Monday, February 28, 2011

Helen Mirren’s Dress

Well, surely AOL didn’t read my blog, but this evening it is showing Helen Mirren in her pretty dress at the Oscars. However, it doesn’t look as pretty in the photo as it did on the screen last night.

On Writing Poetry, Part 1

Here’s a reply to an occasional question sent my way: what are your secrets for writing poetry? This always amuses me, for I believe poets are born poets and should not need teaching about writing poetry. But for those who struggle and possibly turn out something praiseworthy, and for those who don’t struggle but think they turn out something just as good, I’ll mention a few ideas that don’t usually appear in all books on writing poetry.

Poets probably wrote their first gems as rhymes. If rhyme came easy for you when you were little, are you still using the run-fun-sun-gun and perhaps even a Hun in your poems as an adult? It was time to move on years ago. I’ll give an example: one line of mine ended with the word bacon and needed a rhyme in the very next line. What a thrill it was when that line ended with to awake on. In an otherwise artless piece, this rhyme was the only worthwhile and clever thing. But that little bit didn’t make the whole a poem. You’re welcomed to use it yourself, but know that it is printed herein on this date, and you won’t get by with it. I’ll likely never use it elsewhere, but it’s still all mine. I don’t mean I created it, for I didn’t. It just came to me out of the blue.

There you have what poetry is: clever, original, and often beautiful or dark phrasing that comes to you out of the blue with no better way of saying it.

To produce your best, choose to write either poetry or prose, but not both during the same period of your life. If you think you can write both equally well, just try naming a few famous writers who excelled at both. There’s Robert Louis Stevenson, but did he write children’s poetry in the same period of his life in which he wrote the adult crime story “Markheim”? I doubt it. Hemingway failed at writing poetry. Robert Frost would likely have failed at writing a novel. C. S. Lewis failed at poetry, though some was published after his death, but he gave us the Narnia stories and one of the best books I’ve ever read, Out of the Silent Planet, volume one of a trilogy of science fiction fantasy.

If you don’t have a fathomless or skyrocketing but controlled imagination, don’t try writing either poetry or fiction, though you may get a Pulitzer with your nonfiction.

A bit more about rhyme. Some words are not poetic except with the pens of real geniuses, Ogden Nash, to name one. Don’t let the second word in your rhyme sound forced. Robert Frost once said, when he was given a poem to critique, the first thing he did was to look in the rhyme column. If the second part of the rhyme was forced, he rejected the poem.

In a poetry contest I once judged, a poem rolled along okay for a beginner’s attempt [she was past 65 years of age], till I came to the last word: galore. It did not complement what went before, so noticeably forced. Here is a way to get around that, if you are one of those who struggle with writing poetry, aiming at something praiseworthy. Since you are not waiting for a line or word to strike you from out of the blue, choose the second word of the rhyme first. That’s no sillier than choosing the first one first with no idea in mind.

As the name suggests, light verse is not so serious as lyric, dramatic, or narrative poetry. But it should, above all other concerns, be clever, surprisingly clever. Of course, it can be funny, but not funny without being clever. That would be corn.

What’s Happening Could Be Better

This is a history-making time. But when isn’t it? It’s just that now all day long we can tune in to some channel and find tragedy after tragedy in numerous areas of the world. What seem to be civil war and genocide in Libya are a horrifying blot on the conscience of mankind and a paralyzing shock at the inaction of the United States. If we were waiting till all Americans were out of Libya to do anything, then why weren’t we Johnny-on-the-spot with planes or ships as soon as we got out of there? I cannot imagine this sort of waffling from Ronald Reagan or even John F. Kennedy.

I remember, many years ago my husband and I listened to the radio in the late-night hours as the citizens of Hungary begged for America’s help. The citizens of Tripoli, with their houses boarded up against Gadhafi’s henchmen, must be calling for Americans to free them. What other power can but the USA?

Then there is the sordid demonstration in Wisconsin. Governor Walker is just doing what he promised to do in his political campaign, trying to get Wisconsin’s financial crisis in order. One possible disappointing outcome is that other governors may be too wimpy to do anything about cutting their states’ expenses. But the buck stops with each governor.

