Author JT Twissel

The Old Warrior’s Birthday

JT Twissel 35 Comments

Today would have been my father’s 100th birthday. While many people would have been happy to have reached that milestone, my father would have been miserable. He was a very active man.

Dad with his good buddy, Captain Wug, daredevil pilot and war hero

My early memories of him were brutal. He could not tolerate weakness.  Illness was a weakness. Bad vision was a weakness. Even breaking a bone was some kind of a weakness. And you never admitted you were in pain, or sick, or depressed. To do so was weakness.

The house he built and never finished in rural Michigan

He was a hunter who expected his family to eat the animals he’d shot and hung to bleed out in the garage. 

I went to bed hungry many nights.

When we went backpacking in the wilderness we always pitched camp near a stream where we were expected to fish for our dinner.

To this day, I hate fish.

But, because of his refusal to buy a boob tube when I was a child, I know a decent amount about classical music and, if given the title of a show tune, I can tell you which Broadway musical it’s from. And I adore books. I probably own over a thousand.

I wouldn’t want to relive my childhood but he raised us the way he was raised.  In fact, I suspect his life was far tougher.  Anyway, I’ll miss calling him today.

Becoming a fruit fly

JT Twissel 22 Comments

I dreamt that I died but instead of being free to shape shift into some other existence, a fruit fly or whatever, my ex-husband sucked me into a hologram and made me sing White Christmas alongside Bing Crosby.

He would try to do that because he’s a Mormon now and they own their wives forever. Or so they think.

According to the news show VICE (HBO)  it’s not enough that images of dead celebrities are being used to sell products, now they’re being “reanimated” to do things they may not have wanted to do.  Like sing White Christmas with Michael Buble.

Oh Gawd. Save me from a show filled with reanimated celebrities.  I’d never be able to get to sleep.

No, no, no. I loved them but let them go!

Believe it or not, until recently the legal ramifications of digital necromancy were somewhat fuzzy and the estates of several dead celebs  had to sue to protect their star’s legacy.  And they didn’t always win. In the 1970s a judge on the California Supreme Court actually ruled that after Bela Lugosi died, he no longer owned his “personality rights.”  I guess that judge thought the dead don’t care.  I’ve got news for him.

Today, companies have to gain the permission of a dead celeb’s estate before they exploit his or her “personality” to sell products. But what if a celeb dies intestate?  Whoever winds up in control could do whatever they want.  I’m reminded of Stieg Larsson, the author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, whose estate ended up in the hands of his estranged father and brother.  According to the reviews, the latest installment of the series sadly does not do justice to Larsson’s legacy.

Hologram of Ronald Reagan.

Poor Ronald Reagan has to give the same speeches over and over again and again at his presidential library.  He was scary enough in the flesh.  Seeing him reanimated would definitely bring on the nightmares.

One good thing about not being a celebrity is no one will try to reanimate me after I’m gone.  I’ll be allowed to die and whatever energy force resides within can either scatter to the winds or find another vessel.  

As a non-celebrity I’ll also never be on the following cruel and sadistic lists:

  • Stars Who Aged Badly
  • Stars Nobody Wants to Work With
  • Stars Whose Spouses Are Unattractive

This picture is from “Stars with Bad Mug Shots.” I have no idea who it is but she kind of looks like me in the morning!

And don’t even get me started on wax museums. 

The Kitty Sleeps in the Sun

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Or so he pretends, always with one eye at the ready and ears erect. And in that same lazy, hazy way I welcome 2019. 

I never thought I’d live to see this year. Not because I had some kind of death wish but because I grew up reading dystopian science fiction  and thought by this time we’d either all be dead or cyborgs. Somehow we managed to forestall our inevitable ruin. The question now seems to be, for how long.

But enough of the doom and gloom. You may have noticed that this blog is undergoing an identity crisis. Marketing experts would caution against changing identities at this point (5 years into blogging) but pooh on caution.  Throw it to the wind, I say.

The title “Saying Nothing in Particular” was inspired by this song.

My husband acts as if his balls are going to shrivel up and fall off whenever I play my  Donovan CDs but his dreamy ballads are my respite from a cruel world.  Even his more serious songs “Hurdy Gurdy Man” and “Season of the Witch” will roust me from my darkest moods.  So, if you have a minute, drift along the coast with the Tinker and the Crab.  Speak to no one in particular but happily. Mankind has defied the predictions of the best minds and the kitty is sleeping in the sun.

May this next year bring you health and joy.

Except for the Dead Guy and Minus a Few Cousins

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I’ve been re-editing a book I wrote and published via Booktrope a few years before they went out of business, The Graduation Present. Of the plot, Colm Herron wrote:

A hapless hopeless romantic American girl called Riley O’Tannen heads for Europe to get a taste of the old world and instead encounters her drunken uncle who keeps a mistress, her randy aunt who keeps a gigolo and a dead CIA man whose boss is a raving homosexual.

Which is what happened decades ago except for the dead guy and minus a few cousins.  Such is the dilemma when your write a “semi-autobiographical” piece.

