Thursday, August 1, 2019

Moose in the sprinkler




 A cooling moose!

P. S. I feel suddenly compelled to say something about my lack of longer written pieces on this blog. To be honest, at this moment we're going through a family health crisis involving several people - none of us is getting any younger - and this involves multiple trips to the ER and the hospital that I find more than disconcerting, given the fact that the chaos in the ER triggers every bad memory/nerve cell in my body. This on top of not knowing exactly what is going on medically. The wheels grind very slowly, and information is scarce and has to be squeezed out of medical staff at 1:00 in the morning.

I find it's not a very good idea to share  deeply on a blog like this, as people feel uncomfortable with it, and I always wonder if I should have  done that and usually delete it anyway. I don't like those many attention-getting videos that dramatize battles with serious disease, some of which turn out to be total  fraud. My world view is just not very positive now, so I can't share that either. So I try to pass along fun stuff, mostly, because that's what I can do right now while I wait out  some pretty worrying  things. 

Meantime, here's that moose! 


Thursday, July 25, 2019

"Can it be done?". . . Well, why the hell not?


 

When I was a kid, everything I was ever taught about the future was prefaced with, "By the year 2000. . . "   The Year 2000 was some sort of magical threshhold, a massive divide between our primitive way of life (nasty, brutish and short), and a brilliant new vision that seemed almost like the Third Reich in its monolithic, blinding purity. One day in Grade 5, the grade that was to change my life forever because we gave the teacher a nervous breakdown, we were even asked, one by one, to forecast what that astonishingly momentous year was going to bring to revolutionize the human condition. I have no idea what I said, and in fact nobody had much to say that was memorable, except for Michael de Haan (who is still on my Facebook page!), who said, "Twentieth Century Fox will become Twenty-First Century Fox."




That turned out to be about as significant as anything else I read and heard about the year 2000. Domed cities were a universal vision, perhaps inspired by the Jetsons and a certainty that the planet would soon become too polluted to inhabit. There would be no more food: we'd all take our nourishment by taking various pills. (I was secretly terribly worried about this one, convinced no one would ever be able to eat again. What would happen to all the restaurants?) All those zeroes just stood there in the future, and although they seemed to me like some nightmare from a bankrupt slot machine, to everyone else they shone like iridescent bubbles ready to lift the earth out of its squalid dilemmas once and for all - and mostly through the unmixed blessing of technology.





When the actual time came, if you can remember this, everyone began to run around in tiny little circles because of the Millennium Bug. The world was going to come to an end, supposedly, because of all those zeroes. Computers everywhere would malfunction, all at once, triggering global havoc. Time and Newsweek had the zeroes on their covers. There were whole books written about this, with the kind of bunkered-down hysteria that is still alive among the survivalists, happily awaiting the collapse of civilization with their stores of canned milk and dried beans.

You know what happened? Do you remember?  NOTHING. Diddlysquat happened when 1999 rolled over to 2000, except that the world had a hell of a party. It was comical to see the sale bin in the book store on January 1, heaped with untouched copies of those alarmist books. But in spite of what everyone was proclaiming, it wasn't even the 21st century yet - that didn't come until the next year. But by 2001, the world had other, more pressing dilemmas to face.





It interests me to see "futuristic" things like these magazine pages from the 1930s. Like reading Ray Bradbury, the flavor of it is almost right, then goes off-course somehow because no one really knows how to think about the future. Bradbury was more of a 19th-century poet with a manual mind, and could never get the hang of technology. Even a visionary work like Fahrenheit 451 didn't get beyond a clunky sort of radio in its communications systems. Thus his writings had a sort of stay-on-the-ground quality even as they reached beyond the stars.

I never futurize because it scares the hell out of me, what with the unprecedented power we now have to destroy the earth and everything that is in it (including all those groaning billions of people).  I am guilty of the worst kind of denial and suppression, because I want to have a nice day, thank you very much, and not sink into a depression from which I am not likely to emerge (unless I am blown to bits first).




