Category Archives: books

The Writers I Love and Why I Love Them

mental health, funny things, books, etc., blogs, writing, , , , ,

Last week, I wrote about why we should love writers—and how we should show it. This week, I’m going to take my own advice and write about writers whose work I love.

There are lots of writers I admire. Jon Krakauer, for example. I started with his book Into Thin Air and went on to read more of his work—Missoula, Under the Banner of Heaven, Eiger Dreams, Into the Wild, Where Men Win Glory, and his essays. (Many of his books are about mountain climbing. For some reason, I like true adventure books that describe things I will never do. Dramatic thrills, maybe, or a longing for experiences that I can only live vicariously. But I digress.)

But the writers I love most, the ones whose books I buy as soon as they are published and move instantly to the top of my TBR list, are Mary Roach, Sue Grafton, and Jenny Lawson.

Mary Roach

• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

• Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

• Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

• Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

• Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

• Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War

• Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

• Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy

Mary Roach writes the least stuffy science books I know on an impressively wide variety of topics. She’s not afraid to insert herself into the narrative as she explores a wide range of topics. Her encounter with the space toilet, for example, is a riot. The thing I love most about her books, though, is the footnotes. They are copious, fascinating, and humorous, and add texture and interest with aspects of the topics that just don’t fit neatly into the narrative.

(I must admit that Roach’s footnotes were the inspiration for my digressions and thus the genesis of this blog. The footnotes for Packing for Mars, for example, include the story of Enos, the chimp that went to space. But I digress again.)

Sue Grafton

• The Alphabet Series

Sue Grafton is justly famous for her series of Kinsey Milhone mystery novels that begin with A Is for Alibi and end with Y Is for Yesterday. She died of cancer before she could write the last book in the series, which she intended to title Z Is for Zero. Mystery fans everywhere mourned her loss.

Grafton’s mysteries are often mentioned in the same breath as Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski series. They do share many qualities, such as strong female private investigators and a cast of interesting supporting characters. But, to me, Paretsky writes from anger (or rage), while Grafton writes from insight and bemusement. Over the years, I’ve gotten away from reading every one of Paretsky’s books that comes out (she’s still writing), but never tired of Grafton’s. I just wish she had lived to write more.

(When I was writing a mystery novel (which never got off the ground), I attended a writing conference where Sue Grafton was one of the speakers/instructors. She read the first 30 pages of my book and gave me some very good advice. But I digress some more.)

Jenny Lawson

• Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

• Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

• Broken (in the Best Possible Way)

• How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay

Jenny Lawson, aka the Bloggess, writes wonderful books on some of my favorite topics. Her writing style is chaotic, wildly funny, and ultimately uplifting. I was reading her “Mostly True Memoir” and couldn’t stop laughing. My husband asked what the book was about. “I don’t really know,” I said, “but she talks a lot about her vagina.” For a long time, he called her “the vagina lady.” I haven’t told him that sometimes she talks about her labia.

There was plenty of other stuff too, a lot of it involving her bemused but steadfast husband Victor and the trouble they get into, separately or together—like the time she bought a six-foot metal chicken that she named Beyoncé and left outside Victor’s home office window.

Her later books contain essays with plenty of humor and anecdotes, but they are loosely on the subject of mental illness and coping with it (or not). How could I resist a book like that?

(I met Jenny Lawson twice, once at a book signing and once at a writer’s conference. At the book signing, there was a Q and A session. I asked, “If you could be any animal, what would you be? And why?” She replied, “A tapeworm. Because I could just lie there and someone would feed me.” But I digress even more.)

Of course, there are other books that I like a lot, including more mysteries, more science, science fiction, some history, some biographies (except ones about Prince Albert), books about shipwrecks, books by Lois McMaster Bujold, Dick Francis, Simon Winchester, Jared Diamond, and Steven Pinker, and true crime. (I don’t read as much true crime as I used to. The ones with atrocity photos no longer interest me. I like the ones involving forensics and legal maneuverings. But I digress yet again.)

Got any books/authors to suggest? My TBR pile (well, electronic shelf) only has 1,000+ books on it. There’s room for lots more!

