Happy Chrismas Eve

 

Monday, Monday

Ralph Nase. Boy, did I love that man. We are watching the electric train circle the tree. A very tiny space for it. I always had a doll in my arms. I believe I thought it was my job to keep them alive. 

 Weapons was an unusual movie, not what I expected until the last thirty minutes, which were terrifying. Much funnier than I expected--for a while. 

Sorry that PLURIBUS (Apple) is ending its first season this week. I really related to the central character. Just started a TV version of Anne of Green Gables. I have never read or seen it before. Off the Poirot kick. They run together after a while. I am enjoying Tony Shaloub's show on bread (HBO). Still rewatching  MAD MEN. No doubt for me it was the best show ever penned for TV. 

Hey, Kevin is taking me out to lunch today. What a great present.  

Reading The Correspondent by Virginia Evans I don't usually like epistolary books so it may not work. 

What about you? Done your holiday shopping?  

Friday's Forgotten Books: THE RETURN OF THE TWELVES, Pauline Clark

 The Return of the Twelves by Pauline Clark

Written in 1962, this was a book I read to my children. I usually chose books with a fantastical element since they didn’t choose such books on their own.

Together we read Tom’s Midnight Garden, Tuck Everlasting, The Indian in the Cupboard and so on.

The Return of the Twelves is a favorite.

Max finds a box of twelve toy soldiers in the attic. The soldiers come to life at night and Max eventually learns the soldiers were the playthings of the Bronte children who endowed them with a magical ability to come alive. (Branwell Bronte actually wrote a story about his soldiers called “The History of the Boys”).

Tying the story to a real and literary family was especially delightful to me and leads young (or old) readers to an interest in the Brontes. Highly recommended.

Short Story Wednesday, A Manual For Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin

 

I have been reading at this collection for more than a decade. A great writer but the stories feel too similar to read all at once. "Mourning" is about a woman who cleans houses (mostly empty ones) for a living. Especially houses where people have recently died. She's cleaning the house of a black mailman in this story. His son and daughter arrive and they are trying to decide what to keep, what to give away. Their mourning becomes more palpable as they discuss various objects. The woman is rude to the cleaner; the man is kind. 

There are terrific stories but don't read them all at once.  

Jerry House 

Kevin Tipple 

TracyK 

George Kelley 

Monday, Monday

So cold, grocery shopping was a horror show. Ice is terrifying, big hulking chunks of it everywhere. And yet I was out three nights because in June it seemed like it didn't snow much in December or get this cold (-2). Did I mention I do not do well on ice. 

Saw the worst movie of the year, Ella McCae. Poor James Brooks. who financed this mess? 

Very disappointed in the Dick Van Dyke American Masters. Couldn't they use better talking heads to weigh in on his contribution to television than his co-stars who mostly said, he was a nice guy. What about  using TV critics instead of Martin Short? People who study it. 

Still loving PLURIBUS but it is not for everyone, I think. I can watch anyone go through their day in silence.  I find it endlessly fascinating. And the guy crossing South America is going to save us all.

Still looking for a great novel to read.  

What about you? Hope you are keeping warm and dry. 

                                    My mother and Josh and Megan circa 1975
 

 

FFB: THE DEAD LINE, Philip McCutchan

 (from the archives)

 reviewed by Bill Crider

Forgotten Books: The Dead Line -- Philip McCutchan

 Back in the '60s I read spy novels by the metric ton.  I wasn't the only one, as there were more spy series being published than I care to count.  The reason, as you all know, was James Bond.  Every publisher wanted to find "the next Bond," and as you can see by the blurbs on this book, Commander Esmonde Shaw was one of the guys that reviewers thought might fit the bill.  I'm not sure how many books in the series Berkley published, but I read a lot of them.  I ran across this one the other day and picked it up to see what it would be like to read one again.  Or re-read.  I have an idea I read all the Berkley editions with this particular cover style.


As you'd expect, Commander Shaw is pretty much a Bond clone, except even more suave and attractive to women.  He's a magnificent physical specimen, and he has a great car.  He smokes, too.  Everybody did, back in the old days.  The book opens (as a lot of spy novels did) with Shaw recovering from wounds received on his previous assignment.  He's doing some surfing to tone up, and of course all the young women on the beach swoon over him.  Also of course in only a short time he's become one the best surfers around.  Now, however, it's time to get back to work, so he gets put through some tough exercises by his handlers and proves that he's aces.


Then he learns about his assignment.  This is a very '60s novel, with the commies stirring up "the Coloured elements" and doing a bang-up job of it. Shaw's sent to Harlem, where a woman falls for him at once and gets involved in some really serious action that even includes a tiger.  In an apartment.  Things get even more bizarre later on.  (Spy novel plots got more and more outrageous as the years went on for writers not following the Le Carre model.)  It's kind of hard to get past the racial elements of the plot here.  It might have been good fun in 1966, but it's not so much now.  Still, McCutchan had a flair for this kind of thing, and the book zips right along. 

 

(I wonder what Bill would think about how far backwards we have traveled in terms of racial elements in 2025)

Well, I'm Here

 Remembering Sandra Seamans

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Well, I'm Here

Okay, so I've finally surrendered to the world of blogs. Welcome to my little corner of the world, pull up a chair, get comfortable, and let's see if we can find something to talk about. 

And Sandra Seamans indeed found a lot of things to talk about. I doubt there was ever a blog that celebrated short story writing as well and a fully as MY LITTLE CORNER. Nor one that served a community as thoroughly and as selflessly as hers. She found her niche surprisingly quickly and although she claimed she mostly started a blog so she could participate in flash fiction challenges (remember those) it required hours of work for Sandra to pull up the information she did so willingly.
And it was also clear that she read many blogs herself and there were a lot of them back in 2008. 

