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         Remember when people would invite you over to view slides of their recent vacation? And it was only the potato chips and clam dip that kept you from mumbling a lame excuse and bolting out the door when they showed you the fifth shot of them splashing water on each other at the hotel swimming pool?

        Well, this is going to be ‘zactly like that only different. No clam dip. No swimming pool. And no lame excuse needed. All you have to do is hit the esc key on your computer and boom, you’re outa there. Back to playing Wordle or playing Death Race 7000. Or whatever. Who’s gonna know? No harm, no foul.

        The problem with fulfilling one of the items on your bucket list is the prospect that it might be a profound disappointment. But when it came to our paddlewheel excursion up the Mississippi River (round trip New Orleans to New Orleans) this wasn’t the case. Don’t get me wrong, it was far from perfect. But there’s something about a view like this from the balcony of your stateroom, that makes you forget all of the small annoyances. 

I first visited New Orleans back in the 80’s when my radio station employer sent me out with a listener who’d won a trip to see the Sugar Ray Leonard-Roberto Duran prize fight. (The infamous No Mas fight) I remember thinking The Big Easy was vibrant, electric and a never-ending circus of people, music and fun. This trip it just felt seedy. I think my impression was epitomized by the street person we saw wearing a t-shirt that read “The Savage Life Chose Me.” The highlight of our time in N.O. was a bus tour around the city. Carolyn stayed in the room glued to a T.V. series that pitted aspiring moonshiners against each other in a distill-off judged by professional moonshiners. 

 

Our excursion off the boat in Natchez took us to a sprawling historical graveyard.

There were hundreds of acres worth of tombstones, monuments and above the ground family crypts. (protection against regular flooding) 

This solitary gravestone and its story tugged at our hearts.

 She was known as Louise the Unfortunate. In the late 19^th century she came to Natchez to connect with her fiancee who had mysteriously vanished. (Or, alternately she found out he was already married.) She worked at a number of respectable jobs until hard times forced her to become a bar girl and ultimately a lady of the evening. She was befriended by a local doctor, who upon her death kept her from being in a pauper’s grave by buying this headstone in the local rich people’s cemetery.

        

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On our riverboat, the American Splendor we did some serious sightseeing, and ate splendidly in the spacious restaurant.

Creole shrimp, yum. For you Yankees, the stuff in the middle is grits. Pronounced greeyats.

There was a serious shortage of vegetarian options, but Carolyn got to know the chef and he made her several special dishes. And there were enough sides and deserts to keep her happy. 

There were lots of shipboard entertainment and education opportunities. I sat in on a series of morning water-color classes Carolyn tagged along acting as a combination cheerleader and heckler. (“You call that a musician painting? Cut off your ear, Vincent!!!)

Two of our excursions were especially memorable. The Cajun Pride Swamp Adventure took us deep into one of the bayous. 

Those are just what they look like. Big. Honkin.' Alligators. Cap'n Allen a veteran Cajun gator hunter (with a rapid fire accent so thick you caught about ever third word) gave us a lot of historical and nature information. At least I think that's what he was talking about. 

He told us that when a professional alligator hunter legally bagged an alligator, they used a power washer to clean it before harvesting the parts for sale. Apparently, gators carry around some unsavory diseases. (Are there savory diseases?) Who even knew gator hunter was a career choice? And me a liberal arts major. 

The gators got close to the boat and cap'n fed them marshmallows. Gators love marshmallows. Who knew? We also had a chance to pet a baby alligator. Strangely enough, Carolyn and I passed. 

Vicksburg was the site of one of the most decisive battles of the civil war. Control of shipping up and down the Mississippi hinged on it. Our guide was a great storyteller and filled us in on some little-known facts about the battle. 

Contrary to some accounts, the confederates didn’t surrender because they ran out of food. The truth is Grant outwitted the Confederate HMFDIC. 

 

Apparently General Lloyd Tighman (depicted here at the moment of his death) wasn't the sharpest sword in the scabbard and was easily outwitted by U.S. Grant.

Another highlight of our voyage was being allowed into the pilot house to talk to the paddle wheeler’s captain and pilot about the rigors of navigating a huge and everchanging waterway. I had just read Mark Twain’s “Life on the Mississippi” and marveled at the knowledge (and memory) it took to keep track of all the hazards on the river. Of course modern technology has simplified things some, but it’s still impressive.

