I SAW A MAN FROM THE 7th CENTURY YESTERDAY

I SAW A MAN FROM THE 7^TH CENTURY YESTERDAY

So time travel is possible after all.  He was on the Drudge site on the internet, white teeth flashing, fist in the air, hoping to rip my throat out and see blood fly.  I don’t think we realize what we’ve done.  Say you want to experience unspeakable cruelties – eye gougings, torn limbs, lingering tortures and so on – well, history books had to suffice until the motion picture industry gave us Technicolor, Surround Sound and 3-D.  But even with the extravagances of the modern cinema houses, you still knew it wasn’t real.  You could have Spanish inquisitors pulling out tongues and frying skulls with branding irons, and depraved Kings could rape little girls, but it was just a story.  Historical drama, they call it at the awards ceremonies. 

This serf from the 7^th century was only on a website, but he was real in a way no movie could ever depict him.  He wanted me and my kind dead because I would not, could not, did not bow to his prophet, dead since 632 but eternally alive in the memories of the faithful.  And my time traveler from the early Middle Ages wasn’t alone.  Large populations of his fellows swarm our world these days.  I see them nightly on the news, burning flags, dragging our diplomats naked through the streets of their towns. 

I was warned of this some three decades ago by my learned and urbane Iranian brother-in-law, himself a ‘modern’ Muslim.  “The Shaw must move slowly,” he told me.  “He has no other choice.  If he moves too swiftly, he will anger the people.  And yet, your government officials are very impatient.”  He tried to explain to me how nearly impossible it was to view a 7^th century person in terms of modern perception, trying to make real for me the many blunt and unyielding obstacles that stand in the way of simply showing older-culture people the light of modern ways.  I didn’t give as much weight to his ideas as I should have, and that is unforgivable, considering I had the lessons of Vietnam at my personal beck and call.  But then, our U.S. Presidents from JFK and LBJ through Carter, Clinton, the Bush bunch and Obama – well meaning individuals, all – didn’t really get it either.  You can move the man from the 7^th century, but you can’t move the 7^th century from the man. 

Writing Like A Lady

A month ago I asked a lady romance writer (you know her) who often reviews genre fare if she would have a go at my new novel, The Freight Train of Love.  It is more a classic war romance novel than genre romance, but I liked her writing so I figured Nothing ventured nothing gained…She asked to see a few pages, but then, a few days later, declined to do the review.  I wasn’t surprised at her decision, but disappointed with her reasoning.  She said she found the person of my heroine Clair to be "crude and unladylike".

 I respect her decision, and in a way I was glad I’d contacted her, because her reasoning started me thinking about how important it is, the way we position ourselves as authors.  Hemingway.  Isabella Lady Bird.   Robert B. Parker, Louis L’Amour, Dick Francis.  Danielle Steele, Marsha Muller, Nora Roberts.

 Beyond this, I was moved to a somewhat controversial judgment.  It has been my experience that some of the women romance writers I have met love gutsy women when they are written about by other women.  But when a man writes about them, the same girls feel a bit undressed.  When a man is writing, they want to see the male idealistic image of a woman, rather than a real person. They are, I believe, vastly uneasy with the idea of a man knowing a woman's character well enough to write in the heroine POV. 

 This started me thinking, not so much about the inner feelings of a man writing the part of a woman character, but of the problems both men and women have faced since novel writing began. Early woman novelists had to use names like George and Tom. Today both men and women use pen names or first name initials to hide their true identies, and they do it, I think, for just these sorts of reasons. While I don't think it should matter one bit to a writer whether writing in the personna of a man or a women (any more than it shouldn't matter if a writer puts himself in the shoes of a demented mass murderer to tell a story) I think it does matter to many readers, and, as we see, even to professionals in the literature biz.  So if you’re going to write thrillers, maybe better you should be Wild Bill or Gutsy George.  And maybe my next heroine driven novel will be penned by Tinkera La Bella. 

Break Out Of Your Box

Don’t you resent being labeled by either the Republicans or the Democrats as to how you are going to vote?  The truth is, you are not Hispanic.  You are not a Black Afro-American.  You are not a White or a Jew.  You are an individual, you are an American citizen, and you have the freedom to make up your own mind and vote as you choose.

I’ll let you in on a little secret.  My people are from Europe, from Prussia (which no longer exists) and Slovinia (which again exists after being Yugoslavia for a time)  So the pollsters would dump me in the White box with the English, the Germans, the Russians, the Spanish, the French, the Italians, and so on.  But here’s the bigger secret:  Nobody belongs in the White box.  Or in the Black, the Red, the Brown, the Yellow, or any other boxes.  They are illusionary boundaries set out to hem in the herds for this or that reason. 

Now I would be the last to deny cultural differences, linguistic difficulties, or human impatience, greed and ignorance.  But there are no boxes, no rigid walls that separate us, no quick and easy ways to define who and what we are. 

