I love spicey soups but need an Alka Seltzer chaser

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Food, writing2 Comments

When I came inside from yard mowing around lunchtime today, I poured a glass of Celtic Ale. Robbie, our indoor/outdoor cat who thinks anything on my TV tray belongs to him, tried to get the glass away from me. So Lesa poured a little in a saucer and he turned his nose up at it like that wasn’t the same stuff I had the glass.

What he does like is the really hot (spicey) Jazzy Jambalaya soup from Campbell’s. I have it with late-night movies but often need an Alka Seltzer as soon as I finish it. If I leave any in the bowl, Robbie jumps up on my TV tray and licks it all up. No chaser. No hairballs. No crazy behavior. What’s wrong with this kitty?

According to Campbell’s website, “This ready-to-eat soup is loaded with antibiotic-free chicken meat, Andouille sausage, rice, and cooked ham, plus veggies and a mixture of flavor-packed spices. Let’s not forget: our fill-you-up soup is also blended with a tasty cayenne pepper sauce that makes it a must-try for any Cajun food fanatic!”

I love Cajun food, so the soup works for me even though you probably won’t find it on the menu at the Atchafalaya Restaurant in New Orleans. They also serve Creole food, but I won’t hold that against them!

At one time, our family had a share or two of stock in Campbells. So, whenever somebody asked if we had anything to do with the soup company, we could shrug and say, “But of course, we do own stock.” But that’s long gone, so I can mention the soup without it being a conflict of interest.

—Malcolm

Voice-over monologue in film noir

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Film, writing2 Comments

Film noir is famous for its sarcastic, metaphor-filled voice-over monologue that often shows just how cynical the protagonist is about life. I thought of this while re-reading Ruta Sepetys Out of the Easy which gets the style and ambiance of the New Orleans French Quarter just right. I appreciate this line about Willie, the bordello madam: “The voice was thick and had mileage on it.”

One of my favorite lines comes from the former TV series “Early Edition” (1996-2000) about a guy who knows stuff because he gets the newspaper a day early: “The fog was as thick as hash-house oatmeal and twice as cold.”

Two silhouetted figures in The Big Combo (1955). The film’s cinematographer, John Alton, was the creator of many of film noir’s stylized images. – Wikipedia

As “Private Eye Monologue” says, “The signature narration style in Film Noir. A bored-looking, world-weary, the utterly cynical detective (hardboiled and/or defective) with his feet on the desk meets a Femme Fatale, while the voiceover gives us his mental play-by-play:” She walked through my door like a tigress walks into a Burmese orphanage — strawberry blonde and legs for hours. No dame her age could afford a coat like that, and the kinda makeup she had on gave me a good idea how she got it. She had bad news written on her like October of ’29.

The 1946 film “The Big Sleep”(Bogart and Bacall) by Raymond Chandler/William Faulkner, and others, is one of the more enduring noir films because of the stars, author, and director, Howard Hawkes. Chandler’s lines are memorable within the genre: “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts,” “I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter nights,” and “Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.”

Wikipedia describes Night and the City as “a 1950  film noir directed by Jules Dassin and starring Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney and Googie Withers. It is based on the novel of the same name by Gerald Kersh. Shot on location in London and at Shepperton Studios, the plot revolves around an ambitious hustler who meets continuous failures.” One can’t help but notice: This is like the Greyhound station for DEATH!

From “Murder, My Sweet,” we get: “Okay Marlowe,” I said to myself, ‘You’re a tough guy. You’ve been sapped twice, choked, beaten silly with a gun, shot in the arm until you’re crazy as a couple of waltzing mice. Now let’s see you do something really tough—like putting your pants on.’“

From the “Lady from Shanghai”: “Maybe I’ll live so long that I’ll forget her. Maybe I’ll die trying.”

And “Key Largo” “When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses.”

According to Wikipedia, “Farewell, My Lovely is a novel by Raymond Chandler, published in 1940, the second novel he wrote featuring the Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe. It was adapted for the screen three times and was also adapted for the stage and radio.” I like the 1975 version (classified more as neo-noir) with Robert Mitchum the best: “It was one of those transient motels, something between a fleabag and a dive” and “Moose never would have hurt her. It didn’t matter to him that she hadn’t written in 6 years. It didn’t matter that she turned him in for a reward. The big lug loved her… and if he was still alive… it wouldn’t matter to him that she’d pumped 3 bullets into him… What a world.”

There’s no way to sum all this up except to say that anyone who loves noir has already gone over to the dark side.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the pseudo-noir thriller Investigative Reporter.

