Luck

June 16, 2016JT Twissel 3 Comments

We all have fathers and we all lose them. Either we die or they die, but we are eventually and forever lost to each other. Fathers can be good or bad, but always they are part of our blood; answering questions before we speak because they know better than us. They can turn the pages of a book without hands or fingers and they give breath to our sixth sense. A Navy corpsman killed my father one night in a hospital room. He overdosed him on morphine. Earlier in the afternoon the corpsman had called me and said that my father would not make it through the night. I had received other calls like that one over the years and always my father had not died, but this time was different. My father was a Marine and this Navy corpsman decided that he was going to put my father out…

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I’m a Loser

June 11, 2016August 18, 2022JT Twissel 39 Comments

Oft times I feel like such a loser. I’ve tried so many things and failed. But, I do have wonderful children. One of them was born on this day many years ago.

My rosy cheeked boy!

June 11th was also the birthday of Jacques Clouseau.

Which leads me to offer a big shout out to another champion of the oceans, Liz Cunningham.

Liz has traveled worldwide talking to people involved in ocean conservation and has recently published Ocean Country, One Woman Voyage from Peril to Hope in Her Quest to Save the Oceans.

Currently she and her husband are touring the US in their efforts to raise awareness about global efforts to save the oceans. Go Liz! You and Charlie are an inspiration to me, especially when I’m feeling down.

What things keep you from feeling like a complete loser? Friends, children, dogs?

T.R. Wonderful and the Sinking of the SS Milvia

June 7, 2016JT Twissel 34 Comments

Yesterday my buddy Cinda and I took the train over to the Bay Area Book Festival. It was a nice day. A little smoggy but nice. I hadn’t been to downtown Berkeley in several years but some things never change; college kids still fly up and out of BART like locusts, hopping over those of us with squeaky knees. The homeless still camp where they want. Restaurants still have signs in their windows reading “Bathrooms for customers only.” There’s still a whiff of pot in the air.

Shattuck Hotel and BART Station from Bing images

We were there to attend (among other things) a session at the iconic Shattuck Hotel on writing memoirs. Having worked in that neighborhood for many years, the hotel itself brought back many memories. The lobby had been remodeled since my last visit but the upstairs meeting rooms were the same.

As the memoirists discussed their process, I flashed back to one particular day in 1995. I believe it was in the fall, not long after the lean, fast-paced company I worked for had been swallowed by its parent, a whale full of corporate babble and blubber called TRW.

If you’ve ever worked for a monster company you know the first thing that happens in these instances is reprogramming. Shortly after the “we have taken over but don’t worry” announcement we were signed up for a session in “corporate expectations” at the Shattuck and ordered to attend, regardless of our work loads or even what we did. Facility manager, receptionist, janitor – it didn’t matter. Of course, we all knew the end was coming. Reprogramming is usually either proceeded or followed by “corporate restructuring.” And sure enough, as we sat in Shattuck, our new lords and masters laid off friends who’d been excused from the reprogramming so they could be fired, a brain-dead effort to appear kind that back-fired. I don’t know what they were thinking because at lunch the news flashed through the Shattuck, causing several members of my “class” to storm out of the session, middle-fingers raised in salute to our instructor who was just some poor rah-rah from Cleveland where TRW was called T.R. Wonderful.

Me, on the first floor of the SS Milvia.

We were all friends then, just a happy tribe of musicians, artist and writers who supported each other while working our day jobs. Email was in its infancy and required keystrokes, thus it was the medium through which we could bare our souls without upsetting the purveyors of corporate values.

The SS Milvia, once the home of pirates and outlaws, now modernized.

The SS Milvia where we all worked and played is still moored about a block away from the Shattuck. After the class in memoirs I wandered past it which was a mistake. Someone’s modernized the facade; they’ve probably also replaced those sabotaged toilets that flooded the lab the day we were uprooted to Oakland. And fixed the elevator that froze between floors every time the big guys got rowdy. I’m sure the foosball table is gone. I’m sure it’s no longer a shoes-optional building. And I’m sure no one working there uses email to start a flaming debate about abortion or the death penalty. Those times have passed.

