Archive for the ‘Remembrance’ Category
A Quick Friday Round-up
Folks, things continue to be very challenging around here, but I thought I’d try to catch you all up on what’s been going on with me over the past few days.
First, I just played a concert with the University of Wisconsin-Parkside Community Band on the clarinet. I was fortunate enough to have solo clarinet parts on two pieces (Gordon Jacob’s William Byrd Suite and Gioachino Rossini’s La Cambiale di Matrimonio), and my former clarinet teacher, Tim Bell — who’s been retired for several years now, but looks as youthful and energetic as ever — told me he thought I played well, which was very nice to hear.
The reason I am mentioning this concert, though, is because it was the final concert for Professor Mark Eichner, who’s been the Director of Bands at UW-Parkside for many years. Professor Eichner was my faculty advisor when I finished up my Bachelor’s degree at Parkside many moons ago, and also helped me rough out some musical compositions (Parkside did not have a composition teacher at that time, so Prof. Eichner was gracious enough to help me on an independent study basis); I couldn’t have had a better one.
The Community Band played as well as we ever have in order to salute Prof. Eichner and send him into retirement on a good note. (Pardon the pun.)
Best of all, Prof. Eichner received three standing ovations after the concert was over . . . no musician could’ve had a better send-off.
Next, I wanted to let you all know that author Dina von Lowenkraft has put up a blog for the most recent Blog Hop (called “4×4” or “Four Questions for the Writer”) . . . please go check that out when you have time. (She had tagged me, as did Katharine Eliska Kimbriel; I discussed my own answers here.)
I am also happy to report that I read Eric Brown and Jason Cordova’s new novella KAIJU APOCALYPSE (which I discussed here) and actually reviewed it on Amazon. I enjoyed it; it’s a very quick read with a lot of action, very well-paced.
Other than that, though, it’s highly unlikely I’ll be reviewing anything over at Shiny Book Review (SBR) this weekend due to my cousin’s passing. But I should be back at it next week, so do stay tuned.
Aside from that, what’s going on with my favorite baseball team, the Milwaukee Brewers? Over the past week-plus, the Brewers have lost six of the last eight; before that, they’d started the season 20-7. Their record now stands at 22-13.
This is maddening mostly because the Brewers are not hitting very well. The starting pitchers have been really good to excellent with one exception (Matt Garza, I’m looking squarely at you), and the relievers have mostly been lights-out.
Still, I’m hoping the Brewers’ bats will get it together.
Before I go, it’s time for my weekly shameless plug: if you’re interested in buying something I wrote, or something my husband Michael wrote, please go to the “about Barb” page; there are links there that will get you to Amazon so you can purchase them to your heart’s content.
Enjoy your weekend, folks. (As for me, I intend to think about my cousin Jacki and reflect on her life, which was one well-lived.)
A Plea to the Media: Leave the Family Members of those Lost on Malaysian Airways Flight 370 Alone
For the past seventeen or eighteen days, depending on which side of the globe you’re on, it seems that every news person in the world has been covering the strange and sudden disappearance of Malaysian Airways flight 370, abbreviated as MH370 for short.
Every night, news organizations such as CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, BBC America, and others have breathlessly reported on any available lead as to where this plane went. Various theories have been expounded, some having to do with Visual Flight Rules and how they might apply (if you’re flying low, you’re on VFR), some having to do with why the pilots might have simulators in their houses, various scenarios about how the cockpit might have had a catastrophic accident, and many, many more.
During all this time, the various families of the passengers who’d boarded MH370 expecting a safe and sedate flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing have been inundated with all of this. They’ve had to try to remain calm, even as the reputations of the pilots have been besmirched over and over again; they’ve been told all sorts of conflicting information, as no one can even seemingly figure out exactly where the flight may have gone down.
Worst of all, the Malaysian Prime Minister, a man by the name of Najib Razak, seemingly says something different every single day. He can’t confirm anything, because the information is constantly changing, and the satellite data coming in from other countries seems to directly contradict anything he says anyway.
So when Mr. Razak said earlier today (as reported by Wolf Blitzer on CNN) that there is now “conclusive evidence” that MH370 went down in the Indian Ocean and that all passengers and crew must be accounted dead, who can blame the families for not believing him?
