Who Are You? What Do You Want? Where Are You Going? Whom Do You Serve – And Whom Do You Trust?!
One of the other volunteers helping to put together the San Antonio Tea Party on April 15th put together this awesome spot, for Youtube and other venues:
Just thought I would share: the project is growing by leaps and bounds: we have a planning committee meeting scheduled for Sunday afternoon.
I’m having one of those intermittent impulses to start stockpiling shelf-stable, dried and canned foods again. Not sure where it comes from, only that some of the generalized dark-gray cloud of gloom and doom that is lurking in the atmosphere may have just finished drizzling a mist of vague paranoia down onto Blondie and me. Or maybe it’s the ancestral memories of my grandmothers, no mean slouches in the food-prep and stash-away in case of a spectacularly bad winter or some unspecified disaster. They both of them lived through the Depression; when Grannie Dodie passed on, there was a couple of years worth of canned goods stashed in the garage, some of them so old the tops of the cans had gone dull-colored under a decade of dust. Grannie Jessie was raised on a Pennsylvania farm where they butchered a pig every fall, filled the root-cellar with potatoes, beets and carrots, and canned the results of their summer garden, in shelf after shelf groaning under the weight of mason jars, filled to the top with jewel-toned tomatoes, green beans, piccalilli and Concord grape jelly.
Save for the two years and some spent living in Utah, my own packing-the-larder-with-massive-stocks of food was pretty much modeled after Mom’s… which is to say, we didn’t, much. We generally had just enough on the shelves and in the fridge to last until the next go-round of grocery-shopping. Why not? The grocery store was always there, Dad’s paychecks were at least marginally generous, and regular; and Mom really didn’t care for canned foods, preferring the fresh and/or made from scratch variety. And we lived in California, for pete’s sake, the year-round fair weather and agricultural champion of the west. Generally the emergency food stash in Mom’s larder consisted of a couple of cans of tomato sauce, some canned Vienna sausages and an extra-large can of tuna. Maybe some dried pasta, and something exotic in a tiny can with foreign lettering on it, which someone gave to Mom and Dad as a Christmas present a couple of years previous which Mom was saving for a special occasion and which no one ever quite had the nerve to open, because if it was really vile, no one would want to eat it and then it would all go to waste. And if it turned out to be really, really good, then we wouldn’t be able to find or afford another can, so best just leave it safely on the back of the shelf.
Besides, at the Redwood House, we did have a vegetable garden, and a range of olive trees, and Hilltop House was planted all around with orange and lemon trees, so in the case of a grand economic meltdown, as a last resort, we would have had olives and oranges and lemons, by the bag… anyway, the long and short of it is, that I never felt the least interest or impulse to stash away mass quantities of relatively imperishable food until that period when I was assigned to Hill AFB, Utah—where, for a variety of reasons, this was a cultural and religious imperative, to the point where most old-style suburban houses came ready-stocked with a couple of fruit-bearing trees and a vegetable plot, along with the seasonal water-system to irrigate same. My own rental house in South Ogden came equipped with a root-cellar, lots of larder-space, a bearing cherry tree and a hedge of insanely prolific apricot trees… some of the best of them were intensely succulent; it was as if someone, thirty years before had walked the fence-line planting apricot trees, and so ever since the lawn along that side of the yard was mined with moldering fruit and mounds of apricot stones. There were so damned many apricots, and I did my best, I really did, but I haven’t been able to bear the smell of a dried apricot ever since. All the ordinary grocery stores stocked lavish quantities and varieties of canning supplies, and restaurant-sized bags of flour and sugar, and other staples… so it was as if there was something in the water. I eventually bought a deep-freezer, and an electric dehydrator, for reasons that I cannot very well articulate. It just seemed like a very good idea, at the time.
And so, now it seems like a good idea again. Maybe the various experts in disaster preparedness, dinning advice into my ears over the last couple of years – after Katrina, after floods, fires, riots and diverse other disasters – have finally achieved a degree of success with me … or there is something about these times, and reading about all those people who- through forethought, were comfortably equipped to ride out disasters. I just have the feeling that I ought to start doing this. Have enough food on hand at all times, stocks of things that I just cannot live without, like tea and jam for bread, and the means to cook food, if there should there be a power interruption that lasts for weeks. I ought not to be depending on a local grocery store, if we run short in a day or so. I ought to have sufficient a stash – for days, weeks and even months. I ought to have a garden again, for more than just ornament, and something in the larder- more than just the usual couple of cans of tomatoes, the half-used packet of Japanese-panko dried bread-crumbs, and the various bug-proof glass jars with about half a cup of dried beans in the bottom, lentils ditto.
So, this Friday, Blondie and I were checking out Sam’s Club and making a list. I can’t, with all my other financial obligations, say that I spent a bomb, on everything that we looked at… but I invested in a 8-pack case of canned tomatoes, a quart each of olive oil and honey, a brick of cheddar cheese – which, alas, tastes nothing as good as the Department of Ag surplus cheddar, which used to be sold at the military commissaries at like, about 50 cents a pound and made the most totally awesome mac-and-cheese imaginable. We made notes about the costs of 25 and 50-pound bags of rice, and beans… and the costs of another propane bottle… I just can’t get away from the feeling that I ought to be doing something more. I bought a bunch of 2-inch pots of tomatoes and pepper plants a couple of weeks ago; they were on sale, at a very good price at the Humongous Big-Ass Grocery chain, a week ago. We planted them, last weekend, the tomatoes in pots, and the peppers in the ground… but I can’t escape the feeling that I ought to be doing more, that I can squeeze some more edible plants into the sun-warmed spots in the garden…
I have read that letting potatoes sprout, and then cutting them up, with a sprout in each piece, that they grow very well… and that fava beans will grow in a heap of gravel.
Spring is here, and with the usual promise of a new season. Its just that those promises are all of vague and threatening things. Thus to work, this weekend. In the garden, and on other projects.
Ok, so in the main, I’m kinda torn. Watching the Fresh Prince of Chicago and his administration melt down is pretty amusing, in a sick, sadistic sort of way; I wake up in the morning, and turn on the computer now, and wonder if the State Department has gifted the Turkish Prime Minister with a bobble-headed Mohammed, or presented President Sarcozy of France with a fine selected case of box-wine and a tastefully gift-wrapped tube of deodorant. Seriously, after the cut-rate Box ‘o Movies to Gordon Brown – in the wrong format yet – I don’t think I would be all that surprised to read of the above official gifts being dispensed by the administration of the guy who was supposed to make the whole world like us again, after that uncouth Cowboy Bush. That’s the trouble with being surreal and humorous in these dark times – just when you had thought up something that you assumed was impossibly, comically far over the top – there it is, all over the headlines. The serious headlines, not at the Onion, or Iowahawk.
I have to admit that seeing all the ecstatically worshipping minions of the main-stream press who drank the hopey-changy Kool-Aid all these months ago, waking up with an ‘omigawd, what did I do last night’ hangover… That’s also kind of fun, too. In a grimly amusing, ‘didn’t I warn you not to trim your short’n’curlies with the weed-whacker’ sort of way. Hey, I will get my jollies where I can, and “I told you so†is one of life’s great unsung pleasures. Watching the major media organs collapse like a dirigible with a slow leak is also no end amusing, especially when it happens to be those very same organs who kept banging on about Governor Sarah Palin’s inexperience, as compared to the Anointed One’s sanctified role as a ‘community organizer’. Live by taking political sides – perish from the same. Thanks. My only regret is that in future, I may not have anything packing materiel for stuff to be mailed out of state. A couple of sheets of newsprint were always good for that.
I said, all these months ago, that Barak Obama was an attractive, empty suit, with a pleasant voice, a puppet of Chicago machine politics, with no discernible bad record – and what did you – or 52% of the electorate, or whatever percent actually did vote for him – have to go and do, but elect him, just because he was so cute, with the year-round-dark-tan, glamorous and exotic background and (insert fangirly squeal here) besides, he made such cool-sounding speeches! So now, here he is in office, the ultimate Affirmative-Action candidate/American Idol fave – stuck in a hideously exposed position, under the pitiless lights, with no possible way to vote ‘present’ and go on doing what he seems always to have done – which is to move on. Having had some experience in the real world, I’ve see his like before; the favored golden candidate, one of those charming and ambitious fast-burners who go all the way up, glad-handing and using all the way, and never staying long enough in any position to actually do the job. They generally leave before the damage they have done becomes evident. As the old saying goes, they leave the stink behind them. Alas, this time, he is stuck, like a treed cat, up on top of the highest telephone pole in the land, with no graceful way to come down.