This trip was special, despite some long airport lines, dealing with occasional whiners and little bumps in the road (river?) For anyone with a strong sense of history it's highly recommended. There's something magical about watching history roll by your balcony as you reread Huckleberry Finn while enjoying a complimentary bourbon and diet coke in the 4th floor lounge. 

What’s in a Name?

Carolyn J. Rose

 

Before the pandemic and lockdown, I dragged myself from bed several days a week to sub at a local high school. Some days it was a cakewalk. Some days it was a challenge. But every day it was interesting. And every day I looked forward to reading the roll sheets, reading names that I doubt would have appeared on roll sheets when I hit high school at the start of the 60s, names that perhaps didn’t exist then, had yet to be imagined.

 

I once jokingly told a student that I was born shortly after World War II at a time when people were still so exhausted by fear and loss and sacrifice they didn’t have the energy to make up fresh names for their children. I was named for my mother’s college friends. Growing up, I wished for a different label. I thought of my name as a box, a burden. Was I expected to “take after” these women I met only a few times? Would their names shape me? If I had another name, would that alter the trajectory of my life?

 

I imagined the life of a girl named Robin or Amy, Wendy or April. I imagined “lighter” and “less serious” names for myself. I wondered about the process of officially changing my name. I’m sure I mentioned that to my mother. I can’t recall her reaction, but I’m guessing she told me when I was old enough I could do that. In the meantime, there were nicknames. My mother, in fact, often called me Petunia and, oddly, Bedelia.

 

My brothers got relative’s names. The second brother, however, born a decade after the war, didn’t get an exact match to the name, or the usual spelling of a variation. Despite the raised eyebrows of at least one relative, things were changing. My aunts took flights of fancy, leaving out traditional letters or making substitutions when naming my cousins.

 

But, compared to some of the names crafted today, that was nothing.

 

Still, if you ask the Internet to reveal the most popular names, you’ll see many you’ve seen before, classics, names drawn from literature and history, names with meanings rooted deep in the past. Many of those names appeared on the roll sheets I’d review as I raced from the school’s attendance office to my first class. But my eyes were always drawn to the juxtaposition of vowels and consonants that broke with tradition.

 

I never changed my name. By the time I was old enough to tackle the legal process, it no longer seemed important. As Shakespeare (if that, indeed, was his name) wrote, “A rose by any other name . . .”

The Urge to Move Moves On

 

 

Carolyn J. Rose

Twenty years ago I often described myself as someone who moved more than she traveled. At the time, I counted up more than two dozen different addresses—more if I factored in college dorms and short-term episodes of squeezing in with friends after breakups. I moved for job opportunities and relationships and fresh horizons. I moved toward and I moved away from. I moved furniture that had been in the family for many years and I moved boxes labeled “stuff” I hadn’t opened in a decade.

 

Five years at one address was a record, and back then I expected it wouldn’t be broken. But, here I am, still in the Vancouver house we bought in 2000.

 

Why?

 

The reasons are many. It’s a comfortable house. It’s in a great location, close to grocery stores, the rec center walking trails, movie theaters, the dog park, and restaurants. Friends live nearby. We have some terrific neighbors. We’re retired and no longer eyeing jobs elsewhere. One of us dreads the physical drudgery involved in moving. The other dreads learning her way around a new city, getting to know new neighbors, making new friends, and finding reliable repair people when the roof leaks or the heater dies. That’s me. But I’d be willing to take on all that, plus the planning and packing and putting away, if the move was to the “right” house.

 

What is the right house? One with an awesome view, a cook, a cleaning staff, a yard crew, and a price we could easily afford.

 

Are we likely to find such a deal?

 

No. Not in this age and this city.

 

Perhaps if we relocated to a small town in the Deep South or somewhere across the border—the Southern border, that is. But that move would still involve the drudgery of getting there.

 

So, for now, we’ll stay put.

 

You might say our urge to move on is gone—gone with passing years and the economic wind.

The Writer's Journey

 One of our early writing instructors always talked about "The Writer's Journey," framing it as some kind of mystical process, wherein you would travel to a place where a great novel would spring unimpeded from your brain and onto the page.

