Before I tell you the story about what I overheard from lurking behind my neighbor’s fence today, I have to give you the Millet Update. (Thanks, Carol, for identifying this mysterious growth on our back patio as millet. Sad thing is, I lived in a West African country for two years where millet was the food staple and I realize that I never bothered to take a look at it. Um, truth is, I never tasted it, either. I must have lived on tea biscuits from the Ivory Coast those two years because that’s the only visceral food memory I have about those two years. Oh, and the fried grasshoppers.) So that’s the millet in the backyard (see above).  Cool, huh?

Here’s the latest look at our cash crop:

So I was walking around the Heights this afternoon, debating whether or not I should knock on a distant neighbor’s door to give them some news that I think would interest them. When I arrive at their house I don’t see a car in the driveway, and the shades are drawn, and I think, “Whew. No one’s home.”

But then I hear voices from the behind the huge wall of hedge that screens their backyard from the prying eyes of passers-by on Plympton Street, so I creep close. And I see the teen age boy I’ve spoken to on one previous occasion, two years ago, when I knocked on the door of their house and that boy answered and I asked him if they owned the white cat that was sleeping on their porch. He told me yeah, that was the family’s cat; he was an outdoor cat, didn’t come in the house at all. And I said Well, he’s been coming over to my house a lot and I’ve been feeding him and keeping him inside on cold nights…just in case you ever wonder where your cat is, that is. The kid did not look at me like I was a crazy cat napping Cat Lady and he smiled and said Oh, well, thanks. So I’ve always thought rather highly of that kid.

You see, one of the things about being my age is that you hardly ever — never, in fact — have any overlap with teenage boys. Nothing about my life, nothing at all, has any point of contact with teenage boys: we live in two different universes, me and those droopy panted, rap-music slouching, video-game mumbling, overgrown lumps of beamish boyhood. I’m not complaining, good lord, no. I’m just saying.

So when I speak to a teenage boy and he doesn’t come off like a drooling dim witted sack of underachieving entitlement, I am impressed. And this was the teenage boy whose voice I’d heard behind the hedge, and to whom I was eavesdropping on this afternoon. I saw him sitting at a patio table with a guitar in his hands, and he was talking with another boy his age and this is what I heard him say (in a tone of voice I can only describe as indignant):

The Arctic Monkeys are to The Beatles as KFC is to chicken!

Well, I was impressed all over again. (Should I have told you before hand that The Arctic Monkeys are the most hyped English rock band of the 21st century? That they are indie artists who were the biggest internet sensation of the new millennium? And that they aren’t nearly as famous in America as they are in the UK? So that mentioning them shows a level of music connoisseurship that I did not know existed on Long Island?) You have to like a kid who finds his contemporary rock musicians inferior to the Beatles.

So I decided not to tell him that his cat had died.

Dear sweet Whitey Boy had shown up at my house in late May looking very thin and old. (I called him Whitey Boy because I have this very sophisticated system of naming stray cats. For instance, I have one called Blackie: he’s black. And I have one called Old Stripey because he’s stripey, and kind of old. And I have one called New Stripey because he’s stripey and he came after Old Stripey. And I have one called Bib Stripey because he’s stripey and has a white bib of fur under his chin. Etc.)

I hadn’t seen Whitey Boy in two years, and I was shocked by the change in his appearance, even for an old cat. But he must have come back to us because he was feeling his age, and we’ve been caring for him like the honored guest that he was, and yesterday at breakfast he was disoriented and unsteady on his feet so I took him to my vet who diagnosed a tumor that had reached critical mass. So we very gently guided him across The Rainbow Bridge.

I knew, when Whitey Boy showed up after all these years, that he was picking me, asking me to take the responsibility of making his last Summer as easy on him as I could, and I knew that he was asking me to make the last call for him. So I knew I’d be making this decision one day, same as I know I’ll be making that decision for all my lovely creatures, but that one day comes all too soon, all the time.

Maybe I’ll mosey back over to Plympton Street tomorrow, at dinner time, and try to find the parents at home.

Whitey Boy, it was an honor to know you.

Nut, meet shell: Power is back on, cable is out, can’t access photos, this post is all words.

OK, now that we’re all caught up (I’m sorry I can’t show you photos of big trees laying down in places where they ought’nt be) I have one or two observations on life that I’ve learned in the past week.

One: If you have a choice between getting stung by a yellow jacket either at breakfast or at dinner, pick dinner. Because if you get stung at breakfast you’ll have to spend the whole day putting an ice pack on some inconvenient body part; whereas if you get stung at dinner, you only have to wait a few hours before you can take a sleeping pill (ooops, sorry: sleeping aid) and when you get up the next morning you’ll only have a big fat red welt that itches like crazy.

Two: Every now and then, I don’t know, something gets into me and I think that I really have to get out of the house more often, interact with grown-ups, show some maturity and responsibility. So I go on a job interview.

