In Seattle, we have kiosks to take money for parking spaces. The other evening, I stood behind a man who was trying to coax a sticker out of one of those unarmed bandits. He pushed and pushed at the rubberized button with the point of a mechanical pencil, but there was no response. As his frustration grew, I mentioned that it might work better to use a fingertip. He shot a nasty glance at the button, then turned the look on me.
I understood. "Would you like me to push it for you?" I asked.
Ambivalence left him speechless. His jaw lowered, then raised, then lowered again.
"I don't mind," I said, then reached past him to push the green rubber button. A sticker dropped into the receptacle, the man raised the cover with his pencil point, gingerly removed the paper, nodded to me, mumbled a thanks, and walked off.
Living in what might be the best sanitary conditions in history, Americans are impressive germophobes. Every visit to a men's room is a nonstop show. The man who advances the paper towels with an elbow. The guy who turns the water on and off with a Kleenex wrapped around his finger. The gent who uses a paper towel to open the door to leave, then before the door closes, slings the towel in the general direction of the waste receptacle, and if he misses, well, that's someone else's health hazard. Let the washroom attendant get infected with whatever microorganism might be coating the door handle.
Hand sanitizers are everywhere. I watched a woman enterering a supermarket pull a moistened paper towelette from a dispenser to wipe the steering wheel of the little car her little boy would "drive" through the store. Then she took another towelette to wipe the handle on the back of the car. Then she pulled out several towelettes, walked inside, used one to sterilize the wrapper of a loaf of bread, and headed off toward the rear of the store. I couldn't help wondering how she'd ever managed to conceive that toddler.
There are people who wear face masks to go out into public. No, they're not on chemo, nor do they have immune deficiency conditions. It's just that you never know what's out there.
On the other hand, how about the guy in the men's room I overheard telling a friend about his terrific two-week trip to several primitive third-world countries - as he did everything he could to avoid having a square millimeter of finger contact the flush lever on his urinal? And how about the epidemic of whooping cough now raging through Seattle because so many people don't want their kids to be immunized? (I know about the autism argument, but I don't believe it's valid. What I do believe is that children are dying in my city because their parents have neither allowed them to be immunized, nor themselves received adult booster shots).
What's going to be the outcome of this dualistic behavior? Might we all become pushovers for infectious diseases, bereft of protective antibodies, with immune systems the equivalent of couch potatoes?
But it's an ill wind that blows no one some good, and writers are always tuned in to the world in which they live. One germophobe I watched in action several years back sent me directly to my little pocket notebook to write a description of him. In Scamming the Birdman, he became Fenton Dassidario, who always wore cotton gloves, and loved all things electronic and therefore non-infectious. He was deathly afraid of bugs that might invade his body and kill it, but was a master manipulator of bugs he could plant in someone's apartment to permit him to listen in on their activities.
As the pencil-point man hustled away from the kiosk, I didn't offer to shake hands.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Boners At The Ball Yard
Last Friday night, I had the weirdest deja vu moment. I was at the local ball yard, seated up in the third deck behind home plate, watching our Seattle Mariners nurse a 2-0 lead. But in the seventh inning, the visiting Minnesota Twins loaded the bases with one out. The Mariners' pitching coach came out to talk to the pitcher and catcher, then returned to the dugout.
A moment later, the batter hit a comebacker to the pitcher. Hallelujah. The pitcher would throw the ball to the catcher, who had one foot planted on home plate, one out; then, the catcher would relay the ball to the first baseman. A one-two-three double play, inning over.
But the pitcher wheeled around and threw the ball toward - not to, toward - the shortstop, who was covering second base. No outs were recorded, and the game was lost (or from the point of view of the Twins, it was won).
Once upon a time, I coached my son's, then my daughter's, Little League teams, and as I saw the Mariners' pitcher pause and start to turn, I was suddenly on the sideline of a neighborhood baseball diamond, cupping my hands around my mouth to call to a confused ten-year-old pitcher, "Home! Throw it home!" "Throw...the...ball...HOME!"
What on earth had possessed a big-league ballplayer to pull off a doozie like that? It got even more confusing next day, when I read in the paper that the pitching coach had told the pitcher, "If they hit anything back to you, throw it home." After the game, Eric Wedge, the tough Seattle manager, told reporters, "I'm sure he'll learn from this," which made me think that if I were that pitcher, I might keep my back firmly to the wall till I could jump on the next plane to Japan. The pitcher was quoted as saying that with the ball in his hand, he could think only of getting two outs, second to first. "I had a brain fart," he explained.
