Going Back to High School (and Finding I Don't Fit)

by Julia Buckley
My husband and I attended the high school's "Back to School Night" so that we could go through our son's schedule and meet all of his teachers. When did I ever have the energy that high school requires?

For one thing, the school is huge--about four thousand students. We wore our gym shoes in preparation for the crazy running between classes, but I was exhausted just making the jaunt from our car to the school (we had to park several blocks away).

Once inside we began the journey: honors world history first period, honors English second period. Ian's English teacher was striking and impressive. "I will never accept a hand-written assignment from your child," she warned us grandly. "And I will never give a bathroom pass to your child." She wore a red suit and high heels and spoke of things like diction and annotation with appropriate passion.

Jeff and I were distracted by the desks. When did they get so small? They dug into our stomachs and we grimaced at each other as we tried to take notes.

The bell sounded and we darted down the stairs to gym class. There the coach had to compete with all of the other coaches, whom the event planners had inauspiciously stuck in the cafeteria together so that their talks all wove together in a cacophany of sound. "Your child is currently taking Life Fitness," shouted the coach. "In nine weeks he will either switch to swimming, dance, or an anti-bullying course called Step Back." We squinted, trying to hear him, smirking slightly when he mentioned dance (our son refuses to dance or sing, ever. School will be so good for him).

The bell, and we were off to Art. The loveable Sandy Duncan look-alike said she had finally "treated" herself to a vacation in the South of France that summer, where she had painted the scenery and felt serene. I doubt we concealed our envy well, but we did admire the things she had the students doing in the impressive studio, which had, according to her, a better kiln than the local universities.

Then (was there more?) we went to German class. I wondered if, at this point in the day, my son's stomach was growling loudly enough for everyone to hear, since I can rarely get him to eat breakfast. I know, I know. Such an important start to the day, and yet both of my sons claim nausea when I show them morning food.

The German teacher was sweet and energetic. She greeted us by saying "Wie gehts?" and told us in a brief English speech that she mainly talked to the students in German. Then she spoke in German.

My eyes drifted to the wall, where pictures of all the students' heads were attached to homemade paper "T-shirts" which sported German slogans. Ian's said "Ich habe drei Katze" (I have three cats) and "Ich habe ein hunt" (I have one dog). Not bad for the first week of school, I thought.

FINALLY we had a break. Jeff and I beelined for the bathroom and then called our littlest boy, who was home alone, manfully playing computer games.

And then there were MORE classes! Did we go to high school, Jeff and I wondered, and did we really learn this many things?

Ian's algebra teacher told us that he had motivated the students to bring in the parent form by promising to do a back flip if they all brought it back. 26 out of
27 students brought it back, so he didn't do the flip, but he made a separate deal with them that they won, and he did the flip in class a few days later.

Oh, did I mention? He's twenty-four.

If I told my students I was going to do a back flip they would A)laugh and B)dial 9-1-1 on their cell phones and keep a finger hovering over the "send" button. Plus I can't do a back flip OR a front flip. I can't even do a cartwheel. I suppose I could offer to jog in place or jump rope, but it doesn't have the same glamour.

When we finally got home, Ian asked what we thought. We said that we'd been quite impressed, for starters, that he could even navigate his way around that Noah's Ark of a school.

He shrugged. "Yeah, I'm great."

In this modern era we can keep track of his grades online, so we'll be able to give him a nudge whenever he ceases to be great.

But I must tell you: hurrah for high school students. I am one adult who is not sure she could--or would--go back.

Changing Gears

by Carola Dunn, guest blogger

Last week I finished writing my 52nd book, A Colorful Death, the second Cornish mystery, which also happens to be my 20th mystery. I'm about to start on the 19th book in my Daisy Dalrymple series (just as the 18th, Sheer Folly, comes out, and the 17th, Black Ship, goes into paperback). Not only do I have to come up with plot, setting, and a whole bunch of new characters as well as a host of returning characters, but I have to switch my head from the 1960s (Cornish mysteries) to the 1920s (Daisy).

For some reason this is more difficult than I ever found it to move from the Regency to the 1920s. For many years I dwelled in the early 1800s. I used to find myself using Regency terms in real life late 20th century America. Then I took up with Daisy and for a while I was writing both 1920s mysteries and Regencies. I rarely found myself confusing the language of the two, perhaps because both language and mores changed so much in the intervening hundred odd years. Great though the changes were between the 1920s and the 1960s, the two
periods were much more similar in many ways.

Perhaps another part of the confusion is that the main character in the Cornish mysteries, Eleanor Trewynn, is in her early 60s and so was actually around in the '20s. She's not so old-fashioned (having spent her life travelling the world) as to use '20s slang still, but she's not going to use '60s slang either, or at least not without a certain self-consciousness. Yet other characters around her have to speak the contemporary lingo.

