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"This Threat is Real and Serious"

3/25/2020

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             “This Threat is Real and Serious”
             Blog post Number 2 for COVID-19
                      James A. Zarzana
                                  *
[This was drafted a few days ago, so some stats are behind. None have improved.]
                                   *
     I generally use Facebook for keeping up with friends and family. In the best of times, I try to avoid political posts, try not to be snarky, and try to spread humor (and, yes, PR for The Marsco Saga).
     But, these are the worst of times.

       I just “unfriended” someone. The other day, when he posted that the seasonal influenza of 2018 was worse than COVID-19, and that today’s virus was all a media hoax, I had enough. At first I wanted to respond sharply with the facts, then decided just to unfriend him.
      Here is pretty much what I would have said if I had responded.
      The 2018 seasonal flu season was extremely severe, the worst in a long time. It killed 80,000 Americans that year when an exceptionally high influenza toll usually runs about 35,000 to 55,000. The numbers were high that year for several reasons. One, the virus was just particularly nasty. Two, it caught the medical community off guard, especially the experts who make the yearly flu vaccine. Those researchers have to make a “best guess” on what to guard against with the yearly flu. Researchers make their guess months in advance so that enough vaccine can be produced. That year, getting ready for 2018, the guess was wrong. Even people who had the vaccine got sick, which is not supposed to happen.
        But to compare the whole 2018 flu season to the COVID-19 death toll is not a fair comparison. The toll as it stood last Sunday (March 22, 2020) is 348 Americans dead. But it’s a false comparison. 80,000 to 348 suggests to the uninformed and unthinking how much worse the 2018 flu was than our epidemic today. This false analogy is not an indication of the severity of COVID-19.
        And I’ve seen other posts about the COVID-19 being a hoax, a media invention, a Democratic plot. Some deniers say it is all hype and nonsense and panic. That “Big Pharma” is behind it somehow to make us all vaccinate. Don’t believe any such nonsense. The COVID-19 threat is real and serious.
         Here are the numbers that concern the World Health Organization (the WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (the CDC). COVID-19 is highly contagious; you can have it without showing symptoms. During the first week that you have it but are showing no symptoms, you can be spreading it. The first week you do have symptoms, you can also spread it. So someone with the virus, even a mild case, is highly contagious for two weeks.
         The vast majority of those who get COVID-19 will have mild-to-moderate symptoms: fever, fatigue, shortness of breath, cough, and in about half the cases some bowel issues like diarrhea. Most people with these mild-to-moderate symptoms, about 80% of those infected, do not need to be hospitalized or even tested for the virus. They should stay home, avoid contact with your family in your home, rest, and take acetaminophen, not ibuprofen, for fever and body aches. Ride it out in isolation. Wash your hands often and thoroughly.
      These symptoms, by the way, do resemble the seasonal influenza and sometimes a common cold or seasonal allergies. But remember, the contagious person may be infecting the next victim who will not suffer this disease with only mild-to-moderate symptoms. The elderly, those with an underlying medical condition, like diabetes or lung problems, may exhibit more severe and deadly symptoms. Also, this disease is regularly attacking healthy adults at an alarming rate.
       In the end, most Americans may suffer through COVID-19 with only mild-to-moderate symptoms. No doubt. None in this group will need hospitalization.
       Severe cases, however, are another story. About 20% of those infected will be serious cases. These cases begin to show signs of disorientation, a lack of interest in food, dehydration, high fever, serious cough, so much difficulty breathing that the patient may need a ventilator, which means hospitalization.
         Here are the numbers to show just how serious this pandemic is. CDC numbers of the seasonal influenza: Mild season to a severe outbreak: 12,000 to 55,000 American deaths yearly. Note, 2018 was well above that with 80,000 deaths. Typically, 140,000 to 710,000 Americans get the influenza each year so seriously that we need hospitalization. In total, about 9.2 to 35.5 million Americans typically get the seasonal flu. About half of the US population gets their annual flu vaccine, which is the reason only about 10% of Americans get the flu in a severe season. And yes, the seasonal flu does kills its victims, but at about a 0.1% rate.
          COVID-19 is a different virus altogether. Since we have no vaccine, it is hitting us much more widely than the seasonal flu. Here’s the CDC predictions for how the US outbreak may go.         
        In the population of the USA, about 330 million, the CDC and other research centers predict a 40% to 80% infection rate. This is what Governor Cuomo of New York has been saying, and he’s been making some drastic emergency measures based on those numbers.
      Let me take 50% infection rate as a means of explanation. If 50% of us get the COVID-19 virus, then that’s 165 million infected, well above the 9.2 to 35.5 million annually who have the seasonal flu. Remember that 0.1% death rate for seasonal flu? In some countries the death rate for COVID-19 is ranging from 5% to 10%.
      Potentially, then, 165 million may be infected just in the USA. If 20% need hospitalization—that would be about 33 million Americans seriously ill at once. With anything approaching these numbers, our health care system will be overwhelmed, stretched well beyond capacity. To hear governors and state health officials use the word “tsunami” to describe this pandemic is NOT an exaggeration. Our hospitals simply cannot handle even a fraction of 33 million patients. There just aren’t enough beds and ventilators and staff for that. And even at a modest 3% death rate here in the USA, that 50% infection rate may produce close to 5 million deaths.
      The Great Influenza of 1918, the so-called Spanish Flu, killed 675,000 Americans in a country of 120 million. It did so in about an 18-month period. The death rate in the UK in that pandemic was 5%. The death rate in poor counties like Italy and Spain was closer to 10%. My use of 3% death rate for COVID-19 is “low-balling” the predicted death rate.
      Now, I am not trying to cause panic. But I am trying to inform people that this is a serious pandemic. It is hitting everywhere around the globe. Governors who are closing down states are trying to minimize the number of infected cases to decrease the numbers going into the hospitals at once. Five states have now implemented travel bans and business restrictions to stop the spread: California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Other states have imposed some travel and business restrictions. Even some mayors, like South Bend’s, have ordered no unnecessary travel in their municipalities. In some states, bars and restaurants, gyms and movie theaters are closed. No large gatherings are permitted. Many concerts and conferences are canceled. Sporting events and tournaments have been called off. In Indiana, the governor just ordered Hoosiers to stay at home until April 7th. All in an effort to slow the spread of this highly contagious disease.
      And note: There are really no federal guidelines at this point. None. States are having to go it alone.
      I mentioned how little the US Federal Government is doing because it is a serious break with how the Feds have confronted others disasters in the past. President Trump put a science-denier in charge of the federal response. Trump has called this a hoax, a way to try to impeach him, a Democratic plot, and a Chinese virus. He’s blamed President Obama time and again for the failure of his own response.
      Leaders lead. They make tough decisions. They ask the American people to sacrifice and work together to face this. Instead, Trump asked us to believe that it will all go away one day without the federal government lifting a finger. The DOW has yet to believe him. Those companies laying off thousands aren’t buying his spiel.
      The whole country is, and will continue to, suffer from Trump’s lack of leadership.
      I certainly hope I am wrong. I hope the graphs, based on the reality of how the virus hit China and Italy, predicting a tsunami of severe sickness and death in the USA are wrong. I hope hospitals find the beds and respirators and staff and resilience to deal with all this. I hope those laid off from work will not lose their livelihoods and homes and life savings. I hope those young people especially, who seem to think this is hitting just older folks, realize this naïve notion is a myth. In Italy today (NBC News Sunday Morning), more and more young people are being admitted to Italian hospitals; once there, they are dying at the same rate as older victims. 
      Please take this pandemic seriously. Social distance yourself. Only go to the grocery store and if needed the pharmacy. Take your temperature regularly throughout the day to monitor your health. Wash your hands. Distance yourself from others. Don’t watch FOX News, which is downplaying this pandemic and often spreading disinformation. Listen to the best sources, like the CDC and WHO and NPR and serious, legitimate and credible news agencies.
      I hope in a few months I am relieved because this blog’s predictions have been proven to be inaccurate and seriously off base. In the meantime, please stay safe and act accordingly because this threat is real and serious. 