Love for the Writers

books, etc., film, literature, music, television, writing

My friend Beth messaged me one day last week to inform me that she had been watching Tales From the Darkside and recognized one of the writers’ names as someone we both knew from attending science fiction conventions: Michael Kube-McDowell. She said she found his episodes very imaginative.

I happen to still be in touch with Michael (who has since dropped the Kube part of the name) after all these years, so I messaged him to tell him what Beth had discovered.

“Where did she see it?” he asked. (He meant on what streaming service, I think.)

“She was watching it on her old collection of DVDs.”

“I didn’t even know they were on DVDs,” Michael said. It turns out the only copies that he had of his own work were some VCR recordings he had made at the time the episodes first aired. And he no longer had a VCR player.

I pointed out where he could get all four seasons of the DVDs online for about $20.

And so he did. “A mere 43 years later, I finally have a professional copy!” he said.

This happy incident happened because Beth watched the DVDs and noticed the writer’s name, something not many people bother to do.

Perhaps because I’m a writer myself, I do, too. I find myself saying, “Wow! David Gerrold wrote this episode of Babylon 5!” or “Theodore Sturgeon wrote this episode of Star Trek!” (I then often have to give this announcement some context for my husband by telling him who the writer is and what else they’ve written. But I digress.) (Oh, and not completely off the topic, did you know Ray Bradbury wrote the script for the movie version of Moby Dick? But I digress some more.)

I like to look for the names of directors, too. I don’t recognize them as often as I do writers, but sometimes I notice that an actor on the show has directed one or more episodes. I always think, “Good for them! Way to branch out!”

I feel the same way about songwriters. People give love to the singers, but barely notice the songwriters much of the time. (I have a little game I play with Dan. When I’m listening to iTunes (or Apple Music or whatever they call it these days), we’ll hear a song, and I’ll say, “Okay, who wrote this?” He’s right a lot of the time, but when he doesn’t know, he’ll guess Kinky Friedman if it’s a funny song or Willie Nelson if it isn’t. Once he said, “I don’t know his name, but he wrote that song that goes ‘living and dying in 3/4 time.'” It was Jimmy Buffett, and he was right. I was impressed. But I digress again.)

So I say, “Pay attention to the writers! Show them some love!” It’s hard to throw your arms around ChatGPT and say, “Thanks for the memories!” (Or, if you’re not close enough to the writer to throw your arms around them other than metaphorically, send them money. I once sent Michael a quarter to make up for royalties when I bought one of his books at a used book store. But I digress yet again, for the last time this week.)

Luck in the Library

books, etc., family, humor, literature, music, , ,

Jimmy Buffett wrote a song called “Love in the Library.” It’s a little disconcerting to hear a Buffett song that includes the name “Flaubert” instead of the word “beach” or “sailboat.” But he did, and I love it. It belongs in Buffett’s oeuvre along with other songs he’s written, like “He Went to Paris.” Gentle, reflective, and nothing at all like “Cheeseburger in Paradise.”

I may not have fallen in love in a library, but I’ve gotten lucky in plenty of them. (No, not that kind of “getting lucky.” What do you think I was doing during all those hours I’ve spent in one library or another? Canoodling in the stacks? But I digress.)

I was lucky that my parents, who didn’t read much themselves, valued reading enough that they took me to the library often. Sometimes the library would come to me—or if not directly to me, to the parking lot of a nearby shopping center. It was the bookmobile, and I loved it dearly. When I was very young, I would visit the marvelous vehicle and check out Green Eggs and Ham, still one of my favorite all-time books by one of my favorite authors. In fact, I would check it out on every visit. My mother made a rule. I could check out Green Eggs and Ham every time we went to the bookmobile if I wanted to, but I also had to check out something else as well. (It was a good thing that I learned to read when I was four, or I would have kept her reading it to me every day. But I digress again.)

I was lucky when I cruised the “New Arrivals” section of the big library and found something new to me and unexpectedly fascinating. It broadened my reading enormously.