Sunday’s who-knows-what’s-in-it HASH

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Potpourri
  • The oldest of my granddaughters starts high school this fall. In trying to learn more about the place, I visited the website. What a mistake. Seemed Greek to me from the curriculums to the clubs. We had chess club, math club, and physics club. They have clubs like Taylor Swift’s music club which sound more like Facebook groups than H.S. clubs. Sigh. Her school begins with 9th graders, the system I’m used to.
  • I think I read most of the novels I buy two or three times. This week it’s Kristin Hannah’s Night Road. Since it came out so recently, I thought I might remember everything that happens before it happens. But, so far, so good, even after reading this excerpt from the description: “Jude does everything to keep her kids out of harm’s way. But senior year of high school tests them all. It’s a dangerous, explosive season of drinking, driving, parties, and kids who want to let loose. And then on a hot summer’s night, one bad decision is made. In the blink of an eye, the Farraday family will be torn apart and Lexi will lose everything. In the years that follow, each must face the consequences of that single night and find a way to forget…or the courage to forgive.”
  • As a journalism school graduate, I found this story in the Guardian discouraging: “Broken and distrusting: why Americans are pulling away from the daily news“ This excerpt sums up the situation: “The Reuters Institute revealed last month that 42% of Americans actively avoid the news at least some of the time because it grinds them down or they just don’t believe it. Fifteen percent said they disconnected from news coverage altogether.” In short, the right thinks the news is untrustworthy and the left is overwhelmed. In recent stories about these trends, some say the growing lack of interest in local news has kicked the foundation out from under the entire medium.
  • When your regular shows are on hiatus, we fall into the depths of nonsense by watching HGTV where people are buying houses with price tags that sound like they belong in San Francisco and/or feature open-plan houses where the entire main floor looks like a gymnasium with little clusters of stuff that remind of my high school’s career day. Many people say they entertain a lot and seem to want a home that reminds them of a cruise ship or a nightclub.  We think most of these house plans, to use a technical term, are horseshit, especially when I see that our entire house will fit in the dining room/kitchen.
  • If you have a cat, does it like cantaloupe? Robbie always wants to know what we have on our plates. We tend to eat off of TV trays rather than sitting in the dining room, so it’s easy for him to walk across the furniture to see what we have. He wants to drink out of our water glasses; that causes a tug of war over who gets to hold the glass. Twice lately, I had the rind of a finished cantaloupe on my plate and wondered what he’d do with it. He licked the things for ten minutes. This seems a bit odd. Cats!
  • You can still get a copy of my publisher’s latest anthology for free on the Thomas-Jacob Publishing website. I have two short stories in it, and the rest of the crew has some fun stories and poems in it as well. The Things We Write shows you the kinds of things we write. (Duh) And, being free, you have nothing to lose. I had so much fun with the Smokey Hollow short story, I’m not expanding it into a new novel.

—Malcolm

Click on my name to see my website. The books shown there have not been pre-licked by the cat.

‘The Last Stand of Fox Company’ by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

I’m fairly sure I’ve read all of Jeff Shaara’s novels from his two novels about Gettysburg up to his novel about the Korean War The Frozen Hours. Before I read it, I had already included a backstory about two characters in my Florida Folk Magic Series that included service in the 1st Marine Division in Korea. Since my work in progress, Pollyanna Hoskins includes these characters, I’ve placed one of them with Fox Company tasked with guarding a strategic pass.

Here we have 234 marines holding off 10,000 Chinese soldiers. This is mentioned, of course, in Shaara’s book that covers the entire war. I wanted more specific information about the brave and determined men of Fox Company. There’s plenty of information online, but The Last Stand of Fox Company is very specific about Captain Barber’s three platoons and how they faired day by day against a vastly superior force in a harsh Korean winter when the temperatures were -34 °. While water and food and feet were frozen, the low temperatures saved some of the wounded whose wounds were frozen, keeping them from bleeding to death.

The entire campaign around the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea is called “frozen Chosin” for a reason.

Using the terminology of the day, my character is still “shook” in his life in the years after the war. “Shook” meant “to go mental,” later described as shell shock and then PTSD.  After reading the account of Fox Company’s defense of a major road at Toktong Pass, I’d expect all of them, the few left standing to be shook.

