Vacations, Verizon, and Injunctions

Vacation happened.  Yes, it's true. We took off in our loaded-to-the-gills SUV in a driving rainstorm, and it didn't improve much for the next five days.  Despite a thorough round of thunderstorms, we enjoyed doing nothing much for a week, reading tons of books, playing cards, and doing puzzles. I know, the most boring vacation on the planet, and it was, in all honesty, not what we'd planned. Hello, sun, sand, gentle lapping waves? Where were you?

But it's all good. We got out of town, and that's a plus in the dog days of August.  I'm not sure all the work it takes to get out of the house is worth it, (who knew there was so much laundry to be done before locking the front door?), but so far, it's a draw, and I'm fine with that.  I just wish I'd been disciplined enough to get some writing done.

Came home with one burning questions, however, and that is: how will an injunction on eight Samsung phones affect their current owners? My daughter has one on the banned list (and I'm betting the injunction is entered sooner rather than later), so we visited our neighborhood Verizon store yesterday to see what the contingency plan is.  I mean, if I were Verizon and I was expecting to lose Samsung phones from my inventory, I'd know what was what.

Nope. No one in the Verizon store had any knowledge of the Apple v. Samsung lawsuit, its outcome, and the pending request for an injunction.  We still don't know if apps will be available for the phones on the  hit list, if repairs and parts will be accessible, etc. Consumers, buy a Samsung phone at your own risk. Verizon ain't watchin' out for ya.

I'll get off my soap box for the moment. More brewing, but I must go pick up all the trash the dogs pulled out of the waste baskets.  They weren't happy about going on a doggy vacation of their own, and have been letting us know is several unsubtle ways for days now.

How would you feel? Creative Hijacking

First, mea culpa for not posting in a while. Life has been crazy, as in five hours of sleep is the norm, and the rest of the time I barely have time to blink.  It's slowing a bit, thank heavens, and I actually got about six hours of snooze last night! Progress!

I've been thinking about this post for a while. As I've said before, I'm a fan of the first four, maybe five, Craig Johnson LONGMIRE mysteries.  The character, Sheriff Walt Longmire, is a man of infinite patience, deadly aim, sharp intellect, and great melancholy. In short, he's a man I'd like to meet.  The mysteries are good - the first three are really a trilogy - and character-driven. My cuppa, for sure.

Couldn't wait for the A&E series to start. Despite the fact Katee Sackhoff looks nothing like the dark-haired Italian deputy,Vic, I was willing to go along with the casting. But the stories...whoa there, pardner.  Not a one bore a resemblance to any of the novels. A series has to have more than five or six stories, sure, but couldn't they have used some of them? Then lo and behold, last Sunday's episode centered around some white teen-agers who raped a developmentally disabled Cheyenne girl. At last, I thought, a plot line I recognize! It was going to be fun to see how they dramatized it.

Only they didn't. Not the novel plot, that is.  Didn't like it. Then I realized how they've changed Longmire's character, and that what's bothering me the most. He's churlish now, almost juvenile in his pettiness. Downright mean to his daughter. The real Longmire would never snap at Cady. Never.

And then there's the new plot line involving Longmire's dead wife. Everyone who has read the novels know she passed away from cancer, leaving a huge hole in her husband's life. It seems A&E has decided she was murdered, and Longmire kept it from their daughter. Bleeech. My mouth tastes bad and my head hurts. Why mess with the character and the basics of the books? 

I realize when you sell your book to a production company, you pretty much give them carte blanche, unless you're Nora Roberts.  But really, did A&E have to mess with what was a really good mystery series so drastically?  I feel for Craig Johnson, but maybe he's fine with all that sc**wing around with his creative work.  Me, I'd be hiring lawyers and going to war.

Nobody messes with my peeps. And my characters are my peeps, make no doubt about it.

Tragedy at Pocono

The tragic death of a fan and injuries to eight more as the result of a lightning strike in the stands today has brought incredible heartbreak to their families and and host of questions. Deepest condolences to the families.  I wish I knew why Nascar didn't warn the fans about the approaching storm,  since the weather people were frantic about the danger. It's more than a person can bear to think.

Yes! The Seekers is up!

After a long haul of re-reading and tweaking, playing with different covers and titles, I'm am so happy the first Mythmaker western is finally available on Kindle and Kobo.  (I have yet to figure out B&N.)  The Mythmaker series centers around Beth McFarland, army daughter and sister to Noble McFarland, army scout, and their lifelong friend, Johnny Two Hats, also a scout.  When Beth is captured by the Kiowa on her way back from school in the East, Noble and Johnny race to find her before she's killed.  Little do they know how resourceful she is.