I find myself wondering if you could use Google Maps to track your writer's journey. You know, enter your current location in one space and "best-selling novel" in the other and see what kind of route it would plot. (Take a left at metaphor street and then an immediate right at "collect rejection letters.)

Carolyn and I set out on another more reality-based writer's journey to a book fair in Florence, Oregon to meet other authors and flog our books. After leaving Nikki (our hyper-active and entitled little rescue dog) with her Uncle Viper (our Godson) we drove south, boxes of books in the back of Big Red and anticipation tingling in our . . . Oh, alright not tingling. But we weren't by any means dreading the experience. 

We found the Florence Book Fair to be attractively laid out, well organized and peopled by smiling, helpful volunteers. Our assigned table, the by now infamous number 23 was in one corner, directly across from a gesticulating poets table and just a stone's throw from where the Jehovah's Witnesses were saving souls by osmosis. Here's a shot of our area. 

Here, alongside a loveable nut job promoting his unfinished opus and a former Lane County Commissioner turned mystery writer, we spent 6 hours smiling, laughing and running our spiel past a parade of strangers that they really need a book about a former pro-wrestling villain/private detective traipsing around the woods looking for a missing Bigfoot Hunter. (Hey, it could happen!)

Or, failing that we'd work at convincing them their next read should be a funny mystery about a woman whose three friends, tragically killed in an auto accident, have come back as ghosts to help her rid their Senior Living center of its tyrannical director. 

We met lots of nice folks, sold some books and after picking up our detritus, set out to enjoy the real reason for our 200 mile trek; A chance to enjoy the charm of Florence, eat some deep-fried clams strips and lollygag our way up the spectacular Oregon Coast. 

Our Writer's Journey complete, we rolled up highway 101. Bonus. We found gasoline for only $4.57 a gallon. (insert sarcasm emoji here). We went by and picked up Nikki, who, under the Viper's tutelage had discarded any level of discipline we had instilled in her (admittedly not much) and returned home to begin  our next prose odyssey. 

Pierced Ears and the Pandemic

 

Carolyn J. Rose

As a little girl, I loved to rummage through my grandmother’s jewelry box. To me, it was a pirate’s treasure chest filled with gold and silver and glittering gems. Or, with the accuracy of time and knowledge, it was filled with brooches and clips and bracelets she referred to as costume jewelry. My perception of what “costume” meant was that the jewelry should be used to adorn the costumes I created out of articles scavenged from her closet—scarves and belts and shoes and a coat with a balding mink collar.

 

There were a few other pieces, less glitzy and almost forlorn: lockets missing pictures, a bent bracelet, broken chains, and single earrings kept with the hope a mate might one day reappear. Some of those earrings had clips or tiny blunt-headed screws that tightened against the lobe. Other, however, had posts or wires and were meant to pass through pierced holes.

 

I recall shuddering at the idea of poking something through solid flesh. My grandmother assured me it didn’t hurt and pointed out tiny dark spots on her earlobes. Those, she said, had been holes. But they’d grown closed because she never wore pierced earrings anymore and seldom wore earrings at all.

 

That surprised me more than the idea of going through what I imagined was a painful experience only to let scar tissue take over. Why collect all those sparkly bits and keep them around if you didn’t use them? And why wear pinchy clip-on earrings if there was an alternative?

 

My mother used to say that she knew it was time to leave the party when her earrings started to pinch. It could also have been a sign that another cocktail was required. But I didn’t know that until I reached drinking age.

 

I decided that I’d definitely have my ears pierced. But the project went on the back burner along with my intention to wear makeup (“Not until you’re 16,” my father decreed) and shorter skirts.

 

I didn’t get around to turning on that back burner until I went off to college, 2000+ miles from home. But it wasn’t until my sophomore year that the possibilities for style and statement outweighed the known pain of clip-on earrings and the anticipated pain of piercing. So I went for it and allowed a roommate to hold an ice cube against my earlobe for a minute and then jab a self-piercing earring through as I clenched my fists and entertained about a hundred second thoughts.

 

Kids today, kids who get their ears pierced sometimes long before they head off to kindergarten, won’t get this. Kids who sport tattoos and lip rings and piercings in places I don’t want to think about, won’t understand what a big deal it was.