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Italy in lockdown 
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Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York taking the lead in fighting this outbreak. New York is one of the centers of the outbreak. 
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"When the World Used to Be Normal"

3/20/2020

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“                      "When the World Used to Be Normal”
                             Blog post for COVID-19
                                James A. Zarzana
                                           *
            The world is so unusual now that to begin this blog by saying “our lives are no longer normal” seems senseless. First off, aside from COVID-19, Marianne and I are not in our home of 28 years in Marshall, Minnesota, but in a small rental in Michiana, the area along the Michigan/Indiana border near South Bend. We’re here because we have retired from teaching at Southwest Minnesota State University (SMSU), the reason we moved to Marshall in the first place.
           For the past several years, as our retirements approached, we planned on moving back to the South Bend area, since this is where we met and married and lived for a few years. Our daughter, our only child, was born in South Bend, and Marianne’s parents have lived here in Michiana for many years.
During our time in Marshall, we have been in and out of South Bend and other parts of Indiana and Illinois often. Weddings, funerals, holidays, campus visits, graduations, and plain old visits to the grandparents brought us here usually twice a year. Our daughter, Elaine, like us a Notre Dame alum, had her graduation party at her grandparents’ home. We’ve used their home as a base for summer vacations and holiday celebrations. And football weekends, don’t forget about those. Plenty of those.
            And so, it was “normal” to move back here as our Golden Years spread out before us. Except, we’re really transitioning not retiring. We’re pivoting to continue and enhance our writing careers. I have three novels of The Marsco Saga published and am working on the fourth and final book in that series. Marianne has a poetry manuscript she is finalizing for publication and is working on a documentary about Sister Jean Lenz, OSF, a seminal professor and administrator brought to campus to aid Notre Dame in its transition from an all-male bastion to a coed institution.
We once had, and still have, grand plans for our Golden Years.
We arrived here March 1, 2020, with a real estate agent lined up and a list of needs and wants for an affordable condo. How hard can buying a place be?
          Soon after arriving at our temporary rental, news blubs from distant China and then closer Italy filled the airwaves about the coronavirus, COVID-19. But except that it was rampant in an area of Italy where I have relatives, the news was not something worrying us.
          Until Seattle. Until New York State. Until California. Until Indiana and Michigan closed bars and restaurants and schools. Until Notre Dame shut down for a few weeks and now possibly the rest of the semester. Until SMSU extended Spring Break for a week, then moved classes online, and now has canceled its May commencement for the Class of 2020.
          Marianne’s parents are elderly. Both will be in their 90s by summer’s end. Both are in relatively good physical health, but are showing signs of aging. Temperamental signs. Signs that make it difficult to convince them to stay home and not expect us to come over regularly. Marianne goes over as much as is feasible, but dealing with the headstrong is not an easy task.
          Our little rented house is near a bike path where we’ve enjoyed the warm spring. We love walking together anyway, so this path has been our gateway to afternoon walks and talks. Of all coincidences, we are near a dive bar that was here when Marianne was an undergrad at Notre Dame many years ago. In those days, Michigan had a different drinking age than Indiana, and so, dives such as this one were popular. Even before moving here, the bar came up regularly in Murphy-Zarzana lore. A funny story of the innocent antics of a college kid.
            The bar has been shut down for at least two weeks by order of the governor. Restaurants and spas and gyms and theaters are now closed. Notre Dame called on all its overseas students to return home, shutting down a score of international study programs in London, Rome, Jerusalem, and France. The mayor has mandated only essential travel in South Bend, but he may not have the legal power to enforce it.
          We need to eat, so we shop. On March 2nd, on our first shopping trip to Meijer’s, a large supermarket, we couldn’t find any hand sanitizer. Not to worry. We knew people were panicking about just that one item. This weekend, I found the shelves growing emptier and emptier. Soup and TP aisles were picked over. Products were there, just not the selection one expects at a large American superstore. Cleaning products like disinfectant wipes are now all gone.
          I have seen no signs of panic, but the area does have an unusual, uneasy feel about it. A quiet, tense atmosphere. A foreboding eeriness.
         I’ve lived through pre-blizzard shopping frenzies in Minnesota, usually a few each winter. People are generally resigned but upbeat about a few days home with the kids, time to watch some TV, especially if the Vikings were playing down south in Dallas or Miami, even if chicken wings had been impossible to find. I used to joke that pre-blizzard everyone went out for a gallon of whole milk, a superfluous 24-pack of TP, and a loaf of white bread.
         But the Weather Channel always gave a pretty accurate end date of a blizzard. And Marshall would clear the streets. Our snow service would clear our driveway. It took time, but no one worried about everyone, everywhere. No one questioned the word of the government and political leaders about the severity of the weather. You could watch the blizzard on radar, after all.
         COVID-19 is so different. Invisible. Deadly. With spouting denial from those who should tell us the truth. Falsehood and outright lies shouldn’t be policy. Russian disinformation shouldn’t spread as though it were the truth. The DOW shouldn’t crash 30% in 30 days, and Delta shouldn’t ground 75% of its fleet. And then the word from China and Italy. The deaths mounting. No word from countries like Iran and North Korea and Russia that must be suffering terribly but not reporting the facts.
        And worse yet, many people not taking the warning seriously. Florida beaches filled with college students for their last spring break before entering “the real world.” Well, the world just got real. Listen to the news out of NYC, out of San Francisco, places where adults are in charge of public safety.
         And so, here we are. Waiting to buy a new place. Waiting for the count of victims to rise. Listening to the reports that at first stated that “this is only hitting older folks”; reports that then became “mostly those taken to hospitals now are younger.” Wondering if our relatives are sick. Praying.
          It’s not a blizzard, and it’s not lasting only a few inconvenient days.
          Stay safe in this world that is no longer normal. A world in which we do not yet know what “the new normal” is.
          Take care of yourself and others—even if from a safe distance.  
 
