"Guests are like fish: After 3 days they both stink."

When I was a kid and people still read newspapers, a birdcage lined with newspaper was a common metaphor writers used to describe how others sometimes treat their work.

When my parents and grandparents were kids, they wrapped fish in newspaper; different metaphor, same idea.

Arthur Treacher's Fish 'n Chips (a competitor to Long John Silver's) used to line their fish 'n chips baskets with food service paper printed like old newspaper. We tried to read the stories, but they were often cropped and nonsensical. Arthur Treacher's is still around >  but not near me.

How'd you like to be the writer that wrote for Aurthur Treacher's fish 'n chips basket liners? One way ticket to fish, no middleman to stop the news on it's way to it's a useful purpose.

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Click to enlarge: Here is a picture of Grandpa and Grandma Cairns (Thomas Cairns and Geneva Cairns) and grandchildren circa 1972. Grandchildren are: Dan Young (held by Grandpa), then L-R, Tom Tom, Carolee, Dee Dee, Linda, me, and Tom.

"Guests are like fish: After 3 days they both stink"
--Grandma Cairns (Geneva Cairns, née Bauer; my dad's mom; she was really very sweet and had a way of saying things like this without a hint of unkindness.)

[2013-06-13]

 

 

 

 

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When the night has been chilly but the day is already warming.

Writers don't see themselves as living and dying in quite the same way, say, as someone who stocks grocery shelves for a living (which I did for many years).

Most people view their job as just a living that comes to an end when the end of everything else is closer than the beginning and we are too weak and tired to go on. What they do every day to earn a paycheck gets undone or discarded, revised or recycled.

Creative people like to think their work will survive them, whether it's words or a wrought iron poker that stands next to a fireplace generation after generation.

When you do something to last, you do it differently.

[2013-06-12]

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The time I spend writing is the most personally satisfying time in a day; just the physical act of putting my fingers on the keyboard is like opening the windows on an early summer morning when the night has been chilly but the day is already warming.

[2013-04-01]

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I don't know about other writers, but I like re-reading my own work and am sometimes surprised and delighted (that's an inside joke).

[2013-06-11]

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A stumpy shrivel glins his head.

Click to enlarge: A Metalunan from This Island Earth (1955).

A stumpy shrivel glins his head slightly whilst addressing the Slugorian vice chancellor: "They travel between those large boxes in small boxes. The small boxes have wheels, but the big boxes have none and remain stationary."

The vice chancellor brawned briefly, sipped at Slugorian tea through his proboscis, then glinned over to the shrivel. "Really?" he said. "What do they call the boxes with wheels?"

"They call them cars, Your Eminence."

"And the big boxes without wheels?"

"Houses."

"How do these... creatures..."

"Earthlings."

"... how do they move between cars and houses?"

"Sometimes the cars enter an adjoining port for an extended period. We cannot observe what happens inside. But often a car will stop outside a house and make a loud beep. After the beep, an Earthling usually appears and moves from the house to the car."

"Is it a language?"

"We think it's a courting gesture and prelude to reproduction. There is more reproduction in cars of some varieties. They are rarer and bear emblems such as BMW and Jaguar."

"That reminds me of a joke," said the vice chancellor.

"Oh, please, do share it, Your Eminence," said the shrivel.

"Did you hear about the homeless snail? He was adopted by a family of slugs!"

And they both snortled proboscisly.[1]

[2013-06-07]

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The most impactful endings to any books I've ever read.

Two, in this order:

1
Truman Capote, "Dazzle," in Music for Chameleons.

2
Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions.

In both those cases, I put the book down and just had to decompress. I won't tell you what the endings were in case you'd like to enjoy them yourself.

[2013-05-05]

 

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Click to enlarge: This is Bethel Baptist Church (which was at that time at 737 E. 26th Street in Erie, PA - map >). It also housed Bethel Christian School for many years. I attended Bethel Christian School 7th-9th grade. I have very fond memories of that time and the friends I met there.

[1]
The genesis of an idea: Mrs Blystone (née Emerson), when she was teaching 8th grade English at Bethel Christian School, read a short story from the front of the class, a vignette, really, in which a creature from outer space was watching our cars go to and fro and wondered if the people inside were the guts.

I don't recall the author or the genre. It confused me at the time. I was trying to pick out which elements of the story identified it with a genre, for I had a keen interest in words very early, but for the life of me, I couldn't.

She read a different story each day as examples of different genres. Another involved a man who had trouble picking up coins with his fat fingers. Another was O Henry's "Gift of the Magi"; any story with a religious analogy in the title is a winner at a Christian school.

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Someday there will be no one to watch me from the window.

Click to enlarge: Dad with Dee Dee and Kayla (Mimi) in the morning before Dad has gotten out of his robe and combed his hair.

Today I left my 4-year-old Dee Dee at daycare and waved goodbye to her as she stared blankly back through a screened window, standing atop a step stool that allowed her to peer out.

The daycare was full of active kids running and coloring and playing; she would only be there for a few hours, and it's a good, safe, daycare, so there's no particular reason why this one morning should stick with me like burnt coffee.

Almost every night Dee Dee asks me, "Daddy, do you have to go to work tomorrow?" I really enjoy the days I can say No, and enjoy even more the next morning when she comes downstairs to my office, cuddling her blanket and climbing on my lap. Then our morning begins with gummy vitamins, cereal, yogurt, and a boiled egg, until Mom and Mimi rise a little later and the weekend family activities begin.

What's so wrong with wanting to be with Dad more than wanting to run or color or play, for just a few minutes? In those few minutes, I am more important to her than I will be to anyone else for the rest of the day.

Someday soon I'll be heading off to work and there will be no one there to watch me from the window.

[2013-06-10]

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Click to enlarge: My son Charlie with Mimi (Kayla). This is a good picture. Mimi is good natured, and offers an inquisitive, inviting smile when she's not hungry or tired.

When I make the bed for my son (a futon downstairs), I remember my parents making my bed for me; you do those things because you are a parent, but kids don't think of it that way, because, since conception, they've known no different.

When I am making my son's bed, I think of Mom making mine, as she thought of her mom making hers, and so on, memories that live only three to four generations, and then go to heaven.

[2013-02-15]

 

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I think Calvin was on to something....

No, not that Calvin, this one....




[2013-06-04]

 

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Hey MDOT...

TAKE DOWN THE LANE CLOSURE SIGNS AFTER YOU OPEN THEM BACK UP.

Thank you.

 

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