Five Random Books

The exercise: list five books from your book collection, each with a different genre/subject matter. Just titles and a sentence that sums up what they’re about: no need to list authors. Then let other people read the list and try to guess a little bit about you from it.

I really tried to add a bit of randomness to this list, too, lest I fill it with culturally and morally edifying works and don’t show the full picture of the reading me, who likes to have fun and be irreverent at the same time.  I tried picking titles that jumped out at me from various bookshelves in my house.  All but one of these books I can say I’ve read from cover to cover.

1. Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul. Just like the other books in the Chicken Soup series. An anthology of inspirational stories, some more inspiring than others.

2. Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife. It’s about varying theories of how people communicate with ghosts and how most of those theories are hooey.

3. Growing Up Brady. Didja ever watch the T.V. show, The Brady Bunch? I did. This is a behind-the-scenes account from one cast member.

4. American Gods. Fiction, and about a war between the old gods and the newer, electronic ones. God 1.0 versus God 2.0, if you will.

5. The Accidental Buddhist. Provides a wide and amusing overview of Buddhism in America.

A Fishy Test Post

Here’s a fishy video. They would play this on MTV in the early days. You can tell they were really scrambling for material.

The Arrival of Maggie

I’ve often referred to my cockatiel Maggie in different e-mails and posts, but I’ve never shared the story of how she came into my life until now.

It really starts with an empty lot. The lot next door to the house my boyfriend (BF) had purchased, and one that he had hoped to buy to expand his space a little bit. It had been empty for years after the rest of the lots in the neighborhood had been built upon, because it failed to pass a “perk” test. Too much water running underneath it to build a house or install a septic system, supposedly.

But it didn’t work out that way. Undeveloped real estate is getting to a rare thing in this part of the world, and what used to be unbuildable suddenly managed to pass the required tests (there was a drought that helped a little). BF put a bid on the property, but a developer must have outbid him, because a foundation was soon being dug, later topped by a pre-fab bi-level. Instead of scrubby trees and a little more privacy, we had neighbors. This was both good and bad, for reasons I won’t get into here.

Almost as soon as the new house next door was connected to the same power transformer as our house, we started to have brownouts, especially when the neighbors’ air-conditioner kicked on and off. So that summer, BF called the power company and they came out to upgrade the transformer.

The night that they did it, BF asked me to come outside and take a look at what they had done. I was completely uninterested in checking out the new transformer, so any distraction to gazing at a humming green box on a pole was welcome to me. And when I caught some movement out of the corner of my right eye, I was eager to focus on its source.

A bird had landed on a wire suspended over the new neighbors’ front yard. I was far enough away to not know what kind of a bird it was, but close enough to know it wasn’t like any wild bird that lived in the area. We’ve got wrens of all kinds, mourning doves, blue jays, robins, and a small murder of crows (more of an assault of crows, really), but nothing so…bright.

I walked closer to the property line and focused on the bird. Definitely not local! As a matter of fact, it looked downright domesticated…sort of like a bird a former boyfriend’s family had owned.

“Hey BF,” I said, “I think that bird’s a cockatiel.”

BF stopped pondering the transformer upgrade and stood next to me. “Where?”

“On the wire over there.” I pointed for him. The bird maintained its balance on the wire.

I don’t recall the remaining conversation, but BF finally saw the bird and thought it would be best for his friend, who was visiting but in the house, to come out and see if he could get the bird to come to him. Said friend spent a lot of time catching snakes and frogs and other reptilian and amphibious creatures, so he was a little more experienced with interacting with wild things than we were. Or temporarily wild things.

The friend came out, walked across the neighbor’s lawn and under the wire, and stuck his arm out. Sure enough, the little cockatiel flew down and landed on his arm. It was what we’d later find out is a “pied” variety of cockatiel: the feathers were light gray, yellow and white, with the signature orange patches over each ear and the crest of feathers rising from the head. And obviously hand tame.

Our friend wasted no time in getting the bird inside our house, where it at least could not fly away, and we put it in a small dog crate we had purchased for a different reason. Birdseed was procured, which the bird hungrily ate, and water. But we were stuck on what to do from there. The bird obviously escaped from a home somewhere, but where? Nobody could be heard in the neighborhood yelling for their lost pet. And we couldn’t keep it…we had two cats.

The next few days, we called the local pound to report a lost cockatiel, just in case anyone contacted them about losing the same. We also called our vet’s office, as people sometimes put up “lost” notices there. BF got a lead at work about someone who had recently lost a cockatiel who looked like the one we found. But when the person came by to see our visitor, he said, “That’s not Oscar.”

So we still had a little bird who was still missing but not Oscar. And The Bird Who Was Not Oscar stayed on. We got a real cage, and called the bird Buddy. Months went by, and Buddy started to lay tiny eggs, so a name change was in order. The Bird Who Was Not Oscar and Formerly Known as Buddy became…Maggie.

And Maggie has made herself very much part of the family. She was a little pet beacon of stability when both of our young cats became ill and died from a mysterious disease. She charms guests and steals cereal from breakfast bowls. And by sitting on a head or your shoulder, she makes any argument seem completely ridiculous. She’s vain and spoiled and has the run of the house, more so than she really should.