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“One small candle in the dark”:          How my posts began

9/17/2019

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​       “One small candle in the dark”: How my posts began

             Occasionally, I am stopped around town by someone who says that they like my daily posts or my humor posts. I am gratified that so many Facebook friends and users look at these posts, which generally come out each evening. Over time, I’ve developed a few followers who routinely like and then share them. Additionally, I’ve actually had several people I don’t know share them. In all this time, I have had no snarky trolling of my posts, mainly I think because I keep these items from being overtly political or negative in their humor.
            I got to wondering if my followers knew the history of these posts. Thus, this blog.
             First off, blogging. I have two websites: www.jamesazarzana.com and www.themarscosaga.com. On each, I try to keep my followers abreast of my writing. I started what I thought would be a weekly blog, “The Eclectic Blog,” way back in 2013. Weekly became twice a month, then monthly. I tried having guest bloggers. I even wrote “blogs” in the voice of my characters trying to get a following going.
            The weekly, monthly, (and frankly) yearly blog became too much. I am, after all, a novelist first and foremost, writing, editing, publishing, and promoting my books.
            I also tried doing live chats. Once more, I started with the high ambition of doing weekly topics ranging from writing ideas and pep talks. I provided lists of writers worth reading like those who explored the theme of, say, World War One.
            Like my blogs, these started with a bang, but soon hit this or that snag, and so I stopped. Perhaps I will restart the live chats again as the launch date of The Marsco Sustainability Project, Book III of The Marsco Saga, approaches.
            During the spring and summer of 2016, when the acrid and acrimonious Democratic primary season was ending and the even more acrid and acrimonious presidential election was beginning, I was adding to the mean-spiritedness, putting up  snarky and disrespectful comments about candidates and voters alike.
            That summer, around late July or early August 2016, I had a change of heart. It was my Road to Damascus. I was sick of all the angry belittling on Facebook, some of which I contributed to or at least reposted with reckless abandon. I was part of the problem. I was ready to just drop Facebook altogether.
            But I use Facebook for PR—in the end, I am still a writer trying to expand my audience and reader base. And, I have family and friends around the world. On any given day, posts on my feed may be in Chinese, Italian, Swedish, or English—subdialects of American, Canadian, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and Swedish-English. They may be from distant relatives, readers from afar, followers, friends of friends, or groups I follow (like sci-fi writers’ groups). Former students who now work or teach around the world end up on my page. It goes without saying, I follow several Notre Dame Fighting Irish Football posts.
            So, my epiphany that summer was simple. I was becoming the worst sort of troll. And, like Joe Fox in You Got Mail, I realized the nastier I got on Facebook, the less I liked myself. I knew I could do nothing about negative posts that came my way except not repost them, not comment about them, and in some case, delete them. But, in the long run, I knew I could really do nothing. . . except be positive.
            That was it. That simple. Be positive.
            Starting in the summer of 2016, at first rather randomly, I began to post here and there a positive message. Generally, I’d say “Here is my post for July something 2016, on kindness, writing, and teaching.” Occasionally, I delved into other topics, like parenting or traveling. Although I have made a few of these post’s images myself, mostly I find an inspirational quote I like, Bing it, and look for a great photo with the quote. Something like this:


            I always write up a bit about it, then have Marianne proof it. (Shout out to Marianne and all others who have the unique skill to proofread. Not my forte.)
            As the 2016 election approached, I posted more regularly to the point where I planned to put something up every day. It grew into a sort of blog, my short comment along with a quote on a background image I liked.
            For the longest time, I made sure I never repeated the same quote, but since I have been doing this now almost daily since August 2016, I have chosen to repeat some images—they are just that good.
            Soon, I was given a quick tutorial about Facebook by Chelsea Lund (www.+Impression.com who helps me with my PR) about linking my Marsco FB page to these posts. Next, I was posting them on my own “personal” FB page and my “Marsco Saga” page. And over time, I began to develop a small following who repost me almost on a daily basis.
            The humor posts sprang up differently. Once in a while, I would post a humorous cartoon, usually one tied to writing. I noticed how much more play via reposts that my humorous ones received. Quick on the uptake, I decided to do two nightly posts, a “serious” one with an uplifting quote and a humorous one.
           For a time, the humorous posts were tied to a monthly theme. September 2018 was teaching. October 2018 was Halloween. During November, with its NaNoWriMo events (National Novel Writing Month), I posted about writing. December was Christmas. January 2019 was science fiction because, as you all know, January 2nd is National Science Fiction Day. (Photo below.)
            In the end, it really didn’t take much to fall into a routine of posting two positive images with my comments, one serious and one humorous. I did take a break last summer, when I traveled to Sweden for the birth of our grandson. He is my youngest Marsco fan. (Photo below.)
           But, since then, I am back on track.
            And it’s become quite a routine behind the scenes. I have jpg files for the posts, a system to keep them in order and keep them from being reused too soon. I have a file with all the images going back to the beginning, one I occasionally dip into for reposting a favorite or timely one. I am sure I will reuse one about autumn, which will be upon us soon. (Photo below.)
           So, there you have it. I am trying to light a candle, and now a second one as well, each night in the darkness of trolling, cynicism, and despair.
            Over time, I moved into using Twitter to post each night. I don’t have many followers there yet, but I’m on the feed. I do get a few comments from folks at times. Mostly, I hear via Facebook.
            I hope you have time to look at my FB page and follow along. “James Zarzana” or “The Marsco Saga” will get to either page.
            If you found this explanatory blog interesting, please like and repost it. And of course, you can always like my Marsco Saga Facebook page. And feel free to repost any or all of my daily posts. I hope you find them insightful and humorous.
            Thanks for reading.  

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The 900-Day Siege

2/11/2019

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        A review of a best-selling, 50-year-old book seems superfluous. Harrison E. Salisbury’s The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad was originally published in 1969. I read it first in 1978 in the year between finishing my MA and beginning my PhD in English. Recently, I reread it, and thus, found that on the 50th anniversary of its original publication, this monumental work deserved a fresh reappraisal.
            First, it is a must for any student of World War II history. And an absolute must for anyone interested in fully understanding the depravity of dictatorships as found throughout the world even today. I have two particular reasons for these assertions, both of them actually background points of this thorough work.
            One, Salisbury makes it clear what the terrors of total war are. In the years since World War II, the Cold War, and even the Vietnam War, society’s memory is clouding over the first-hand knowledge of the abject horror of war. And society may have forgotten the horrors a total war brings to its most vulnerable citizens: civilians, mostly women and children, all noncombatants.
            The encirclement of Leningrad by German and Finnish armies was intended to starve the civilian population. Soon after the siege began, Hitler moved his panzer units, his spear tip for assault, to the south to attack Moscow. He wasn’t giving up on capturing the city of Communism’s birth, which he intended to raze, to wipe from the face of the earth; he was committing a style of genocide. Easier to starve his enemy to death than capture them and be at least somewhat answerable to the International Red Cross and world community for their safety.
            More than 1.5 million Russians died in the 900-day siege, well over 2 million if the causalities leading up to the actual encirclement are added in. All told, Russia lost more than 20 million men, women, and children in their fight against Hitler’s invasion.
            And Leningrad is only one of four major battles that raged in Russian territory and cost Russia so dearly: Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk. Of them, only Kursk was mainly an army-to-army battle, often considered the greatest tank battle in history. The rest battered the civilian population caught between two modern armies.
            The second reason for reading Salisbury is the backstory of two totalitarian regimes: Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Communist Russia. Neither leader actually cared for his people. Their armies were to serve without any concern for casualty rates. In the case of Germany, the Wehrmacht received orders that essentially freed them from any restraints by the rules of war concerning civilians. Death of Russian civilians was expected. To Hitler, all Slavs were a mongrel race, best exterminated by conflict and starvation or used for slave labor.
            For his part, Stalin cared little for his own soldiers and ordered attacks by hordes of unarmed, half-trained units at times when fixed defensive positions with such troops would have been militarily wiser. Nor did the citizens of the Soviet Union fare better under his leadership. Stalin was notorious for engineering famine among the people he ruled as a way of punishing them or keeping them in check. Likewise, in his paranoia, he executed subordinates who failed to carry out his orders or who succeeded and might become a rival to his power. Almost all the civilian and military leaders in Leningrad who held off the Germans and Finns, thus saving the city, were dead at Stalin’s hands, either during or soon after the War.
            Salisbury’s stunning and meticulous work is a testament to the spirit of human survival. And it stands as an indictment of unbridled power, draconian leadership unhindered by empathy, one that can act without a conscience. On the Leningrad front and throughout the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler and Stalin ground humanity to ashes without remorse. Contemporary readers should be aware of such barbarism if only because it is all too often repeated by other dictators.  
 