I was lucky when Ms. magazine had an article on women mystery writers. I went to the library with a copy of it, burrowed into the mystery stacks, and fell in love with Sue Grafton’s and Sara Paretsky’s works, which have stayed with me for decades.

I was lucky when I went to college and got a job in the graduate library, fulfilling requests. (People filled out little slips of paper, which were sent to the upper floors where I worked via vacuum tubes. I located the books and sent them downstairs on a sort of dumbwaiter. When there were no requests, I spent my extra time delving into the stacks. Most of the time, I was on the history/sociology floor, where I learned lots. (The antiquated system of vacuum tubes is still used at the pharmacy drive-through where I pick up my prescriptions, if nowhere else. But I digress some more.))

One day, however, I got really lucky in the library. As I browsed the shelves, looking for my next read, I picked up a book that had a bookmark in it. People use all kinds of things for bookmarks. Some use proper bookmarks and forgetfully leave them in the library book, but others use anything at hand: business cards, envelopes, postcards, playing cards, ribbons, ticket stubs, sticky notes, receipts, the cards that fall out of magazines (these actually have a name: blow-in cards), and even photos.

On the day I got lucky, I picked up a book and noticed someone had used a lotto ticket as a bookmark. And whoever had used it for a bookmark had accidentally used a winning ticket! Going on the venerable, ancient philosophy of “finders keepers,” I cashed in the ticket, which was worth a whole $2.

Naturally, rather than buy something useful like gum or mints with “my” winnings, I decided that my lucky find was meant to bring me even more luck. So I used it to buy another $2 lottery ticket.

It was a loser. But at least that lucky library find had given me a momentary thrill and a soupçon of hope for a million-dollar payout. And that’s in addition to all the books I checked out that day!

How Not to Sell Out

books, etc., family, humor, , ,

As a Girl Scout, I was not a success. Oh, I did a lot of the usual Girl Scout things. I wore the uniform, even to school, when the meetings were right afterward. (This was not a cool and popular look in high school.) I went camping and hiking. One summer, I was even a camp counselor. I learned the campfire songs and taught them to younger campers. I earned badges for esoteric pursuits and wore them on a sash. (Another reason the look was uncool at school.)

Trying to Push Cookies

What I couldn’t do was sell cookies—at least not well. Back in the day, we went door-to-door. (This is considered unsafe now for obvious, unsavory reasons. Nowadays, Girl Scouts market the treats by phone or online, or at tables outside supermarkets. (They would no doubt sell more if they set up their tables outside marijuana dispensaries.) I have a dealer who fixes me up every year. She’s the granddaughter of a fellow scout from my high school days. But I digress.)

My problem with selling door-to-door was that I had a sister who was also a Girl Scout, and with whom I went door-to-door. We split the orders, which meant that I got only half the orders I could have had without her.

Another way that Scouts got orders back then was to send the order forms to where their parents worked. The grown-up could then apply pressure to coworkers to buy. (This led to infighting. “You bought from Norma’s daughter, but not from mine.” But I digress again.)

My father, however, had a government job and claimed that he wasn’t allowed to pass around the order form. I now suspect that this wasn’t strictly true, and that he simply didn’t want to be the middleman.

As an adult, I have become a consumer of Girl Scout cookies, not a purveyor.

I Didn’t Learn My Lesson

My eptitude with sales has not increased over the (many) years.

I have written two books on the subject of bipolar disorder (gleaned from the writings in my other blog, Bipolar Me (www.bipolarme.blog). They aren’t selling well on Amazon. I get royalties from time to time. I’m saving up for a pizza.

I figure my choices for selling these books are:

A) door-to-door (That would be silly, not to say ridiculous. Well, okay, it would be ridiculous. There simply isn’t a neighborhood full of people living with bipolar disorder that I could canvas. But I digress some more.)

B) from a food truck or bookmobile-like trailer. (Same problem as with A. Besides, the price of gas would kill me.)

C) Facebook ads (I tried a few of them, to resounding silence.)

D) ask Dan to take orders at work (That would go over well. Not.)