 

I heard a sharp pop as the point passed through the cartilage and then, except for swabbing on alcohol and turning the earrings regularly, it was done. Well, done except for worrying about infection and soothing those worries by gazing at the trove of earrings waiting to swing from the holes. I’d bought perhaps a dozen—tiny bananas being my favorites at the time.

 

In the 50 years since then I’ve owned about 200 sets of earrings—studs and dangles, gold and silver, feathers and stones, and in all colors. I’ve had tiny dragons and cats, birds and bells, spiders and webs, and once a set made from IUDs. (Don’t ask me what I was thinking because I have no idea.) I wore earrings every day.

 

When the pandemic came and we shut ourselves in, the earrings came out of my ears. Before I realized it, the holes in my lobes were growing shut. For a time I considered just going with it. Then a friend sent me a new pair, studs bearing tiny photographs of bags of Cheetos.

 

You all know how much I love Cheetos.

 

Obviously, those pierced holes have to stay.

 

Bright Shiny Objects

 

 

         The way I figure it, I was born 40 years too late.

         If I’d come along in, say, 1988 instead of 1948, my elementary school report card would not have been crammed with a clown car full of bullet points like “must refrain from distracting others,” “does not use his available time to the greatest advantage,” and “often acts inappropriately.”

         Instead, I would have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, forgiven my transgressions, and encouraged to ignore the teacher instead of being frog-marched to the principal’s office for our regularly scheduled 10:15 soul-searching encounter session and therapeutic tongue-lashing.

         Of course, this tendency to view life through a flickering focus has carried over into adulthood. I chose the life of a radio deejay (in truth it chose me), where there’s something entirely new to do every two and a half to three minutes when a song ends, and it doesn’t neccesarily matter if you make any sense when you speak. In all modesty, I have excelled at this, starting at the rock bottom of my profession, quickly rocketing to a position firmly in the lower middle, and only occasionally dipping back down to ground zero. As a grown-up, I’ve pursued a variety of interests and hobbies, each lasting for a span of between two and three minutes and once for an entire half an hour. Typical was the time I decided to become a concert oboist. By the time I found a store that sold those instruments, I’d moved on to foosball.

         As a writer, my inquisitive but mercurial imagination is both a blessing and a curse. While I excel at playing the “what if?” game, I’m profoundly poor at the sport of “what then?”

Students in my short-story writing class and the novel-writing boot camp I co-teach with my wife often ask where ideas for stories come from. Usually, I’ll respond: “Excuse me, were you talking to me?” Then, after they’ve restated the question, I’ll tell them the truth. I don’t know. They just seem to be there, all around me, and all I have to do is stop and pluck one, as if it were an overripe cherry.

But that’s when my difficulties begin.

         Bright shiny object.

         I’m easily . . . easily . . . uh . . . er . . . is that a bunny? Did you see a bunny? Oh, yeh, uh, distracted.  My wife, a woman of infinite patience and pretty darn nice legs is alternately amused and disgusted by my inability to turn inspiration into perspiration.

         She contends that every time I’m distracted it reminds her of when we’re agate-hunting together on a rocky beach and I spot something sparkling in the sand. My pupils grow larger, my breathing accelerates, and a child-like grin spreads across my face. Bright shiny object. Ooh. Pretty.

Carolyn can take the germ of a plot, a handful of interesting characters, and an idea of where she wants the story to take place and then immerse herself in the process of writing a novel. Three pages one day, five pages the next, only two the third (there was something she wanted to watch on television); before long there’s a complete book in a three-ring binder beside her desk. A month or so later it’s been rewritten and she’s querying agents to find someone to rep it.

Meanwhile, in the same period of time, I’ve started and discarded five novels, written a rough draft of a short story, generated ten other ideas for novels I’d like to write, played golf seventeen times, downloaded eighty songs from the internet and—

Bright shiny object.

Look at it sparkle in the sun.

Despite my stuttering synapses, I’ve managed to co-write five novels with my wife and several on my own. Guess whose rock-solid resolve and discipline made those come together? A clue. It was someone who was not, in any way, even by the wildest stretch of your imagination, remotely resembling me. As we collaborated, Carolyn, to her credit, never frog-marched me to the principal’s office. She did use a variety of tactics to keep me on task, including, but not limited to: threats, intimidation, shame, leg chains, firearms, and yogurt.