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The St. Petersburg Siege Museum. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Leningrad has reverted to its original name, St. Petersburg. 
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Hadrian's Wall

9/24/2018

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​Note: this essay was originally written in the summer of 1982 after a trip to Hadrian’s Wall earlier that June. It was never accepted for publication. In March 2018, I found a copy of it in old files I had kept from my graduate school days.
                                                   *
                       Hadrian’s Wall

          “Hadrian was the first to build a wall, 80 miles long,
               to separate the Romans from the barbarians.”
                                   A Roman historian
                                             *
   Hadrian’s Wall has long fascinated me. This rampart, crossing the narrow neck of northern Britain, gently undulates over remote wolds and through fond memories of my childhood daydreams. It rests now taciturn, sporadically overrun by tourist armies, its battlements weather-beaten into a pasture wall. Since boyhood, I’ve always wanted to explore the Wall; while in England doing research for my dissertation, I finally did.
   
For miles, the Wall’s crumbling remains, preserved as a national treasure, furnish outcrop sidewalks across barren moors. Once it rose twenty feet; now it stands hardly four feet tall. In places, at a casual glance, it might appear as merely a cut-stone wall guarding cattle, not an empire. In other still-impressive sections, striding crag-to-crag and commanding a tenable position from horizon-to-horizon, this stonework instantly demonstrates its former dominance: nothing moved in front of it without Roman permission.
  At Steel Riggs, a chain of sheer cliffs, I walked along a ledge where some centurion from the Second Legion once stood watch. Often, he stood guard over nothing. Mostly, he surveyed, as I did, the calm valley below. Periodically, however, on my “watch,” RAF and NATO jets hugged the valley floor in practice bombing runs that evaded radar. I’d seen other jets doing the same maneuvers skimming over Yorkshire moors, miles to the south, the week before. Some places seem made for mimicking war.
     But that day at the Wall, it was difficult, even with the roar of jets in the distance, to imagine this peaceful place ever being fought over, although it was. The Wall was attacked, captured, and retaken several times during the Roman colonization of Britain. For a time, the Antonine Wall to the north in Scotland made Hadrian’s unnecessary; consequently, it suffered great neglect until needed in earnest again by retreating Romans.
     The Wall was not so much the limit of Roman rule as the designated boundary from which the Empire was unwilling to retreat should the tenuously conquered northern British and southern Scottish provinces successfully revolt. In the end, economics as much as war forced the inevitable abandonment of the Wall sometime after AD 367. With the Empire interested mostly in the Continent, Britain—always expensive to garrison—was left to fend for herself. Rome left the isle to the Saxons, Picks, and in the north, the Scots.
     Brought to ruins by eventual disrepair during the Anglo-Saxon period, the Wall still captivates; a horizonal engineering feat not duplicated in Europe until inspiring vertical cathedrals rose above medieval squalor and sprawling castles stretched out from fortified, moated manor houses.     
                                   *
     Seventeen identical forts are incorporated into the Wall; even their latrines are all in the southeastern corner. Strung between these forts stand small guard castles precisely every Roman mile; between these “milecastles” are two less grand but precisely placed guard turrets. No guard point is out of sight of another. More forts (with their southeastern latrines), fortified towns, and villas flourished just north and south of the Wall as well. Rome came to stay, and before leaving, she cut her archeological heritage deeply into the British countryside.
    Nearby, a supply road, the Stangate, is visible in strips here and there: straight, level, and true, unlike its modern, ambling, rolling descendants. A deep ditch, the Vallum, protected the legionnaires’ rear flank from the guile and pilfering of locals. What is now an intermittent grassy gully immediately north of the Wall was once a steep trench, perhaps twenty feet deep. It remains in places where the Wall has been carted away to become a manor’s barn or a “modern” moated tower, or a farmer’s wall. Where the Wall itself no longer stands, some scar or cutting shows its path. Even someone untrained in archeology, like me, can usually tell where the Wall ran, and tell which common walls in the vicinity began as debris from the Wall after it fell into disrepair. I thought, this is Hadrian’s wall, but up here, every wall in part is Hadrian’s Wall.
    Begun in AD 122 by Hadrian’s imperial edict, as much to protect his northern frontier as to give his idle legions something to do, its Eastern two-thirds were made of cut stone. The final third, in the isolated Western reaches, was originally mounds of fortified turf. Years later, this turf section was entirely reworked in stone.
     The wide pathway of the Wall contains more than just military evidence. The remains of temples, arch-bridges, water mills, Roman baths, even a quarry now become a lake, dot the countryside north and south. Bustling with trade, cities like Vindolanda, later Chesterholm, thrived. Villas, aqueducts, granaries—this frontier was intricately employed, commanding troops, ancillary services, camp followers. The Romans in the Wall’s swath lived better (heated homes, hot baths, sanitation) and ate better (a variety of meat and fish, abundant fresh produce, fine wines and oils) than most Europeans until well into the nineteenth century.
    And except for the inconveniences of a periodic rebellion, throughout the 250 years the Romans manned the Wall, it was generally cushy garrison duty. Remote and tedious but hardly a strain.
                                    *
   Alone, I walked atop foreboding, desolate stretches in a cold spring rain, which kept most other tourists away. Only a childhood dream could press me into roaming these abandoned fortified crags. At Vercovicium, the foundation of a fort has been unearthed, and several miles of existing wall, just four-feet high, runs to the west. Remoteness alone probably kept all its stone from being scavenged over the last fifteen hundred years. Then, as now, Vercovicium is peaceful; so much so, that the Romans built an additional gate without all the usual elaborate fortifications to allow for easy exchange of herds and goods in the town’s thriving marketplace. Any fortification can be breached successfully with eager trade.
   At the quarry lake and milecastle at Cawford’s Crag, I dangled my feet from the low wall as I lunched on takeaway Chinese food bought at the local village. In the distance, the Wall straddled the edge of a sheer cliff. I climbed over the impressive ruins at Birdoswald, once Camboglanna. Visitors pay ten pence at a farmhouse backdoor and then wander among its unusual outbuildings: the preserved foundations of a large fort, a water mill, and a bridge. From here, even part of the original western turf wall is still visible in the lush valley below. From Birdoswald west to Bowness little exists of the Wall. Farmers and more recent engineers have reused its stone for new designs, though often for the same purpose.
  Sixteen hundred years ago, this defensive line divided Roman civilization, Pax Romans, from the barbarian hinterland. Somewhere north of the Wall began “the land of Them.” From here south was Us. It defined the known world, the good and the evil. Cycles of security, bounty, and protection, disrupted now and again by loss and inevitable recapture until the final cycle broke. Then all went backsliding into disrepair and disuse: the ever-repeating saga of history. Gettysburg now a quiet park. Normandy reinvaded by tourists every June. Monte Cassino restored. Anzio a quaint fishing village once again. Today, places alive with history but without violence. Part of national heritages and international memory, yet once, signs of division, of tension, of conflict, often of occupation.
  In my reverie as I walked the Wall, I kept wondering who would one day walk our Hadrian’s Walls. Tossing pebbles into the Cawford’s Crag quarry lake, I tried to imagine what of ours today will belong to history tomorrow. Who will hike our iron and concrete curtains, finding them deserted and ramshackled by time. For in trying to stop time, we’re only ensuring it will have its inevitable sway. Every beach house braced against restless tides surrenders to their inevitable conquering.
   I also wondered what of ours would signify our divisions to posterity. What will Watts and Belfast and Beirut show should they ever earn a historical marker, since hate and violence never deceive history? Or are we making our racial and religious and national lines invisible but as lasting as cut-stone? I wondered if relentless time will make all our walls outdated. Will they survive because we changed and outgrew them or because we fell back and dug in yet again?
   Tossing my pebbles, I wondered if anyone would ever toss some into the murky, watery bottom of an abandoned, hardened ICBM silo. 