E) have a website

I chose E. I found a company that would host a website—an online bookstore with my two books (and a third, when I finally write it). The site is called Bipolar World, and it lives at books.by/bipolar-world. Of course, the product is not as appealing as cookies (of the Girl Scout type, not the computer sort).

Maybe I should be pushing books AND cookies on my website. (I could call it the Cookie-Bookie Website, except then people would think I was taking bets on which cookies are the best. I’m pretty sure oatmeal raisin would lose. But I’ve digressed enough for this week.)

Fun With Smut

literature, funny things, humor, books, etc., NSFW, writing, , ,

I may get in trouble for either the picture (no one I know) or the topic, but it’s an aspect of writing and reading that I have just a wee bit of experience with.

How do I feel about “dirty books”? I’m tempted to quote Tom Lehrer from his song “Smut”: “Dirty books are fun. That’s all there is to it.” He also said, “I do have a cause, though. It’s obscenity. I’m for it.” The song contains not one “dirty word.” ( You can find it online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSwYID-u71M. But I digress.)

Reading Smut

I must admit that I did read Fifty Shades of Grey when it first came out, just to see what the commotion was all about. (My advice: Don’t bother. It’s miserably written. And unrealistic. Any couple having that much sex that often would be too chafed to carry on carrying on. But I digress again.)

When I was an editor for an early childhood magazine, I was frequently given books to review. One was an illustrated sex education book for young children, written by a doctor. I don’t remember the title, but the book was written in a style meant to emulate Dr. Seuss. I also don’t remember much of the content, except for this metaphor for some body parts, which he supplied the location of:

The towns are both called testicle

And they look like two round eggs.

They’re not located on a map

But between your Daddy’s legs.

(The conception scene was a meeting of Stanley Sperm (who wore a top hat) and Essie Egg (who wore a bow) in front of an ornate gate. I did not write a review of the book. It was my theory that it could be read aloud at a party to great amusement. But I digress some more.)

Reviewing Smut

I’ve recently gotten a gig reviewing books. Most of the books I’ve reviewed were in a category called “steamy romances.” This means that the couple must overcome obstacles to get together, but when they do, they have sex. This means about two realistic sex scenes per novel. (They’re short. The books, that is. The sex scenes go on for a number of pages.)

Personally, I’m grateful that these books (there’s a series) use neither clinical names nor cutesy euphemisms for body parts. (I still remember in the movie The Naked Gun when someone used the term “throbbing purple-headed warrior.” Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess) has been known to refer to her “lady garden,” a euphemism she created when not allowed to say “vagina” on TV. But I digress some more.)

Writing Smut

Once during my ghostwriting career, I had to write a piece of smut (erotica, if you prefer). It was the adventures of a woman who was connected (sorry) with various men. The men were all gorgeous and rich, and they bought the main character extravagant gifts. The woman gave me an outline describing her (and their) escapades, which I didn’t believe for a moment. I would call it “wish fulfillment porn.”

This time, I was in the position (sorry) of having to come up (sorry) with words to describe body parts and sex acts without being cutesy or clinical. I guess I succeeded. The customer was satisfied (sorry) with it, and I got paid for it (sorry), so I guess I did okay. (I’ve never been tempted (sorry) to look it up on Amazon and read the reviews. We will not discuss whether or how much I had to conduct research for the book. But I digress even more.)

The only other thing I know about writing sex scenes is that a writer friend of mine once wrote one that went on for multiple pages (and orgasms). My husband read it and was impressed.

To the Adriatic and the Alps

books, etc., travel, , , , , , ,

Eastern Europe isn’t a vacation destination that many people would choose these days, given the uncertainty in that part of the world. But in the past (those days as opposed to these), we did.

It started one day when I called Dan at work and asked, “So, do you want to go to Croatia?”

Dan is pretty much used to anything that pops out of my mouth, but this had him stumped. How did I come up with such an outlandish notion?

The answer is fairly simple. I belong to a website that advertises low-cost vacations. We had used them to arrange a trip to Mexico for us, which was very nice. So when they offered a trip to Eastern Europe for an unbelievably low price, I was ready to jump on it. And I hoped Dan would be, too.

