tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311218482024-03-14T00:56:36.630-05:00Catholic Writer Chick at Large!Faith, Life, Music, and The Glory of StoryJannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.comBlogger378125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-58802703052823879652024-02-26T20:43:00.003-06:002024-02-26T21:46:55.776-06:00In Darkness and Quiet.<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I need to put in a good word here for...darkness.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">For clouds.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">For overcast, even for fog and rain sometimes.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And for early dusk. Long, lovely nights. And deep, unbroken quiet.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Shortly, we'll be heading into the springing-forward madness of clock adjustment that is Daylight Saving Time, something that I probably liked as a kid...but which I no longer like as an adult.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">There are many reasons for this, the biggest one being that--of course--there's no reason for it anymore.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">No. Really.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />My understanding was that originally, it was meant to "extend daylight" for farmers. So they had extra hours of sunshine in the fields when they were working sunup to sundown, and thus could get extra tasks done at what would normally have been a darker time of day.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But frankly, I don't even know if that's actually true.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Before we lived in the Promised Land of the Eastern Time Zone, my son went to school in it--at Michigan. And he used to tell us, come springtime, how late into the evening it was "still light out." Like, 10 PM.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I have to admit, I thought he might have been exaggerating a tiny bit.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Until I saw it for myself.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If you live in the Eastern Time Zone in the springtime, when DST happens...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">...suddenly, you're going to bed in full daylight.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">No, I don't mean "light" like "Land of the Midnight Sun" Alaska "perpetual dusk."<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I mean the <i>sun is still above the horizon when you're heading to bed.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This makes precious little to <i>no </i>sense for schoolkids, if they're young enough that they need a decently early bedtime to get enough sleep for school the next day. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">But it's equally nonsensical for those of us who weren't in school, but who got up frightfully early to go to work in the morning.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If you're getting up at 5:30 or 6 AM, you need to have a reasonable bedtime. Like, 9:30 or 10:00. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But at 9:30, it's barely sunset yet.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And if you've had a rough day and you're thinking of turning in early?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Better hope you have room-darkening shades.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Fourth of July fireworks displays, in the Eastern time zone, don't take place in full darkness, like they can pretty much anywhere else; full darkness doesn't hit until 10:30 PM, when most shows elsewhere are finishing. So all your "dusk" fireworks shows happen when the sky really isn't dark enough yet to show them off. And that's only one of the aspects of this silly time-adjustment thing that I find irritating.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">What I have to wonder, even more so as I get older, is what the obsession is with sunlight.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And why so many people seem to hinge their mental health on it.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It's said that when Chopin was a boy, he would play piano in the dark; he would deliberately blow out the candles, and then sit down to play. Which may be why his music is some of the most evocative, touching, and soul-stirring stuff you can experience. (Play it in the dark sometime. I dare you. And have the tissues handy.)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In today's culture, those of us who prefer clouds, who enjoy "softer" light and earlier evenings, are looked at askance. Sometimes people out-and-out ask what's "wrong" with us.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But maybe the problem isn't in our preference for darkness.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Maybe it's in the obsession with bright light, long days, and never-ending activity that stretching the sunlight beyond bedtime seems to encourage in so many people...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">...the same people who complain about "how tough it is to disconnect" or how "overwhelmed" they feel by "everything happening everywhere all at once."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I would submit that those of us who aren't afraid of a few shadows could--no pun intended--"enlighten" those people a bit about the need for greater balance. Daylight...and evening. Bright...and dark.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The question is, would our inquisitive audience be willing to "unhook" from sunshine, bright lights, and perpetual busyness long enough to appreciate what can happen on the other side.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">That some truly deep thinking, some truly profound creativity, can happen in subdued illumination.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">That some incredibly beautiful work can, in fact, be done...in darkness and quiet.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I love the long winter night. The stillness of a world not incessantly in full-tilt "carnival" mode.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I live for the day more people "come out of the closets" of enjoying those kinds of nights--and more subtly lighted days, too.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And of appreciating the largely unplumbed depths of times of silence and shadow.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Could you?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-54412477388274409892024-02-25T10:31:00.003-06:002024-02-25T10:31:38.549-06:00Excuse the Dust!<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This blog is presently Undergoing Renovation.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">No, I'm not changing the basic background or colors, despite some recommendations to do so. I like this background and these colors, and the work involved in shifting to an entirely new set of themes would be <i>massive.</i> And I'm just lazy enough not to want to undertake <i>massive </i>work for something that's only one tool in my writer's kit.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">BUT...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I <i>do</i> want this to be readable and sensible and easy on the eye in other ways.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Which is why the type size has increased over the last year or so.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The problem is...I have <i>years</i> of entries in this blog that were done "the old way."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And in the process of changing computers, operating systems, et al, some of the formatting in those old posts has gone <i>completely</i> skawapity. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Which means I still have semi-massive work to do, going into those old posts and revamping them so the formats and type face work again. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I encourage (okay, beg) those of you who've just discovered this blog to feel free to plumb its historic entries...but just be aware those might look really strange for a while.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I'm fixing them. Batch by batch.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In the meantime, dust cloths and feather dusters are at the door.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Feel free to avail yourselves of them...or of a magnifying glass, if need be.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It'll all be better...soon. I promise.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Thanks!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-68230818592350805312024-02-19T11:52:00.007-06:002024-02-25T12:59:10.753-06:00"Et Tu, Brute?"<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The last thing you expect to encounter, in an armload of novels from the library, is an assault of hypocrisy. Unless, of course, you're deliberately courting such things by reading certain nonfiction. 😏</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But this is a different kind of hypocrisy.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It has to do with women, and the perception of "oppression" or "abuse" or "harassment," or...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">...whatever victimization the feminists want to latch onto this week.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Because, as so often is the case, this "victimization" is one in which women are fully cooperative.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Hook. Line. Sinker. And Lingerie.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">No, I'm not talking about the Victoria's Secret catalogue. I'd imagine those ladies get paid a handsome amount of money to get pictures taken in underwear, and if asked directly, they might well claim it's their way of "owning" their femininity and a stroke on the side of "body image pride."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But you can't go anywhere, have a conversation online or off it, nowadays without having to hear a litany of incessant whining about how it's "unsafe" for women to so much as take a walk anymore by themselves in public, in broad daylight. That men will ogle them, follow them, try to see where they're heading, or accost them, in subtle or not-so-subtle ways...and that it's barbaric. When I was a girl, we were told to "ignore" the construction workers and other guys who would whistle and/or feel free to make comments about our physical appearances as we walked by. We were told that's just the way "some men" were, and that it was a shame, but if we didn't reward the behavior, it'd stop.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The fact that apparently it hasn't stopped, after all this time, is appalling. I'll grant you that.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But let's also talk frankly about the other side of the coin, shall we?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Yes, there <i>is</i> another side. And yes, I'm sure you can see it coming. And I'm sure you're braced already to lambaste me from here to heaven and back for daring to even suggest that we women sometimes are our own worst enemies when it comes to men respecting us...or even us respecting each other.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I'm not going to go into the argument that women should remember to put clothes on before they go out in public...and some don't. That's a dead horse that no one will tolerate beating anymore, at least not without screeching your ears raw in protest. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">What is bothering me today is how much of what's in print--in novels clearly designed for a female audience--betrays that we really don't respect ourselves much, either. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Again, I'm not talking nonfiction.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I'm talking novels.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And not erotica, either.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I ran into an instance this past weekend that about curdled my coffee.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I started a book that was supposed to be a cute rom-com. By an author from whom, if the gushing blurbs can be believed, the rom-coms are always cute, always funny, and always a bright spot in one's reading life.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Only by the time I was in chapter five, I couldn't go any further.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Why?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A conversation between our heroine and a guy who the reader knows is going to be the hero. Meeting unbeknownst as to whom each other is, as two strangers at a bar. Flirting.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Nothing wrong with that...except in the form the flirting takes literally seconds into their exchange.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When the heroine says something along the lines of that it's okay because it's "just flirting," and "no one's going to see each other's undies," and then she expresses relief at that because she doesn't know if she wore "cute" ones or not. But it's when she follows it up with a line about "guys probably don't care about that" that things go south. (Pun intended.)<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When our "hero" comes out with, "How do you know I'm wearing any?"</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And the next line is our heroine feeling a "hot flash."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And I sat for a moment, mouth open, unable to believe what I'd just read.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Ladies. With all due respect?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If some strange guy at a bar comes out with a line about whether he's wearing underwear or not?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">How is that <i>attractive?</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">How is that even <i>okay</i>?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Some strange guy at a bar starts talking underwear, that's not flirting.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>That's perv territory.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">That's me picking up my drink and heading to the farthest corner of the bar that I can get <i>away</i> from him.