See, the families are in between a rock and a hard place. They want information; they have to know that it would be an increasingly long shot for anyone to survive in the cold ocean in choppy seas without land, even with floatation devices and possibly some food and a bit of water, after seventeen-plus days. But the information must be impeccable, must be comprehensible, and must be logical.
More to the point, every available authority should agree on it.
Because after all this time, with all of the information that’s been thrown at them day after day after day, the families of the passengers and crew of lost MH370 have to be completely shellshocked.
That being said, the families have reacted with dismay, frustration, loss, and a whole lot of screaming to the recent revelations by Prime Minister Razak. All of this is completely understandable.
What isn’t understandable is why the media insists on showing these poor people being carried out on stretchers, screaming at the top of their lungs while gesticulating wildly, or other scenes of pain, loss, and outright suffering.
Where is the decency of the media? Why aren’t they treating these poor families the way they, themselves, would wish to be treated if for some reason their family members and loved ones had gone down on MH370 instead?
Granted, not every media outlet is showing the screaming. MSNBC seems to have restrained itself, for the most part, especially in recent days, for which I thank them. Fox News has not shown a lot of that, either, during the past four or five days. I don’t think BBC America has shown much in the past few days (though it showed a lot more earlier), and that’s a good thing as well.
But CNN definitely has.
Worse, it keeps doing it, and shows no sign of stopping any time soon.
My view is simple: The media needs to leave these poor families alone. (Yes, CNN, I’m looking squarely at you.) They have suffered enough as it is.
And unfortunately, they will continue to suffer for a very, very long time, even if the current information is absolutely accurate and even if the bodies of their loved ones are eventually found and recovered.
The only thing CNN and other media outlets like them are doing at this point is to prolong the agony of the suffering families.
And that, my friends, is just wrong.
Adam Lanza’s Father Finally Speaks . . .
In a new article in the New Yorker, writer Andrew Solomon discusses Adam Lanza with one of the very few people who knew him well — his father, Peter Lanza.
Now, why is this significant? Well, no one’s sure why Adam Lanza killed twenty-six children at Sandy Hook Elementary School to this day, and despite what we’ve learned about Adam Lanza over the past year-plus, we possibly never will know, either.
But at least Peter Lanza knew his son, Adam, and can discuss Adam’s mental illness and other issues . . . which is probably why Mr. Lanza consented to be interviewed by Andrew Solomon in the first place.
I wrote about the Sandy Hook school shooting back in December of 2012, and at that time asked the basic question: Why did this happen?
As I said at the time:
I normally have sympathy for the mentally ill, even severely mentally ill types like it sounds like the latest shooter, Adam Lanza, probably was. (And I’m decidedly not talking about his Asperger’s Syndrome; I’m talking about the behavioral issues he’d have likely had whether he had AS or not.) But in this case, I can find no mercy in my heart for him — far less mercy than one of the parents of the victims, Robbie Parker, who’s already expressed sympathy for the surviving family members of Adam Lanza.
Mr. Parker is a far better person than I.
My focus is elsewhere, because I just do not understand why any responsible parent, such as Nancy Lanza has been described, would ever allow a troubled young man like her son to get a hand on any of her guns.
Much less teach him to shoot them herself, as it appears she did.
What Peter Lanza has done by consenting to an interview by Mr. Solomon in the New Yorker is to answer that question — why did Nancy Lanza teach her son to shoot in the first place? And why did she seemingly enable her son to withdraw into his own violent fantasy world rather than get him treatment?
In addition, Mr. Lanza also discusses many, many other things. He believes that his son Adam would’ve gladly shot him, too, if Adam had had the chance . . . a tremendously sad thing for any father to say about his own son. And he discusses why he thinks Nancy Lanza, his ex-wife, took the odd approach of laissez-faire parenting on the one hand with over-the-top enablement on the other, too, and through writer Solomon comes to a somewhat healing conclusion that perhaps this was just the best Nancy Lanza knew how to do.
The eight-page article in the New Yorker is well worth reading, if you haven’t seen it already (again, the link is here), but it is unsettling.
I’m glad Peter Lanza, Adam’s father, has spoken. I’m glad he was able to shed some light on things from his perspective.
