Category Posts

Death and the little thing called life

JT Twissel 30 Comments

The other day a friend  told me about a Netflix show, the Frankenstein Chronicles, that interested him.  So I decided to check it out.

If you haven’t been following the series, first of all, it’s set at a time when London was literally a sewer, they burnt coal with no restrictions, and poor families tossed children they couldn’t feed out into the streets to fend for themselves. In addition,  Sean Bean (aka the beheaded Ned Starke from the Game of Thrones) plays a detective tasked with finding the “monster” who’s been mutilating dead children and grotesquely stitching them back together again. It’s critical to find this person because when Jesus returns to earth those of us who’ve been good will get to sit next to him but only if we have a body to reoccupy.  Preferably one that has not been chopped up or in other ways violated.  Jesus is evidently a bit picky about who he keeps company with.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  Jan, you’ve gone off the nut once again.  So let me explain.  In the 1800s, medicine was evolving into a science. Doctors were on the verge of many advances to help prevent premature deaths from childbirth to plagues.  But only, dot dot dot, if they could get a better understanding of human anatomy and to do that they needed, dot dot dot, corpses. The corpses were happily provided by prisons and poor houses as those blokes weren’t going to sit next to Jesus anyway. But innocent children were off-limits.

Ned Starke to the rescue

As to why the preoccupation with death, remember life wasn’t so great back then. This fact was seized upon by preachers promising a meet and greet with the big JC, thereby making death the reward for a virtuous life.  So, in the Frankenstein Chronicles, when mutilated children’s bodies begin littering the shores of the river Thames, fingers are pointed at the scientific community.  It must be doctors dumping their botched experiments, thereby depriving children of a wonderful after life experience. Our hero has a different theory but I doubt I’ll stick around to watch all three seasons (sheesh) just to find out if he’s right. To me these Netflix series’ start out with an interesting concept but then somewhat rapidly become expensive soap operas sans the cheesey acting.  However, the producers and screen writers have done a brilliant job of depicting the environment that spawned early horror classics such as Frankenstein and Dracula. 

As a writer I’m not sure we’re always aware of the environmental and societal forces shaping our work. I doubt either Mary Shelley or Bram Stoker thought “I’m surrounded by death so I might as well write about it.”  But maybe I should speak only for myself.  What do you think?

I have to say something, sorry

JT Twissel 33 Comments

It seems necessary to speak of it, even though it is unspeakable. Not to say a word and to continue writing posts absurd and silly, to keep things light and easy, knowing that in a couple of days it will be old news, well, that’s the smart thing for a blogger to do, isn’t it?  Besides, what more could I possibly add to the gun control debate? Nothing that hasn’t been said a thousand times before.

“There’s people that eats up the whole earth and all the people in it.”

“Then there’s people that stand around and watch them do it.”

When every reasonable suggestion to curb mass shootings receives responses so idiotic that they bugger the imagination and killings just keep on, the tendency is to give up. To accept the fact that there are people in this world with no empathy. Until their child, in a fit of rage or depression, kills dozens of kindergartners with a semi-automatic weapon that they swear was locked up and they become instant pariahs in their communities. Until they’re forced to change their names and move far away. Then they’ll get it. But then it will be too late.

“We’ll own this country someday. They won’t even try to stop us.”

As I was writing this post I heard that one hundred students from Florida are on their way to the state capital to try to talk to the legislators. Instead of thoughts and prayers, let’s send them something they really need: COURAGE, STRENGTH and LOVE.

The images in this blog are from the movie Little Foxes,  based on the play by Lillian Hellman. 

The Beans versus the Cheese Steaks

JT Twissel 28 Comments

This should be Philly’s mascot

While watching the Superbowl last night I began to wonder how teams come up with their mascots. For example, the Patriots.  I’m sure the people in Philadelphia are every bit as patriotic as Bostonians so how come Boston gets that name? 

Not to mention that there are probably as many eagles in Philly as there are bears wandering the suburbs of Chicago.  And let’s face it: New Orleans is hardly full of saints.