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It's not cute.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It's not sexy.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It's <i>creepy.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It's everything we <i>claim </i>we don't want men to be.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Everything we'll crucify them, in the court of public opinion, for.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Yet there it is, in black and white, supposedly put in for...what?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Laughs?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Titillation?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Hints of horizontal mambo to come?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And how do we not see how completely hypocritical such things are to put in women's fiction?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Let me say it again: this isn't content in some girlie magazine that a guy's going to use for fantasy purposes.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This is supposedly flirting language. By a woman who <i>initiates</i> it. In a book aimed at <i>women</i>.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A book not even being sold as "hot" or "spicy."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So...if we think this is cute, and sexy, and flirtatious...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">...why isn't it okay for men in real life to behave the same way?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I'm not saying it is.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But neither is it okay for us to put such things on the pages of our books, giggle about them...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">...and then vilify men when they think things like that are okay to say to us in real life.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">They're not.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But they're not okay for us to say to ourselves, or each other, either. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Not even in "fiction."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Not even in "fun."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">All the "me-too" crusading in the world won't instruct anyone to treat us as anything but objects if we write books in which we treat ourselves as such. Or men as such. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Let's stop being hypocrites on the page--and in what we show the world of ourselves.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Because objectification ain't gonna stop...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">...until <i>we</i> do. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Thoughts?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-44966374298896030412023-11-06T12:39:00.006-06:002023-11-06T12:54:15.827-06:00The Dirty "C" Word, Part II<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">When we last left our heroine, she was sticking her toe in the contentious waters of Debunk,</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> calling an unclothed emperor naked...</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">about the "dirty word" that so much of creatives' social media is quick to abase. I'm sure you've all seen the posts that go something like this:</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"The longer I write, the more I know the secret of really being successful in it--realizing we're not in competition with each other. We're all in this together. What benefits one of us benefits all of us. So when you succeed, I celebrate!"</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Doesn't this sound wonderful? Doesn't this sound unselfish, and noble, and <i>accomplished</i>?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Yeah. It does. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Only </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">when I see one of these "evolved" souls spouting this sentiment, I have all I can do not to type back:</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Well, Petunia, I'm thrilled you want to celebrate my success, and I'm happy for yours. But don't think for a minute that that means we're not in competition with each other. We are, and we will be until the day one of us kicks the bucket. So stop trying to pretend you've reached some exalted level of enlightenment, and admit it."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">By now, many of you may think I'm mistaken about which "dirty C word" I'm talking, and I'm actually dealing in <i>cynicism. </i></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">If I am, it's because another perfectly good, innocent word has taken way too much undeserved rap, and I'm simply fed up </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">with nodding and smiling along to something I <i>know</i> originates from the posterior end of a bull.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The question is how <i>competition</i> became such a "dirty word."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The obvious answer is that we're being manipulated to feel like we <i>should</i> take the "enlightened" road. We <i>should</i> be mellow, and detached, and unfailingly positive. Above all, we're told repeatedly, we live in an "infinite universe" of possibility, and success isn't like a pie--giving someone else a slice doesn't mean there's less left for <i>me</i>. "A rising tide raises all boats." Right?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Um. H</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">ow do I put this tactfully?</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">WRONG. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The plain fact is that we <i>don't</i> live in an "infinite universe" of possibility. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Yes, human beings have infinite potential (given to us by an infinite God). </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">But our world is FINITE. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">As in, it has LIMITS. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If a NYT bestselling author or some celebrity with a tell-all signs an 8-figure contract, that does nothing for <i>me</i>. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">That particular "rising tide" doesn't raise my boat; it swamps it.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Because the money that goes for that book...by definition...cannot also go for mine.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Harsh, but true.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We all know this. So why are we afraid to say it? If we openly admit we're competing, and that we want to "come out on top"...does that somehow taint our art? Make us an evil person? Render us "less worthy" for the universe to reward?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">CAN wanting to come out on top taint your art? Sure. If your "want" becomes such a driving force that you're ruthless about bending or ignoring rules, cheating, walking over people and/or using them to get your end results. Heck, it's not just tainting your art in that case; it's tainting your <i>life</i>.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">CAN competition "make" us evil? Only in the sense above. But even that's not <i>competition</i>'s fault. Remember the adage "Adversity doesn't make the man; it merely reveals what he truly is"? The same goes for competition. It doesn't "make" someone evil unless he or she's got a streak of evil already inside that's just waiting for an excuse to take over. And even then, in a person with sufficient character, that evil won't get enough of a foothold before he or she draws a line in the sand and calls her/himself to account.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">CAN competing in the marketplace--wanting to win--render us "less worthy," somehow, of "cosmic reward"? Put aside for the moment the fact that the "universe" can't give out rewards in the first place (because it's a created thing without power of its own); that alone negates the question. But even without that consideration, if the notion that you're not "worthy" of something unless you pretend not to desire it sounds silly to you...it's because it <i>is</i>. Even the Bible says, "Ye have not because ye ask not." <i>Competition--</i>setting our sights for something, declaring a clear want, and determining a course of action to win it--not only isn't evil; it's Scriptural. If you doubt this, look up the Epistles and count how many times Paul talks about "running the race" and "winning the crown."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"But there's enough to go around for everybody!" you cry. "Why do we have to talk about 'winning' and 'losing'? Why can't we just 'compete' with ourselves?"</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Because the truth is when it comes to material success in the marketplace, we know</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">--because we have common sense--that, many times, there really </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">isn't</i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> enough "opportunity" to go around for everybody. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Probably the clearest illustration of this I can give you is traditional publishing.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Publishers have X number of slots available for X type of books. If mine and yours are both the same kind of book, and they're being shopped to the same publisher...it's only human nature for you to hope your book "wins" and mine "loses."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Is that because you wish me ill? I hope not. Is it because you're an evil person? I would assume not. It's because </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">only one of us is going to get that slot.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">That's not "scarcity thinking." That's a simple mathematical and economic fact.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Acknowledging that fact and working with it will take you a lot further than trying to resist, fight, decry, condemn, or deny it. And it'll sure take you a whole lot further than the "participation ribbon" crowd thinks you can go.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Best of all, though? The real secret?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Competition</i> is one of the best ways to make--or deepen--some whiz-bang achiever <i>friendships.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It's a well-known phenomenon that athletes can be the best of friends <i>off</i> the field--and enjoy nothing more than beating each other <i>on</i> it. Brothers (or sisters) are the same way. And there's nothing hateful about it: it's a simple desire to "be one better" than those you know the best and respect the most. (Not to mention the good-natured bragging rights element!) If it does become acrimonious in some way, often that's because things happen <i>outside </i>competition that affect the relationship negatively--NOT because one person was striving to be better than the other. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Long ago, a mentor of mine was asked by her husband why she helped new writers. "You're training your competition," he pointed out. "Why would you want to do that?"</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Her answer was genius.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Because," she replied. "Do I want to be the best writer in a group of mediocre ones, or the best writer in a group of really good ones?"</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">That, ladies and gentlemen, is why <i>competition</i> isn't a dirty word.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It, in fact, is a gift from God. It keeps us on our mettle. It makes us constantly look over our work, learn and grow, so that when that slot opens up at a publisher, they'll say <i>yes</i> to us. And, yeah, we know that by saying <i>yes</i> to us, they'll say <i>no</i> to someone else.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But there's nothing evil about that, unless we turn it into a way to hurt people.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And it doesn't have to demotivate anybody, unless they're ready to let it.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So maybe we should stop treating our fellow artists like hothouse flowers...and just admit that we'd relish winning a slot in a publisher's catalog--or getting more 5-star reviews for our self-published work--when "pitted against" someone whose talent, work, and personal friendship we esteem highly. And give them the permission to feel the same way right back at us.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>That's</i> what we're really "in together." In <i>competition</i>. In a race for a crown.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I'll be glad to cheer you on...but someday, I want it to be my turn, too.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And I'm going to do everything I can to make that happen.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Thoughts?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-25380919914018212322023-11-05T21:25:00.010-06:002023-11-05T21:43:23.540-06:00The Dirty "C" Word, Part I<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Okay, now, don't get too excited. Of the many "C" words that might occur to you, th</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">e word I'm talking about today isn't actually risque--except, perhaps, in the minds of fellow creatives.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">That word is...</span><i style="font-family: georgia;">competition.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">(Some of you may need to sit down and fan yourselves at this point. Feel free.)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A pretty ridiculous notion has taken over the creative world of late. This wouldn't be surprising, in itself: creative people can be just as ridiculous as uncreative ones. But this notion has been embraced so rapidly, completely, and radically that it borders on the closest thing to religion some of these people have. And fundamentalists ain't got nothin' on them when it comes to upholding this shining credo, and shaming those who dare to challenge it.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The notion?