Well, brain farts do occur in baseball games, often enough that there should be provision for them in the official scorer reports. Back in the 1930s, a Brooklyn Dodger named Frenchy Bordagaray was picked off second base because the fielders were aware of his tendency to tap his foot, and he got tagged out, as he put it, "between taps." This was the same Frenchy Bordagaray who once became so angry at an umpire that he spat on him. For that, Frenchy was fined $500, which he said was more than he'd expectorated.
Not only players have brain farts. One day in 1942, Lou Boudreau, the manager of the Cleveland Indians, had a bad cold, and during the game, with his team at bat and its two slowest runners on base, blew his nose. Unfortunately, a towel over the face was the signal for a double steal, which ended in a unique double play.
These events used to be called bonehead plays, or boners. The term goes back to 1908, when Fred Merkle, a young player for the New York Giants, did not run all the way to second base on a walk-off single in a crucial game against the Chicago Cubs. One of the Cub infielders noticed, got hold of a ball that may or may not have been the game ball, tagged second base, and Merkle was called out. As the result, the Cubs beat out the Giants for the pennant, and then won the World Series, which they've not done since. Maybe it was Merkle who put the curse on them. In any event, poor Fred was known the rest of his life as Bonehead Merkle. "I suppose that when I die, the epitaph on my tombstone will read: 'Here lies Bonehead Merkle,'" he once said.
It could've been worse. What if Merkle had done his deed 100 years later? Brainfart Merkle all his life, then on the tombstone?
Nah.
Yeah.
A moment later, the batter hit a comebacker to the pitcher. Hallelujah. The pitcher would throw the ball to the catcher, who had one foot planted on home plate, one out; then, the catcher would relay the ball to the first baseman. A one-two-three double play, inning over.
But the pitcher wheeled around and threw the ball toward - not to, toward - the shortstop, who was covering second base. No outs were recorded, and the game was lost (or from the point of view of the Twins, it was won).
Once upon a time, I coached my son's, then my daughter's, Little League teams, and as I saw the Mariners' pitcher pause and start to turn, I was suddenly on the sideline of a neighborhood baseball diamond, cupping my hands around my mouth to call to a confused ten-year-old pitcher, "Home! Throw it home!" "Throw...the...ball...HOME!"
What on earth had possessed a big-league ballplayer to pull off a doozie like that? It got even more confusing next day, when I read in the paper that the pitching coach had told the pitcher, "If they hit anything back to you, throw it home." After the game, Eric Wedge, the tough Seattle manager, told reporters, "I'm sure he'll learn from this," which made me think that if I were that pitcher, I might keep my back firmly to the wall till I could jump on the next plane to Japan. The pitcher was quoted as saying that with the ball in his hand, he could think only of getting two outs, second to first. "I had a brain fart," he explained.
Well, brain farts do occur in baseball games, often enough that there should be provision for them in the official scorer reports. Back in the 1930s, a Brooklyn Dodger named Frenchy Bordagaray was picked off second base because the fielders were aware of his tendency to tap his foot, and he got tagged out, as he put it, "between taps." This was the same Frenchy Bordagaray who once became so angry at an umpire that he spat on him. For that, Frenchy was fined $500, which he said was more than he'd expectorated.
Not only players have brain farts. One day in 1942, Lou Boudreau, the manager of the Cleveland Indians, had a bad cold, and during the game, with his team at bat and its two slowest runners on base, blew his nose. Unfortunately, a towel over the face was the signal for a double steal, which ended in a unique double play.
These events used to be called bonehead plays, or boners. The term goes back to 1908, when Fred Merkle, a young player for the New York Giants, did not run all the way to second base on a walk-off single in a crucial game against the Chicago Cubs. One of the Cub infielders noticed, got hold of a ball that may or may not have been the game ball, tagged second base, and Merkle was called out. As the result, the Cubs beat out the Giants for the pennant, and then won the World Series, which they've not done since. Maybe it was Merkle who put the curse on them. In any event, poor Fred was known the rest of his life as Bonehead Merkle. "I suppose that when I die, the epitaph on my tombstone will read: 'Here lies Bonehead Merkle,'" he once said.
