DIVA?

The word diva used to really mean ‘something.”  Now it’s a word used among the commoners for themselves.  No accomplishments necessary, just being born to celebrity parents or money will do.  Just being born will do.

When I was a youngster a diva was usually entering middle age because it took that long to develop the skills necessary to achieve the appellation.  I think of Marilyn Horne, Dame Joan Southerland and our own Beverly Sills.  Continued voice training, learning long operas, and several languages, while working their way up in a crowded field filled with temperaments.  We admired accomplishment.

What do people admire now days?  Almost anything, including a show called jackass which elevated people for being stupid.  We admire mouthy athletes with double digit I.Q.’s and some even make hero’s out of criminals and idiots who are in and out of rehab all of their lives. 

What in the hell ever happened to accomplishment?

WHAT IF?

What if UFO’s aren’t mechanical devices sent by other ‘intelligent’ life forms?  It is a very egocentric point of view if you think about it.  Like the belief that earth was flat or the sun revolved around the earth.  Typical human conclusion.

God populated the great depths of the ocean with creatures who could live there. 

 

What if God populated the great depths of space with creatures who could live there?  Doesn’t the real live creature above kind of remind you of a UFO?  A giant space creature?

The second picture is a real life creature that God made.  Looks almost like a mother ship with ports for smaller commuter space craft.

Is man really that intelligent or has God created deep space creatures as he created deep ocean creatures?

 

     It’s an interesting idea to think about anyway or maybe write about.  Hummm!?!

Christmas in September?

We just finished with the Labor Day Holiday and started football season and what do I find on the media and in the stores?  Christmas decorations and ads.  Or should I say holiday ads since Merry Christmas is no longer politically correct. 

I’m afraid the department stores with their Happy Holidays rather than Merry Christmas ruined my zeal for gift buying.  Could ‘those people’ who oppose Christ in Christmas just not celebrate ‘our’ holiday and do their own thing?  No, instead of getting their own parade they want to rain on ours and ruin it.  The behavior of vandals.

Couldn’t we just get twelve paid holidays a year and choose which twelve we want to celebrate?  Wouldn’t that be less discriminatory?  They want Christ and the Bible out of our culture as if it threatens them somehow.  The Bible has been part of our culture for ages, a best seller for ages, and a wonderful piece of literature, so what is it with the Left? 

The ‘left’ wants to celebrate all cultures except our own.   But they want to pick and choose, Santa and gifts but no Christ.  How capitalistic of them! They don’t bother pointing out that Easter Bunnies don’t have eggs but seem to have a compulsion to criticize Christian holidays while the pagan ones like Halloween are typically enjoyed.  I must admit that other cultural holidays are of interest to me especially gastronomically and I don’t feel any compulsion to destroy them – so what’s with the Left?

Why does the left have to destroy or embrace?  There apparently is no live and let live in them, we must be in lock step or be condemned.  Now I understand why they don’t get the spirit of Christmas.

Words' of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. V

How to choose my favorite writer?  Their craftsmanship, their message, whether or not I agree with the content or approve of the characters?

Let’s discuss non-fiction first, and I’m interested in the craftsmanship but mostly in the impact the work had on me.  First, I have to note the, “I Have a Dream” speech.  The power of Dr. King’s words was overwhelming. The content was spiritual as well as practical and that is also true of “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” and, “Peacemakers.” 

Dr. Martin Luther King spoke more than words, he spoke truths.  The leader was shot down and killed on my birthday, April 4^th and each year I remember the man and his message. 

I guess Martin Luther King is a natural follow up to my early reading of Henry David Thoreau, “The Duty of Civil Disobedience.” The book was a study on the duty of an American citizen if we are to become and remain a free people.  Unfortunately, today’s citizen is more grasping than dutiful. We act as if lines on maps are a force of nature created by God rather than a punishment by God for our foolish ego manifested in the Tower of Babel. We weren’t gathered together here as His only true people as some humans seem to believe.