So that’s the thing – I would be amused, save for all the damage that was done, getting him up there, and all the damage that will be done, when he comes down. (To be continued.)
(Note – re-posted to allow comments. There is a bug in our system which dislikes apostrophes in the titles of posts.)
Well, I finally got around to taking down the PJ Media ads… why the heck should they soak up ad space on this blog? At this point, about all I want to promote is my own darned books, thank you. I will attempt to further tweak the sidebar to that effect, utilizing my own somewhat less than totally mad HTML skilz…
As you were.
(Gomer Pyle voice): As you were what?
Never mind.
No, not the writing one – that is as liberating and as enjoyable today as it was when first I sat down to scribble the first couple of chapters of what would become “To Truckee’s Trailâ€, and even earlier, when I first began to write for this blog, back in the high middle ages of the blogosphere, some seven years ago. (My, how time flies when having fun, et cetera…)
I don’t hate the various freelance author-wrangling/editing gigs that I have, through the good offices of one part-time source of employment, the tiny boutique subsidy publisher, or learning the various ins and outs of the small-book-subsidy press. Neither do I hate wrangling the world’s tallest ADHD child – the real estate agent who specializes in Texas ranch properties, who must simply adore tap-dancing on the edge of economic ruin, since he finds himself out there doing it so frequently. No, I view these jobs with considerable affection. The only thing the least little bit wrong with them is that they are not a reliable, steady source of income.
Which brings me to the one job which does indeed provide reliably constant hours and a resulting and reliably steady income stream – and which I hate with a passion, the phone-bank job with a certain large corporation which shall remain nameless, doing hotel-resort reservations for a large nation-wide chain which shall also remain nameless.
That is the job that I hate with such a desperate passion that in future not only will I try to avoid driving past the building where the phone bank is located – but I have taken a vow to never even darken the doors of the hotel-resort chain involved, or set a toe in the city where the properties that I specialize in is situated. I find everything to do with it is loathsome, from the little half-cubicles in the large glass-walled room where a fifty to a hundred of us sit, to the constant racket of voices saying basically the same thing, over and over. “How may I assist you with that? Can you verify…I have requested for you a deluxe room with a king-sized bed… your confirmation number is… thank you for choosing…â€
I hate the sound of the beep in my headset when a call comes through, the automated male voice telling me which property the caller wants to make a reservation for. I hate the antiquated, insanely complicated DOS-based system that was so cutting-edge twenty-five years ago, with it’s million quirks, peculiarities, obscure abbreviations and having to manually enter just about every necessary bit of information when a more up-to-date revision would have that data auto-populate. I hate having every single call listened to and recorded, and timed to the second. I hate being dinged for taking too long with a caller – and dinged again for not cross-selling another property or service or gourmet restaurant, when doing so would increase the call-time.
I hate the dress-code – casual office attire, but no jeans permitted – even though we are doing phone work, and not direct, face to face sales. I hate the fact that we can no longer bring a book to the floor and read between calls when it slows. I hate the fact that the only two computers that we might use for personal business on our rigidly scheduled breaks are the slowest and nastiest in the whole building and one of them doesn’t connect on-line any more. I hate having to wear an employee badge on a stupid lanyard around my neck whenever I am in the building. I hate the callers who mumble, who hold a cell-phone away from their mouth, or are calling from an area with rotten connections – who then berate me because I can’t hear half of what they are saying.
I don’t hate the supervisors – who, to give them credit – do their best to ameliorate the rotten conditions and circumstances of the job as much as possible. I’ve been working there now since July, and many of them now know me by name. Most employees only last a maximum of six months – of the lot I trained with, I only see one other working in the cubicles. The rest are gone. And I am pretty sure that I will be gone also, at some point in the near future. The only questions remaining, are how soon can I afford to quit – in these shaky economic times a regular paying job is not something you abandon. I have no wish to napalm that bridge until I get to it. Secondly, will I plan a graceful and professional exit and leave with two weeks notice, or will I suddenly just be pushed too far one day? There are days when I can see myself melting down, tossing my badge at the floor supervisor and leaving abruptly in the middle of the shift, perhaps after a set-to with a particularly unreasonable caller. I don’t usually do nuclear meltdowns – but in the case of this job I might be pushed into making an exception.
Yes, I hate this job – but now I do feel better.
Oh, and every sale of a copy of the Trilogy moves me just a little bit closer to the graceful and professional exit. Thanks.
So, ages ago, Karen M. who manages the speaker’s schedule for the German Texan Heritage Society emailed me to ask if I would like to come and do a talk about the history of the Adelsverein in Texas, and how I went about writing three historical novels based on those events – which are dramatic to the nth degree and which hardly anyone outside of Texas has ever heard of. Of course I said yes, how could I resist any organization which contains a large number of people who are, or might be interested in my books, and whose’ tag-line on their website is “Guten Tag, Y’all?†Besides, they offered refreshments for afters; I will work for cookies and punch. Perhaps someday I will be able to throw all sorts of hissies and demand Perrier on tap, a fruit tray and a private dressing room before engagements, but that day is not yet – really, my sense of entitlement is all but stillborn. Either that or I haven’t become jaded – darn it, I still enjoy these things, once I get over the initial panic of standing up and looking at all those strangers or almost-strangers in front of me, waiting for me to say something deathlessly witty. This is where having been a broadcaster comes in handy. I know that I have spoken, through a microphone or a TV to larger numbers of people, but those audiences were not ‘there’, not in the same room. On those occasions, I could fake myself out, pretend that I was only speaking to a handful of people, be casual and friendly, informative and remember to stand up straight, not pick my nose and not cuss in front of them … but having them all look back at you – that is another kettle of fish. Fortunately, I am getting accustomed to a live audience…
Blondie programmed the GPS unit, and I did a google-map search for the venue, which was described as being “The Old German Free School†in beautiful downtown Austin, Texas… which is, I feel only fair to point out, really quite beautiful, as it is spread over a number of scenically lumpy and rather nicely-wooded hills on either side of a lovely deep-green river. A lot of the streets were strategically and alternately one-way, but – thank god – there was no particular festival going on, which might have clogged traffic unbearably – but we did have to go to one exit and then zig-zag through another couple of streets which afforded us some nice views of assorted college students enjoying their last day of spring break, and one particularly large complex which seemed to be ‘street-people central.’
The old German Free-School turned out to a lovely antique two-story building, constructed of stone, and stone and plaster, and stone and plaster over rammed-earth, a long structure just one room deep and turned sideways to the street, with balconies and terraces overlooking a series of pocket-gardens connected by stairs. Most of the rooms opened onto balconies or the terraces, with long windows on either side, which reminded me irresistibly of 18th and 19th century townhouses in Charleston or Savannah or Beaufort, built up on narrow town-lots with the narrow end of it to the street. All of the rooms had tall windows on either side – to ensure a good draft through the room, essential in those far-distant summer days before the invention of air conditioning. It had just gotten over being unbearably chilly and rainy, so the rooms were quite pleasant. The German Free School was the first institution of public education in Austin, according to one of the members of the society who came for my talk. In the mid-1850s, there were sufficient numbers of German-speaking settlers who were totally exasperated with the lack of educational resources; the only option for educating their children was to hire a private tutor, or send them to the Anglo-American ‘Sunday Schools’. According to my informant, one of the founders was totally fed-up, (possibly with listening to all his fellows kvetching about the subject) so he threw down a thousand dollars in gold and growled, “So, build a school!†and there you go – apparently the Free School predated the Austin Independent School District by at least a decade.
There were about fifteen or twenty attendees – and the room was fairly small, so I went ahead and used the podium, with my notes and my pictures of certain relics and locations, 81/2 by 11 pictures mounted on foam-core board, with little hinged supports to hold them up – all of essential items or evocative locations in Fredericksburg. It really went well, this time – I have quite a sort-of-planned talk-with-notes that I use for these occasions, a list of notes, names and things that I simply must cover, and in the proper order; not a set script, for that is the absolute death of this kind of event, just a memory-jogger of the high points. This is the best and most-spontaneous seeming kind of talk, I am not bound by an every-single-word script and can play up or play down things, and respond immediately to what the audience seems to be most interested or engaged in. I wing it, every time – but a wing-it with some sturdy yet invisible supports! Finished with a reading – a couple of pages from “The Gathering†– about the feast and bonfire the first settlers held among the trees of what would become Fredericksburg, and took questions until everyone repaired for punch, home-made coconut cake and a plate of little baked pastry and sausage nibbles.
