hello to 18 million veterans

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life

Tomorrow is a day for parades that honor the 18 million former servicemen and women who–these days–volunteer to give of their time and perhaps their lives on behalf of the country. Like many people in my generation, I remember when the day was called Armistice Day because that was the name we first heard as kids like Boulder Dam instead of Hoover Dam and tin foil instead of aluminum foil. The name was officially changed to Veterans Day in 1954.

In 2016, President Obama signed the Veterans Day Moment of Silence Act urging Americans to observe a two-minute period of silence at 3:11 p.m. local time. On Memorial Day, the moment of silence occurs at 3:00 p.m. local time. In both cases, the silence honors those who died and those who served.

Many of us are veterans, have family members who are veterans and know others who are veterans. While the day doesn’t lend itself to family gatherings like Thanksgiving, acknowledging veterans in some way seems to be preferable to using the day to attend sales of one kind or another.

In 2019, the Cohen Veterans Network commissioned a poll and learned that 49% of veterans don’t like to be thanked for their service. In general, veterans feel uncomfortable being thanked. Better, perhaps, to ask where the person served and/or what their service branch and job were. One can always donate or provide volunteer support to organizations that support veterans. If you search online, you’ll find many charities focused on veterans, including those trying to help former servicemen and women cope with PTSD.

I think we owe it to ourselves to find out why so many veterans are homeless–possibly 40,000 at this point–and work toward ways of solving this national embarrassment. That number appears to have decreased during the last several years.

Pick what works for you. Being involved serves the greater good, I think.

–Malcolm

I Voted. Now What?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life in general

Like most Americans my age. I’ve been brainwashed to believe that if you don’t vote, you’re scum. Maybe that’s true. Or not.

I tend to vote. When you vote in Georgia, you get a sticker like the one shown here. It’s mainly for people who will be out and around and can wear it proudly on their shirt or blouse to remind others that they’re flirting with becoming scum if they don’t get one of these stickers. Legally. That means not buying one from some guy on the street. I think the street value is 50￠. That tells that people don’t mind looking like scum and might even be proud of it.

Since voting is seen as a duty, you don’t a bell or get any wings when you vote. Maybe you stay up late watching the election returns and find yourself getting angry when the scum candidates win.

This year, Democrats voted because they were scared of “the red wave.” Republicans voted because they were supposed to cause “the red wave.” The red wave never came. The Republicans took over the House as expected and the Senate is even, pending several runoff elections including my state which, as Reuters said, “Runoff election in Georgia may decide fate of U.S. Senate, again.” This year, we’ll have a December 6th runoff between incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker.

I may not vote. I don’t like either candidate.  Since I don’t, I safely voted for the Libertarian candidate to keep from having to vote for either of these guys. Now they’re back again in a runoff. Sorry guys, better scum than voting against one’s conscience.

My wife and I haven’t talked about the runoff yet. If she votes, I’ll drive her to the polls and sit in the car to read more of Kathy Reich’s Déjà Dead. Then my wife will come home and wear her sticker around the house to prove that I’m lower than whale shit. But I won’t care because whale shit nourishes stuff in the oceans while these Senate candidates will if elected, ruin the country in their own devious ways.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of contemporary fantasy, magical realism, and one satire:

Chef Wanted: Low Pay, Few Benefits Other Than Resume Material

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Food8 Comments

Help Wanted: Personal Chef

Please supply references.

Personal chef and grocery shopper.

Prepare regular meals (including late-night snacks) and keep the pantry and fridge full.

Must not cook meals that look like those on Hell’s Kitchen, Master Chef, and Chopped.

No bloody rare steak.

No puree to decorate plate.

May be required to produce two dinners each night, standard Southern cooking for my wife and Seafood and Cajun dishes for me.

May need a pickup truck to haul beverages from the store to the house (sparkling water, bottled water, Coke, Wine, Scotch). The chef will be allowed two drinks per day but must supply his/her own mixers.

No accommodations other than an old chicken house.

Chefs who have worked at the sous chef level or higher at any or all of the following New Orleans restaurants will be given an automatic second interview: Brennans, Antoine’s, and Galatoires. Experience at the Biltmore Estate Restaurant in Asheville, NC is also desirable.