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LADY BIRD, Sacramento, and Me

2/27/2018

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                      Lady Bird, Sacramento, and Me
                             (Yes, with plot spoilers)
            If you follow my writing, you know that growing up in Sacramento has had a huge impact on my life even 40 years after leaving. I was born and raised there. Came of age there. And moved away for good when I was 28. I left to attend Notre Dame, earn my doctorate, and never lived in my hometown for any length of time again. My parents are buried there as are both sets of my grandparents. My last sibling still living in our hometown plans to move to Oregon soon. But my roots are deep there.
            I have often said that the best time to live in Sacramento was prior to 1968, a watershed year that shifted my city out of the realm of a small town and threw it into the sphere of a metropolitan area. More freeways. More people. More crime and grime.
            Lady Bird taps into the ethos of Sacramento quite well. It resonated with me on two levels. A Catholic school boy (Christian Brothers, Class of ’68), I felt I knew much of Lady Bird’s angst about growing up Catholic. I didn’t have a relationship with my parents like her stormy one with her mother, but I grew up with much unsaid that should have been said.
And the Catholicism of that era was a Post-Vatican II mishmash of old-style sexual fear and damnation plus forward-thinking social justice ministry. I remember being told once by a priest, told seriously, of going to hell for masturbating. I learned later in college psychology class that this was a normal part of growing up. Somehow, too, the social justice message got the damnation taint, so that having a good career and money was somehow wrong. A god with that much eagerness to punish and condemn never squared in me with the notion of a loving God.
            But it was more than that. Lady Bird is at a Catholic girl’s high school based on the school Greta Gerwig, the screenwriter/director, attended. I taught at that school (St. Francis Girls’ High School in real life) before moving away. I didn’t teach Gerwig who came well after my time, but I taught many of the types she depicted. The bright Lady Bird/Christine, who didn’t apply herself because of her internal struggles to come to know herself. To accept herself. Like many of my then-students, she decides being a “good Catholic girl” was fruitless, so she tries to badass herself in with the badass crowd. Quick to find hypocrisy and falseness in others, she fails to check her own drift into lying and hypocrisy as she drops close friends and then engages in meaningless, shallow relationships. It’s an accurate picture. Christine’s life and choices aren’t pretty at times, but they are nuanced and masterfully depicted.
            Her one authentic boyfriend betrays her because of his own lack of trust and honesty. Her badass boyfriend betrays her by being exactly what he is: rich and spoiled, spouting slogans about money and wealth he doesn’t believe or follow, living selfishly with no regard for her or anyone else’s feelings. The poser is consistent in that. He doesn’t give a rip about anyone but himself.
            Through it all, Lady Bird grows up. Painfully, but up.
            And part of that is moving away from home. Taking that gigantic first flight from the nest alone. And finally, in her new life at college in New York City, it dawns on her. What friends have been saying, although boring, is absolutely true—that her mother does have a big heart and does love her. That her mother is nonjudgmental and kind. Christine’s anger at herself blinded her. And all that anger, aimed at her mother, caused the mother/daughter relationship to bite and snarl. Finally, as the thankless Christine flourishes because of all her mother’s sacrifices, the light goes on.
            They are apart now, physically on two different coasts, but closer. And yet, as is the case for everyone, it is not distance that separates them, but silence. Christine calls her mother to admit she loves her big-hearted mom but hadn’t known how much she was loved by her mother until now.
When I left Sacramento in 1978, I was older. I’d pass through many of Christine’s stages. And frankly, some of those of her second, poser boyfriend’s stages. My father was dying. He’d been given 3 to 5 years, and the sands were running out, but he wouldn’t hear of me delaying my life and dreams. Off I went. He died 16 months later, his end coming much sooner than anyone expected.
            But, for many complicated reasons, a silence existed between us. We never talked of his terminal condition, although once when I was teaching at “Christine’s school,” my dad was hospitalized, near death. The doctors told my mother and me to call those who might like to say goodbye. He was that close to the end, but then he pulled through.
            Yet even after that, the silence remained. When I tried to speak of it, he said, “Do you think I’m going to die?” He sounded so like his resilient Sicilian mother who had the luxury of outliving him by 20 years. She lived to be 96.
I often wished my dad, mom, and I had sat down and talked about his approaching end. It would have helped much more than we will ever know. Silence of this type is never helpful. It fosters resentments and regrets, even now.
            In the final scene when Christine breaks her silence to her mother on the phone, she does so by remembering Sacramento. My father and I never broke that silence. But the movie depicts a heart-warming and sincere admission of love by a now-enlightened daughter for her mother.
            Part of this is Christine acknowledging how much she really loved growing up where she did, that she really loved Sacramento. The city has its own charm. Its own spots of meaning and uniqueness. As I watched the film, I loved seeing sights I know so well. Club Raven, a neighborhood bar my uncle and cousin owned until several years ago. Tower Bridge used in the background. Tower Theatre, only blocks from where I grew up. The film brought back memories of my Land Park neighborhood with its zoo and park and Vic’s Ice Cream tucked right in our midst. Yes, Sacramento has much to remember fondly and to love.
             I’m sure, this is what led me to set many Earth-side scenes of The Marsco Saga in Sacramento rather than in some invented city. I know the city and its moods. I can put characters there—even in a future and dystopian Sac City, as I call it—and imagine what the environs would be like. How they would influence the scene. It made writing the work more personal to me. Sacramento State University is in the first three Marsco books. I earned my MA there. The state capitol building and its park, places I often walked, are also in the Marsco world. And, of course, I have a few scenes at Frank Fat’s. If you know anything about the politics of California and its backroom deals, this makes sense.
           Gerwig and I, each in our own way, wrote love stories to Sacramento. Hometowns should evoke that kind of affection. Our mutual town was a good place to grow up, to spread my professional wings as a teacher, and to visit often. Even if I never return, now that my family has moved away, it’s in my bones and lives on. I will always hold it in my warmest memories.
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Jim selling a copy of Marsco Triumphant to Mary Pass at Tower Cafe in Land Park. Mary is a longtime friend and avid reader of The Marsco Saga. August 2016. 
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House in Land Park where I grew up. Much changed and updated. There's a pool in the backyard now. We had an apricot tree, rose bushes, lawn and a shady patio. Fond memories of this house.
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Jim at the main branch of Sacramento County Library downtown near the Capitol the day I gave them copies for The Marsco Dissident and Marsco Triumphant for the special collection of works about Sacramento in "The Sacramento Room." Doctor Who tie-in that day a plus. 
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The Great Lakes Blizzard of                     January 1978                  or A California Boy Remembers      or How I Didn’t Meet My Wife