I did travel to Germany unprepared for the realities of life in an occupied country.  I did have to pry my uncle from the bar every night and listen to my aunt sing the praises of her lover’s magical tongue “oh what it could do …”  My uncle’s boss was rumored to be a CIA operative, and he was a dead ringer in looks and manner for Truman Capote.  But, as to the rest, well, I could say time has warped my memory but the truth is, a bit of imagination was applied.  Perhaps too much.

When you write a book with at least one character recognizable to family and friends, be prepared.  

“You made me out to be quite the putz,” my uncle complained shortly after the book was published. Ironically if he’d read through to the end and not just the first couple of chapters he would have realized that Riley O’Tannen was the putz and not him. Still it gave me pause.  I know writers who will not base a character on someone they know until that person was dead and gone. Even then, it’s difficult.  

“And how about that evil burgermeister. I don’t remember him,” my uncle continued.

“I made him up.”

“Then that other story about me pimping you out for dinner…”

“The truth.  You said ‘look at all those lonely officers. They’d love to take a pretty girl to dinner. Why should I have to feed you all the time?'”

Number one travel book when I first went to Europe.

“I don’t remember.” Sadly he didn’t mention the people who were missing from the story, my young cousins neither of whom survived unscathed from that time. When you tell a semi-autobiographical story those are the choices you face.  Who to spare and who to expose.  Uncle Bob, who now preaches the gospel of Trump in a Walmart parking lot down in Tampa, has repented and been saved. He’s never without an eight ounce glass of gin and makes gross jokes about women’s body parts, but in the church of the almighty Trump all you need to do is speak in tongues and all is forgiven.  Plus, he was born with a teflon hide.

Happy Hour at the Officer’s Club, Worms Germany 1970

And the dead man?  He’s here with me now. He sits with eyes tunneling into the night sky as we ride through Switzerland time and time again and see no stars, just a cold and apathetic landscape. Toward the end, he’d been relegated to a seat at the table reserved for those with frozen boots who couldn’t move on. They are the best people for a writer to know.

I relieved him of his misery.  I killed him.  I let him die in a place where he’d known happy times and not in a Veteran’s hospital. And that’s what writers do. But should we?

Diamond box

JT Twissel 3 Comments

From a young poet.

Bijou's avatartin hats

Mouse of mine,
I’ve made for you a maze.

Impenetrable diamond box beneath the earth,
swaddled in the sweltering magma like
the immortal star under a blanket
you have always been.

So safe, warm and concealed
beneath the shifting plates
the winding roadways,
shivering mountains.

As far as the roads of Agartha will take you
from the violent apes and their
precious gates
to heaven and hell.

Monkey of mine,
there are hot springs and peaceful beings-
as many ripe kiwis as a boy could eat.

Mr. Golden Sun is just a sweet song away
with a rainbow necklace that you can wear
and a glowing crystal crown
from the icy end of a meteor
for your precious royal head.

When it is time to sleep,
you and me and daddy makes three
will pillow fight with fluffy clouds,
flying like jets that will never cradle missiles.

We will crash…

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The Spoon Apocalypse

JT Twissel 30 Comments

My paternal grandmother believed that at some point in the near future the world would be bereft of spoons.  To prepare her grandchildren for the coming apocalypse, we all received spoons for Christmas, that is until Cousin George, then over six foot eight, pooped on her prophesy. I believe his exact words were “Get your head out of the vodka bottle Grandmother.”

“Oh what a wonderful spoon, Grandmother! Now I’m prepared for the Spoon Apocalypse.

Through all my travels and relocations, my spoon collection has not fared well but I still have the first one she ever sent me. It’s a sterling silver teaspoon with an etching of the Moorhead Minnesota Public Library.  I always assumed it was just something she picked up at some antique store, but through the miracle of the internet, I believe it had some other meaning to her besides the spoon prophesy.

Moorhead was my Grandmother’s home until her father died and her mother married The Judge. Probably a wise thing for a young widow with two small children to do but The Judge was a controlling nasty pants who didn’t allow his stepchildren to talk of their father or paternal aunts, uncles and cousins still living in Moorhead. That town always remained a life that could have been if not for the Spanish flu.  As a freshman in college when the library opened, she probably also spent a lot of time there.  At that time, the University of North Dakota at Fargo catered to the study of animal husbandry and improvement of soy bean crops and not to the study of something so useless as English literature.  So the spoon wasn’t just something she wrapped in foil and sent to her granddaughter (or maybe it was and I’m just a fruitcake)

After Grandmother’s death my aunt sent me this odd assortment of her utensils. Note anything odd?

 

There’s only one fork and who needs that many butter knives? Or pickle forks.

I don’t know what to do with all those spoons. Perhaps play Spoons.  Have you ever heard of that game?  Apparently it’s also known as Pig and Tongue and it is some kind of variation of Musical Chairs.  The winners of Spoons take a spoon from the middle of the table and the winners of Pig, fart.  (Not really they just touch the end of their noses. Don’t ask.) The winners of Tongue stick their tongues out.  I imagine it’s a game old Judge Nasty Pants would have loved.