“I can get us a deal that includes a vacation in Croatia, with days in Venice and Slovenia, and excursions to Bosnia/Herzegovina and Montenegro. It’s a great price. But I need an answer right away. At this price, it will fill up fast.”

“Okay,” he said. “Why the hell not?” (Did I mention I love him?) I booked the trip.

Venice, of course, isn’t in Eastern Europe, but it is a gateway. To get to the region easily, you fly into Venice and transfer by bus to Croatia. We had a jet-lagged afternoon in Venice to spend seeing the sites, including some off the tourist map like the tower with a spiral staircase named El Bovolo (the snail). We took a gondola ride around the city and a water taxi to the island of Murano, where we got to see glass blown and many examples far too expensive for us. Then on to Croatia.

Croatia, like Venice, is on the Adriatic, and the coast shares the Mediterranean climate and many features. There are Roman ruins in the Istrian Peninsula and olive and citrus trees everywhere. The whole of the coastline consists of beaches on the Adriatic Sea, harbors, and quaint houses with red tiled roofs. On the inland side of Croatia, where it nears Bosnia/Herzegovina, you are in the Dinaric Alps. A gorgeous National Park, called Plitvice Lakes, features lakes (of course), waterfalls, cliffs, stone trails, and rainbows. It’s particularly lovely in the snow. This side of Croatia is definitely not Mediterranean.

Zagreb is the capital, and there we saw, in the Old Town, a 15th-century clock tower 31 meters tall. I went into a bookstore, found a science fiction novel I dearly love, and bought it. “It’s in Croatian,” the proprietor said, looking puzzled. “I know,” I replied. I wanted it for a souvenir.

Another entertaining sight in Zagreb was a public festival celebrating contraception and safe sex, which featured a number of people in large sperm costumes dancing around. I wish I had gotten a picture of it. And in a town called Split, Dan and I split a banana split in a restaurant.

We also visited Slovenia and a city there, Ljubljana. There is a Tolkien-themed bar there where we had a beer to celebrate one of our favorite works of fiction. And there are castles, one of which we tried to geocache at (see my post on geocaching), but were stymied. We knew exactly where the cache was, but it was underneath a large mound of snow.

We made a side trip to Montenegro, a small, mountainous country (the name means Black Mountain) at the tip end of Croatia. It’s famous (to mystery fans, anyway, of which I’m one) for being the birthplace of detective Nero Wolfe. The country is quite mountainous, with little taverns strewn about and rockslides that looked like Wile E. Coyote might be trapped under them.

Eventually, we made our way back to Venice, where we spent another night before flying out. It was my birthday the day we left, so Dan sneaked out in the morning and bought me an orchid, which I had to carry all through the airport. Strangers kept asking, “Is that for me?” and I always replied, “I don’t know. Is it your birthday?” (It never was.) The orchid made it home with us, no more disheveled than we were.

With all the metaphoric clouds hanging over the area (the weather was pleasant the whole time we were there), I’m not sure I’d want to visit Eastern Europe right now. But Dan says he wants to retire in Montenegro. I’m thinking Costa Rica. We’ll see.

Roommate Roulette

books, etc., funny things, health, humor, television, travel, , , ,

When I spent time in a skilled nursing facility recently, I quickly learned that one didn’t find a compatible roommate. The choice was up to the whims of the powers that be. It could turn out either good or less-than-good. (My insurance company would only spring for a double room, so there was no chance of a private one, except on the occasion when my roommate happened to move out. But I digress.)

All-in-all, my experiences varied from okay to excellent. My first roommate was Norma, who was quiet and inoffensive, but unfortunately addicted to the TV show Gunsmoke, which she watched all day long. I suppose I could have raised an objection, but I was determined to keep the peace and, after all, I could hardly inflict on her eight-plus hours of cooking shows and Star Trek reruns. Norma was released to go home, however, and I had the room all to myself, my chefs, and my aliens.