The members of the audience were all enthusiasts – the very best kind of audience an author can ask for, for they had interesting questions and a lot of knowledge behind them – even if only one person among them had actually the Trilogy. Doris L. purchased the Trilogy and read it all – her husband is from one of the old Gillespie County families and by one of those interesting coincidences of history and the internet and all – it was her husband’s several-times great grandfather who owned the sheep-flock that a boy named Adolph Korn had been watching over, when he was taken by raiding Comanche Indians. Adolph Korn’s g-g-I don’t-know-how-many-times grand-nephew Scott Zesch wrote bout his life and the ordeal of a number of children taken by Indians from the Hill Country in his book “The Captured†– which was one of my references in writing Book Three “The Harvesting†– about the multi-leveled tragedy of young children taken captive by the Comanche or Apache and later returned to their white families. Some of the other questions asked of me were about Prince Solms – who I do still think was rather an idiot, in spite of what one of his particular partisans could say. Sorry, buying into the Fischer-Miller Grant was not an act bringing any particular credit upon Prince Solm’s financial or political acumen. Also, the train of personal servants and his insistence on his title of nobility – not a good move, all around, no matter what his qualifications as a serving military officer might have been in other fields. Although there was an excellent point made, about how perceptions about Germany and German settlers went to the bottom of the tank after about mid WW I or so.
Until that very point in time and history, and in most places in these United States – being from the German settlements and of German ancestry were seen as pretty favorable things. It was OK to be one of ‘the folk’, to remember Germany as it was… until history and Germany changed; the place that these hard-working and cultured immigrants came from, the place that they remembered with fondness and reminiscent affection morphed into something ugly. That Germany – or those duchies and principalities that they came from – all of those places changed during their absence, into something that they would not have recognized, these innocent and trusting immigrants, taking ship from Bremen, carrying their memories and those wooden trunks with them, hoping for new lives but recalling their old country. But in the 20th century, their new country would fight two wars against the old – against what the old country had become, while they were busy building lives and towns, bringing up their children as free citizens of their new country. Funny, how history happens, when you are just trying do your business and get by.
All in all, a most gratifying Sunday afternoon spent, in the company of book and history enthusiasts.
It appears that San Antonio is brewing up a tea party too, along with all the others in the works for April 15th. The grand plan is to throw a thousand tea-bags into the San Antonio River – how the River Authority will feel about that, also have no idea how they would feel about me adding a little milk and sugar – well, that’s the way I drink my tea… and even though we’re as mad as hell about an impossibly pork-packed, and most likely totally counterproductive stimulus package which most of the Congressional numb-skulls who voted for it never read… there is no need to let the standards down.
More here. Blondie and I plan to attend, and to take pictures. Any suggestions for signs would be appreciated; something witty, literate and short would be appreciated.
Yep, it truly is a bit of a dilemma – is the just newly-new and fresh-out-of-box purveyor of hope ‘n’ change and all that – just beginning to gleam with a discrete and gentlemanly film of flop-sweat? Mom always used to say ‘never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity’ but as I scan the newsblogs of late, I am seriously torn: is the man of hopey-changy acting out of deliberate and long-considered malice? Or is he just an arrogant, medium-city pol with delusions of grandeur, now dug into a job which is so far above his head that he would need a couple of floors worth of elevator to even get level with the demands of a position that a narrow majority of American voters, a large portion of the MSM and such international hacks as the BBC airily assumed he was more than equal to?
Eh – I just don’t know, can’t decide… and can’t even figure out which of those two options is the lesser of evils. And here I was, lo, these many moons ago, pointing out that his resume was thinner than Callista Flockhart’s thighs, and all he really had going for him was that he looked so nice and talked so sweet, and a dismayingly large portion of the traditional news media were drooling over him like fan-girls in the presence of Menudo – (the boy-singing group, not the tripe soup.) Yes, even with a series of unfortunate friends and associates, like the Reverent Wright, Bill Ayers, the entire Chicago political machine and a scarily resentful BAP of a spouse, he was hauled like a juggernaut, by the labors of his supporters and a complacent media into the highest office in the land. So there he is, rather like a fly in amber – except that everyone pretty much knows how he got there, unlike the late 19th century British politician of whom a similar comparison was made.
But now that the One has been duly anointed, blessed and installed – what next? Chaos, disaster, and the stock market dropping like Michael Moore stepping off the top of a tall building seem to be the order of the day. And the Russian-language gaffe over a gag gift ‘reset’ button, and the really unfortunate gift exchange with the British PM. Ugh – that was truly cringe-inducing. Al and any other British readers – I deeply apologize: a couple of cheap toy helicopters and a gift-package set of DVD movies apparently pulled at random out of the “miscellaneous white-elephant gift assortment closet†that most sensible social persons keep as a kind of emergency fallback when presented with last-minute present-giving occasions. But there are people and occasions where something pulled out of that closet is appropriate and expected – like unit Christmas parties, or Red Hat association affairs. A State Visit by the head of another state is not… especially when the poor man is going blind and the DVDs are the wrong format, anyway. Honestly, until this week, I thought our gummint had a very efficient protocol office who would keep track of occasions, and of the likes and preferences of State visitors, the general suitability, utility and tastefulness of formal gifts — just to prevent embarrassing things like this happening at the highest levels. Perhaps all the people who had expertise in these matters were let go in January, and replaced by twenty-somethings who are – or were, until last week – relatively innocent in the savage requirements of the higher good taste. Still – a very hard and embarrassing lesson, which may cost the One with regard to foreign allies, farther down the line. The other option is, of course – the tacky gift-giving was a deliberate slam. Hard to know which bodes worse; petty and deliberate malice, and the joys of sticking it to ‘the man’ or just plain administrative incompetence? In any case I do apologize, and note that I did not vote for him. Whatever criticisms that Al and others might have about GWB – at least the point can be made that none of his state visits had this kind of fall-out in their wake.
Oh, yeah – interesting times. Pass the popcorn.
Perhaps not in lights, but it was definitely my name on the marquee in front of the Butt-Holdsworth Memorial Library in Kerrville last Saturday. Blondie took a picture, so we have the evidence. It seems that they like to do author talks on Saturday afternoons, and it would appear that Phillippa Gregory or Diana Galbadon already had busy schedules – so the librarian in charge of author-wrangling emailed me to ask if I would come and talk about the Trilogy. Of course I said agreed; I’d much rather drive an hour and talk with a group of people about my books, or local history, or the vagaries of 19th century frontier Texas then sit at a small table in the front of a big-box bookstore and watch shoppers carefully avoiding me for an hour or so. There’s just no contest there – and frankly, doing a talk and answering questions is much the better way to build my local fan base anyway.
This talk turned out to be for an audience of about a dozen or fifteen, in the basement meeting room of the library, which – since it is built on a steep hillside overlooking the river, looked out on a stone-paved terrace and a line of trees at the edge. I’d feel such an idiot, standing at the podium and talking to such a small group, so we circled the chairs and sat down. As it also turned out, most of the audience hadn’t been able to read any of the Trilogy yet, not even the librarian. Although the library does have a single copy of all three books – they have hardly spent any time at the library and the reserve list for them is lengthy. Gratifyingly, as soon as they return, out they fly again! Excellent news for me, and perhaps they might even consider buying another set, if Adelsverein is going to be that popular.
For my talk, I did a brief overview of the entrepreneur scheme, the grand plans and bungling that doomed the Mainzer Adelsverein, outlined how I came to be interested in such a relatively obscure historical event, and what I did for research, and how I really had to make up very little regarding the various historical events that I touched on. Amazingly, most of the people present – just about all of them from Kerrville or close by – had not heard much about either the Adelsverein, or the travails in the Hill Country during the Civil War, so much of I had planned to talk about was a) new and b) interesting. All in all, a pleasant afternoon, well spent – although we did have to hustle back to San Antonio in time for me to get to work – in my ‘author’ tailored suit and well-chosen accessories, which proved something of an astonishment for the Saturday evening co-workers, who are used to seeing me slop around in something considerably less professional-appearing.