I stood and looked at the SS Milvia until the memories whispered good-bye, its time to move on.

Have you ever wandered past a place once held dear and wished you hadn’t?

Okay Hollywood, Brad Pitt’s not getting any younger

May 30, 2016May 30, 2016JT Twissel 20 Comments

After a month of feeling lost and stressed to the point of damaging my health, I’ve decided not to rush my books back into print but to steady my nerves and move forward one step at a time.

It’s mortifying to think back on those first heady months as a “published writer.” Don’t laugh, but I actually bought a day planner to keep track of all the events I’d be invited to, the book signings, the interviews, the meetings with Hollywood producers all begging to transform FLIPKA into a block-buster mega hit starring Brad Pitt as Captain Wug.

Those of you who’ve read the book are thinking “Pitt’s too young.” Well, if and when FLIPKA ever makes it to the big screen, he’ll be too damn old.

Suffice it to say, the day planner was a complete waste of money. Oh, I worked my fanny off begging and pleading for reviews, blogging, tweeting, pinning, throwing a release party, meeting with a book club (thanks MA) and signing books up in Reno (thanks Mom) – but as the months went by, no calls from Hollywood.

After realizing there would probably never be a FlipkaWorld at Disneyland I moved on to my next hope for fame and fortune, The Graduation Present. Surely it would intrigue the movie people. It had adventure, romance and another made-for-Hollywood character, Oncle Boob. But they better hurry. Brad Pitt will soon be too old to play him too.

Brad Pitt lookalike, Oncle Boob

Unknowingly I had committed a mortal sin by writing that book. I’d changed genres. Cross-genre writers are literally the two-headed monsters of the literary world. Ask any expert on “branding.”

Ah well. I’ll probably republish the first two books with minor changes. However the third book I need your help with. I’ve never liked the title – Willful Avoidance. Sure, it deals with a grim subject – Innocent Spouse Relief – but that doesn’t mean it has to be saddled with a grim name. Can you think of a funny title for a book about divorce and taxes that ends with a talking dog? Thanks!

#ThursdayDoors: On a Carousel

May 12, 2016May 13, 2016JT Twissel 46 Comments

The last couple of weeks have been so stressful that I ended up in bed dying. Or so I thought. In retrospect it was probably a good thing as it stopped me from rushing into many decisions I might live to regret.

Tilden

On Sunday (aka Mother’s Day) we decided to drive over to Tilden, a 2,017 acre park straddling the hills between Berkeley and my small town of Orinda California. The park boasts an antique carousel, a child’s size steam train, a reedy lake for swimming, hilly golf course, botanical gardens, a small farm, and of course oodles of hiking trails and picnic areas. Tilden1

When I was a child there was nothing I loved more than a carousel. One ride around was never enough. I could ride all day, round and round to the sound of an organ and had to be dragged back to solid ground crying when it was time to go. I dreamt of visiting every carousel in the world and even of having one in my backyard when I grew up.

My children were happy with only a couple of rides and on Sunday my granddaughter only wanted one. It’s a sad thing when a girl doesn’t beg for one more ticket to ride the carousel. What is the world coming too?

Not exciting enough for kids these days.

Not satisfied with a beautiful, albeit, plaster palomino, Audrey wanted to find a real horse so we went to the farm. The Little Farm is in a beautiful pine grove but alas there were no horses.

Cow There was a cow.

Bunnies And bunnies but you couldn’t feed them.

How about you? Was one ride on the carousel enough for you? Check out other ThursdayDoors on Norm Frampton’s site.

By the way, I’m still weighing publications options. I decided not to rush but take my time. Thank you all for your kind wishes!

The Devil’s in the Peanut Butter

April 24, 2016July 21, 2021JT Twissel 44 Comments

In honor of those people in New Zealand who lost their lives due to prejudice and ignorance, here’s a repost from a few years back. Before you blindly hate or fear people who may have different beliefs and a different life style, get to know them.

