Strong & Beautiful, INSIDE & Out

Just found this new video of my sister.  Isn't she gorgeous?

                                    

Salmonella-spiked Turkey

(Hello! I'm working on a post to share some vacation pictures with you. Unfortunately, all my pix are enormous -- as in 4320x3240 pixels. Anyone know if it's possible to mass reduce the size of whole folders of photos? 'Cause doing it one pic at a time is going to put me over the edge... In the meantime, here's a random current events entry.)  

In an attempt to re-acclimate myself with the regular grind (as my switch is stubbornly stuck on Vacation Mode), I ventured to the grocery store yesterday for milk.


The drive to the nearest store is literally 3-1/2 minutes from my house, which is why I try not to shop there. At any time in the store's 24-hour day I am sure to bump into at least two neighbors; and during peak hours, I find myself leaning on my cart five to eight times and chatting up an extra hour or so that I hadn't allotted to errand-running. Time management is NOT my friend, to start with. So I often shop in a food store farther from my house.


However, since yesterday was just an excuse to get out of the house, I went to my neighborhood Kroger. At the register, I was surprised when the cashier handed me a receipt for milk that was long enough to categorize a week's worth of groceries. She explained the extra type dealt with the ground turkey recall.


Since I use my Kroger card when I shop in the store, the computer was able to spit out all the dates and UPC codes when I bought now-recalled ground turkey. I learned that since February 20, I bought fourteen packages of potentially tainted turkey. I guess I shop at Kroger more often than I realized.


I searched my freezers but found none of this turkey, which means we ate all of it. That's a lot of bullets to dodge.


But here's the thing I'm most struck by: The recalled turkey came from one processing center. "On August 3, Cargill recalled 36 million pounds of fresh and frozen ground turkey products produced at the company’s Springdale, Ark., facility from Feb. 20, 2011, through Aug. 2, 2011, due to possible contamination with Salmonella Heidelberg." (Source) That same turkey has been sold under the following brands:


Honeysuckle White
Giant Eagle
Aldi’s Fit & Active
Fresh HEB
Riverside
Kroger
Safeway
Shady Brook Farms
Spartan
Natural Lean
Bulk packed ground turkey


So though I've often suspected, I now know for sure that when I pay $1.50-2.50 more per pound for Honeysuckle or Shady Brook Farms turkey, I'm getting the EXACT SAME product as if I spent less money on the store brand.


Friends, I've helped fund those name brand companies' marketing campaigns for the last time. Lesson learned!






Happy Friday!

                                    

Where the *bleep* Am I?

If you're reading this between July 15 and July 31, you will not find me here.  I'm off with my husband, kids, sister, nephew and friend, vacationing like rock stars!  Here's my itinerary:

The evening of July 15, I'm taking one of these...

Source

...leaving Atlanta on a flight to Paris, connecting the following afternoon (European time) to Pisa, Italy.

I'll spend the weekend at my sister's house near here:

Montalcino, Italy (Photo Source)

...with lots of family members and friends. Can't wait!!

Then, on Monday July 18, some of us take one of these:

Not THIS Private Corporate Jet...but one like it! (Photo Source)

...to Malta.  Not sure where Malta is?  I'll show you:

Source

Waiting for us to board will be one of these:

NOT this yacht, but one like it! (Photo Source)

We'll sail for close to two weeks up the coasts of Sicily and mainland Italy, arriving here on the 30th:

Naples, Italy (photo source)

From Naples, we fly to NYC where we'll spend one more night with my sister, boyfriend and her son, then we fly commercial back to Atlanta on the 31st.

Actual photos of our vacation will follow!

Until then, have a wonderful July and I'll be back in August to revive my regular blogging schedule.  

See you then!!! J

                                    

Characters that Capture the Imagination

Photo Source

         The gym where I work out is only slightly larger than a corner pharmacy. But the modern facility with state-of-the-art equipment, located a short drive from our house is my daily, early-morning haunt. The cardio stage faces the weight training area, so when I'm not conjuring new character ideas during treadmill workouts, I am people watching. As you can imagine, those two pastimes often overlap.

