A Tale of First Loves- Culinary and Human

Gatlinburg, Tennessee, 1989. I was twelve, just beginning to take an interest in life outside of fairy tale books.

At that time my dad owned a little floundering jewelry store on the sixth floor of the Mountain Mall. I would come to work most days with him, doing my best to help wait on the few customers, occasionally puttering with the wax that has since become my life. I had friend next door whose dad owned both the fur and carpet shops on our floor. We would play together, catching crawfish in the river out back or burying ourselves beneath Oriental rugs in the storeroom. A couple of floors down was a magic shop, and if I stopped by long enough I was guaranteed a demonstration of the latest novelty trick. Escalators connected all six floors, and my sisters and I would take turns racing the wrong way, courting scoldings from some of the other store proprietors. At the time, Gatlinburg residents got into most of the tourist traps for free, and I’d spend long happy hours inside Ripley’s Believe It Or Not and Fannie Farkle’s.

I had a lot of freedom back then, my dad was too preoccupied with life to be overly concerned with me. He’d often give me three bucks to get a Wendy’s salad down on the ground floor. That was back in the day of the legendary Superbar. Don’t you wish they’d bring that back? My thirty-year old GI tract probably couldn’t handle it now.

My favorite thing to do that summer was hit the salad section of the Superbar, loading that plastic plate high with lettuce, peas, mushrooms, red onions and croutons. I’d pop a few cherry tomatoes on the side, scatter sunflower seeds all over the place (once I picked the raisins out and carefully put them back. Man, I was a nasty kid) and ladle a generous amount of their lovely ranch dressing all over. I can still taste that salad in all its vernal perfection.

One sticky summer day I walked downstairs as usual, clutching my paltry three dollars in the pocket of my hot pink jumpsuit. (Don’t you love the 80s? Bad fashion and food for less than ten dollars…) I rounded the corner, carefully stepping on the parquetry flooring that ran parallel to the street, and came up short in front of Wendy’s.

The Superbar was closed for cleaning.

Being a hungry adolescent, I wasn’t about to wait forty minutes for the thing to be restocked and reopened. I needed food, and soon. My eyes cast around for another idea. I knew that the restaurants up the street were fairly expensive, and didn’t want to venture outside of the mall that day. The only other choice that presented itself to me was the Irish pub next door to the tobacconist’s. I’d never set foot inside, but I’d seen people eating at the long laminated bar. I stepped inside,

“Bit early in the day to start drinking, eh?” The voice came from a handsome man, dark hair setting off eyes that crinkled at the corners. He sounded different from the natives I’d grown accustomed to, a Yankee accent, like mine. I smiled shyly at him and was rewarded with further eye-crinkling.
“I-I just need lunch.” I stammered, embarrassed to be in this den of adulthood.
He jerked his thumb at a dry-erase board, still almost a novelty back then. The board hung on the wall behind the bar, between signs for Guinness and Budweiser, elixirs which I would remain innocent of for another several years. Scrawled on the board were prices for the standard bar burger, some sort of chili dog with too many toppings, and something called an Irish Taco.

It was exactly $3.00.

“I’ll take that, please.” I pointed at the bottom line on the whiteboard and spread my bedraggled dollars on the bar. The handsome face grinned, told me to have a seat, and ducked under the bar for a carryout container.
I clambered up on the tall stool and sat watching his back. He moved with an easy grace, one that I’ve since come to know as congruous with that of an experienced bartender. He opened a foil packet of Fritos, dumped them into the black plastic dish, and tossed the bag in the trash without looking. In the little food prep station, there was a chafing dish on simmer. He flipped the lid open, winked at me in the mirror, and poured a heaping ladle of chili all over the Fritos.
“You like spicy stuff?” he asked. I nodded dumbly. I didn’t notice it particularly then, but now I remember that he never called me ‘kid’, ‘squirt’, or any of the other demeaning nicknames grownups often tag children with.

Maybe that’s why I fell in love with him.

Or maybe it was the beautiful way he handled things, like he gloried in the simple pure contact with everyday things. I had often watched my mom chop tomatoes- chop, chop chop! I had even done it myself, but never had I seen someone bend his head over the cutting board and carefully, almost tenderly, cut a razor-thin perfect round slice of the red fruit. To this day I cannot slice a tomato like that, it always has one edge thicker or angled off.

He threw a dollop of sour cream on top of the chili, then threw those perfect tomato slices all over, not caring in the least for his masterpiece of shaving.

I had never been interested in an older man until that point. Looking back now, in order to have worked in a liquor establishment, he must have been at least 21, but he seemed young to my twelve year old eyes. He had a solid and lovely chest under the ratty tee shirt, and his white apron draped easily on well-proportioned hips.
“Want a beer, too?” his light mocking caught me off-guard.
“No thank you.” I replied, blissfully unaware of the fact that I wouldn’t have even been able to order one.
“Then how about green onions, on top of the taco? It comes with it, but most people don’t want them.”
Green onions have always been a weakness of mine.
“Oh, of course!”
“Good!” he smiled, and his eyes crinkled again, “It’s the only way to eat it.” Whereupon he proceeded to sprinkle finely minced green all over my lunch.

With that same rapid grace, he flipped a lid onto the mess, slid it across the bar towards me, and punched keys on the register. It came to $3.12
“Oh!” I flushed, panic setting in, “I only have the three d-“
“Don’t worry about it!” he cut me off, waving away my protestations, “I’ve got it. Enjoy your lunch.”

I don’t remember getting back to the store, five flights of stairs with that hot dish in my hands. My heart was hammering as I scrambled onto the stool near my dad’s repair bench. Opening the box, I could almost feel myself salivating, and I can taste that first bite to this very day.

Every respectable bar has at least one dish that they cook well. For some, it’s a burger, others- wings. In South Bend, there’s an Irish pub that makes a divine stew, liberally seasoned with Guinness Stout. For this bar, whatever its name was, the dish was chili. Meaty, spicy, rich and warm, their chili was perfect. Coupled with the salty corn chips, cool sour cream, and the fresh tomato and green onion, it was a dish I would be happy to eat at any elegant restaurant.

Irish Tacos soon trumped Wendy’s Superbar for lunch. Not only did they taste better, but no one at Wendy’s flirted gently with me, or gave me free New York Seltzer Chocolate Seltzers, or cut their tomatoes with such a craftsman’s hand. I made sure to always bring four or five dollars after that, leaving the change in a little pile on the bar top for my Chili Knight. We moved away late that summer and I have never been back, not in all of these eighteen years since. I’ve encountered the same dish since, called anything from Walking Tacos to Chili Pie, but no one (not even me!) has ever made it taste quite as good.