As the Kiowa and Comanche, Johnny's mother's tribe, raid that summer for cattle and coups, Beth finds strength in forgiveness.  As she prays for the recovery of a small Kiowa boy, her only friend, she is healed of her anger at her captors and finds she is now an accepted healer, a woman of note. 

Johnny rejoins his tribe to try to track down Beth, and in so doing, discovers he is more Comanche than white.  Noble, heading another direction to rescue his sister, is struck by tragedy and pain, but also an unexpected love.  Their search for Beth leads both men in paths in their own lives they had never imagined possible.

As the tribes gather for the Medicine Lodge Treaty, Beth, Johnny, and Noble reunite one final time. Their lives will never be the same.

Bad Apple by Barb Morgenroth

Am halfway into Barbara Morgenroth's BAD APPLE, a YA about a girl who has tried to hide from her crazy non-relatives, ever since her father died and left her to be raised by his nutty wife, her stepmother, and her lawless, vicious, and crazy children from another marriage. Only Aunt Maude, not really her aunt, is around to give her respite from the dysfunction.

When an older friend, Paul, who taught Neal to play the fiddle, is murdered, Neal's life switches into high gear, despite her best efforts to step off the Truly music train. Read the book and you'll know what I mean. Morgenroth's writing reminds me of the best of Lisa McCann, and she's deft and sure-handed when it comes to writing teen-aged girls.  I can't wait to finish it, yet on the other hand, I don't want it to end.

Westerns and Me, Part Trois

         In my last post, I forgot to mention a super book called People of the White Mountain.   I have no idea if it's still in print - I found it a long time ago at the Smithsonian book shop - but it's a first hand look at Native Americans and what happened to them. 

        There's nothing like seeing where history happened. We drove to Ft.Sill, Oklahoma, (the hottest wind on the planet) to see Geronimo’s grave, and the reservation there, where we ate fry bread. The Cherokee Reservation in North Carolina was a sad picture of casinos. In San Angelo, Texas, we visited Ft. Concho, where the Buffalo Soldiers under General Grierson fought the Kiowa and Comanche. It's privately owned now, but you can feel how hard life must have been. We tracked down other forts across Texas, some of them nothing but piles of stone in the middle of some field with a weathered Texas State marker. In a way, these sites are the lost Roman ruins of the United States. For someone who grew up riding old Roman roads across the Middle East, this was quite a revelation.

         After all my research, I came to the conclusion that since history is written by the winners, I’d write from the viewpoint of the losers. There's a line in Last of the Dogmen where Barbara Hershey's character says (paraphrasing here), “it was inevitable that the Native Americans would lose their land. It’s how it was taken from them that’s horrible.” I wanted to show the horror of being a displaced people, starving, on the run, and finally being forced into giving up what and who they were as a free people.  If you want a chilling first-hand view, read the history of this time from original orders and letters by William T. Sherman, to what the Kiowa chiefs said at peace conferences.

            So what about American films in the Western genre?  Their heyday is over, but some can be found hanging around on cable on on DVD.  American films I consider the best in portraying the West of myth and anti-myth: The Searchers and Thunderheart.  The Searchers portrays John Wayne as unheroic for the first time I can ever remember.  He’s determined to find the little girl taken by the Comanche, so he can kill her because she’s “turned” Comanche. (The Cynthia Ann/Quannah Parker story film-ized.)  The brutality of the Comanche (and they were vicious in war) is shown, as is the stark landscape of the settlers.  The treatment of women by their families after they were captured is shown in a film with breathtaking beauty and honesty.  Another duck-out-of -water story for the captive Natalie Wood, but also a story of survival and understanding.  The camera shot from inside the shed where John Wayne’s (married to another man) only love has been raped and killed is stunning. Classic loner western hero who is really a dinosaur in his own time.

            Thunderheart never fails to hold up.  A modern western, at its heart it’s a murder mystery.  However, the surrounding portrayal of the hopelessness of modern reservation life, its alcoholism, its struggle to retain its tribal identity , and the violence that was perpetrated by the federal government in the name of sovereignty is dead on when you look at the real-life situation on the Oglala reservation, the AIM standoff, and the incarceration of Pelletier for the killing of an FBI agent.  A story of injustice never rectified, it should be seen by anyone who thinks reservations are hotbeds of wealth coming from casinos.

            

Women who are going places. . .

Start at Hollins! The class of (mumble, um, mumble) at our Reunion this past June, standing on the steps of the Admin building. I'm the redhead in the middle of the last row. (Not really a redhead, but hey, redheads have more fun).

Hurrah for a liberal arts education! Hurrah for women's colleges! Proud to be a Hollins alum.

No football scandals at a women's college. So there.