I dropped out of college when the chance to live in Europe came along and didn’t have a chance to return until the mid-eighties when my life hit an unfamiliar period of calm and, because I wasn’t used to calm, I decided to spice life up by returning to UC Berkeley. However I needed childcare as my son was just a toddler. Finding childcare is always a sticky-wicket if you don’t have a mother-figure nearby to help.

After fretting over my options for a couple of weeks (potential child abusers versus soulless baby mills), my husband pointed out that we had an extra bedroom with an attached bath, so why not find a college girl willing to trade room and board for help with the children?

He envisioned a buxom blonde from Sweden. I thought more along the lines of a quiet farm girl from Kansas.

The ad read: “Room and Board in exchange for child care a couple of times a week. House is only 15 minutes from campus.”

I’d just returned home from posting the advertisement when the phone rang. On the other end of the line was a young man with a thick accent. “I have sixteen brothers and sisters,” he informed me. “I know all about babies.”

Stunned stupid I mumbled: “But you’re a man.” Something which he’d probably already figured out.

“But your ad didn’t say…”

What a corner I’d painted myself into! I couldn’t say we want a girl, now could I? That would be sexist. Besides, he had a point. There was no “must have a vagina” in my ad.

“I can come in for an interview today.”

“Today? Ah, no, um – that won’t work. Tomorrow, eleven o’clock,” I needed time to figure out how I was going to reject him. Now, I should have said the position was already taken but I’ve never been that quick on my feet.

The next morning at precisely eleven the doorbell rang. How stupid, I thought. I’ve probably just invited a serial killer or a rapist to my house while my husband was at work. I should have arranged to meet him somewhere else, a public place with lots of people around. I should have had him come when my husband was home. But as I said, I’ve never been quick on my feet.

Like a ninny I peered out the living room blinds. At my front door stood a young Omar Sharif in a plaid shirt and slacks, his dark hair cut short. Figuring that serial rapists generally don’t look like Omar Sharif, I opened the door and let him in.

“Just call me Aziz,” he informed me. “Americans can’t pronounce my real name, Azizulah.”

“Azizulah, that’s not such a hard name to pronounce.” You twit, I thought, feeling insulted. I’d traveled the world. I wasn’t a typical American, or so I thought.

He went on to say he was a graduate student from Karachi who had scored fourth in Pakistan’s version of the SATs which guaranteed him entrance into just about any college in the world (lack of confidence was not one of his failings). He took a look at the room and the bath and declared it would suit him just fine as it was far away from the “family” quarters and he liked to touch base with his family in the middle of the night. He also informed me that he expected to be allowed to cook at least one meal a week and asked if the local butcher stocked freshly slaughtered goat.

Aziz with the woman he couldn’t possibly live without and Cam

I was about to tell him that we’d get back to him when my son who was sitting on the floor abusing the dog began to wail. Aziz picked him up, made a funny clacking sound with his tongue and Cam settled right down. They got along so well that I invited him back to meet my husband for dinner that evening.

“Is there anything you don’t eat, other than pork?”

“Peanut butter!” He said, looking as if he’d just smelt a fart.

He stayed with us until he married the woman he claimed he “would die without.” It was true. Whenever she was out of town he couldn’t eat or sleep, often stumbling from his room red-eyed and moaning. I’ve never seen a man so love-sick.

Hindu Marriage Ceremony

Unfortunately, she was a Hindu. And so, of course, his family boycotted their wedding and my children played the roles meant for the groom’s siblings. After a few years and children, fortunately his family softened their stance.

Here are just a few of the things I learned during my years with Aziz:

Peanut Butter is the food of the Devil. Grilled Cheese isn’t far behind.
The worst thing you can call someone in Urdu is a Devil.
Pakistanis do not celebrate birthdays because many of them have no idea when they were born (Aziz was either 24 or 26 depending on whether he believed his mother’s journal entry or his father’s). The date on his passport was made official by a bribe to an immigration official.
Pakistanis also do not believe it is necessary to either give or receive thanks. People are expected to do good deeds for each other without expectation of a thank you.

