Paradise, Sugar, summer, and X-ness

The time was gone when we'd actually sit in someone's family room and watch MTV, but Paradise City's images still made up a big part of listening to that song. We knew Axl was a jerk, but the *song* was still summertime. That was the year we cruised DMV drive.

Val had taken me to Grace Street before, and I was used to venues, dating my rock star at college, going to gig after gig with him and all our musician friends. So cruising really seemed pointless to me, just driving around a wide block, traffic at a standstill, and only one stretch of it really populated. It was usually impossible to get a spot on that stretch; so you'd crawl through the crowded, merc-lit street, and then it was half an hour around a boring circuit to get back again. If you *could* get a spot, though ... it was a fun way to blow an hour before actually going somewhere.

That year, it was Paradise City - Axl in his white jeans; the ageless avatar of Slash stripped out of black and hat, actually sexy under there - and Pour Some Sugar On Me. Every idiot with a too-large spoiler and giant speakers rigged in a hatchback serenaded the entirety of the cruising audience, and I can't remember a single other track that dominated. Those two songs were THAT. SUMMER.

Valerie died to the strains of Paradise City. And Def Leppard was her favorite band.

It is my punishment, and my poignancy, that Axl's damned white jeans will make me cry forevermore.

I miss my girl. She was my sister. Her husband, now - I guess he's my brother.


The orangey light outside the huge HQ building for the Division of Motor Vehicles. Me and Val being cute and using fake names. I was Sabrina because I'd liked that cartoon as a kid, and the name seemed exotic to me. Valerie used Penelope.

Sometimes, now, loving on my dog Penelope, it's not just her I am hugging. She's my girl too.

I never did know why she used Penelope - just, it amused her. It was so unlikely. And boys. Boys trying anything will believe anything. I mean - Sabrina? We both dared 'em to disbelieve. They never bothered to; honesty beside the point, when you are cruising.

Pour Some Sugar On Me.

Both the songs are anthemic, and impossibly catchy. Cryin' is playing at me right now - and we loved us some Aerosmith. (Val had a story about being a groupie and chewing gum.) But Sugar and Paradise, that was all anyone ever heard. When your car was inching forward, and the heated dark breeze of a Richmond summer night carried the distant strains of either of those songs back to us on the long slog through the boring 75% of the circuit - that was the promise. "You're almost there." Almost to the relevant part. The part that is lit, and full of people (boys) and music. The interesting bit.

Scent of hot asphalt hanging in the air, and not a little exhaust, including diesel. Voices, shouting, unrestrained singing. That kid on the skateboard, the first person I ever TOLD I was named Sabrina.

Valerie's laughter.

My girl.

We'd make a few turns. Or park, if we could. Then the lateral move, more parking, more crowded blocks, and The Jade Elephant, or Newgate Prison (hilariously, a dive bar unbeloved by Virginia Commonwealth University Police - now their headquarters - I guess they won). Dirt Woman sitting on his porch. "You can get the dirt off Donnie, but you can't get Donnie off the Dirt!" The Lee X theater, I think defunct already by the early 90s. Grassy scrub lots. The 7-11, maybe convenient for some, but impossibly distant and useless for those of us in heels.

That guy who made his friends drive him around in an old limo. He was cute. He'd give us rides to our cars. Every boy Val ever dated, or was thinking about it. The night I brought The Elfin One, and she laughs to this day about how I zeroed in on someone and said, "I want THAT one" and got his attention. It's all in the wrist - you just pick the one who appeals and is most likely *to* pay you some attention. He was tall. Dilliest smile you ever saw. He was ... unfortunate. Sigh.

My Val.

It's funny. Since she died, I talk to her - "Vally" I call her. I NEVER called her this in life. Some part of it is necessary now, and some part of it almost offends me for being unprecedented. Too cutesy, perhaps. But she's so dear. She was so damned small, in her hospital beds. I miss her.

Summer nights.

Right now, it's so humid in Richmond you just feel WET. Even walking the dog at 6:45 a.m., the humiture is intense. Even at ten o'clock at night, letting her out for the last time, dark - maybe even breezy - it is HOT outside.

Summer used to be what my dad called "soft" nights. Oh, it was still warm, even back then. But it didn't seem punishing. Maybe nothing does when you're half the age I am now, healthy, and ignorant of the future. Not that our future was bad. Val found the best husband she ever could have had. She had joy and SO much love. She and he knew what could come, and agreed.

No regrets.

