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This is the Kind of History I loved to Teach


Skimming through the Canadian Vignettes, I came across a couple of historical films. They remind me of the filmstrips Mr. Myer, my seventh grade social studies teacher, would occasionally show. He was not a great teacher, but he told interesting stories and went off on tangents that probably should have gotten him fired. Like the time he told us about “Nam” and needing to drop his drawers for a shot of penicillin because he picked up VD from a street girl. Or there was the time he waxed philosophically on the fact that he could have gone for the real money – like his old Nam buddy – and gone into real estate instead of wasting his time trying to teach the children of the unwashed*.

Anyway, I loved to sneak history into my Language Arts or English classes and the more offbeat – the better. 

 

*Myers was a bit of an elitist. We weren’t trailer park but our fathers were working class.

The Right Stuff


According to writer Nancy Kress, there are about six traits a person must possess in order to be a writer. So I thought it would be fun, or maybe just informative, to measure myself against them as I am in serious career direction consideration mode.

  • the ability to tolerate long periods of time alone (or surrounded by people who don’t actually exist)

I could fill rooms with the people I know who don’t actually exist outside the space between my ears. And being alone is an art form I perfected as a child.

  • the arrogance to believe that, however crappy your current work and however much rejected, you will get good enough for other people to want to read what you write

Well, apparently I am quite arrogant because not only do I believe I will be published someday, I believe that readers will buy the books I write.

  • the humility to understand the limits of your talent, and to learn from what editors, reviewers, and writing-group colleagues tell you about your work

Oh, I know a better writer than myself when I read one. And believe it or not, I take criticism to heart.

  • a love of reading and of stories (I have never met a writer who didn’t read fiction voraciously, at least while young, and who didn’t tell himself stories in which he was the hero)

I am not a voracious reader of fiction these days. I simply don’t have the time and I don’t run across authors who can really transport me or inspire me either. Is that a function of old age? Or am I just too much in writer mode to not pick at the work of others? I don’t know. I read books a week as a child and well beyond college. I was even still a better than average reader in the early days of my first marriage. Now it has to be a really great book to hold me still long enough to read.

Oh, and I am always a central figure in my own fiction though my hero tends to be Rob-like.

  • self-motivation, since one must work without a boss, an external work structure, or, often, a deadline

Blogging has helped me develop a work ethic. Group blogging is good for imposing outside structures and deadlines. Fiction efforts though are still scattered. A dilemma that may lead me away from the web soon, but I am still working things out.

  • for the SF writer, the peculiar cast of mind that finds a future world, an alien planet, or a magical realm fully as solid and believable as the chair he’s sitting on — at least for the length of the writing session

I have never had difficulty suspending my belief.

I’m A Barbie Girl


My first Mattel dolls were Liddle Kiddles. Someone gave me one when I was about three and I was obsessed with them for the next two years. The first Barbie arrived on my fifth birthday, and though I can’t say Barbies were ever as fun as those first little dolls, I was a Barbie fan until high school. Baby D has that Baribe now, minus the ski outfit of which only the dress remains.

barbie-ski-outfit

I am likely in a small minority of girls who played with her dolls until I was forced to put them away at about age 15 just to preserve what little bit of popularity I had. Bad enough to be fat, bespectacled and looking enough like a boy most days to be mistaken for one, I didn’t need anyone to know that I still played with Barbies on top of it.

Barbie was 50 years old yesterday. Just five years older than myself but still a peer because like President Obama, she is a Joneser, and we all fall happily into the valley between the boomers and the x-ers together.

Happy Birthday, Old Girl!