So wherever you are, man that cuts tomatoes nicely and is friendly to shy children, thank you.

Dating Translations

Mike and I celebrated our tenth anniversary this past week. I was thinking back on all of the attributes that attracted us to each other, and how some of this personality traits now tend to be ever so grating.

For those of you who are in the process of falling in love, or may someday be, here's a handy conversion chart:
[remember, its tongue-in-cheek, a good relationship only gets better with age :)]

Guess I might have been called honest and sincere and one point...

Boycott.

I almost did it. Today, after weeks- nay, months- of a difficult boycott I almost caved.

We had been getting more and more tired of Wal-Mart over the past few years, the endless aisles of cheaply manufactured goods, the regrettable customer service, the negative impact on the economy. A friend of ours held a job there for a few months, literally scraping the bottom of the barrel for employment. The pure abuse he suffered as a human being and a man was disgusting.

Then, late last winter, I snapped. I was shopping for luggage. My husband had a business trip coming up, and I and our oldest daughter were going to be accompanying him to London, expenses paid! Out of pure habit, I hit the local Wal-Mart in search of affordable suitcases. I shouldered my way into the store, past the proletariat crowd lingering at the snack bar, past the utterly disinterested non-greeter standing in the entrance, past the cashier gossiping in front of the self-scans. Obese women waddled in droves down the housewares aisles, fat rolls visible through thin stretch pants purchased on previous outings.

Every time I set foot in that store I felt a little bit stupider, a little bit less human. Every time I wandered the aisles, slack-jawed and confused, I left feeling disoriented, muddled, and taken advantage of. This time was to be no different, more than likely. I found my way to the luggage aisle and stared in disbelief at their selection. Two kinds of suitcase stared back at me- black and ugly, and ugly and black. One was already falling apart on the shelf. I already owned an ill-made ugly black suitcase, bought at the same lousy store two lousy years ago. I needed an extra one for myself for the trip, and my 8-year old needed a nice kid-sized one. Swiveling my head a bit to the side, I perused the selection of children's luggage. We had a choice of Dora the Explorer and Bratz. That's it. Kid #1 is to old for Dora, and no child of mine will ever be in possession of anything to do with spoiled preteen Valley girls, especially spelled wrong. Sure, there was some obnoxious, bright-colored boy's choice, Spiderman or some such rot, but it was just plain ugly.

A sudden flash of anger swept over me. Who were they to dictate to me that my kid was forced to choose between the lesser of two mindless evils? Who were they to foist one more shapeless and colorless suitcase on my household? I looked around at the other people shopping- every one was buying cartloads of things, things that they may or may not need, things that looked the exact same as the things everyone in every other state was also buying. I remembered vividly Madeline L'Engle's characterization of IT, the force that controlled and modulated the entire population of the city and beyond. Here I was, being controlled by a huge nameless faceless corporation that is so interested in character licensing that a kid can't even get a solid color suitcase.

Trite? Sure. But I walked out of that store and went somewhere purchased a bright red, leather-trimmed suitcase with nice detailing and excellent craftsmanship. Kid #1 got a brilliant lime-green rolling suitcase with matching tags, and they have served her well in the past year.

And then I started to learn about the company that is Wal-Mart. I learned about their numerous abuses of employees, their shameless corporate tactics, their utter disregard for the conditions of the third-world laborers that make their garbage, their ill-treatment of a customer that they hurt... the list goes on for pages.

So we stopped shopping there. It was hard at first, the convenience of everything I 'needed' in one place had become so sweet that I almost went through withdrawals for a few weeks. But after a while I noticed that I wasn't so grumpy when I came home from shopping. I noticed less 'things' cluttered my shelves and littered my house, and I just felt better. No longer was my pitiful little budget supporting a giant corporation. I know, I know, my money stills goes to other major corporations (Meijer, Target) but we are weaning ourselves off little by little.

Sometimes it was almost fun to find other places to shop at, planning out a path that would take me by Jo-Ann fabrics and Meijer in the same day.

But then we moved back to Cadillac. There's nothing here to speak of, now that Wal-Mart has taken over. The old Ace hardware, with their 'helpful hardware guys' and rows of well organized nuts and washers- they closed up and moved on years ago. The little fabric shop went out, then Snyder's shoes, then the local mom and pops that sold this and that. We do most of our shopping now at the local Meijer, which, although still a large corporation, is a Michigan-based company with somewhat better employee standards. They also support local farmers, something Wal-Mart does not do. Maybe that explains their outstanding produce selection and quality. So I feel a bit better about spending what little I have in Meijer. But now I am not within a 20 minute drive of Trader Joe's, Hobby Depot, and Target. We order off the internet more than ever, and eat from the local farmer's market when it's in season.

Money is not quite as free-flowing this year as it was last. We struggle now to make ends meet, once again. When I had the need of some extra clothing yesterday, I somehow found myself in Wal-Mart, scrounging the $9.00 clearance racks and the so-called 'career wear' section. I'm no fashion maven, but the styles hanging stiffly off the racks depressed me. I threw some clothes in a cart and went to try them on in the tiny, dingy little cattle stalls that pass for fitting rooms. The first outfit- great on the rack- was horribly cut and made me look like a piece of furniture. Of course, with my figure, this could happen anywhere.

Five- six- seven articles of clothing wound up back on the hangers, rejected. Poorly cut, poorly made, scratchy material, plunging necklines. I realized then, what the sinking feeling was in the pit of my stomach- it was defeat. "Ha!" crowed the Big Box store, "You think you can get away with boycotting ME? Have I got news for you!! I will systematically undercut every other business in this country until you have no other recourse than to shop from me!! Bwahahahaha!"

Ok, so I didn't actually have a conversation with Wal-Mart. I walked out, forever, hopefully, and got into my car and drove to a store that carries overruns and closeouts. I spent my paltry $20 on a well-made shirt from last year's design line and left happy, with most of my dignity intact.

But they almost got me. Not this time, guys.

Apple, you have my heart back

Man, it's been a rough month computer wise.
My wireless keyboard stopped working, even with fresh batteries. My MacBook's keys started springing off like crazy, my MacBook case splintered up into my wrist one day, and while backing up my MacBook to ship to Apple my track pad stopped working! On top of that my wife's MacBook Pro is having crazy keyboard and other kernel panic issues. Needless to say, my faith in Apple was riding really low.

