Jetlag Brainstorming

 

It was 3 a.m. in Boston, 9 a.m. in Argelès. 

We were in Boston for our second night and still jet lagged. Had we been in Argelès, we would be just getting up, having had our morning tea in bed and reading bits and pieces to each other. Rick would have walked the dog and crawled back in bed.

Staying awake earlier in the evening had been difficult so we went to bed about 9 p.m.

Rick woke first around three and was thinking of ideas about his work.

I woke second thinking about the day ahead where I would finally meet the Minuteman Park Ranger who had been so helpful in my research for my novel Lexington: Anatomy of a Novel. I was also thinking of the project I'm currently working on.

 

We started sharing ideas throwing out one concept after another. We were each writing down what we wanted to make sure we remembered. And then it was almost five in the morning Boston time. 

We tried to sleep. It didn't work. Instead we were up, showered and off to breakfast at our favorite Dempseys and Lexington to meet with the Ranger who helped so much in our research.

I think one of the things I enjoy most in my marriage is that we share ideas in our chosen work. However, maybe not at 3 a.m. on a regular basis...or then again, maybe 3 a.m. is more than okay.

Rick has done a dueling blog.  https://lovinglifeineurope.blogspot.com/

First Flight

 

The last flight I took before this week was 1 January 2020. This week I flew from Toulouse to Amsterdam to Boston on an Airbus KLM.

Over the decades, I've been an almost frequent flyer on both business and pleasure trips. So many changes -- many because of automation, many because of Covid.

Where once flying was exciting and fun, now it has pitfalls, which my husband did much to circumvent. He found out we needed the rapid Covid test to get into the U.S. I suggested the local pharmacy rather than the next village. Once again my nose was subjected to Q-tip attacks. I think this was my 10th time. He's pushing 20 times. Negative.

One nice thing? If we hadn't been at the pharmacy, we would have missed seeing two friends and ended up in coffee and a café sit in the glorious sunshine.

He also found out about the multi-page form the U.S. requires. We had to hand them over in Amsterdam. Our Clean Covid Certificates were never asked for. 

In Toulouse, I've never seen such a short security line. It was the two of us, although some people followed us. One looked like a short version of George Clooney. Hmmm.

I limped ahead of Rick leaving the Toulouse flight only to see stairs leading to the tarmac. The pilot or co-pilot asked me if he could help. He not only took the suitcase down the stairs he carried it up the next set of stairs. His parents, although Dutch, currently live in the Boston area. 

Schipol Airport is still huge, but we noticed that many of the moving sidewalks weren't moving. Also the restaurants stopped serving around 2. Looking out the window we saw a field of tulips. Coming into and leaving the airport looked down onto large patches of yellow, red and purple tulips -- and of course, Rick spotted a golf course.

They did have a nice selection of English books. The woman who sold three to me was from Norway and we had a nice chat about reading in 2nd and third languages.

Rick and I have a different point of view about flying. On our first international flight I wondered why he wanted a meal right before boarding the plane. For me, airline food is fun. He isn't as enthused and prefers eating before the flight, but I just love peeling back that tinfoil to see what's there. Peek and eat. 

For me part of the enjoyment of flying is meals and movies. This flight had the new West Side Story. It might be interesting to watching them back to back sometime, except, the new one made me long for the old one and to change the channel. Rick settled into a Federer/Nadal charity match. Both of us napped.

 

A cheese packet wrote about how the cheese was made from healthy and happy cows. As a cynic, he was sure it was marketing, but I'd like to think the cow that produced the milk for the cheese was at least content. Maybe she modeled for the cow above in the store at the airport. Maybe a happy and healthy cow modeled for the statue.

On both flights, I asked for early boarding because of my hip that has left me limping. It made it easier for us, especially in getting things in the overhead. Also, we didn't slow anyone up.

While waiting with the other boarders, a woman remarked on how sweet the teddy bears that decorate my suitcase were. She lives outside Boston and her hobby is making doll furniture. I told her about my daughter's dollhouse. 