From the Publisher

November 1950, the Korean Peninsula: After General MacArthur ignores Mao’s warnings and pushes his UN forces deep into North Korea, his 10,000 First Division Marines find themselves surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by 100,000 Chinese soldiers near the Chosin Reservoir. Their only chance for survival is to fight their way south through the Toktong Pass, a narrow gorge that will need to be held open at all costs. The mission is handed to Captain William Barber and the 234 Marines of Fox Company, a courageous but undermanned unit of the First Marines. Barber and his men climb seven miles of frozen terrain to a rocky promontory overlooking the pass, where they will endure four days and five nights of nearly continuous Chinese attempts to take Fox Hill. Amid the relentless violence, three-quarters of Fox’s Marines are killed, wounded, or captured. Just when it looks like they will be overrun, Lt. Colonel Raymond Davis, a fearless Marine officer who is fighting south from Chosin, volunteers to lead a daring mission that will seek to cut a hole in the Chinese lines and relieve the men of Fox. This is a fast-paced and gripping account of heroism in the face of impossible odds.

When I was in elementary school, I saw many headlines in the daily papers about the Korean War. Needless to say, I didn’t understand the big picture. But the war has fascinated me in part because it’s more or less forgotten. But, it occurred just a few years before my novel-in-progress Pollyanna Hoskins is set. So, one way I’m adding depth to my novel is by including characters who were in Korea, the man as a marine corporal, and the woman (Pollyanna) as a marine nurse serving in MASH units and field hospitals.

The title of Jeff Shaara’s book comes from a poem by one of the marines on Fox Hill:

The long nights. Too long.
Time stops, frozen in place.
I beg the frozen hours for the
Sunrise.
Too many many memories 
Ice and Death
I’m ready to join my friends.

And so, I can’t help but include bits and pieces of this war, partly because the heroism there has been mostly forgotten and partly because it’s a major factor in the world where my characters lived in the early 1950s.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the Vietnam War Novel “At Sea.”

Thoughts while re-reading Ruta Sepetys’ ‘I Must Betray You’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, writing

If your reading speed is faster than the amount of money in your wallet, then you’ll end up re-reading many of the books on your shelves. I often re-read books by John Hart (The Hush), Kristin Hannah (The Nightingale), Pat Conroy (The Prince of Tides), and Ruta Sepetys (Salt to the Sea). I think I’ve read all of these authors’ books multiple times because they are well-written and speak to issues larger than their plots.

As I re-read I Must Betray You, I find myself simultaneously captured by the story it tells and horrified at the life Romanians led under the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu who led the country until the revolution of 1989. I remember this from news reports, though I had no idea how pervasive the expectation was that “good citizens” were all expected to inform on each other.

As a Libertarian (not a Republican using the term falsely), I think we already live under too much surveillance from highway license plate readers that track who goes where to NSA listening to conversations that are expected to be private. But, as I read I Must Betray You, I think maybe things here are either much better than my worst fears or are heading in the direction of my worst fears.

The New York Times reviewer said the novel is “A gut-wrenching, startling historical thriller about communist Romania and the citizen spy network that devastated a nation, from the #1 New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of Salt to the Sea and Between Shades of Gray.”

My thoughts are: (a) Why does a dictator “need” to deny so much freedom to his/her country’s citizens? and (b) How do so many people put up with their government’s atrocities for so long?

From The Publisher

Romania, 1989. Communist regimes are crumbling across Europe. Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu dreams of becoming a writer, but Romanians aren’t free to dream; they are bound by rules and force.
 
Amidst the tyrannical dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu in a country governed by isolation and fear, Cristian is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer. He’s left with only two choices: betray everyone and everything he loves—or use his position to creatively undermine the most notoriously evil dictator in Eastern Europe.
 
Cristian risks everything to unmask the truth behind the regime, give voice to fellow Romanians, and expose to the world what is happening in his country. He eagerly joins the revolution to fight for change when the time arrives. But what is the cost of freedom?
 
Master storyteller Ruta Sepetys is back with a historical thriller that examines the little-known history of a nation defined by silence, pain, and the unwavering conviction of the human spirit.

Of course,  I know one thing Cristian Florescu doesn’t know. The dictator and his wife aren’t going to stay in power because a revolution is coming. But even if he knew, could he hold it together like a person in a storm who knows the storm will ultimately move out to sea? Yet, I appreciate his spunk, his beliefs, and the risks he’s willing to take. I think all of that goes beyond what most of us in the U.S. would be willing to do to get back to the kind of government the founders intended.

You may feel totally different things as you read this book. That’s fine. The point is, that in addition to providing us with a good story, Sepetys provides us with a lot to think about in the countries where we live.

—Malcolm

Ken Follett’s sobering novel ‘Never’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn reviews, writing

Many authors, especially lately, have written books about the end of the world as we know it. I think the first novel I read about an apocalypse in our world was the 1949 Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. In spite of its theme, which seemed all too real to me as a junior high school student–I liked the novel a lot.  Stewart’s antagonist was disease.

