Sunday

Harriet just said, What a nice peaceful Sunday morning. That it is!

Busy few days

Been a busy few days in the kitchen. Made an incredible pecan pie, using Pecan Pie In A Jar. Maybe the best I ever tasted. Not sweet, many whole pecans, quite remarkable. Tons of rave reviews but I was skeptical, tried on a whim. A keeper.

I made a scrapple omelette for breakfast. Terrific. A few days ago I made the best quiche I ever made, thick and creamy, no doubt because I used half and half instead of milk.

And I picked up the ukulele after a silence. Learned a nice instrumental version of All Of Me. Found a great ukulele jazz book -- in Japanese, but with readable tabs. Ordered it. Hard to get jazz tabs for ukulele.

Writing progresses slowly, which is fine. Onward.

BIRTHING LITTLE RICHARD

BIRTHING LITTLE RICHARD
Reflections on the Rise of Rock-n-Roll, Los Angeles, 1950-7

by Charles Deemer

(originally published in Oregon Magazine)

I became a teenager in the right place at the right
time. Although you could count on one hand the number
of blacks enrolled at Woodrow Wilson Jr. High or
Pasadena High School, Los Angeles County had large
enough a black population to justify the existence of
radio shows that played "the very best in Negro
entertainment" around the clock. One such show was
Hunter Hancock's afternoon "Harlematinee" on KFVD.

I'd discovered this radio show in Jr. High. In 1952,
when I turned 13, I already was part of a growing
vanguard of white kids listening to black music, and
we were going to change the popular music industry
forever. I was on the front lines for the birth of
rock-n-roll.

Read it.

Merry Christmas

Read the script.

The wall

Mending Wall

BY ROBERT FROST

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

* years ago I did a decent dramatic reading of this as part of a drama program at Salisbury State College in Maryland. 

Sketch

Onward

New working title of work in progress is REQUIEM. Which is how I think of it. A meditation in the form of a novel. Might use that as subtitle. Definitely not for popular consumption. But definitely important, to me and others like me.

Santa tells the Christmas story

Played by the late B. Joe Medley.

Barack Obama dons a Santa hat and hands out gifts in surprise visit to D.C. children’s hospital

Read about it

Favorite Christmas songs

Reunion

Lunch tomorrow with our closest friends from the retirement center, at our new hangout, Coasters. Look forward to it! Not often social ha ha.

Portraits From the Exodus Members of the migrant caravans, stranded in Tijuana, explain why they traveled thousands of miles from their homes.

Read the story. Trump's "terrorists." Shameful.

'This Is a Child Prison': Visiting Texas Detention Center, Democrats Demand Release of Children to Family Sponsors

Read the story. Shameful policy!

We found it!

We've been in our apartment almost a year now. Love it! Love the area, where we've lived almost two years. Close to everything ... well, with an exception.

We had not found a "hangout." When we had our house, our hangout was a brew pub in nearby Tigard, a place with good food but more attractive than a restaurant for just passing time together. Lots of good restaurants near our apartment but no hangout.

But yesterday we found one! A brewpub ... and just down the street. We missed it all this time because it is off the street, looks like a house, and has a sign easy to miss. I found it online searching for best burgers nearby. Hmm, never heard of this one! Let's check it out.

It is perfect. Great atmosphere, clean, family friendly, and our food was terrific. We have a hangout at last!

A poetry reading: four poems

In My Old Age.

The Body I Look Out Of

I'm Not Fit Company

The West Meets East Talkin' MIsery Blues

All these are from my book, IN MY OLD AGE.