It could've been worse. What if Merkle had done his deed 100 years later? Brainfart Merkle all his life, then on the tombstone?
Nah.
Yeah.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
The Lilac Lady
Turn 55, and the shills for retirement communities come out of the woodwork. "You've worked hard all your life. Now it's time to lay back and enjoy life. You've earned it."
I don't think The Lilac Lady would've been persuaded.
Hulda Klager, born in Germany in 1863, came with her family to Woodland, WA, twenty-some miles north of Portland, in 1877. Here, she married, started her own family, and settled into the routines of a farm wife of the time.
In 1903, Hulda suffered an unspecified serious illness. During her recovery, she read about Luther Burbank and his plant hybridization work, and got hooked. She had been annoyed at how long it took to skin the small apples from her tree to make pies, so she crossed two variants and came up with just the right apple, in terms of both size and taste.
Hulda was always fond of flowers, and in 1905, she turned her attention to lilacs. In five years, she developed fourteen new varieties. Ten years later, she began to hold yearly week-long open houses during the height of the blooming season, so people could enjoy her flowers with her.
Her husband died in 1922, and Hulda, dispirited, thought of giving up her work. But with encouragement from her son, she continued, and the Klager lilac variants continued to grow in number and excellence. Hulda's open houses continued, and she received numerous honorary awards from garden clubs, academic institutions, and government agencies.
But it seemed that every couple of decades, a new challenge would arise, and 1948 brought probably the most daunting cruelty. The Columbia River produced the worst flood in memory in Woodland; the town was submerged for over a month. Except for the big trees, every plant in Hulda's garden was destroyed. It would've been understandable if the 83-year-old Lilac Lady had decided to just pack it in, and live out her days in a rocking chair in the home of one of her children. But she didn't. She set to work restoring her living treasure, aided by friends and customers who provided her with starts from plants they'd gotten from her. By 1950, she'd resumed her yearly open houses, and she continued her experiments until her death at age 97, in 1960.
If you live close enough, take a day to go to Woodland during the few weeks leading up to Mother's Day. The Hulda Klager Lilac Society now owns and keeps up the property. Before you go into the gardens, though, take a slow walk through Mrs. Klager's house, which was built in 1889, and is now a museum. There's a must-see photograph there - a picture of an 83-year-old woman, standing at the edge of her tool shed, a hoe in each hand, her face a study in human emotion. Passion is an overused word, but in that picture, Hulda Klager is in nothing less than a passion. She projects sadness and deep anger, but most of all, in her tightly-drawn mouth and hard-set jaw, there's indomitable determination. The first time I saw that picture, it put me in mind of the lines near the end of The Adventures of Augie March, where Augie laughs in sympathy at another character, "as hard used as that by rough forces, [who] will still refuse to lead a disappointed life. Or is the laugh at nature - including eternity - that it thinks it can win over us and the power of hope? Nah, nah! I think. It never will."
After you've seen the photograph, then go out to the quiet, peaceful gardens. Sit on a bench amid the riot of purple blossoms. As the breeze blows the unique odor of lilac blooms across your face, you'll be surprised by an agreeable sensation of humility and gratitude, blended with more than a little inspiration.
I don't think The Lilac Lady would've been persuaded.
Hulda Klager, born in Germany in 1863, came with her family to Woodland, WA, twenty-some miles north of Portland, in 1877. Here, she married, started her own family, and settled into the routines of a farm wife of the time.
In 1903, Hulda suffered an unspecified serious illness. During her recovery, she read about Luther Burbank and his plant hybridization work, and got hooked. She had been annoyed at how long it took to skin the small apples from her tree to make pies, so she crossed two variants and came up with just the right apple, in terms of both size and taste.
Hulda was always fond of flowers, and in 1905, she turned her attention to lilacs. In five years, she developed fourteen new varieties. Ten years later, she began to hold yearly week-long open houses during the height of the blooming season, so people could enjoy her flowers with her.
Her husband died in 1922, and Hulda, dispirited, thought of giving up her work. But with encouragement from her son, she continued, and the Klager lilac variants continued to grow in number and excellence. Hulda's open houses continued, and she received numerous honorary awards from garden clubs, academic institutions, and government agencies.