12/30/2017

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     It’s a little disingenuous for me to write about the Great Lakes Blizzard of January 1978. Here’s why.
    I grew up in Sacramento, California. Born there in 1950, I was 25 and teaching high school when I first saw snow on the ground of my hometown. Before I drove to campus that eventful morning, a boys’ boarding school outside Sacramento, I had to scrape the snow off my car window. I had a pocket full of 3X5 index cards—I was still writing my MA thesis. I used those as a scraper. When I got to campus, the boys and teachers were out playing in the snow, throwing snowballs made of equal proportions of snow and ice and mud.
      Other than a few forays to the Sierras for skiing or sightseeing, one trip to Squaw Valley as a boy for the Winter Olympics, and being at a retreat held in the mountains when it snowed a few inches, I had never really been in anything approaching s-n-o-w. For a true native from Sacramento, snow was a destination to drive to, play in, pile the car with fluffy heaps, and then drive down to the Capital City to show off that snow blanket.
     Real snow, let alone a crippling blizzard, was unimaginable to me, someone accustomed to fog as the worst winter threat. Maybe icy roads, maybe rain storms so severe that some places got localized flooding. But snow? C’mon. That was so Midwestern. So New Englandish. No “Scott of the Antarctic” for this fellow, no sir.
      Life goes on. Teaching high school was fine. But I wanted to teach college. For me, that meant staying in or close to California. In fact, only on a campus west of I-5. Check your maps. That interstate runs Seattle to San Diego. Sometimes hugging the Pacific coast, it stretches out mostly right down the center of California. In fact, it hits Sacramento along the western edge of downtown, but that was just fine.
       I was going to earn a doctorate from Cal Berkeley, UC Davis, UCLA (besides the Dodgers and Disneyland, the only decent aspect of SoCal). At the very worst, I was going to U of Oregon. I’d be a Duck. Or U of Washington. Huskies are fine. Since my MA director was an Oklahoma grad, I agreed to apply there. A good Catholic, I sent Catholic U an application. Also, St. Louis U, a Jesuit campus with a strong English department.
          Then friends stepped in. Two friends actually, both conveniently named Cathy, one with a C and one with a K, called me. Or, might I say, Fate called me via C/Kathy.
        Here’s their story. Both are UC Davis grads, both from California. One from Sacramento, one from Castroville or Salinas. Both had begun grad school, seeing such a time as a grand adventure, akin to a Continental tour after finishing at Oxford or Cambridge. One sojourned to New York City, the other embarked to DC. Emerald Cities both, to be sure.
         We had a mutual friend living in Milwaukee. The two C/Kathys drove from DC/NYC to Milwaukee to visit during Fall Break of 1977. I-80/90 crosses northern Indiana. The Indiana Toll Road—another anathema to someone from California, land of freeways—has only a dozen stops. One is South Bend/Notre Dame. The two C/Kathys decided to see the Notre Dame campus for themselves.
          They were so impressed, ambling across the campus at her glorious best. The campus is thick with deciduous trees that are most splendid in October. Walking there, especially if you are not familiar with crisp breezes and sharp, vibrant autumnal colors, must have been something. Dorothy her-first-day-in-Oz something. Now, this was before cell phones. They found a payphone, one that took quarters, and called me to urge me to apply to Notre Dame.
         My father was onboard in an instant. A Subway Alum, he all but ordered me to apply. It was only a matter of filling out the ND forms, sending my transcripts, writing one more $10 check for the application fee. Wasted money, since I was going to stay in California.
            One last application in. All I needed to do was wait. And wait. And wait. Wait for Cal, or UCLA, or Washington, or Oregon to beckon me, a native born and bred for that rarified West Coast air. No Rust Belt, no Chicagoland, no Midwest acreage of corn, soybean, or hog pens for me. Bears and Cubs? Go to a zoo.
            And wait. Okay, Cal, off my list. Okay, UCLA, snobby as hell, my GRE a mere 10 points too low. Washington and Oregon taking only the best their state had to offer. 
            Then the Blizzard of 1978 hit.
           My father and I were in our living room watching NBC Nightly News. As it turns out, Notre Dame had an NBC affiliate right on campus, and as the stretch from Chicago to western approaches of Pennsylvania came under a thick blanket of wind-blinding snow, WNDU stayed on the air.
           When daylight came, the campus of the Golden Dome, the Grotto, and Touchdown Jesus was two-feet deep in snow with drifts to the second story in many places. Notre Dame shut down for the first time ever. As did Ohio State, for those inclined to compare the records of both schools.
            So, the nightly news had plenty of film, plenty of shots of a campus resembling a white No Man’s Land, with a pedestrian trench-system from building to building. It’s a residential university with most of its undergrads living on campus. After this storm, they were in the midst of a crippling winter wonderland. No classes. Meals somehow provided. Sleighs found to trudge to the neighborhood liquor stores.
            I know this from two firsthand accounts.
       One Ms. Marianne Murphy was then a senior living in Badin Hall. Snowbound, she witnessed and—participated in—that wonderland. (I’ve heard only heavily redacted stories about her antics on these blizzard days.)
            Also, one Mr. Robert Murphy, on campus to conduct business, staying at the campus hotel, the Morris Inn. Ms. Murphy’s father witnessed the lines of liquor resupply being dragged from South Bend proper to campus. No cars moved. No one tried to stop the restocking of dorm commissaries. The cavalry arrived, with beer by the case.
            NBC was good enough to gracefully pan the camera away from these wagon trains of undergraduate ambrosia, but the white scenes were clear enough. Sitting in my living room in Sacramento, glued to my TV, I mumbled audibly, “Who can live in that sh*t?” My father, lowered his newspaper and answered me, “You’re going to go to Notre Dame.”
            My father’s prediction, prayer, admonition, sacrificial offering to the gods has to account for something I’d never imagined. Cal, a bust. UCLA, still La La Land. UC Davis, haughty about taking a local. Washington and Oregon, anti-Californian even then. St. Louis, graciously accepting me but offering me no stipend or teaching assignment. Notre Dame had the foresight—had they spoken to my father?—to offer me a four-year teaching contract, almost like I’d signed with the majors, based on my four years of high school teaching experience and my year as a TA at Sac State while I worked on my MA. I had experience, and they paid me for it. (That’s not often the case, I found out, with universities as I moved around campus to campus, including my own, thank you very much…but a song from another opera, that one.)
            So, the campus came back to life. They sent me my acceptance. I sent in a book order for my first class I’d teach in Fall ‘78. Marianne finished her final semester as the snows retreated. She graduated in May ‘78, moved to Colorado in June. I arrived in August of 1978.
            We didn’t meet until April 1981. But that’s another story.
           And yet the Great Blizzard of 1978 did play into our early days—in lore and myth, if nothing else.
            We live in Minnesota now. I’ve lived here longer than my 28 years in Sacramento. I think of our harsh winters as a type of purgatory the nuns taught me about, freezing off my guilt here for earlier halcyon suns and sins there. Some price to pay.  
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Marianne and I in January 1982, long after the January 1978 Blizzard. St. Joseph's Park, near South Bend, Indiana. Just a normal snow that year. We announced our engagement on Thanksgiving 1982. We were married on the Notre Dame campus on July 2, 1983.
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With Great Power Comes Great                    Responsibility