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">That as writers, we don't compete with each other, because "we're all in this together."<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Whoever came up with that notion? Ought to be taken out back and doused with cold water. In January. In the Northern Hemisphere. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Because it's simply NOT TRUE.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Let me say that again.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Wonderful, warm, and affirming as it sounds to say that all creatives are "in this together"--and therefore, never, ever, ever, ever, EVER in (gasp) <i>competition</i> with each other--it's NOT TRUE.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Real life experience will prove this over and over and OVER again. </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It's even common sense, not to mention backed up with fact. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But just try going on social media and saying that out loud.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Go ahead. I dare you.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This blog post is even stepping out on a ledge.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So where did this cockamamie notion come from? </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I suspect it has its roots in a couple of sources.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">First, the influence of New Age thinking, <i>The Secret,</i> and all the rest, which preaches a "limitless universe" and scolds us against a "scarcity mindset." And, in one sense, this has some veracity. Publishing, after all, has become rather limitless; you can put together a book and "publish" yourself, any time you like. You simply have to have the resources to cover all the details involved, from buying ISBNs to cover art to copyright registration (just to be on the safe side), and <i>voila!</i> You're a published author. You're independent, you collect all the profits yourself, and no one stands in your way. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In terms of publishing "freedom" and "access," this is great. In terms of quality?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Yeah. Sometimes, not so much. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">(But the few times I've said <i>that</i> out loud, I've gotten raked over so many coals that no wonder my skin gets thicker every year. Never mind that it's true; it still gets the kind of knee-jerk vitriol we used to reserve for animal abusers and serial killers. 😒)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Second, I believe it comes straight out of the participation-ribbon mindset: that people should be rewarded and applauded merely for showing up, breathing, and standing upright. That heaven forbid we should dare to say one thing is "better" than another, or that one "wins" and another "loses." The self-esteem damage of losing does terrible things to our young ones' confidence. It demotivates them. It depresses them. It can damage them forever, and forever keep them from achieving their true potential. Potential, according to these people, needs constant affirmation, watering, nurturing, reinforcement, and praise in order to develop fully. Any negative assessment of efforts to do so? Any aspersion cast on them, or evaluation of them that is less than glowing, or constructive criticism of them? Will bring about certain disaster. Maybe even physical damage, but certainly emotional. And, hence, tragedy.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Apparently, potential--be it writing talent, musicianship, artistic endeavor, or anything else--has no strength in itself. If not coddled like the proverbial hothouse flower, it will wither and die before it even takes root. Young (or even not-so-young) artists are to be celebrated for effort, and rejoice in that the only people they're "competing" with are themselves. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Only problem is...that ain't how the real world works, Karen.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And it's long (DAMN long) past time someone was brave enough to say it out loud.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Before the denial of reality does way, way more damage and breaks way, way more hearts than that evil <i>competition </i>monster could ever do in a thousand lifetimes.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I'm here to tell you that not only is competition <i>not </i>an evil monster...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">...but that we're all doing it, all the time. And it's long (DAMN long) past time we realized that, admitted it, and put it to work <i>for</i> us, instead of trying to shame it out of existence.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We'll talk more about that in part II!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-84235244030183676512023-10-02T21:32:00.005-05:002023-10-02T21:41:39.986-05:00Timing...Is...<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Long ago, the hubs and I did a prank message on our answering machine that has the title above as its punch line...but this post isn't about that. Trust me: if you're curious about that story, I can tell it in another post. And I probably will.😀</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>This </i>is about a realization prompted some time ago when I heard "The Swan of Tuonela" on Music Choice--and was swept away with memories.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But also, with wonder at the genius of God's timing.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Let me explain. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Jean Sibelius's "Swan of Tuonela" was one of many pieces on a listening list for music theory and ear training for me, 44 years ago this summer at Harper College. And, yes, I remember most of the pieces almost indelibly, for many reasons. One of which was, it was one of the few times in my life I've ever gone to summer school. The reason behind that, and how what came next unfolded, leaves me in awe to this day.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I was in summer school to take semester 2 of Music Theory and Ear Training/Sight Singing for the Music major track. Our instructor in the 101-102 track had alerted us that we needed to take these over summer; if we didn't, the 102 courses wouldn't be offered again for another year, and that would screw up the sequence of being able to accomplish two years' worth of music education in, literally, two years. 😉</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A very small group of us took these courses. Maybe a dozen, total. Of which one was my future husband. Which I didn't know at that point...because at that point I was already (unhappily) married to someone else.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Come the fall of 1979, my ill-advised (and invalid) marriage dissolved...and I became friends with Patrick. And, as they say, the rest was history. But consider, for a moment, how God arranged this timing.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It's only dawned on me recently that Patrick wouldn't have been in those classes, in that sequence, with me had he not started at the same time I did--which was January of 1979--in Music Theory 101. But he graduated from high school in the summer of 1978. So the logical time for him to start in Theory would have been <i>fall</i>, not January. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Only for some reason known only to Harper College (and God), the Theory sequence didn't begin during fall of 1978. Had it begun at the point a freshman might reasonably expect, he'd have been ahead of me. Which means we might never have met...had Harper College (and God) not timed their course offerings the way they did. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Had he been in a "track" a semester ahead of me, we would never have done homework together.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Would never have been thrown together for tutoring, as one of our professors did when she realized I was pulling As in Ear Training while he was struggling.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Might never have been in chorus together, although that's still a possibility...but that association was so peripheral that were it all we had, it wouldn't have carried us into the closer relationship that sharing the same classes, for the rest of our music education, did.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I've always said I "lucked out" in terms of meeting Patrick, and getting to know him, when and how I did. Because there were three guys in our Music Theory track: one was married, one was stoned half the time...and then there was Patrick. And I was the fortunate woman who ended up catching <i>his</i> eye.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But I wouldn't have ever been able to catch that eye had we not been plunked into the same classrooms together, slogging through the same theory and analysis, and gradually growing closer by the day. Because we helped each other. We made each other laugh. Eventually, we fell in love.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And God, who knew we needed to meet and bond in these particular ways, not only arranged my life and Patrick's, but an academic schedule, so that could happen. When it did. How it did. And to the splendid, heartbreakingly wonderful conclusion it did.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Part of that plan, I know now, was summer school. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And listening lists.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And Sibelius. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And God's timing was perfect in all of it.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If anyone ever doubts how much God cares about whether we're happy in His will...this story ought to help reassure you. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">To a musician, timing is everything.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And I praise the Lord who knows that. 🙏</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Thoughts?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-39109655931555986592023-09-24T21:34:00.013-05:002023-10-02T20:52:26.760-05:00Caution...Frissoning Ahead!<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">For years and years and years, romance novels in particular have used a word I never saw anywhere else: <i>frisson.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">As in, "A frisson of unease went through her," or "A frisson of awareness sparked between them" or the like. While I never ran to the dictionary, the context was usually enough to give me the hint of what a frisson was: a shiver. A tingle. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Imagine my utter dumbfounded shock, then, when I actually <i>looked it up...</i>to make sure that, if I used it in one of my books, I'd be using it right...and discovered it's a <i>thing.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Something <a href="https://www.discovery.com/science/Getting-Chills-from-Music">backed up by research</a>, no less. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And something<i> I've had all my life.</i></span></div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I've always considered myself a bit eccentric for it. I <i>feel</i>
music, to a point and at a level I haven't heard many other people talk
about much. I know virtuosic artists must feel this to some degree--there's a
reason a brilliant player will, in a very real sense, "make love" to
his or her instrument. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But in my ordinary, everyday life, even in music school,
I stood out to others for the intensity of the exhilaration and excitement I
felt. It was more than merely enjoying music, or loving it--far more. It was an
intoxication, a "high" that probably explained why I never
dabbled in chemical "highs" of any kind, not even during high school
or college.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But as I've grown older, it has an additional component that
comes over me when I'm truly <i>making music</i>. Or, as I'm fond of calling
it, "kicking musical butt." When I'm in the "zone," in the
"flow," or whatever you want to call the results that happen when
years of hard work, love, and learning all come to fruition. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">There is truly nothing like the "high" I've felt
at those times. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Like nailing that high A in Gounod's <i>Ave Maria</i>...at
7:30 Mass on Sunday morning.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Or giving the solo on Michael Smith's <i>All Is Well </i>all
I had on Christmas Eve...which I did for several years running.<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Or pretty much anytime, with anyone, that I can sing
the <i>Hallelujah Chorus</i>.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">When I've done those things, I've felt a physical chill run
down my spine. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">A subtle one at first. Not dramatic. Just...there.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now, however--probably because of my "seasoned"
status as a music maker--that chill isn't subtle anymore. I'm feeling it
regularly. And strongly. Both when singing, and at the piano.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">I have a couple of pieces I work on now that I was working
on 40 years ago, in school. Yes, 40 years ago. No, I hadn't mastered them yet
then, and I was away from the keyboard for enough years that I didn't master
them in the interim.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">But they're in my blood. And, so, I've hauled them out
again--this time, determined to get them under my command, and fit for public
consumption.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">This hasn't been easy. Because these are not easy pieces.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">One of them is the Rachmaninoff <i>Prelude in G Minor.</i>
Look it up. It's one of the most awesome things you'll ever spend your hearing
on.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Another is the Chopin <i>Waltz in C# Minor</i>, famous for
what most of Chopin is so famous for: running lines up and down the keys, this