The next time I returned to the facility, my roommate was Brenda, a woman with a large family who created quite a commotion when they all visited at once, though that was not often. When it happened, I retreated to Pandora and my earbuds (a must for any stay in such a facility).

I was moved to another room when Brenda developed an infection and had to be isolated. (Since we were then across the hall from each other, our Physical Therapist arranged for us to have weight-lifting sessions in our doorways so we could see each other and chat. Sometimes, Shirley, the lady next door to Brenda, joined in as well, and we all chatted while doing curls. But I digress again.)

My best roommate, however, was my third one, Darlene. She didn’t care for TV and had only a few visitors. Among her other ailments, she had PTSD, so she preferred to keep the curtain between us pulled and wouldn’t be distracted by comings and goings in the hall.

The curtain proved no impediment to our growing friendship, however. We started bonding over our shared love of murder mysteries and true crime books. Naturally, the subject of Jack the Ripper came up. (As it does.)

“When we were in England, my husband and I took the Jack the Ripper walking tour,” I shared.

“Oh!” Darlene exclaimed. “I’ve always wanted to go on that.”

“It was a foggy, drizzly evening—very atmospheric. And we booked our walk when Donald Rumbelow was guiding it.”

She recognized the name immediately. “Donald Rumbelow! I’ve read his book on Jack the Ripper! He’s the best!”

“That’s why we chose a tour when he was leading. We also went to 221B Baker St. and saw the Sherlock Holmes Museum. It was a small, narrow building sandwiched between two others. Every floor had displays related to his famous cases. The top floor held a toilet with a blue Delft-like design in the bowl. It looked much too pretty to use. Even if you could make it up all six flights to get there.”

“You’ve been to the places I’ve always wanted to go and done the things I’ve dreamed of doing! Tell me more!” We were off and running on travelers’ tales.

After that, we dissected our favorite mystery series and recommended them to each other. We talked about holidays and favorite foods and family and pets. We spoke of exes and jobs and rated the nurses and aides. We cheered each other on about the distance we’d walked during physical therapy.

And we talked politics. I had been reluctant to share my political views with anyone at the facility, knowing how divisive, not to say explosive, such talk can be. But once again, Darlene and I were completely in sync. We despaired of the state our country is in and blamed the same people for it. When neither one of us could sleep, we talked well into the wee hours of the morning.

Darlene had a birthday while we were both residents, and she shared it with me. Literally. We each ate half of the yummy carrot cake with cream cheese frosting that her family brought her. She reveled vicariously in the little anniversary dinner that Dan arranged for me, which featured sushi, electric candlelight, mood music, and ginger ale in champagne glasses. Dan brought Darlene a case of Diet Cokes and a box of plasticware that her arthritic hands could manage at mealtime. (The aides often forgot.) She let me watch Practical Magic on her DVD player and I ordered her a copy of Fletch when she told me how much she liked it.

I’m out of the facility now, but Darlene is in for the long term. Today, we’re going to stop by and surprise her with a box of the cheese-and-peanut-butter crackers she can’t resist. I can’t wait to see her face light up.

Down the Rabbit Hole

books, etc., humor, literature, writing, ,

Almost five years ago, I wrote a post about how memories from my (and likely your) childhood were being repurposed for political statements and propaganda.

This time I’m writing about a classic piece of literature being rewritten for other purposes. (Largely unobjectionable ones, it’s true, but it’s the principle of the thing. But I digress.)

The work in question is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (more often known as Alice in Wonderland). It’s one of my favorite pieces of literature and I have returned to it many times since I first read it (murfle) decades ago.

(I have a friend who despises Alice. He finds it to be nonsense (which it obviously is) and incomprehensible. This despite the fact that he has returned to it frequently to see if it makes any more sense. (He ought to like at least part of it because he’s a mathematician, like the author, Lewis Carroll. I recommended The Annotated Alice (edited by Martin Gardner), which explains the jokes, Briticisms, and outdated expressions. (It also includes “Jabberwocky” in French, German, and IIRC, Latin.) But I digress, pedantically and at length.)

The “quotations” in question are not political but psychological or philosophical. I’m not saying they’re invalid—merely that they are misquoted, misattributed, or completely made up.