So how do I travel in time? I've found the best way to get inside the language and mind-set of a period is to read the fiction of the period. I have a lot of early Sayers, Christie, Wentworth, and others, but I've reread them too often, so yesterday I spent 2 1/2 hours in the city library hunting down 1920s mysteries and non-mystery novels. Came out with Gladys Mitchell, John Buchan, P.G. Wodehouse, E.C. Bentley, E.F. Benson (if you don't know Lucia, go and make her acquaintance now!), Freeman Wills Crofts and R. Austin Freeman. A few evenings cuddled up with a cuppa and a book and my head will be right back where it needs to be.

Simply ripping, darling!

Come and visit me on Facebook, my website: www.geocities.com/CarolaDunn/ and my blog: http://theladykillers.typepad.com/the_lady_killers/. My Regencies are all available as e-books in various formats at www.RegencyReads.com.

Where were you?

By Lonnie Cruse

We all remember where we were eight years ago today, don't we? I was at home, sitting on the couch, watching television. Hubby was gone for the day, probably playing golf. I saw the report of the first plane hitting the tower. What a sad accident. Then the second plane hit the other tower and I realized it was no accident. I spent most of the rest of the day watching the news. Praying. And I found it interesting that the word "prayer" suddenly became politically correct to use on the news channels.

In the days that followed and more news came out about the reasons behind the attacks, writers were talking about it in various online groups. Some of us wrote our way through it, dealing with the horror and fear that way, others were totally unable to write, frozen by all that happened.

The attacks changed the landscape of downtown New York City forever and the way we all looked at our world, forever. We were no longer as safe, anywhere. I don't think I"ll ever forget the sight of the sky over our rural area . . . totally empty of airplanes all the next day.

I grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, near Hoover/Boulder Dam, which was always considered to be a prime target when Russia was our country to fear. The A-bomb tests weren't much help either, for making area residents feel "safe." In elementary school, in the 1950's we had A-bomb drills where we had to duck under our seats (not much protection against a powerful bomb, but we bought into it) and we wore dog tags, like all American soldiers wear, so we could be identified in case of a stray A-bomb. It wasn't until we were grown that we learned we were virtually the only kids in America who wore them. As I said, that was the fifties. By 2001 Russia no longer seemed to be a threat, and most of us believed our country and its citizens were invincible. Meaning no country would dare attack us on our own soil. Now we know different.

Events like the assassination of a President, a bombing, or an attack on large buildings full of innocent citizens changes our everyday lives in many ways. If perchance it hasn't changed yours, then you don't watch much television and/or you haven't been through an airport lately. Whether or not we like those changes, we adapt. We have to. September 11, 2001 made huge changes in our daily lives or at least our perceptions of them. We don't take a lot of things for granted any more. And a lot of our troops are involved in a war that didn't exist then, at least not like it exists now. Don't we all know someone fighting over there? Several someones? Those are scary things.

Today is a good time to reflect . . . on how things were before September 11, 2001, on how they are now, but most of all, a time to reflect on those innocent victims who lost their lives that day. And on how the rest of us are surviving/coping.

May your days be blessed with family, friends, and little fear. May you never see another day so horrific that you'll always remember where you were and what you were doing at that moment.

You learn something every day

Elizabeth Zelvin

A hundred years ago—when my grandmother was 31 and my mother was 7—nobody had heard of lifelong learning. Learning was the task of the young, whether the subject matter was reading, writing, and arithmetic or the skills needed to raise a family and make a living. My immigrant grandmother raised her children and taught piano—not very well, according to a cousin who took lessons from her maybe 60 years ago. My mother, the American daughter, helped her father in his tailor shop (she always hated sewing but could do it very well indeed), went to law school, and eventually became a legal writer and editor.

Certainly, throughout their lives they had to cope with the new and unexpected. Between 1909 and 1969, when my grandmother died, the world changed enormously: from the Model T Ford to the Corvette, from early radio to TV, from polar exploration to men on the moon, from cotton and silk to nylon, from wood and metal to plastics. My mother, who lived till 1999, got to experience the women’s movement, computers, and a host of other changes. In fact, she was a pioneer lifelong learner, who went back to school in 1960 and earned a doctorate in political science in 1969.

Forty years ago, my mother was an anomaly. Today, we take it for granted that there is always more to learn and we’re never too old to learn it. For example, in the past quarter century, from ages 40 to 65, I’ve acquired all my clinical skills and knowledge as a therapist, mastered technology including the Internet, cell phones, digital cameras and photo editing software, and the GPS, as well as advanced fiction writing and editing skills.