That summer. Not regrettable. Not even a guilty-pleasure memory. I'm not ashamed we were hair-band chicks, into that kind of guy, brash, loud, laughing. As much as Val's laugh still rings, I never ever faded beside her. Neither of us ever did second-fiddle. We were the Cinderella twins from their old videos. We were catty, and open, and good in our skin, and interested and interesting. We were the 80s. We were the 90s. We were good with it all (and, no - neither of us was ever into the big-hair thing for *ourselves*).

The one time V ever faded into the background around me.

She was with me when I met Mr. X. It actually took about a year or two, that meeting.

It was the crack of the new millennium, and as an 80s throwback we went up to a bar in Springfield, to see the Bullet Boys, who sucked and had ZERO crowd. It wasn't even any fun for making fun of those who'd never gotten the memo that the 80s were over, because almost nobody was there. One other table - us two girls, maybe three guys. I don't remember most of them, because a *CLICK* happened. Mike. It wasn't sexual, but I've rarely experienced chemistry like that. He was fun to talk to, we stayed in touch on email and by phone, tried dating ever so briefly, then he met his wonderful, gorgeous, immensely generous wife.

November, 2002. I've just broken up with the "should be good on paper" guy with the SOUL PATCH (good grief, I though I was getting old at 34, and shouldn't be "picky"), and Mike's band is playing that same club, opening for - I think - Blind Guardian. The line this time wrapped around the building, and it. was. cold. Val and I get out of the car and end up in an alley around back, walking by hundreds along our way, wondering why the doors haven't opened, and hearing lots of grumbles. Only one attractive guy in the whole lot, and he's probably way too young. We take our places. And wait. And wait. I actually sent her back to the car at one point, to get my big wool coat. I hadn't wanted to wear it in the bar, but out here, waiting interminably, a little plastic jacket is not doing the job. The cold stabs from below. Val and I are shivering, miserable.

It turns out, BG's equipment was not compatible with American electrical systems. Which one might have thought could have been solved before several hundred people ended up stranded in the cold, but so-eth these things go-eth. Once we are inside, I go to touch up my face, and find the blackberry lipgloss in frozen shards, bleeding, and recalcitrant about remediation. I feel annoyed and Of Constrained Attractiveness for the rest of the night. And just as well, for the most part I can't find that hot guy anyway. We hang with Mike and the lovely (seriously - she gave me a FOOT MASSAGE, that wonderful woman) Mrs. Mike, and the night ends up being a lot of fun. Good company goes a long way.

At the end, coming out of the venue itself, there is an outer bar. Pool tables, flourescent lighting for my already not-so-flossy-feeling self, and ...Val pulls on me, "Diane, get a load" - and it's that guy. Definitely too young.

I dither and linger, Val takes a bathroom break, I'm on my own by some pool table, make eye contact, smile. He still doesn't come over. When she comes back, I grab her and make a beeline because it is late and we've got a hundred miles to go.

And, not being but so selfish, I leave the opportunities (between chicks hitting on him) open. "We just have to know. Are you single?"

"Sure!" he says.

And, Val told me, she might as well not have been there. "He lit up." "He was only looking at you."

I got his email and we booked it.

That's how I met Mr. X. Who turned out not to be 25 after all. What his age *was*, relative to my 34 at that time, we shall not discuss, because he's a coy one. But I won't say I wasn't glad he wasn't a baby.



Ahh, my Vally.

She was fun.

A Poem of Sorts

Today, I wrote a poem of sorts to Mr. X in an email ...

http://dianelmajor.blogspot.com/2016/01/fractured-light.htmlYes, that wasn't written today. But it's my heart again today.
I want to cut my hair. I want another piercing in my right ear. I want a new tattoo.
I want you.

The thing about cutting my hair ... it would be hard for anyone who has never met me to understand just how "big" a statement that is. My being long-haired is so much a part of who I am it's almost a point of stubbornness. Well, it IS stubbornness. Resistance of my mom's utter loathing for long hair. Resistance of What is Expected of me - of women. Resistance of making anybody happy but myself.

So it's weird, these thoughts - this near-obsession I've been nursing for a couple or three months now, of cutting my hair. I'm forty-nine, for goodness' sakes. I resisted cutting it when I reached A Certain Age - now I want to chop it all off?

But here's the thing.

I look around myself, and more and more women my age - and older - are long-haired, and what they seem to be resisting is their age.

Hmmm, sez I. Hmmm.