I was browsing Craig’s List and I saw an ad for a receptionist for a law firm in a nearby Gold Coast town and I thought, well hey, that sounds fun. I like sitting at a desk, meeting and greeting; and I like the leather-sofas/dark mahogany walls/ Gentlemens’ Club atmosphere that this particular Gold Coast address promised. So I sent an email and less than 30 minutes later I was invited to stop in for an interview.

When I got to the office, it turns out that the law firm isn’t actually in the boundaries of that Gold Coast town, it’s more like on a side street of a shabby neighborhood past which the cars that are heading for the Gold Coast town drive by. And it’s not so much a law firm as a process-serving place that handles paper work that law firms are too bored to do.

The interview was going quite well until the very end, when the office manager (a woman in her early 30s) asked me, “Do you handle stress well?” I must have looked slightly puzzled (I thought the conversation had suddenly taken a philosophical turn, which surprized me) because she added, “We have five phone lines and sometimes they all ring at once.”

And I laughed. “Five lines?” I said; then I assumed my serious, interview face: “I think I can handle five phone lines”, I assured her.” We shook hands and the woman said she was still interviewing and that she’d be making her decision on Friday.

I had to keep laughing about that last question all the way home. It seemed to me the kind of question that only someone under the age of 35 could have asked, of someone under the age of 30, that question about stress and five phone lines.

What I wanted to say to that question was, “Honey, five phone lines isn’t stress.

Stress is when your kid gets diagnosed with leukemia. Stress is trying to care for an elderly parent who refuses to move into a nursing home. Stress is making mortgage payments when you’ve been out of work for a year. Stress is worrying about a bleeding mole when you don’t have health insurance. Stress is getting a divorce. Stress is having to stay married to someone you can’t stand because you can’t afford a divorce. Stress is being broke and 40. Stress is the regrets, two or three decades old, that keep you awake at night.

Honey, stress is not five phone lines ringing at the same time.

One day, when you’re older, you’ll understand that.”

Three or four years ago I got the idea that working in a bookshop would be fun, and I applied to the local chain store. A skinny, 20-year old assistant to the assistant store manager interviewed me, which meant that he read from a list of questions on his clip board, the usual job interview questions about describing a challenge that I successfully overcame and listing my weaknesses (I’m much, much too dedicated to work; and I used to be a crack whore in the Meat Packing District).

When he asked me to describe a situation where I had to deal with someone greatly different from myself, I laughed. Then I realized he was dead serious. Because when you’re 20 years old and just back from your Junior Year Abroad you think life is full of profound cross-cultural enlightenments. And I didn’t have the energy to explain to him that when you’re 50, and you’ve had pretty much the same ups and downs as everyone else in the Getting Along With Difficult People department and that by now, after all the travel and jobs and roommates and bosses and family issues and financial issues and wins and losses, you think that being married is about all the cross-cultural adventure a person needs. I didn’t have the energy to  tell him about how I was a Brownie Troop leader in a Harlem battered women’s shelter, about how I lived in France, and Africa, how used to visit  the rich and famous to discuss Faberge, how I volunteered to screen the crazy people applying to adopt cats at a local animal shelter, how I am 50 freaking years old and have not gone crazy myself: I didn’t have the energy to make up an answer so I could impress him enough so he’d hire me to shelve books. I think I said something like, “Hmmm. I can’t think of anyting, not right now.”

Needless to say, I did not get that book shop job. And I didn’t get the receptionist job, either. I must learn to keep a straight face at these interviews.

Does anybody else have a job interview story they’d like to share? Do they bring out the worst in you, or are you a genius at making the great first impression?

Since 3:15 Sunday afternoon: the thunderstorm that ripped across the Long Island Sound left many downed trees, which take the power lines with them when they fall. Please check back here tomorrow — if we get the lights back on, I’ll have a new post for you.

There’s a corner of our backyard that I don’t let Top Cat mow. Now that’s it’s the middle of July the growth is crazy — shoulder-high in places. I call this wildness  “The Meadow”. This is a peek of it on the edge of our second patio, where we put the bird feeders. Birds, you might not know, are PIGS.

After they get through stuffing themselves at our feeders they’ve scattered enough seed on the ground for a Burpee catalog. One day this strange stalk (see photo, above) started to grow and we thought, hey, maybe the birds planted us some sweet corn! So far, it doesn’t look like corn, unless it’s some weird Chernobyl-style maize. But watching it grow counts as our Summer Activity.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about today. Today I wanted to talk about The Meadow, and its bumper crop:

Can you see them? All three of them?

This is what I call our Cash Crop.

Because I am an idiot. And I think this kind of cuteness in our own backyard makes us millionaires.

You know what else makes me feel rich?