If you go through the ten plus years of entries, you will see names come and go, zines come and go, contests come and go. And nobody was a bigger champion of other people's success than Sandra. Her "little Snoopy Dance" was always joyous. If someone wanted to a history of the online crime short story community over the last twenty years, her blog would be the place to start. A place to collect every contest, every call for submissions, the writers, the ups and downs of the business, and on and on.

In 2015, in the course of a week, Sandra lost her husband and mother and a lot of the joy went out of her. Although she came back to blogging, it was not about writing short stories so much as continuing her service to her fellow short story writers. How brave.

I only ever knew Sandra online but somehow it seemed like I knew her pretty well. She was candid on her blog. And we shared a year of reading short stories. Brian Lindenmuth suggested the challenge and initially there were quite a few participants, but by the end it was mostly Sandra, Brian and me. (Why wasn't Jeff in on this?)

Reading a short story every day doesn't seem like an onerous task but the mere chore of finding 365 stories you are willing to read was harder than we thought. Anyway, through her blog and through flash fiction challenges and through this assignment, I felt like I knew Sandra well.

Here are a few words from short story great, Art Taylor.

"In my writing courses at George Mason University and in any workshop I led elsewhere, I regularly devoted a section of my PowerPoint to resources for writers trying to market their short fiction. At the top of the first slide was My Little Corner, and I felt like I could never say enough about Sandra’s expertise on short story markets, her dedication to staying on top of market news, and her advocacy always on behalf of the authors, finding opportunities for us and warning us about venues to avoid. I never met Sandra in person, sadly, but she and I chatted sometimes, mostly in the comments section of My Little Corner. When she included something about me in her posts, she called me a “friend of the blog,” but in our own way in this age of online interactions, I felt like she and I were actual friends. I’m sorry I missed the chance to let her know how very much I appreciated her and her work." 

An interview from 2012 on DO SOME DAMAGE.
Some words from Paul Brazill 
Sandra on PULP CURRY 
Here are some words from Kate Laity
And from Sandra Ruttan 

Sandra's collection of stories COLD RIFTS is out of print, but it won't take much effort to find many of her stories online. A particular favorite of mine was one she wrote for a flash fiction challenge I ran a long time ago. The challenge was to write a story that uses the song  "SWEET DREAMS." Hers was clever and beautifully rendered. Google "Repeat Offenders" if you care to sample it. It's just a thousand words after all. Just a short story. But for Sandra and a few others, a good short story is the gold standard of writing.

Goodbye, Sandra. We will miss you. 

 

George Kelley 

TracyK 

Jerry House 

Monday, Monday

 I was lucky enough to see MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG on Broadway in June of 24 so I was eager to see the filmed version. Seeing everything in closeup rather than as you see an a stage sort of threw me off. Still it was worth seeing if you like Sondheim, which I do.

The weather here is awful. So cold that everything is icy and a fear of falling makes me walk even less assuredly.

Saw two concerts one with the DSO with a terrific violinist and the other was Detroit Chamber Orchestra.

Watching the Beatles Anthology on HBO.  So much footage I don't remember seeing before.

2019

 My street in Philly in the fifties. 

What about you?  

FFB: CONTINENTAL DRIFT, Russell Banks

 

Continental Drift, Russell Banks.

It is hard for me to choose between AFFLICTION and CONTINENTAL DRIFT as my favorite novel by Russell Banks. But I am going with this one today. You may have seen the filmed version of AFFLICTION, a tremendous film with Nick Nolte and James Coburn.

Bob Dubois is a furnace repairman in a blue-collar town in New Hampshire, a state the American Dream has bypassed. Although Bob has a wife, three kids and a steady, if low-paying job, he is persuaded to look for a better life in Miami by his brother.

Bob is a good man although not a smart one. The sixties has persuaded him that there is something better out there. That it is foolish to be satisfied with a meager living in a depressed town.

Another character is also seeking a better life in Miami. A female Haitian refuge, who truly does need asylum and comes to the U.S. in a perilous manner. These two lives intersect in a Florida that is the antithesis of paradise, both characters suffering tragedy. This is not a happy book or one to escape into, but it is one that presents characters and situations that seem real and compelling.

(And sadly the life of a Haitian refuge would be even more precarious today). 

Short Story Wednesday: "Elephant" Raymond Carver

 First I read "Safety" by Joan Silber, which was so depressing I had to wash it down with a second story. Briefly it recounts the bad deeds of ICE and how similar it is to what went on in eastern Europe nearly a century ago.

 A late in life tale by Carver relates the story of a man who cannot stop loaning and giving his family members money to keep them going. It is just about that. Over and over again until you fear for his sanity. I am sure such things happen in families but I would disown them all. Mirian Toewles reads and discusses it. I am going in for another try and what the title means. There is no tragedy here and yet...

TracyK 

George Kelley 

Jerry House 

Monday, Monday

 Saw Wake Up Dead Man, (slept through some of it) and Eternity (same). Enjoyed seeing Kevin and celebrating his turning 19. He is taking quite a group of classes next semester. One in music, one in art, one in writing, one in philosophy and one in math.  He's trying out all the family businesses.

Saw the movie Lurker, which was strange but interesting. (Apple) 

Trying to settle into a book. Maybe THE COPENHAGEN TRILOGY. Or A Pale View of Hills. 

Watched a Poirot-- FIVE LITTLE PIGS, which is one of my favorites and so beautifully made. Also watching the many episodes of THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY on Disney. Also watched Sad Cypress. What's your favorite Christie. 

Snow here. Ugh. 

What about you?  

Apparently sending out three group emails with 20 names on each has meant friends are getting things from other friends and not knowing what is going on. Sorry if you've had that happen.