When I was very small, I had long hair and bangs for a very short time. Tangles and my sensitive headbone screwed that up for me. I was horrible for my mom to work with, brushing my hair - and so, in the seventies, when super long hair was in, when hippie chic was my equivalent to Disney Princess glamour, I lost my long hair and got a PIXIE cut.

I hated that cut. I hated the shags that followed, and every iteration of NOT LONG HAIR my mom dictated to every stylist she ever dragged me to. I managed longer hair in middle school, but somehow (still under maternal control as under the paternal roof) ended up yet again with Mackenzie Phillips's layers come high school. If you look at the old photos of me at the link above, though, you'll just manage to perceive - I also managed a sort of take on Cyndi Lauper's hair, senior year. The cut as produced by a stylist was as seen in the purple sweater, but as it grew out, I would razor it myself, and it was much shorter. I kept it this way for some time, but eventually I tired of maintaining the shaved-right-side.

(Side note - being My Brother's Little Sister, he of the punk rock and scariness: I did not know at all that shaving one side of my head was the least bit odd, for many years. It honestly was just easier for doing schoolwork - I didn't have to constantly throw my hair out of my own way.)

By my freshman year in college, it was plain old shaggy, and I had my eyes on the prize: out of mom's control, my hair could be under my own control. I grew it out. And grew it, and grew it.

I never got Crystal Gayle with the stuff, but it was long enough at times it'd get caught in my armpits sometimes. Heh. That grossed my sister-in-law out once, when I said that. I never could sit on it, but I've always sat BACK on it. Even today, if I didn't wear it up most of the time, it would be long enough to hang between my back and any seat-back.

But I wear it up most of the time.

Hmmm, sez I. Hmmm.

There was a time I didn't wear my hair up all the time. I liked to let it fly. I wore it differently all the time; one of the hallmarks of my style was the time in my teenage years when someone said to me my hair was different every day. I liked that.

These days, it is limited to knots, braids, and very rarely I'll do a barrette on top (and then I end up knotting the hanging length half the time) or a hair band (and then I end up knotting the hanging length more than half the time).

Even when I am alone at home, I twist it out of the way. The stuff is almost never down.

And these women - a lot of them even older than I - with long hair. I don't like their aesthetics. I don't like the sense they're clinging to youth gone by. The sameness. The sadness. I never had much problem with ageing, even though people do tell me I am relatively poor at it. Jamie Lee Curtis's story about Jessica Tandy has long stuck with me. JLC kicks copious amounts of bootay. And she has uber-short hair: undyed.

Hmm.

And the older I get, the more keeping up with my roots annoys me. I got to about an inch and a half of white showing last month, and my most recent dye job is already growing out. Not obvious to anyone but me - YET - but the point is, the upkeep is constant. And it takes two bottles for me to dye my hair.

Mind you - I LOVE my contrasts - the fair skin and dark hair. The light brown eyes and freckles. Playing with makeup and coming out Morticia.

Hmmmm.

I have said for maybe 15 years now, that when I get around 50 and I have "enough" white hair (my hair is WHITE-white, like my mom's and my grandmother's; not steel, not grey), I'd strip it and cut it. I had images of a 50s style and a body wave, something soft and sophisticated.

With the onset of the earliest symptoms, I think, of menopause, have come more concrete ideas in this direction. It began amorphously - jokes with my friends about using bright color in it, once I do go white. Random interest in certain haircuts. The realization of just how edgy it could be, even before I let it go white. A glossily dark bob, curled. A crunchy zhush of short, crispy layers, framing my face. Letting the bangs grow out. One long, soft dark wave.

And, frankly: the fun I would have, shocking the crap out of everyone I know. Not least of all: my sainted mother. She would love me to cut it, of course. She'll both hate and laugh with anything more subversive I do. She will never believe it. That's a fun mental game, right there - just showing up one day, shorn and  super stylish. Crazy colors or spiky bits or no, she would DIE.

The thoughts: they have become more specific. More focused. And they're sticking with me.

The Gift of the Magi
I had a beautiful moment recently with my beloved friend Cute Shoes. She gave me an absolutely stunning hairpin; a vintage Deco piece, with grey rhinestones. Graceful. Meaningful. Gloriously beautiful. I had my hair down the day she gave it to me, and immediately put it up. I've worn it several times since.

I had all but set an appointment for a cut that very Thursday. Of course I could not bring myself to do it, suddenly.

A few days later, I researched ways to wear a hairpin in short hair. (This is, by the way, almost as tricky as researching ancient Carthaginian women's names.)

The cut I had in mind, I don't know how well it would work ... but hair grows, too. And I have many styles in mind; I plan to change things regularly.