1. When Kennedy airport (15 miles to the South of us) re-routes its flights (we never know why) the planes’ approach is right over our little village. We can sit in the backyard and read the tail fins on all the aircraft: Air France. El Al. JAL. That South American airline that LOVES the color teal. TEAL! (I could write a whole book on the 1980s and the color TEAL!)  Air Suisse! Fed Ex! Each plane is a topic of association and I sit there and marvel that they can get those tin buckets to FLY. We even saw that new monster Airbus pass by — it’s a non-stop show, all those planes bringing all those people with all their stories to our neck of the woods. Who needs expensive drugs when you have this for free?

2. On the first Tuesday of every month the Locust Valley bagpipe drill team practices at the Presbyterian church in the village. You can just walk in and take a seat in the pews and listen to the most amazing Scottish music for free. In fact, those guys (and ladies) are so happy to have visitors that they will make you feel like they are playing this all for you. There’s highland drums, too: that sound pounds through your skull like the heart beat of the Celtic god of thunder. And when you get a load of the skinny Indian teenager who plays his heart out on those bagpipes you give in to the feeling that the human race is full of some of the most wondrous creatures on earth.

3. My local public library has two yards of P. G. Wodehouse books on its shelves. They’ve been there forever… that means that most of those books are vintage, with the original dust covers…(if you’re a book lover, you know how important that is). And I can borrow them any time I want. (For instance, today I got a 1958 edition of Cocktail Time, and a 1971 edition of Jeeves & The Tie That Binds — the one with the author photo of P. G. touching his toes at age 80). A good public library is like having a rich uncle who gives you free rein in his great collection of books.

4. American birds. They might be — what am I saying? THEY ARE — pigs, but they are also marvelous. It’s a fact that there are very few blue birds in the world and in fact, there are none in Ye Olde World. We in the New World are lucky to have the bluest, smartest, spiffiest blue bird in the world: the Blue Jay. Every time I see them (every day) I feel exorbitantly wealthy that I am able to feast my eyes on these astoundingly beautiful, entertaining, and jazzy smart-ass birds.

5. It’s not that I live in a 100-year old  house. It’s that when this 100-year old house needs a minor face lift, my husband (the Top Cat) prepares to tackle the down and dirtiness of Home Repair in a wealthy way: he scrounges through all his power tools and his jars of bits of hardware, he hoists his tool belt and his vast stock pile of hand tools and drags together all the machinery and leather accessories and snazzy metal accoutrements of his trade, and he goes into the kitchen and pours himself a glass of red wine. Then off he goes, to do manly things, wielding in one hand a lethal apparatus of modern technology that can drill/sand/saw through steel/concrete/slate; and in the other hand is alcohol. This makes me feel rich because Top Cat’s life insurance policy covers Death By Stupid Stuff That Happens With Power Tools and I’m the only beneficiary!

So, what’s making you feel rich today?

It’s hot here on Long Island. 100 degrees hot. And Top Cat and I are too snotty to use air conditioning because it doesn’t go with our judgemental attitude against all our maniac pampered Styrofoam-McMansion central-air/Hummer driving/labradoodling neighbors. We have plenty of better, alternative, zero-carbon ways to stay cool.

The one in  front is my in-house air conditioning unit; the one in back is my portable (fold-up) traveling personal air conditioning apparatus.

Now, where was I? On the verge of running away to Paris to meet my long lost love?

The situation here is muchless dramatic than that: Top Cat is as interested in meeting the old BF as I am, because the old BF spends a lot of time in China for business and Top Cat is very interested in first-hand info on the economic pulse of the place. I meant to write about how swell I am at keeping my writerly focus sacred and I still have more to say about that because I think it’s one of the hardest things to manage when you’re trying to write several ten thousand words about a topic. Most of good writing is knowing what to leave out, and I have a good example to show you:

Seth Stevenson, a young but much awarded (Prizes: he’s won a lot of prizes) travel writer, went around the world without getting on an airplane. This book is the story of that journey, and it is remarkable for the focus he keeps all through the book. I hope he wins another award for it. It’s amazing that throughout the whole book, there is hardly any digression from the actual travel part of his story; 99% of the narrative takes place on the actual conveyances by which he is in contact with the surface of the earth: ship, bus, train, taxi, ferry, rented car, etc.

This meticulous focus on the movement involved in getting from one place to another is very rare in travel writing, which is a genre that is mostly not about travel but about being there and free associating. Which is just fine by me, provided that the free associations are done by someone whose wit, frames of reference, personality, and associations are entertaining or enlightening. And not about Germany.

I picked up Tramps Abroad by Mark Twain, whose The Innocents Abroad is still one of the best travel books ever, and I could not read past page 20. It’s all about Germany, and that’s one country I just can’t bear to spend any time in, even abstractly.

The other thing that came to me when reading Grounded was how hard it is to integrate a traveling companion into a narrative. Seth Stevenson traveled around the world with his girl friend, and the few instances when he mentions her is when the story bogs down. For some reason, I didn’t find her sympathetic. In fact, she came off as rather annoying — and I’m sure she’s a lovely, smart, fun, competent partner in real life. It’s just not a good idea to bring along a traveling companion you are in love with, stylistically speaking.