But it seemed that every couple of decades, a new challenge would arise, and 1948 brought probably the most daunting cruelty. The Columbia River produced the worst flood in memory in Woodland; the town was submerged for over a month. Except for the big trees, every plant in Hulda's garden was destroyed. It would've been understandable if the 83-year-old Lilac Lady had decided to just pack it in, and live out her days in a rocking chair in the home of one of her children. But she didn't. She set to work restoring her living treasure, aided by friends and customers who provided her with starts from plants they'd gotten from her. By 1950, she'd resumed her yearly open houses, and she continued her experiments until her death at age 97, in 1960.
If you live close enough, take a day to go to Woodland during the few weeks leading up to Mother's Day. The Hulda Klager Lilac Society now owns and keeps up the property. Before you go into the gardens, though, take a slow walk through Mrs. Klager's house, which was built in 1889, and is now a museum. There's a must-see photograph there - a picture of an 83-year-old woman, standing at the edge of her tool shed, a hoe in each hand, her face a study in human emotion. Passion is an overused word, but in that picture, Hulda Klager is in nothing less than a passion. She projects sadness and deep anger, but most of all, in her tightly-drawn mouth and hard-set jaw, there's indomitable determination. The first time I saw that picture, it put me in mind of the lines near the end of The Adventures of Augie March, where Augie laughs in sympathy at another character, "as hard used as that by rough forces, [who] will still refuse to lead a disappointed life. Or is the laugh at nature - including eternity - that it thinks it can win over us and the power of hope? Nah, nah! I think. It never will."
After you've seen the photograph, then go out to the quiet, peaceful gardens. Sit on a bench amid the riot of purple blossoms. As the breeze blows the unique odor of lilac blooms across your face, you'll be surprised by an agreeable sensation of humility and gratitude, blended with more than a little inspiration.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
The Fabulous Bodacious Chocolate Birthday Cake
My son Casey and his friend Ian had birthdays very close together. The year they turned 12, as the big days came up, Ian's mother was in the final stages of a tough pregnancy, so she announced she wasn't in condition to throw a party for him. "No problem," said my wife. "I'll make a birthday dinner for both you guys. You can have whatever you'd like.
You don't say that to 12-year-old boys. You just don't. They came up with turkey tetrazzini and a 7-layer chocolate cake. Myra balked at the entree, offered roast beef instead, but agreed to do the cake. The 7 layers turned out to be 14 inches high, each layer separated by chocolate buttercream, and the entire construction was iced with a bittersweet chocolate glaze. As you might imagine, it was a major hit.
Such a major hit that the other two chocolate freaks in the house - my daughter Erin and I - insisted that we get equal treatment. So when our next birthdays arrived, so did Myra's Bazooka Cake. Trying to slice the sucker was such an undertaking that our friend Carl Kehret, one of those guys who could make anything work, studied the situation, and the next time we saw him, he presented Myra with a uniquely-formed plastic panel to keep the layers together as they were being cut and served.
All this was 35 years ago. Though Casey's moved out of the area, and Erin's moved on to a chocolate souffle whose recipe she wheedled out of a French chef, for me the idea of a birthday dinner without that cake is inconceivable. Though the gatherings at the table are smaller than in years past, it's all right. The cake freezes beautifully, and is the best remedy in the world for a bad day, whenever one springs itself on us.
There's this joke about the psych prof who asked his class how often they have sex. "Who has sex every night?" "Three times a week?" "Once a week?" "Once a month?" "Every six months?" "Once a year?"
At that, a little man in the back row jumped up, waved his hand wildly, and said, "Me, that's me! I have sex once a year!"
"O-kay," said the professor. "But what's to get so excited about over having sex once a year?"
The little guy jumped up and down. "Tonight's the night! Tonight's the night!"
Well, tomorrow's my birthday! Tomorrow's my birthday!
P.S. If you can leave a little room in your gizzard, the cake goes down real slick with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
You don't say that to 12-year-old boys. You just don't. They came up with turkey tetrazzini and a 7-layer chocolate cake. Myra balked at the entree, offered roast beef instead, but agreed to do the cake. The 7 layers turned out to be 14 inches high, each layer separated by chocolate buttercream, and the entire construction was iced with a bittersweet chocolate glaze. As you might imagine, it was a major hit.