So what's changed? Three days ago Apple sent me a shiny box. Today I have my MacBook back. They replaced the entire top casing, keyboard, trackpad, and the splintered area, and they also went ahead and upgraded my superdrive and replaced something that I'm not even sure what it is on the invoice. All of that- ship a box to me, ship the MacBook back to them, fix it, and ship the Macbook back to me in perfect condition, in three days(!), no charge.

Oh and my keyboard, complete fluke. It started working while I was on the phone with the techs (Telepathic keyboard repair Apple?). So I'm happy there.

Now to get my wife's computer sent off. With the promptness and professionalism that I've received with my MacBook, I now have full faith that everything will be fine.

All is alright in the world again.

Moderating non-sense

Out of the goodness of our hearts we left the commenting open to anyone, anonymous or other wise. I'm an Anarchist myself and don't wish to enforce any kind of control on others. But the libertarian in me also rears up in defense of property when it is being abused.

On that note, due to some spitful jerk, I have a good guess as to whom it was, and for the convenience of other people trying to read spam free comments, all of our comments are now moderated. The only thing I will be moderating out is spam. We are open minded people here. Feel free to behave in any other manner than harmful to others.

Cheers,
m3talsmith

Invasive Advertising

So here I am in a public restroom, struggling with my coat, purse, and gloves, trying not to drag my scarf in the toilet, which I'm sure houses an entire galaxy of germs. I finally manage to wrap the scarf halfway around the top of my head, get my purse hung haphazardly on the wiggling hook inside the door, manage to get myself somewhat seated and- I make eye contact with some tanned young man.
No, there's not a co-ed bathroom at the Mexican restaurant. Instead, there's an advertisement for someone's travel agency. The guy who runs it obviously decided it would help increase his business if potential customers can spot him walking down the street. Or peeking into their bathroom stalls.

Now, being in retail myself for many years, I can thoroughly appreciate a good advertising opportunity when it comes around. Bathroom advertising, my friend, is not good. Sure, they tell you that you've got a captive audience. What better to do than read some text while relieving oneself? Far better than making conversation with the person in the next stall. But, are you really going to develop lasting business relationships with people who are frantically scrambling for toilet paper.
I don't think I could ever look that tanned young man in the eyes and tell him about my interest in a trip to Madagascar. Not after he watched me go to the bathroom. His pleasantly smiling face invaded my personal space, you see, causing me discomfort and insecurity. When one has a slightly embarrassed memory of an establishment, it is not necessarily an association that will trigger a desire to conduct business there.
On the flipside, there is an ad agency in Brazil that has come up with this exceedingly clever and much less invasive bathroom ad idea. This grabs the target market while they are perusing themselves in the mirror, washing hands, doing altogether less personal hygiene routines.
Some of you have seen, by now, this Clearasil pimple cleanser campaign. Utterly brilliant, it manages to get a message across by teetering on the fence between embarrassing and hilarious.

Our lives are being constantly bombarded by advertisements, some in the most intimate and offensive ways. I understand that corporations need to find ways to maximize their outreach to a target market, but the constant barrage of mental dross leaves a person feeling ragged, violated, and overwhelmed at the end of the day. As a businesswoman, I will do my best not to assail my current and future customers with invasive marketing techniques. I know that my work is good enough to carry my name into the world. And I'd rather be there in person to hand someone the toilet paper.

Winter in Michigan

The wind came across frozen Lake Mitchell with a banshee shriek. Splinters of ice whistled through the brittle air and drove their way into every surface in view, covered the world in frigid white. Native Michiganders huddled deeper into the hearts of their homes, flickering television sets offering little in the way of warmth, but much in the way of distraction. How these people survive twenty, forty, even sixty years here I cannot fathom. I've been home for three months and can't wait to get away. There is no sunshine, no color, no reprieve from the endless cold and gray. They say the divorce rate spikes high in this time of year, and its no wonder. People stuck indoors together for weeks at a time, skin growing pale and clammy, fighting over paying the heating bill.
I grew up here, you know. As a kid I wore my (boy) cousins' hand-me-down snowpants and trekked through knee deep snow to go sledding. I got chapped cheeks, frozen digits, and pneumonia. I ate snow, melted it on top of the wood stove, and shook it out of my clothes for five months a year. Then my dad moved us to Arizona for the winters, and we were able to leave behind the gray and cold, trading it for sapphire skies and blooming deserts.
When we did move home, several years later, the winter didn't bother me for some reason. Snow driving sucked, always has, always will, but other than that I barely noticed it. Then I got married and started moving elsewhere: Ohio, southern Michigan, Traverse City. Winter is still in existence there, but nothing like it is here in Cadillac.
I have kids of my own now, who are fortunate enough to have girl snowpants. They love the ice, the cold, the frozen windswept lake. Maybe I've gotten too old, maybe too spoiled by mild winters elsewhere, I am not sure. All I know is that it's a wicked winter wonderland. And I still don't have my own snowpants.

On Things that Really Matter ...

In our frantic hurry to prove one point or another - to yell, argue, and fight each other over ideas - we need to remember why the ideas are important in the first place. We must never forget our humanity.

Today is National Hug Day. Go out there and prove that you are a human and that other humans matter too. Don't forget to hug the odd stranger or loved one today.



Consider yourself hugged by us; The Urban Rebellion.

The Best Movie You've Probably Never Watched

Is there yet anything sacred from the eighties? That decade of American prosperity, revolting clothes, ratty hair, and arms negotiations, we've been basically content to forget it all for the time being. But one part of the era has been stamped permanently in the Annals of Important History: 80s Movies.
From The Blues Brothers in 1980 to Steel Magnolias in '89, we saw some of the funniest, classiest, and most romantic movies to ever grace the screen. I know this is objective opinion here, but it tends to be the general consensus among all three of my friends. And my cat.

In 1985, John Cusack had been in only a few credited movies, despite having a string of smaller productions behind him. How and why he got the role of Lane Meyer in Better Off Dead is probably of no importance to us now. All we need to know is that he fit into the insecure teenager's character perfectly. No one could step in potato salad better, at least not in those awful red shorts. Neither could anyone be better at sticking Q-tips into every facial orifice. Not in 1985. Lane Meyer is a typical dweeby suburban teenager- hopelessly in love with a shallow girlfriend, desperate to blend in, and doomed to race the family station wagon against two crazy Japanese guys who learned their English from sports television.