You know how when one of your friends falls in love and raves to you about how marvvy and dishy the Love Object is? And she’s all fluttery and excited and cooing over the guy, and she keeps telling you how cute he is when he (fill in blank), how smart he is because he (fill in blank), how funny he is when he said (fill in blank). You get really fed up, right? Especially when you meet him, finally, and you think, Sheesh.

That’s the problem in print, too, when the writer keeps telling you how smart, cute, and fun the traveling companion is. And you, as a smart, fun, cute reader keep thinking: Show Me for god’s sake. (Back to that old Tell-Show problem again.)

Read any one of a dozen books about an American woman traveling to Italy and falling in love with some suave foreigner and you’ll know what I mean. It’s always kind of icky.

The best use of a traveling companion, for a writer, is as a foil. Bill Bryson used his pal, Katz, to timeless comic advantage in two books: Neither Here Nor There and A Walk in the Woods.William Least Heat Moon used his ex-girlfriend as a kind of nemesis in Blue Highways (you never had to like her at all and thank goodnesshe spares us the details of his looooove, which he did not do in his latest book about Q) and one of the reasons that Travels with Charlie (by John Steinbeck) is such a failure is because good old Charley hardly shows up in the tale. 

So I’m hacking away at my Damn France Book, keeping the focus and trying to make my readers not loathe the cuteness, smartness, and fun of my dear traveling companion, Top Cat.

In other words, I’m going to have to tone down the Top Cat. And focuson the few times when we weren’t speaking to each other, for what the fiction writers call “plot”. (It’s not easy traveling with another person, even if you love them. That’s why Martha Gellhorn called her book Travels With Myself and Another. That barely acknowledged, passive-aggressively annonymoused ” Another” was Ernest Hemingway.)

I was living in the Middle East (I’m leaving the exact location vague, for narrative reasons) as a pit stop on an around-the-world trip I never finished (having started in Ireland, with a one-way ticket from New York, six months previously). I’d packed a set of watercolor paints (see photo) and a sketch book, thinking that people who go around the world must pass by a lot of things that inspire painting. My painting plans fell as short as my travel plans — I never painted a single landscape while I was on the road.

But this is a picture I took of me trying to paint a pretty little flower that grows wild in The Levant, AND a WILD pomegranate! I still have that sketch book: I never painted the pomegranate, but I still have the watercolor dabs of that flower.

[Consider this a footnote: Those are the paints that I'd had with me in Paris in 1978-79, when I was a mopey au pair,painting a lot of manuscript-illumination-type decorations; and, when I picked up painting again, 15 years later, I still had those paints! (I'm on my third or fourth set now, now that I'm, like, a semi-professional illustrator; and I still use the same paints -- Grumbacher all the way. The olive green always is the first to go.).]

This is me in 1985 (taken in that Middle Eastern country):

I bring this up because I got a call from someone I’d met there, in the M. E., as it happens just a few steps from where the pomegranates grew wild. After all these years, Facebook has brought us back together. When I knew him he hadn’t even been to university yet — now he’s a corporate executive and travels all over the world. So he asked me to meet him in Paris.

And I said no.  And I told him the honest reason why: Because I’m writing a book about France that has a very specific time line, and I have to protect the integrity of that time line. I’m afraid that if I go to France now, I’ll get all new impressions and observations that will contaminate the memories and narrative that I’ve been working on.

In other words, I’ll go to France and realize that all my old ideas of France suck and I’ll want to re-write a whole new book about it that won’t be true to the France that I’m currently writing about. For better or worse, I am committed to the France that I experienced within the parameters of my Damn France Book, and until it’s done I have to stay away from France, Paris, and old boyfriends. Yes: I’m that dedicated to my vision.

Also, I don’t have  naturally auburn hair anymore. Or bangs. (And I wonder, about every other week, if I’m too old for bangs. )

By the way, Top Cat would have been happy to take me to France, too; and I told him the same thing: I don’t trust myself enough as a writer to go and not add some new layer of expereince to my previous story (especially if it makes me look smarter, better informed, cooler, or more soigne). When you write memoir-ish stories (and I do), it’s hard to stay true to the limits of your memories, hard to be honest about what you really did or did not know in the past. In my small way, I’m trying to be as least dishonest as I can be, and that’s about as good as memoir gets.

Here’s another photo from 1985, the wierdest thing I saw in the whole Middle East:

Yes, friends, those are telephone covers, from the Arab market in Jerusalem. I think this about velour telephone covers:  That’s everything you need to know about the esthetics of home decor in the Middle East.

And I wonder; is there any other good reason besides writer’s ethics to stop me from going to meet an old boyfriend in Paris? Anyone want to advise me on this?