Today, I see a lot of novels in which the culprit is climate change, and that’s to be expected. Early on, I read Hiroshima (1946) by John Hersey, On the Beach (1957) by Nevil Shute, and countless nuclear war-related novels since. Those books probably influenced my belief that Truman was wrong when he dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

To avoid getting into the realm of spoilers here, I’m not doing to tell you how Never ends. Yes, it does involve the prospect of nuclear war. People seem to be of two minds about how a nuclear war might start. Primarily, people presume Russia or China will suddenly attack the United States or whatever rationale brings either country to that point. Others presume the war would be started by a rogue nation like Iran or North Korea that has nothing to lose by harming the United States and other western nations.

What’s sobering about Follett’s novel is how small and/or isolated provocations, many of which involve a so-called “appropriate response” can escalate into a potential conflict that might involve nuclear weapons. In this scenario, it doesn’t take long for countries that have responded to attacks with conventional weapons to respond with a measured conventional weapons response to suddenly be on the brink of a war much larger and more difficult to stop.

This well-written, realistic novel provides readers with a lot of food for thought. It’s one of those books that’s very hard to stop reading even though there are chores to be done and bedtime to consider.  I hope some of those who read it will be impacted as I was impacted by Hiroshima and On The Beach and resolve that there’s never a justifiable reason for using a nuclear weapon.

—Malcolm

 

What do you do when you’re not writing?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

Once an author begins a new novel or short story, there’s no such thing as “not writing” even when s/he isn’t actually writing. The characters are always present. The need to gather more information is equally present. It’s hard to explain this to people who see me reading online or a paper book (yes, they still exist) and assume I’m taking a break. Nope, doesn’t happen.

My novel in progress is called Pollyanna Hoskins. If you read Thomas-Jacob Publishing’s free anthology, then you saw the first chapter of this novel in my “Smokey Hollow Blues” short story. Before I wrote that short story, I’d been trying to write another novel set in Glacier Park. But, I couldn’t do it. My novels set in the park (there are three of them, I think) were too far back in time for me to just plug into their matrix and start writing about the high country again.

However, I’d already written four novels in my “Florida Folk Magic Series,” so it was easier to step back into that world again. So, I’m writing about north Florida again. And a CIA operative. And the Klan. And a bit of conjure. I grew up in this world, so it’s home–for better or worse. I know it sounds weird, but the stories a writer writes choose him/her rather than the other way around.

I thought I was done writing about the Florida Panhandle. Well, I guess not. As it turns out, an author is never really done writing about anything.

—Malcolm

FAILED BILL BROUGHT BY ARIZONA DEMOCRATS WOULD HAVE RESTRICTED WHAT TEACHERS CAN TEACH

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Politics, writing

Imposing Content-Based Restrictions on Teachers Through Law Violates Free Expression

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Pen America, July 5, 2022

AZ Capitol Building – Wikipedia Photo

(NEW YORK)– Since Republican state legislators began proposing educational gag orders in January 2021, votes on these legislative restrictions on the freedom to read, learn, and teach have generally broken down along partisan lines.

Last week, however, 11 Democrats in the Arizona House of Representatives introduced HB 2634, an unsuccessful bill that would have banned from school curricula “any textbook or other instructional material…that contains any matter reflecting adversely on persons on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, religion, disability, nationality, sexual orientation or gender identity.”

In response, Jeremy C. Young, senior manager of free expression and education at PEN America. said: “Government-imposed censorship of students and teachers is always the wrong approach, no matter the motivation, and no matter which side of the political aisle it comes from. Educational gag orders have no place in our schools, period.

Had HB 2634 become law, Arizona teachers might have been unable to assign materials that depict historical or literary instances of discrimination to educate students about why discrimination is wrong — such as the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision or the works of Pulitzer Prizewinning author Toni Morrison. We should never seek to impose content-based restrictions on teachers through the force of law. Doing so violates the principle of free expression and impoverishes student learning in the classroom.”

—Malcolm

Sunday’s succotash (who invented that stuff, anyway?)