One of the most common misquotes is attributed to the Cheshire Cat:

“You’re mad, bonkers, off your head. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”

What the Cheshire Cat actually really said is much more complex. Here’s the context:

“But I don’t want to go among mad people’” Alice remarked.

“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” 

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.” 

One quotation supposedly from the Mad Hatter is:

The secret, Alice, is to surround yourself with people who make your heart smile. It’s then, only then, that you’ll find Wonderland.

Unobjectionable if sappy, but not from the book. The same with this one:

But, said Alice, if the world has absolutely no sense, who’s stopping us from inventing one?

The most annoying fake dialogue is this one, between Alice and the White Rabbit.

“Do you love me?” Alice asked.

“No, I don’t love you!” replied the White Rabbit.

Alice frowned and clasped her hands together as she did whenever she felt hurt.

“See?” replied the White Rabbit. “Now you’re going to start asking yourself what makes you so imperfect and what did you do wrong so that I can’t love you at least a little. You know, that’s why I can’t love you. You will not always be loved Alice, there will be days when others will be tired and bored with life, will have their heads in the clouds, and will hurt you. Because people are like that, they somehow always end up hurting each other’s feelings, whether through carelessness, misunderstanding, or conflicts with themselves. If you don’t love yourself, at least a little, if you don’t create an armor of self-love and happiness around your heart, the feeble annoyances caused by others will become lethal and will destroy you. The first time I saw you I made a pact with myself: ‘I will avoid loving you until you learn to love yourself.’”

The White Rabbit was late to play croquet with the Queen of Hearts. He wouldn’t have had time to discourse on self-love.

Alice has been in the public domain since 1907, so one can misquote or invent all they want. (The Disney movie version only came out in 1951, The book was in the public domain, but the movie isn’t. I think we can expect a live-action film. I hope they lose the repellent pink-and-purple Cheshire Cat, though I doubt they will. But I digress again.)

Surely no one would do this kind of thing to The Wizard of Oz…or would they? [squints suspiciously]

New Love Languages

books, etc., family, humor, , , ,

Noted author Gary Chapman has written that there are five “Love Languages.”

They are physical touch, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, and gift-giving. Others have suggested that there are seven love languages that add emotional support and intellectual sharing to the total. (These all sound just fine, but trouble arises when a couple speak different languages. If one offers physical touch and the other longs for quality time, they’re destined to clash. But I digress.)

I would like to suggest two more: baton twirling and cake decorating.

In general, I don’t care for cheerleaders, especially the ones for professional sports, who wear the skimpiest of outfits and do the lewdest of dances. That’s the stereotype, at least. I understand that nowadays, cheerleaders perform acrobatic moves and build themselves into complex pyramids. (Evidently, I need to rethink my prejudice regarding cheerleaders. But I digress again.)

Baton twirlers, on the other hand, I hold in higher esteem. They have a talent to show that involves a piece of equipment and dexterity. (Not completely unlike the tuba player in the marching band, who never gets the credit they deserve. But I digress some more.)

However, I discovered something when I talked to a coworker. Her daughter was a baton twirler, and Mom watched her practice in their yard, offered tips from her own twirling days, and came to every game she twirled at. What I realized was that it was her mother’s way of speaking love. If you define it in terms of the seven love languages, the eighth one (baton-twirling) could also be called consistency.

Consistency comes in any number of ways. The key element is being there. Someone who gives consistent attention is someone you can rely on. They’ll read your novel drafts (every time you rewrite them) and accompany you to all your dreadful office parties. You just know that when you need them, they’ll be there, whether that’s to remove a tick or (to choose an example not totally at random) open a letter from the IRS. Or watch you throw a stick in the air and catch it.

The other love language I learned about (cake decorating, in case you’ve lost track) was also inspired by a coworker. Every year, she created a cake for her son and decorated it in honor of one of his interests—cartoon or comic book character, motocross, whatever he happened to care about that year. These were elaborate decorations, not just a toy motorcycle popped on top of a bakery cake or something similar. They were elaborate, decorative, inspired, and personal. I’ve seen the pictures.