I kept telling my husband that I had Arm Cancer. All of a sudden, about seven weeks ago, my left arm began to hurt. I couldn’t pin point the pain but it was bad enough that I stopped using it to lift, pull, or push anything – which is very inconvenient seeing as how I’m left handed. I couldn’t even pick up a tea cup. Had to drink my favorite bevvie all unnaturally, from the recto side. The worst thing, though, was having to hold my toothbrush in my right hand. That, and the tea-cup-holding thing: I don’t know how you right-handed people do it. It just feels so, so very wrong.

But I kept painting and drawing through the pain (see above, the famous ancient Bridge of Orson over the Couesnon River in the little Normandy [France] town of Pontorson). In fact, it was after I did the (above) illustration (which is unfinished: I have to add the ghost of William the Conqueror in the clouds) that my arm began to really, really hurt. I finally called my doctor and got a same-say appointment to go get my Arm Cancer checked out.

(Top Cat is a typical husband, in that he is male and in denial when it comes to aches and pains. I told him that I was going to see my doctor and Top Cat asked me, “What’s she going to tell you that you don’t already know?” ha ha.)

Turns out that I’ve strained my wrist. Which I would never have guessed, in that that’s the one part of my left arm that doesn’t hurt. Seems there’s a tendon that runs from the wrist to the elbow that, when stressed, makes the whole arm throb. (Note to Top Cat: Anatomy. That’s what my doctor can tell me that I didn’t already know.)

So I have to rest my left wrist. Under doctor’s orders, I can’t paint for three weeks. So for the time being, I’m just a writer. Which felt awful until I remembered that there was a time (up until about five  years ago, when I started thinking about illustrating for the first time) when that’s what I was: a writer. So I’m going back to my roots!

So the story for this day is How I Became A Writer.

It was the Fall of 1991. I was at a lecture at the Hispanic Society of America, which is not a liberal political organization agitating for immigration reform although there is nothing wrong with that: it’s an old, stuffy, snotty museum and cultural center in a wonderful old Beaux Arts building in upper Manhattan the houses a grand library and art collection concerning the influence of Spain in America. The lecture I was listening to was about The Spanish Royal Jewels.

(P.S. There aren’t many left, since when the Habsburgs lost their American empire they had to hock a lot of stuff and what the Spanish royal family didn’t pawn the Bonapartes stole.)

Philip II of Spain gave his bride, the English Queen Mary Tudor, a wedding gift (in 1554) of a large, beautiful 58-carat (203.84 grain) pearl called The Peregrina.  She was often painted wearing the gem (as a pendant on a very big brooch) : 

Mary died in 1558 and the pearl was returned to Philip to give to his next wife, and then passed down for generations and worn in royal portraits painted by Velasquez and Goya.

(Isabel of Bourbon, Spanish Queen, by Velazquez; The Peregrina is at her waist.)

Yadda yadda yadda. All typical jewelry historian stuff. Which is why I was there, at the Hispanic Society: I was a brand new graduate gemologist and I was interested in antique jewelry.

But then the lecturer said, to sum up The Peregrina’sstory, something that electrified me: She said, “By the way, the Peregrina is now owned by Elizabeth Taylor.”

Whoa. Suddenly, I realized that this pearl had had a very, very interesting life that a listing of its Spanish owners didn’t even come close to telling. And I had to know what happened, in between the Habsburgs and the Taylor-Burtons, to this pearl.

It took me a year to research it — the pearl has been the victim of fraud and several cases of mistaken identity through the ages, mostly with a pearl called The Pelegrinathat came down through some Russian princesses (which itself was confused with another Pelegrina that was from India) and I was researching it back in the day when there wasn’t Google. I went to the New York Public Library and looked at lots of primary sources: old sales catalogues, antiquarian books, newspaper articles. I tracked down info in ancestral homes in England and images from the Prado in Spain and archival drawings from Cartier. I wrote to Dukes and curators and Elizabeth Taylor. I got the whole story, and I published it in 1993 in a magazine called Heritage (which called itself A Report On Antique and Period Jewelry and Watches).

And that’s how I became a writer. Because I learned about a story that was out there, loose in the world, that needed to be set down for safekeeping. It didn’t need for me to tell it but I was the only one who was willing to do the work: that’s the way I still feel about much of what I write.

I hadn’t looked at my story about The Peregrina for many many years, but I dug it up for this post and I re-read it. I’d forgotten just how complicated the story was — so much wrong info to wade through! The funniest bit happened when Richard Burton bought the pearl at Parke -Bernet in New York: its authenticity was disputed by the exiled Queen of Spain Victoria Eugenie, who said she still owned The Peregrina. But her pearl was not the right size as the historical Peregrina so Liz Taylor got the REAL one for her 37th birthday. It cost Mr. Burton $37,000.

Here’s what it looked like when he bought it:

(From the LIFE magazine story on Feb. 25, 1972: Liz Taylor is 40!  The Peregrina had been mounted on a simple chain by the English Marquess of Abercorn in the late 19th century. Long story.)