So why don’t cities rebrand their teams to promote what they’re famous for?  Chicago could become the Pizzas; Tampa could become the Prunes, and Los Angeles, the Diet Pills. 

This would lead to all sorts of tasty matchups, like the Portland Granolas versus the Seattle Oysters or the Milwaukee Pretzels versus the Minneapolis Cheddars.

How about your local teams?  What would they promote?  Me, I would be rooting for the San Francisco Sourdoughs as they battle Atlanta Peaches.

Licking wounds that won’t heal is called being a writer

JT Twissel 36 Comments

For over a year now, I’ve licked wounds that refuse to heal. I’m a failure. My books, despite kind reviews from friends and colleagues, didn’t sell well and so my publisher went out of business.

Okay, perhaps it wasn’t totally my fault.

Many Booktrope writers immediately republished after being kicked to the curb. But I thought it was a good opportunity to address the confusion some readers had over the ending of my great masterpiece, Flipka. My plan was re-introduce sections the original editor suggested I remove. They were my precious little babies, so beautifully written and funny and close to my heart. But she killed them.

Well, y’all can probably guess the folly of that sort of thinking.  Yes, according to not one but two editors, reintroducing those sections resulted in an even smeller pile of dog shit. Total and complete manure, not worthy of dirtying your boots on.

Those of you who are writers, I can feel you cringing in sympathy and I thank you for it.

Anyway, it would have felt good to quit. Stamped the whole effort with a Failure, get over it label and burnt all copies of Flipka past and present in the fireplace.  I could have invited all of my friends over for KFC (who am I kidding, I don’t have any friends) to witness the celebration of my failure and they could have said things to me like “I could write a great story” or “Why did you ever want to be a writer in the first place?” and fed greasy chicken bones to the insatiable flames of failure. Probably a few of my imaginary friends would not have survived that particular party.

But I’m haunted by the characters I created. I can’t leave them in a simmering pot of pooh, now can I?  So back I go to writing. I may return now and then if I have something I think worthy of your time to read but otherwise, it’s back to the agonies for me.

I do plan to keep up with those bloggers who have been so supportive of me.  Thanks, thanks and thanks again.

Today I declare 2018 has begun, said no one sane

JT Twissel 26 Comments

I’ve packed away the ornaments and washed and stored the Christmas plates, thus I declare that today, January 15th, the holidays are over and the new year may begin. The last of my extended family has been feted and fattened and now, with no more excuses at my disposal, I will attempt to get back on track. 

It used to take me a full day to decorate for the holidays and a full day to pack everything away. Not any more.  These days I hang a few treasured memories on a plastic birch tree. 

The cheery group below from Finland remind me of the many times they saved me from mountain trolls dwelling in impenetrable forests around my castle.  A gift from a family friend, they’re as old as they look.

This snowman, made from shell, was sent to my children from Hong Kong.

This tin spiral is a toddler magnet.  I bought it at a country store in New Hampshire.

My dining table centerpiece is a gold foil wrapped cardboard star which hangs from an archaic candelabra.

Sometimes I jazz my sculptures up with scarves and tams.  Below are busts of my children done before my wrist weakened and I could no longer handle clay. 

So, everything’s back to normal and it’s time to get back to work. But not today.  Not because I’m honoring Dr. Martin Luther King but because it’s my father’s birthday and he’s been gone for over a decade now. They may have shared the same birthday but Dad would have joined a nudist colony before he’d have joined a protest march.   

Tomorrow, yes, tomorrow I’ll get back to work. Any advice as to how I’ll accomplish this miracle?

Bakers White with Flour

JT Twissel 1 Comment

Duke Miller's avatartin hats

She is gone now into the shadowlands of my tearful breakdown and I follow encased in a poor recollection, one of denial and regret.  I will see her at play and in the way she held her hands just so around her face.  Pirates sailed across her wake and the water rose through our house floating the pots and pans into the neighbor’s hands.  Oh, I can hear the other kids chasing down her name.  We are all the same in those dark halls, where mirrors abound, yet I know not what to do and I feel so alone, so ashamed.  I never protected her from the demons in the sand, the ones squeezing her form and I  left her there in the room somewhere circling a distant star, like a million pieces of a shattered, cold moon.  Please deliver me if you can.  Take me as a spirit, a…

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Me and Jane and the Zombies

JT Twissel 33 Comments

My Jane Austen dolly

It has become evident that I’m not going to get any serious writing or editing done before the end of the year so I’ve decided to rift on the most boring thing about me: I’m obsessed with Jane Austen and will watch just about any production inspired by her work. Especially when I’m not feeling well. She can always squeeze a happy tear out of me.