When the shallow girlfriend dumps him for the captain of the ski team- blow dried blond hair, gleaming white teeth and all- Lane decides the only way to deal with the situation is to kill himself. He is as inept at doing this as he is at skiing the K-12 hill, which he sees as the only way to win his old girlfriend back. Meanwhile, we have his wonderful friend Charles De Mar to keep us company, snorting Jell-O and snow and rattling off euphemisms- ("Now you listen to me, Lane. I've been going to this high school for seven years- I'm no dummy!") as well as his completely absurd family. The things that come out of Mrs. Meyer's kitchen are enough to make one want to shudder (blue boiled bacon for one) and Lane's little brother Badger would probably make the FBI profiler's list nowadays.
While Lane's dad struggles to be relevant, finds himself humiliated in an anteater coat, and receives microwave meals for Christmas, we get to meet the delightful French foreign exchange student staying next door. She has been procured, it seems, for the sole purpose of romancing Ricky, the disgustingly plump momma's boy who slurps nasal spray and crochets.

Ricky's mother is also delightful, in a revolting sort of way, especially when Lane accidentally blows her up in another suicide attempt. We also have the lecherous, letter-dropping mailman, the vengeful newspaper boy, and a slavering pig-burger man.

I don't think I'm going to give any more tidbits away at the moment, other than this last: This movie is one of the quirkiest that I have ever seen, and I also believe it has graced society with ones of the best movie lines of all time. Lane has once again unsuccessfully attempted suicide, and in jumping off a bridge, lands in a garbage truck. Two black men, working construction nearby, witness this and sigh, shaking their heads. "It's sad times when folks gotta be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that."

If you haven't watched Better Off Dead, please go out and rent or buy it right now. Then watch it twice, because you'll be laughing so hard you'll miss half of the jokes the first time around.

And I don't have a cat.

Ron Paul Powns Hillary Clinton!

Update: Apparently I was transposing Democratic delegates for votes. My apologies! I assure you this was an honest mistake. I have never voted in a democratic caucus and I misunderstood how they were recorded.

In the interest of honesty I am not going to delete my mistake. I will instead be posting a corrected version. You can read the retracted post below.

---

What u say?! Srsly, in nevaduh.

Ok enough of the net euphemisms. Seriously. The lesser known but higher delegate state of Nevada held both the Democrat and Republican primary today. And the Silence is Deafening!

For the past week, after the Michigan primary, the MSM (main stream media) has been touting South Carolina, and how important that is; or they were busy talking about how a certain Union endorsed Obama, but the Union members were going to vote against the Union for Clinton instead. Meanwhile Nevada is worth 32 delegates whilst South Carolina is only worth 24; making Nevada the hidden big prize.

Of course they may have totally ignored Nevada because of the heavy Mormon influence; perhaps just counting on Mitt Romney winning it because of this. A sign of Religious prejudice and bias would not look good in the papers, so they may have chosen to ignore most of the Republican side. But something major did happen there. Then again they may have been playing up to the "Major Candidate" bias that they've shown lately, by ignoring it because of the Republicans, up until last week, only Ron Paul was airing ads in Nevada. Whatever the case, something big did happen.

What? Look at the numbers:

Ron Paul (2nd place) 6,077 votes 14%
Hillary Clinton (1st place) 5,355 votes 51%
[source: cnn.com]

If this isn't damning to Hillary I don't know what is. How can you, as Hillary Clinton, the big "Front Runner", spend personal time over in Nevada campaigning, come in first place, and still have, as the MSM would have you believe, a second tier candidate like Ron Paul, who came in second place, beat you in total voters?

Maybe there's more to this Ron Paul than meets the eye ... rly

The James Dean/Firefly Syndrome

The James Dean/Marilyn Monroe/Firefly Syndrome



“You have to watch this show!” My husband burbled one day after visiting some coolgeek cousins, “It’s great, it’s essentially a space series, but with cowboy aspects to it, and the captain’s really funny, but he has a sad history, and, there’s this funny girl who fixes the engine, and a guy named Jayne, but he’s really tough, and Fox cancelled it after only a few episodes! But its great, the first episode has this fight, on a train, and, and-“
He doesn’t have the greatest way of making things sound appealing. The last show that I ‘just had to see’ turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment, so I didn’t listen too closely to his praises.
Persistent as ever, Michael brought the series home, and I still didn’t pay much attention, wrapped up as I was in my writing, moving to a new home, trying to homeschool our three children…
Somehow, eventually, he cajoled me into watching one episode. And I fell in love. Firefly is witty, earthy, spacey without feeling like Star Trek (not that there’s anything wrong with Star Trek!), warm, and very, very human. It has depth and dimension, and the possibility for a good long run of storyline.
I inhaled all fourteen episodes over the next few days, in the proper, non-Fox-issue order. I was entertained- I laughed, I sniffled, I hid my face in my husband’s shoulder when anything to do with Reavers came on, and I found, somehow, another little slice of weirdness to identify with.

And then the episodes ran out. And I learned that this show had been cancelled nearly five years ago, never to be produced again. (where I was when this all happened, I have no idea)
“What?!?” I was furious, livid actually, “How could some stupid network execs cancel something as quality as this, and show something as stupid as Trading Spouses? What the hell is the matter with them?!?”
Suddenly, somehow, it became just a little bit more than a television show. The odd little speech quirks of Captain Mal became almost iconic, I smiled at people wearing the tee shirts, my curiosity was piqued by anything to do with Joss Whedon. I even signed some online petition to bring the show back, as if that would ever do anything.
I learned that the show has a sort of cult following, much like the similarly fated, but longer-running Futurama (thanks again, Fox).
Something about my reaction to this seemed a bit familiar, and it was only the other day that I was able to put my finger on it.