Of course, the best part of the trip was walking into my daughter's hug. A man in his late 20s or maybe early 30s stopped and said how seeing a mother and daughter hug made his day. It made mine too.

 

 

Cannon fodder

 

When I was pregnant, it was during the heyday of the Vietnam War. My husband only wanted a son, but I secretly was hoping for a girl.

There were two reasons. My younger brother was a horrible child regularly disturbing the home. To this day when someone has a boy, I feel a moment of sadness if the birth of a boy is announced along with gratitude the infant is healthy. Granted, some have turned into lovely children and adults that I've developed good relationships with or admire.

The other, I wasn't ready to provide cannon fodder of my child in some far away country for reasons that had little or nothing to do to protecting the homeland, and everything to do with protecting the military-industrialized complex, propaganda not withstanding. Over the years in most wars, the reasons disappear in time and those that died, died for nothing.

Few people realize that the U.S. has fought in 102 wars over its existence. That made for a lot of dead soldiers and a lot of dead civilians--cannon fodder. For what? Does anyone know why what each of those wars accomplished other than extinguishing lives too early?

Likewise, I thought of a pregnant woman in a far away land whose son my son might kill. Would it ruin his soul or would he have bought into the propaganda too? Would he think he killed for a noble cause?

I knew if I had a son and there was still a draft, I would take him to whatever country would offer him protection from the U.S. Armed Services. I would hope I would have raised him with the understanding why fighting for your country had little to do with reality and he would go with me.

This does not apply to places like the Ukraine or Vietnam (and others over time) where the country has been attacked by invaders.

I live in Switzerland where every male is expected to do military service until 34. Those who don't pay extra taxes or can substitute civilian service. However, Switzerland does not attack other countries. The military is there to protect from invasion. They do hire out such at the Vatican Guard. A look at their uniforms makes one suspect their main function is not the battlefield. There are other forms of protection that the Guard offers.

The idea of every youth doing some kind of formal service for their country is a good one, especially if kids are sent far from home and mingle with people who are very different. It might build better understanding between regions which is sadly lacking. A city boy and a farm boy might discover they have things in common.

I shudder that there is a game called Cannon Fodder described as Never So Much Fun. On duckduckgo.com it is described as:

"Cannon Fodder is a military-themed action game with strategy and shoot 'em up elements. The player controls a small squad of up to five soldiers. These soldiers are armed with machine guns which kill enemy infantry with a single round. Game developer Sensible Software Game publisher Virgin Interactive Entertainment, Inc. Game published 1994."

A form of violence brainwashing preparing young men to be cannon fodder. In the game, the players do not feel machine gun bullets tearing through their bodies. They have no idea why the enemy is their enemy. Perhaps their country overthrew the diplomatically elected president of the "enemy." Or maybe it is just to guarantee there will always be enough cannon fodder for the powers that be. 

I didn't have a son, thank goodness.

 

Legislating ignorance

 

The Scopes Trial ran from 10-21 July 1925? The crime? A teacher had taught evolution breaking the Tennessee Butler Act forbidding the teaching of evolution and Charles Darwin's theories. The idea was to protect children from ideas different from the Bible.

How far we haven't come with laws that prohibit teaching some subjects such as Critical Race Theory, Black, Latin American history or gender variations being enacted in Florida and mainly other southern states. Lord knows, we don't want kids to learn about reality. Better to leave them in ignorance.

In Puritan times Boston kids went to school to learn to read and do basic math. Boston Latin was founded in 1635 with heavy courses in Greek, Latin and other erudite subjects to prepare them for the ministry, law, teaching, medical careers. Harvard University was founded the year after for the BLS graduates to continue those studies.

Boston in the 1600 and 1700s also had Writing Schools. These trained the accountants and small business owners. 

Public schools should be designed to produce a literate and educated citizenry. It allows them to work in needed professions or jobs. Some of these can evolve into trades that still require basic reading and math skills.