And here is the biggest secret of them all:  those simple DNA tests that you can get will prove the fakery of the Box System of dividing people into alien groups.  I’ll give you a good example.  If you go back a few generations, my wife is a mix of English, Irish, German and Norwegian.  But her DNA reveals that she is descended in historic times to French people, and in pre-historic times through Spain to Africa.  So does that put her in some sort of White-Brown-Black box?  Or does it cause you to suspect the rigid walls of the box may not represent the way things really are?

This November you get to choose

Yes, 47% of Americans are on the government dole.  But you are not a number.  You have been a victim of bad government policy, but you don’t have to put up with it past this November.  You can choose more of a failed economic policy and a disastrous foreign policy…until the handouts run out, which they surely will in the next few years.  Or you can vote for smaller government and a stronger America.   You get to choose.

A BASIC BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY: PANASONIC

In 2006 Matt Klawitter produced a dramatic short film titled "Extinction" with top of the line camera equipment that he got provided free by Panasonic through a 'new filmmakers' program. So every year, when the Directors Guild holds "Digital Day" I stop by at the Panasonic booth to see what's new with them. This summer, I met Doug Leighton, one of their execs who worked on that program. Doug gave me his card, and on the back of it was printed:
Basic Business Philosophy
The Seven Principles
1) Contribution to Society
2) Fairness and Honesty
3) Cooperation and Team Spirit
4) Untiring Effort for Improvement
5) Courtesy and Humility
6) Adaptability
7) Gratitude

And I thought to myself that striving for perfection in an imperfect world isn't a bad way to be.
j.

Lyrics I Wish I'd Written

My blood runs cold

My memories

Have just been sold

My angel is a centerfold
- Shwayze

I AM SCOLDED IN SERIOUS OFFICIAL TERMINOLOGY THAT IT DOESN'T COST ANY MORE

The other day at Albertson's supermarket I was imagining I might get out for under a hundred dollars, but that was so foolish of me.  You see, I'd somehow forgotten it was 2012 and not 2011.  The cheapest house brand cheddar cheese chunk was up $2 dollars over what I paid last year.  The pack of sticks of string cheese was up from $6.99 to $9.99.  The turkey Keilbasa, on sale for $3.99 looked like it was only up about a dollar until I realized it was a little light in the hand--the same 16 ounce package now only weighed 12 ounces.  This new technique, designed to soften the blow of much higher prices, is popular with snacks like Triscuits and Wheat Thins, as well.  Cereals, on the other hand, appear in so many different sizes that they hide their inflated prices in a bewildering flurry of choices.  Rye bread that used to be $2.50 for the half loaf, went up to $3.50 and now is over $4.00.
(I guess that last one deserves an exclamation point, but let's say the rye crop was eaten by pests or outer space aliens, so disregard the abnormal surge in rye bread.
The  mood is, if not jovial, at least calm, and prices on items  are engineered  to seem as they are not:  For instance, at Pavillions, a branch of VONs supermarkets, the savings on the various cuts of beef are astounding.  It is sometimes  possible to buy T-bone steaks, bone in, at 4.99 in the economy pack.  Since they print the "REGULAR PRICE" on the label, it is easy to see that five pounds of steak, regularly priced at $50, can be had for $24.95, not counting tax, which is nearly ten percent in Los Angeles, where I live and buy my food.  Astounding, but confusing at the same time.  If memory serves (and in this case it does) a slim year ago, the econo-pak price was $3.99 per pound.  My salary didn't go up by 25% and my social security (that I contributed into for 40 plus years and am supposed to be ashamed to accept) didn't go up at all. 
I suppose I would shuffle along with the rest of the sheep, but something has been puzzling me, and I find myself out of step, confused, looking for a simple answers to questions that shouldn't be all that difficult:  If the prices on fundamental foodstuffs keep jerking up, up, up month after month after month, then why has the government you and I elected declared there was no inflation in the 2nd quarter of 2012?  And why did they claim inflation was way, way below 10% in all of last year?  And why did they declare there was no increase in the cost of living in the two years before that? 
I think something is wrong, but we both have to admit I am just a sample of one little lamb who has lost his way.  Perhaps my math is wrong, or perhaps I am just buying food on expensive days or shopping at the wrong stores.   Perhaps there are cheaper ways to buy food and the government is adding those into the mix.  Maybe spoiled or tainted food counts in the official tally.  Surely such food would be cheaper.  No, seriously, I heard that for some time now the official federal calculations have been allowing a substitution of cheaper grades and cuts of meat, rather than the old fashioned idea that cuts of meat are defined as this or that because they are different in taste, texture and so on.  For instance, if a pound of hamburger meat has the same calculated amount of nutrition as a pound of filet mignon, our trusty inflation fighters can switch to the cheaper ground meat in their calculations, and hence squeeze the flation formula back down to zero.  I know, 'flation' is not a real word.  But when inflation is not a true figure or a real calculation, I think we the sheeple should try to find other words to describe the process.  After all, in the direction our society is being shepherded, what is the real value  of mutton, anyway?