She can also maddeningly repeat the same chirp over and over again, especially when you’re on the phone, and is also possibly the messiest pet I’ve ever had, even messier than a ferret my brother once brought home. And when she’s about to lay eggs, she tends to shun the perfectly good nesting box we’ve made for her and looks for dark nesting places, usually in inconvenient locations like laundry room crawlspaces and kitchen cabinets. I once had to stick my arm down into a wall to pull her out to safety.

Maggie’s also a constant temptation to our two new cats, who cannot understand why we bestow the same kind of affection upon a creature that they consider prey. We’ve heard all the horror stories about how just cat saliva is deadly to birds, believe me. It’s like being a peace broker for the U.N. around here sometimes, but we do create boundaries.

I believe the Hopi tell of birds being messengers, traveling between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Perhaps Maggie is a messenger herself. When I look into her eyes, which are actually a very dark brown with black pupils, there’s a divine little spark that tells me something is going on in there. I don’t think her arrival or my seeing her out of the corner of my eye that late summer afternoon was a mistake at all.

Fun with Photos

I’ve got some photos of ghostly places that I took: not all of the places featured here are in the book, but I wanted to do something with them.

| View Show | Create Your Own

Thanks to AMM for leading me to RockYou.

Venting on Wingnuts

There’s been some recent wingnut activity hereabouts and I have a recent case from my own experience.

In my current line of work, I solicit writings from different authors for anthologies of ghost stories. I’ve got a nice group of authors who are well respected and eager to contribute to the anthologies. Everyone wins.

One of those authors had been contacted at the end of October by a woman who owned property in the northeastern part of the U.S. that’s long been rumored to be haunted. She must have found out that he was doing a talk at the local college about ghosts and e-mailed him, inviting him to visit and stay at the historic house on the property. She was very enthusiastic and supposedly even followed though with the author’s agent to sweet talk him into coming. I saw part of the email she sent and she actually said that she hoped he could use this location in “his writings and teachings.”

Sounds like a done deal, doesn’t it?

So my author friend went to this house, took pictures, presumably interviewed the woman about its history and the ghosts, and even stayed overnight. He didn’t experience any ghosties and would later write up a story that was not critical of the ghosts or house history in any way: just honest. Nothing happened.

He posted this story on his website at the end of last year, and then submitted it to me for inclusion in one of the chapters in the anthology.

A few weeks ago, the illustrator I work with wanted to get photos of the place to include in the book. I’d forgotten that the author had taken photos and asked if he could send a note to the property owner, who was also a “Doctor Reverend” in some kind of new-agey church, and ask if she had photos that we could include in the book. Based on what we knew about Doctor Reverend from the author, she sounded like she’d be enthusiastic.

But NOOOOOOO. When Doctor Reverend got the email, she flipped. She wrote back to the illustrator with a laundry list of issues. She was angry that the author would even dare submit the story for publication without checking with her first (this from “use in your writings,” remember), and how dare he write something for profit about the place, and how he didn’t even bother to get in touch with her after he stayed there. She then proceeded to shred his rep by saying that more qualified historians should be writing the story, and implied that she was the gatekeeper to the house’s history, like she bought it with the property. And who were we? This is the first she’d ever heard of us or our books. She had to get in touch with her lawyers about whether or not this story could be told in the book, and she’d get back to us.

Woah. This was a bit of a sea change from someone who actively pursued our author a few months earlier.

The illustrator sent her response to me and the author, who was understandably a little taken aback by her response. He, too, thought all was fine: after all, you invite a writer of ghost books to your house to talk about the ghosts in it, what do expect him to do? Sit on his hands? He said he even tried to e-mail her a few times in December (possibly about the story he had written and its usage, I don’t know) but she never responded.

We weirdos were fine with including the story in the book, with some minor changes to make the location harder to identify. One thing we’ve learned: nobody owns the history or folklore of a location. We can write about anything we want: we just can’t do it in a way that promotes the destruction of a site (which we’d never, ever do).

But the author asked us to pull the story. He did not want to make waves with people in the paranormal community, which has been his bread and butter for a few years. So we honored his request, not hers, by taking it out of the chapter.

I’m still so mad, though. This Reverend Doctor is someone who signs off on her emails with “Love and Light,” which I’m beginning to think is code for “batsh*t crazy.” Visit her church website and learn about how she can counsel you at $1.50 a minute over the phone, cure your cancer with positive thinking or something. Maybe she wasn’t so upset about the story as she was that she wasn’t getting a cut of the pay for it.

She might have been a little upset that the author didn’t have a ghostly experience there. In her own wingnutty way, I think she might feel that if the ghosts wanted him to write about them, they would have made their presence known. Since they didn’t show up, he’s not the person anointed to tell their story. Or, it didn’t bestow a ghostly guarantee to the the place and she thinks it’ll ruin future attempts to get other people to visit for that reason. Or, she changed her mind about wanting to promote it at a ghost tourist spot. In a follow up email, she mentioned that she didn’t want to attract that kind of tourist (though she once mentioned doing ghost tours…), and she felt that she had enough promotion for her dopey ass museum from state tourism guides. We were not necessary, thank you. So much for love and light.