I read an article where a mother was furious her child was studying world history. "What does she need that for?" she demanded.

The rude answer is, "So she won't be as ignorant as you are." The diplomatic answer is "what happens in the world will affect your child."

Parents want to say what their children will learn and some are amazingly hostile. Usually these are the parents that want to limit information to their children.

What do kids need to know? First to learn the 3 Rs -- "Reading, Riting, Rithematic."  In today's world let's add how to use a computer (mobile). Of course, the second they have access to a computer, the entire world, true and false, is available to them. 

The phrase "my tax dollar" echoes throughout school board meetings. Between the woman who didn't want her kid to learn world history and myself who wanted my daughter to learn the good, bad and ugly of the world so she would be prepared when faced with them has the same gap as between an orange and a Tesla.

I doubt if any child will faint if they hear the word gay. And it really wouldn't hurt them to know some kids and adults are not only different, but they might learn compassion and appreciation for differences that would go beyond sexual differences. This might even extend to religious differences and national differences. 

Basic biology, chemistry and physics wouldn't hurt them nor would history, good and bad about the U.S. and the world. And if there's time the arts for their hearts and soul.

The problem with ignorance is that it doesn't make anything go away. Reality will be there to damage us when it wants to.

What bothers me most is we haven't advanced much since 1925 in trying to legislate ignorance.

 

 

Clothing coding

My first classmate to die almost immediately after graduation had been a bit of a rebel by pre-1960s standards. His crime? He wore a boatneck jersey. This almost identical except it was white and yellow striped.

Needless to say, the administration went nuts when our entire class showed up in dresses made from burlap bags. I guess they didn't know at one time burlap bags were printed with flowers and designs for women who couldn't afford cloth for their kids' clothes.

My late friend Barbara, an anthropologist, claimed that all clothing is cultural coding. 

She was right. Throughout the ages, clothing has delivered messages. One of my fantasies is the Jean Calvin comes alive and is plunked down on the quai near Lake Léman with all the  young women walking around in bikinis. If he weren't already dead he'd have had a heart attack on the spot.

If early man were concerned with covering himself, over the centuries styles have come and gone. A Roman and/or Egyptian might have been confused with men's slacks. 

Only in the 20th century did western women reveal her legs (and maybe more). Men were able to control themselves most of the time and the god dids not send any other the normal storms to wipe out the species for their sins.

 

Clothing also reflects social status, although I wonder if a cave woman wearing mammoth skin was considered lower class compared to a woman wearing a bear fur.

Clothing was and is a way of maintaining control. Think of maid's uniforms. English school children still wear uniforms.

Back in the dark ages we had to wear skirts or dresses to school and that included university, although it was beginning to break down. I suspect you could have a treasure hunt to find girls in dresses or skirts on most campuses today and give the winner a semester's free tuition if they could find five.

When I went to work, all female staff petitioned our male boss (aside from the printer/janitor the only male)  agreed to let us wear slacks to work. We were never in contact with the public. He relented -- but they had to be stylish with creases, combined with a nice blouse and preferable a suit jacket.

My job in Geneva was varied. 

Meeting with clients? Stuffy business suit. Spending time in the print shop on new publications or just buried in my office for the day? Jeans.

I've been fascinated by the clothing in the TV series Suits. I've never been in a law office where the staff wore thigh-slit skits and showed off so much cleavage. That comment is not from jealousy because of lack of cleavage on my body.

I know I dress differently in France and Switzerland. More Bohemian writer in France, and slightly more office casual depending on where I'm going in Switzerland. I think of the couple that was turned down for citizenship because they wore sweats into their village.

Today we are alternating downpours with normal rain. Tonight we are having an apéro for Rick's birthday. I'm wearing jeans and my sweatshirt that says "I am a writer. Anything you say may be used in a story." 

I warned you. Another message delivered by clothing.

My novel available

 On 19 April 1775 the American Revolution began in Lexington.

