A turning point

On March 5, 2002, almost 16 years ago, I received an email out of the blue with the subject heading "Your Pioneering Websites." It begin:

I just read your article, "What is hypertext".  It is a great article 

that verbalizes many things that I had not seen clearly stated in print 

before.

I am the archivist at a digital library,  Could we offer you a free home 

for your writings?  You could get them off geocities, have no ads 

popping up and not be restricted by time / space limitations.  We also 

do digital streaming, which might be of interest, given that you are a 

screenwriter.

The library was Ibiblio at the University of North Caroline. Obviously I took her up on the offer, and my literary archive has been there ever since. A gift of the gods, giving me more exposure than I would have had otherwise. This, and benefits from hosting the first comprehensive website for playwrights and screenwriters, defined my career over the past two decades.

Charles Deemer Reading

I had hoped to have video of this but, with three cameras, I still managed to screw everything up. But one camera had a good audio track, so I put together the reading with it. Audio only, and added illustrations. Better than nothing.

This reading was my birthday present to myself. Reading in a very unlikely environment, to a small audience.

One more time

I'm rusty and made some stupid errors in the first edit. Re-edit, and rendering again ...

Rendering video!

I remember it well, a time-consuming part of the video editing process. Rendering my reading, the first complete edit, which will take over an hour. In my digital filmmaking days, at the computer in my basement office, I spent many hours waiting for rendering so I could continue to the next step. Of course, I always worked with low end, inexpensive hardware, which added to the time. But I got it done.

Cold and sunny. Tomorrow the parade on TV, homesickness. All these years in Oregon, I still feel like a SoCal guy.

Transition

2017 was a year in transition for us, selling our house, deciding where to live next, and happily this uncertain time officially ends today, and we can move on with out lives, happily settling into this apartment in Milwaukie. I love it here.

On my last birthday I gave a reading att the retirement community. I planned to tape it but screwed up. However, one camera had good audio, so I can't do a video of it but I can do an audio with illustrations, and I've been working on that, might finish today. Just something to do.

Plan to stay home, watch the celebrating on the tube. In my drinking days, this and St Paddy's Day were hated because my drinking holes filled with amateurs, who were noisy and sloppy, compared to the witty intellectual regulars. I picked bars filled with lost artists. In Portland in the 1980s, not hard to find.

The only thing I miss about New Year's is the Rose Parade in Pasadena, not to see it, but just the atmosphere of it and the usual great weather. Seeing the brown San Gabriels on TV makes me homesick.

Android again

You get what you pay for. This android is slow, temperamental, but it does work. Something for backup, to take to the beach, whatever. I like its size and keyboard. I suppose I could make it do what I need but it would be frustrating in the end. Going to a laptop was a good decision. It is a buyer's market on ebay. Great prices. The laptop now off the kitchen works great. $99. Can't argue with that. 

Kitchen aromas

Slow roasting turkey legs, filling the house with wonderful smells. Classical music, mellow afternoon. Ordered a laptop from ebay, this android won't do it for me.

Hmm

Probably better to shell out a bit more and get a refurbished laptop. Lots of deals on ebay.

Android netbook

Test run ... not impressed ... yet it may do the little I ask of it. 

Small miracles

Now and again, reviewing my blessings, I marvel that I did not become homeless. Especially in my drinking days, I escaped any number of possibilities that would have started a downward cycle of behavior and consequences. For example, I habitually drank and drove. Yet in several decades of the practice, never had a ticket. I did have two fender bender solo accidents. That's it. I could have easily killed someone in a traffic accident, for all my recklessness.

Also as a writer more interested in personal perfection than popularity, I could easily have had no career at all. Luck of the draw, I began when grants were plentiful, as they are not today in the pendulum's swing between art and commerce, and therefore had financial support and psychological validation when, in another era, I could have had invisibility and depression, with its personal consequences.

At a time when I was tired of the stress of freelance writing, and needed a stable income source, the telephone rang and Portland State University asked if I'd be interested in creating a screenwriting program as part of their new graduate Creative Writing program. The timing could not have been better.

In other words, I've been in the right place at the right time often through my life. A different timing, I might have ended up on the streets. This is why I consider my life blessed.