On Tuesday evening, with my computer returned to me and functioning more or less normally (fried mother-board and CPU, but all docs retrieved and saved – whew!) I followed up the library talk with a book-club meeting, on-line and through an organization called Accessible World, which provides books to the vision-impaired. Nan Hawthorne, another author and IAG member, had finagled me into putting the Trilogy into the Accessible World library, and Book One was the book to read for Accessible World’s historical novel book club. So that made another very gratifying hour, linked into their internet ‘conference room’, with about fifteen people who had read “The Gathering†and loved it, loved the characters, and had lots of detailed questions about what was real, what were the character’s motivations, and why had I written things in the way I had. Now, that was an hour that went past very quickly. It’s caviar to the writer’s soul, hearing from people who have read your books and are passionately interested. It makes up in a small way for the months and days, spent alone but for the world that you have created in your head, when you hear from people beginning to share that world and to become as engaged and interested in that world as you are.
And as of this morning, and possibly thanks to a wonderful write-up from David Foster at Chicagoboyz – the Amazon ranking for all three books of the Trilogy was at and around 150,000, which is possibly the highest it has been at since all three were released for sale in early December. So it appears that I am a few steps closer to being a famous ‘arthur’!
Still waiting to see if there will be another “Tea Party-San Antonio†in the near future, in which case Blondie and I will happily join in; the weather is fine and mild, and I wouldn’t mind at all a chance to actually commingle in the real-world with some of the other people that I know are getting more than a little annoyed with the current administration. As another commenter remarked on another blog – and it was so apt that I have promptly stolen it and used with great effect ever since: “I knew the Obama administration was gonna be a train wreck; I just thought it would make it out of the station first.â€
The nice thing about having low expectations is that one is very rarely disappointed in a politician, and often quite pleasantly surprised. At this point in time, all I am reduced to asking of our elected public servants is that they would cover their mouths when they cough, and to kindly refrain from sexually molesting barnyard animals and interns in public – and there have been moments over the last couple of years, when I wondered if that were asking altogether too much. The passing spectacle is just getting to be all to much; the affirmative action President and his race-mongering attorney general all hot to have conversations about race in America, as if we haven’t hardly been having anything else for the last forty years. Then there is Sen. Dodd with the charming Irish cottage and his sweet-heartedly favorable mortgage arrangements – and his many friends in the House and Senate who also appear to have had similar friendly arrangements with their mortgage lenders. Follow that with a chaser of the pols who scrambled to explain their omission in paying taxes … jeeze Louise, does everyone going into politics these days have amnesia when it comes to filing their income tax report?
And the stock market has been dropping like a rock over the last two days, to the tune of ineffectual bleating by the Anointed One, who appears to be making the discovery for the very first time – that what he says does, indeed, have effects in the real world, outside the arena of Chicago politics. It would be amusing, watching him twist and turn – if it weren’t for the very real repercussions. It’s also amusing watching a variety of Obama media fans from last fall owning up to second thoughts now that their guy is actually ensconced in the White House. Nice timing, sports – very nice timing, indeed. Sorry, mediawhores, in my own mind and after your performance coming up to the election, you are now firmly and irretrievably stuck to him. Would it be racist of me to draw a comparison to the tar-baby? Perhaps – but it is apt enough. You are stuck on to him for good, and even if you break free at the last minute, you will still have all that icky tar smeared all over your face, and the rest of us will point and laugh, as your TV network or newspaper goes down to insolvency and you look for another job.
Interesting times – just as that ancient Chinese curse prescribes.
(Later – another perspective, found courtesy of Rantburg, home of all that is surly and cynical.)
Oh yes – the day to go out and ask your local bookstore or library for a western novel – any western novel!
Not just mine, you know – but any of the classics, ancient (relatively) or modern. Although I wouldn’t take it amiss if you did go out and ask Barnes & Noble, or your local Borders or independent bookstore to order The Adelsverein Trilogy. There are piles and shelves of good classic westerns out there and a lot of people interested in reading them, so why not draw the attention of retailers to that market, today!
More here, from “The Tainted Archive“.
And more here, at “The Tainted Archive” – one-stop shopping for all fans of traditional westerns … which the Adelsverein Trilogy is, sort of, if you bend down and squint at it sideways.
To: Atty-Gen Holder
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Not having open discussions about the r-word
1. Well, thanks, your attorneyness. Just thanks. After about forty years about being called racists when we open our mouths on any topic remotely to do with race, now we get whipsawed by being called cowards for not opening our mouths. Look, we got wise about noisy race-hustlers long since… is it OK to lump yourself in with them? With Al Sharpton, Jesse the baby-momma-banging-hypocrite Jackson, and Spike Lee and all the rest of the easily offended crowd with the dark year-round tans?
2. Frankly, no one really digs being screamed at when we had one of these mandatory equal-opportunities encounter sessions, and no, it never much changed anyone’s mind, and these little sessions hardly ever cleared the air much. It just took up however many hours were mandated by whoever dictates those matters.
3. It did, however, shut up most of the virulent white bigots… forty years ago. I have a heck of a time recalling the last time in real life that I actually heard someone in a social setting uncork some casual racism, misogyny, or anti-Semitism, so mad props for social pressure and all that. Pity one can’t say the same of thug-rap music, but then I’m white so I’m probably disqualified from commenting on that.
4. Let it be noted that we do, in fact, have discussions about racism with friends and acquaintances of all color – but they tend to be those people who we are fairly sure will not come f&$#@ing unglued and begin screaming and calling us racists when we decline to blame ourselves personally for everything to do with race relations in the United States over the last couple of centuries.
5. Hoping this memo will prove of help in assisting you to understand this, although I am not gonna hold my breath about it. Will we have to listen to you bang on about this for the rest of the Obama administration? (God, it’s going to be a long four years!)
I remain,
Sgt Mom
PS – Just as a reminder, a good chunk of the Founding Fathers were not slave-owners, and very much disapproved of chattel slavery… and seventy years after the founding, we fought a particularly bloody civil war over that very issue. Do history much. AG Holder?
Honestly, I can’t help but think that I am way ahead of the game when it comes to an economic down-turn, incipient depression, bubble-bursting, or whatever the heck the mighty media organs want to call it. I lost three jobs alone last year, before the major misery even started. I’ve already processed the grief, adjusted to a fairly Spartan lifestyle, and gotten very well adept at bargaining with institutions demanding money from me. I cobbled together another series of paying ventures, including fifteen hours a week at the phone bank – which does have as a virtue (perhaps it’s only virtue!) that it is at least reliable in providing work hours and the resulting paycheck. Amazingly enough, I’ve lasted there long enough that many of the other drones on the floor know me by name, which is nice enough, I suppose – but I still call it “The Hellholeâ€. My original plan called for quitting around Christmas – but alas, Blondie loosing a job of her own put paid to that notion. So – tight budget all around, and welcome to the joys of bargain hunting, at yard sales, thrift-stores and in the untidy shelves at the back of various retail establishments labeled ‘clearance’ or ‘final sale’ or ‘70% off!’
I don’t know if I will really ever be able to embrace full retail prices again, after this year. I don’t think I will ever be able to walk into an upscale shop and cheerfully pay the full price for something, without feeling an incapacitating twinge of regret. I guess I have just enough of my grandmother’s canny puritan soul in me, and how it has a chance to flower. Unlike Granny Jessie in the Great Depression, though – we will not be keeping chickens. That’s going a little too far. But we have picked up a barely-used bread machine (at a yard sale for $10) and make our own bread, since I have a liking for the very expensive wheat varieties that are loaded with fiber and flavorful seeds and spices, which cost better than $3.00 a loaf at the Humongously Enormous Big-Ass Grocery. So one step closer to self-sufficiency – and Blondie is teaching herself how to knit. Much more of this, and I can see us living away off in the country with a satellite dish, a generator, our own water well and a milk cow. Talking over this whole gestalt with Blondie, and neither of us can remember the last time we bought a non-food item at full price. Everything has been on sale, second hand, bought in bulk at Sam’s Club or an ethnic grocery, or made at home. Even the ink cartridges for my printer are recycled from Cartridge World.
And this is not to say we don’t have a lot of quiet fun with this – we have bought some lovely, frivolous things for practically pennies and even some items which miraculously replaced those lost in the fire at Mom and Dad’s house in 2003. This very week at the new Goodwill Store which opened in our neighborhood, Blondie found a round silver-plate drinks tray which – after ten years worth of grimy black tarnish was cleaned off of it and she checked the now-visible hallmark – turned out to have a market value of about a hundred times what she spent for it. And there was also an odd set of crystal glasses, all jumbled among a long shelf of glassware. These were as fragile as bubbles, and appear to be hand-etched with a bamboo pattern; four with a short stem, three with a long stem and three which look like miniature martini glasses. I think they are Japanese, since they look so much like a set of crystal that I bought in the BX there ages ago. Blondie adds them to the collection that she is setting aside for her own house, against the day when I am a best-selling author and can buy her one.