It hardly needs stating that we all learn a lot of what we know from books. My husband and I both have an extensive knowledge of world history, his from history books and mine gleaned from novels. But along with the big stuff , books, especially novels, give us an infinite number of details, and you never know when one of them will come in handy.

For example, I’ve recently reread all the books in Sara Donati’s series of historical epics, set in the “endless forests” of upper New York State in the 18th and early 19th centuries, in anticipation of a new book coming out soon. The last one was set around the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. I already knew about the pirate (or privateer) Lafitte, the slave-holding free people of color in New Orleans, and the battle itself, though it was nice to get a refresher course, along with page-turning action and a deliciously romantic story.

But in the category of “you learn something every day,” I nominate a tidbit from the first book, Into the Wilderness. The main characters belong to a family that includes Mohawk Indians and the last of the Mohicans (literally: Hawkeye, borrowed from James Fenimore Cooper, becomes the heroine’s father-in-law), as well as English settlers. All of them have superb woodcraft, including the ability to move silently through the woods. What I didn’t know is how they do it: the secret is that they toe in. The day after I read that information, I had an opportunity to test it out. I went for a run on the beach, counting on the hard packed sand at the ocean’s edge to provide a good running surface. I was disappointed to find the wet sand softer than it looked. When I tried to run, I kept sinking in. So I tried toeing in. Sure enough, it kept me on the surface of the sand. My footprints looked a little funny, but I was able to run at least a couple of miles.

I’ve also been reading some of the Anthony nominees in anticipation of voting for the best at Bouchercon. Julie Hyzy’s State of the Onion is the first in a series about a young woman who works as a chef in the White House. There’s a charming moment between her and the fictional First Lady, when they concur that the best way to cut onions without crying is to choose a work surface right next to a stove with a burner turned on—and that both of them learned the trick from their mothers. My mother didn’t know that one—but it works, as I confirmed the next time I had to cut up an onion.

What can you teach us today that you learned unexpectedly by reading a novel?

Beverle Graves Myers: Exploring the Mysteries of Venice

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall

Beverle Graves Myers is author of a historical mystery series featuring amateur sleuth Tito Amato, a castrato who sings with the Venetian opera in the 18th century. Beverle made a mid-life career switch from psychiatry to full-time writing. A graduate of the University of Louisville with a BA in history and an MD, she worked at a public mental health clinic before her first mystery was published in 2004.

Bev also writes short stories set in a variety of times and places. Her stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Woman's World, and numerous anthologies. She has earned nominations for the Macavity Award, the Kentucky Literary Award, and the Derringer Award. She and husband Lawrence live in Louisville.

Q. Would you tell us a little about your new book? Who is the mischievous lady in your intriguing title?

A. In Her Deadly Mischief, Tito Amato has shaken off the grief caused by events depicted in the previous book and is once again singing lead roles at the Teatro San Marco in Venice. During an opening night performance, his crystal voice has the packed auditorium entranced. All eyes are on this prince of the stage—except for one fourth-tier box with its scarlet curtains tightly drawn. Miffed, he aims a powerful arrow of song at the box and is astounded to see a woman fall through the curtains like a limp rag doll. For a long moment, he locks eyes with her killer, robed and masked for Carnevale, before the man escapes. Since Tito is the only one to view the murderer, the chief of Venice’s rudimentary police force involves him in the case. They quickly identify the victim as Zulietta Giardino, a courtesan involved in a mischievous wager over a rival’s jewels.

Q. I'm always curious about how writers of historical fiction were drawn to certain time periods. Why did you decide to set your books in the 1740s?

A. I love the 18th century. It’s ripe with conflicts that a mystery writer can work into plots. Absolute monarchy, the culmination of the old feudal system, is sparring with the rise of democracy and individual rights. Science and religion are clashing head-on. The old European world is being challenged by the upstart colonists of the new. These changes affected the mindset of every living person, Tito included.

Q. Why did you want to write about the Venetian opera community? What opportunities for story and character did you see there that felt unique to you?

A. If I recall correctly, I first considered using a castrato protagonist after reading Anne Rice’s Cry to Heaven. That put my proposed series squarely in the 18th century and allowed me to indulge my longtime love of opera. Venice, Naples, and Rome were the three great centers of early opera. No contest—Venice won! It makes such a wonderful backdrop for intrigue—misty canals, a crumbling society, nonstop carnival revelry, a crossroads for scoundrels. And Tito right in the middle of it all, because opera and its stars were the popular entertainment of the day.