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Potpourri
  • As you can see by the AccuWeather graphic, our heat wave in North Georgia has eased up a bit, leaving us with an outdoor sauna bath without anyone handing out fresh towels and cold beer. At present, my desktop weather simply says “rain off and on.” Other than not having fresh towels, we’re also not having grass dry enough to mow. The yard’s not looking its best right now. About all I’m doing outside these days is pulling the wheelie bin out to the road and going out to buy groceries (which ensures that I’ll have to keep moving garbage from the house to the road).
  • I was happy to see this news: “Novelist Jesmyn Ward has become the youngest person ever to win the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.” Her words are well controlled and still carry magic in them. According to Michael Shaub’s story on Kirkus, Ward said, the award “not only because it aligns my work with legendary company, but because it also recognizes the difficulty and rigor of meeting America on the page, of appraising her as a lover would: clear-eyed, open-hearted, keen to empathize and connect.”
  • Currently, my light reading has taken me to Ken Follett’s Never (2021). I must confess I hadn’t read anything from him since The Pillars of the Earth. His work still reads well, though it tends to be long and (in Never, at least) includes multiple venues that take a while to get used to. If we can trust Steven King, and I think we can (more or less), he said, “Ken Follett can’t write a bad book, and Never is his best. It’s terrifying. I defy anyone to put it down once the last 150 pages are reached.”
  • We’ve been watching old movies at night because most of our “regular shows” have taken their usual long summer vacation. How long has it been since saw you Sydney Pollack’s neo-noir “Absence of Malice” from way back in 1981? Since my wife and I started out as journalists, it was fun seeing an old-style functioning newsroom. As Wikipedia notes, Variety called it “a splendidly disturbing look at the power of sloppy reporting to inflict harm on the innocent.” I always liked Melinda Dillon, Wilford Brimley, and then, Paul Newman wasn’t bad either. I kept expecting Sally Field to show up looking like the flying nun or Forrest Gump’s mom in which she’d explain the whole box of chocolates thing to Paul Newman.
  • On a completely irrelevant side note, our local Food Lion grocery store has finally started carrying Newman’s Own salad dressings and other products. The product shown here not only tastes great on a tossed salad but also works as a great marinade for steak. According to the company’s website, “When Newman’s Own first began, Paul Newman declared that 100% of the profits would go to good causes. The mission continues today through Newman’s Own Foundation. In total, more than $570 million has been donated to good causes since 1982.” By the way, Newman wasn’t wearing that crown in the movie.
  • Those of you who know me, whether you’ll admit it or not, know that I’m a fan of poet/engraver William Blake (1757-1827). So I was happy to see a story about him in The Marginalian, “The Only Valiant Way to Complain Is to Create: William Blake and the Stubborn Courage of the Unexampled.” It begins on a disturbing note: “In the first days of a bleak London December in 1827, a small group of mourners gathered on a hill in the fields just north of the city limits at Bunhill Fields, named for “bone hill,” longtime burial ground for the disgraceful dead. There, in what was now a dissenters’ cemetery, the English Poor Laws had ensured a pauper’s funeral for the man who had died five days earlier in his squalid home and was now being lowered into an unmarked grave.” He saw what others seldom see and probably don’t understand–especially in 1827. The story notes that Blake was the man Patti Smith would celebrate as “the loom’s loom, spinning the fiber of revelation” — a guiding sun in the human cosmos of creativity.

So, I ask you, where else can you read about Sally Field, salad dressing, and William Blake in the same post?

—Malcolm

Knights Templar in Illinois

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

In my footnote to yesterday’s post about the Knights Templar, I mentioned that my grandfather was a commander in the Illinois Commandery of the Knights Templar in the United States. Since he was the boss, he could take us on tours of this building, including the basement where the pool tables were. (My two brothers and I could never beat Grandpa had pool or billiards.)

As an elementary student and a junior high school student, I was too young to understand the heritage of the organization or the goals of its current incarnation. The Knights Templar is a York Rite organization and, while it’s associated with the Freemasons now, it seems doubtful that there’s any provable direct link between the ancient Knights Templar and the modern-day Masons.

I joined DeMolay, associated with the Masons, while I was in junior high, and then had to drop out when its meetings conflicted with my Boy Scout activities to which I already had committed.

When my grandfather moved to Florida, he was disappointed in the Masonic organization there. I suspect they were a craft lodge, a level he would have already passed through and, therefore, quite different than what he was used to in Illinois.

My first crisis of conscience came when I left DeMolay for the Boy Scouts (which Grandfather approved of, reminding me I was already on that track). My second came when I was older and joined the Rosicrucian Order (a mystery school) rather than the Masons. I didn’t have time for both, and the “mysteries” seemed to be where I belonged.

Even now, I wonder. Would my life be different if I was a “Sir Knight” of the Knights Templar? I’m sure it would be. And yet, I have no excuses for the journey I chose. There are many routes leading to becoming oneself. And as Frost said, “I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”

My novels usually focus on the transformation of the main character. That’s my main focus because I have been there over and over–as have we all.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “The Sun Singer,” a hero’s journey novel.