I was much more interested in a find on a table of books: a stack of the old Time-Life series about the foods of the world. Mom had a subscription to the series in the late 1960s; each volume focusing on the food of a particular country or region came as a two-part set. One was a lovely, lavishly illustrated examination of the country and it’s cuisine, and the other a small spiral-bound collection of recipes. Of course, Mom’s collection was among those lost in the fire, and the ones I found at the thrift shop were the coffee-table book only – but still, I was very fond of that series. The cooking of provincial France, of Spain and Portugal, of Great Britain, and Scandinavia…. I think those books were where we all learned to be adventurous about food. It’s good to have them back.
One of the most curious instances of the rich American heiress for old European title exchanges was the marriage of Consuelo Vanderbilt to the Duke of Marlborough; the wedding itself was covered with breathless interest by the media of the time – which since it took place in 1895, meant coverage by newspapers only. However, the wedding was as lavish, and the interest in every tiny detail as intense as that paid to the nuptials of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. It took place at St. Thomas Episcopal Church on New Yorks’ 5th Avenue, and the crowds of spectators outside the church and for a good way down the avenue was so thick that squads of policemen could barely force enough of an open way between them for the invited guests. The inside of the church was lavishly decorated with flowers – pink and white roses, swags of lilies, ivy and holly, arches of ferns, palm leaves and chrysanthemums. No expense was spared – even more astonishing was the fact that Consuelo Vanderbilt and the Duke had only been engaged for about six weeks and only known each other for barely a year. She was barely eighteen, reserved and sheltered, the very pretty daughter of a woman with a will of iron and ambition to match. After her marriage, she would blossom into one of the acknowledged beauties of that era: Playwright James Barrie supposedly said he would wait all day in the street just to watch her get into a carriage.
Alva Smith had married for money herself – having pursued, wed and just recently divorced the oldest grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, called ‘The Commodore’, who had founded the family fortunes in shipping and branched out into railways. Her own father’s fortunes were sadly diminished by the Civil War, and Alva resolved to secure her own future and those of her family by marrying rich. She emerges as a domineering, driven and stubborn woman with a fiery temper. Very few people ever said ‘no’ to Alva Vanderbilt, least of all her own family; neither her parents, either of her husbands, or any of her children. Her own mother, a cultured Southern belle spoke French, and traveled widely in Europe with her children in those distant days when it meant a long voyage on a sailing ship. In a fragmentary memoir written late in life, Alva recalled that her mother had made a yearly order of clothes for herself and her daughters from a Paris dressmaker. All the clothes they would need for the next year would arrive one time – a means which was sufficient for that era, but not when Alva was raising her own children. By that time, being rich and in the social set meant a degree of ostentatious competition that is purely mind-boggling to contemplate today. Everything about those at the very top of the social network still astonishes, beginning with the ‘summer cottages’ built at the edge of Newport, Rhode Island. Alva was responsible for one of the most lavish, ‘Marble House’ which seemed like nothing much but a couple of square acres of the Sun King’s Versailles, set down in the New World. The balls and parties that prominent members of this high society threw for each other also defy belief. At one infamously grand banquet, an artificial river filled with live fish ran the length of the dining table – and guests were provided with little silver shovels to search for jeweled party favors in the sand at the bottom of the river. Such a grand dinner ran to course after course of elaborately prepared dishes, and an ordinary day for a society woman might involve changing clothes four or five times over. And Alva Vanderbilt was one of the leading social lionesses by the time her daughter was of marriageable age, despite having divorced William Vanderbilt.
Divorce was almost unthinkable in that milieu – and yet, Alva went ahead with it; she would marry her daughter off to a nobleman, and having achieved that apotheosis, would marry again herself, to Oliver Belmont – another wealthy member of the Gilded Age’s highest social circle. Incredibly, she would have a contented marriage with him – and maintain her high position in that society – until his sudden death from complications of appendicitis. Almost without a moment’s hesitation, Alva would involve herself in the campaign for women’s rights to vote, using her considerable wealth to fund suffrage organizations and publications, to lobby in Washington and among the highest levels. She would fight for women’s property and political rights with the same stubborn intensity that she applied to any of her previous enthusiasms. In fact, she became something of a militant – and after her own death in 1931, had a full suffragette’s funeral, with women pallbearers and choir. Never mind the contradiction, of being for women’s rights, yet having dictated Consuelo’s marriage and overruled any of her daughter’s considerable misgivings.
Consuelo married reluctantly, in obedience to her mother. In spite of that, she serenely adorned the great estate of Blenheim Palace – which her marriage settlement helped repair and renovate – and the highest levels of British political and social circles equally. She was one of the noble wives who carried the canopy over Queen Mary at the coronation of King George V. She would produce two sons, and is thought to have been the originator of the expression ‘an heir and a spare’. The marriage was not happy; she and the Duke were of different and incompatible temperaments and Consuelo had something of her mother’s spine. They separated barely ten years after their lavish wedding day, and divorced in 1921, upon which Consuelo married a wealthy French aviation pioneer named Jacques Balsan. She achieved no small victory in managing to remain on easy and affectionate terms with her ex-husbands’ family, which included his redoubtable cousin, Winston Churchill. Her further life adventures included escaping with her husband from France in 1940, and returning to live in the country she had departed nearly half a century before. Amazingly, she lived until 1964 – and if pictures taken of her are any guide – she was still amazingly beautiful.
(No particular reason for writing all this – I had heard of these women in a vague sort of way, but the entire book about them was rather fascinating.)
So, I belong to a number of different chat-groups about books, and historical novels and Westerns and all … and at one of them, fans of Westerns are trying to raise interest in that particular genre, by mobilizing other fans, around the world to go into their local library or bookstore and ask for Westerns – any western, new, traditional or somewhere in between. The thinking is, we can achieve a critical mass of fans, and maybe take the book-selling world – if not by the throat, maybe we can gum their ankles a little, when it comes to stocking genre Western books. Which are really madly popular, but you’d hardly know it, to look at the shelves in your local Borders or whatever.More here, thanks to Gary Dobbs of “The Tainted Archive“.
Gary says, in part:
“At the moment we are in a situation where bookshops control the market (a select amount of buyers chose the titles they think we want to read ) and they seem to think all we want to read are massive tomes with more padding that substance. The days of cheap paperbacks that existed to entertain, excite and delight are long gone. Strange when those are the reasons we started reading in the first place. But it doesn’t have to be so – so come on get involved, hit the bookshops, hit the libraries. All of us on MARCH 2nd.
Come on get involved.”
Not just my books, which count as Westerns if you get down and squint at them sideways, but a whole range of others. Some of the classics are being profiled at Gary’s blog, and I would like to throw in a mention of a book by the micro-publisher who helped me launch The Adelsverein Trilogy, Michael Katz at Strider Nolan. His Western is called “Shalom on the Range”, and is about the adventures of a Jewish railway detective who knows nothing about the west but what he has read in dime novels, investigating a train robbery in the 1870s. Think ‘Seinfeld on the Prairie’.
Mark it on your calendar, if you are a fan of Westerns: March 2 is Wild West Monday!
I am immersed in a schedule of reading over the next few weeks, devouring omnivorously a stack of books from the local library branch, another stack from my sometime employer at Watercress Press – she has a splendid collection of Texiana – and re-reading some of my own not-inconsiderable collection. This is where the stories, characters and incidents are planted and begin to grow and entwine; but the soil they sprout from is composted from all this reading, if I am allowed to milk out the gardening metaphor as far as is possible… well, anyway, circling back to the beginning again – I’ve got a tall stack of books about Texas, about the Gold Rush, and the 19th century in general. Too many to stack up on the nightstand, so the overflow is piled up on the flat-topped cedar chest, in three or four tall stacks. One of the potential story-lines in the projected trilogy is about how the American cattle business boomed and collapsed in the 1880s, which is about the very same time that many of the most popular envisionings of the Wild West were laid down in the form we have come to know best. It is also the setting for the concluding volume of my projected new trilogy; picking up the story of the next generation of the Becker family, once the Texas frontier calmed down a little.