Q. I'm sure many people have asked why you made your leading man a castrato. I can see you have fun confounding expectations of such a character – Tito is happily married and passionately in love with his wife, far from being asexual. Is he a realistic character? How much detail about the personal lives of the castrati have you turned up in your research?

A. I started with the idea of Tito being a chaste eunuch, unruffled by the urges of a typical man, and thus able to view the world through dispassionate eyes. He refused to cooperate. He said (yes, I’m one of those authors whose characters talk to her), “The knife that created my voice came nowhere near my heart.” He wanted to find his love and his life’s companion as much as anyone. Surprisingly, my research agreed. Many of the historical castrati were considered great lovers by their contemporaries. The surgery destroyed their ability to father children, but not their potency, at least for some. Tales of scandals, concerning both sexes, abound. And even though the Catholic Church denied them the sacrament of marriage, some castrati moved to Protestant countries and married there. Tito’s marriage is unsanctioned. Since Liya holds to Italy’s old pagan religion, they merely “jumped the broom.”

Q. Speaking of research, I envision you writing in a room overflowing with history books, architectural drawings of Venice, illustrations of 18th century Italian clothing styles, and so on. Have you absorbed everything you need to know about the setting and era, or does each book require additional research? How much research did you do for the new book?

A. You’ve pretty much described my office, minus the dust, of course. When I begin a scene, I try to find a painting of the location, indoor or outdoor, or at least something similar. I prop the art book up by the computer, get a baroque opera CD going, and start writing. I make a binder for each book that contains helpful articles and news clippings, portraits of the main characters, maps, and photos of period-specific weapons and other implements, etc. I researched the basics—the theaters, modes of transportation, clothing, and so forth—at the beginning of the series. But each book presents at least one new avenue of research. For Her Deadly Mischief, I had to get up to speed on Murano glass as much of the action takes place at a glass maker’s fornace.

Q. Have you visited Venice? How much has it changed since Tito's time? Is the modern world becoming intrusive – do you see cell phone towers, for example, or TV satellite dishes?

A. My husband and I spent an idyllic eight days in Venice several years ago. It has probably changed less in the last 275 years than any other European city, but it is no longer Tito’s Venice. People have been living there the whole time, and they do tend to change things little by little. That’s just the way of the world. The two most glaring intrusions were the huge, totally out-of-scale cruise ships in the basin by the piazza and the awful graffiti defacing many of the old buildings. That graffiti just made me sick.


Q. Psychiatry and mystery writing may seem to be utterly different pursuits, but your work as a psychiatrist must have given you insights that are useful in writing about murder and other devious behavior. Do you take an analytical approach to your characters, tracing their behavior back to its roots, even if you don't include all the details in the story?

A. While plotting out a book, I do what psychiatrists call a detailed medical and psycho-social history on each major character. I pay especial attention to the villain—the motivation to kill has to be believable. Purposeless, random evil doesn’t work for me. I also include at least one character with what we would call a mental illness in each book. Tito’s youngest sister suffers from Tourette’s syndrome, for instance.

Q. Had you written fiction before you began writing about Tito? What led you to write mysteries?

A. Not one piece of fiction! The smart thing would have been to hone my craft with a few short stories, at least, but I’ve always been impatient. Why mysteries? Except for some non-fiction history and biography, mysteries are all that I read. To me, what is labeled as genre often rises to great literature.

Q. Would you tell us about your road to publication? Was it harder than you expected or easier?

A. I started the agent search as soon as I’d finished Interrupted Aria, the first Tito novel. I was extraordinarily fortunate to find a good agent with my first volley of queries. That set me up for unrealistic expectations. I thought connecting with a publisher would be just as easy. Boy, was I wrong. After many rejections, Tito found a publishing home at Poisoned Pen Press. Working with the folks at PPP has been a delight—it’s the perfect place for a series about a Venetian castrato singer/sleuth, not exactly mainstream material.

Q. Have you learned anything about the publishing business, or the life of a published writer, that has surprised you?

A. Like most writers, I had no idea the level of promotion required. I admit it’s not my strong suit. While I love to have one-on-one discussions with readers, most marketing techniques go against my southern upbringing. “A lady never toots her own horn” sort of thing.

Q. One thing I love about your writing is your attention to details – for example, the row of pins in the opera company costumer’s dress bodice. Are you the kind of writer who “sees” a scene fully, down to the smallest detail, before you begin writing, or the kind who does several drafts, further enriching the scene with each pass?

A. I probably “see” the scenes too fully. My challenge is to pare the details down to what the reader needs to “see” it—those small things that define time and place. So my revisions involve taking way rather than enriching.