Maybe I’ll give the spoons to the Spoon Lady!  Any odd things you’ve gotten as Christmas presents that made sense many years later?

 

Certainty of death, no chance for survival

JT Twissel 24 Comments

Thanksgiving night we watched the final episode of the Lord of the Rings as we ate the crab and potato salad.  When the trilogy first debuted, our home was where stockings were opened Christmas morning and then we all walked down to the Art Deco theater at the bottom of the hill to watch whatever had just released.  

We began this Xmas tradition in 1983 with The Christmas Story, a low budget picture that was not expected to do well at the box office and is now a holiday classic. We’d had a rough year and that movie was the perfect distraction.

The next year was even worse.  After a failed attempt at merriment, we hiked down the hill to watch Ghostbusters. 

I can’t remember all the movies we saw in the ensuing years. Generally silly flicks. None were able to make us laugh until we cried. None were as cathartic as the first two. 

By the way, who’s your favorite character in Ghostbusters?  Mine’s the wise-cracking receptionist played by Annie Potts. I love that gal.

To my teenage friends and I, the book The Lord of The Rings was the holy gospel of Middle Earth. It was where we were meant to be and not the Reno High School biology lab dissecting frogs. We’d heard about the analogies to WWII and the Nazis, but had no real understanding of the horrors of concentration camps or the ability of power to leech the soul from a human being. We just wanted to escape the mundanity of our lives.

Now LOTR seems like a warning and is too close to comfort to exit the theater refreshed.  I think we’ll see a comedy instead.  Any suggestions?

Grateful for breathable air

JT Twissel 40 Comments

In large cities you are immediately reminded that there are doors you will never enter unless you are wealthy or service the wealthy in some way or another. 

The above house (on Manhattan’s East Side) was for sale but guess what? No open house was scheduled. Rats. No peek into the Lifestyles of Rich and Famous for me. Here in honor of Norm Frampton’s ThursdayDoor event is another door I’ll never enter.

Below is a picture of a peculiar and apparently abandoned structure in another borough of NYC. Any guesses as to what it is?

 

Here’s a clue: It’s in the same park as the fountain below. 

Flushing Meadows, in the borough of Queens, is a world away from the east side of Manhattan. On the day we visited it was packed with families. On every field, soccer, baseball, cricket, and volleyball players either practiced or competed against each other as family members and friends watched.  Even in mid October, kayakers paddled around the small lakes taking selfies. They were mostly people from third world countries who will probably never be able to buy that house on the east side of Manhattan but they have their families and their community.  Today is Thanksgiving here in the United States. In California we are all thankful for the rain.  Our view has gone from smokey grey:


To cloudy grey. But the air has moved out of “hazardous” purple to a moderate orange.  It will be awhile before we are in the green of healthy air but we will never take fresh and healthy air for granted. Nor will I complain about the high cost of roof repairs.  At least I have a roof.

 

And of course I am thankful for you. Whether you come by once or every time I post, I am thankful for you.

 

 

Giant Turkey Caravan Headed For US Border

JT Twissel 4 Comments

Austin's avatarThe Return of the Modern Philosopher

Thanksgiving, turkeys, caravan, humor, Modern PhilosopherI don’t want to be a fear monger, Modern Philosophers, but I need to warn you that there is another huge caravan headed towards the U.S. border.

This one, however, is heading north through Maine on its way to Canada.

And this caravan is not made up of migrants fleeing persecution, criminals fleeing prosecution, or terrorists looking to enter the country without detection.

In fact, there are no humans at all in this caravan.

It’s made up entirely of turkeys.

Thousands of them.

The caravan crossed into Maine yesterday, and is making a bee line for the border with Canada.  When asked about the parade of northbound turkeys, Maine Governor Paul LePage stated: “As long as they aren’t hurting anyone, I could care less.  My term is almost over, and I don’t need the headache.”

Maine State Police and the Maine Warden Service have been monitoring the caravan’s progress, and…

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In Flander’s Fields

JT Twissel 12 Comments

Today is the 11th day of the 11th month on which we celebrate the ending of the war to end all wars. I don’t think a lot of people really understand how that war (WWI) began. I certainly don’t.  Something about the assassination of an archduke. Today it honors all veterans from all those other wars that weren’t supposed to happen.

Armistice Day means red poppies. If you’re out and about you may run into a veteran selling them. This traditional started with a poem.

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
In Flanders Fields by John McCrae

McCrae was a Canadian doctor who, legend has it, wrote the poem from the back of an ambulance. Poppies leech the blood from battlefields and in the spring, cover the ground with a sea of red. A sight to see indeed, if not such a stark reminder.

My grandfather did not die in France; he returned to his family and lived a long life.The wounds he suffered were not visible to the naked eye. And he didn’t talk about them.

I’m actually quite mortified that a bit of rain has kept a president of the United States from attending ceremonies honoring the fallen of WWI.  It didn’t stop the troops from fighting and losing their lives. Shame on him.