I was fifteen, working at our family jewelry store in the Foothills Mall in Tucson. I had lived a pretty sheltered life up until that point, not paying much attention to cultural icons or idols much. An antique show came to the mall one weekend. You’ve seen these before, a mass of booths laden with postcards, posters, comic books, costume jewelry, and pop art, all of questionable vintage. It was at one of these booths that I spied a poster that made my pulse quicken a bit. The man in the shot wore a white tee shirt, dark jeans, and a scowl that can only be described as belligerently sexy. I moved the print aside and found a whole stack of pictures beneath, all of this man. I couldn’t tell exactly what era they were from, but in every one he was more and more handsome. Scowling, smirking, smoking cigarettes, he looked to my sheltered fifteen year old eyes like a ragged god, an indifferent and possibly troubled divinity. In love, I hurriedly bought the (cheaper) postcard version, carrying it close to my heart all the way back to work.
There, I showed it to my mother.
“James Dean.” She said, in her matter-of-fact way, barely glancing at my treasure, “Haven’t you ever seen him? Rebel Without a Cause?”
I shook my head.
“50s movie star.” She shrugged, “Died in a motorcycle crash when he was still young. Only did a couple of movies. Maybe we’ll rent one so you can see him. Not much of an actor.”
I gaped at my picture. How tragic. A life cut short. How romantic. A Romeo, an Icarus. It made the imagination whirl- what would movies have been like if he were still here?
I didn’t become obsessed, per se, but I was very fascinated. I studied his short life and learned that it was a car accident, not motorcycle, that he had been a tiny bit mentally unhinged, and that sultry squint that he showed in his photographs was from poor eyesight more than any profound sexuality. Even today, when I am browsing movies, my pulse quickens a little bit at the sight of him on a cover.
He didn’t have the chance to get old and flaccid and embarrassing, like so many other film stars. Now, we hold onto this romantic memory, exaggerating it in some way, possibly, just like we do for other things that we have lost in our lives.

Do things suddenly become more valuable once they are not available? I propose that they do, at least to some of the more romantic of us humans. Do we often take things for granted when they are right in front of us, simple and common things like our families, our comforts, our very culture?

I don’t have any life-altering thoughts to end this article with. I just felt like challenging you, me- all of us- to enjoy and cherish what we have, while we have it. Before it’s gone, and we’re forced to cling to a memory of what once was.
Thanks, and good night.

Diebold and Serious Voter Fraud

It looks like the time has come for the public to see the fraud absolutely perpetrated upon them for so many years. Forget Ohio 2004 (actually please remember that too). Here comes New Hampshire Primaries 2008!

Just a test

I just finished moving the blog to a new directory, in order to start work on the real blog engine for our site. I apologize for any problems that you might encounter. If you do happen to encounter any please post the problems in the comment section or email me: m3talsmith@gmail.com

Chapter Two of The Untimely Demise of an Excellent Customer

To purchase click here
To download the free pdf click here
For Chapter One click here
Click here for Chapter Three

Deborah Fixes All

“Hey Deborah, look at this ring!” Jerry called out. Jerry is my main jeweler. He has very little hair on his head, lots on his arms, a prominent Adam’s apple, and a heart of gold. He also came blessed with his own weird sense of humor. He was grinning and holding out a small piece of gold.
“That’s not a ring.” I said.
“Well it was, until they had a fight. Then she smooshed it up into this little ball. Now we have to fix it before he sees it. She came here because of our reputation for good work.”
“Not because of our reputation for magic? ‘Cause that’s what it's gonna take to fix that thing! Why can’t she just show him what she did to it? It’ll teach him not to get in a fight with her again!”
“It could be a good warning to him,” rejoined Carol, our resident man hater, “she could show him what’s going to happen to him if he screws up!”
“Know what the great thing is about her story?” asked Jerry. He didn’t wait for anyone to answer him, “The thing they fought about turned out to have never happened!” This made him laugh uproariously.
“So we have to straighten it all out, probably same day service, and we have to give her a good price, too, right?”
“You got it!”

Business that had piled up while I was gone- the kind that only a boss can take care of. There were some custom job quotes to look at, some complex repairs, one customer complaint I had to call personally, and the question of a Halloween display in the store. This I took up with Jesse, the more creative sales associate. Halloween isn’t any kind of a jewelry sales holiday, but we try to stay festive. After a bit of deliberation, we wound up doing a purple, black and orange window (what else?) with some blackened gold pieces lying on orange velvet, some cat jewelry, and a pumpkin shaped trick-or-treat container filled with rings spilling out. Jesse hung some sheer sparkly black material under the lights for the right eerie effect, and I made spider webs out of black string and laid them on the bottoms of the cases with bracelets wound in between.
We change our seasonal displays every month or more, it usually takes about one day of solid work, but it is worth the effort. Our store becomes part fairy tale, part theater, and it delights customers. When Jesse and I were done, we stepped back. She tucked a slightly damp blond curl back into her ponytail and squinted.
“It’s missing something, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, do you remember what we did last year?” I asked her.
“Something more along the line of candy. Treats.”
“Well this year I want tricks. How about a big spider somewhere?”
“Yeah….” She smiled. “Ok, so where do we get a big spider? A costume shop?” This part I didn’t know, so I left it up to her. That’s what I pay them for. I went back to the glassed-in office where I carve my waxes. I had a wax to start on for the garnet I had bought for Mae Griffiths.

Ok, so here is where I have to explain what I do: I make jewelry. There are really only a few ways to make it. What I do primarily is carve wax. Ever hear of displacement casting? For those of you who haven’t, I will explain:
A microcrystalline plastic wax is carved and shaped into the desired shape- ring, pendant, etc. (This in and of itself is a labor intensive process requiring years to master.) This wax is then put in a steel mold called a flask. A silica-based powder called investment is mixed with water, and then poured over the wax models in the flask. When this hardens to plaster hardness, the mold is put in a kiln that vaporizes the wax, leaving a cavity of the original. Then the mold goes to a burnout kiln that hardens the investment at approximately F ˚1350. The molten metal, (gold, silver, platinum,) is then poured into the cavity using either a centrifugal force caster or a vacuum pad. The investment is then chipped away, leaving an exact metal model of the wax. This is the primary way jewelry has been made for thousands of years and we have found very few ways to improve on it. There are other ways of making jewelry such as fabrication, which we also do here. My store is Peregin Fine Goldsmithing & Design; I own it, and I love my job.

On this particular blustery October day I loved my job a lot. I love starting a project for Mae Griffiths. She is my best customer. Not the one who spends the most money, just the best in terms of my favorite. She is in her early sixties but has more energy than people half her age. She is thin, fashionable, and vivacious. I make her about 4 big custom pieces a year, not to mention several smaller ones. When working with her, I have complete artistic license. She is collecting sets of every gemstone she likes (which, lucky for me, happen to be most of them) and we have worked our way up to garnet. I had made her the ring, earrings, bracelet and even a pin back in the spring. Then she went away for an extended vacation in Cancun, leaving me with the instruction to have a necklace waiting when she got back in October. I had to wait for my trip to NYC to find a stone before I could even start on it. A garnet that special has to be handpicked, not ordered out of some catalog.
Mae would be back in about 3 weeks, which gave me exactly enough time to have it done and looking like I had never scrambled at the last minute. She loves large when it came to pendants; many of her better center stones had come from Mr. Abramoff’s. Thirty very small, very black seed pearls had been selected to surround it. Black sets off garnet so well.
I pulled a large block of hard green wax from my drawer and began shaping it with a rotary file. I worked long into the night, my crew left quietly, careful not to disturb the creative process.