No, I want to have a nice day, and for the most part I do, because I know how little control I have over anything at all. Those who say you rule and govern your life by the decisions you make don't take into account how utterly irrational most of our decisions are. We decide with our genes, our gonads, our superstitions, and our worst childhood fears. I have far more life behind me now than ahead, and believe me when I say, I don't want to waste one second of it in doomsaying. Besides, I might be wrong! The Soviet Union fell. The Berlin Wall came down. A Catholic Pope is making sense, at least some of the time. That's the list, folks, and it's short, but it might just be enough to sustain me for the rest of the day.



Friday, July 12, 2019

KFC EXPLOSION: Police do not suspect "fowl play"





July 12, 2019, 11:19 AM PDT / Updated July 12, 2019, 11:56 AM PDT
By Minyvonne Burke

Surveillance video caught the moment a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in North Carolina exploded, reducing it to rubble.

The explosion happened around 12:30 a.m. Thursday in Eden, which is about 35 miles north of Greensboro. Eden police said the fast-food restaurant closed between 10:15 and 10:30 p.m. and nobody was inside at the time it was destroyed.

There have been no reports of injuries, authorities said.

Video from Eden Drug, a pharmacy next door to the KFC, showed the building suddenly ripped apart by a large blast as debris flew through the air. A photo the Eden Police Department posted on Facebook showed the store reduced to just a partial building frame.


Image: KFC explosion
A Kentucky Fried Chicken in Eden, North Carolina, was reduced to rubble after it exploded early Thursday morning.Eden Police Department

“We are devastated by this incident, but most importantly we are grateful that all of our restaurant team members are safe and no one was injured," a KFC spokesperson said in a statement.

Employees who are affected will have their choice to work at six area KFC restaurants “to minimize disruption to their work schedules and pay” while the Eden location is rebuilt, the spokesperson said.

Eden Mayor Neville Hall told NBC affiliate WXII in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, that he was several miles away and still felt the blast. He said residents and the store's employees are lucky.

"It's hard to see that and think you can be lucky about anything," he said, noting that if the blast had occurred hours earlier, the restaurant would have been "packed with people."

Authorities are still trying to determine the cause of the explosion. NBC affiliate WCNC in Charlotte, North Carolina, reported that energy and natural gas crews arrived at the KFC location shortly after the explosion.


"WOW!" Response to yesterday's post




As a followup to yesterday's lament, which was originally posted on Facebook,  I received a heartwarming outpouring of support from my fellow writers, many of whom aren't even on my friend list.  Some of the longer comments say "see more", so they aren't complete, but you get the idea. I had no idea ANYONE would respond to this. It's that "I'm all alone in this" thing, which it turns out I am not. I have  copied and pasted these without changing the format, as quite often you get nothing but one solid block of text. This is one of the longer things I have ever posted, but it's important to me that it be put up here to balance yesterday's lament. I also had a chance to tell some writers how I felt about them and their work. I didn't do the usual thing and intersperse photos (as I've always felt big blocks of text are hard to get through). But here are the comments, not quite complete. As Christopher Walken would say: "Wow."




·        Ruth Hill I am wondering why he is bent on criticising you instead of encouraging you. I also do not believe popularity is any measure of the quality of the creative endeavor. I am hoping you can ditch the grouch and surround yourself with
o                                                       
Margaret Gunning I think writers have a tough enough time trying to deal with editors, critics, etc. without getting it from their fellow writers. It's too bad. But his opinion doesn't carry much (if any) weight with me.