And here’s what it looked like when Cartier designed a $250,000 new necklace for it:

(photo by Fred Ward, 1993)

I just did a quick internet search on The Peregrina. Sigh. There is still lots of confusion about this pearl. No, The Peregrina does not mean The Pilgrim: that’s The Pelegrina. The Peregrina means “The Wanderer“.  Huge sigh.

I guess my work is not done. All that bad info out there, and I’m not even mentioned on the Wikipedia article about The Peregrina. So if you see a new page on this blog about The Fabulous True History of The Peregrina, it’s only because damn it: I have to set the record straight. AGAIN.

Huge, self-important, why-is-the-world-full-of-half-assed-information sigh. That’s just my job as a writer.

I’ll get back to this in a sec. But first I have to show you the marvelous cloud that drifted into my backyard yesterday:

 I know! It’s Sistine Chapel-ready!

Back to the topic at hand.

On Monday I wrote about the creepiest celebrity experience I’ve ever had in my life, and someone calling herself “Terry” posted a comment blasting my audacity. (Does Telly Sevalas have a daughter named “Terry”?)

Mostly, Terry took issue with my right to writeabout Telly Sevalas. And then she took a few pot shots at Americans in general and one of the fine citizens of Texas (Janet) for being, well…we really can’t figure out what she had against Janet.

Well, “Terry” got me to thinking about the related, larger issue amongst us memoirists. Which is: who owns the stories we want to tell?

Well, Duh. Here’s the easy – to – follow rule about ownership of stories: if it happened to you, if you were there and can tell the story in the first person  / eye witness  you were there format then: it’s yours. YOU own it. No Matter What: it’s yours.

And of course, there will always be people who are eager to shut you down, take your story away from you.Very, very angry people, very conformist, strictly un-fun,  dead-inside, Stockholm-syndrome people who need a target on which to latch their own self-loathing and they will tell you that you have no right to tell that story (even people who don’t know you! see: “Terry” comments), that you are wrong or evil or not nice to tell that story or — when all else fails: you are being self-centered to tell that story. (Be on the look-out for all synonyms of self-centered: self-involved, selfish, self-important, self-indulgent…)

So what?  Let them rant and rave: they are as ants to us story-tellers with Bozo shoes. Nobody – least of allsomeone foaming at the mouth spewing guilt and accusations of un-lady-like behavior –nobody can take away your story. And if you must fight back ( although why even bother? ) try using  their own weapons:  call yourself self-aware, self-sustaining, self-assured, self-awesome!!

Here’s a picture of you, the (little yellow tabby cat) story teller, chasing away the big bad (black bear) nay-sayer:

And that’s a true story.

Has anybody tried to shut you down? How did you tell them to go suck eggs?

Hail: we had HAIL last Wednesday. The storm that raged from Chicago to Maine hit us here on Long Island as a 30-minute pounding of wind, monsoon, and HAIL.  Of course, Yours Truly was out in it, experiencing the weather so I could write about it in my journal (weather: the single most interesting part of a journal– as long as you describe what its impact on your normal routine is because that is what readers 100 years from now will want to know trust me: I’ve read hand-written diaries and when it comes to weather, I want to know what they did 100 years ago when it HAILED…should I make this another whole different post?).

Anyhoo. I was out there, in the lightning and thunder, and then the HAIL hit. Hail is the most science-fiction kind of weather we get on earth…except for all the other kinds of weather. Lightning? Rainbows? Sun sets? Are they not, like, utterly fictional if we didnt’ see them with our own eyes??

But I digress. Altho there was much damage to the west and north of us, (mayor of Bridgeport, CT, wants the Feds to declare his city a National Disaster after this storm) here on Middle Egg this was the only damage that I saw with mine own eyes:

But, dear readers, this is not why I am blogging this week.

The thing that’s put a bug up my butt this week is this red hot happenings from my own dear Long Island Newsday (newspaper) Blog about the hometown Crazy Train that is Lindsay Lohan and her mom (Dina):

Yesterday we heard straight from Dina Lohan that she was turned away at a Carvel ice cream outlet for attempting to get a free birthday cake for her son by using a lifetime free ice cream card in her daughter Ali’s name. Dina claimed that she had her own card, but had left it at home, and she became outraged when a clerk confiscated the card and called the police. She hilariously added that her family was “treated so much worse than regular people,” and sneered “wait until Lindsay and Ali hear about this.”

Carvel has responded to this incident, and their statement is very matter of fact and basically takes Dina to task. They say that they only gave cards to Ali and Lindsay, and that the cards state that the holder must be present to get free ice cream. What’s more is that the cards clearly say that no more than $25 in free ice cream can be obtained in a week. Carvel ice cream cakes run about $30 and up. Plus, Carvel points out that Dina is the one who called the cops to get her card back, and they didn’t just “show up” like she claimed.