I know that speaking must’ve been difficult for Mr. Lanza. I applaud him for doing it, and hope it will help others in some way.
But it’s a sad, sad commentary when a father says of his own son, “I wish he’d never been born.”
Especially when it’s true.
Story Complete, Sent to Lightspeed’s Special Women Destroy SF Issue
I’m pleased to report that I was able to finish my military science fiction story to my satisfaction, and sent it off earlier this evening to Lightspeed magazine for their “Women Destroy SF” special issue.
The main reason I’m discussing this, other than the fact I mentioned I was writing the story in the first place and wanting to give y’all an update, is because it’s Valentine’s Day.
I know that sounds like a non sequitur, but it isn’t. (Hear me out, OK?)
This particular story is set in my husband’s universe, the same one used in both Joey Maverick stories (available right now at Amazon, here and here). It does not feature Joey Maverick. Instead, it features a doctor, Amanda Hirschbeck, and the choices she must make during a brutal firefight.
I don’t want to give too much away about the plot, partly because I’m hoping that somehow, some way, this story is going to come out and you’ll all be able to read it. But I will say that it deals with loss, redemption, sacrifice, and personal integrity . . . I’m proud to have written it, and I’m even more proud to say this is the first story I’ve written in Michael’s universe that’s entirely mine.
When I started working on Michael’s stories, years ago, I wasn’t sure I could do this. I really didn’t think I’d ever get to the point I could write a decent-to-better story set in a milSF milieu, as that’s not my normal genre — I usually write fantasy, and humorous fantasy at that.
But I’ve had some very good people cheering me on, including the inestimable Katharine Eliska Kimbriel, the incomparable Rosemary Edghill, my first writing mentor (she told me years ago that I needed to make these stories my own, and I wasn’t ready to listen; now, though, I finally am, and I owe it all to her for planting the seed in my mind that I could, indeed, do this), and everyone involved in my writer’s group Barfly_Slush.
Note that the reason I mentioned both Ms. Kimbriel and Ms. Edghill is because they are both outstanding writers and editors. They have many good books out. And as I can’t possibly ever repay either one of them, much less both, for all of their advice and guidance, it seems wise to let you all know about them in the hopes that maybe you’ll go to their respective Amazon Author Pages (Ms. Edghill’s is here, Ms. Kimbriel’s is here) and find a book you like — then buy it.
At any rate, I’m proud that I was able to write a story in my husband’s universe. It’s a good story. I hope it’ll find a home.
But I hope you can excuse me if I think of it as my own, personal Valentine’s Day gift to Michael . . . because without him, and leaving his universe behind for me to play in it as much as I like, this story would not exist.
Shirley Temple Black Dies at 85
Yesterday evening, Shirley Temple Black passed away at 85.
As I don’t normally write about movie stars, you might be wondering why I’m writing about Mrs. Black. I’ve made an exception for her, mostly because of her second career as a diplomat for the United States . . . and partly because she was an extraordinary woman in her own right, someone most people could use as an example to emulate.
This obituary from the New York Times clearly illustrates why Mrs. Black was such an astonishing woman. Here’s a few words from that obit:
Mrs. Black returned to the spotlight in the 1960s in the surprising new role of diplomat, but in the popular imagination she would always be America’s darling of the Depression years, when in 23 motion pictures her sparkling personality and sunny optimism lifted spirits and made her famous. From 1935 to 1939 she was the most popular movie star in America, with Clark Gable a distant second. She received more mail than Greta Garbo and was photographed more often than President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
. . .When she turned from a magical child into a teenager, audience interest slackened, and she retired from the screen at 22. But instead of retreating into nostalgia, she created a successful second career for herself.
After marrying Charles Alden Black in 1950, she became a prominent Republican fund-raiser. She was appointed a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly by President Richard M. Nixon in 1969. She went on to win wide respect as the United States ambassador to Ghana from 1974 to 1976, was President Gerald R. Ford’s chief of protocol in 1976 and 1977, and became President George H. W. Bush’s ambassador to Czechoslovakia in 1989, serving there during the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe.
The obituary also discusses Mrs. Black’s public discussion of her own breast cancer — widely credited for popularizing the need for breast cancer care, treatment, and discussion (as it used to be stigmatized, and women often suffered in silence — hard to believe in 2014, but real nonetheless), her divorce (she was married to John Agar, Jr., before marrying Mr. Black at age 21), and how difficult it was initially to come down from the dizzying heights of child stardom to become her practical, level-headed adult self.