Christmas as a kid in Pasadena

Dragnet

Simply put, Trump's campaign, transition, inaugural committee and presidency are now under active criminal investigation. His business -- the Trump Organization -- and his defunct charity -- The Trump Foundation are also under investigation (the charity investigation is a civil one). His college -- Trump University -- has already been deemed a fraud. (CNN)

Screenwriting tutorial app

Larapinlady

5.0 out of 5 starsJust The Boost A Lacking College Portfolio Might Need

October 31, 2014

Verified Purchase

I got this app for my husband. He has a degree from SFASU in theater; his primary emphasis 
was in technical theater. While acting was never his bag, creative writing always has been.
 Unfortunately, theater is not an easy nor initially lucrative career to break into especially if
 you already have a family. So, he chose a career path that would support a family while
 doing community theater on the side. He is always skeptical of the apps I present him with,
 however; he went bananas for this one. That being said, a five star rating from me is probably 
a 10 or more coming from him! After 20 years out of school, he is adamant that this app would 
have helped him immensesly in getting the juices flowing in college and that he is having fun
 with it "in his old age"! I do not have a second thought or hesitation in highly recommending
 this to a kid in college or an "old fart" reliving the glory days. It might not win you a Pulitzer but
 it would go a long way in perhaps generating something worthwhile for a lacking portfolio or
 something worthwhile to show, well as is the case of my gregarious husband, anyone he can 
snag long enough to take a look at his endeavors! (This said with tongue firmly planted in cheek!)

Check it out, it's free.

I hope I live long enough to ...

... read the Monday morning look back at the Trump horror after he is removed from office, either by law or voters. Mind-boggling degree of dishonesty, deception, dimwittedness, delusion and dehumanizing actions. I've read great "look back" books lately by Bob Woodward and Lawrence O'Donnell. Maybe one of them would tackle it. But I may not make it, it's such a huge story still in flux. I just want to know what really is happening.

Harriet's self-portrait

My favorite of her work.

Persons of the Year

Defending journalism. Excellent choice.

The USA women will defend the World Cup in France. Here's who they'll face

June, 2019, it all begins. Read the article.

77 years ago

My mother's brother, Curt, to whom she was close, died at Pearl Harbor. I don't remember him. He played guitar and sang country songs. Mom was thrilled when I took up guitar.

She never got to visit the memorial. I did in her stead, after she died. A surreal experience, heightened by Japanese tourists taking photos like crazy.

Hyperdrama intro

More about hyperdrama.

Presenting the Annual Interracial Pig Roast

Roll of Honor, Best American Short Stories 1972)

PRESENTING THE ANNUAL INTERRACIAL PIG ROAST

By Charles Deemer

From Prism International, Spring 1971

Roll of Honor, Best American Short Stories 1972

GROOVY, THE WHOLE SCENE, even better than his short-timer's party in Baumholder, Germany, a year ago: the roast pig, which Tee was still carving, his large black hands glistening with fat; the colossal supply of beer and booze, which Phil was serving from behind the portable bar in the back comer of the yard (grass was verboten, Tee being straight); the huge happy crowd, predominantly black, predominantly middle-aged, incredibly friendly; and the sounds, out of sight, of the jazz combo on the patio; and the dancing, which Roy dug most of all, that sensuous and rhythmic elasticity which was theirs alone (man, how they could dance!). In line for seconds, Roy watched and saw the obvious: only a spade could dance like a spade. Witness whitey who was trying now and being made a fool of by the black girl who was his partner. Hours earlier Roy had witnessed whitey's arrival in black turtleneck, bellbottoms and shades, whitey chanting Skin, baby! to every black man within reach. When Roy's turn came, whitey merely had nodded, as one white man to another, and Roy had turned and walked away. 

“How hungry are you?" Tee asked. "Or should I say, how hungry are you still.” 

"Half as much as the first time," said Roy. 

"Half? You're kidding." Tee began filling Roy's plate with pig. 

"Beautiful party, Tee. Incredible." 

Tee grinned, as close as he would come to agreeing. Roy had known him only for five months, having met Tee and Colette and Phil at The Ash Grove during a Lightning Hopkins gig, but he had recognized Tee's humility early. To brag about the success of his own party was the last thing Tee would do, and so Roy repeated, "I mean it, I've never seen such a beautiful party." 

Tee laughed. "We try to do this every summer. I get the pig, and Phil and some others get the liquor." 

"Out of sight." 

"How many do you think are here?" 

"Jesus. A hundred." 

"Colette gave up counting at a hundred fifty." 