Such a major hit that the other two chocolate freaks in the house - my daughter Erin and I - insisted that we get equal treatment. So when our next birthdays arrived, so did Myra's Bazooka Cake. Trying to slice the sucker was such an undertaking that our friend Carl Kehret, one of those guys who could make anything work, studied the situation, and the next time we saw him, he presented Myra with a uniquely-formed plastic panel to keep the layers together as they were being cut and served.
All this was 35 years ago. Though Casey's moved out of the area, and Erin's moved on to a chocolate souffle whose recipe she wheedled out of a French chef, for me the idea of a birthday dinner without that cake is inconceivable. Though the gatherings at the table are smaller than in years past, it's all right. The cake freezes beautifully, and is the best remedy in the world for a bad day, whenever one springs itself on us.
There's this joke about the psych prof who asked his class how often they have sex. "Who has sex every night?" "Three times a week?" "Once a week?" "Once a month?" "Every six months?" "Once a year?"
At that, a little man in the back row jumped up, waved his hand wildly, and said, "Me, that's me! I have sex once a year!"
"O-kay," said the professor. "But what's to get so excited about over having sex once a year?"
The little guy jumped up and down. "Tonight's the night! Tonight's the night!"
Well, tomorrow's my birthday! Tomorrow's my birthday!
P.S. If you can leave a little room in your gizzard, the cake goes down real slick with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Life's A Pitcher...
...with a collection of curve balls nastier than Hogan's goat.
Back on November 9, I wrote about my Writer's Quandary: should my next mystery novel be My Mother The Murderer, or should it be The Most Horrific Botched Surgical Case In History? Or should I give attention to the treasure I'd recently acquired, unpublished manuscripts of Brun Campbell, the real-life Ragtime Kid?
Well, I'd figure it all out once I got past the major promotional work for A Perilous Conception.
Right.
The bookshop tour went very nicely, but a new term entered the equation. I'd intended APC as a standalone, no more stories featuring Detective Bernie Baumgartner and Dr. Colin Sanford. But somehow, the review copies went out proclaiming the book to be the first in the new Bernie Baumgartner series. Reviewers were enthusiastic - delighted, they said, that Bernie would have further adventures.
And then, at every stop on my tour, there were people who'd already read the book, and without exception, they wanted more Bernie. By the time I got back home, I'd decided if there really was that much interest, why not give it a try? It might be fun, and besides, why miss an opportunity to be compared to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?
So I settled in, and tried to go to work. I say, tried. I felt exhausted, my mind like a sieve. Okay, I need a week or two to recover from the tour, right? Wrong. I got worse. Finally, I hauled myself off to my doctor, who told me I had Graves' Disease (an overactive thyroid gland), and got me treated. But he warned me it was going to be a slow recovery. I'd need to be patient.
I wasn't. I felt fatigued, did I? Really exhausted? Fine. Step it up a notch or two at the gym. Whereby I managed to strain both rotator cuffs, and got to add twice-weekly physical therapy to my routine.
Talk about frustration. No way could I get another mystery underway. I couldn't put two coherent thoughts together. Develop a plot or a character? Forget it. Literally.
But the Brun Campbell material was there, staring at me. The Kid's story of his life, first as an itinerant ragtime pianist more than 100 years ago, then as a fanatical ragtime revivalist in the 1940s, was captivating, but to say the least, it also was seriously disjointed. I needed to take about fifteen short to mid-length manuscripts, put them into some kind of reasonable order, and type them onto the hard drive. That I could do, an hour here, an hour and a half there.
Now, three months later, I'm feeling a whole lot better, but still have a way to go. Bernie and Colin sit in the back of my writing room, shaking their heads and rolling their eyes. Brun Campbell nods approvingly at the files on my computer. "Kid," I tell him, "I think it's getting to be time for me to give those guys a little attention."
He waves off my comment. "Hey, lemme tell you about the time, it was back in Sedalia, summer of '99, with weather almost as hot as my ragtime playin'. I'm sittin' around with Scott Joplin and his pal, Otis Saunders, over by the Maple Leaf Club, and here comes this gal, movin' double-time, the most attractive creature of the fair sex you ever set eyes on, and both her eyes got blood in them. Saunders, he takes one look at her..."