5/13/2017

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            As many of my readers know—those who follow my career, not just my published writing—writing is not an easy effort. It takes time and careful attention to detail. One of my methods to insure this care is seeking out and having an excellent copyeditor. I have known Cathy for years, since she was an undergraduate at Southwest Minnesota State University. Several years ago, she edited Book One and then Book Two for me. She is onboard to do both remaining books in The Marsco Saga as well. But, here are her words to explain what this all means.
                                    *
“With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility”
      By Cathy Bernardy Jones, the copyeditor of The Marsco Saga
      When Jim Zarzana asked me to copyedit Book One, The Marsco Dissident, of his saga, I didn’t believe him at first. Until that point, my entire publishing career had been spent in nonfiction: news, music, general interest, sports, crafts, education, and even business marketing materials.
      For his first book, though, he wasn’t going to go through some random résumés of editorial candidates who’d have no investment in the project other than the check.
      As an alumna of the creative writing/literature department at Southwest Minnesota State University, he knew I knew my stuff and that I’d be invested, that I’d use my powers for good.

      When I finally got over the shock, the honor of it all sank in. I was being entrusted with a project that Zarzana had been working on literally for years. It was finally going to come to fruition, and I’d be helping it along. I would be polishing the text and caring for his characters, his places, his entire Marsco world.
      Editing fiction isn’t the same as nonfiction—it’s not only about spelling, grammar, and punctuation fixes. It’s also all the behind-the-scenes effort that makes sure the story is believable and allows the reader to be transported.
      It’s about making sure the timeline works. If eighteen months pass in the dates, the text needs to coincide.
      It’s about believable dialogue and actions of a character. Would Tessa really have said such a thing, or was she still ticked off at that point in the story?
It’s about continuity. If Mei-Ling’s nightgowns are blue and white in Book One, when they show up again in Book Two they must still be blue and white.
      It’s about accuracy. If the book says the Mars day is 24 hours 37 minutes, then it sure had better be in reality. (I trusted NASA’s figures, no one else’s.)
      I was the guardian over readers’ willing suspension of disbelief. If a typo, factual error, continuity error, or plot hole would distract the reader from the worldbuilding and break that reverie, that would be a huge problem.
      The last thing a writer wants is a reader to put the book down and not come back. That’s what I had to prevent through careful attention to detail, my knowledge of grammar, and lists—lots and lots of lists.

      It has been a joy to bring the series out of the depths of Zarzana’s computer and put it into readers’ hands.
      I’m sure you’ll find the world compelling, engrossing, thought-provoking and well worth every page.

Enjoy.
Cathy Jones
www.bernardyjones.com


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Let's LA LA LAND Again

2/14/2017

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                       Let’s LA LA LAND Again

        This blog will have a plot spoiler, so if you intend to watch La La Land and haven’t, you may want to skip it. We recently went to see La La Land at Marshall 6, and for a small town, showing a movie without something blowing up is refreshing. But, in many ways, the movie did blow up at the end.
       Many of you know, it is a musical homage to old-time movies, jazz music, love stories, and Hollywood life. It all worked for me until the ending, but here’s why it blew up by fizzling. As a writer, I expect characters to be consistent even if I don’t expect them to all live happily-ever-after. I’ve even killed off a few of my popular ones, because the plot and the thematic development demanded their death.
       All that said, I feel Mia at the end was changed too much off-camera during a five-year hiatus of which we learn nothing. She changed inconsistently with the character that developed throughout 95% of the movie. She lacked an objective correlative, as T. S. Eliot might say, a solid reason for her complete change.
       In the end, Sebastian didn’t win her, but movies can end with a broken heart. I can live with that. But, at least he is consistent if unloved at the end. He had his life, a life of jazz at his own club, but Mia was sucked into the worst of “La La Land.” She became a success, but one existing in as hollow a life off-screen as any shell of a character on-screen. Her so-called life at the end was with a husband she clearly didn’t love, a child she shunted off to a nanny, and all the vapid pizzazz and glam that encapsulates the falseness of a lifestyle without substance. She has it all but actually has nothing.
       Even in Casablanca, reasons exist why Ilsa has to end up with Victor Laszlo. But all three characters in the love-triangle—Rick, Ilsa, and Victor—are well-developed. Nothing new is added to smooth over the choices that Ilsa and Rick have to make. Even the bromance of Rick and Captain Renault seems plausible. Rick makes his choices, he’s welcomed back to the fight, and the hill of beans is settled. All the pieces fit. And the pieces make sense. No so in La La Land.
       Mia’s daydream when she meets Sebastian five years later tells a better story than her real life. And their wistful looks as they part, without speaking, only reinforces that everyone viewing the film knew that this ending was unsatisfying. His smirk and playing a jazz tune doesn’t replace love. Her turning to walk out with Mr. Cardboard doesn’t seem like a walk with a man she loves. The whole ending seems stuck on, not developed. We meet a new Mia, and she is hollow. Empty. Not particularly likeable. Not the fresh kid we grew to love earlier. And we ask, why? Tell us why and how this happened.
        If Mia really loved Sebastian, if he really loved her—damn it, as the movie leads us to believe—they would have worked it out. Good writers, sensitive writers, would have had the guts to write the movie that way. That love and happiness can come together, even in a “Hollywood couple.” That careers don’t have to be a stumbling block to love. That love is the key source of satisfaction in life, not success. I wanted to scream at the screenwriters, that spineless gaggle aiming to produce a product that fills theaters rather than producing art, “Hey, rat bastards, sit your arses down and re-watch The Princess Bride. ‘Love, true love…’”
     Here’s how I would have ended it. She has her Paris audition. They don’t know what will happen. She says, “I will always love you.” Cut, segue, three months later: Paris, the Eiffel Tower, Mia being filmed, a crowd gathered off-camera to watch. When there’s a break in filming, Sebastian is standing in the crowd. She greets him tentatively. He says, “Paris has lots of jazz clubs.” She answers, “We’ll always have Paris.” Kiss. Ending credits.
         Vague, but hopeful. Vague, but full of possibility for those ceaselessly romantic who wants to believe our couple will work it out. The cynical can always have it end, mentally, like a lead stone on a pond at Versailles. But, think of this, it cuts out the cardboard and alleged husband, the stiff in the suit. It also cuts out the unloved child who will go from pediatric meds to anti-depressants to street drugs to rehab and/or suicide. (Book deal later.)  
        As my faithful readers know, I was royally ticked off at Downton Abbey when Matthew Crawley was killed in that car accident at the end of Season Three. I realize the scene and his demise were needed because the actor wanted to move on to new waters professionally. But, part of what bothered me most is that culturally our movies, our ubiquitous mini-series seasons, have such a limited and dim view of marriage and relationships.
         Maybe in a comedy, maybe in a light kids’ movie, we find a rare, longstanding relationship. But our modern culture seems to thrive on the broken, the hurting, the hungering. I don’t mind that. Art, fiction, should be truthful. But on the other hand, let’s face it, it is also true that people can love each other—deeply, passionately, endlessly—and not tear each other apart, drive their kids to drugs or to suicide. Couples can do more than just sit there together, hating each other but being afraid to separate.
        Dammit, celebrate love. The struggle to find love, develop love, is the point. To grow and mature in that love. And in the long run, we thrive as humans based on the quality of whom and what we love. I guess I really am an old-fashioned romantic that way, but love conquers all. Much more so than a limo and a glitzy career.
        On Valentine’s Day I hope you’re celebrating with someone you love. And if so inclined, I hope you watch a great movie: Groundhog’s Day, Pride and Prejudice, Miss Potter, Calendar Girls, Brooklyn, Love Actually. And especially Casablanca.
       All I am saying is, give love a chance. So, in my mind, Mia got her film career, Sebastian got his jazz club, yet they manage to juggle being together. Struggling. Arguing. Making up. Laughing. Crying. And shuffling off all the outside pressures that kill relationships. They end up, not shallow and plastic, but real.   
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Madness