"Beautiful. Man, that's enough!" 

"I think you're on a diet." 

"Enough, really. Beautiful." 

There were tables near the bar and Roy headed that way, weaving his path slowly through the black crowd, he had never seen so many black men in one place at one time. The juke box was at full volume, Brownie McGhee wailing Walk On! as Sonny Terry echoed with harp. In front of the box a half-dozen black GIs, none in uniform, were dancing without partners, with themselves. The club was packed but Roy saw no other whites in the crowd, the German whores not counting, and this scared him. Crooks, on the other hand, was not bothered; he went ahead to the bar and when he found Roy hesitating near the entrance, Crooks called, Come on, man! Roy followed quickly then, a twitch of fear in his gut. He had heard the stories about knifings, knifings right here in Baumholder's own Bop City Club', about the continuous race war in which a black knife slipped without resistance into a white crowd. He progressed carefully and when he reached the back of the yard he spotted an empty stool at the end of the bar and went for it. 

Read it

***

I did something really stupid in this story, written early in my career. Since it was loosely based on a true event, I used the real names of the friends with whom I shared the experience. Disaster!  Everyone treated it like a documentary, my black friends decided I was a racist, it was a nightmare. I learned that many, many folks have no idea how to read literature or deal with metaphors. They have literal minds. Lesson learned, never again. Eventually all my friends forgave me ha ha.

 

Zen and the Art of Retirement

This morning was perfect. Up early, a short drive to Sellwood to buy our week's supply of Harry Higgins Boiled Bagels, to Safeway for baked goods, home to make breakfast, which was a scrapple omelette. Coffee and TV news, and then here.

A mellow routine. Slow, lots of brooding time, and I am very big on brooding. Brooding about the human condition never ends. I also am brooding about a related new story, which may or may not get developed and later published. It doesn't matter.

In fact, my writing career has come curiously full circle. In the beginning I wrote despite having no sense whatever of having an audience. However, I did have a sense of belonging to a wider community of literary artists, some known, some invisible, all chasing a personal vision hoping to clarify the human experience. After a year, behold!, I began getting published in literary journals, an audience of sorts, enough certainly, and along the way three stories made the Roll of Honor in Best American Short Stories, and agents wrote to ask if I had a novel. I didn't. In fact, I was abandoning fiction to write for the stage. First in a series of untimely changes of focus. Following my desires, not the marketplace.

Today, again, I find myself writing without a sense of an audience, despite my list of achievements. What audience I do have seems to be overseas. All this is fine, though it took me time to embrace it. There is a certain freedom in invisibility because there are no expectations about what I am up to.

My current story fascinates me. The premise, an old man can't stop weeping. Such a medical condition actually exists, I was surprised to learn. The story is about his children and grandchildren and what they make of his situation. There's a hint of this theme in my first CJ novel, when CJ goes to the shrink and talks about the most sensitive and moral among us being locked up in loony bins.

My day began well. May it continue so.

Fragments Before the Fall

Fragments Before the Fall

The Literary Review (Summer, 1971)

Charles Deemer

I WALK a tightrope between two mountain tops over the Valley of the Waters of Fire. The waters are rising and all too soon the flames will disengage the embracing strands of fiber which hold me up, casting me to my fate below — incineration. I stand very still. To move would be to lose my balance and become cinder too soon.

I RECOGNIZE the voice: "Mummy, can I take this magazine to school? It has a story in it that is full of symbols, and Mr. Walker just loves symbols."

YOU, my friend, have not believed me from the beginning. But you say you do. And that makes you a phony.

Read it.

Back story. I was living in Multnomah Village after dropping out of a PhD program in American Lit at the Univ of Oregon. I was giving myself a year or two to "become a writer," which meant to publish short fiction in journals I admired, like The Literary Review and Prism International.

One day the mail brought three rejected stories. Three! I remember entering the house with the mail, throwing the manuscripts across the room, sitting down at my manual Remington, and writing this story almost in the time it took to type. It came without preface, from deep frustration. I immediately mailed it to The Literary Review. About six months later, they accepted it! A breakthrough. A story from my deep subconscious. 