It came over me again today - how exactly I want it to be, how I'd need to explain to a stylist about the inconvenient cowlick on the wrong side. Working out twice in a fitness room filled with wall-sized mirrors, I mentally pictured it. Looking at those high school pictures, I looked at that short-on-one-side thing.



Tonight, I'll let my hair down. And leave it.

And tomorrow, I'll be wearing a beautiful, gorgeous hairpin. And I love you, CS. And I'll figure this thing OUT.

The Writing Desk

Being an author, there is a special depth to the problem I am suffering right now - the longing crush I developed on a desk I saw last week.

When my mom and I hit the used office furniture and military surplus store, and I found a good filing cabinet to bring home and clear off one of the major projects in my house (years of filing which would not even begin to fit in my old, one-drawer cabinet) ... I saw it there, like a gorgeous temptress, showing off that mid-century design I have craved all my life, and stretching out huge tracts of desktop, just calling to me.

I got a wild hair and made an offer for desk and filing cabinet combined, sure they would say no - and, ahh, to my chagrin, they did not do that.  They even said they'd honor the price without taking both pieces home immediately.

The thing is gigantic - three feet by SIX - and even its coffee mug rings seem charming to me. I can imagine both my laptops there, my research books, all my little gimcracks in the drawers.  Huge is good.  My current "desk" (likely originally a vanity; though it does have a modesty panel and finished "back" side, which is less usual in a vanity) is about eighteen inches deep, and the knee hole is so short sitting there cuts into my legs.  I sit high.  It's also fairly dark, and formica-topped, which does not make me particularly swoon.

I don't even know where the current desk came from, which is odd.  So much in this house is from family or thrifting/antique trips I can recall.  This one seems sort of provenance-free.  It is not greatly practical nor very romantic.

Being a writer, and never really setting myself up with a good, proper office, is sometimes frustrating - not to say outright bewildering, all things considered.

Lately, I've been spurred to some sort of autumnal version of spring cleaning - a great deal of nesting, and some very satisfying redoing of some of my rooms.  The bedroom, I shoved around a couple of weeks ago; shifting the bed to the eastern wall rather than the west - though I don't much like it, and will change it back again.  The former office, which had become a disused space mostly reserved for Gossamer to escape from Pen-Pen.  The sunny wing room, once home of Pen's cage, and having several former lives, but not much used in a very long time.

As of now, that sunny room, scarcely used since it was my little den, the first year I lived in this house, is my nice new office.  The filing cabinets are together in there - the new one housing my papers, and the old one now holding paper and photo paper and some miscellany, as well as one of two vintage stereos I have brought out of a difficult storage space since all that business about music bubbled up recently.  The other, my parents' beautiful 70s receiver and turntable, has a pair of vintage speakers on the way, I ordered just today.  It'll give us some George Winston and maybe a bit more, when I have a surprise birthday party for my mom.

Nominally, of course, it is this party inspiring me to make my house as nice as I *can* before it sees a house full of guests.  Deeper than that, I have other motivations, of course.  Motivations like being a real writer with a GOOD desk, like having a nice library, now I've commandeered Goss's room for myself.

Why bringing wasted space back into use, back to life, seems to have become more important, I don't exactly know, but it's certainly motivating.  And this isn't just about that desk - though it's enjoyable, certainly, having a bit of fun being silly about wanting it.  The former office/Goss's room is now a *much* more functional library, of sorts, a reading room so comfortable I can't wait to spend what portions of tomorrow aren't occupied in grocery shopping and laundry ploughing through pages I did not write.

I can't wait, either, to spend some time writing again - and at a good desk.  Even if it's not the one I've got a crush on right now.

It'll come.  I've made the space for it.  I'm excited ...

Customer-Facing

I’d forgotten what it was like, through a decade and a half at an executive level, or working in tech and/or with engineers, what it was like to have a job in which there’s much contact with vendors and clients.  It didn’t even occur to me, taking on a new job with a company which sells actual products, but among many other adjustments, this one is a fundamental gear-shift for me.

If I’d thought about this and had a chance to say whether it’d be appealing, I almost certainly would have found a way to stay where I was.  I might have felt that dealing with salesmen (our own *and* those seeking our business) and – “worse” – customers, or people with complaints would be a deal-breaker.

I’d have been an idiot, of course, but the underachiever in me never was a sharp tack.  Nor even a comfortable person – laziness isn’t ease, not by a long shot.