So, now what? I don't know. I really don't. I guess before I pick my teammates for the next year or two, I need to keep up with my conditioning, and get myself off the DL. Then it'll be time to grab a bat, walk up to the plate, and depending on what the pitcher throws me, either dump the ball into the right-field corner, or drive it to the left-field wall.
Back on November 9, I wrote about my Writer's Quandary: should my next mystery novel be My Mother The Murderer, or should it be The Most Horrific Botched Surgical Case In History? Or should I give attention to the treasure I'd recently acquired, unpublished manuscripts of Brun Campbell, the real-life Ragtime Kid?
Well, I'd figure it all out once I got past the major promotional work for A Perilous Conception.
Right.
The bookshop tour went very nicely, but a new term entered the equation. I'd intended APC as a standalone, no more stories featuring Detective Bernie Baumgartner and Dr. Colin Sanford. But somehow, the review copies went out proclaiming the book to be the first in the new Bernie Baumgartner series. Reviewers were enthusiastic - delighted, they said, that Bernie would have further adventures.
And then, at every stop on my tour, there were people who'd already read the book, and without exception, they wanted more Bernie. By the time I got back home, I'd decided if there really was that much interest, why not give it a try? It might be fun, and besides, why miss an opportunity to be compared to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?
So I settled in, and tried to go to work. I say, tried. I felt exhausted, my mind like a sieve. Okay, I need a week or two to recover from the tour, right? Wrong. I got worse. Finally, I hauled myself off to my doctor, who told me I had Graves' Disease (an overactive thyroid gland), and got me treated. But he warned me it was going to be a slow recovery. I'd need to be patient.
I wasn't. I felt fatigued, did I? Really exhausted? Fine. Step it up a notch or two at the gym. Whereby I managed to strain both rotator cuffs, and got to add twice-weekly physical therapy to my routine.
Talk about frustration. No way could I get another mystery underway. I couldn't put two coherent thoughts together. Develop a plot or a character? Forget it. Literally.
But the Brun Campbell material was there, staring at me. The Kid's story of his life, first as an itinerant ragtime pianist more than 100 years ago, then as a fanatical ragtime revivalist in the 1940s, was captivating, but to say the least, it also was seriously disjointed. I needed to take about fifteen short to mid-length manuscripts, put them into some kind of reasonable order, and type them onto the hard drive. That I could do, an hour here, an hour and a half there.
Now, three months later, I'm feeling a whole lot better, but still have a way to go. Bernie and Colin sit in the back of my writing room, shaking their heads and rolling their eyes. Brun Campbell nods approvingly at the files on my computer. "Kid," I tell him, "I think it's getting to be time for me to give those guys a little attention."
He waves off my comment. "Hey, lemme tell you about the time, it was back in Sedalia, summer of '99, with weather almost as hot as my ragtime playin'. I'm sittin' around with Scott Joplin and his pal, Otis Saunders, over by the Maple Leaf Club, and here comes this gal, movin' double-time, the most attractive creature of the fair sex you ever set eyes on, and both her eyes got blood in them. Saunders, he takes one look at her..."
So, now what? I don't know. I really don't. I guess before I pick my teammates for the next year or two, I need to keep up with my conditioning, and get myself off the DL. Then it'll be time to grab a bat, walk up to the plate, and depending on what the pitcher throws me, either dump the ball into the right-field corner, or drive it to the left-field wall.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Bad Words
More and more, I get asked why I need to put bad words in my books. This despite the fact that you can walk past any elementary school play-yard during recess, and you won't be able to count fast enough to add up all the fucks you'll hear.
A well-read, educated man once put the question to me. "You write so nicely," he said. "Such good stories, so clever. You don't use a lot of bad words, but they still ruin the experience for me. I really think my wife would enjoy your books, but with that language in them, I can't recommend them to her."
I imagined his wife, down under the covers in bed, shining a flashlight on the pages of First, Do No Harm, as her husband snored beside her.
I just can't understand why you need to use any bad language," the man said. "Even one word."
"Because that's what a particular person - a character - in that situation would say right then," I replied. "Look at it this way: when my wife and I were bringing up our kids, we told them they could use any word they wanted, as long as they knew what it meant. And now that they're grown, they actually don't cuss very much at all - but when they do, you sit up and listen. It's like that with my characters. I draft my stories from the subconscious, and I'm often surprised at what comes up on the computer screen. If I go back and cut out anything a character says that rings right for the story, it'd be like cutting off that character's arm, or leg. I couldn't expect him or her to do anything for the story from then on."