The closest I ever came to writing an Aesthetic, a statement on my poetics. Lit as a cushion, cushioning the fall and pain of others. How idealistic! I was younger ha ha. (But even then, I sensed a certain phoniness in audiences. The tension between lit and pop cultures.)

The ticking bomb of climate change is America's biggest threat

Imagine that US leaders were told that hundreds of nuclear weapons were set on a timer to detonate across the planet, progressively and in increasing numbers, over the coming years and decades. The lives of millions would be upended, if not made nearly impossible to survive, by transformed weather patterns and resource scarcity. Tens of millions would become migrants as regions became uninhabitable. Millions would die, more and more as time went on. If this science fiction were reality, US leaders would lead an international effort to immediately disarm and dismantle the weapons.

But this isn’t science fiction. Climate change is a ticking time bomb, literally threatening to end human life on earth over the coming centuries. 

Read the story. 

The Man Who Shot Elvis

The Man Who Shot Elvis

Prism International (Fall, 1977)

Charles Deemer

SO HERE HE WAS, in the casino with hundreds of other tourists, waiting in line two hours before showtime, bored, drink in hand, watching his wife shoot craps. Mary was losing and angry but all the more striking for it, her blue eyes intense as she shook the dice in a fist near one ear. She brushed aside a strand of blonde hair that had fallen across her face, still shaking the dice, softly demanding of them five, five — she reminded him of a mad Scandinavian queen who had one roll to win or lose a kingdom. For a moment, he looked away, attracted by the ringing payoff of a slot machine, and when he turned back the blonde queen was coming toward him, dethroned and pouting.

Read the story.

Check it out

Death Is A Paper Tiger

DEATH IS A PAPER TIGER

By Charles Deemer

From Mississippi Review, 1974

            The paper predicts war with China. It is so difficult to predict war? Who has seen peace? If not China, Africa. Or Japan again. A friend, an enemy; an enemy. a friend. China, then, and I give odds she wins. Any odds I would give. China is thousands of years. China is hundreds of millions. China is immortal. Look at history, read the books of her old men. 

            "A cynic with your books," says Camilla. "Your books don't deserve you. Gregory read to enrich the soul!'' 

            Gregory is her late husband. Where is his soul today? His ashes, at least, she keeps in an urn. Any stranger who would ask to inspect a room must first see Gregory's ashes. 

Read the story.

Trump's America: Activists, Politicians React With Horror At Border Scenes Of Tear-Gassed Children

“It is a despicable act on the part of the Trump administration and CBP officials to attack defenseless women and children firing tear gas, a chemical agent, at them,” Salas said in a statement. “These are human beings who are reaching a point of desperation because their asylum claims are being processed at a snail’s pace or not at all.”

Read the article. 

Border control

U.S. TEAR GASSES AT BORDER— KIDS SCREAM

Read the article.

Leisure

Still in my bathrobe.

'This Is a Climate Emergency': Extinction Rebellion Takes to Streets to Stand for the Planet Over Polluter Profits

In London:

"Last Saturday we celebrated all the life we wanted to save. This Saturday we mourn all the life we've lost, are losing, and are still to lose," Extinction Rebellion said in a statement. "We rebel because we love this world, it breaks our hearts to see it ravaged, to watch so many people and animals all over this world already dying, to know that this will soon happen to our children if nothing changes. There is no way forward without giving credence to our grief."

Read the article. 

Trump's failure to fight climate change is a crime against humanity

The American people are paying a heavy cost for the cynicism and cruelty of politicians in the pocket of the fossil-fuel industry. It is time to hold these reckless politicians to account.

Read the article. 

Mellow

Under the weather but mellow. Not a bad holiday at all. Beats going out for sure. And made a very good turkey and cranberry sandwich from Boston Market leftovers. Man, their turkey breast is first class. What a find for lazy times.

