Possible publication of Chapter

This week there is some positive news to report. I recently decided to update and complete the chapter of my Memoirs that told all about our friendship with Al Beadle, the architect who built two of our houses in Phoenix, Arizona back in the 1950's.  Al went on to become one of the best-known architects of the mid-century modern era and was compared to Niemayer, Mies van de Rohe, Corbusier and was known primarily for his "Beadle Boxes", rectangular boxes with floor to ceiling glass walls.

I wrote some anecdotes about our personal conversations we had with Al, which I believe is the first accounting of his wry sense of humor.  When we asked Al to add a guest house at the end of our carport in the second house, he came up with a beautiful, efficient, stylish addition.  We complimented him on how perfect it was and he responded with, "You build it, they will come."

Excerpting a paragraph from the chapter, describes another little vignette about Al from our first Beadle house:

We moved in in early 1953 and at our Open House cocktail party I had silk-screened paper cocktail napkins with a miniaturized floor plan. While nibbling on some hors d’hoevres Al commented on the interesting geometric design on the napkins. I smiled at him and said “Look closer, Al.” The expression on his face as he suddenly realized it was his floor plan was incredible. He grabbed a handful of napkins and walked around the room delightedly showing everyone what I had done. I think he was very touched by it. It was another affirmation of our respect for him.

I was fortunate in that with all our moves from country to country I had always managed to preserve the original floor plans of both houses along with the watercolor renderings Al had painted himself. I decided they should be saved in the Beadle Archives at the Arizona State University, but before I donated them, I wanted to get in touch with Nancy, Al's widow, to let her read the chapter I had written about him.  I googled Beadle Archives and got the name of the woman who has organized all of the Beadle history and asked if she could put me in touch with Nancy.  I received the nicest emails back the next day, one from her and the other from one of Nancy and Al's daughters, both saying how delighted they were that I had contacted them and expressing the desire that the chapter should be published first and then the articles sent on to the Archives.  The woman runs Modern Phoenix and wants to publish the essay, and the daughter Gerri said she and her mother would like to talk to me.  After all these years, it will be wonderful to share memories of Al with her.

I'll keep you posted what happens next.

Lamenting the rat race.

I can just hear you saying, "Join the Club"
But I've been a member of this club for so long that it just seems normal.

I'm speaking of course, of all of we hamsters running and running around the wheel and not getting anywhere.  When do you finally get your taxes organized for the accountant?  When do you get all the old files filed? When do you get the gardener to come by to prune the Birds of Paradise? When do you get out the sewing machine to shorten all the legs of those new pants? When do I schedule the next jewelry class? And when do you get the revisions written on the last few articles you wrote for the book? "few?" Must be at least fifteen in the stack of "Incompletes-unrevised." I keep telling myself After the Holidays. After my birthday. After the Gem Show.  And now it will have to be After Taxes.

Oh, Janice, stop with the mantra "Procrastinate NOW!"  Live in the moment...

Does anybody understand Satire?

Hi, Everybody,
Today I'm venting. Couldn't sleep all last night. Want to know Why?

Well, yesterday I decided to have some fun at my Writers Group and as luck would have it, I was the first to sign in to present an essay.  My essay was a satire on the rules and regulations of Writing.  I had spent three days writing it and as all good satire requires, I had ridiculed, sarcasted, and exaggerated all through it. And it was loaded with what I thought were very funny metaphors. In introducing the article I told my fellow writers that I had deliberately inserted every mistake possible, so they didn't need to "correct" it: I was well aware of every unnecessary, superfluous word, comma, italic, capital letter, repetition, conjunction and preposition, with exaggeration. It had been a huge struggle to get all of those in and , with irony, make it sound like a normal piece of writing.  I thought I would hear a chuckle begin with the fourth word and become roaring laughter by the end as they enjoyed my poking fun at all the critiquing errors they usually comment on.

Instead, I was met with relative silence. Just a couple of snickers.  I was dismayed.  At the end of the reading time, the leader of the group remarked, "Since Janice has indicated she doesn't want any comments, we'll move on to the next presenter."

I was so disappointed.  I had expected comments on how I had taken a Rule and stood it on its head, or at least turned it inside out in a very humorous way.