Thirteen hours later, I had a wax ready to cast. The pendant was in 2 parts, the body of it would hold the garnet and swing free of the bail, which surrounded the center and held all the pearls in tapering points. I think the Halloween decorating had inspired me; the finished piece would be rather witchy. I locked up; left alone (big no-no in this business) went home and slept until noon.

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Click here for Chapter Three

Chapter One of The Untimely Demise of an Excellent Customer

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Deborah Makes a Purchase

The subway vomited its contents onto the platform. Passengers streamed out in several directions, heads down, eyes not looking directly at any other person. Many were on cell phones; many more had thin white cords trailing from their ears to some hidden area on their person. I headed for the closest turnstile I could find, got my purse stuck in it, swore, and extricated myself.
Racing up the 3 grimy flights of stairs, I emerged into natural daylight, commotion and the stench of garbage juice. It trickled out of a huge compactor bin on a dark side street. The smell, festering in the October warmth, was strong enough that it triggered an involuntary retch in the back of my throat. At the sound, the woman walking just to my left looked sidelong at me, crossed the street, and continued her frenetic pace. Millions of people, going everywhere, going nowhere; all hurrying to the same fate. Well, they can have New York. I like it a lot, for about a week at a time, twice a year. I come, I spend, and I get the heck out. The trade shows bring me here in early summer; I make all my contacts, stock my store for the year, and refurbish my wardrobe. Then I come back in October to stock up for the Christmas gift-buying season, fill specific diamond requests, and hand pick our famous gift wrap and display. Each time I get here, I am tempted to join the madness; but by the time my flight leaves for home, I have been cured of that whim.

This particular trip saw me on my second to last day in the City. I always save the best for last. I made my way to 47th St. and turned in at one of the less impressive buildings. Riding the elevator up to the 9th floor gave me the same gut lurch elevators always do. I had tried the stairs here once and was so winded by the 6th floor that I had to sneak back to the elevator and cheat for the last three floors. I am not in the best of shape, but I get points for effort, right?
Down a rather twisty hall I found my destination- a large black door with the moniker ‘H. Abramoff, Importer of Fine and Large Coloured Gemstones’ engraved on a red plastic plaque. It looked like most other office doors, just with a little bit more security. Having gotten security clearance downstairs, I was admitted presently and stood gazing at case after case of blazing color. No research lab developed this color; no chemical process was studied and perfected, at least not by mere man. These colors were formed far below the earth’s surface millions of years ago by heat, tectonic plate shifts, and incredible pressure. Then gnomelike men in various parts of the world dug it up and sold it to ferretlike men who studied it and cleaved it and cut it and sold it to lizardlike men who brought it here to be sold to people like me.
The color seeped out of the gems onto the white displays under them, the fire within winked as I moved past. This is why I cannot leave the jewelry business; I am hopelessly trapped by a love of shiny colored rocks.
Mr. Abramoff has his gems arranged by color, in a sort of rainbow. Most jewelry and gem venues arrange by gemstone, but since there are so many colors available in most minerals, it becomes a riot of color. He is in business solely for the color worshipper and therefore wisely caters to us.

I was headed for the brown-red section, which just has to be at the far end of the Mr. Abramoff’s spectrum. So of course the blue purple tanzanite, the grass green moldavite, and the juicy peach precious topaz distracted me on the way. I was so absorbed in my reverie that I jumped when Abramoff himself appeared from nowhere and gripped me by the arm,
“Mizs Peregin! How veddy veddy nizce to see you!”
I only come twice a year but the man always remembers me. He called out to an associate lurking in the back room-
“Mickey! Come help ze lovely Mizs Peregin… Mickey! You eat your lunch later!”
My heart sank just a bit; Mickey was a consummate flirt and rather distracting when I was trying to shop. He came out of the back room with a small piece of onion in the corner of his mouth.
“Hey Deborah, wanna taco? I got chicken, I got beef, which’ll ya have?” His eyes traveled me up and down as he spoke, finally making contact with my own eyes.
“No thanks, I can get just as much satisfaction from smelling them on your breath.”
“HA! Mrs. Funny, huh? Glad to see ya. Where we gonna start?”

Welcome to New York, the melting pot. Mr. Abramoff is about as Russian Jew as one can get, while Mickey DiSaronto is pure Brooklyn. He has the rough accent, his head bobs forward slightly when he speaks, and he’s completely unfazed by any personal insult
Trying desperately to ignore the onion smell on his breath and the souvenir stuck in the crevice of his greasy lips; I asked for garnet.
“We got your rhodolite, we got your demantiod, we got your tsavorite, spessartite, color change. Eh?” His head bobbed with every word but the onion remained firmly in place.
“Actually, I just need plain ol’ Mozambique, as red as you can get it, very large and preferably pear shape.”
“Large red, very hard to find…” he shrugged and opened a drawer.