one culminating in a lovely high C sharp at its end.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">I've been working these things and working them and WORKING
them. Because 40 years away from something usually means you need to
reintroduce your hands to it. And, at my age, some of that practice is a bit more challenging, due to arthritis that wants to rob the mastery from my fingers.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">I've gradually gotten better, though. To the point where
Rachmaninoff is about halfway along, and Chopin is "almost there."</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I'm also taking on new stuff I never played before. Grieg <i>Lyric Pieces</i>. Mendelssohn <i>Songs Without Words</i>. Beethoven's <i>Pathetique</i> and <i>"Moonlight" </i>Sonatas. And an Elgar piano reduction of <i>Nimrod</i>, from the "<i>Enigma"</i> <i>Variations</i>, that is loaded with emotion in and of itself.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">So, when I play any of this fairly well...? </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">I have to fight off physical shivers. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">And if you think that's easy...think again.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">But I'm welcoming them. Because now I know not only am I not
crazy to be feeling these things--there's actually a word for them. An
official, recognized, scientific term. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">A </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">name </i><span style="font-family: georgia;">for the spell music casts on me, and I try
to cast in return.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's called <i>frisson</i>. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">And it's real.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">So if a day comes when you see me play these things, and my
hands are shaking...<br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">...know that reaction probably has little to do with nerves
and a lot more to do with an artist trying desperately to keep control of her
musicianship while she's breaking out in goosebumps and feeling a chill clear
to the roots of her hair.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's almost scary.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">But I hope that, as long as I listen to, learn, and make
music...I never lose it.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Thoughts?<br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Janny</span></span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-71178800046160181762023-07-12T21:51:00.015-05:002023-08-30T10:14:39.677-05:00Who's Been SIlenced, Again?<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We hear a lot in the media now about "underrepresented" populations. "Marginalized" groups. "Own" voices. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And publishing is doing its level (woke-fueled) best to cater to groups it sees as (or has been told are) underrepresented. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Inadvertently--or, if you believe the propaganda, advertently--silenced. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">If not outright censored, then at least ignored. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Passed over, in favor of "white-bread" work that publishers wanted to sell to their target "white-bread" audience.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Unfortunately, this attempt to make perceived "wrongs" right isn't being done well.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Oh, it's being done with all the good will in the world...but, like any other quota system, it's a self-defeating phenomenon. It will, eventually, embarrass itself, and collapse like the flimsy house of cards it is.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But that's not the reason behind this post.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">What's inspired this is an "own voice" that has been silenced for <i>generations.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It's been disparaged. Discounted. Ridiculed. Called "toxic." And...worse.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It's the voice of <i>men</i>.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It's no secret I love men. I always have. I always will.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In junior high and high school, this got me points with my girl friends, who couldn't figure out the secret of "how to talk to boys." I, who had boys hanging around my house all the time, had deduced that secret ages ago: t</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">hat boys were, in the end, just people. Like girls were people.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Lest we have any misunderstandings here...I didn't have boys hanging around my house t</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">o be with <i>me.</i> They were there for my brother, and the garage bands he was perennially forming, reforming, and playing in.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But they were still boys. Members of the male sex. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And I loved 'em all.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">However, for a long, long time, our culture has <i>not</i> loved men.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I can remember, as a kid, hearing people complain about how TV shows and commercials--even then--typically portrayed men as bumbling fools. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If something got solved on a commercial, it was a <i>woman</i> who did it.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">While the man stood by making dumb remarks and scratching his head.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I suppose it was inevitable that, from that root, came the next phase: where the <i>kids</i> solved all the problems, while the <i>parents</i> stood around making dumb remarks and scratching their heads.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But even then, the dumbest of the dumb was still Dad.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The husband hardly ever won in any of these things. Be it a commercial, a sitcom, or even a drama...the butt of the jokes and insults (or the person who made all the foolish and/or thoughtless mistakes) was usually the man of the house.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And I agreed with people when they said, "Wait. This is wrong."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Fast-forward to my adulthood, in which for a brief time I was on the evangelical Christian side of the Tiber. Baptist, to be exact.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Now, these were good Christian women. Subservient to their men. Honoring the men's authority, their position as head of the household, et al. Right?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Hardly. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The running joke in these households was a backhanded compliment to the wife: "We husbands are in charge, for all the world to see...but we know who really runs the house." </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">That might've been cute, in its own tongue-in-cheek way.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But the women's running joke wasn't cute. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It went along the lines of, "Well, we make him look good...but we all know men are just overgrown little boys. And you have to treat them that way."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">(Don't look so shocked. I'm sure you heard it dozens of times growing up.)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Once again, I found myself thinking, "Wait. This is wrong."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Fast-forward again, to my writing conference days, when I heard a keynote address by none other than Susan Elizabeth Phillips in which she talked about why the "alpha hero" was such a popular trope in the genre. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">You know the alpha hero. He's the swaggering man's man; he's rough, he's tough, he's a shade uncouth at times, he might be a bit crude, maybe even vulgar--until he meets the heroine, who sees the gentle soul inside and "tames" him. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Roughly paraphrased, she laid the steps out: the heroine teaches him to feel, to express his emotions, to control his barbaric urges and passions, to have manners....</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"...in other words," she finished, "she <i>turns him into a woman.</i>"</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And the place roared laughing.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Only even as I laughed, I thought, "She's right." And, close on its heels, once again thought, "Wait. This is wrong."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And it is. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Ridiculing men, calling their masculinity "toxic," decrying "patriarchy" as if it's some kind of evil (news flash: it's not)...it's all quite the thing to do lately. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But there's an even more insidious wrong being done to men now, behind all the rhetoric and hostility.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And that wrong is the worst of all.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It's that men have, over time, been oh-so-subtly...<i>silenced</i>.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The most striking example I heard of this recently was a perfectly "innocent" commercial on the radio. For Xfinity, as it turns out. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I have Xfinity. I like it. A lot.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I wish I could say the same for their commercials, most of which are embarrassingly not funny, or even mildly witty. (One has to wonder how low the bar is set at ad agencies now.) </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But this particular commercial brings out, in stark relief, what I'm talking about.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />The setup is a kid--clearly, a young boy who sounds about twelve--pretending to be a "salesman" for Xfinity's new 10G network. He begins, "Mom--Dad--Sis--"</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">What follows is gently funny--Mom asks why he's "in a suit," and Sis identifies his "card" as "just a gum wrapper with your name on it," and the like.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But the interaction, for the entire commercial, is only between the boy, his mother, and his sister.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Even though he begins the commercial saying, "Mom--Dad--Sis," <i>Dad doesn't have a single line in the entire ad.</i><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It's not like it's an ad dominated by a voiceover, either. There's quite a lively exchange between Mom, the kid, and his sister.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So where's Dad?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Is he asleep during this "presentation"?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Did he leave to get a cup of coffee?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">His kid addresses him...so where is he?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And if his kid is "selling" the family on a major outlay for something like Internet service...<i>shouldn't he be involved in the conversation somewhere?</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">He's not.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Which is odd enough.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But what's odder? And SADDER?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>That this commercial went into production and no one corrected that.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It's a glaring example of what has happened to men, slowly but inexorably, in the media landscape. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">First,</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> their voices have been decried as too loud, too boisterous, too uncouth, too unkempt...you name it.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Then, their authority and intelligence have been ignored--or, worse yet, deliberately undermined.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And now...they've finally done what the culture clearly wants them to do.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">They've gone away.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">They've become invisible.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And <i>no one seems to realize they're gone.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">You know what?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">That's wrong.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">You want to champion an "underrepresented" voice?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Champion a man.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Let men speak again. In their own natural, wholesome, masculine strength.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Let men <i>be</i> men again. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Without insulting them, accusing them, ridiculing them, or refusing to listen to their wisdom. Because they do have some, you know.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">At least as much as a woman does.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Ladies, we're not the ones whose voices haven't been heard.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We've been shouting down the other half of the population at such a volume, and with such stridency, we don't even realize we've completely taken its voice away.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We all need to stop doing this (not so) "subtle" silencing.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Now.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Thoughts?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-14316310679837392772023-07-02T20:05:00.007-05:002023-07-02T20:20:23.269-05:00Enough.<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The writing world is, in many ways, reminiscent of the Wild West lately.</span><div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It's got its share of outlaws lurking, too, seemingly more than there ever have been before. And they have one target in their sights, constantly:</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Traditional publishing.