On April 19, 2022, Lexington, Anatomy of a Novel, is available on Amazon an IngramSpark.

 

James Holloway has just lost his wife and daughter. His older brother won't let him try any new ideas at the bakery which has been in his family for generations in Ely, England. When he runs into recruiters for the 43rd Regiment of Foot, he decides to sign up, never realizing it will take him to Boston on the eve of the American Revolution. He is assigned as an orderly to Governor Gage where he gets a first-hand view of all sides of the unrest.

Newlywed and historian Daphne Andrews is married to the newly appointed Consul General in the British Consulate in Boston. She quickly wishes she hadn't married without knowing more about her husband. Only after she joins up with the wife of the French Consul General and they decide to create a comic book about the American Revolution does she begin to recapture her own sense of identity.

What about the story behind the story? How did D-L Nelson make certain decisions on what to write? Notes on the creation of LEXINGTON: Anatomy of a Novel add a different dimension to this unique work of historical fiction.

My brother

 

  I was six. My mother was giving me a bath. 

"Your Daddy has planted a seed in my tummy and it will grow into a little brother or sister."

I pictured my father with a tiny shovel, hoe, rake and watering can. It would be about three more years before I learned the true method of reproduction.

My brother arrived. I wish I could say we had a wonderful relationship. 

We didn't.

He was a child who ruled by temper tantrum. It wasn't jealously that made me wish he hadn't been born but memories of him knocking me down the stairs, tearing up a six-page term paper, etc. make that impossible. in my junior year of high school I left home and moved in with a girl friend to avoid him. Our parents eventually worked out that I would go home. 

He could probably tell people I did things to him too. I probably did.

My mother was the original helicopter mother 60 years before the term was invented. Where I had believed her when she said, I wasn't to leave the yard to play with the kids across the street, my brother was out and away playing with Stevie, Karl and Todd minutes after leaving our house. It was my job to go and check on him regularly every hour or less in case he'd been kidnapped. It cut into whatever I was doing.

He wanted to visit a friend in Florida so he took my mother's GTO. My best friend's father quipped that GTO stood for Gone to Orlando. He brought the car back unharmed. 

At her wits end. my mother sent him to Hyde School in Maine (Cher's son would later be a student) and he thrived.

My brother had an extremely high IQ. But I always had better grades, although I worked for them. When he went to university in Ohio, he went with the theory that he should be graded on his ability not on what he produced. They suggested he not return.

He then enrolled at my college where he met his first of three wives. They married because she wasn't pregnant. Her very Catholic found birth control pills making it a demi-shotgun wedding. I really liked my first and third sister-in-laws. 

My brother never finished any university, never worked in any profession, but he was always successful in the jobs he took. He managed a service station with no mechanical ability and for years was a much-loved pizza delivery man.

He had a daughter and was a great, loving father.

We didn't see each much of each other. For a time he offered meals to friends and I was included. He was a great cook. There would be some family holidays where we overlapped. 

At one point he called me to ask if I would introduce him to his father, whom he had not seen for 22 years. I was in close contact with my Dad, but our mother had made us choose sides. His potential penalty for breaking her rule was greater than mine and I was able to navigate the mine field of threats for developing an excellent relationship with my father and stepmom. 

The weekend with my father, stepmom and brother was fantastic in emotion, knowledge of the past, good food, and the love from their home.

When my mother was dying of cancer my brother and I worked together to make it easier for her. We shared the clean up afterwards, dividing the necessary chores that death brings. I will always be grateful for that.

As adults about the only thing we had in common was our childhood. I moved to Europe. He seldom left New England. I moved first to France and then to Switzerland. Once in a restaurant on one of my visits home when I spoke French with a French waiter, he barked at me to speak English. We were in America. 

On another trip he wanted his daughter to speak French to me. He was proud of her accomplishments. That's a horrible thing parents do to children who are studying a foreign language. They want their child to show a person from wherever that language is used to show off their skills and the child wants to hide. I usually say in French, Ce n'est pas nécessaire and then we laugh.