·                                
Amber Hayward A real writer doesn't write so that their words will not be heard, a real writer aims to communicate. Otherwise we could stow it all away in closets and feel we accomplished enough. Good grief!
o                                                       
Margaret Gunning I keep thinking: humans became human when they began to communicate with words. And that began with everyone sitting around the fire in a circle listening to the the Storyteller, mesmerizing everyone with the tale of. . . Oh, wait - take away that circle! A storyteller isn't a storyteller if they need THAT crap.
·                                
Lori Hahnel You don’t need a jackass like that in your life.
o                                                       
Margaret Gunning Well, he's blocked. It was kind of a shock to receive a tirade like that. And he wanted me to re-title my novel Glass Girl. The novel is about silent film comedian Harold Lloyd. But "girl" was a sort of buzzword in titles a couple of years ago. . . I don't know, everybody's an expert, I guess. (But you're right.)
o                                                       
Lori Hahnel Good for you for blocking him. What a weirdo.
·                                
Catharine Clark-Sayles This person is not a friend
o                                                       
Margaret Gunning No, he's not. Not even in a Facebook sense.
·                                
Luanne Armstrong Sounds like a good subject and an interesting topic from you
·                                
Bruce Meyer Hey, you have a right to care. Everyone who is a professional and wants to be recognized has a right to their own barometer for success. Keep writing. Books don’t go away and many begin to sell long after the fact. Austin Clarke felt the same way you dSee More
o                                                        
Margaret Gunning I'm still hoping for the movie deal! And I still keep writing, this "thing" I work on late at night. . . I don't think I'll ever show it to anyone. But you never know.
·                                
MJ Cates Wanting your work to be read by as many people as possible is not nearly the same as wanting to own a private jet and four houses. Many great writers lamented their lack of sales/recognition (Keats, for example), and your analogy to making something yoSee More
o                                                       
Margaret Gunning Thank you so much! I posted this because I was trying to come to terms with what happened and, frankly, not get too hurt by it, though it hurt anyway because I used to think this guy was an ally, if not a friend. But his naivete (or perhaps ignorance) See More
o                                                       
MJ Cates I mentioned your post to a highly regarded novelist today and he was as offended by your friend's comment as I was.
o                                                       
Margaret Gunning MJ Cates I almost wish I had kept it, but I blocked him to protect my feelings. It was just jaw-dropping. I have no idea why he'd do this to me, as a fellow writer. To say I wasn't a writer and have never been a writer. Hmmm, I kept a diary from age eight because I felt like nothing had really happened in my life until I had written it down.
·                                
Natalee Caple That is garbage and abusive -- real writers are not all the same and this is just a way of asserting power for the jerk who wrote that. Writers care about reception -- otherwise they would not publish.
o                                                       
Margaret Gunning Thank you so much, Natalee. Though I seldom comment, I follow your page daily because I admire your sensitivity and honesty and can see that all writers are "up against it" in many ways, including ways which never came to light before. Yes, this guy is a bully, and though he more-or-less behaved himself before and seemed supportive, there was an agenda. I blocked him immediately.
o                                                       
Natalee Caple Good, that was a set up for more abuse -- I am glad you asserted your boundaries.
·                                
Patricia Robertson Facebook can be hazardous. As a professional writer, I write for money, an audience and attention. We write to communicate. We need readers to complete that circle. Book sales are driven by timing, subject matter, marketing budgets, PR efforts and the See More
                                                       
Margaret Gunning I think his comments reflected a kind of purist attitude of "art before everything" (when I know very well he's just as interested in recognition as most other writers). I found this article (link below) many years ago and bookmarked it. It spoke to me and at least made me feel better. I See More

THEGLOBEANDMAIL.COM
Artists struggle to survive in age…
o                                                       
Margaret Gunning I don't agree with everything he says, but it's true that writers feel they have to shoulder the entire burden of the shifting global economy and the way it rules book sales, and who becomes a "best-seller" or even a "seller" at all. There used to be sSee More
o                                                       
Patricia Robertson Margaret Gunning and Ian Brown's show, too. I remember Gzowski's great interview style. Readers and writers still need to find each other. I'm not sure that poverty is good for your art as Smith concludes. I'd rather have my bills paid so I can focus on my writing. But much of what he asserts about the shifting tides in the industry is bang on.
o                                                       
Margaret Gunning I think he was being ironic! I just realized Gzowski extensively interviewed Elly Danica, the author of an incredible book called "Don't: A Woman's Word". This was in ***1988*** and he gave it his full attention, and also extensively wrote about the auSee More
o                                                       
Patricia Robertson Margaret Gunning I remember that book. It was ground-breaking and controversial back in '88 when I was enrolled in Women's Studies at York it generated a lot of classroom discussion. Elly Danica stands out from the period for me, too. Gusty.