Other trouble spots exist but I don’t have enough information to hold much of an opinion on those. But one thing for sure, the minute one unrest takes a hiatus on our screens, another is already in the making. Perhaps Saudi Arabia next?

While I’m protesting here, a word about last night’s Oscars. Wouldn’t it be great if actors and actresses could perform as well at these Academy Award events as they do in the roles they’re awarded for? Although this year’s ceremony was more sensible than last year’s, it still had some speeches lacking in some respect. The men’s speeches were much better, as a whole, than the women’s, with Colin Firth doing a great job with his. And again, one of the best actresses in modern filmdom, Helen Mirren, got short shrift, not from the Hollywood audience this time, but from AOL. It didn’t show her beautiful gown online. Most of the gowns were, as usual, overdone and ridiculous, but hers was just right.

As I watched the performance, with interest only in one film—The King’s Speech—I wondered if any of the stars knew anything about Libya’s plight. Directors and screen-writers probably keep up with the news because of the nature of their work, but actors may be busy with their stylists, their clothes, and other ingredients that go into making a star. They don’t have to know anything outside of that world.

One good happening in the last few days was seeing again my grandson, his wife, and baby home from Libya, safe inside the USA. They visited me here, with a news channel on all the time in the background. We watched the ferry land at Malta and news people get aboard, but we didn’t see a stream of Americans alight. It was enough to know they could.

For me, back to the news now, as I prepare my simple lunch.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Congressman Jim Cooper of Tennessee’s 4th District

His speech was in progress when I tuned in tonight to C-SPAN. What a treat! A “blue dog democrat,” he was speaking at Harvard University Law School on January 27, 2011. He spoke on our “broken Congress,” and offered some excellent ideas to make it better. I won’t attempt to tell you much about what he said, but I urge you to hear the entire speech online. I plan to do that when I can find that 25th hour somewhere.

Cooper does not like to raise money for any campaign of his. He says he’s not good at it. He mentioned one Congressman, whose name I didn’t catch, who raised/raises no more than $500 for each campaign and got/gets reelected. He says Congressmen don’t need more pay and indicated there should probably be a different pay scale. One suggestion was to pay for members’ success in creating ways for cutting expenses. Perhaps the word used was “budget.”

His audience included some professors of law, several of whom were good friends of his, and the applause after the address was loud. During Q&A he received compliments on and thanks for the speech from all who offered questions, if I recall accurately. [I was quite tired and sleepy, but wouldn’t have missed this for anything.] An extra delight was his intellectual sense of humor. I’d never heard of this man before, but I’d certainly like to vote for him to be reelected. He’s been in Congress a while. I hope he stays there for many years to come. Do watch this program online.

From Tripoli to Boise

It’s a long flight, but by way of Malta, they are finally here: grandson Robby, his wife Melissa, and precious little Johnny Rocco. [That’s what I call the baby. His parents call him Rocco. There are so many Johns in our family that I guess I felt we needed one more.] I had a long phone talk with Robby today and Friday they are planning to drop by to see me.

I asked him if his contacts in Tripoli had verified that the atrocities we’ve heard about on the telly were actually going on in Tripoli. He said yes, they were, even worse than what our reports stated. At one point he learned protestors were just outside their apartment house. His friends told him not to bring his family back there.

Robby hopes the company he works for has insurance to cover his losses. Besides most of their clothing and their computers, there was/is also $3,000 in a small safe in the apartment. They have settled temporarily in Robby’s parents’ house in Idaho, from which location he will still do some work for the company. He may be sent a new computer anytime soon. Robby’s mother, my daughter-in-law, is to get in tomorrow night from Australia. She will be overjoyed to see them all and will likely hold Rocco in her arms for a very long time.

I asked Robby if he would like, when the turmoil in Libya is past, to go back there just to witness the changes. He said he would like to do that. He made some good friendships with the locals, and he has some worry about them, plus the last ten from the engineering company, posted in Benghazi. He heard that they had been taken to a safer place.

Robby’s cousin made it home too, as of today, I believe, the nephew of his mother.