As part of Carvel’s 75th Anniversary celebration last year, we issued 75 Black Cards to celebrities. These cards were issued in the celebrity’s name and require the card holder to be present at the time of use. Many celebrities have enjoyed their cards at our CarvelIce Cream shoppes and have shared their excitement with being included in the celebration.

Unfortunately, the Lohan family has been abusing the card. While the card was issued in Lindsay and Ali’s names only, their extended family has repeatedly used the card without either present. At first, we graciously honored their requests while explaining that the Black Card was not a carte blanche for unlimited Carvel Ice Cream for the extended Lohan family and friends. After more than six months of numerous and large orders for ice cream, we finally had to cut off the card and take it back.

Dina Lohan reacted badly and called the police to have her card returned. The police responded and did return the card to Dina with instructions not to use it again.

This is an unfortunate situation where certain people feel entitled to use a celebrity’s name for their own purposes. We regret that the Lohan family is upset and hope this matter is put behind us quickly.

This incident got me to thinking about the  most obnoxious celebrity I ever met. You may or may not know that I, Yours Truly, have held many a lowly service industry job in my time, various retail and “hospitality” industry jobs that is, and I have had my own Carvel Ice Cream-type run ins with famous people.  While I have nothing bad to say about Steve Martin or Mick Jagger (both who showed up at the B. Dalton’s on Fifth Avenue where I was working and very, very politely asked about getting help finding a book), I DO have something to say about Telly Sevalas.

Telly Sevalas: What a creep.

I was working at the front desk at the ITT/Sheraton/Saint Regis Hotel on Fifth Ave. in Manhattan in 1988. I wore a uniform (OK. It was a tuxedo, but still: I had to pay union dues and I had to hope to get over time or holiday pay to put anything in my savings account) and I was supervised by a series of title-happy, Go-By-The-Book (and really: there WAS a book) assistant managers from the Eastern Block who resented having to work their way up in Amerika when they were PRINCES for god’s sake in their own forlorn homelands behind the Iron Curtain….

Anyhoo. It’s a Sunday night and Telly Savalas strolls in. I am at the front desk and I check him in and I ask the usual check-in question: And which credit card, Mr. Sevalas, will you be using for your stay?

And Telly just stands there, exahales, and, as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, shakes his head. “No, darling,” he says to me. “No.”

I decide to let the moment hang in the air. I’m kind of  an expert when it comes to passive-aggressive customer service at this point in my life because I’m 32 years old and have been under-employed MY WHOLE FREAKING LIFE. And I’ve met other, better, celebrities before; worlds better than this has-been homely TV celeb.

He’s still shaking his head. I wait until he says something. “Check with your CEO,” he says; “I NEVER have to give my card at a Sheraton hotel,” he tells me.

Turns out that Telly, being of Greek extraction, is like the most famous Greek-American in America and so,  is like a freaking PRINCE amoung Greek-Americans and the ITT CEO (I forget his name, but I know his twin brother used to turn up at the St. Regis drunk ) is Greek-American,  so Telly gets to stay at any ITT/Sheraton hotel for free. But I had not gotten the memo that informed all staff members of this and had personally insulted Mr. Sevalas by asking him to withdraw his credit card from his wallet because, apparently, it’s a big horrible burden to Mr. Sevalas to have to check into a hotel LIKE A NORMAL PERSON.

So Telly then gives me a whole lecture about WHAT a great FRIEND he is of the ITT CEO, who by the way IS MY BOSS, and don’t I know who he is? Etc., etc., etc.

Well, I got a groveling assistant manager to smooth things over eventually, but even now, all these years later, I still wonder. Why did Telly Sevalas have to go to all that trouble to impress a lowly front desk clerk with his VIP status at Sheraton hotels? Why didn’t Telly just hand over his credit card and call the hotel manager’s office in the morning and let them straighten out the room charges? Why did he feel the need to educate me on his importance? (Well, I think we all know the answer. Because Telly Sevalas is/was a DICK.)

I wonder this because, at that same hotel, I had the pleasure of checking in so many other, purely delightful celebrities, who never made a big deal over their exalted status as Special Human Beings on  the Scale of Famousness.

Paul Hogan, AKA Crocodile Dundee: extremely, other-worldly handsome in person, genuinely polite and gracious. Really: I was surprised how much more handsome he was in person than on film.

Patty Hearst and her dad, who both waited in a long check-out line for their turn to sign their room charges. Good breeding shows.

Raymond Carver, who was so delighted that I recognized him in the check-in line (and waved him aside so I could get him out of the scrum.., hey: he’s a GREAT WRITER) that he gave me a book of his when he checked out.

Robert Wagner, a true gentleman, who spoke softly and thanked me by name when I gave him his receipts.

Richard Chamberlain, who I had a big crush on since I was 16, who needed change for his cab fare on his way out of a dinner at the hotel and made EYE CONTACT with me as I gazed adoringly at his face.