Now, I’ve given myself away.  I’ve spent long, happy periods of my life in Bible study.  I know it’s not cool or sophisticated but it’s some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever read.  Our schools have classes in Elizabethan Literature and Shakespearean Literature why not Bible Literature?  So much of the writing is noteworthy and who can claim that it is not as big a part of our culture as Shakespeare or that it is not a best seller?  Then how can people oppose the literature and not ban all other manifestos?  “Mein Kampf,” Karl Marx, the Declaration of Independence, or the text of Martin Luther’s “95 Theses” at Wittenberg, or Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail?” 

 All who are trying to erase it from our culture don’t understand culture.  You are the ones who burned books in “Fahrenheit 451,” or the ‘more equal’ pigs in “Animal Farm,” and “Brave New Worlds.”  The new Puritans are little schoolmarm’s running around with missionary zeal, glasses sliding down their noses, making sure that our speech is politically correct.  No, they don’t abolishing the pulpits they try to destroy; instead, they use them for their own message.  They were called 'busy bodies' in my day.

Enough!

A Seventy Two Year Old and a Computer IV

 

 



Leave a seventy two year old alone with a computer and she will soon get into trouble.  I found a digital art set by Crayola and without a sinew of talent in my whole body I started to have fun.  I'm either getting senile or beginning to enjoy retirement. 

It's not art, of course, it's just a compulsive/obsessive's effort to control - in this case nature.  When, in fact, nature is what it is, in the hand's of God. 

 

Here's another, less tortured view of nature:

 



And one, stylistic, and kind of in between:

 



Why am I displaying my refrigerator crap to the rest of the world?  Probably getting senile, lol.

MY FAVORITE CHARACTERS: KAREN MACEANRUIG: First Post

MY FAVORITE CHARACTERS: KAREN MACEANRUIG: First Post: Should you wait to practice a craft until you can make a living doing it?   Is the value of time spent in the money earned? Don’t cook unles...

Hobby vs. Profession I

Should you wait to practice a craft until you can make a living doing it?  Is the value of time spent in the money earned? Don’t cook unless you’re a chef?  Don’t sew unless you’re a fashion designer?  Don’t play an instrument unless you’re a professional musician?  No amateur astronomers or athletes allowed. Nonsense! 

As with most writers I’ve been writing all of my life.  Am I published?  As with most writers the answer is no but it’s a compulsive obsessive behavior that is impossible to break and my nervous system would explode if I didn’t do it. It’s not wasted time, it’s time spent on my mental health. Don’t apologize for time spent or on your particular pleasure.  Enjoy it

When you read or write you get to spend time with the characters!  Did you ever have pretend friends when you were little?  I often wonder if reading and writing isn’t an extension of pretend friends.  We chose the place, the setting, the people, the activities, and the story.  We get to escape to ‘the other place’ for a while and come back refreshed.

As a writer my characters always come first in the process.  They grow and become more and more fleshed out and real and then begin to interact with one another and that is the stuff of the story. Sometimes I think that I'm just there to take it all down like a court reporter so they can speak to each other, live their lives, enjoying their friends, family and lovers.  They are much like Geppetto's carving who wants so desperately to be a real little boy.

My Characters II

Two of the characters I most enjoyed spending time with when I was writing were Luke from “American People Desert: 2025” or as I call it Luke’s Saga and the Judge Beth Able Books I and II, or “Sequestered With a Killer” and “Police Force Under Siege”.

And now that I’ve said that I realize the two characters have a lot in common.  Both have a tough, hard inner core that allows them to get the job done whatever it takes. If action is required there is no hesitation, no second or squeamish thoughts. Both can kill in the line of duty.  Yet, both have a great deal of compassion and empathize readily with suffering, disadvantaged, or victimized people. 

Both Luke and Beth have a well-developed sense of justice and high moral standards.  They both love their homes and like to nest. Luke walked for almost two years to find a home for himself in a beautiful valley.  Beth lived in the same house all of her life and couldn’t part with it even when she was widowed and her daughter left home to pursue her own life.  She rambled around the big old house with a large yard and the memories kept her company.  Memories she couldn’t sell.