So, the family is happy today but sad about the extreme loss of life at the command of a mad man.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Great and Sad News

The good news is that my grandson, his wife, and baby son took a jaunt away from Tripoli to spend a few days on Malta, a place they like. As things got worse in Libya, they did not go back. He heard the people who operate the building where they had an apartment deserted their jobs and left everything for looters. So, he wrote, they lost everything, including laptops and sentimental objects they cherished, and their clothing except for the three-day supply they had with them. They are probably in the States today. And if so, should be sleeping now. I hope to see them soon.

The sad news, as of an hour ago, is that that tyrant Gadhafi has ordered as much killing as possible of his own people, even bringing in mercenary killers from outside to do so in the middle of the night. Another high-up official has resigned his position. That makes two of those to do that, and some army pilots flew to Malta for safety and protection, saying they would not fire on Libyan citizens again. Don’t be surprised to hear soon that Gadhafi is himself dead. A big problem with that is that since the Libyan people have not had any freedom at all, they also have no one with leadership ability to lead them. May the day of Divine Right of Kings return, in this one case, to lift up the right leader that would be now needed.

♥♥♥

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Governors for the Presidency

In recent days we television viewers have met some state governors we had never heard of before. One question they all seem to get these days is, “Are you going to run for the presidency?” I want to mention two of them here.

Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey had an excellent answer to that question. He said he didn’t think anyone should seek the highest office in the land without having solid ideas about doing the job, not just that the opportunity was there. In his case, he had the opportunity, but he did not feel he was ready with the answers to the current problems [my wording, not his]. The first time he spoke this whole paragraph on the subject, I liked his reply a great deal. But when he repeated the entire thing verbatim within a few minutes, proving it was a memorized response, probably practiced many times before a mirror, I changed my mind. Not only was he not ready to be president, I was not ready for him to be president.

Another possible candidate I met for the first time last night was Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin. I didn’t hear much of what he said, some of it way over my head anyway, but as I was in and out of the viewing room, I particularly noticed how good looking he was, and that he did not act as if he knew that. That’s what I like in a handsome man, the fact that he doesn’t seem to realize he’s handsome. I think he would have been just as handsome if his hair were white. [His black hair seemed to be “touched up” a bit, perhaps a prompting by his wife, if he has one, but I don’t mind that.]

Several former governors’ names always get tossed into the hat: Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and even a non-governor-ever Donald Trump. All of these have their plusses. Maybe the Donald has the least chance, but whoever is elected in 2012, he or she should certainly appoint Trump as a financial advisor. He has some good ides about that. He’s also a patriotic citizen and that means so much. All of these mentioned in this blog are patriotic citizens, I believe. How refreshing!

Teachers’ Protest in Wisconsin

The spectacle of teachers protesting in the streets of Madison, Wisconsin, demonstrates the very reason I was not a member of a union when I taught school for thirty years. (I was a member the first year, but never again.) I looked upon teaching as a profession, not just a job. If the rest of them had marched in strike, I would have gone to my classroom to teach anyway. If no student showed up, I would have stayed there till my regular time was ended for the day. I understood the others would have called me a scab. Who cares about that?

As I think this blog already states somewhere, I explained to the high school seniors I taught that they could look into salary schedules, insurance, tenure, etc., in any school district before opting even to train to become a teacher. It doesn’t make sense to me to have such information and then, at the drop of a hat, start striking for higher pay or for certain other advantages. What they should have been protesting for a long while is the scandalous amount of money poured into education in this country with the results sinking lower and lower each year. They pay taxes too. Don’t they care? We are not getting our money’s worth out of today’s public schools. It is a shame on the part of many, a crime of a few.
Current Danger Zones and My Family

With one grandson working in Libya, with his wife and baby son there too, and with another grandson studying in Mexico City for one semester (part of his junior year at West Point), I try to keep up with what’s transpiring in those areas. I wrote to Robby to suggest they stay out of the streets in Tripoli, and discovered him and his family at Malta, which they like to visit. Friends are keeping him clued in about conditions “back home.”

My guess is that West Point is keeping an eye out for the safety of its students abroad. But I’ll be glad when both grandsons are safely back in the States.

One of my sons is working in western Australia and his wife is with him. That sounds like a much safer place to be at the present time. The countries that speak English—because England was once there—seem safer for Americans.