There were a lot of other things going on at about that same time, including a veritable explosion in the number of American millionaires. In the post-Civil War years, enormous fortunes were being made in industry, from building railways, in steamship lines, in mining, in mercantile interests. The post-Civil War decades increasingly came to be dominated by ‘new money’ men, beside which the ‘old money’ families – with fortunes based on land, banking, the fur trade, sailing ships, or cotton and rooted in the earlier decades of the 19th century began to appear pale, and dull to everyone but each other. Mark Twain called the latter decades of that period ‘The Gilded Age’ – and he didn’t mean it particularly as a compliment, even if people have used the expression ever since as implying something rather fine. Twain meant it in the sense of something cheap, of a microscopically thin layer of gold overlaid on cheap metal, something flashy, over-ornamented, an object which would not wear very well, but caught the eye and impressed no end in the short term.
That era seemed strange and uncomfortable to someone who remembered an earlier day – for all it’s comforts, convenience, riches and plenty. Changes came thick and fast; the telegraph, the transcontinental railway, the ease of taking a steamship passage across the Atlantic and being there in a week or so, where once it had taken months. Americans of the upper crust began traveling for pleasure and for education, rather than strictly business and in numbers, once the crossing became relatively pleasant and short. The United States had never, even before the Civil War, been particularly isolated, but the 19th century world became appreciably smaller. Mark Twain himself became a part of this trend, by participating in one of the first great American tourist excursions, the 1867 voyage of the “Quaker City†to the Holy Land and elsewhere, which was documented in one of the funniest travel books ever, “The Innocents Abroadâ€.
It was an interesting time, no two ways about it – and one of the interesting aspects is that there were so very many assorted experiences recorded in the years between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the new century – rich pickings for someone like me, doing research. One of those collisions that I am interested in exploring is the same collision that Twain wrote about so humorously: the Old World and the New. There were quite a lot of opportunities for them to collide, and nowhere more than among the very newest of the new money, or even the semi-new money of the New World and the aristocracy of the old. One book I picked up at random was a joint biography of Alva and Consuela Vanderbilt – of whom I was sort-of-aware, mostly because the Vanderbilts are one of those filthy-rich families that you can’t help not having heard of, and because Consuela Vanderbilt was married off – mostly unhappily – to an English Duke. It was kind of ick-making to think about; fabulously wealthy American heiresses married off to the impecunious inheritors of ancient name, royal favor – and crumbling stately homes. Their vulgar American new dollars in exchange for an old name, a title and a coronet with strawberry leaves on it; it’s hard to decide which is more awful, the decayed noblemen hunting for heiresses that they would condescend to honor with their titles and past-due bills, or the social-climbing and wealthy American families of a supposedly democratic and more or less equalitarian nation going all weak-kneed at the thought of a title in the family.
(to be continued)
There is a dog park, hidden away in the back forty of McAllister Park, a sprawling public park/semi-wilderness area in Northside San Antonio. It is formed by a large fenced area, about half an acre of trees and shrubs, dotted with benches, a pavilion with a concrete table and benches under it, a couple of structures that hopefully the dogs might find amusing to run through or jump on top of and a lavish number of heavy trash cans and dispensers offering what my daughter describes as ‘poopy-bags’. There is a paved path leading around the perimeter of the fenced area, the rest of it being spread with free mulch generated by the city waste disposal department’s industrial-sized tree shredders. Another long paved path leads from a parking lot: on any given afternoon when the weather is fair and mild, and most especially on weekends, that path is alive with leashed dogs and their people. The dogs are normally wild with excitement, for they are either coming from or heading toward their social-hour, play-date or mad-minute. It must be something they look forwards to all the rest of their limited, doggy lives – if they are capable of retaining a pleasurable memory. I rather think they are; at least they know, through constant repetition, that something nice is about to happen. Spike and the Lesser Weevil are insane with excitement every morning when I put on my exercise things; for they know that it means the morning walk is imminent. So when the dogs are decanted from their owner’s cars in the parking lot on the third or forth time around – they must know. By the time they get to the double-gated entry-way enclosure to the park itself they are usually mad with excitement
It was one of our neighbors told us about the park; admittedly, we were nervous when it came to the whole off-the-leash concept when it came to the Lesser Weevil. We know that she is part Boxer; it’s obvious, just to look at her. But we don’t know for sure what the other half is, and suspect that a considerable lashing of what is usually described in screaming headlines as ‘pit bull’ is included in her genetic makeup. She is adoring and lovable to all humans. Without exception everyone she meets is instantly her bestest friend in the whole wide world, and the way she went all gooey and affectionate over the cable guy was quite embarrassing – especially since she is supposed to be a guard/watch dog. No, we have no apprehensions about the Weevil and humans – it’s other dogs, and only now and again in the early months that she took an instant and abiding dislike to another dog on a leash. If she had not also been on a leash herself, and for Blondie or I instantly half-strangling her in the pinch-collar, it might have gotten very ugly. But our neighbor assured us, over and over – that it is all right, the dogs seem to govern themselves very well, off leash, and the more there are of them in the confines of the park, the better they all behave. So we took a chance – and we stuck very close to her that first time, and waited until she had behaved well for the first half-dozen dogs who came romping up for a bit of friendly butt-sniffing.
Weevil still does not play quite so uninhibitedly with the other dogs as some of them do. She will chase a thrown tennis ball and race with some of the others, but she will stay fairly close to Blondie. And Spike basically attaches herself to my ankles, never going much farther than ten feet away, even if there are other small dogs – Shi Tzus, Jack Russells and Chihuahuas and the like who want to play with her. It was quite lively this last Sunday; not least because it seemed to be Big Dog Day. No kidding – don’t they keep insisting that everything is bigger in Texas? Sometimes people tell us that the Weevil is a big dog; no, she actually is rather agreeably medium-sized. On Sunday she looked positively dainty, next to a Newfoundland the size of a small sofa (there were three of them there, that day), two mastiffs who topped out at a couple of hundred pounds each, and a Great Dane who looked big enough to put a saddle on and ride like a horse. No kidding, that last dog’s nose alone was bigger than the smallest dog present – a four-month-old Chihuahua puppy, too small even to be put down on the ground among all those specimens of canine gigantism.
And of course, the Weevil behaved herself – how could she not, when the whole place was seething with dogs; dogs running, chasing tennis balls and each others’ behinds, begging to be played with and petted, and romping in front of, or behind their people making a slow circuit of the path around the park? No, it was a good day and good for her – and kind of a relief to know that Blondie has trained her to obedience well enough to trust her off the leash and with a large number of other dogs.
Received the following yesterday afternoon, while working away on a poetry book for Watercress Press:
“As you know, last September Pajamas Media began a new initiative in Internet television called Pajamas TV. When we started with our RNC coverage from Minneapolis, we noted that we would be in a Beta Phase through the first quarter of 2009. In the last few months we have strengthened the PJTV lineup with shows covering Media Bias, Education Bias, Middle East Update, Sharia and Jihad, Powerline Report, Ask Dr. Helen, Hugh News, Poliwood, Conservatism 2.0, Economy and Finance, National Security, and others.
As the end of the first quarter approaches and we near the production phase of Pajamas TV, we will continue to build our emphasis in this area. As a result we have decided to wind down the Pajamas Media Blogger and advertising network effective March 31, 2009. The PJM portal and the XPressBlogs will continue as is.
You may continue to display the Pajamas Media ads through March 31. We will be sending you information in mid-March on removing the ads.
We thank you very much for participating during the formative years of Pajamas Media and we look forward to working with you in other ways. One of those is, of course, Pajamas TV. If you have any ideas in that regard, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Our best wishes in the new year and again our deepest gratitude for your participation in Pajamas Media.
Sincerely,
Roger L. Simon
CEO, Pajamas Media”
It seems that quite a lot of other blogs which were initially a part of PJ Media are also being kicked to the curb, as regards the advertising revenue. When PJ was first put together and the Daily Brief invited to join, it seemed like one of those ideas whose time had come; there would be an enormous range of linked blogs with all kinds of interests and specialties, and in a position to negotiate for serious advertising opportunities and the income arising from it. At least, there would be enough coming in to cover the hosting fees, and a little over. This didn’t last at the Brief for more than a couple of years: about three years ago, I was informed that the Brief didn’t get enough page views to justify any revenue for running the ads – but if page views went up, then the Brief would have that revenue stream restored. So, I went back to paying the hosting out of my own pocket, and kept the PJ ads in place, partly in hopes of eventually getting some revenue out of it and partly for the association. Because of sticking with the PJ ads, I couldn’t place ads from another agency, since PJ had the top place: so, nothing out of having them there – and nothing from anywhere else, either.