He asked me if something happened to him and his wife, would I raise his daughter. I said of course.  

Politically we grew further and further apart. I border on socialism and left the greatest country on the planet according to my brother. He thought George W. was far too liberal.  

I remember a rare Thanksgiving dinner together, when my sister-in-law was still pregnant. There should have been more of them. We didn't mention politics concentrating on the great meal.

Mostly our contact was his birthday when I sent him a Jacquie Lawson internet card. Usually I said something about I wished we could be closer. Some years he acknowledged my birthday a month later. Some years he didn't.

When his step-daughter visited me while she was an exchange student, she told me he'd been divorced five years. I didn't know. So much for closeness.

When I visited my niece, his daughter, in New Hampshire right before Covid, she told me he said, "Hi."

That was the last I heard from him. A few months ago, I had a Facebook message from my niece saying he'd died. She was with him. He had had Guillain Barre Syndrome. I'd never heard of it.

Kurt Vonnegut said, "Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, 'it might have been.'"

I wish we could have been closer, done more things together. When someone says that their brothers are their best friends, I feel a loss. I wish I'd done more to bridge the gap, but most of the time, I don't see that the gap could have had a bridge. That makes me ever sadder.

Characterization

 

Living in Europe, I don't always get to see popular series when they first appear. Netflix has changed some of that.

One of the series I'd never heard of was Suits. It was only Meghan Markle's marriage that called it to my attention. When I found it on Netflix, there is a pleasure of being able to Binge watch rather than wait for next week or next season.

I can also watch smaller amounts of series. I was intrigued with Bridgerton for the first season, mainly the costumes and settings. I thought of it as Desperate Housewives meets Downtown Abbey. 

As a writer, besides the story of any series, I'm interested in the writing, plotting, and characterization. The character of Louis Litt in Suits has fascinated me. In the beginning he was a sorta bad guy and over the many seasons, he has turned into the good guy. His background was revealed in dibs and dabs. 

Rick Hoffman, who plays Litt, has impressed with an actor more than any other actor in a long time. I've dubbed him a face actor, because he can say more with a twitch of a muscle than some other actor would with a long a speech.

Years ago watching the movie Road to Perdition with Tom Hanks in one scene I realized that the placement of the actors in the car was a visual and psychological addition to the story.

Hanks’ son has seen him kill a man. Hanks and he talk about it in their Model T. They make no eye contact until the last moment of the scene.  He shot the scene in such a way that the bar of the driver’s door separates father and son. It is so subtle that no one would say, “Oh look at the bar of the driver’s door emphasizing the separation between the father and son it has disappeared when the two characters reach a moment of understanding.” 

Of course as a writer limited to words on paper, I don't have the luxury of the visual, so I must create it in words. I hope I can do it was well as Rick Hoffman does it with his face.

 

Grandma’s Bean Pot

 

 

I find it the cellar next to the owl 

candle in a carton, hidden behind

dish shards and a stool 

 

one day … really. The pot’s dust-coated.

Brown and beige surface unscarred despite

toting from town to city, city to country,

 

country to country. Saturday night servant.

It has heard discussions about Roosevelt,

Ike, McCarthy and Kennedy before

 

being shunted aside, doomed to wander

the world. Ignored, unloved. I sort hard,

brown beans like Grandma once did. She

 

looked out at two maple trees, my swing and

The clothesline with white sheets flapping

In the fall wind. I see a château and

 

trees with yellow leaves, not like their

New England scarlet cousins. Beans

soak in my silvery bowl

 

swelling as I go in search of salt pork.

My butcher offers bacon. It will

have to do. I add molasses, onion,

 

mustard, water. Grandma tells me

how in spindly writing on a

yellowed file card. Saucisson

 

replaces hot dogs. The cole slaw

tastes the same, carrying me back

across the sea to childhood Saturdays.