“You and your pear shapes…” he muttered as he dug through little folded gem papers.
“They make the best pendants.” I replied. He selected a paper, leered at me, pulled out a white velvet pad. The bulge in the paper was fairly significant. I held my breath as he opened it, the paper crinkling softly. The stone that slid out was breathtaking. Mickey was obnoxious, but he knew what I wanted, and he knew his stuff. Nearly an inch and a half long, the pear shape proportions were lovely, the cut perfect, the red fire within seemed alive. The color was almost indescribable; almost a pomegranate seed, almost a drop of blood, definitely a smoldering ember, and nearly a rose petal.
“Looks like a nosebleed.” Mickey said, interrupting my raptures.
No need to ask the price, we both knew I would pay whatever they asked, and my client would pay whatever I asked, which hopefully would be enough of a markup to pay a few bills. But ask I did, and dicker I did, until it was back in its paper, with a cryptic price written on it, and encased in one of those little zipper bags most people associate with drugs. We set it aside and I continued shopping for special pieces.
I had a request for a large perfectly clean squarish emerald from the local neurosurgeon. I guess when your career keeps you at work for over sixteen hours a day you make up to your wife every holiday with a beautiful gift to remind her why you can’t be home. Personally I would rather have my husband home than any sparkly rock; but I’m not married so I what do I know. Besides, it keeps me in business, so who am I to judge? If I eliminated any guilt-induced sales I may as well close up shop and sell shoelaces.
Mickey had reverently pulled a stone paper out of the safe and was slowly opening it. Just from his attitude I knew it was going to be good. Or bad, whichever your viewpoint. The stone slid out on the white velvet and just sat there being beautiful.
“Eight point two carats. Flawless. GIA cert.” Mickey said, now watching me narrowly for my reaction. Eight point two carats of pure green, with a flash of blue in its depths. It was like looking into a steamy Amazon rainforest, if there are any left. A flawless emerald is incredibly hard to find, let alone this perfect in color and cut. It was a nice cushion cut, which is a sort of rounded square. I didn’t even want to ask the price.
“How many digits?” I held up four fingers, knowing I was mad, then added my thumb. Mickey grinned and held up all five fingers, then added a stubby forefinger from his other hand. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it still amazes me that something small enough to swallow can cost as much as a moderate house or a luxury car!
“Two hundred thou, give or take some spare change,” he said.
“Wow.” I pulled the velvet pad closer and picked the stone up in the large stone grippers. This is a contraption with 4 thin prong shaped springy wires that can push out from one end and hold the stone for viewing or display, much less dangerous and clumsy than tweezers. Examining the stone under a loupe was as much a delight as a task. It had perfect symmetry, perfect color, and it scintillated. Emeralds usually don’t scintillate. A blast of onion brought me back to earth.
“Hey Deborah, when ya gonna come out here to stay?” Mickey’s Brooklyn accent made my name sound funny, with the emphasis on the ‘De’ rather than the ‘ah’.
“What are you talking about, Mickey?” I asked wearily.
“Out here, New York, me, ya know…”
“You?”
“Yeah, I know you got the hots for me, its ok to admit it. Me an’ you could open our own thing, you make the stuff, I sell it, we have a little place out in Queens or somewheres, a coupla kids. Huh?”
“Mickey, you try this on every female customer you have.”
“Only the hot ones.”
Now, I am not hot. I am just past 30, ever so slightly overweight, somewhat short, and still have a trace of acne. I am rarely hit on, so a direct come on is so rare that even when I know it’s not serious I can’t help but get flustered. I diverted my confusion by pointing out his lunch leftover. Ever the gentleman, he flicked it on the floor.
“So whaddya think about this beauty, huh?”
“Well, it’s a little more than I think he wanted to spend, let me make a call to him.” I suggested
“More than he wanted to spend? What, he works at the Burger King or something?”
“Yes, actually he does, Mickey. He skims a buck off every Whopper they sell and pockets it. He’s a millionaire and everyone in my town is fat.”
“Ha.”
I ducked away to call the brain doctor’s office number that I had tucked into my purse before leaving. As my luck would have it, he was at the hospital in surgery, and unavailable to speak to. Would I leave a message? No, I would not. Leaving the receptionist with the impression I was carrying on a lurid affair with her boss, I hung up and returned to the even more lurid Mickey with his proffering of wonderful gems. At my request he pulled out several other emeralds for a fraction of the price, but none were the caliber of the cushion cut. I sighed and wrenched my eyes away from the beauty.
“I don’t know if slicing up brains pays enough now, what with malpractice insurance and all.”
“Ah, take a chance on it.”
“Mickey, I’m not a big enough fish to take a chance on a quarter of a million dollars!”
Mr. Abramoff again appeared out of nowhere and waved his arms,
“You plizs take on memo! Take to your good cuzstomer and when he sees, he will buy! It iz a be-a-u-tiful sztone, you take home today, call me in a week, ok?”
“Are you sure? I- I’ve never taken delivery of a memo that big, it’s almost scary.” I dithered. He snorted and gesticulated again,
“Did I make my money by not truzsting people? Do I build a buzsinez by hiding my stonesz up here in thisz safe? No! I trust you, I know where your store iz, you try anything funny, I szend Mickey to take your front door away. But it will not come to that.”
I had to laugh in spite of my fears, and I had him wrap it up along with the garnet. To be on the safe business side I had him put two smaller and cheaper stones with it for fallback. From there we moved on to the moldavite. I had no specific requests for it, but it was a favorite of my best saleslady, therefore it sold fairly consistently. Mickey pulled several pieces out of the case, ranging from a fine deep leafy green to a light yellowish green. The sparkle was intense, the cuts exotic and inspiring.
“Volcano glass, huh? You know we actually had a tough time convincing Boss to carry it, he looks down on it, says its not a real gemstone.” Moldavite, so named for the Moldavian mountain range where it was first discovered, seems to be the result of a volcanic eruption. Even though its crystal structure and properties are very similar to glass, it is still a natural occurrence, therefore valuable. I selected three specimens and checked my request list. Mr. Abramoff opened a parcel of nice Madagascar hot pink tourmaline and tried to pique my interest in it. As much as I tried to put him off (I had lots of it sitting in my safe at home) a huge fine kite shape kept catching my eye. I could visualize it in a wide cuff bracelet surrounded by some kind of baguettes.
“I can make it very nisze price just for you- Ah, hello there, good day, what can I do for you?” I was saved from commitment by a new entry. I turned around and saw a thin young man standing looking around with rather a self-conscious air about him. He was dressed in a tacky pinstripe suit, almost a zoot suit, ugly purple tie and shiny pointy shoes. He had slick hair, and was carrying a small case under his arm. Everything about him struck me as wrong and I could see Mr. Abramoff looking him up and down with a skeptical eye. Tired of getting picked on by Columbian crime rings, this end of the jewelry business has really started to dress down in recent years, so the sight of someone in a full suit, let alone a cheap full suit, seemed fishy. We all watched him narrowly as he looked in the cases, trying to be ultra-casual but only pulling off ultra-fishy. After a bit he asked Mr. Abramoff for large sapphires.
“What cut, plisz?”
“Uh, square.”
“You have a need for some special customer-?” The small man in the yarmulke was gently but suspiciously probing this guy.
“Oh, yeah, I’m a jeweler and a customer of mine, uh, needs one for his girlfriend. I’m going to set it in a necklace.” Jeweler, huh. Three heads swiftly glanced at his hands and glanced back at his eyes. Perfectly smooth and clean fingers fidgeted with the case he was holding. I sneaked a glance at my own jeweler’s hands. My forefingers had black polish rouge permanently ground deep into the whorls of the fingerprint. Bits of the skin around the nail were shiny and peeling, the fingernail was ground thin in spots at the edge from getting hit with a file. I had a small black hole under one nail where a tiny spinning bur had sunk into my flesh at 11,000 RPMs. There were dry scaly patches where the cleaning solvent and frequent washing has completely stripped my skin of its natural emollients.
They were ugly hands; I never bothered to do my nails anymore because within a day they looked awful again. If I had a professional manicure with the paraffin dip and everything, it succeeded in making my hands slightly softer and only somewhat more presentable for about 2 days. Jewelers’ hands are not pretty, but they are some of the most skilled hands in the world. This guy had never laid his fingers to any skilled handwork, let alone dirty jewelry work. Mr. Abramoff was angry.
“How did you get in here? You want a stone for cheap for yourself; you are a zneaky and bad man. This is wholeszale to the trade only! Get out!” He made a call to the security booth and could be heard furiously reaming out some poor bastard downstairs. Mickey and I finished the list with no further problems, I left with 3 fine emeralds for the brain doctor’s wife, the kite shaped tourmaline, a large oval tanzanite for a customer too old to enjoy it, several pieces for various other projects, and a stunning garnet for my favorite customer, Mae Griffiths.