I will remove the PJ ads with the greatest pleasure, possibly even before the drop-dead date. I haven’t gotten much out of the association at all, save for PJ including my books on their “Christmas Gift” page throughout December. Frankly, it looks to me that PJ Media has become what they professed to counter – Big Media, in all it’s glory. A handful of the top blogs, all linking to each other, and the rest of us pretty well shut out. All things change, and often not much for the better.
I might as well have a bigger ad for my own darned books. I’m a little tired of looking at that Joe the Plumber picture, too.
Still here, finally over the massive, incapacitating head cold/allergy I came down with in the middle of last month. I missed a week of work at the telephone center, and cut short a couple of shifts when volunteers were asked for, mostly because the cough lingers on. I don’t think it sounds at all good when a hotel reservations agent sounds like she is hacking up lung tissue whilst entering guest data into the hotel reservations data base, but that’s just me. I had originally planned to quit after Christmas, but since Blondie lost her job, and my other employers have work for me on such an erratic basis, a regular check has certain charms. Even if I loathe everything about the call center – the break room is a pit, the two computers there which employees can use for personal stuff like checking emails barely function, and the restrooms smell like ass, I’ll have to stick it out a couple of months longer. I also confess to such a deep dislike for the client, a certain hotel-resort-casino chain, that I will never, ever set foot in any of their properties, because I now hate it so much. Eh, I’ve had jobs that I hated even more. The last one took me a year of plotting my escape, and that was a full time, 40-hour a week hellhole. This is only mini-hellhole.
The income from books is still a trickle: one very nice check straight from the publisher for books bought outright immediately upon release by several different shops. Alas, I won’t get much from royalty payments in February, mostly because sales made through Ingram (the book distributor) and through Amazon and other Humongous Sales Outlets are only reported and paid quarterly. So, the results of sales of the Trilogy made in December will show up at Booklocker in March, and in my bank account maybe in April. This kind of delay in registering results of sales efforts makes it damned hard to figure out what works, let me tell you! It’s also the after-Christmas sales slump, also – things won’t pick up again in the Hill Country until spring break time, so I am making plans to gear up again then, and in late spring, when the tourist season, such as it is, kicks into high gear, with the wildflowers and all. I do have a talk in March, at the German –Texan Heritage Society, in Austin, and the Trilogy is now available to readers with vision impairments at www.bookshare.org. In March, The Gathering will be the book for an on-line book club of Bookshare members, thanks to the interest of another IAG member who posted a very nice review of “The Harvesting†on her own website.
I also had a lovely interview on another Western enthusiasts blog – The Tainted Archive which may have bumped up the Amazon rank a notch or two with a couple of sales
In the meantime, my campaign to have the Trilogy stocked at various Texas historical museum bookstores continues apace: the George Ranch management sent me a very nice reply, and the buyer who manages stock for the store at the Alamo asked for two copies of The Gathering for review. Talk about the Ground Zero of museum bookstores – the Alamo would be it. I have to sit on my hands and wait patiently for their response, at this point. I don’t think I’ll pursue too many more signings in the big-box stores, though. There’s a brand-spanking new Books a Million over on the other side of town, but all signing events for it apparently have to be requested/approved/coordinated through either their regional manager, or god help us, their corporate HQ. It’s the same thing with Barnes & Noble; local managers are exceedingly cold to independent writers, and the signing experiences I have had at Big Box places have been so miserable, I’d rather put my efforts into museum stores, independents and on-line.
And I started on the next book, this week. The prelude, and most of Chapter One already done, finished, backed up onto disc. Am I a glutton for punishment or what?
…and repenting at leisure, or so it would appear with a new consumer product safety law, which will go into effect in about twenty days. Yes, indeedy, Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, or HR 4040 which is supposed to take effect February 10th, was supposed to strike a mighty blow against the forces of evilness and icky lead contamination in children’s toys, but instead looks fair to bankrupting all sorts of micro-and home businesses in the US, instead – and to plunge a dagger into the hearts of all kinds of well-meaning handicrafters, thrift-stores and various enterprising individuals scrounging a living by selling stuff on e-Bay. Not to mention any parent on a budget, hoping to save some of their diminishing funds by purchasing second-hand clothing, books, toys and accessories for their children.
And I am not about to be frivolous about the problem of lead contaminates in children’s toys, although the temptation is there.
(Hey, did you hear the one about the shipment of lead from China that was turned back at the port of entry because it was contaminated with children’s toys?)
Yes, lead is not healthy for children or other growing things, and frankly, those manufacturers knowingly or unknowingly contaminating their export crap with lead, arsenic or any other dangerous substance ought to be taken out and have their pee-pees whacked with iron bars. Repeatedly – so yes, there ought to be a law. But oh, what a lesson in unintended consequences there is in the hurried and apparently careless formulation of this one! No lobbyists around who speak for the thrift shop industry, I guess, or the little workshops making this or that specialized product, or all the little church ladies across the US, piecing quilts or knitting baby-clothes. The law as written flatly mandates a level and degree of safety-testing which – it may might be argued and probably already has – is appropriate to a large manufacturing industry. Say, something that churns out product by the box-car load daily, weekly, or even hourly.
What got overlooked until the last few months, what with all the good intentions about ‘protecting the cheeeeldren’ was that all those mandated testing of all the elements of every product meant for the use of those under the age of 12 also applied to just about every body who makes stuff for kids, either for sale or charity. Everyone from the guy with a small woodshop making high-end traditional wooden toys, to the lady with the small business making ornamented hair scrunchies, those little businesses making doll-clothes or children’s clothes will fall under this law. Even the POD publisher who designed and printed my own books – they do children’s books; Or they will, up until February 10th. Heck – this law might even apply to me; I made clothes for my daughter, and now for my niece. Once upon a time, I also made bespoke doll-clothes and stuffed toys for sale at church bazaars and craft shows; I still have several boxes of finished outfits in the den closet, which is where they will remain, now. I’m not out all that much, for this was a hobby for me a good few years ago, but serious crafters who depend on small retail sales of their output are stuck with an inventory that they can’t sell legally, or even give away, after having invested in their raw materials and done the work. According to the scattering of news stories (linked here, here and here) second-hand and consignment stores are already feeling a pinch; how can they possibly test every garment or toy, according to the letter of the law? They are either refusing donations or consignments of those items, and very likely making plans to dump those stocks already on hand into landfills or into the market in the next couple of weeks. The fines are insupportable for an individual or a small business; practically no one wants to risk being charged with a violation of the act. Assurances that ‘oh, no – boutique handicrafters and second-hand stores will not be prosecuted under this act, everyone knows it’s really meant for the big mass-producers’ are falling flat among those most concerned. And rightfully so – for what is a law that is on the books, but enforced by bureaucratic or prosecutorial whim? It is a suspended weapon, to be used selectively against people who have drawn the unfavorable attention of the state upon themselves.
And it is purely ironic, that just as the economy is in dire straits, with businesses large and small going through tough times, and individual entrepreneurs doing their best to stay above water, and people who are desperately trying to economize – a consumer safety law is about to wallop those very same small businesses and entrepreneurs whose hold on economic security is least secure. It’s almost as if the captain of the Titanic called for another iceberg to crash into the other side of the ship – just to make sure the whole thing sinks on the level.
So the impending Obama ordination/coronation/apotheosis is nearly upon us and of course the media is all girlish a-twitter, breathlessly declaiming yet again how extraordinary, how very historical, how bright-new-day-adawning it all is… meeeh. I switched over to a strict diet of the classical station two weeks ago, it was all getting to remind me of girly fan-mags like Tiger Beat going all gushy over Herman’s Hermits and the Monkees, and I have a low nausea threshold, anyway.
Still, there he is, and there he will be, in all his Urkel-geek glory – attended by a fawning press establishment, and the multitudes who see in him whatever they wish most to see – and no doubt trailed by all sorts of unsavory connections from the old Chicago hood. Commander in Chief, President of the Good Old US of A, and the current Resident of the White House – I shouldn’t wonder if he and the rest of his family might not be thinking second thoughts about the whole thing, at this point. It’s probably pretty different, actually being the one at the tippy-top of the chain of command, rather than just being able to skate past, by voting “present†.