We introduced Aziz to Thanksgiving turkey, Christmas cookies, and Easter bunnies. He introduced us to curry, Eid and Ramadan. One summer, part of his large family came for a visit, staying at the Claremont Hotel and traveling around the Bay Area in a convoy of vans. They owned a factory on the outskirts of Karachi and made replicas of the kind of furniture you’d find at Versailles which they sold primarily in Europe. They invited me to their home but, after Aziz told me the honored guest is always offered (and expected to eat) the eyeball of a freshly slaughtered cow, I declined the invitation!

I used to joke that during the time we were all together, we had the bases covered – the son of a Holocaust survivor, a baptized Christian (drifting towards Buddhism), a Hindu and a Muslim – should the world come to a sudden end; an end which would probably have been caused by one or all of the above religions. Ironic, isn’t it?

Holy Mole

April 20, 2016April 20, 2016JT Twissel 12 Comments

On the third day of chili grinding (see Making Mole Sauce and Making Mole in the Modern World) the chili-nut-fruit mixture was still not ground to Liz’s satisfaction and so I kidnapped every grinding machine I could find in Joel’s well equipped kitchen and brought them to her house.

Then we got an assembly line going – using one grinder until it started to overheat and then switching to another. BTW – the best grinder in our assortment was the small white one on the right (a Grup). I’m happy to say that no grinders were permanently damaged. Finally we had a Costco-size pretzel jar full of perfectly ground mole powder!

Above is pork mole with sourdough bread and my share of the mole powder. It should last a year.

Liz then added a cup of the mole powder to 8 ounces of tomato sauce and sauteed the mixture with a cup of chicken broth and grated chocolate to taste. Please note, if you use dark, dark chocolate you may want to add sugar to prevent bitterness which we did.

The mole was divine. Worth every blister!

Liz’s Paternal Grandmother’s recipe – Note the final step – “Then take all ingredients to a mill and have it ground!” No shit!!!!!!!!

Last night I made chicken mole with the commercially made powder for a taste test. Aside from being a little sweeter than the homemade, it was also excellent.

When Liz enrolled her son for kindergarten she told the principal that he was bilingual, that English was his second language. The woman countered by saying she didn’t think it would be too much of a “problem.” A problem, Liz thought, seething. Of course, it wasn’t a problem a few months later when the son of a Venezuelan ambassador interviewed at the school and they needed a translator.

Stereotyping by political buffoons “Mexicans are all rapists” may seem like merely the ranting of an opportunist but unfortunately it’s far more pervasive in our society than we blush-faced Euro-types want to admit. And don’t get me started on racism.

And while I’m at it, next time: My Pakistani Nanny.

Making Mole in the Modern World

April 18, 2016February 27, 2022JT Twissel 14 Comments

Traditional Mole Grinding Tool

Making Mole Sauce, Part Two (Part One here)

After giving up on the mortar and pesto, we turned to Liz’s antique Mixmaster to grind the chilies into dust. However, after five minutes of grinding the mixture looked like cornflakes and the machine began overheating. Liz unwrapped a present she planned to give her daughter for Mother’s Day: an electric coffee grinder and so began stuffing it with chilies.

Alas, it soon became apparent that between the smoking mixmaster and the tiny coffee grinder we would be pulverizing chilies until the end of days. Luckily I knew where to find a much more powerful mixmaster and a substantially larger coffee grinder.

Modern day poblano chili grinders!

“You’re not taking my babies to Liz’s house!” My husband said.

He adores his gizmos. Almost obsessively and Liz, well, Liz has no patience with a machine that doesn’t obey verbal orders. He went on to catalogue all the things we’d lent her which came back a little wonky.

“I won’t let Liz touch it. I’ll do all the grinding myself.”

He didn’t believe me but when informed no Mixmaster equaled no mole sauce, he relented. I returned to Liz’s house and we commenced our never ending chili grinding operation.