o                                                       
Patricia Robertson "I was interviewed by Peter Gzowski for CBC’s Morningside Show in 1988 after the publication of Don’t: A Woman’s Word. Peter won an ACTRA award for this interview, which was produced by Hal Wake." from Danica's website
o                                                       
Margaret Gunning Patricia Robertson She was, and is, extraordinary. Women weren't speaking out then, and when they did, lo and behold, it spawned a new corporate entity: the False Memory Syndrome Association (FMSA for short). I say "corporate" because it was highly orgSee More
                                
MH Pilk I've gotten up every single day for 19 yrs and cooked breakfast for my kids, made their lunches for both school and home, and cooked dinner. I'm a mom. It's what I do. But if I found that every single day they were scraping it in the trash and walking See More
                                                       
Margaret Gunning I am loving this conversation! I felt so alone in this.
·                                
Jerry Levy Hey Margaret. I don’t know you other than that we both published with Thistledown. And I rarely post anything on FB. But your post made me write something. I just want to tell you that you have an amazing track record as a published writer. Think aboutSee More
o                                                       
Margaret Gunning It took me literally decades to get the first deal, after which I assumed I was on easy street. My first publisher, whom I really liked by the way, and treated me well, told me two things: I had gotten more reviews/more positive reviews than they had See More
·                                
Jerry Levy So hard to get a book deal. That means only one thing - publishers love your work. You should be incredibly proud of yourself. Not everyone can be a NY Times best seller but likewise, not everyone can write and publish novels. So continue writing, you’re obviously a very, very good writer. And ignore the naysayers (they just might be jealous of your talent)
o                                                       
Luanne Armstrong It is bloody hard to be a Canadian writer. It's very much a popularity contest. I think frankly that almost every writer in Canada feels left out and ignored much of the time. The great thing is that despite this, we have so many great writers doing an amazing job.
o                                                       
Margaret Gunning I think you guys may have just saved my life!
o                                                       
Luanne Armstrong Good for you, Margaret, now I am going to look up your work and maybe order some books. It's also hard when we have small publishers ( mine is Caitlin) and depend on their writers to do all the PR. I am not well enough to run around and do that. So, not much more I can do...
o                                                       
Margaret Gunning Would you like the link to my Amazon author page? It lists all the novels, publishers, etc. Well, here it is!https://www.amazon.com/Margaret-Gunning/e/B001K7NGDA
o                                                       
Margaret Gunning Luanne Armstrong I think at least one of my novels has been pulped - maybe the first two - because they weren't selling and the publisher didn't have warehouse space for them, so they were destroyed. But there may be a few copies left, and I think Amazon has a few.
·                                
Luanne Armstrong ok -- I'm gonna read up on you anyway. We can complain to each other. I'm fine with that. I don't think there are any real rules on FB yet. There should be. It should be subject to libel and slander and hate speech rules like any other publications. And why people are so rude, I just don't know.
·                                
Sue Reynolds I'm so sorry you had that experience Margaret. When someone tells us how we "should" feel about ANYTHING that complete invalidates the experience we're having. You didn't need to have more shit heaped on top of the way you were already feeling. I'm sorry you're struggling right now.
o                                                       
Margaret Gunning Oh I don't know, this turned out to be a pretty good day after all! It's the first time I've felt this supported on FB. I appreciate all of it. You make yourself vulnerable when you expose feelings of failure or disappointment in the reception of your work. I find a lot of social media in general is "sunny side up", and that's not of much help.
o                                                       
Sue Reynolds Well that's making lemonade! Happy to hear of your resilience
                                                   
Margaret Gunning Sue Reynolds A lot of it is age, I think. Being a senior has its points. The pension cheque is great!