And what an interesting life it has been! I wrote about it in my memoir Dress Rehearsals, then later came out with an annotated edition called Always A New Horizon.

My best film

Most viewers say so, and I do myself. Read a review..

Practical stress

Our new apartment has baseboard heat, and I've been curious, and a tad concerned, about what our heating bill will be. In our house, we had a gas furnace. At Vineyard Place, we didn't pay utilities. So here was an expense that we haven't had before.

Bill came this morning, less than expected, less than budgeted, I am a happy apartment dweller.

Money, when your income doesn't grow but expenses do, is a major stress factor in old age. But here we are in pretty decent shape, for the first time since selling the house. If we can stay healthy, we are fine.

I like our heating bill ha ha.

Homemade

I make a great breakfast and bake great artisan bread, but perhaps the best thing I do is make buttermilk. Bought a culture some time ago and just keep it going, and it gets better and better and better. Ambrosia!

Susan Jacoby

One of the saner investigative journalists writing today. Excerpts from NEVER SAY DIE:

“The worst thing about having lived too long is you know you are of absolutely no use to anyone.”

We need to look at old old age as it is, not as the middle-aged and the young old would like it to be.

 The middle-aged, not the old, are the instigators and disseminators of most of the pop culture gibberish about the wonders of the new old age.

Marketing and media hype (the latter created by the former and vice versa) have misled the public in two fundamental ways—by suggesting that cures for mankind’s most serious and frightening diseases are imminent and that the medical reversal or significant retardation of aging itself may not be far behind.

The prevalence of Alzheimer’s doubles in every five-year period over age sixty-five.3 These statistics cannot be cited often enough.

This insistence that depression is not a part of “normal” aging—like the assertion that dementia is not a part of normal aging—is a ubiquitous feature of the happy talk promoting the myth of a new old age.

The sanitization of death was an inevitable part of this decreasing tolerance for evidence of physical decay, and America led the world in the process of segregating the dying.

 It is, in my view, much more rational to contemplate suicide at a time when one still has the capacity to act than it is to simply deny the terrible fate that awaits everyone with Alzheimer’s, thereby condemning oneself through inertia to months or years of institutional care.

Let us be honest with the old, and with their relatives, about what can and cannot reasonably be expected from medical treatment near the end of life. Let us offer palliative care liberally in nonhospital settings, so that people who do not want to die hooked up to machines are not forced to do so. But let us also respect the wishes of the few old people who have had enough and want to end their own lives on their own terms. Let us not insult them by dismissing their justified fear of lingering too long as a mental disorder.

Breakfast

I"m a breakfast guy. I could adapt to a life without lunch or dinner menus but take away breakfast, I would consider cashing in the cards. Life without breakfast would be too unbearable.

Understand I mean old school breakfast, truck stop breakfast, not these new healthy dishes they call breakfast. An old school breakfast demands a few necessities: eggs, first and foremost, followed by potatoes, meat, toast. At home I make country potatoes, in restaurants I order hashbrowns. My meat preferences are sausage, bacon, scrapple. I do my eggs up or scrambled.

Vineyard Place seldom served potatoes at breakfast, one of the reasons I usually made my own. Now and again I would go to breakfast there if they were serving hotcakes, which I seldom make at home.

I could eat breakfast three times a day. Now and again I do. I ain't dead yet.

Sketch

... getting his Christmas present this morning, bath and nails clipped. Overdue. Here he is younger than his 15 years.

And here he is with another old man, doing what old men love to do.

Karaoke Tonite!

One of my no budget features.

Spring trip?

Thinking seriously of a Spring trip to Idaho. Three areas to visit. Two godsons in northern Idaho. Long time friend from grad school, actor who played lead in my first play, in eastern Idaho. And a favorite grad student I mentored at PSU also in that area. So lots of good folks to visit. And could visit my best friend's resting place, ashes poured over White Bird Hill. Sounds like a plan to me. Harriet would be for any trip, I think. 

The day after

A bit melancholy this morning. Nothing serious. Existence itself includes melancholy, it seems to me. A certain sadness about human imperfection and all the difficulties we create for ourselves. A lot of these "heavy issues," the life and death stuff, will face CJ in the new novel, as he observes the suicide club in action. And looks at his own mortality.