Step 2: Roasting the spices, fruits and nuts

Once the chilies were finally pulverized, it was time to work on the other ingredients: hazelnuts, almonds. raisins, pecans, cinnamon, garlic, sesame seeds, anise, and plantains. All of which would need to be roasted until they were fragrant.

As Liz roasted, I pulled apart garlic. I love garlic, I really do. But peeling garlic, oh my, do your fingers get sticky.

When we were young mothers I envied Liz. I was divorced and struggling in a community were misfortune was treated like rabies while she lived in a sprawling ranch-style house on a hill. Her husband was an attorney specializing in environmental concerns, her large close-knit family always around for family dinners and impromptu babysitting, her children were invited to all the parties mine were not. So when her family adopted me and my son as a part of their extended family, I smiled and pretended things were not as bad as they were for me. I always assumed the same women who pretended not to see me when I went to school events, welcomed Liz into their fold because, unlike me, she hadn’t caught the misfortune bug. Apparently she was as a good a pretender as I was.

Ah, the things we do not see. Until Liz was 30 she was a legal resident of Mexico, having come to this country at age 5. She graduated college and worked for the state for twenty years but, even after she got those citizenship papers, she still felt like an outsider.

“Remember Miss Crap?” she asked as we were roasting away.

Miss Crap is what she calls our boys’ kindergarten teacher. Her real name was Miss Trap.

“Sure.”

“Remember how we all had to go in and help her out once a week?”

“Yeah.”

“You know what the bitch had me doing?”

Miss Trap generally put me in charge of an art project. I always assumed it was the same for Liz. “No.”

“Cleaning the damn windows!”

Ground chili powder on top of the nut/raisin/spice mixture.

After filling the house with their heavenly fragrance, we dumped the spices, nuts and raisins into the Mixmaster and let ‘er rip. Unfortunately the raisins proved to be a problem. They don’t grind very well. We ended up with a mixture the consistency of lumpy peanut butter.

And there was another problem. The plantains were not ripe. “I’ll call Pat and have him buy some more plantains,” she said.

Pat, Liz’s husband, had been MIA most of the morning. After she reached him, he called back several times, unable to find plantains anywhere.

Our hands were chapped and bleeding. Our wrists aching from that damned mortar and pestle adventure. “Oh crap, I’ve had it,” said Liz. “Let’s have a glass of wine and call it a day.”

I didn’t argue.

Stay tuned for the final episode – will Pat find ripe plantains? Will Liz and Jan figure out how to turn raisin goop into powder? Or will their mole turn out to be mole paste?

Anyone have a suggestion as to how to grind roasted raisin goop?

Making Mole Sauce

April 15, 2016July 21, 2021JT Twissel 18 Comments

Liz and I on another of our adventures – coaching softball, something about which we knew NOTHING!

When my friend Liz announced she was going to make mole (pronounced mole-lay) I offered to help. The process of making mole takes at least a day, even in Mexico where there are special mills for chili grinding so I saw this as a chance for us to spend some time together. You see, her life is in constant flux and I’m always writing, blogging or taking care of my elderly mother so mole-making would force us each to take a day off just for ourselves. In fact, Liz is so busy I half expected something to come up which would postpone our adventure, maybe forever. But, miracle of miracles, it did not.

Here’s what a commercially made mole looks like:

It’s actually a powder which, before serving, is mixed with crushed tomatoes and freshly grated dark chocolate and then served over meat (generally turkey). I suppose it could be served over cheese enchiladas, for you vegetarians, but from what I’ve read, it was originally developed to disguise the taste of bad meat.

The last time Liz made mole was in Mexico with her aunt. At that time they’d roasted the chiles and de-seeded them before taking them to a professional chili grinder. Her aunt was from Puebla, one of the cities claiming to be the mole capital of the world.

This is a BIG bowl of roasted poblano chiles – it took us an hour and a half to slice and de-seed all these buggers!

By the time I’d driven to her house, Liz had already roasted the chiles over her gas range. The smell of burning chiles hung over the small enclave of houses on the hill where she’s lived peacefully for twenty five years.