Q. How long do you typically spend writing a novel? What is your writing routine like?

A. Each book in the Tito Amato series has consumed a year of my writing time, those golden four to five hours of the morning, five or six days a week. I’m slow and a bit of a perfectionist. I don’t like to go on if I’m not happy with the previous work, so I revise as I go. Then, when I reach the end, I just need to do one more quick run though before I send it to my editor.

Q. Who are your favorite writers and what do you most admire about their work?

A. There’s so many. Going way back, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers made me fall in love with mysteries. Over the years, Robert Barnard, Steven Saylor, Sarah Caudwell, P.D. James. All very different—the one similarity is that their books draw me into a fully realized world that I hate to leave. I literally cried when I read the last Sarah Caudwell, because I knew there would be no more. Just now I’m enjoying The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.

Q. Will we see Tito age as the series goes on? Historically, what became of the castrati as they aged? Did they continue to sing into middle age and beyond?

A. Something about the hormonal derangements graced the men with longer than average lives. I expect Tito to live to a ripe old age. When he is no longer able to thrill audiences, age fifty or so for most singers, he can always teach at one of Venice’s famous music schools, direct operas, or use his many artistic and governmental contacts to indulge his taste for sleuthing.

Q. Do you plan to write about Tito indefinitely, or do you want to explore different characters – and perhaps a different era – at some point?

A. Funny you should ask! While I haven’t abandoned Tito, I do feel the creative need to explore other times and places. An author friend (Joanne Dobson, author of the Karen Pelletier mysteries) and I are working on a suspense novel set in the 1940s.

Q. What advice do you have for aspiring writers who may feel discouraged by today’s tougher-than-ever book market?

A. Be persistent. Don’t let yourself get bogged down by rejection. It saddens me when I see a fellow writer consign a good book or short story to the drawer after a few turn-downs. Make sure your work is top notch, believe in it, and keep it circulating.

*********************
Beverle's books, in order, are Interrupted Aria, Painted Veil, Cruel Music, The Iron Tongue of Midnight, and Her Deadly Mischief. For more information, visit her web site at www.beverlegravesmyers.com.

That Which . . .

Sharon Wildwind

. . . doesn’t kill us will drive us crazy.

The relative pronouns “that” and “which” have been driving me crazy for a while. Since it’s September and we’re all back in school, one way or another, I decided to brush up on that tiny bit of grammar. Brushing up wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Apparently, rules have been in flux for a while. Books printed at different times give different advice. But you still have to understand restrictive and non-restrictive clauses.

Here’s the old version, which was firmer in its world view:
A restrictive clause must be in a sentence. Without it the meaning of the sentence changes. Restrictive clauses begin with “that” and no commas are used.

Suppose we’re discussing my cousin, who retired after being a teaching nun for many years. I say, “The religious order that my cousin joined taught in Chicago and Detroit schools.” Without the restrictive clause, the sentence becomes, “The religious order taught in Chicago and Detroit schools.” If you and I had been talking about my cousin for the past few minutes, you could probably figure out which religious order I meant, but the person just sitting down at our table would ask, “What religious order is that?”

Non-restrictive clauses are nice to know, but not necessary to know, information. They start with which, and are set off by commas.

The Sisters of Passion, which my cousin joined, taught in Chicago and Detroit schools.
The Sisters of Passion taught in Chicago and Detroit schools.

It’s nice to know that my cousin was a member of that order, but not essential to understanding the sentence.

So much for good, old-fashioned dogma. Here are some of suggestions for newer forms of use.

Suggestion #1:
Use the word that sounds best. “That” contains softer, unstressed sounds; “which” contains harder sounds, easier to stress. Think of Raymond Burr as Perry Mason. He’s questioning a recalcitrant witness, and at the proper moment he whirls to face the witness demanding, “This check, which you said you’d never seen, has your initials in the corner.”

Suggestion #2:
It’s dealer’s choice for using “which.” It can be used for both restrictive and non-restrictive clauses, and punctuation is more important than word choice. This tends to be followed more in writing coming from the British Isles.
The dog which my aunt adopted turned out to be valuable. (restrictive clause, essential information, no commas)
The dog, which my aunt adopted, turned out to be valuable. (non-restrictive clause, additional information, commas)

Suggestion #3:
Use “that” for clauses following impersonal constructions, including people who are not specifically named; non-specific pronouns—anything, nothing, something, everything; or superlatives.
Teenagers that work after school reported less trouble falling asleep at night than those who did not work. (If the teenager is named, the proper reflexive pronoun becomes “who.” Tiffany, who works after school, reported less trouble falling asleep at night than her friend, Beth, who did not work.)
Anything that increases attention span is worth trying.
Jerry played the best ragtime piano that I ever heard.

