditto for your typical writing day (if you
have one)?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">I’m one of those “pantsers” you hear about,
who flies by the seat of my pants when I’m writing. I wish I could be more of
an outliner. However, once you’re published, your agent needs a partial to
pitch your book to your editor. So I’ve developed a habit of writing three
chapters, then writing the synopsis. That synopsis can then serve as an outline
if they buy my book and I get to write the rest of it.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">I wish I said I had a daily routine. I
usually have every intention of writing 1,000 words or so in the morning, but I
end up responding to emails and doing blog sorts of things until around
lunchtime, when I go to the gym. When I get back, I realize I’m behind on my
word count for the day and I write my butt off until bedtime! I always have
writing assignments, and I try to do three to four a day, which means writing
around 2,000 words a day, not including my book writing.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">4.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;">Piper starts out with a bang by joining the circus!</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;">Any hints about future exciting situations in
which she might find herself?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">She gets to work in the circus and a
principal’s office in these first two books. In the third book, coming out in
November, she works with puppies at a rescue shelter. The one that’s scheduled
for next spring is set in a pool and spa shop and includes a TV commercial
shoot. We’re still working on ideas for book number five, but I’m thinking it
will be event-planner themed.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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If you'd like to find out more about Stephanie and her Piper Morgan series (and why wouldn't you?), you can check out any of the following links:<br />
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<span lang=""></span><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"></span></span><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><u></u></span></span><a href="http://www.stephaniefaris.com/"><u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: small;"><span lang="">Website</span></span></span></u></a><br />
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<u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"><span lang=""></span></span></span></u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"><u></u></span></span><a href="http://stephie5741.blogspot.com/"><u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: small;"><span lang="">Blog</span></span></span></u></a><br />
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<u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"><span lang=""></span></span></span></u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"><u></u></span></span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/stephfaris"><u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: small;"><span lang="">Facebook</span></span></span></u></a><br />
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<u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"><span lang=""></span></span></span></u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"><u></u></span></span><a href="https://twitter.com/stephfaris"><u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: small;"><span lang="">Twitter</span></span></span></u></a><br />
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<u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"><span lang=""></span></span></span></u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"><u></u></span></span><a href="http://instagram.com/stephfaris"><u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: small;"><span lang="">Instagram</span></span></span></u></a><br />
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<u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"><span lang=""></span></span></span></u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"><u></u></span></span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Stephanie-Faris/e/B00J4VZODO/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1"><u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: small;"><span lang="">Amazon</span></span></span></u></a><br />
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</span>And make sure you enter Stephanie's Rafflecopter giveaway!! <br />
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<span lang=""></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><a href="http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/share-code/YmE3MjA1ZmE3NmM3MjJlOTUyMzIyZjViYzk5OWQ3OjY=/"><u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: small;"><span lang="">http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/share-code/YmE3MjA1ZmE3NmM3MjJlOTUyMzIyZjViYzk5OWQ3OjY=/</span></span></span></u></a><span lang=""><span style="font-size: small;">?</span></span><br />
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The Olympics might be over, but for Piper Morgan, the fun is just beginning!<br />
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</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: small;"></span> </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05736019203704382525noreply@blogger.com25