And — you won’t believe this — Sylvester Stallone. Who I’ve heard from other people can be a real prick but was sweet and unassuming when he swam into my ken. I still have a soft spot for Sylvester, for the kind way he handled the paperwork that I put in front of him, in the 1980s, when he was a big, big star and I was a girl in a uniformwith a plastic name plate pinned to my lapel. 

But Telly Sevalas?? Sheesh. And now, Dina Lohan.

Get Over Yourselves. Even If You Are Dead, Mr. Sevalas.

Anybody else got some good dish on household names? I am all ears.

This is what the solstice sun set looked like on the Long Island Sound on Monday. Top Cat and I packed a picnic dinner (See that plastic wine glass? That’s what’s called a Traveller in the Carolinas, and a Go Cup in New Orleans) and we had a big chunk of the North Shore all to ourselves. I’m torn: should I be high-mindedly judgemental that so many Long Islander don’t take advantage of the natural beauty of this coast line, or should I be grateful that they stay away and leave me the hell alone on such a gorgeous night?

Change of Subject: I was at the Smithtown/Kings Park library last night giving my low-falutin’ Book Talk (3 things You Should Know About Creativity and 6 Travel Tips for Staying Put). A wonderful group of people showed up and we had a lively Q&A that lengthened pleasantly during the book signing. And then a fellow took me aside to discuss his writing: he told me that he writes a lot, but he can’t seem to finish anything. “I get lost somewhere in the middle, and I can’t get to the end,” he said.

I hear that a lot from workshop writers, that they run out of steam before they get to the end of their story. If that’s you, too, I think I might have some useful advise.

If you can’t finish your stories (because you see no way to end them, you see no resolution, you get tired of them, or you simply run out of things to say) it could be because  you are writing the wrong kind of story.

It’s either the wrong genre, or the wrong format, or the wrong length; that is, it’s wrong for your talent. It’s a bad fit: you’re trying to write fantasy when your calling is romance. You’re trying to write fiction when your genre is essay. You’re trying to write a short story when your talent is better suited for feature writing. Or: you’re trying to squeeze 1200 words from a topic that only needs 300.

In short, you’re trying to imitate a writer or a form that you love, but your skills, your personality, your mind-set is better suited for some other, uniquely you kind of writing.

I would encourage writers who can’t finish their work to try some new tactics.

1. Try starting your story in the middle. For one thing, that brings it closer to the ending than if you start it at the beginning; for another, it gives you a whole new perspective on the story itself. You might discover that your story, or your writing, was never meant to start from the beginning in the first place. (If you don’t know where the middle of your story is, well, that’s a whole other problem; it means that you have no idea what your story is about. We can fix that, too: subject of another post.)

2. Try ending your story in the middle. Maybe the reason you can’t finish your work is because it’s already finished and you don’t know it. Try ending your story at the point where you are stuck: wrap it up with a line or two (an end doesn’t have to be a whole big production; and it doesn’t have to be tidy.)

3. Cut the word count . Try writing the story as if it has to fit on a post card. (By the way, I use the term story as a neutral term; it could be an essay, an article, a work of fiction, a chapter in your memoir, etc.) By cutting the word count you not only are forced to deal with the most urgent aspects of your story, but you might discover that it was a story that was only meant to be told that way in the first place: concisely, in epigrams,or stripped of a lot of over-laying narrative interpretation (which is something that a lot of novice writers tend to do– they over-explain).

4. Change direction. Either start over, writing your story from a different point of view or in a different genre. This means taking your current story off the table and switching into a whole other voice. OR, at the place in your story where you are stalled, transition into a new character, a new time line, a new theme. THIS IS VERY TRICKY to pull off and you probably won’t. Very few writers can do it: it usually comes off as an alienating post-modern trick, where the narrator/writer suddenly intrudes into his story, musing what the narrator/writer should do next…I seem to remember that the guy who wrote The French Lieutenant s Woman did it in that book (I didn’t like that book). But if you have the guts or the determination to stay with your story, letting a new consciousness into it might unlock it for you, shed some light on the thing that wanted to be said but you, the writer, were fighting to leave unsaid (which might be why you are stuck with a piece that you can’t end). And with that knowledge, you can re-write the story all the way to the end.

Of course, there’s always the chance that you can’t end your stories because you bore yourself, and are too uninterested in finishing. This usually means that you’ve chosen a voice, or a narrative style, that is inauthentic. It’s not you, the stuff that you are writing, it’s the writer-you that you think you should be. The clue is if you are using much bigger words than you use in real life, or if you are using words that you’ve read frequently in litterchur. Don’t do that.

Which reminds me, as much as I tryto edit out every trace of inauthenticity in my own writing, there are times when some pomposity slips past my bullshit detectors. And then those words get published and I keel over in eembarrassment every time I see them in print. I’m just trying to save you from such mortification.