Here’s the sentence construction that started my that/which quest. I know that “that” is necessary when changing from one person to another in a sentence, but I’ve no idea why.

She realized that Alice’s letter must be postmarked today.
Harold bought two tickets so that Delores could accompany him to the concert.

Unfortunately, I never found the reason why behind this. Maybe someone out there knows.

------
Here’s a few grammar and spelling sites to get us back in the swing of serious writing.
Grammar Book
Plague Words and Phrases (In other words, avoid them like the . . .)
Spelling rules from very basic words on
In case you’d prefer to sing your spelling, try this site. It’s a little hard to navigate: scroll down until you see the names of different songs and click on the one you want to hear. Music only, but if you read the words while listening to the music, it falls into place.

Labor Day Thoughts

by Julia Buckley
Happy Labor Day, Everyone. In honor of the day, we are laboring. My husband actually has to go to work (so much for everyone having this day off) and the rest of us have homework. So we will acknowledge workers by being workers, which I suppose is appropriate.

On this Labor Day weekend my attention was drawn again and again to animals--our silent friends who do the work of enriching our lives. I had three animal encounters, and they were all rather sad.

First, while driving my husband home from work on Friday night, I spied one of my least favorite things: a man who held his dog by a leash and compelled the animal to run alongside him while he rode his bicycle.

While people may believe this gives their pets a good workout, it is actually a cruel thing to do. The dog is expected to keep up a pace that the rider does not have to maintain. We would never tie a human to our bikes and make them run along, so I am shocked when people do it to their animals. Veterinarians also frown upon this form of exercising a dog.

Why not run yourself and ask the dog merely to keep up with your pace? The poor canine can't speak for itself to tell you that you're running him ragged.

In any case my husband and I glared out the window at the bicyclist. "That's bad for your dog," I said. I don't know if he heard me.

On Saturday we took our cat Rose to the vet for a yearly checkup. She weighed five pounds on the vet's scale--she's just a tiny thing, but actually quite well fed and healthy. While we waited to pay our bill, a woman approached me.

"Could I ask you to take a picture of us?" she asked, gesturing to her family and their two dogs.

"Sure," I said. Lots of people like being photographed with their pets, and I figured they all wanted to be in the picture.

Once outside on the sidewalk, where they posed, I found out why. "Our baby is getting put down today," the woman said, pointing at a snuffly old bulldog at our feet. He was all white and rather fat, but he seemed to have trouble breathing, and when the woman tried to pick him up for the photo, he cried out in pain.

So the two dogs sat in front of the bench, and the family--a mother, father, and son--sat on the seat behind them. I took four pictures of their complete family. The woman thanked me with a very sad expression. When they left there would be only four of them, but at least they had a picture of five.

Animals continued to haunt me on Sunday. We went to my parents' house, about an hour away, to visit my uncle who is visiting from Germany. When we got there my mother told me about a cat that had been appearing in her back yard for several days. "It's so weak and thin," she said. "It can barely move. I tried to give it milk and it couldn't drink it."

I didn't think this sounded good. That morning the cat had reappeared and they had given it some tuna; it had eaten some.

I asked if the cat might be wild, but my father said no, it was declawed in its front paws, and it was more likely that someone had driven out to the country and "freed" the cat, who then had no claws to catch its own food, and not much training in hunting if it was a domesticated creature.

Now it was starving. When I finally saw it come into their yard, my heart broke. It was beyond gaunt, and its gait was odd, as though its spine were somehow out of alignment. The children gathered around it, trying to get it to eat more tuna.

My sons were disturbed by the sight. "That cat is dying," my eldest said. "Someone should help it."

My sister tried to call the vet, but of course it was Labor Day weekend and they weren't open. Someone suggested that she try animal control at the police number, but no one answered that phone.

When last I saw the cat, it was draped over a rock on my father's pond, watching the fish in the water. It seemed that a part of it still longed to play.

We left without getting any resolution about what would happen to the poor thing. I will call my parents to make sure they keep putting out food and that someone helps the cat as soon as possible. It bothers me to think that some owner out there was irresponsible and cared so little about the suffering of a living creature.

My sons were more depressed by the cat than I knew. When we got home, they raced into our house. My oldest said, "I need to see some animals that aren't dying." So they reunited with their three cats, their jumping Beagle, their fish that has defied fish lifespans.

I realized that part of our work, our obligation, is to care for those without voices, and to try to give them the happiness they freely offer to us.

Calgary Welcomes the World

Sharon Wildwind

This week the 40th World Skills Competition—an olympics of work—is being held in Calgary. When the bus advertisements and billboards with the slogan “Calgary Welcomes the World” started appearing earlier this year, I had no idea what a big deal it was. After I took a look at their site, I decided to take a look at it.