Mrs. Black was a Republican at a time when you could be a moderate and still be successful in politics. She was a powerful woman because she was smart — she was well-regarded by Henry Kissinger, who was himself no fool — and because she never stopped trying to improve herself, her mind, and the world around her.
I’ve admired Mrs. Black’s adult career for years, but I admire it even more now that some of the missing pieces (like her early divorce) have been filled in thanks to the excellent obituary at the New York Times.
We have lost an extraordinary woman with the passing of Mrs. Black. She was an American original, and she will be greatly missed.
Guest Blog at Murder X 4 Is Up . . .
Folks, when writer Aaron Paul Lazar asked me if I was willing to write a guest blog for his shared blog site Murder x 4, I leaped, yelled, and said yes . . . though of course only the last part was verbalized as I didn’t want to scare the dogs.
Aaron asked me if I had anything Christmas-themed that might be interesting, and as my relationship with my late husband Michael started around Christmas of 2001 — and as I have two of his stories up at Amazon right now that are desperately in need of new readers, “A Dark and Stormy Night” and “Joey Maverick: On Westmount Station” — I decided to talk about that. And because Murder X 4 is a writer’s blog site where they often talk about the process of writing, I asked if it was OK to talk about everything I’ve done to keep Michael’s words and work alive.
Fortunately for me, Aaron said yes.
Those of you who’ve known me a while, or who’ve faithfully read my blog posts since I was coerced — er, convinced to start blogging will most likely know why I’ve done my best to keep Michael’s work alive. Even though it’s now at least partly mine, and at least some of the choices I’ve made might not be the choices he would’ve made, I had to try.
Michael meant everything to me, and in many ways, he still does. So I just couldn’t bear the thought of his work not getting any chance to find a readership . . . bad enough he was dead, but did his work have to die out, too?
Not everyone is going to like what I’ve done. I know that.
I also know that some people have told me along the way that Michael is dead, I’m not, and that it doesn’t really matter if his work stays alive. Michael, had he lived, would’ve undoubtedly written more things, and he might not even have wanted these particular works to stand.
But I knew Michael very well, and the people who’ve told me this other stuff did not. Michael did not give up, not on himself, not on other people. He was trying to figure out how to get action into his novel about Joey Maverick (MAVERICK, LIEUTENANT) at the time of his passing; he and I were both wracking our brains to figure out what he could add that wouldn’t blow his premise completely out of the water. (That premise being “quiet heroism,” which I discussed in today’s guest blog.)
Michael definitely would’ve kept trying to figure it out, and I can’t believe he’d have let these adventures rot.
But he almost certainly would’ve found other ways toward the same ends . . . and I truly wish he were alive so he would’ve found them, rather than me doing my poor best toward getting whatever I possibly can done.
Still, as a good friend of mine told me a few nights ago, the important thing is to write something Michael would’ve liked and enjoyed reading. Michael would like what I’ve done, by that logic, and even if he quibbled with me as to how I got things done, he’d still like it that I did it.
That’s why I’ve kept trying, both on his behalf and my own.
Anyway, please do go read my guest blog, and see what you think of my efforts. Then come back here, if you would, and tell you if it makes any sense . . . I just know it’s what I have to do, or else I’ve failed.
And I refuse to fail.
How the World has Changed Since 1999
Folks, I don’t often write much about the changes I’ve seen during my lifetime . . . in fact, to the best of my knowledge, this is the first time I’ve ever written about this particular subject before. Yet it came to mind because yesterday would’ve been my Grandma’s 103rd birthday, had she lived . . . as she died in 1999, I thought I’d talk about what I’ve seen happen in the world since then, the good and the bad alike, and reflect on what my Grandma might’ve thought about it all.
First, Grandma would’ve been utterly horrified by 9/11. She’d have been shocked that anyone had been able to do something like that on American soil. She’d have been livid that our various “alphabet agencies” (the NSA, the FBI, the CIA, etc.) all got caught with their pants down.