Short stories are a natural for me. I can generate an idea; pressure spray the contents of my brain onto a page and have a rough draft in the matter of a couple of hours. Then, between brainstorming, noodling, and discarding four or five new ideas, I can generally force myself to sit still long enough to steam clean the original story, peeling away glaring logic dropouts, sappy syntax, and rogue adverbs. Next comes the self-flagellation portion of the writing exercise—playing bend-over dodge-ball with several dozen dysfunctional endings. (Whack. Thank you, sir. May I have another? Whack.)

Endings are a bitch. My standard M.O. is to spend several hours more on the last two paragraphs of a short story than I did the ten pages that preceded it. I know the way the story is brought to a conclusion is of critical importance. It must satisfy the reader, answering their inner need for a symbolic answer to today’s most perplexing conundrums. It must wrap up all loose ends and bring the characters to their inevitable—but not totally predictable—rendezvous with destiny. And most importantly, it must have some kind of punctuation following the final word.

I know that if I’m to succeed as a writer, I must find a way to stay on task. A friend, creative in his own right, suggested that I have to tell myself it’s okay to ignore the whack-a-mole idea farm in my brain and plod forward on whatever project I’ve begun. He claims inspiration isn’t hopping a bus for Pocatello or running an ad in Craig’s list for a new spawning ground. He assures me that ideas will always be lurking in the shadows, waiting for me to call out to them.

I’m not so sure. And that may be the root cause of my problem. Deep down, I’m afraid that if I ignore the muse, she’ll stop showing up, like a guest who finds her party invitation sported the wrong address.  

But, I’ll try. Like right now I’m plotting out a novel where the detective is a professional midwife who . . .

Bright shiny object.

Or maybe I should work on the one with the tuna fisherman who hauls up his net to find Nazi gold in the . . .

Cold Water Ears

 

Carolyn J. Rose

 

 

Recently my brother’s doctor peered into his ears and announced “You must have done a lot of swimming in cold water when you were young.”

Indeed we did.

 

 

That’s how my brother developed the bony growths the doctor spotted.

 

I’m sure I have them as well, although a medical professional has never brought them up.

 

When summer finally came to the Catskill Mountains where we grew up, we chose between cold water and colder water. We headed either for the Sawkill or the family pool.

 

The Sawkill (note that “kill” means “creek” in that neck of the woods) was off limits in the early spring when it ran high after heavy rains. For one thing, the high water was an opaque rusty red from clay deposits upstream. For another, we could hear rocks slamming together and see limbs thrashing in the current. Even at an age when we had little idea of what mortality was all about, we knew enough to pass on a rock-slamming swim.

 

In summer, however, the stream ran clear. But the level was usually low and the pools only a few feet deep and a few wide. Not exactly conducive to swimming laps or executing wave-creating cannon balls.

 

So mostly we picked the family pool. Built in 1941 and now no more, it wasn’t fancy. It was an in-ground concrete-lined rectangular box with a sloping bottom that filled and was replenished with water from a hillside spring. Shaded by that hillside and plenty of trees, the water remained chilly for weeks. By the end of August, it began to cool down when the days weren’t long enough to replace heat that lengthening nights sucked from the water.

 

So, the window of opportunity was short. But we were hardy souls. And, let’s face it, without computers, smart phones, and more than the two TV channels our set picked up, there wasn’t much else to do. The days seemed to stretch forever and then compress suddenly as the start of another school year loomed. So, we crammed in all the swimming we could. We splashed and sunned and bet who could swim farther underwater, or knock someone else off a tube, or do a complete flip, or bring up a quarter from the corner of the pool where water didn’t circulate much and green slime grew thicker every day.

 

There was no filter system on that pool, and no chlorine to kill germs. My father tossed in a handful of copper sulfate now and then, but it didn’t deter the algae. It did, however, seep into my hair and by the end of the summer it was a brassy green that kids at school would tease me about.

 

It a weird way, I didn’t mind that. Green hair set me apart. At least for a few weeks. Then, like my summer tan, the tint faded. I don’t have many pictures from those days. Perhaps my brother will ask his doctor to take some shots of the interior of his ears to remind me of how it was.