However it wasn’t always a peaceful co-existence. The day she moved in there was a knock at the door. A middle-age woman stood on her welcome mat, a disconcerted look on her face. “You don’t look like a Mexican!”

Without missing a beat Liz fired back: “Well, let me go get my sombrero and serape! Then maybe I’ll look like a fucking Mexican.”

I think the neighbors got the point.

Step One: Preparing the Chiles:

Without much adieu we set to the task of pulling apart the chiles to remove the seeds. You don’t want to leave the seeds in as they are as hot as Hades and they do not grind properly. While we processed the chiles we gossiped and giggled and complained about our husbands, the key ingredients of mole making.

Here’s what our fingers looked like after all that work.

Luckily it washed off.

Next came the task of grinding the chiles to powder. Unfortunately we don’t have any nearby professional chili grinders. Here’s what we had:

Traditional tool used to make mole. You’ve got to be kidding Liz!

It took about two seconds before we realized neither of us had the wrist strength of Liz’s ancestors.

We had to come up with another plan. Next: Grinding Chiles in the Modern World. In the meantime – chiles are just one of the twenty or so ingredients used in mole. Without googling, can you guess some of them?

My Heart is a Map

April 8, 2016JT Twissel 35 Comments

The other day I ran into an interesting post regarding whether or not to include maps in works of fantasy and science fiction. Apparently some readers hate them. Not me! In fact, I’ve even considered adding them to my books, Flipka in particular.

Who didn’t love tracing Bilbo and Sam’s route as they tried to save Middle Earth?

The first edition I owned of the Lord of the Rings trilogy contained several maps which had the effect of further loosening my grip on reality. Thirteen years old and I still believed in elves and fairies. And there were maps so Middle Earth had to be a real place, right?

I wasn’t alone. There were thousands of us running around demanding to be called Arwen, dressed in medieval garb and smoking pipes filled with something other than tobacco. Of course, Tolkien was mortified by our behavior however it’s the price of success. Unless you’re a total narcissist, fame is a beast you can’t control.

I was surprised to read that many of Tolkien’s descendants considered Peter Jackson’s movie version of LOTR a complete desecration of his work. I’m of two minds. I’m a big fan of Viggo Mortensen but he was not my Aragorn. My Aragorn was a bit more – dare I say it – effeminate. (You have to remember – I was just exiting the Justin Bieber years.) My Aragorn did not have facial hair and looked a bit like Cary Grant, my then favorite movie star. Can you image Cary Grant as Aragorn?

The fact that we all have our own Aragorns and Arwens made it fool-hardy to try to interpret those books in film (with real humans!) and so for the most part I cut Jackson some slack. Gandalf was perfect, the Nazgul terrifying and who didn’t root on the Ents? Go get ’em trees!

Sometimes you need a map just to keep track of all the places and names in a book or television show. For example, the Game of Thrones:

Be honest, did you have trouble keeping track of the seven kingdoms? Course I probably should have read the book before getting hooked on the television series…

My real passion however is antique maps, particularly if the place in question has special meaning for me.

This is a map of Monson Massachusetts circa 1879 which is around the time my great grandparents decided to make it their home. The drawings on the bottom are of the town’s finest establishments: Greens Hotel, the Reynolds Woolen Mill and Merrick, Fay & Co. Straw Works. All sadly no longer in operation. Old Monson hangs on the wall of my bedroom and greets me each morning with a kiss from those idyllic days of ice-cream floats and evenings spent watching Lawrence Welk with my grandparents. I never thought I would ever miss all those cheesy performers or the bubbles (talk about fantasy land!) but sometimes I wish I could jump into the map and return.

Heidelberg Germany circa who knows! The inscriptions (upper right) are in Latin and difficult to read.

I bought the above map of Heidelberg Germany on a magic night long ago. We don’t get that many magic nights. Each and every one should have its own map.

If you had the chance to purchase an antique map of a special place, where would it be and why?