What has turned out to be ease, and a great surprise to me, is this very dealing with people which almost certainly would have done me out of this job.  Among other things, I take calls from people who have had issues of one sort or another with our drivers.  Fender-benders, poor parking, bad attitudes, or dangerous driving in the winter storms ravaging almost all of us so far this winter.  The interesting part is, the worst I’ve encountered so far has been stress – not actual nastiness nor even griping.  People are so very glad to have a human being to speak with that when I simply LISTEN, they seem to come away satisfied.  Of course, I go farther than that, explaining to them what I will do to follow up, and I give them my name and direct number – which almost none of them will ever need again (one hopes …), and THAT is customer service solid gold.  We all see those “How’s my driving?” numbers – and for many years, the facility to use one was limited – but then came cell phones, and you can reach out in real time to discuss truck number such-and-such’s high speeds in the snow and so on.  In one case, the complaint was about noise – our driver’s radio was on too loud – and the insurance office calling did so while the driver was still there, explaining how they’d approached this driver in the past and wanted to call the law.  Once they talked with me, there were no police involved.  It didn’t take much, but it saved our company a certain amount of nuisance, and – I would imagine – money as well.

I’m not per se surprised that I’m good at this.  There’s enough of my mom in my DNA and mentality, it’d be impossible for me to be bad at it.  What surprises me is that, unlike my facility for math – and unlike my expectations of myself – I don’t HATE picking up my office phone.  So far (and it’s early days yet, yes), there’s no dread nor grudging attitude toward this part of my job.

Perhaps, at the tender age of forty-six, I am doing a little growing up.

Or, just maybe, I’m actually providing something worthwhile professionally.  I bet they pay people to do that …

Pitchery

Thinking about The Query Shark’s posts on pitch sessions, and my own experiences both with these and with Pitchapalooza, I’ve been ruminating on how useful they are.  The thing is, I’ve had 100% success with in-person pitches – with “success” defined as “agent asks for partial or full” (and fulls are more frequent as electronic delivery improves; as Victoria Skurnick said to me, and part of the reason I asked her for an interview to be published here, “Why ask for a partial, it’s all the same by email”).  There was a time when a full request was a HUGE deal, but either out of my own experience or because technology has changed so much in the industry, even down to these preliminary events, it seems less earth-shaking now than once it did.

As for pitch sessions, part of Janet Reid’s objection is the nervousness and the novice state of so many of the writers she sees during sessions.  Much as I’m little burdened with preciousness about the killing off of my darlings, I was fortunate to have parents who very consciously and explicitly raised me and my brother to be able to talk to people in any walk of life.  Now, for me and my brother, this does NOTHING to actually eliminate nervousness, *but* it does manage the thing – and, frankly, there’s not much interest in a life into which a little nervousness never falls.  Nervousness is close kin to excitement – and, if you’re excited about what you have written, as far as a pitch session goes, that can bring you halfway “there” so to speak.

I pay attention to how I plan to pitch, but I’m not scripted beyond those points about Clovis’ story I personally found so compelling I needed to write it, and which I know make the strongest selling points both literarily and in the market.  Now, if I were blessed to attend conferences more regularly or closely dealing with my particular GENRE, maybe I’d have been agented years ago just off an in-person – but, as much as I love JRW, and as widely worthwhile as I find The Ax and the Vase to be … you may be astonished to learn that, apparently, the trade in ancient Frankish kings is not brisk in fiction currently.

(That’s not to say that the market is not good, but it does speak to Clovis’ relative obscurity next to the ubiquitous Tudors, Rome, and even the odd Plantagenet in histfic alone – and histfic is only one area out of many, when it comes to conference-planning for maximum impact.  Take a look at the fascinating data produced recently by a historical fiction survey; even keeping in mind that this was created by sampling a necessarily skewed sample, the results are interesting and even encouraging.)

I keep getting off discussion of pitching.  One has to be careful, you can do that in a 5-minute session, and POOF it’s all over then.

Another objection Reid has is that the five-minute pre set meeting is all an author gets, at a conference.  This is where my love of JRW forces me to point out that – SOME conferences invite participants/agents/marquee speakers/editors to come AND TO BE THERE THE WHOLE TIME.  Buttonholing agents in the hall is not merely encouraged, but built into the experience.  So, at JRW – yes, they have pitch sessions (as Reid points out, to omit them might cause riots from writers who expect them), but there is also the opportunity to pitch impromptu … and just to have LUNCH with people.  This past conference, I reacquainted myself briefly with Paige Wheeler, the first agent to ever request a partial from me (I need to re-query her ASAP!), and formally pitched both Victoria Skurnick and Deborah Grosvenor, who was incredibly generous in fitting me in at the end of an extraordinarly long day, and even got to just sit and relax for a while at a table off on its own slightly apart from the center of activity, talking cello music and mezzuzahs with Ms. Skurnick, who was so painfully delightful I asked for the interview then and there (and she was enthusiastic and lovely in saying yes, I’d love to).