Chef will be terminated immediately if any dinner looks like it came from IHOP  or Golden Corral.

We eat off of TV trays while watching TV. Try to adapt to that.

Training at a top-of-the-line culinary school is a must.

We do not want to see any meals that originated in the home-economics tradition of the 1940s and 1950s.

Note: We measure the levels of alcohol in all bottles nightly.

No girlfriends or boyfriends allowed.

Easy work, we think, in a farm environment in NW Georgia. Your resume may include the fact that you were the personal chef of the author of the Florida Folk Magic series.

–Malcolm

Sunday’s goodness knows what

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Potpourri
  • Florida State University in Tallahassee, where I received my BA, hasn’t been the powerhouse football team for some years it once was, so I’m happy with every win, especially against in-state rivals Miami and the University of Florida. Last night, the Seminoles beat the Miami Hurricanes  45-3. Meanwhile, Houston won the World Series. I should mention that the term “Seminole” is not a mascot but the name of the team with the written permission of the never-conquered Seminole Nation. FSU and the Seminole Nation have been working together for decades on cultural and educational programs.
  • Many southerners won’t use fifty-dollar bills because they don’t like Grant’s picture on them. If I could, I would avoid using the twenty-dollar bill because Jackson’s picture is on them. He killed Indians in Florida with a vengeance and is the architect of and the force behind the inexcusable Trail of Tears. Fortunately, his picture is scheduled to be removed by 2030. That’s not soon enough for me. However, time is needed to design the anti-counterfeit system for the currency.
  • The next book on my reading list now that I’ve finished rereading The Tiger’s Wife is Inland, also by Téa Obreht. The novel was released two years ago which shows how far behind I am in my reading. In its review, “Entertainment Weekly” wrote, “What Obreht pulls off here is pure poetry. It doesn’t feel written so much as extracted from the mind in its purest, clearest, truest form.” I hope that turns out to be the way I feel about it. None of you should be surprised when I say that I’m always attracted by good novels written in the magical realism genre.
  • NPR’s interview with author Richard V. Reeves Men are struggling. A new book explores why and what to do about it caught my attention because there’s not much of a focus on men these days because men are (rightfully, I think) considered to be part of the problem. Any problem. I think some people go too far with that point of view, but that’s the current climate. According to NPR, “Titled Of Boys and Men, the book explores the economic, social and cultural shifts that have forced men to the sidelines of the economy, including the loss of jobs in male-dominated fields such as manufacturing and the influx of women into the workforce, diminishing the need for men to serve as providers for their families.” This book should be the basis for some interesting conversations. Reeves believes that “The danger with even raising the specific challenges of boys and men is that it will be seen as a distraction from ongoing efforts to help women and girls. I think that’s a false choice. Partly as a result of the changes of recent decades, we both can and should now pay attention to both sides of gender inequality.”
  • I see Yahoo “news” because one of my e-mail accounts in on their system. Every day, I see headlines like these: “Salma Hayek Took Everyone’s Breath Away in This Daring & Curve-Hugging Ombre Gown at the LACMA Gala” and “Kendall Jenner’s Skirt Slung So Low, It Showed off the Hem of Her Sheer Bodysuit Underneath.” My first response is “Who cares.” My second is, “Why does Yahoo have a daily feature story (or two or ten) about celebrities wearing revealing outfits?” I have no answers for such things.

–Malcolm

If I’d Been a Career 8000-meter Peak Mountain Climber, I’d probably be Dead by Now

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn mountains

I started reading accounts of mountain ascents and attempted ascents when I was in junior high because my father, who climbed mountains in college as I did later, had most of the classic accounts. My target peak was K2, the second-highest mountain in the world, and considered more difficult than Everest. The fatality rate on that peak is about 25%.

In fact, like the successful American climber Ed Viesturs, I wanted to summit all fourteen of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks without supplemental oxygen. There have been many bad years on these mountains in the Himalayas and Karakoram ranges, so why go there?

I have no answer, really, because I never made it to any summits higher than Colorado’s 14,0000-foot peaks, some of which my father climbed years before.

I did have an opportunity to trek in to the Base Camp at Everest, but the money fell thought at the last minute.