Parades

I grew up in Pasadena, two blocks from the Rose Parade route, so parades were a big deal in my childhood. Parades have been disappointing after seeing the Granddaddy of them all. Moreover, parades have changed, getting filled with song and dance numbers, like today's Macy's Parade, which I am sorry has become the trend. Parades should be, well, parades. At any rate, another benefit of my childhood.

Under the weather, staying home today.

55th anniversary

USA coup d'etat.

Young blood

Bottom line

"Youth are taking action in their districts to pressure federal policymakers to back the only rational response to the climate crisis—a massive economic mobilization over the next decade to get our country off fossil fuels." 
—350.org

'Make America Rake Again' begins to trend in Finland, because the world is laughing at us

Everytime I think Bone Spur has spat out his most inane, stupid remark, he proves me wrong.

Read it.

What an embarrassing sick man. He needs a shrink badly.

Occupying Office of Another Key Democrat, Climate Activists Say "Best Chance at Survival" for Humanity Is Green New Deal

Read the story.

It's about time: "As New Green Deal Democrats cement their hold, climate change emerges as a top priority"

Read the story.

Pelosi must become a Green New Deal activist, save potential bickering, and get something done to lessen consequences a tad. I also say, form a huge work force of voluntary immigrants and others to get the major dirty work into action. So much to do, so little time. Vision! Action! Some of the new women are providing it. Follow their lead. Old white men appear to be useless, or worse, a detriment. "Get out of the way if you can't lend a hand ..."

54 years later:

Thanksgiving I

Since time is short, and blessings abundant, we are having the first of two Turkey Meals today, the second at a restaurant on Thanksgiving Day. This one was delivered by Boston Market, and the packaging and clear instructions are first rate. Hope the food owns up to the presentation and have a feeling it will.

That's the game plan today.

Tick tock

We need a Green New Deal

“I don’t want to see Miami underwater, I don’t want to see my own district underwater, and I know that Leader Pelosi doesn’t, either,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters Tuesday as she joined protesters at the leader's office. “What we need to show her is that we’re here to back her up in pushing for 100 percent renewable energy and we’re here to support that kind of bold, progressive leadership.”

(Politico)

Flying colors

Trip to doc to have pacemaker checked. all is well, great blood pressure, still losing weight, 5 yrs left on battery. Onward.

William Goldman, Oscar-winning screenwriter of ‘Butch Cassidy’ and ‘All the President’s Men,’ dies at 87

Read the article.

Very highly recommended

Bikel sings Russian

Starts at 1:10 for some reason.

Sidesaddle

Gone but not forgotten

A clean apartment!

Tired of our mutual failure to keep a tidy household, we hired a cleaning lady and 3 Russians showed up, did a great job at a reasonable price. We'll hire them again. I got to speak the little Russian I remember, sang a bit of a Russian song, and they were either duly impressed or convincingly polite.

Cleanliness! For a few days.

Letter to Editor, Kansas City Star

Two representations of the U.S.

White men v. diversity

Democrats

Will Rogers said it best: I belong to no organized political party. I'm a Democrat.

The blue wave barely done, and the in-fighting begins, first over whether to stick with Pelosi as leader in the House. By the time Presidential candidates get in gear, it might get ugly. It might put Bone Spur back in the White House.

Presidential politics has become about celebrity. How about Caroline Kennedy?

Celebration

In these dark times, I remind myself that in a zero sum universe there is considerable positive energy available to balance the negative, and for me much of this energy is found in literature, music and history. I am about half way through the single volume U.S. history by Jill Lepore, a Harvard professor, a remarkable book. I am listening to favorite pieces of music. I am revisiting favorite works of writing. All this is inspiring against the dark poison of American politics, which will be getting worse. I predicted a long time ago that Trump will end up declaring martial law and that possibility becomes more likely every day. But I'm not sure the military will follow his orders by that time.

Nostalgia

Blue wave

The Flip Chart

ELECTION	DEMOCRATIC FLIPS	REPUBLICAN FLIPS
House	35	2
Senate	1	3
Governors	7	0
State Legislature Control	6	1
Attorney General	4	0
Secretaries of State	2	0
State House/Senate	300+