There is really no safe place anymore, is there? But of the places that exist, the USA is the very best place on earth to be.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Sounds Like Science Fiction but It Isn’t

So, someone is working on creating a button that our president and all future presidents may press that will cut off all communications by computer in the entire country in what are deemed times of international emergency. Why do I have the feeling that all those who clamor for freedom of speech and of the press with regard to everything else will not be crusading against this? I heard this just today and the spokesman wasn’t talking about Iran.

Shepard Smith on Fox News

All the other television networks probably wish Fox News’s Shepard Smith worked for them instead. Shep is just tops. He’s young, good-looking, and has a great sense of humor, the best ad-libber around. I like it when he gives the time or the weather, or something similar, and adds how it is in Oxford. He doesn’t mean Oxford, England, but Oxford, Mississippi. I think he’s from Mississippi and likely, from Oxford. I love it. Way to go, Shep.

Better yet, Shep shows a sympathetic heart when he reports disasters. Fox seems to call him in especially to report on these events. At times it seems his heart is breaking. Now my guess is journalists are taught not to show emotions in their reporting and perhaps all the other reporters should obey this rule. But Shep is unique. He’s never maudlin. His viewers must appreciate his tender comments as well as his humor, or Fox wouldn’t be the most popular network on cable with a constantly growing audience.

One day I caught sight of him running to get to his assigned spot to start the newscast. Only Shep could do that with audience delight. Imagine Wolf Blitzer doing that! Is that the guy’s name?

Shep gives the news twice a day [if more, I don’t know about it], from 1:00 to 2:00 p. m., Mountain Time, and from 5:00 to 6:00 in the evening.

I’m not sure Shep has a law degree, as many of the Fox staffers do, even those young blond consultants who look like college coeds. But he doesn’t need a law degree; he reports, you decide [to coin an original slogan].

Young ladies reading me, if you need a job, get a law degree, become a bleached blonde, and apply at Fox News. Everyone there seems happy, at least on the screen.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Drug Alert: Don’t Overdo It

As a writer, my fiction mostly connected with crime, I eagerly grasp every little fact about crime that I catch on television or anywhere else. It’s one method of research. I just heard a goodie of this sort, but actually it’s a fact everyone should be aware of. Here it is:

A Tylenol overdose is one of the most painful deaths anyone can experience, for it takes about one week to destroy the liver which is what the drug does if taken in overdose. No mention of how many of them constitute an overdose. Take care.

Monday, February 14, 2011

What I Actually Did

I did whack off my hair to a length I can function with and then I wrote another story for the contests. The assigned theme was “Footprints on the Ceiling.” What a ball I had writing it! When I first read this assignment, I was sure I could not imagine any footprints on the ceiling, but I did.

But let me tell you how I cut my hair. I merely divided it down the middle at the back, then brought one half of it toward the left ear in one point and with barber’s scissors cut off about an inch of it. Then the other side the same way. Took about a minute. Could have done it in the dark.

Jane Austen and I

Happy Valentine's Day to all my readers.

It’s perfectly clear to me why Jane Austen did not reveal in her novels what was going on in the real world and she didn’t have television to interfere with the process of her art. For the past few weeks the action in Tucson, in Egypt, and now in Iran, has distracted me to the point of almost forgetting I have a blog to feed. It’s not easy to perform in the real world and at the same time in the writing world of which blogging is the smallest part. A bigger surprise is that the reading has dragged too. Now, if someone(s) would just straighten out the problems of the real world, it would help in more than one way.

It’s time for writing and mailing in our entries for this year’s Idaho Writer’s [sic] League writing contests and I have worked today on that project. Not with quite the same enthusiasm as that of last year, but that will come. I suppose. One does not wait for inspiration, of course, but just starts writing and inspiration shows up sooner or later. Then one can chop off all that writing without the inspiration and proceed with what’s left. Today I cut down the current story from 3,669 words to 3,498 to fit the limit of 3,500 words. That is fun and tightening up the wording is great first-aid. But to get on with it, I’m going to a mirror and cut my hair short. Then I can write with more ease and my stylist can finish the job next Thursday.