You have to push yourself on these climbs and know when to trust your instincts when everything about the mountain is against you, especially above the so-called “Death Zone” at 26,000 feet, above which the atmosphere isn’t conducive to long-term survival.

Perhaps pushing oneself is the rationale behind climbing. It was for me because truth be told, one doesn’t have a lot of time for the view. It amazes me, though, how the dreams of a high school student can be just as vital now as they were then. Do you have dreams like that? Things you wanted to do and mourn not doing?

Malcolm

Today, 35K people are blogging for peace

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn war

“When your fight has purpose—to free you from something, to interfere on the behalf of an innocent—it has a hope of finality. When the fight is about unraveling—when it is about your name, the places to which your blood is anchored, the attachment of your name to some landmark or event—there is nothing but hate, and the long, slow progression of people who feed on it and are fed it, meticulously, by the ones who come before them. Then the fight is endless, and comes in waves and waves, but always retains its capacity to surprise those who hope against it.” – ― Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife

(I’m not an official blogger for peace, check Mimi Writes if you want to be a member and use the official logos.)

The quote from Téa Obreht suggests one reason why war is so difficult to stamp out.

My introduction to the realities of war came from reading All Quiet on the Western Front when I was in high school. I found this novel to be so graphic, I could not comprehend how anyone who fought in a war, observed a war or read that book could possibly support any politician calling for war. I won’t read it again.

I felt the same way after reading the equally repellant Johnny Got His Gun. “Hawks,” I wanted to say, “this is what war does to people.” Along with many others, I learned about the unnecessary and immoral firebombing of Dresden when I read Slaughterhouse Five. Cynically, I wondered how many of those who raged at Sherman’s approach to war thought what we did to Dresden was somehow justifiable.

We don’t always hear the anguished stories of those who fight and return because they can’t or won’t talk about what happened over there. I’ve written elsewhere that I think the real casualties are those who survive so that they can go through the hell of the battle every night in their dreams. Perhaps we learn a little from war reporting, and later from historical novels and nonfiction accounts. Perhaps if we spent one day in Ukraine, we would become doves forever; but I doubt it.

Dresden, where 25,000 people were slaughtered.

Kurt Vonnegut, wrote in, Slaughterhouse-Five, “You know — we’ve had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. ‘My God, my God — ‘ I said to myself, ‘It’s the Children’s Crusade.'”

And so it usually is. We imagine there’s glory in it. There is not. The idea of glory is the sham that sends the babies off to fight and that celebrates their work if they return. They never return, actually, because they will never mentally escape the slaughterhouse of battlefields and the cities like Dresen that got in the way.

Perhaps if we listened to their nightmares and shared their PTSD, we could become doves forever and–as we used to say (and sing)–“give peace a chance.”

When it comes to a prospective war, your thoughts about the wrongness of it matter.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the Vietnam War novel At Sea.

Etc. and &c.

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life in general, writing
  1. Fabiola Valentín (Miss Puerto Rico 2020) and Mariana Varela (Miss Argentina 2020) – CNN Photo

    According to CNN, “A former Miss Argentina and former Miss Puerto Rico shocked and delighted fans by announcing their surprise marriage on Instagram.” I don’t claim to understand it, but I do like imagining the horror of some who hear the news. In fact, some people will be so ticked off, they’ll probably whine on Facebook that they weren’t consulted. They did check with me and I said it was all right.