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And it's starting to get really, really irritating.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If you haven't heard the popular manifesto, it goes something like this:</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"The traditional publishing industry is a dinosaur that deserves to die and, if there's any justice, it <i>will</i>. It's a closed system in which you have to know somebody, you have to have a celebrity name, you have to have 'pull,' and even then it's impossible to get an agent and even get your manuscript in the doorway. But say lightning strikes, and you do get in the doorway? They'll then dumb-down your work, tell you what you can and cannot write, and ignore both your cover and your title ideas. By the time they're done with your story, you won't recognize it anymore. But, hey, at least they'll then take two years to get the book out, pay you a pittance, give you no marketing support whatsoever, and blame you when it doesn't sell. No one with a brain should subject themselves to that!"</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Well, yeah. If all of that was accurate, no one <i>would</i>.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Only it's not.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But then, it brings about incidents like I witnessed recently in a writers' group on Facebook.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A writer posted that a publisher had contacted her with a four-book deal, and she was turning it down. Why? </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Because the publisher was going to make her take down two of her indie-published titles from Amazon when they took them over, and she didn't see that there would be a financial benefit to doing that. And she then proceeded to elaborate further on why self-publishing was <i>the way to go </i>because no publisher would ever make it worth your while to give up that precious independence!</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But many, many of us raised questions.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Such as...why in the world would a publisher pitch an author?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">(Note: unless for vanity presses, it <i>doesn't happen </i>that way. No. Not ever.)</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This was by far the biggest question most of us had. About which some of us, myself included, expressed doubts that this "offer" was legit. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Did the author thank us for caring enough that she not get scammed?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Hell, no. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">She lashed out at many of us--yours truly included--accusing us of calling her a liar.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">She even had her friends chime in and lambaste us as well.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And in the mix, of course, were dozens of "me-too" echoes from people who repeated the same tired script about how horrible traditional publishing was...ad infinitum.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Only...</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It should surprise absolutely no one to find out that in her initial post, this author hadn't <i>quite</i> told the whole truth.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A publisher hadn't approached her out of the blue to publish four new books; a publisher who <i>had already published</i> one of hers had expressed the offer to take on more. The offer wasn't a "pitch" to lure an indie author into the evil of Traditional Publisher Servitude.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This woman has published 40 books on her own, some of which look fairly competent. If that sounds like damning with faint praise, there's a reason. I would have tried to explore more of them, but I couldn't; there were no "look inside" features for any of her stuff. The most I could glean was a </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">blurb for one of her fiction titles--something so atrociously written that it was clearly done by someone with no clue what a "blurb" was.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">(Something going the "traditional" route, by the way, can <i>help you learn to do.</i>)</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If any of the people lambasting us took the time to read even that far on her author site, they might have smelled a rat.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I suspect very few did.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I did respond to the accusations of calling her a liar, by merely stating that in her initial posting, the <i>publisher</i> sounded like the liar...not her. And that some of us were sincerely trying to keep her from making a mistake. But that she also hadn't played fair with us, and I didn't need to stick around for more of that.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I left the Facebook group. And I ain't going back.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But let this stand as <i>my</i> manifesto of sorts, if you will. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I'm fed up. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Fed up with this slanted, error-ridden narrative. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Fed up with how it paints an entire industry with half-truths, casts them in cement, and encourages newbies of all stripes to swallow them whole. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And I'm fed up with spending social media "networking" time with other writers having to debunk, and debunk, and debunk...over and over and over again.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If you're out there independently published? God bless you.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Just stop lying about what the rest of us are choosing if we take the other route.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Enough...is enough.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Thoughts?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-81625021136671300912023-05-17T10:52:00.009-05:002023-05-18T12:13:57.602-05:00Are You Trigger Happy?<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">No, this isn't a post either for, or against, some Second Amendment aspect. So all of you on either side of the fence...just take a deep breath, relax, and move along if you need to.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">There. Now, for the REST of us...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Recently, in some FB writing groups--and in the Twitterverse from time to time--the question has arisen about putting "trigger warnings" on our writing. So people who have "issues" won't stumble into something that makes their lives miserable, even for a moment. And the general consensus seems to be incredibly generous and benevolent: "Oh, of course we should do that. People should feel safe reading our writing."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Too bad it's hogwash.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Feel free to call me names, if you like. Everyone who's come out on the "other side" of this question has been labeled, defamed, and otherwise insulted, by people who don't know anything more about them than that they dared to say, "But, wait a minute." (A rather interesting reaction from those claiming to espouse a point of view that emphasizes "compassion." LOL)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The fact is, it <i>is</i> hogwash. For many reasons--but two main ones are the strongest:</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">1) <i>It is impossible to anticipate every potential trigger in a reader. </i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Or, to put it more colloquially..."Everybody's bothered by something."<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If there's one thing I've learned by being in a heavy-duty grief process--and supporting others in same--over the last six years, it's that everyone processes life differently. My grief is not your grief. Therefore, my triggers are not your triggers.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">My triggers can even change from day to day, week to week, and mood to mood. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Sometimes, I can't bear to hear songs from the 80s, because they bring back too many memories of my husband; sometimes, I embrace them, because they make me laugh, smile, or dance.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Sometimes, I find comfort in rereading love letters. Sometimes, they tear me apart.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Sometimes, I enjoy seeing young families out having fun together. Sometimes, they only reiterate to me what I will never have again.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I know people who've dissolved while shopping for groceries, because their spouse was a "foodie." Or smelling a favorite flower, because it was an unforgettable first bouquet he gave them. Or trying to navigate past a greeting-card or gift aisle when it's full of valentines or other "special occasion" reminders...that, frankly, only bring pain. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But we don't tell stores they can't play oldies over their Muzak.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We don't put up caution signs at the end of greeting-card or flower aisles.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And we don't limit families to one end of the picnic area, and singles to the other.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Just. In. Case.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Neither can we anticipate what may trigger someone in our writing.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So, the only option we have available is to issue...what?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Blanket "caution" signs?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Some writers claim that the only "trigger warnings" necessary apply to scenes that involve violence--especially sexual--or abuse--again, especially sexual. But what that's saying is that certain kinds of trauma are worse, or more "worthy" of being warned about, than others.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And <i>that's</i> hogwash, too. Because trauma is trauma. Pain is pain. And espousing that kind of narrow, discriminatory "compassion" is just plain ignoring the facts.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Which leads us right into the second reason "trigger warnings" are hogwash:<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">2) <i>It's not an author's job to police your eyes...or mind.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If you read back cover copy of a book and it uses terms like "gritty" or "seamy," or comes right out and talks about sex and weapons and crime and danger...don't you kind of know what you're going to get on the inside?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And if that reflects something of your past, something you're still healing from...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Don't read the book.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Kind of obvious, isn't it?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And no, I don't mean to be callous here. But it's come to a point in today's culture where no one is responsible for anything they, themselves, do anymore. It's always someone else's job to "protect" them and give them a "safe place"...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">...while at the same time, these people rail against censorship of any kind.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Or, to put <i>this</i> more colloquially, "You can't have it both ways."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If I read something that's advertised as a "hot" book, and I then complain because it's sexy, who's at fault here? The author, for not warning me that some scenes may be offensive or objectionable to me? Or me, the reader, for deliberately wading into the swamp without mosquito spray and then blaming the swamp because I got bitten?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The bottom line is, we cannot hope to cover, protect, and shield everyone from everything that's ever going to trigger them. And if we can't do it for everyone, it's both shallow and pointless to do it only for certain people and certain traumas. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Occasionally, yes, we can get ambushed by something. We in grief know all about that, too. And that might mean that, temporarily, we've got to absent ourselves from the site, the page, or the author's work that did that. We might be able to return, again, at a future date...when we're stronger. Triggers aren't always forever, either. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But, again...that's <i>our</i> stuff. Not a culture's. Not a grocery store's. Not a florist's. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And it shouldn't have to be an author's, either.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Thoughts?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-2800452647911149372023-05-02T14:17:00.007-05:002023-05-02T14:17:43.390-05:00No, It's Not Bohemian Rhapsody...<div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">...but this week's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yxSSg6XzuQ">Musical Monday</a> selection does offer us a visit from Scaramouche!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Enjoy...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-91710181115898218242023-04-24T13:23:00.008-05:002023-04-24T13:30:02.642-05:00In Praise of a Truly "Small" World<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Many years ago, when I had a short-lived (and doomed!) job as an administrative assistant for a PR firm, a coworker had a radio on all day playing pop music. Why do I remember that so well? Because of one song in particular: the infamous Disney theme from EPCOT, "It's A Small World, After All."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">For some reason, 70s pop music stations thought they should bombard us with that song at least once a day. If not more often. Don't ask ME why; I could barely tolerate it. But my coworker had a different, and much more dramatic, reaction to the thing. Every time it'd come on the radio, she'd call someone--I have no idea whom--and tell them their song was on.