And, lastly, if she thought the author shouldn’t write about something because he’d make some money off of his efforts, she has another thing coming. Authors earn a living by writing. They don’t live off the air. Invite an author who has already written several books about ghosts to your haunted house, and damn skippy he’s going to write about it, preferably for profit. And you’re naive as hell if you think otherwise.

I am from…

I am from color pencils and reams of white paper from Dad’s old job, drawing for hours, and stories typed out badly on an electric typewriter that always smelled of overheat.

From Atari and Nintendo and I Want My MTV, to feed my brain with good and bad and maybe school isn’t that important any more.

I am from a tiny summer home turned year-round and sharing a bedroom with my younger brother for too many years, unfinished basements smelling pleasantly of dank, trips outside to the clothes dryer, and fat, black crickets in the porcelain tub most mornings.

I am from Japanese irises that grew in the hilly front yard each May, and the lily of the valley picked for mom just before I tripped and cut my knee open on a piece of slate (and I am the tiny scar that remains from that fall.)

From corn, and raspberries that my mom as a child didn’t want to sell door to door, pretending to push the doorbell while her mom waited nearby in a car.

From hemlock, climbing as far as I could to the top to see the lake below, stabbing my palm on the remains of a torn branch.

I am from the ugly shed that made the best clubhouse, with floor and walls that loudly protested our every movement inside, and endless games of kickball and manhunt in the neighbor’s side yard.

I am from bright: the blue bike, the red jacket, the October day spent riding around the medical building parking lot while dad cleaned offices.

I am from being a perennial holiday guest, traveling by car and trapped in the backseat smelling White Linen and fearing migraines. Over the river and through the woods to fool Josh the dog yet again with a stick not really thrown and then eating with Anson and Mildred and going home after the dishes were washed with pink dish soap.

Sometimes, I am from over the river and past Two Guys to eat with Ken and Ethel on Elm Street, where the gravy was not homemade, the sidewalk was bumpy, and there were pears rotting in the back yard, but it was somehow more fun and two cans of pipe tobacco always sufficed as a gift.

I am from those who gather in kitchens to “help” the host, because that’s where the hottest munchies and fastest refills are, plus the best family gossip, and those who see the glass empty most of the time, and those who tend to hold grudges for too long.

From hangnails that when left unclipped will develop into gangrene, and “everybody likes pound cake” left as the bake sale wallflower while people danced off with cheap frosted and sprinkled floozies. Also from “it will still be there when we get back with some money” and it wasn’t.

From the school of armchair Methodists, after a brief spell of Sunday morning representation while Dad slept in and not wanting to hold the pastor’s hand in a prayer circle at home.

I’m from the land of Heinz (57, that is), with roots of green and orange (which sometimes clashed), a mix of scottishirishenglishgermanswissitalianlennilenape(maybe). We ate corn fritters and fondue (that’s the Swiss in ‘ya) and most definitely not cracklings but always birthday cake, which was definitely NOT from a box.

From my dad as a kid, getting hit by a car in the street and my aunt coming into the house to say, “He’s finally gone and done it” to my grandmother, and another time when he hid under a porch and was bit in the ass by a dog, which Grandma thought he deserved.

I am from old photos albums once kept in a linen closet and old reels of film showing a baby picking up a toy, then not having a toy, then having a toy again in a strange continuity, now all kept in a place in which I don’t like to dwell.

And I am from a cemetery that holds an older sister I never knew whose death is why I can say,

“I am from…”

Jaffas in the Snow

No, they aren’t rolling. And they are very cold and wondering why it is this way when in their homeland, it is summer and they should be HOT.

I present to you, Jaffas in the snow…

When the snow melts, I intend to roll some down the driveway. Because these things matter.

Oh: as these sank into the snow, they left a disturbingly bright orange trail behind them. I can only imagine the effect they have on the human gastrointestinal system.

More Squidoo

I set up another lens, this one to highlight books I’ve read more than once. Also to find out what other people think is multiple-read worthy. Life is short, and there are a lot of books out there. So what makes a book worth the time?

Image from FreeFoto.com 

Hold your Madeleines!

It’s a Proust contest!

Rules and such are posted there.

Weird Squidoo

I created a lens on Squidoo for my book and other ghostly things. Check it out.

It’s not too hard to set up a lens, and it’s forced me to figure out out to do some things in HTML that I haven’t attempted in a while: links and bulleted lists.

There’s also a feature on Squidoo called “Duel,” where you can put up a question and let others come and debate it. I put one up about the existence of ghosts, and I’m kind of curious to see what happens. If it gets ugly, I’m taking it down!

The only other thing I worry about is that it’ll be construed as advertising, or spam. It is pushing a product, and it’s also encouraging submissions for another product–a second book. But I hope to add things to it that make it more of a ghostly resource of sorts. The Duel could be a step in that direction. And I’m also truly committed to promoting the authors who contributed to the book: they are an entertainment force to be reckoned with in their own right. So, there–now I feel a little better about the lens.