  2. Just in case it matters, I’m drinking Scotch while writing this post. I’m usually drinking red wine, but I got so excited about the news from Fabiola and Marianna, I broke out the good stuff.
  3. Our HRV finally starts up now that the dealership sheepishly admitted that they had sent the car out the door without checking the battery–which turned out to be crap.
  4. Yahoo “news” reports that we can “Save on JLo’s Booty Balm and other celeb faves at Sephora’s Beauty Insider sale.” I lived my whole life without knowing there was a product out there called Booty Balm and wish I were still innocent. Seriously, do people need to hydrate their butts? This stuff is supposed to fade imperfections for a “smoother-looking booty.” And, it’s clinically tested, so we know this product is based on science rather than magical thinking. I notice, however, that when I was looking at the Booty Balm ad, I didn’t see any before and after photographs of treated Booty.
  5. Fox News reported that “Biden blasted for new warning about ‘threats to democracy in midterms: ‘Their rhetoric is all a sham'” “During Wednesday night’s address, Biden focused his rhetoric on Republicans, asking Americans to vote for Democrats to protect democracy.” I like the old days when both major parties were trying to protect democracy. My feeling is that both parties have gone over the edge. And so have the news organizations that worship them.
  6. According to the Associated Press, “Musk: People banned from Twitter won’t be restored for weeks.” The story says that “Elon Musk said Wednesday that Twitter will not allow anyone who has been kicked off the site to return until it sets up procedures on how to do that, a process that will take at least a few weeks.” For me, this info is filed under the I don’t care category. I don’t need Twitter to survive.
  7. The New York Times reports that “The New Covid Boosters Are Incredible, and Everyone Should Get One.” I can’t say any more about it because the dreaded paywall showed up before I could read the editorial column. I have no idea whether the author works for Pfizer or Moderna or the CDC. I’m not rushing out for a shot (other than Scotch).
  8. According to a roundtable on The Onion, “As the oldest commander-in-chief in the history of our republic, the current president’s age demands a vigorous discussion to settle the question: Should President Joseph R. Biden run again?” This seems to be the consensus: “So go ahead and spit on me. Strangle me. Strip me naked and dog-walk me across the cement floor on a metal leash. Threaten my wife and children. Hell, murder my entire family. Nothing—nothing—will break my resolve. I will never reveal whether I believe Biden will have the mental and physical ability at 81 years of age to retain the most powerful office in the world.”

Well, there it is, the state of the nation at 4:57 EDT on 11/3/22.

–Malcolm

Rereading ‘The Tiger’s Wife’ by Téa Obreht

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn authors

Several days ago, I posted some ideas that a story happens in a place and can be revisited like any tourist destination. I especially like returning to places filled with magical realism since I often write in that genre. So it is that I decided to reread The Tiger’s Wife which NPR reviewed as Magical Realism Meets Big Cats.

I’m rereading the book now because I wanted to take another look at it before finally getting around to reading Inland, a novel set in the American Southwest.

NPR wrote that “The Tiger’s Wife rests securely in the genre of magical realism, inciting comparisons to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and even Kafka.” The reviewer thought that the ending was too abrupt. I didn’t in my April 2011 review: “The Tiger’s Wife is dark and deep and perfectly crafted, and if you allow yourself to be immersed in it, you will see the blazing eyes of Shere Khan.” The novel won the Orange Prize for Fiction and was a 2011 National Book Award finalist.

From the Publisher

Author’s Website

“Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, Téa Obreht, the youngest of The New Yorker’s twenty best American fiction writers under forty, has spun a timeless novel that will establish her as one of the most vibrant, original authors of her generation.

In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her—the legend of the tiger’s wife.”

–

Téa Obreht was born Tea Bajraktarević in the autumn of 1985, in Belgrade, SR Serbia, SFR Yugoslavia, the only child of a single mother, Maja Obreht, while her father, a Bosniak,[10] was “never part of the picture.” – Wikipedia .

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of Eulalie and Washerwoman, magical realism set in the backwoods of the Florida Panhandle in the 1950s.