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Every. Single. Time.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I couldn't help but wonder whom she was calling (I never asked) or why. Clearly, that song meant something to someone in her world, and so every time she heard it, she'd share it. And since this station played it regularly, that gave her an excuse to make a personal phone call every single morning. In between lighting cigarettes and chain-smoking. Which she did, in the office. Because those were the days when you still <i>could</i> do such things in an office!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This song came to mind (briefly only, thank heaven) when I read a FB entry by a fellow author about getting to know an online consultant in Ukraine, and sharing a few thoughts with that man. And our author friend concluded with the obvious: that, in the end, a lot of the social and political issues we're obsessing about in this country really aren't all that important, and we should remember the suffering fellow human beings closer to us than we might think--hence, the "small world."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">All of which is true. And worth understanding.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But, in my perspective, is an attitude that can also be hazardous as a steady diet.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In our everyday existences, our own worlds are very small, indeed. We deal with minutiae: kids and parents and neighbors and carpools and appliances breaking down and Internet access and work issues and laundry and dinner and mowing the lawn and what our pets are getting into...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It can all seem so insignificant and selfish, compared to the "problems of the world."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But the little-known (and even less-believed) secret?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It's <i>not</i>.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Contrary to what media and culture seem bent on "guilting" us with--this small, limited, "unimportant" life most of us live is not only whole, and real, and legitimate...but a <i>healthy,</i> <i>sane </i></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">means by which we </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">effect long-term betterment for an entire world.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Something that, by contrast, is <i>not</i> accomplished--and can never be--by constantly looking outward instead, and agonizing about all the things beyond our scope to fix.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This concept may be horrifying to some of you, in that it comes across as self-absorbed to the max. It concentrates on who, and what, is right in front of you, what your day brings in terms of challenges and opportunities. And leaves the rest to fate. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Or God. Or whatever higher power you recognize (and we all recognize one, whether we admit it or not). </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">What does a life look like that's lived this way?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Rather peaceful, truth be told.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And I can say that because it's a life I've lived for years.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">My life is, quite deliberately, not hemmed by news reporting, argument, or gossip.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It is a life not governed by worry, stress, frustration, or rage.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It is a life in which I can go for days without knowing that a natural disaster occurred thousands of miles away, on the other side of the world...and, consequently, without feeling awful about it.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It is a life in which I am "behind the curve" in terms of contemporary mores, tragedies, or social idiocies...and consequently, don't expend energy or emotional investment on them.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span>It is a life in which, as much as possible, I try to stay focused on things I </span><i>can</i><span> do.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Things I <i>can</i> control.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Lives I <i>can</i> impact.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Direct actions I <i>can</i> take to influence policy, personalities, or public opinion.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The rest, I ignore.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Yes. You heard that right.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I can hear the indignant reactions now.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"What do you mean, you ignore what's happening all over the world? You have to be informed! You need to know what's going on!"<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">To which I always respond, "Why?"</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And, to this day, I haven't gotten a good answer to that question.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In fact, the people I know who make it their business to be "informed," and who <i>do</i> always "know what's going on"? By and large? </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Are psychological messes.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">They're so balled up in anxiety, in anger, in fear, in worry, and in suspicion and/or cynicism that, ironically enough, their lives are "smaller" than mine is. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">They don't "dare" do things I'll do in a heartbeat, because it's "not safe" to do those things. Even when, as I do them, I'm perfectly safe the entire time...and enjoy myself in the bargain. And speaking of enjoyment? </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Some of these "informed" people</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> can barely laugh, really laugh, at anything anymore. Or make a joke, even a perfectly innocent one, without looking over their shoulders.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Surely, that's not the way human beings are supposed to live.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Because, during His time on earth, even God laughed.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Yes, He did. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And yes, He cried, too.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But He lived <i>in balance</i>. And when the world was too much with Him, or His disciples, He urged them to get away. To separate themselves from the melee, take some time for peace and quiet, and recollect.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Reconnect.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Renew.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Refresh.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Some of us take "retreats" in which we do these things. But I firmly believe we need to go way beyond intermittent "escape"...and start practicing some judicious, everyday ignorance. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Because a life lived with one's finger endlessly on the pulse of the world at large, endlessly vigilant, and endlessly concerned about things that, most of the time, we <i>have no control over...</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Has no room for refreshment, recollection, reconnection, or renewal.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And eventually, then, it has no room for humor. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Or whimsy. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Or creativity. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Or spontaneity. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Or optimism.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Or...faith. Or hope. Or real charity.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I have all of these elements still at my disposal. And I use them, when I can, and when I need to, to make things better. I don't have to go looking for opportunities, either. Wha</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">t needs me to tend to it, as I've often said, shows up--without fail--at the doorstep. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Which is plenty soon enough to deal with it.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Remember, Jesus worked miracles <i>one person at a time</i>. He was divine--but He still understood, and respected, sane human limits.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">No amount of "information" will give you superhuman powers to go beyond that.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So stop expecting it to--or expecting yourself to be superhuman as a result. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I do my best with the small world I've been given to live and move in.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And in the end, I believe, that will turn out to be more than enough.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Thoughts?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-11502488994676978202023-04-24T11:35:00.000-05:002023-04-24T11:35:04.396-05:00"I'll Be Bach."<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/smallsoprano/posts/pfbid02GaJjj2AL6R5GJCHqqJBbsnKe2RWBHwFvc3UnGgWStUHQbner4wSstZsNr73NRwhhl">Happy Musical Monday!</a></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Well, okay, technically I won't be...but HE will.<br />Enjoy!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-8271467405753808532023-03-16T15:02:00.008-05:002023-03-16T15:08:40.187-05:00"They're Playin' Bas-ket-baaallll..." <div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">...and it came to pass,
in the gray days of March, that the Lord looked down on his American people and
said:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Hey, word up, there's nothin' happenin' down there. This is neither spring, nor winter, neither hot nor cold. It is not good to have man living in these doldrums of halfway between.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">
"So let us shaketh things up a bit. Let us make of March a special time,
that shall be henceforth known as 'Madness.'* At this time, men shall procure a
roundball, made of leather, filled with the breath of the wind, and shall bring
it to a 94-foot hardwood court. There, they shall string cotton beneath a wide
orange cylinder of metal, one at each end of the court, at a height of 10 feet
from the floor. And groups of men shall band together, and shall make it a mission
to launch the roundball through the cylinder, so that it makes a special music
through the cotton cords. And yea, verily, when the roundball passeth through
the cotton net, there shall be rejoicing and great jubilation in many lands.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">
"They shall do this in the city; they shall do this in the country. They
shall do this in the small town, in the places time forgot. They shall do this
in the Ivy League and in the Midwest Athletic Conference, on the Atlantic coast
and in the heartlands; in the Mountain West and the Pacific lowlands; and the
people shall behold it and marvel.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">
"And let us make this an annual feast, a time when small men can dream big
dreams. Let us celebrate and rejoice, and make merry, when the Big Dancing
begins. And let March be forever blessed with this glorious festival of team
colors and cheerleaders, slammin' and jammin', 'diaper dandies' and
buzzer-beaters...to bring joy and craziness to all my people."</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">
And God saw it...and it was very good.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">
Let there be Roundball!!!!!!!</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">
Janny</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">
(*Yes, we are aware that the IHSA claims that Illinois High School Basketball
was the original "March Madness," and we have no doubt whatsoever that
this is true, as we can remember this term from way before it was used for the
NCAA Tournament. We have merely exercised a little poetic license here, and