I have a good fifty page start but the meat is down the road. An efficient set up is what I'm working on now. I would love to have a draft in Spring. If the draft is close, it will be down hill. But it's a complicated issue, and CJ is a complicated character. 

My frend in LA, who just retired, claims to have email at home now but she's not responding. Not a computer lady and all my correspondence had been through her work, so not sure if we stay in touch as much now. Hope so. She makes me laugh. Not many people do.

Expect an Amazon Prime Now delivery before 10 a.m. 

In the 20s outside. Too damn cold for me.

Narrow escape

Avoided a major computer crisis of my own making, for being too curious about something I know zilch about. If it ain't broke, don't fix it! Whew. Close call.

Here's the entire play

Amazon Prime Now

Since the market was closed, and I still need eggs, I decided to use the Amazon delivery service to get them and a few other things first thing in the morning. A tad more expensive but how convenient. What a world for consumers ha ha. And for lazy folks like myself.

Christmas dinner

At neighborhood Thai restaurant. First visit but won't be last. Great food, reasonable prices. Nice visit with owner. A small gem, close by.

Holiday activity

Deiced the car and drove to the market for a few basics we're out of, like eggs and milk, but lo! the market was closed, even Freddy's, which actually surprised me but, as Harriet noted, how nice for the employees. So we'll make do with what we have for the day,.

Which is enough to bake bread, which is what I am doing now. Cheese bread. Pumpernickel in the hatch.

I can do my artisan breads all by feel now, with so many repetitions in my experience. Don't sweat the measurements at all.

Watched documentary of 1973 Wounded Knee takeover. I should have mentioned it in SODOM. I do Alcatraz instead. Poor choice, I think now.

This is a great Christmas! No stress, no responsibility, no hassle. Back to my bread.

New take on an old story

Kindle book at Amazon

Originally a screenplay.

A modern retelling of Dickens' classic Christmas story for the digital age

Strange things happen when Scrooge's laptop gets hacked!

Mrs. Cratchit has had it with her husband's boss. Bob Cratchit is a wimp, and Scrooge is a tyrant. She decides to teach him a lesson about the meaning of Christmas.

With the help of her brother Charles, a computer whiz, and Scrooge's nephew Fred, she embeds the old man's business computer with video and audio that Charles can manipulate from a van parked outside Scrooge's apartment. In this original way, the classic visits from the three spirits unfold on Scrooge's computer screen, scaring him to death.

˃˃˃ All the classic charm is here -- now reinterpreted for the computer generation

Scrooge watches a slide show of pictures from his past, takes a video visit to a homeless camp, sees home video of the joy of previous Christmases at the homes of Cratchit and his nephew. He's forced to remember lost love and shady business deals. And he is led by instant messaging to a final rendezvous in a graveyard.

All the charm and heart of the original with a new twist!

"A room of one's own"

Here is my workspace, my office, my room of one's own, in the new apartment, a writer's necessity that I did not have for nine months at Vineyard Place, it was so crowded, and so had to work on my Alpha Smart on my lap, no luxury. This is what I mean by getting my life back: this space and the daily cooking I do now. My life. Who I am. It feels great to be me!

The posters are, left to right, FAMILILLY's winning the Crossing Borders International New Play competition, among several thousand entries; a reading I gave at Portland State University; the original production of CHRISTMAS AT THE JUNIPER TAVERN with Steve Smith playing Swami Kree, which is online in its public television version (original cast).

Blessings

I don't need a Christian holiday to remind me of my blessings. I am aware of them every morning, as soon as my mind becomes aware of itself. I'm one of the lucky ones who inhabit this planet.

We plan a day like any other. The new Alexander Payne movie opens, and if it is playing around the corner, we may walk to a matinee. He has become my favorite director, from the beginning with the brilliant CITIZEN RUTH. I briefly corresponded with him before he became famous.

I hope anyone reading this is well and content.

Another issue

Rains and then pours etc, which is to say, our main computer (originally H's laptop, which died at Vineyard and which I replaced with a better model, used) apparently got a malware program, screwed a few things up until I ran a program to clean it, and now it is back up and running like it should. Been a few days of computer issues! My netbook still isn't right. Thinking of a low-end replacement, something with a full keyboard, just for writing and blogging.