But she’d also have seen the Patriot Act as an overreaction. She’d have cheered our Wisconsin Senator, Russ Feingold (a D), for his principled opposition — the only Senator to oppose it, I might add — but she’d have wondered what the world was coming to when the United States had to start spying on its own citizens in a way that could no longer be hidden or swept under the rug as a “necessary evil,” instead being brought out into the sunlight as something that was “right and proper,” something that every right-thinking American should want in order to prevent more terrorism.
The lack of privacy would be something that deeply upset my Grandma, who was a very private person. That the government has admitted to spying on its own citizens (albeit supposedly in a limited way) through the Patriot Act and now through the revelations caused by NSA leaker Edward Snowden would be quite distasteful to her. But that there are so many cameras on street corners, at street lights, that everyone and his brother seems to have a cell phone complete with camera available to take pictures at a moment’s notice . . . that the police, in many states, now use computers to run license plates of everyone on the road, including those who’ve done nothing wrong whatsoever, or worse, tape people’s license plates as their cars are sitting in their own driveways, would weigh heavily on her heart, too.
I think she’d wonder, “What have we given up in order to use all this high-tech stuff? And can we ever get our privacy back after all this?”
One positive thing that’s changed that my Grandma would probably have appreciated is the rise of e-books (and the technology to read them), as putting type in bold face and larger fonts would’ve been something that greatly appealed to her. She’d have been pleased about people reading anything, as she believed fervently in the power of reading in order to help anyone educate him or herself in order to do whatever we want to do. And she’d probably think that this was one aspect where technology had greatly improved life for the better . . . or at least had the capacity to do so.
Grandma would’ve been quite bemused by the ascent of cellular phones, which were around in 1999 but in a much less usable fashion. She’d have wondered a whole lot about this phenomenon of “texting,” which wouldn’t have made any sense to her. (She understood e-mail as a type of telegraphy, which makes as much sense as anything else to someone born in 1910. And she saw computers as helpful to businesses, but something that had no practical value to herself or her family.) She’d have wondered even more about the people who get behind the wheel of a car but cannot keep themselves from texting while driving.
The way people go on and on when talking on their cell phones, as if their conversations were in a private room rather than, say, in the middle of a Wal-mart would be distressing to her also. She used to watch the Jerry Springer show, and she’d tell me all the time that people seemed to have lost their moorings — a different way to say that people didn’t seem to know where their boundaries should start, or end. Well, half the conversations I’ve unwittingly overheard in the grocery store, or in the pharmacy, or on the street corner make me blush . . . and though Grandma might not have blushed the same way I do when I hear such things, she’d definitely have wanted to give the person (or people) using the cell phone a piece of her mind.
Grandma would not have understood Twitter, Facebook, or much about instant messaging. (I tried to explain to her about IMs before she died.) She probably would’ve accepted something like Skype as video conferencing has been around for at least the past forty years (though it used to be far rarer and quite a bit more expensive than it is now), but she’d never have used it herself.
The plethora of people sending digital pictures to all and sundry would have made her shake her head, too. (I can hear her now. “Whatever happened to privacy? Don’t these people care that everyone else knows all their business?”)
And this phenomenon where people seem to have to record any event, whether it’s a wedding, a funeral, a baseball game, or the running of the bulls in Pamplona, from all angles and from every viewpoint possible . . . well, let’s just say she definitely wouldn’t have understand that, either.
In other words, most of what has changed since 1999 has to do with technology. But some of what’s changed has to do with mindset. And while technology will come and go, mindsets usually do not change very often, which is why the changes that I’ve described would be extremely distressing to her.
How we get back to a mindset that says to the world, in essence, “Yes, I’m out here. Yes, I have a Web presence. But no, I’m not going to share everything with you. Sorry, my private life is none of your business” is something that I will continue to ponder.
Why? Well, I look at it this way . . . my Grandma was no fool. She believed strongly that a person had a right to keep her own counsel and that whatever you shared with her should go no further.
A life where everyone shared everything with everyone, all the time, would be looked at in horror by my Grandma as a specific type of Hell.
And as we get closer to such a society with every new technological gadget that comes down the pike (such as that Google “everywhere” headset, which made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever as people shouldn’t be walking and be on the Internet at the same time as it’s too dangerous to do both for 99.9% of the population), I can’t say that I disagree.
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