         Typically, the same crowd of early risers shows up Monday through Friday between 7:00 and 8:30 a.m. Among the regulars, there's the muscular girl whose shapely legs I covet. There's the man I silently cheer on ever since he told me he's already shed 150 of the 225 pounds he needs to lose to achieve his goal weight. And there's The Grunter, who dresses like he's in gym class, circa 1955, and who loudly clears his throat on average once every thirty seconds. Recently, though, an unfamiliar pair of members arrived on our scene. They showed up wearing the trademark bright, factory-fresh sneakers of motivated gym newbies. I haven't been able to keep my eyes off them since.

         Every day they arrive together and leave together, but while they are in the gym they work alone. Both appear to be in their fifties, and I assume they are a couple. They know their way around the equipment. Unlike timid newbies who steer clear of the complicated-looking apparatuses, their workouts entail far more than random sets on unrelated Nautilus machines. Instead, they target specific opposing-muscle groups -- like back and biceps, or chest and triceps. And they maintain good form while executing precise movements, thus avoiding the injury traps that more inexperienced members easily fall into.

         They rarely speak to each other, and I've neither seen them partner up nor spot one another. There's no air of anger or distain between them, though. They simply move around like people who are used to sharing the same space and are comfortable in their own silence. Every once in a while a quick smile passes between them.

         By now, you may have formed an image of these people in your mind. Close your eyes and take a moment to gaze upon them. What do they look like, to you? Earlier, I said I can't keep my eyes off them. Here's why:

         The man is scarecrow-skinny and easily over six feet tall. His wiry gray hair spills over his shoulders like a scraggly shawl, and his gaunt cheeks are covered by a dishwater gray beard that's so long its wispy ends reach south of his solar plexus. Though there is something graceful about his movements, he walks with the hunched gait of a man accustomed to manual labor. He wears the same ratty baseball cap every day.

         The woman is of medium height, though when walking next to the man she's dwarfed by his stature. Like him, she is very thin. She wears boxy t-shirts that hang on her frame and tend to draw my eyes to her pronounced elbows and knobby knees. She pulls her graying brown hair away from a weathered and make-up-free face, cinching it in a stubby ponytail at the base of her neck. Her mouth and chin are sunken in, as if her teeth were missing. A wristwatch or a pair of earrings would look conspicuously out-of-place on her.

         In short, they don't look at all like "gym people," which is why I find them so fascinating to watch. When they're working out, I don't even notice the muscular girl, the shrinking man or The Grunter. And that got my writer's brain thinking.

         As characters, all five gym members are unique - meaning they are each physically different from the others, and each must have interesting stories to tell. When all five share the same setting, they move around the space with equal aptitude and facility. But it's their visual paradoxes that make the new couple the center of my attention. They are the splashes of red on an all-blue canvas. They are interesting.

         A fictional character that is multi-dimensional or quirky captures our imaginations. Discovering and exploring a character's contradictions, illogicalities, and ironies bring depth and drama to any story. Inspiration for these characters is all around us, and looking for it is almost as enjoyable as crafting the characters and their stories.

         And it sure makes the time on a treadmill fly by!

[I originally published this article today at Writing.com.  Read it HERE. And to enjoy other regular newsletters and a slew of tools for writers, sign up HERE.  Membership is free!]

                                    

Concrete Poem

Just a little concrete poem I wrote a while back.

Hope you enjoy it!

                  The Call of the Whale

My name is Dylan,                                                                      “Lover of the Sea.”
    Or so my mother                                                                hoped I’d always be.
    The palm fronds swayed                                            the day that I was born.
        And sea gulls screeched their                            welcome from the shore.
          A family of simple needs raised            me. Our livelihood was eked out
            from the sea.  From babe to boy,      my playground was the beach;
                Observant ocean never failed to teach.  But I, unwilling student,
                    would not hear and dreamed instead of arid west frontier.
                    Two years of misery in desert quest; I searched for verve
                        but found I was depressed. ‘Neath empty skies and
                          cacti's harsh embrace, the ocean ebbed and
                                  pulled me from that place.  Thalassic
                                          prodigy returned at last, at
                                            ocean’s edge I stood and
                                              viewed my past: I was
                                              the whale compelled
                                                to breathe fresh air,
                                                  an orcan idealist
                                                  lunged, unaware.
  In reckless flight I'd faced a basic fact. A  whale lives under
     contract most exact. I’m from the sea and  it’s a part of me;
                  My salty tears were proof and guarantee.









Have a wonderful day!