1/30/2017

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                        “It’s always too soon to quit.” - Rudy

     Lately, I have been thinking about the madness it takes to start writing a novel and see it through to its completion. It takes all the usual preliminary work: an outline, several character sketches, months of drafting, countless months of editing. Then, the text needs all the publishing aspects: cover design, interior layout, back cover comments. It’s not something to whip out in an afternoon.
     “Be patient with the wait,” Oprah reminds us. And Seamus Heaney tells us, “Getting started, keeping going, getting started again—in art and life, it seems to me, is the essential rhythm.”
     It is the staying with the text that makes it happen. Writing a novel, a history, a biography, is god-awful work. Endless work. I know this sounds pity-party, but these miraculous marvels readers enjoy don’t float onto the shelves of our libraries as though writers produced them as easily as we can download them to a Kindle. “Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work,” Anthony Powell noted. And he’s the author of a twelve-novel series, A Dance to the Music of Time. No easy feat taking characters from their school days in the 1920s up through the 1960s.
     It is by not paying attention to all the pitfalls and dead ends that makes this work possible. The writer has to ignore the obvious drudgery and love the task—every part of it, from the printer jamming, to the need to edit a chapter again, to the desire to read the work aloud to hear the dialog clearly. Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead sort of tommyrot.
     Thankless, often. This isn’t happening at your local coffee shop. It happens in your writing space, and with any luck, all fledging writers have a dedicated writing space. “A room of your own with a lock on the door,” as Virginia Woolf tells us. Maybe we have to settle for a corner of some room. Or even a spot under the stairs—a nice literary echo in that. Somewhere that is hers or his alone. The space is ours. The mess is ours. That special ambiance is ours. Like Fanny Price at Mansfield Park living in unheated rooms, but with a desk and ample paper for writing when the ink isn’t frozen.
     And yet, it still remains folly that drives us all forward. What is it about our task that commands and holds our collective attentions? Is it our unique characters? Or those final, infuriating plot twists? How that kiss might feel if pressed to our cheek? It is all senseless, irrational behavior.
     Better to take up knitting or baking or jigsaw puzzles. . . anything with defined parameters and a set goal line. I hear bowling is really nice. Something measurable that would please the Board of Teaching. Walking your dog should bring you back home with a dog, ideally, the same one you started out with. That’s not always the case with writing. I started a novel with a twelve-year-old boy who promptly told me he was man, and I had better get to revising quickly because he was grown up now and not putting up with idle youth again.
     And how about this? The writer reads another novel. Then, he says to himself, I can use this particular technique in my own work. Or another writer realizes this would be a greater way to run her still-in-draft-form, ho-hum love story. Or that the shading of that just-read dialog—the hesitation captured in words, the nuance the speaker utters but her listener misses, the humor in the dry reply—they are all too tempting not to knead into our own story.
     And yet, it all remains imprudent, reckless, foolhardy.
     “With the voices singing in our ears, saying that this was all folly,” T. S. Eliot muses.
     How do you take a blank sheet of paper and start writing something vaguely about hobbits and a magic ring and a dragon hoard without being slightly off the beam? Is your colleague down the hallway going to listen to that?
     Or a boy—just your average, gawky preteen with broken glasses—who is a wizard but who doesn’t even know what the hell a wizard is. And that once an obsessed evil wizard tried and failed to kill this boy who is a good wizard. The priest in the confessional probably thought you came to talk over your sins.
     A whale. A white whale. A lunatic captain. A naïve sailor jotting it all down. Does that work as scintillating dinner conversation?
     Young girl, smart but not the most attractive at the ball. But light on her feet, and quick with a quip, and deadly smart, and boasting a wonderful smile. Snubbed at a dance. Then, in the end, capturing the heart of the man who snubbed her. . . and then promptly rejecting this same man’s proclamations of love. You going to mention that in your car pool? Again?
     How do you justify setting all these ideas down? Completely? Smoothly? That task is at least a year or two in the making. With no guarantee that anyone at all will ever read your words anyway. What do you say to your spouse or mother or children? Does your family plot to lock you up? Take away your computer and printer? Stop buying you inkjets? Make you do the dishes for a change?
Or worse yet, humor you. That’s nice, dear. Yes, pretend it’s the Panama Canal, bury them in a basement, dear.
     It’s all madness. Infuriating madness.
     We have no one to blame but ourselves. I think. Or maybe a high school English teacher. Or a prof that first year in college. Or the one novel we love and can’t stop rereading.
​     Madness and folly! Goats and monkeys! Yet, we go on. 

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