This international competition was started in the 1950s to promote and celebrate labor skills. The competition this year contains six competitive sections: information and communication technology (think computers); creative arts and fashion (things like jewelry, fashion technology, graphic design and floristry); transportation and logistics (cars and airplanes); manufacturing and engineering technology (ranging from computer manufacturing to welding) ; social and personal services (hair dressing, beauty culture, food preparation, and health care) ; and construction and building technologies, which is the largest group with 14 sub-specialists.

Wednesday morning, my husband and I started out in the Landscaping tent, where the first event for teams of landscape gardeners was to lay a perfectly round brick walk path.

One tent over, carpenters built wooden decks; cabinet makers, a most intricate diamond-shaped cabinet, and joiners pieced together a complex trellis arch, which as far as I could see, was all curved pieces and very difficult to fit.




The welding, metal works and sheet metal technology was like walking into Vulcan’s forge. Because looking at welding sparks damage the eyes, a tall black-and-red translucent booth surrounded each contestant. The most we could see was a shadowy figure working in the booth and showers of sparks peering over the top. It was hot, noisy, and spooky. Maybe metalwork won’t be my next career choice.

The event we giggled over when we read the program was IT PC/Network Support. You know, your average system maintenance computer geeks. Watching a silent room full of young men staring at computer screens, how much fun could that be? We decided to take a look at it anyway and it turned out to be . . . a silent room full of young men and women staring at computer screens. What I hadn’t expected was being struck by how intense and methodical those young people were when they worked. From the concentrated scowl on some of their faces, the problem that had been set for them might even be tougher than that intricate cabinet being assembled over in carpentry.

One young Asian man had a piece of the innards of a computer in front of him. I guessed something was wrong with it, and he had to figure out what. Beside him on the table, he’d drawn a colored-pencil drawing of the hardware, labeled each element with neat block printing, and was proceeding to methodically test and describe the condition of each element. He was not only fixing the computer, but also creating a work of art with his drawing.

What struck me at each event was the youth and commitment of all the participants. I thought that if this represents the younger generation, we don’t have anything to worry about.

On our way out of the grounds, we stopped by the try-a-skill tents. The Alberta Ironworkers Local 720 Edmonton and Local 725 Calgary tent was shilled by a twenty-something guy in jeans and a hard hat; he would equally any carney barker. “Come on in, try your hand as an ironworker. What about you, ma’am, have you got what it takes to walk the iron?”

The iron was a steel girder, suspended about six feet off the floor. Heights are not my thing, but he was young and cute and I was not so young but figured I could still take a challenge. So I walked the iron, and now I have the T-shirt to prove it.

We tend to throw this weekend off as the end of summer or the first weekend the kids are back in school. I suggest we find our favorite worker and hug him or her, tell them thank you for the work that they are doing. Even better if we find a young worker, one of those just coming up and tell them thank you for continuing the tradition. Tradespeople of the world, celebrate!
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I drew this with my finger on an electronic board. No dry marker, no eraser needed. What will they think of next?

Confessions Of An Obsessed Barn-Picture-Taker or When Authors Immitate Characters

By Lonnie Cruse

I grew up in Las Vegas, surrounded by the hot, dusty, dry Nevada desert. Many home owner's yards there are made up of rocks and cacti. Easier to take care of. Not much farmland to speak of. Or crops grown in large fields.

When hubby and I moved to Kentucky, many decades ago, I quickly fell in love with the various old barns we saw when driving past local farm land. I admired them, but never thought to preserve them by taking pictures. At least not until now. Below is my favorite barn.

When I wrote FIFTY-SEVEN HEAVEN, my character, Kitty Bloodworth, expressed a desire near the end of the book for a modern digital camera so she could take pictures of old barns. Seems she shares my passion for them. In book two, due out next July, she's gotten the camera for Christmas and is busy taking pictures of every old barn she sees with the intention of creating a coffeetable book featuring old barns, perserving them for the next generation. Hmmm, sounded like a good idea to me.

My first digital camera was also one of the first on the market, and it cost an arm and a leg. When it became apparent that my beloved camera was dying a slow death, I went shopping, and to my surprise and delight, they are MUCH cheaper these days. AND the little memory sticks can hold lots more pictures. I keep it in my purse, which makes it handy for picture taking at odd moments, but it also creates a safety issue, at least for me.