                                    

On Submission...again

Image snagged from Source

I spent the afternoon revising and spit-shining a short story for submission. It's amazing how much easier the editing process is when you've put the project aside for a couple months.

I hadn't reread this particular story since early spring when I submitted it to a literary magazine called Independent Ink. That market generally takes 120 days to notify authors of acceptance or rejection, although they state on the website that if the story is of interest to them but not right for the issue they're currently preparing, they may take longer to announce the acceptance, to coincide with the issue it will appear in. I've now been waiting to hear a 'yay' or 'nay' for 139 days...A good sign or not, I can't guess.

At any rate, I decided to submit the story to other markets. If it is accepted someplace else, I'll withdraw it from Independent Ink's consideration.

I hadn't forgotten what the story was about, but I had become distant enough from it to enjoy it as a reader would. I wasn't skimming the words like I did when it was well-rehearsed in my writer's brain. I actually read it.

And, naturally, I found places where a tweak was in order. After some minor adjustments that, I think, strengthened the flow and overall emotional impact of the story, I sent it off. I don't think I'll ever get over the nervous, flip-flopping jitters I feel when I push the "Submit" button. It's a gulp from a big glass of exhilarating terror. Makes me sort of drunk, every time.

Now I have to settle in for another 90-day wait, on average. Plenty of time for cramps to take hold of my tightly crossed fingers. Going to try to put it out of my mind and just write.

Just write.

Just.Write.

 

                                    

Facing the Fear

On a warm spring day this year, my daughter opened a canvas camping chair and settled in to read a book in the shade of our small front porch. That evening, instead of hauling the chair back to the garage like she should have, she pulled up on the four corners of the chair back and seat front, collapsing the chair up into a vertical bundle. She stood it in the corner next to the front door and then went into the house.

A week later, we noticed the nest.

A mama Bewick's Sparrow had discovered the hammock-y nook that the seat bottom created, sheltered on all sides by folds of stiff canvas. She'd deemed it the perfect spot to nest, and before long we spied six speckled eggs atop a bed of woven twigs and straw.

Try as we did, remembering to use an alternate exit from the house proved difficult, and the regular traffic of neighborhood kids ringing the doorbell in search of playmates increased with the lengthening days. Each time someone drew near, Mama Sparrow took panicked, sputtering flight, several times smacking into the porch eaves in her haste to flee.

Then one day, she just never returned. Without her attention, the abandoned eggs succumbed to the elements, their precious contents surrendering to the chilly spring air.

As a novelist I am like that Mama Sparrow. I build a story nest. I outline on paper, weaving character sketches with plot points, constructing something tangible from the ideas floating in the quiet safety of my imagination. A new project excites me; it consumes my waking thoughts. As I wash the dishes, the characters speak. When I fold the laundry, scenes play out. Driving the car, I see setting landscapes rise on the horizon of my mind. All the eggs are laid. Nothing left to do but roost and write.

Something happens to me at this point in the project. I get spooked. I stare at the blank screen. I begin the first chapter, but wind up scratching the first scene. I start over with a different character, or put him in a different room, outdoors, three days before, one month later...

I give myself time off. Sometimes, I'm told, stepping back from the project gets the creative fires burning again. I try anew, and the same thing happens. I jump back again in panicked, sputtering flight.

And I've learned that when I flee often enough, the fragile ideas sense impeding abandonment. They cool off and perish, like unattended eggs in a nest.

For whatever reason, I don't struggle this way with my short fiction. And I question whether I'm just being stubborn in my desire to write a novel. Then I recognize, again, the fear lingering in-between the words in that sentence. The urge for flight is strong, but my love for writing and faith in the process must be stronger. 

And the moral of this story is this: Story ideas, like any artistic inspiration, must be acted upon in the heat of that initial, stimulating enthusiasm. How many times have you been driving down the road and a brilliant idea for a character comes to you? And how many times have you later gone to your computer to write about her, and her essence has evaporated from your mind like mist in morning sunlight? Writers can't put off inspiration. Not for a busy schedule, not for lack of sleep, and certainly not for fear.

[The above article was originally published on June 15, 2011 in my monthly newsletter at Writing.com.]

As I face my fears and embark on my second attempt at a full-length novel, I wish all of you the same inspiration and perseverance for your current writing endeavors that I'm beckoning for mine.  Write on, friends!