"You could use asterisks," the man said. "Or dashes."
"'Dash you?'" I said. "Go asterisk yourself? Sorry, but I think that might take readers out of the story."
He was determined to be patient with me. "In one of your books, you have a bunch of people walking down a sidewalk, using the worst language I can imagine. I walk on a lot of sidewalks, and I've never, ever, heard a bad word. Have you? Honestly, now."
"Well, one day last week, I was walking along in downtown Seattle, and the air around a bunch of kids was bluer than the sky. Yes, honestly. I hear it all the time."
He shook his head. "It must be different where you live.
I don't think I mentioned: this man lived in New York. I figured there wasn't anything else to say.
Then, there was the pleasant, gray-haired woman I spoke with at a library promotional event. She asked all about my books, their plots, settings, and characters, and she seemed extremely interested. Then she said, "Do you take the name of the Lord in vain in your books?"
"Well, not personally," I said. "But yes, sometimes my characters do take the name of the Lord in vain. All in all, there's not a lot of off-color language in my books, but sometimes it just seems necessary."
The woman's smile became positively materteral. "Oh, I don't mind off-color language in books," she said. "As far as I'm concerned, you can let your characters say fuck all you want. I just don't like to hear the name of the Lord taken in vain."
I tried not to laugh, failed miserably. Fortunately, the woman didn't seem offended. "Well, I guess a person can't please everyone," I said.
The woman was still smiling. "You'd be foolish to try."
A well-read, educated man once put the question to me. "You write so nicely," he said. "Such good stories, so clever. You don't use a lot of bad words, but they still ruin the experience for me. I really think my wife would enjoy your books, but with that language in them, I can't recommend them to her."
I imagined his wife, down under the covers in bed, shining a flashlight on the pages of First, Do No Harm, as her husband snored beside her.
I just can't understand why you need to use any bad language," the man said. "Even one word."
"Because that's what a particular person - a character - in that situation would say right then," I replied. "Look at it this way: when my wife and I were bringing up our kids, we told them they could use any word they wanted, as long as they knew what it meant. And now that they're grown, they actually don't cuss very much at all - but when they do, you sit up and listen. It's like that with my characters. I draft my stories from the subconscious, and I'm often surprised at what comes up on the computer screen. If I go back and cut out anything a character says that rings right for the story, it'd be like cutting off that character's arm, or leg. I couldn't expect him or her to do anything for the story from then on."
"You could use asterisks," the man said. "Or dashes."
"'Dash you?'" I said. "Go asterisk yourself? Sorry, but I think that might take readers out of the story."
He was determined to be patient with me. "In one of your books, you have a bunch of people walking down a sidewalk, using the worst language I can imagine. I walk on a lot of sidewalks, and I've never, ever, heard a bad word. Have you? Honestly, now."
"Well, one day last week, I was walking along in downtown Seattle, and the air around a bunch of kids was bluer than the sky. Yes, honestly. I hear it all the time."
He shook his head. "It must be different where you live.
I don't think I mentioned: this man lived in New York. I figured there wasn't anything else to say.
Then, there was the pleasant, gray-haired woman I spoke with at a library promotional event. She asked all about my books, their plots, settings, and characters, and she seemed extremely interested. Then she said, "Do you take the name of the Lord in vain in your books?"
"Well, not personally," I said. "But yes, sometimes my characters do take the name of the Lord in vain. All in all, there's not a lot of off-color language in my books, but sometimes it just seems necessary."
The woman's smile became positively materteral. "Oh, I don't mind off-color language in books," she said. "As far as I'm concerned, you can let your characters say fuck all you want. I just don't like to hear the name of the Lord taken in vain."
I tried not to laugh, failed miserably. Fortunately, the woman didn't seem offended. "Well, I guess a person can't please everyone," I said.
The woman was still smiling. "You'd be foolish to try."
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Life Goes On
Ed, Dale and I had good times for a lot of years, collecting and restoring antique phonographs and music boxes. Ed had some twenty years on Dale and me, and he generously showed the young guys all the ropes about acquiring and fixing our musical toys.