When I got home, I sat down and read each returned copy for comments.  Out of ten copies, six had not one word written on them, one had the word "Cute" at the top, one had commented "We're not mean!" One had corrected every single mistake and covered the entire thing with curlique "e's" meaning Eliminate. And one had written "Good tongue-in-cheek."
All night long I dwelt on it. They didn't understand at all what I had attempted to do. I hadn't called them "mean"; I had written that the POWER of Critiquing turned them into monsters. I thought that was funny exaggeration. But I countered it by saying that after the meeting they shed the critiquing robes and were the sweetest people ever! I had written that writing Memoirs had been a very steep learning curve, more like a suicidal cliff, referring back to my article about How Far Do You Go? when writing a memoir.  Didn't even get a smile. The only thing that got a laugh was the ironical mention in regard to conjunctions connecting thoughts and sentences together: that at my age, I needed all the help I could get to hold my thoughts together.

Towards dawn I finally figured it out.  I had succeeded so well in making the essay sound like a normally written one, that they had all ignored that I had told them it was satirical.  Satire can't be subtle; it has to be right out there in your face kind of humor.

So I Googled How to Write Satire and they gave me a few good examples:

• If voting changed anything, they would make it illegal.
(This uses sarcasm to undermine democracy.)

• Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
(This uses exaggeration to highlight the vices of politicians.)
• When I was a boy, I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it.
(This uses humour to allude that the current President has no talent.)  

I just thought satire was more subtle.

See you next week.  With a more serious approach.  Janice

Thoughts at 2:35 a.m.

Hi, Everybody!
Glad to be back with you again!

There were no blogs for two weeks, while I attended the International Gem and Mineral Show here in Tucson. I stocked up on enough Findings to last me through a lot of projects for my web page as well as the future classes I'll be teaching in the coming months.

Next Friday I will be presenting a short article called Thoughts at 2:35 a.m. at my Writers Group. Occasionally I like to give myself a challenge and a few weeks ago I read that a good writer should be able to convey a thought or a concept using the least words possible. So I decided to write a short reflection and then pare it down to the bare bones.  The thoughts expressed in my wakeful hours are in full chapters which will precede this short one and are in great detail, filled with examples, etc.  But I wanted to "wrap up" this section of chapters in a precise manner, using as few words as possible but still telling the reader the significant facts. I'd appreciate your comments whether it is effective or not.

I woke up and started thinking , again. Remembering. Questioning.

I had been this young nineteen-year-old naiive girl who read so many novels where there was always a Happy End. I believed in Happy Ends. The story-book meeting, always by chance, love at first glance, the happily ever after kind of love. He would be Prince Charming.

Once, on a trip home, my sister introduced me to her senior citizen group of friends, "This is my cinderella sister, Jan."  I was startled, but, smiling, asked, "Cinderella?" Without hesitation she replied, "Well, you married Prince Charming, didn't you?"

I thought about my struggles to adjust to yet another foreign location, the loneliness I felt, how isolated I had become.  But I perpetuated the fantasy. "Oh, right!"

My memories took me back over the years.  All the dreams I had had.  I had put this god on a pedestal. He was beyond my wildest dreams.

And over the years, little by little, the blocks of that pedestal had been chipped away, one little blow after another.  And the god fell in the pile of rubble.  So what happens?  Why does one go on, is it a sense of duty by then? I prefer to think of it as loyalty. Because the dreams never die; there is always the hope that you live with, every single day.

On my fridge, held by two tiny magnets, is a quotation. The newspaper is now yellowed with age. It shows a sketch of a forest of bare birch trees and a double pair of footprints in the snow, fading to one pair in the distance. It says "I can't promise you that I will be here for the rest of your life. But I can promise you that I will love you for the rest of mine."

My favorite television-watching is the Hallmark movie channel. Uh-huh; mushy, sentimental but tender. And, one minute before the end of every movie they finally get to kiss. At one minute to nine or one minute to eleven every night, you can set your watch. Happy End.

But in real life, you're left standing, looking at your god-statue lying in the pile of rubble. Remembering, remembering all the unfulfilled dreams.  Another myth, dashed.  Oh, Hallmark, you have a lot to answer for.


Till next week.
Janice