Wish ya luck, Baracky… I really do. Wish ya luck and a real thick skin. You wanna hark back to Abraham Lincoln? Take a look at the pictures of him, before he took the Presidential oath the first time around, and then the pictures of him as he was starting his second term. Looks a couple of decades older, doesn’t he? But that’s what four years will do to you, in the highest office in the land. It isn’t all standing up and making mellifluous speeches to the adoring crowds … but I daresay you’ll be finding that out very shortly, of you haven’t already.
I shouldn’t sound all that discouraged, really I shouldn’t. We’ve had worse chief executives over the 19th and 20th century, although some of them were such pale nonentities considered over the long haul that even the actions they took while in office are relegated to the footnotes. I am sure people felt passionately about Millard Fillmore, at the time of his election, although at present I have no idea of why. The long haul tends to even out the bumps and the dips in the road. What was Warren G.Harding, after all, but a temporary rut, a long-ago embarrassment with a hatchet-faced wife, a mistress in the downstairs broom-closet and a scandal at Teapot Dome. At the very best (and we will be extraordinarily lucky if this is the case) Barak Obama might turn out to be presidential material like Truman – a hard-headed, competent and personally uncorrupted man who emerged relatively unscathed from a perfect sink of a political machine every bit equal to that which made Chicago famous. At worst, he’s Jimmy Carter with melanin.
Hey, I’m an optimist – I can dream.
And you know what the nicest part might be? Maybe we can finally hear the very last of “Amerikka is teh most racist nation evveh!†I’m personally looking forward to cutting off at the knees the next race-hustler who tries to lay that one on me. Really, I am. Almost as much as I am looking forward to hearing Garrison Keillor lampoon Barak Obama on Prairie Home Companion – or the Saturday Night Live crew do a similar parody.
Just to get them inspired, here’s a link to an entry on Protein Wisdom which has the most perfect photoshop eveh of the post-coronation appearance. Enjoy.
A send-up from Israel’s answer to “Saturday Night Live”, on BBC coverage of the current situation in Gaza
Link: 
Found by degrees through Rantburg and Hot Air. Enjoy – it’s subtitled, which puts almost everyone in on the joke. Look, haven’t I been saying we ought to make fun of these guys … and this one makes fun of the Palestinians as well.
All righty then – the Daily Brief site is safely transferred over to a new host – all but some posts from the first part of the month, and for putting weird little marks in all of my own posts where the quote-marks and m-dashes go. I assume this is because of my penchant for composing in MS Word and then copying and pasting… my bad. I’ll fix such of my posts as I can.
I have already applied to cut back my hours at the Hellhole Telephone Bank to a more manageable 15 hours a week, since the work for Watercress Press is ramping up. Frankly, I have gotten better at the whole ‘taking reservations’ thing, but entering uncomplicated data into an insanely complicated and antiquated DOS-based program while simultaneously pitching a whole range of add-on services and amusements while trying my darndest to keep the whole transaction under 4 minutes flat… well, lets just say I have had jobs that I hated more. Not many of them, but I did hate them more. I don’t want to napalm my bridges entirely, by quitting outright an employer which – say what you will – does at least pay on a reliable basis. At 15 hours a week (three five-hour stints a week) I can keep my loathing of the place down to a bearable level. At this point, I have taken an oath in blood that I will never, ever set foot on any of the property premises owned by the chain for which I am taking reservations. Seriously, I have begun to dislike them that much.
It’s kind of a moot point this week, as I have caught the most horrendous cold-flu-allergic reaction to mold and dust – or whatever. Sinuses running like Niagara Falls, eyes likewise, sore throat, coughing like Camille, and I can’t talk above a painful croak. Which will pretty much put the kibosh on eight hours of phone work, and honestly, I think they might very well pay me just to go home and take my germs with me. I have an editing job to work on, and when the cold misery gets too much for me, I can turn off the computer and crawl into bed.
Have to be better by Sunday, though – another signing event for “Adelsverein†– this one at a Hastings in New Braunfels. Practically the only bookstore in New Braunfels, I think. If there is an independently owned one in town, I haven’t been able to find it through Googlemaps. I was well enough to send out another mailing, targeting various history museums, or as in some cases, re-targeting them for another round. Eventually, I may get a response from some of them. Already did get an email from the bookstore at the Alamo… yes, that Alamo, the ground-zero of touristic-type attractions in Texas, and I would purely love to have the Trilogy for sale in the bookstore there. Apparently, as part of the process, I do have to send them two review copies, so they may verify that no, my writing does not suck. And at least I was considering this kind of thing far enough in advance as I was writing, that I did set two scenes at the Alamo itself. Not during the immortal siege, of course – that has been done to a turn. No, the old church and the yard in front of it serve as the background for two scenes in Adelsverein set years later, when it was an Army warehouse and marshaling yard.
My grand plan is to have the Trilogy for sale as a local interest item in every town that the plot encompasses. Except for Indianola, of course – that town is no longer there, in a meaningful commercial sense. A trickle of regular royalty payments would suit me right down to the ground, but I do have to carry on with marketing the books here, and there – follow up with letters, with phone calls and postings on various websites and forums.
It’s been said over and over, that the writing of a book is the relatively easier part – getting out and marketing it, that’s the hard work.
What do you call a little doggy who is the result of a cross between a chihuahua and a Shi-tzu? (and what would you give to have not been present at that moment, the barking would have been deafening!?)
Blondie and I spotted one, in Fredericksburg last weekend – kinda cute, actually. But small, and probably yappy. The best we came up with was
(wait for it …. drumroll, please…)
A ‘Cheet-zu!’
Any other suggestions?
To: Our Friends in Palestine – Specifically in Gaza (and all their good buds in Mainstream Media)
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Why I Don’t Give a Rat’s Ass
1. I really don’t – having written about it several times before and most memorably here.
2. Really, if there is an aggrieved party anywhere else in the world who had a more legitimate grievance, a larger fund of donations in the form of coin, sympathy and goodwill and yet still managed to alienate, annoy, and piss away any residual body of good-will and sympathy (save of those mush-brained lefty luvvies exemplified by idiots like Rachael Corrie and her fellow tools in various so-called solidarity orgs)… well, it’s just hard to come up with any other religious/national/ethnic group who has managed to equal the record of your illustrious selves. I’d like to hear about them. Seriously, I would. The world record for political Darwinism is in contention here
3. And yet you still manage to blame plight on the Eternal Juice, and their infernal allies in the media… which is really sweet, since most of those media whores (to include the BBC and our very own terror-symps, NPR – not for nothing is it bitterly said that it stands for National Palestinian Radio) – they all still take your calls, choke down your spittle-flecked rants, and manage heroically never to mention all the rockets sent towards Southern Israel over the last few years. 6,000 is the last figure that I read – no thanks to NPR for this interesting tidbit.
4. So, my dear little Gaza chickadees – It has all to do with consequences. Having sent all those indiscriminately-aimed rockets in the general direction of those feelthy Juice, dressed your little children up in suicide bomber costumes, and fed them all sorts of Jew-hatred from the very cradle, sent your older children out to throw stones, and your young men and women to blowup restaurants, public buses and hospital emergency rooms, generated a tidal-spew of misinformation, disinformation and outright lies, and given every evidence of welcoming a good fight… well, now you have one.
5. It might seem also that although your allies in mainstream media are doing their usual heroic work in passing on every scrap of the disinformation and lies noted in item 4, it doesn’t seem to be going down quite as well as previous. Too much of the audience maintain vivid recall of incidents like the Jenin massacre that wasn’t, the al-Dura fraud, Green Helmet guy, and divers others. It’s pretty much taken as a given that any local stringers reporting for the news services are shills for one or another Paleo-faction.
6. So there you go – scream, rant and rave all you like, play the victim card and whine for intervention and rescue 24-7 . I don’t care. You provoked a fight; if the IDF air and ground forces are now having a contest to see how high they can make the rubble jump – it’s no skin off mine.
7. Frankly, if it had been a group of Mexican narco-traffickers planted just over the border from San Diego or Yuma, launching large numbers of rockets in a northerly direction, I can pretty well guarantee that the US wouldn’t have put up with it for more than a couple of months.
Sincerely,
Sgt Mom
PS – I am now waiting for a Jenin-like ‘ultimate atrocity story’ to surface, thanks to your apparently-farcical dramatic abilities, but which turn out to be strangely convincing to the gullible international media.
We seem to have survived the short trip over to a new host… but lost all the entries for the last week. Sorry… maybe they’ll be along later, or perhaps they are drifting out among the currents of the internet, like some kind of pixilated Flying Dutchman…
I’ll repost mine, anon.