(It should be noted that this was in the days before everyone learned how to make buttercream roses, tempered chocolate, Swiss meringue, macarons, gelees, mousselines, molecular gastronomy, and all the other spiffy elements you can learn on YouTube or Food Network. But I digress yet again.)

I would call this the love language of creativity—making something special with your hands for a loved one. It doesn’t have to be something edible, though of course it can be. A flower you’ve grown yourself, a bookshelf you’ve crafted, or a refurbished treasure that’s been broken or forgotten are all examples of creative love. (My husband and my mother found a rag doll of mine (Raggedy Johnny, like Raggedy Andy, only John Denver) in disrepair after a move and fixed him up. That’s the sort of thing I mean. But I digress even more.)

I don’t expect baton twirling or cake decorating to appear in the next edition of the Love Languages book. But I do think that Consistency and Creativity deserve consideration. So does Consideration. After all, at heart, aren’t all love languages Consideration?

Dan’s Only Friend

books, etc., humor, music, ,

The phone rang and Dan picked it up. He held it out to me. “It’s your friend,” he said.

“Which friend? I replied. “My friend Robbin?”

“No, he replied.

“My friend Beth?”

“No.”

“My friend Tom?”

“No.”

“My friend Kim?”

“No.”

“My friend Jean?”

“No.”

“My friend Peggy?”

“No.”

“My friend Leslie.”

“Yes.”

“Geez,” I said, snatching the phone. “You make it sound like I only have one friend!”

The irony was that Dan worked in a place where friends were hard to come by. His hobbies are solitary, like working in the garden, reading about archaeology, and watching old movies on streaming services. He doesn’t like sports or going out drinking. Then he went to a support group, where he made one friend, John.

Whenever John called for Dan, I was truthfully able to say, “It’s your only friend.”

John caught on and was amused. Sometimes he would call and say, “Tell Dan it’s his only friend.”

(Dan also continued the joke with me. Someone would call for me and I would ask, “Who is it?” He would say, “It’s your only friend.” I would reply, “Is it my only friend Kathy?” “No.” “Is it my only friend Mary Jo?” “No.” And so on. But I digress.)

At one time, there were friends we shared. Beth, for example. Dan met her at a job they both worked at. One evening, however, we went to a work party and Dan introduced us. We got on the topic of science fiction.

“You’ve got to meet my husband,” Beth said. “He loves Isaac Asimov. He’s read everything he’s written.”

“Oh?” I replied, without thinking, “He’s written 200 books.” (Later, he wrote even more.)

Then we talked poetry and Beth, abashed, admitted that her favorite poet was Ogden Nash. (He’s considered pretty low-brow, but I can recite several of his poems, which I enjoy for his ingenious rhymes “platinum” and “flatten’em,” for example. But I digress some more.)

Beth was intimidated. (I have that effect on a lot of people for some reason.) But we became friends anyway. Once when Dan was lamenting that he had only one friend, I pointed out that he was friends with Beth before I was. “You stole her,” he replied.

There was a chance that I would steal John as well. He and I had a lot in common, like country music and murder mysteries, which we could talk about for long enough to make Dan feel left out. But instead of one of us claiming his friendship, we ended up sharing custody.

John and Dan would go off together on occasion without me. When I asked where they went, Dan would only reply, “That place.” They would never say where it was. (I figured it wasn’t a strip bar, since Dan had gotten them out of his system in his youth.)

Then John and I started going off on our own, just the two of us. (We called them our “hot dates.” A typical one would be thrift shopping, lunch at a diner, and a shared bag of M&Ms for dessert. We never told Dan what they consisted of. But I digress again.) (Once we went to a tobacconist (John smoked a pipe) and it was all I could do not to say to the proprietor, “My hovercraft is full of eels.” Yet another digression.)

All of us were cool with this arrangement. There was no jealousy or fighting over our outings. But John passed away a number of years ago, upsetting the balance of our friendships. We both still remember him fondly.

Now, I’m Dan’s only friend.