trust that the reader will be accommodating.)</span></div><p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">***(Reprinted from March, 2009)***</span></div><o:p></o:p><p></p>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-22430282137216696112023-03-06T10:26:00.009-06:002024-02-25T10:35:42.844-06:00What's On Your Liszt For This Week?<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7EONsOY5To"></a></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7EONsOY5To"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8fUOEM0fLIiKGU0dZja4Fqk4RNMNugtLpvG-giCt8iZxeaLwVMa1mki1X5c2laZyvKGTef4SV4KTkzhDhx9koi1ndtttUvg55nChg93MdolxBw9Z403rs1mVP2UR0Mi3lGC7kPPVodU3hm0CciMXM4hgIH8wkRKORD0F3ySVMQoSy66yCoBM/s5472/Piano%20image%201.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3648" data-original-width="5472" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8fUOEM0fLIiKGU0dZja4Fqk4RNMNugtLpvG-giCt8iZxeaLwVMa1mki1X5c2laZyvKGTef4SV4KTkzhDhx9koi1ndtttUvg55nChg93MdolxBw9Z403rs1mVP2UR0Mi3lGC7kPPVodU3hm0CciMXM4hgIH8wkRKORD0F3ySVMQoSy66yCoBM/s320/Piano%20image%201.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7EONsOY5To">This</a></span> <span style="font-family: georgia;">is on mine...</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Happy Musical Monday!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-73109331034630213562023-03-05T10:28:00.003-06:002023-03-05T10:43:51.928-06:00Mindful Coffee<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">...no, I never heard of it, either. But...! </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://unsplash.com/images/food/coffee?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: large; text-align: center;"><a href="https://unsplash.com/images/food/coffee?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiS7lI-UlDbU1CozweGdFqt72oA_VYUbQiED6CbBgPPWe1mx2GxvPlA6f2BTVJo4PEO7dd0OTcwnD6ubbJUyA2E7-Xawq52OmyK_TNh4aIMTc8lI8_K8XdRrrb7wOeSn7L1nAQHI_RxW01Fm7JSA7zAR0dK7zivnGW2ObVaurUEKVA3Au0gU8/s6000/ante-samarzija-lsmu0rUhUOk-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="6000" data-original-width="4000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiS7lI-UlDbU1CozweGdFqt72oA_VYUbQiED6CbBgPPWe1mx2GxvPlA6f2BTVJo4PEO7dd0OTcwnD6ubbJUyA2E7-Xawq52OmyK_TNh4aIMTc8lI8_K8XdRrrb7wOeSn7L1nAQHI_RxW01Fm7JSA7zAR0dK7zivnGW2ObVaurUEKVA3Au0gU8/s320/ante-samarzija-lsmu0rUhUOk-unsplash.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I love my morning coffee. Or afternoon coffee. Or, on some occasions, even evening coffee. Which is why, IMHO, the Keurig is among the best things ever invented. All that coffee, one cup at a time, whatever flavor you fancy...and quick to make.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">BUT...lately, I've had the *other* kind of coffee, too. No, not perked on the stove (although that's still among the better ways to make a pot)...but perked from grounds in my Keurig. As in, hand-scooping the grounds into one of those reusable cups you insert into the coffeemaker. Also for one cup at a time.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But a whole lot messier. Which means that every time you make one of THOSE cups, you have to really think about it. In terms of the cleanup work involved. Because coffee grounds, I'm here to tell you, migrate worse than spaghetti sauce toward a white blouse. No matter how careful you are in measuring out those grounds into that teeny little cup, inevitably some will...leak out.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Not to mention the cleanup of the used grounds afterward.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So, then, I got to wondering...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If you need to take care, and extra time, to make an individual cup of coffee...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">...does that make it MINDFUL?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">As opposed to just tossing another premade pod into the machine and brewing a second or third cup?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And do I get extra credit, then, on the "mindfulness" scale...for making the coffee more from scratch? Not to mention extra points for wiping up every spare speck of coffee grounds?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It's an interesting question, I think.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">😇</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I mean, hey--sometimes you need to take your meditation points where you get 'em.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But I also gotta say: sometimes, folks, I just like my coffee mindless. Snatch a pod, stick it in, push the button, and go.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Does that make me shallow?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Am I missing a chance for extra-deep thoughts while I scrub out a reusable cup?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Or...?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Yeah. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I doubt that'll keep ME up nights, either. </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">😛</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Thoughts?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">[[<a href="https://unsplash.com/images/food/coffee?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText"><span style="color: black;">Photo by </span></a><a href="https://unsplash.com/@antesamarzija?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Ante Samarzija</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/images/food/coffee?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a>]]</span></div><div><br /></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-8579744554310445882023-02-22T10:36:00.010-06:002023-02-22T15:00:31.784-06:00"All You Need Is Love..." And A Second Bathroom!<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Yeah. The little-known second line to that lyric? (LOL)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This thought came upon me as I've been ruminating over the possibility of someday in here, "being with" somebody new. </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">s in, having a romantic relationship that could turn into marriage and cohabitation.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And I started considering that, in light of the house I presently call home.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Now, this is a great little house. From the outside, it looks like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs live here: It's a little blue cottage with a stone chimney in front. It is two bedrooms, a large dining room, a tiny kitchen, a cozy living room, and a bathroom. No basement, no second level, utility room is literally right off the living room (when they say laundry is "mere steps" away, they're not kidding!). It's on a slant, as are most houses in this area that were built in the 1940s and "settled." You can put a marble on the floor and check the slant for yourself, any time. Or you can take it from my Mini Taktell metronome, which cannot find level purchase upon which to keep time!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It is funky. It is charming.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But it is SMALL.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And it has only one bathroom. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A basic bathroom, at that. No double vanity, no separate W/C, none of that wonderful stuff. It DOES have a bathtub--which nowadays, for reasons known only to builders, is NOT always a given--as well as a shower, and it's in pretty good shape, although dated. If a designer came in here, the first thing he or she would do is groan, then start tearing out all the old woodwork and cabinetry and replacing them with sleek gray & white.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Which wouldn't be all bad. And if I could afford it, I'd likely do some of that myself.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But, again...it is SMALL.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">As in, it has no linen closet. I use part of the master bedroom closet to stash linens and other storage. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">And, once again, as in it has only ONE bathroom.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And I know, for a fact, that if I moved in with someone else again...that wouldn't be enough.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The older we get, the more we need bathrooms to be handy, accessible, and OPEN.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">For many obvious reasons, none of which </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">will </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">I bore or gross you out with now.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We had one bathroom in the condo in Wauconda, and there was more than one instance in which I spent some <i>looong </i>minutes waiting for it, when it was occupied at a time when my biology wanted me to be occupying it instead!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So, in addition to the considerations attached to forming another emotional connection, dealing with all the baggage that could ensue from that exercise, and doing the usual adjustments one has to do when one is too used to living on one's own...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">...I'd have to find a bigger house with another bathroom in it!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">No, it wouldn't have to be lavish. And, truth be told, even a half-bath would do.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Just for Important Functions When They Need To Be Tended To.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So, the sentiment will never make its way onto a Valentine card.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">But it's a very practical way</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">to make sure everybody feels </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">loved</i><span style="font-family: georgia;">...going forward!</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And to me, it's a basic necessity I <i>don't</i> want to live without.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Whadya think?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-76596209182589707392023-01-30T12:01:00.007-06:002023-01-30T12:04:08.876-06:00It's Musical Monday again! <p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Some warm music for a cold Monday! A few <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RAWm008oXs"> piano meanderings</a> by a composer who hasn't gotten nearly enough attention yet...(but we're working on it!)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Enjoy!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></p>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-83764849544830321962023-01-25T10:32:00.000-06:002023-01-25T10:32:00.110-06:00Happy Birthday Robert Burns!<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In honor of the occasion...a quintessential love song, sung by one of the greatest of all time. Have tissues handy.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And...you're welcome.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBCQMWMbeMU">A Red, Red Rose</a><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Janny</span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-47374285607425474482022-09-19T12:44:00.003-05:002022-09-19T12:44:14.949-05:00For Musical Monday...A Surprise!<div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Yes, it was for ME, too.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Check <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Udfqbvi-U&fbclid=IwAR0v8S2-6t5RS38DYwIcYCk3yeTwxiLqQFgjd-lu5EqxPXZxnsvHOH0B5Wc">it</a> out!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-69257967086355616752022-09-12T21:05:00.002-05:002022-09-12T21:05:24.578-05:00 A Miracle Musical Monday! <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I think <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-3d_UagGRA">this</a> is probably one of the best ways you could start any week. But, then, again, I think it's pretty much impossible to listen to Haydn and not smile...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So enjoy the rest of your week with this as accompaniment!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-13852065771534383192022-09-11T19:11:00.002-05:002022-09-11T19:13:21.430-05:00The Story So Far...<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I admit, I stole the title for this entry from a Battlefield Band album. But it's an apt way to describe how we're all doing, don't you think?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And I had an interesting perspective on how I'm "doing," almost five and a half years after Patrick's death, during a message I wrote to a man with whom I'm chatting on Catholic Chemistry. Yes, I've done some dating services. No, you don't want to know how many...or that I was 7-for-7 on scammers with at least one of them...or what some of the men out there seem to be focused on when they talk about a new relationship. (It's a three-letter word. Use your imagination.) But this particular entry was an answer to his musings about whether he may have been too picky all his life, looking for a woman to settle down with--he'd never married--and the makings of "chemistry." He asked me if I believed in it, and if it was something that happened fast, or something that "grew" on you...what I thought. And I looked at that, and just laughed.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">How I answered him, I think, shows a great deal about how far I've come, where I've come to, and what I'm looking at in this new reality of mine. See what you think:</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">============================</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #ffd966;">Brace yourself, because you asked the wrong girl about "chemistry." LOL! Yes, I believe in it...boy, do I! It could be said that I kind of NEED to, as a romance writer...but I'm lucky/fortunate/blessed enough to have also had terrific chemistry on my "second time around," and I miss him every single day.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: georgia;">I say "second time around" because technically, I had a first marriage--but I was never married in the eyes of the Church, and I've come to refer to that relationship as my "fake first husband." Oh, we were legal and all--but we married at age 20, and we frankly didn't have a clue what we were doing. The young man was a charmer who proposed to me on the second date. (!) Coming from a father who was verbally abusive, emotionally crippled, and not the kind of "daddy" any little girl should have, I ate up the affection, laughter, and compliments of this guy, and I thought that was all it'd take. I did my best to be a good little Baptist wife, kowtowed to his preacher father, and all the rest. Seven years later, when I discovered my husband was a chronic liar, couldn't hold a job, and had a disturbing affinity to violent and/or pornographic literature...I bailed. I got a legal separation, moved out into my own apartment, and pursued full-time music study...</span></div></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: georgia;">...and then, I encountered the love of my life.</span></div></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: georgia;">I don't say I "met" him because, in fact, I had already MET Patrick. He was in the same music classes I was, we performed in several ensembles together (as well as performing in separate ensembles at the same concerts!), and I knew OF him. But he was a very quiet, reserved, and shy drummer, and so I never knew him, per se...until one night, (purely "by chance") I sat next to him at a choir pizza party, we started talking--and the bond was immediate. We "clicked" so well that, that night going home in the car, my hands were shaking on the steering wheel. I knew SOMETHING had happened to me--what, I wasn't sure yet!</span></div></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: georgia;">From there, we became fast friends, then best friends....and eventually, he decided he wanted to date me. Truth to tell, I was head-over-heels for him probably about from "hello," and he claimed he'd had a "sign" early on that I was the one. But he was a very, very cautious soul, and he wanted to take his time pursuing a relationship with a divorced woman, especially since she was 7 years older. (Yeah. Just call me "cougar"! LOL)</span></div></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: georgia;">But the chemistry? Happened like lightning. Everyone who knew both of us told me repeatedly that we had "something special." And we did. It was more than just our shared faith, our shared music, our shared weird sense of humor, or--let's face it--a whole lot of just plain physical attraction. Fundamentally, we looked at the world the same way, which is kind of my informal definition of "compatibility." And yes, we went through all kinds of trials...but we laughed almost every single day, never lacked for conversation, and came through some very rough times even more in love than we started.