In my defense, I’m not quite as looney as many so-called Janeites who dress in bonnets and empire waist dresses and have tea parties in the garden. 

But I did watch Pride and Prejudice and Zombies all the way through. Actually, other than the fact that the Bennett sisters are zombie killers, the plot is fairly close to the original.

That’s not always the case with P & P.  In the first film version (1940), the producers changed the time period to the late 1800s so that Greer Garson could dress and act more like Scarlett O’Hara and less like, well, Elizabeth Bennett. Then they compounded their tomfoolery by casting that obnoxious gasbag Sir Lawrence Olivier as Darcy. But it could have been worse. They originally tried to cast Clark Gable in the part. 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the character of Fitzwilliam Darcy cannot be played by just any actor.  He or she has to be able to capture a character who is beyond stinky rich and prickly as a cactus but also kind and generous. Not to mention sensitive. But not too sensitive. In the 2003 version of P & P a little known Scottish actor plays opposite Kiera Knightley. She does a decent job as Elizabeth but he looks at times like he’s going to cry.  No, no, no.  Darcy is a Englishman gentleman and they do not cry!  Stiff upper lip and all that!

I also do not want to see Elizabeth and Darcy as a bickering married couple, as in the 2013 film Death Comes to Pemberley.  Even if Wickham is accused of murder and Darcy is forced to defend him for reasons that make no sense, Darcy and Elizabeth do not bicker.  They all out fight. Then they make up. Darcy gets wet, and, well, you know.

Speaking of wet Darcys, in the 1995 PBS miniseries, Colin Firth did the impossible. He pulled off Darcy. And for his efforts, look what they did to the poor guy.

They turned him into a swamp monster.

Happy New Years everyone!

Where were you?

JT Twissel 17 Comments

I remember exactly where I was when it happened: On a rocking chair trying to get an obstinate six-month old to go to sleep. The television was on but I wasn’t really watching the football game. That is, until Howard Cosell stopped his play-by-play to make an announcement he felt couldn’t wait. John Lennon was dead.

The baby sensed my shock and settled down. I put him in his crib.  Then I went into the next room, turned off the light, crawled into bed, and covered my head with  blankets. I stayed that way until noon of the following day. Only the week before I’d heard Lennon on the radio, returning from a five year hiatus from the lusting, grasping hands of adoring fans.  He needed to get off the carousel, as he said, and learn to bake bread.

Although there are many great songs on his last album, Starting Over, I wish he’d become a baker instead.  Many of you were probably in diapers (or perhaps not even a twinkle in your father’s eyes) and have no memories whatsoever of those dark days that followed his death but for me, it was the end of a dream.

Merry Maple Leaves

JT Twissel 22 Comments

Here we go again. The Christmas fandango; a month of planning for the perfect holiday fully aware that swimming the English Channel in a hailstorm would be an easier miracle to pull off.  So it’s no wonder that a certain grimness hangs overhead this time of year for everyone but the very young, and every tragedy seems so much worse.

This year’s tragedy was the slaughter of the Sufis. I’ve known Sufis. They’re  peaceful. They follow the teachings of all the prophets. They don’t proselytize.

But it’s the holidays and so we light the cinnamon candle and make Christmas lists.  Should we send cards this year or should we go paperless like our eco-friendly friends and send mass Happy Holidays emails?  No that’s too impersonal. Sorry trees.

Whenever I feel grim about the mouth I take a page from Moby Dick and embark on a voyage.

I generally don’t need to go far, just round the block and over the hill and back to the colors in my own backyard.

How do you handle holiday blues?  Or maybe you don’t get them.