Christmas eve feels like any other night. White outside, however.

Cooking as sanity

Living at Vineyard, where all meals were provided, I realized how important cooking has become to my sense of personal well being. Very Zen, I think. At Vineyard, where meals were remarkably good, I habitually cooked only breakfast because I preferred my truck stop dishes to their fancy dishes. But otherwise I missed cooking. I didn't even bake bread as much because fresh rolls and breads were served at every lunch, and damn good ones.

Now, in our new apartment, I am cooking again. Before her heart attack, Harriet did most of the cooking, passing the baton to me only for my half dozen specialties. But since then I do it all -- and I enjoy it. In the morning in bed, I plan the day's menu. I like cooking projects that are labor intensive and take time -- they keep me busy. Also, cooking, I get a better sense of achievement and reward than I do in writing, where what fans I have are so invisible. Fans of food are right in front of me.

Part of my sense of "getting my life back" is cooking daily again. Another part if having a room of my own, in this case a corner desk. Someplace to write. As now. 

Santa tells the Christmas story

The late B Joe Medley in Juniper Tavern (link)

What a fine actor. Died taking off makeup after a children's play. 1990s, I believe. Bit parts in westerns before settling in Portland. Good man.

1950s Christmas

Growing up in Pasadena. (link)

Family home movies. I'm the oldest son. Dad, mom, granddad, brother.

Progress report

I am back up to speed on the novel, which is to say, I've gotten back into the swing of the first fifty pages, which is where I left off at Vineyard after hitting a wall. I think I am ready to move forward again.

Emptied a box this morning. Harriet did two yesterday. We both are astounded by how easily we tire, but that's old age for you. Our minds are still adjusting. An hour's work in my fifties feels like a full day's work in late seventies.

A glaze of whiteness on the ground, more frozen rain than snow, but a suggestion of a White Christmas nonetheless. Not that I care. I still don't have the holiday spirit.

Which is fine. I feel great! This new apartment has given me my life back.

One thing and another

My netbook crashed yesterday. Have it hobbling a bit, after a long frustrating day. Had it a long time. Might be time to retire it.

Time

In old age, my perception of time has changed. The small view, one minute after the other, crawls. The longer view of days and weeks accelerates. A bit strange to get used to.

Independent living

The retirement center where we spent the past nine months advertises that it provides "independent living" for seniors. I assumed, before first hand experience, this meant residents were physically and mentally in good shape. This proved not to be true. A few there have lost it mentally. Others have severe mobility issues. The line between independent living and assisted living is fuzzy.

The place also advertised how everything was provided for you. Not quite true. A number of chores depend on volunteers among the residents, which wasn't in the advertising. Our facility is part of a large, national network, and it made a few typical bonehead corporate decisions. Two come quickly to mind. First, they gave the servers new black uniforms, making them look like Mussolini's Italian thugs, not too cool in an environment filled with WWII veterans. And they raised the rent on a woman who spent countless hours keeping a large number of rose bushes and flowers in tip top shape, forcing her to move. No reward for her free labor, maybe 15 hours a week.

This kind of place works best, I think, for those with children and grandchildren in the area. But others are there involuntary, put there by children  with powers of attorney after a stroke or other health crisis. I met a number of very unhappy residents, who felt like prisoners.

We were pretty bored. Activities amounted to bingo, card games, beanbag baseball, with very little mental stimulation. And now and again I felt like I was in elementary school again, being directed to do this or that and please stay in line. The experience definitely was not for me.

But I met some great characters. One, a toothless woman in her 90s with a thick Texas accent, "a sharecropper's daughter," took me aside and said, They call this independent living. Don't you believe it. People come here to die.

Which was true enough for one or two residents every month.

Christmas?

Neither of us much in the spirit. Being sick doesn't generate energy. Harriet, Jewish, nonetheless celebrated as a kid at a renegade aunt's, with tree and presents etc. I never got into Christmas as an adult, less each year as the holiday still gets more and more commercial. Starting the day after Thanksgiving is too much for me. The best thing now are the parodies by Tom Lehrer!

A tough cold to shake

Still running at half speed. Better than no speed at all ha ha.

My last blog

I hope!