Recently my friend Debby and I were returning from a visit to a fudge shop located out in the country when I spotted a barn I'd not seen before. I knew I just had to have a piture of it. I turned around and pulled into the driveway across the road and snapped a couple of shots, much to the surprise of the guy on the lawnmower who lives there. He apparently decided we were safe and went on about his mowing. I wanted a side view of the barn and couldn't get it from there, so spotting an old driveway in front of the barn, I backed out of the driveway, and nearly got Debby and I both wipped out. We were near a hill and a huge truck barreled over it, around us, and on down the hill. I was too frozen to move, which was a good thing, or he'd have gotten us as I turned. Whew.

We pulled across the road, parked, thanked our lucky stars, and I jumped out of the car and proceeded to hike to a suitable spot for picture taking, wading through calf-high weeds, ever on the look-out for snakes and spiders. But I got the picture! See below.

The next week, hubby and I were traveling back from Nashville. Spotting road crews hard at work and possible delays, he decided to take a detour to The Trace, the highway that travels through a nature perserve area in western Kentucky. I spotted at least five fabulous old barns on the way home so of course we had to pull over so I could capture them on my camera. Again, risking life and limb, but lucky for me, hubby is a better driver, so no close calls.

What's so facinating about old barns, you ask? Well, most are over a century old and still standing, often long after the land is no longer being farmed and nothing has been stored there for a very long time. They've withstood tornadoes, ice storms, wind storms, time, neglect, insects, and other dangers. They remind us of a time long past when nearly all farming was done by single families, not corporations. And the areas are generally peaceful and serene (well, except for the one near the dangerous hill!)

In the midst of snapping pictures and admiring the barns, it occured to me that I was imitating my own fictional character, Kitty Bloodworth, although my plans are to print out the pictures and put them into an album just for my OWN enjoyment, rather than trying to get a coffeetable book published like she planned. And who knows, she may succeed in her dream, given that I'm in charge of her life. Well, most of the time. When she lets me be.

What's your passion? Is it something you could preserve in a picture album? Make drawings of? Scrapbook? Incorporate into your life? Go for it! I love to draw, and I'm hoping to use some of these barns as models. Just be sure you watch those hills. And the big trucks. Not to mention the snakes and spiders.

The barn below is one of the few left with the Rock City advertisement on it. So if you run across one, you are seeing a piece of farming history. This one is about 15 miles from where we live.

Thanks for stopping by.

Swimming in the Ocean

Elizabeth Zelvin

As summer ends, I’d like to talk about my favorite feature of the all-too-brief season when you don’t have to be a polar bear to immerse yourself in the vast, salty playground that covers more than half of our planet and entices folks like me to cavort in the foaming surf around its edges. Yep, I’m talking about going to the beach, which to me is synonymous with swimming in the ocean.

I’ve been an ocean lover since childhood, when we used to visit an aunt and uncle who had a summer house in Hampton Bays, which back in those days was too working class to be considered one of “the Hamptons.” My grandmother, mother, and aunt were all indefatigable swimmers. To this day, I look incredulously at women on the beach who obviously have no desire to wet their hair, their bathingsuits, or even the polish on their toenails. Aren’t they hot? Do they know what they’re missing? How can they stand it?

Adolescent girls, on the other hand, plunge happily into the breaking waves. When I’m swimming alone, without a spotter, I sometimes elect a bunch of them my buddies. I ask them to keep an eye out for me in case I get in trouble. And I tell them to cherish the moment, because when they get to be my age, they may no longer have either the nerve or the companionship they’re enjoying now.

The Atlantic’s face is always changing. Every day is different. (I remember going to the beach in La Jolla, CA and being amazed at the reliability of the Pacific, at least between the frequent jetties: the waves were exactly the same from day to day.) My favorite set of conditions is when the tide is at the right height for me to stand beyond the breakers and sail across high rollers for that heavenly moment of weightlessness, then land on my feet again. To make it perfect, the water has to be warm enough not to shock me but cool enough to be exhilarating, and there can’t be any undertow to taint my mood with fear or make it difficult, when I’m ready, to get back onto the beach on my feet.

How different people like to take their ocean water seems to vary, to some extent, by gender. Most of the body surfers are guys, who catch the breaking wave and ride it toward shore, arms extended like aquatic versions of Superman in the air. Most women, like me, seem to prefer riding the rollers, calling “Under!” and “Over!” as each wave invites them to dive or soar. Lap swimmers seem to be evenly divided. I used to body surf myself—out of sheer competitiveness and a burning desire not to miss anything—but that was thirty-five years ago. I do swim laps in the ocean occasionally—a day when the water is safe and smooth enough for me to do a half-mile of the crawl, with breathing, is even more rare than a day when the waves are perfect for jumping.

The ultimate: clear day, perfect water temperature, waves just high enough to be exciting but without enough power to make getting back to shore difficult—and the company of someone who enjoys both ocean swimming and schmoozing as much as I do.