So, clearly, I would number among those authors whose reaction to Janet Reid’s condemnation of these sessions would be resistant, to say the least.  But then, I’m among those lucky twits whose reaction to nervousness itself seems to be manageable and productive – and I am also smug enough to say to myself, an author who wants to sell a book needs to be able to sell her or himself, so for pete’s sake, pitch sessions are just part of that education we need in order not only to improve our pitches and queries themselves, but to participate in the larger world I am trying to become part of, that of Published Author.

Who the HELL put that soapox there, and how did I trip on it … ?

Um.  So – yeah, I kind of like pitch sessions.  I like being surrounded by friends old and new, sharing these tiny and painful short works, getting feedback, rehearsing, improving them.  Conferences have borne, for me, some of the best marketing work I’ve been able to produce in support of Ax itself.  And, nervous or not, I’ve never been to one where EVERYONE was not completely supportive, no matter the context.  And the agents are not the least of this.  I’ve learned, even those who don’t “do” my genre are generally delightful people, and at times there’ve been those it just hurts me to know don’t work in my area.  (Michelle Brower, I’m looking at you.)

Just thinking about all this makes me want to get a-querying and impress the pants off of those I’ve met – and Janet Reid herself (are you kidding me?  Love Query Shark like I do, and NOT take a chance?  No way – now that she’s open for queries again, she’s on the list, of course she is).  And so I must away, and get cracking.

Even if I can’t vomit on anyone’s shoes.

Collection

Disorderliness in the soil, or sweet entropy ...

Fight or Flight in the Office … ?  This isn’t supposed to be a blog about work, but it’s often about people and our interrelation, and certainly about science and our behavior.  And so we include this link, which I found both vindicating (everybody in every cube farm knows of these facts, and some of my former colleagues in outright open-plan farms double-know them) and fascinating.  We all know what bugs us, but sometimes it’s good to see these things quantified.  Not that this leads us to much hope for change …

The Pronunciation of Smaug.  Need I comment?  (No.)

Beauty in terrible condition, from the Passion of Former Days photography blog.  There is perhaps as much fascination in the decay of artifacts as in artifacts themselves.

An unexpected peek into the (English) historical perpsective on same-sex marriage - yet another of those ideas/issues humanity didn't wait until the twentieth century to consider.  Courtesy of History Extra - which, while you're considering the link above, also has this piece on homosexuality during WWII.  "Lashes and slap" indeed - and that may not mean what you think.  (Then again, maybe it does.)

For those who admired the gorgeous needle work post (a beautiful video, worth revisiting), English History Authors bring us a new look at Stuart period needlework pieces, with a bit of the history of the stumpwork style - truly wonderful photos at the click-through.

Finally, the proportions (and omissions, yes) given to history and culture are a fascinating study in themselves, in this piece.  This link comes courtesy of Cute Shoes, who sent it to me ages ago and I've only just gotten around to finally watching it.  The images chosen speak to their editor, but they are just as vividly communicative to us.  It's an interesting piece, so I'm including it here (but the link above, should you have the framing issues I know vids come with on this page for some browsers, will take you to a nice copy as well).

Good Things

Elizabeth Chadwick agreed to let me interview her, and the bronchitis sidetracked me for too long, but I hope to take time in the next several days to GET ON that so I can bring you something exciting.

Day Al-Mohamed asked me on Twitter tonight to write for Unleaded.  That would be pretty exciting - their platform is such a nice variety and view, with very engaging writers contributing.  I'd love to be a part of that, even if just for one shot.

And, of course, there is this.  I'm still an awful interview.  But maybe I can learn.

This is the sort of thing I'm supposed to do, as I refine and perfect the work itself.  It's gratifying and encouraging, and it's bouying me through a period of doubt and difficulty, as I edit again when I didn't expect to get back into that and am still working alone.  Feeling like I'm proceeding without a net these days, I'm very grateful for these things.  I have a lot to be thankful for - now to do it all some justice.

Editing is going quickly - if I had readers, I'd know better how *well* I was doing.  But I'm doing what I can to put into the world what it has been giving me.  I hope it's good stuff I am giving back ...