</span></div></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: georgia;">Does that mean he was perfect? Heck, no. Neither am I. And there are a lot of things about the relationship, and his personality and habits, that I DON'T miss. But in balance? I believe we were absolutely meant for each other, and had been from before either of us was born. That kind of "soulmate" truly IS rare, and I know a lot of people who settle for less; I feel sorry for them. But if you may have been a bit picky about what you were looking for in terms of a wife, imagine how picky I am NOW! (LOL) Yes, I know the bar is set incredibly high, and I may never find another partner that good. As Tom Hanks' character says in SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, "It doesn't happen twice." It does, of course, in that romantic movie. It may not for me, but if it doesn't, I have to say....I'm okay anyway. Yes, it's lonely. But it's lonely for a particular brand of person, a particular brand of relationship...not just for "having someone" in my life. And that difference is important.</span></div></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: georgia;">That's why I also believe that the best thing someone who's looking for a "partner" can do is to learn how to be happy alone. I did that as a single girl in college, and I'm doing it now. Put your imprint on your space. Surround yourself with things you love. Do things, as a single person, that treat YOU well. So many times in my grief-support group, people will talk about not wanting to cook a nice meal "just for one person," because it seems like it's "not worth it." To which I want to say, "Of course, it's worth it. That one person is YOU, and you deserve good food." The same applies to the rest of one's life--you deserve a place you can snuggle up and "nest" in, something far more than just a place to eat, sleep, or wash up. You want a haven for yourself, and you want to treat yourself well. Because Jesus says. "Love your neighbor as yourself..." but all too often, people forget the "as yourself" part. It has to be part of the mix, or you won't know how to love someone else well!</span></div></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: georgia;">So, yeah. This very long answer to your long post boils down to a couple of answers. I most definitely DO believe in "chemistry," and I believe you don't know if it's there or not until you're face to face with the person. You can think it's there through such things as these messages, or even over the phone...but there's another component to it that only happens when you're physically present with the other person. That's when you know for sure. It can happen very fast, or it can build nice and slow...but for me, it has to be there, or I have to say, "Thanks, but no, thanks," to pursuing anything further.</span></div></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: georgia;">Hope this gives you some insights!</span></div></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">=======================</span></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Thoughts?</span></div><div data-v-8e0cc950="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-66318889301378341752022-09-05T11:16:00.001-05:002022-09-05T11:16:22.067-05:00Some Fun and Frolic for Musical Monday! <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFaypFJhvo0">This.</a> Just way too much fun, IMHO. Although it could also be said there IS no such thing as too much fun...</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">(as the old country tune said so well!)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Enjoy!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-28851857917766917102022-08-29T13:04:00.002-05:002022-08-29T13:04:21.908-05:00"Russian" Into Musical Monday!<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Yeah, I know. I couldn't resist.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2GKgFZ_ioQ">this</a> is worth the trip.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">As I say in my Facebook post, I'm "T-H-I-S close" to getting this under control. And when I do, the chills that will run through my system could air-condition this house for the rest of summer.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Good chills. Trust me.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In the meantime, enjoy this version. I certainly do!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31121848.post-25880934382570389052022-08-27T12:38:00.004-05:002022-08-27T21:43:40.070-05:00What's the Good Word?<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Probably many of you are too young to remember what the question above was a common greeting...but that's neither here nor there. 😉</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I've had to stop reading two books this week.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">One promised to be a neat, paranormal suspense book, with ghosts and hauntings and danger and all. I was really looking forward to it.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Until I got into the book, and discovered that everybody in it had potty mouths.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Yes. Including the seven-year-old son.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But what wore on me even more was the casual gutter speech from the parents.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Specifically, Mom.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Now, it's a British book. So, I had to tell myself over and over again, "Brits are cruder in their everyday speech than you're used to."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So when she teases her husband by calling him a "cheeky bastard," I could laugh along. He was being one, as a matter of fact. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But when she greeted her kids, first thing in the morning, by saying, "You're up early. Did you shit the bed or something?"</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I stopped.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And, while I did read a little further into the book, at that point, I lost interest.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The book had many "tripping points" for those of us used to an opening that moves fast, anyhow; it delved into great and meticulous detail about the layout of this fantastic estate where that the woman was going to be live-in manager. Describing in fine specifics the lengths, and breadths, and numbers of doors, and the whole shot. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Even that, I could adapt to...in a book where, clearly, the setting is as much a character as the people. I get that. I've even done it. Although not, it must be said, in such exhaustive geographic detail.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But not a mother thinking it's in any way remotely affectionate to tease her children about being up early by asking if someone's defecated in a bed.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I wonder, to this moment, what she would have responded if they'd said, "Yes."<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Part of me, I confess, wanted them to. Just to see her jaw drop.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But they took that in good spirit, as if that was the kind of thing their mother said to them all the time. And the notion of <i>that</i> turned my stomach.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When the language of the kids didn't improve any over the next few pages...I stopped. I just had had enough of their smart-ass mouths. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I no longer cared if the ghost got any of them. In fact, I was rooting for it.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The same has happened with a second book I started, and was quite absorbed in, because a lot out of it is funny. It's another paranormal thriller, with a black-humor bent in it that I appreciate. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I even was heartened when, in the first several pages, the language was actually cleaner than I expected.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Unfortunately, that didn't last.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But the kicker for me? One particular scene, upon which a major incident in the story gets built. A scene in which our "hero"'s wife is being, shall we say, sexually indulged by one of her fellow workers. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Mind you, they're only separated, she and the hero. Not divorced yet. And he doesn't really want to divorce her.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Until that moment, when he doesn't catch them directly in the act...but <i>right</i> afterward.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And he spares us no description of what that looks like. Body parts, reactions, smells, the whole thing.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This is piled on top of an increasingly foul text anyway, in which our hero is dealing with mobsters and semi-mobsters and people who once did business with the mob, and petty crooks, and the whole shot...and none of them, apparently, know any creative words and terms beyond "a**hole," *d***head," and, of course, the ever-popular "f**k" (and all its forms). </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A little of that, I put up with. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When we then start to wallow, deeper and deeper, into language--be it conversation or description--that makes me want to take a shower when I'm done reading it?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I'm outta there.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Which brings up my ever-present question.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">There are over 600,000 words in the English language.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Why can't people learn to use some more of them?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And why don't publishers demand better?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">One time, someone posted on Twitter that he couldn't understand why people had a problem with the word "f**k." </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I said, because it's vulgar, obscene, and repetitive.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">To which another respondent agreed with the first poster and said, "Oh, but there are situations in which it's the perfect word."<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">To which I responded, "Only if you're too lazy to find any others."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I stand by that.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I stand by that as pertains to "a**hole," as pertains to *d***head," and a host of other terms that are so peppered throughout most contemporary prose that, were they actual pepper, you couldn't consume the dish they were used on.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Which, when you think about it, is a very good metaphor.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">People will say, over and over, "But this is the way people talk."<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">To which I can only answer, "It's not the way I talk. And it's not the way people with a grain of decency talk. Or write. Or narrate things."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Above all, it's not the way people who actually want to convey real English talk...or write. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And before you scream protests? <i>It can be done.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It has been. Countless times. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">You can write about the seamiest, grittiest, most down-and-dirty plot points in the world in your prose <i>without a single one of these lazy words.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And, no, it won't sound like a Sunday school teacher wrote it.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Because there are some really <i>wonderful</i> words in the lexicon that can be used as substitutes for these words. And they're not just substitutes, in that you're doing some knee-jerk "cleaning up" of your writing--they're actually <i>better </i>words.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">More descriptive.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">More vivid.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">One or two, or half a dozen of these other "gems," in speech? If you want to have your characters portrayed as lazy speakers, go ahead.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But peppering them throughout narrative, throughout thoughts, throughout conversation as if they're anything but the nauseating insensitivities they are?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">You do that, I'm going to get tired of digging through the excrement to get to the pony. But worse than that, for your author's reputation...is that I'm going to doubt that <i>there even is a pony in there </i>to begin with.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And I will set your book aside.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And I will delete it from my Kindle.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And I promise, I will never recommend it to <i>anybody. </i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Do you really want that reaction from a reader? <i>Any</i> reader?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">You all can do better. I know you can.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Give it a try.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Go ahead.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I dare you.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Thoughts?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Janny</span></div>Jannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06725527285837338560noreply@blogger.com0