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.)