When the day came for Dale and me to attend Ed's funeral, Dale had a music box that needed my particular attention. He and I live nearly an hour's drive apart. "Should I bring it up to the church?" he asked. "We can put it in your car after the service. You think that'd bother anyone, if they saw us?"
I shrugged. "There's always somebody who could be bothered by anything. But if Ed knew, I'd bet he'd get a laugh out of it."
Dale nodded. "I wouldn't bet he never did anything like that, himself."
So the parking lot exchange went off as arranged.
In the years since, Dale and I have stayed close to Kay, Ed's wife, and John, his son, also a phonograph enthusiast. Last week, one of Kay's daughters, John's sister, died, and her memorial service was set for last Saturday. I had a music box that needed to go to Dale, and he had one he wanted me to work on. You know what we planned.
The service was to be casual, the celebration of a life, but the air in the church was heavy, no one being able to get away from the feeling that a much-loved person had died too soon. After the service, there was a reception, and after that, Dale and I made our way outside. As we were moving music boxes between car trunks, I heard a gruff voice: "Hey, what's this? You guys having a swap meet in the parking lot?"
I half-turned, saw John standing behind us, and wondered whether I might be able to melt into the asphalt. But then I saw he was laughing. Not only that, he was holding a phonograph. A man and woman standing with him were also laughing. John introduced them as cousins of his; they had bought the phonograph years before from Ed, and now that it had stopped working, John had told them to bring it to the church, and he'd take it home and fix it.
We stood around, talking, for a good fifteen minutes. John showed us some interesting structural details about the phonograph he was going to set right. Dale gave the cousins contact information for someone who could fix an early TV set. I remembered aloud the time Ed got a hot tip on the availability of a rare and beautiful phonograph. Never mind that right then, a wind and rain storm was raging through western Washington, and most of the area was without power. That's why God gave us flashlights. "Come on, Maw," Ed shouted to Kay. "We can't let anybody beat us out on this one." An hour or so later, Kay held the flashlight as Ed hauled his treasure up from a dark, soggy basement and into the car.
When we went off to our cars, everyone was smiling. Life does go on. Celebrate it any way you like.
When the day came for Dale and me to attend Ed's funeral, Dale had a music box that needed my particular attention. He and I live nearly an hour's drive apart. "Should I bring it up to the church?" he asked. "We can put it in your car after the service. You think that'd bother anyone, if they saw us?"
I shrugged. "There's always somebody who could be bothered by anything. But if Ed knew, I'd bet he'd get a laugh out of it."
Dale nodded. "I wouldn't bet he never did anything like that, himself."
So the parking lot exchange went off as arranged.
In the years since, Dale and I have stayed close to Kay, Ed's wife, and John, his son, also a phonograph enthusiast. Last week, one of Kay's daughters, John's sister, died, and her memorial service was set for last Saturday. I had a music box that needed to go to Dale, and he had one he wanted me to work on. You know what we planned.
The service was to be casual, the celebration of a life, but the air in the church was heavy, no one being able to get away from the feeling that a much-loved person had died too soon. After the service, there was a reception, and after that, Dale and I made our way outside. As we were moving music boxes between car trunks, I heard a gruff voice: "Hey, what's this? You guys having a swap meet in the parking lot?"
I half-turned, saw John standing behind us, and wondered whether I might be able to melt into the asphalt. But then I saw he was laughing. Not only that, he was holding a phonograph. A man and woman standing with him were also laughing. John introduced them as cousins of his; they had bought the phonograph years before from Ed, and now that it had stopped working, John had told them to bring it to the church, and he'd take it home and fix it.
We stood around, talking, for a good fifteen minutes. John showed us some interesting structural details about the phonograph he was going to set right. Dale gave the cousins contact information for someone who could fix an early TV set. I remembered aloud the time Ed got a hot tip on the availability of a rare and beautiful phonograph. Never mind that right then, a wind and rain storm was raging through western Washington, and most of the area was without power. That's why God gave us flashlights. "Come on, Maw," Ed shouted to Kay. "We can't let anybody beat us out on this one." An hour or so later, Kay held the flashlight as Ed hauled his treasure up from a dark, soggy basement and into the car.
When we went off to our cars, everyone was smiling. Life does go on. Celebrate it any way you like.
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