Sunday’s mixed bag

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Potpourri
  • The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy has been the perfect book for re-reading on this dour Sunday afternoon. In the novel, we read of the terror of attendance at the “Carolina Military Institute.” So many people–including the Citadel’s top brass, I suppose–saw the 1980 novel as a veiled and not very flattering account of education at the Citadel. So, they banned him from the campus for two decades. Conroy is my favorite author and I much prefer South of Broad and The Prince of Tides to this novel.
  • I can’t remember what online vendor it was, but when they delivered a package at about 7:30 p.m., they sent my wife a picture of the box sitting on the welcome mat. That’s a first. Too bad the photo didn’t include Robbie (cat) standing by the box while glaring at the camera and hissing at the interloper who dared to step up on our front porch.
  • I see this free and downloadable magazine “Learning Justice” from the Southern Poverty Law Center as an excellent chance to consider how teaching should be happening in our schools. According to the center, “Current censorship efforts and attacks on inclusive schools show that education is indeed the battlefield for justice, and the new issue of Learning for Justice magazine highlights the fact that the fight for democracy is built on intersecting struggles for justice.” (Download your copy of Issue 3, Fall 2022 Learning for Justice magazine: https://bit.ly/3gEXeBg ) I’ve been a supporter of the SPLC since its 1971 founding with Julian Bond as its first president.”
  • If you’re a constant visitor on Facebook, you’ll remember seeing photographs people took years ago under the designation of FBT (Fall Back Thursday.) One of my favorite FBT pictures shows what happened a lot when we first moved here since the fence around the adjoining pasture was always falling down.  The most fun comes when the cows get out at night and we all go out to round them up in the dark when we can hardly see them. Seriously, you don’t want these heavy critters in the yard because they create mini-potholes wherever they go. Those play havoc with the riding mower for weeks.
  • In a recent post called A character is alive or dead or both until the scene is written I said that I was avoiding writing a scene because I didn’t want to character to die. I reasoned–as in the famous Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment–that the character wasn’t really dead until I wrote the scene. Okay, I wrote the scene with only three fingers of Scotch to help me make it through the night. Okay, now I can mow I can move on. If my publisher is reading this post, she now knows why I don’t turn out books like hashbrowns at a Waffle House.
  • We recently purchased a 2019 Honda HRV because our 2006 Focus wouldn’t start. So, what happened the first time we wanted to go somewhere in the car? Right, it wouldn’t start. The dealer said to jump-start it and bring it in. They figure it just needs a new battery. We figure: (a) that they should have checked the battery before we drove it off the lot, and (b) that they should have driven over to our house to fix the problem rather than saying, “hey, just dump the sonofabitch off and bring it back to the dealership.” I think my wife told them on the phone that that wasn’t the image of customer service they presented to us when we were buying the car. I think the vibes coming from all those cows damage the electrical systems of cars that have sensitive computer systems.

–Malcolm

Why stuff is worse than it seems

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Journalism, writing

If you follow objective news sources–and that takes a lot of looking–you’ll know more than most people about the issues you’re passionate about. But that would be a 24/7/365 job, and who can spare the time? So whenever I click on a website like Pen America or the National Parks and Conservation Association after a long absence, I always find that the issues these sites track are in worse condition than they seem. I blame Schrödinger for this because stuff getting worse is too scary for me to take 100% responsibility for its status.

Of course, if you don’t look at the websites or read the news, there aren’t any issues. Schrödinger and his cat taught us that. Most the people arguing about issues on Facebook and never checked out the websites, much less read/watched objective news. Experience teaches us that.

Truth be told, I think we can be passionate about a lot of issues, but need pragmatic restraint in choosing which ones to study in depth. I gravitate toward conservation groups and press freedom groups. This morning, I realized that I hadn’t been out to read anything on the Freedom of the Press Foundation site for a while. As the home page says, “Freedom of the Press Foundation protects, defends, and empowers public-interest journalism in the 21st century.”

I come from a family of journalists and followed in their footsteps. But even if I hadn’t, I would still support strong, neutral, and comprehensive journalism. Without it, we’ll have trouble maintaining our democracy because the only thing people would know would be the propaganda that comes from their political party of choice–and the “news” sites that support it blindly.

There’s been a lot in the news lately about the erosion of our freedoms of speech and press. Obviously, I’m aware of that. But when I looked at the foundation’s site, I discovered that stuff is worse than it seems.

  • Outrageous social media laws await Supreme Court
  • In its quest to censor war reporting, the Russian government has dismantled all semblance of press freedom
  • Newsworthy leaks under attack in LA
  • Congress has a historic chance to protect journalists and whistleblowers in this year’s defense authorization bill
  • Supreme Court ruling limits paths for journalists to hold federal officers accountable
  • The extradition of Julian Assange must be condemned by all who believe in press freedom
  • Exploiting tragedy: Police in Uvalde and Buffalo clamp down on free press
  • Why press protections need legislative teeth, in DOJ’s own words

We take our freedom of speech and press as a given. So I don’t think it occurs to us that powerful groups, state and local governments, and federal agencies and individuals are constantly nibbling away at them. Most of us are aware of a lot of this, but cannot always cite specific examples. I look at this list and hope that I can make time to check the website at least once a week.

If things are getting worse, we can only speak out if we’re aware of them and how/why they are getting worse.

—Malcolm