Luke read the Bible daily and prayed to God often and Beth was a regular member of her parish attending weekly, and prodding the church to relevancy.  Neither judged others based on their own belief system.  They were both close to family and extended family.  Neither were really social animals but preferred their inner circle for company.  Both Luke and Beth were extremely loyal to those they loved.  My hero types, I guess.

One of my other works is more of a love story, second time around.  “Love Rekindled in Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto.”  Both were widowed, and I throw up obstacles to their union and their love; or, physical attraction, wins them over.  I never manage to make David the man I think he is, probably Nadia comes through much better.  Is that because I’m a woman?  Is it harder to write from the opposite sex’s point of view?  Is it hard to make a man loving as well as manly?  Perhaps, I should rewrite the story from Nadia’s point of view. An idea for my spare time, laughter.

Abby, in “Flight from Obsession,” is running from an abusive husband who is trying to find, and kill her.  I give her a new life and new friends but the threat is ever present.  Can she survive the years of worry and the frightening climax when he finds her?  I’m still putting the last few chapters together.

Bandit is, of course, a cat. The short stories about Bandit tell the story of each of Bandit’s nine lives. I love cats and it is interesting to try to write from a cat’s point of view.  Did I succeed?  Hard to know, but I enjoy Bandit along with all of the other cat roommates I’ve had over the years.  Such beautiful, loving, cuddly creatures who always seem to sense your mood and empathize. What’s the Christmas song, ‘these are a few of my favorite things?’  Cats would be near the top of that list. 

Do the “Banshees Still Scream,” is an autobiographical tale about my great grandmother, Margaret Amelia Scott.  I wrote it near mother’s day and it involves four generations of mothers, from my great grandmother, to my grandmother, my mother, and myself.  You’ll have to decide yourself if it was worth the effort for readers; it was something I had to spit out as a person in the form or words.  If I was driven to paint it would be a painting of the snapshot I saw as a child.  Smiling, and if I was Steinbeck or Angelou it would be a great novel or poem, but I’m sure as hell not so it’s just a story I wrote.  Maybe next time I’ll be writing about some of the writers I revere.

Children's Stories III

When I was very, very young I read mostly animal stories by such wonderful authors as: Thomas Hinkle, who wrote mostly horse stories, S.P Meek, who wrote many dog and horse stories, and, of course, Walter Farley who wrote, “The Black Stallion”, “Son of the Black Stallion,”  “Island Stallion,” and many, many more. 

Along with the rest of the world I read the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mystery series.  But my very favorite was Howard Pease, and especially, “Thunderbolt House,” about three children in the San Francisco earthquake.  That was my favorite and I read all of his other books; including, “Ship without a Crew”, “Shipwreck,” and “Secret Cargo”.  He was my favorite childhood writer.   

I’m sure I’m not remembering all of the writers that I read but Frank Yerby soon became a favorite along with Thomas Costain.  Then I found a super book, “The Good Earth,” by Pearl Buck.  That’s about the time that I switched from children’s books to adult fiction. 

Soon I was reading “Girl of the Lumberlost,” “Little Women,” “Wuthering Heights,” “Jane Eyre,” and that genre.  Not enough adventure there for me so I moved on to Dickens, Steinbeck, and many of the other classics and then I got into Russian writers,

In the eighth grade I was fortunate enough to be selected for a class sponsored by Stanford University for speed reading and comprehension.  We were also required to read one book a week and make an oral report.  It was a very small class, probably ten of us.  We read everything from Popular Mechanics to Harper’s and Atlantic Monthly for speed and comprehension.  It was a wonderful experience for me and while I did increase my speed I never gave up savoring wonderful writing. Similar classes in all areas should be offered to students in grammar school. Art, music, mechanics, physics, whatever interests the student.  How wonderful to be allow to read and read and read.