I left the diamond district with close to half a million dollars worth of gems tucked into my inside jacket pocket. I have become used to the risk involved. I have a habit now of walking fast, staying aware of being followed, etc. This time, though, the stakes were probably higher than they had been in my career and a lot of it wasn’t mine yet. Taking risks I can handle. Taking risks with other peoples’ hard earned money makes me sweat. I dress extremely casual when I’m not at work, looking more like a dumpy schoolteacher than a woman who owns a successful jewelry store. If anyone were desperate enough to mug me they probably wouldn’t be lucky enough get the stuff in the hidden inner pocket of my coat, and if they did I carried insurance for these instances anyhow. But I would still put up a fight. Between our justice system and our entertainment industry we have bred a generation of heartless criminals, no conscience, seeking only for them and not afraid to dispense with any human life. They don’t scare me; rather, they anger me. I have a concealed weapons permit in my native Midwestern state, I carry, and I know how to use it. Of course I don’t bring anything out here that deadly, but I still carry a large wad of keys ready to take some punks’ eye out should he give me the least reason to. Too many of my trusting colleagues have died.

By the time I was done there it was nearly dark outside. It gets dark much earlier here than at home. We are 700 miles away, yet still in the same time zone, strange as it may seem.
The next meeting on my agenda was with an old high school friend, Lila Pointer. She was one of many of us who wanted to get the heck out of our suffocating small town as teenagers. She was one of the lucky ones who made it out and never came back. Graduating from a fine culinary school, she had traversed the world doing various foodie things, finally landing a job in New York City. I’m not sure exactly what her job entailed, but it had something to do with restaurant menus. All I know is when I went to visit her she always brought me to some wonderful dark little watering hole. We met outside of her Midtown office and shared a cab to some remote corner of Manhattan. The outside of the restaurant would have not caught my attention as anyplace to eat, it had the look of a closed up store. The inside, however, was fantastic. It looked like a small hanging garden. Plants hung from the ceiling, wound their way around lights, trailed down the walls. There were small cactus gardens in the center of each table and in long boxes attached to the wall. There were no menus for tables, just a small sign hanging from the ceiling in amongst the plants. Lila found us a table in a hidden corner and plopped down with a sigh,
“Whew! You’d think after dealing with these people all day I would just want to go home and forget about food, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, I play with pretty baubles all day and go home and make some more… I guess when your work is your passion you just can’t unplug, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess. So! Show me the stones you got!” I had told her about them on the way over.
“Not here, Lila! That’s too dangerous!”
“Nonsense! No one here gives a hang what you do. Besides, I might have you make something for me!” Her jewelry box contained not a few of my creations, collected over the years of our friendship. Her tastes were usually a little more moderate than what I had purchased today. Reluctantly I drew out the parcel of stones and showed her the big emerald. She cocked her head at it and pronounced it “fakey looking”. I laughed and told her the price and her jaw dropped.
“Well, I never really liked green anyhow. Do you have any more earthy tones?” I showed her a Madeira citrine I had picked up. It was the color of the autumn leaves still clinging the trees. It was a very elongated pear shape, nearly 2 inches in length but only about ¾” at its widest. To me, it was a challenge to set; to the stonecutter, it must have been more of a challenge. Lila liked it, but as I thought, it was too big for her.
“I’m sorry, I already had the medium sized stones mailed home. The ones I bought a few days ago were great but I don’t want to hassle with them so I have the guys send them to the store as soon as I pick them out. But I have a nice matched set of this material back at home, if you like the color I can make you a pendant and earrings set.”
“How matched is the set?” she asked skeptically.
“Not too matchy-matchy, I promise. I know how tacky that is. The earrings are smaller and lighter, and they accent rather than match. I was going to set them in dangly settings with some brown garnets.”
“Hmm, that sounds nice, can you email me a pic of them before I commit?”
“Sure.” I put my stones away and the talk turned to more personal things. When the disinterested waiter finally showed up at our table I let her order for me, too. She scooted her chair closer to mine, dropped her red head in her hand and asked me confidentially,
“Any man worth mentioning?”
“Ugh, I was hoping you might not ask that. What about you?”
“I asked you first, out with it! Is he rich? Dashing? Romantic?”
“He is none of the above, there is no he. I’m sick of romance and dating and all of it!” I sipped my water to cover my discomfort, and discovered it had thin slices of ginger in it. It was kind of good. Not anything I would have thought of, but then again I didn’t run a little bistro in a town that demands to be impressed. I ran a little jewelry store in a town that demands to be catered to and then whispers behind your back. I turned my mind back to my friend.
“Your turn.”
She sighed and stretched, curling dainty little hands into dainty little balls. She had always been petite and pretty, but couldn’t hang on to a man for some reason
“Well, the guy I introduced you to the last time you were here remarried his ex-wife. It was disgusting. So I swore off men forever, but two weeks later I met this great guy online and we started emailing. He asked me for my home address and I didn’t want to give it to him, thinking he would be some freak and stalk me. But my curiosity got me and I gave it to him and can you guess what I got in the mail 3 days later?”
“Not a clue.”
“Oh, come on, just guess!”
“Um, flowers?”
“No! I said mail. Flowers get delivered! It was a handwritten love letter! He has this elegant handwriting and he wrote beautiful things on regular office paper but put in a little dried flower to make it better. So I wrote him back. I felt stupid doing it, I hadn’t written a real letter since, like, high school! But he is all into this old fashioned thing, and he is totally unique.” She sighed, and then dropped her voice into a confidential whisper,
“I think I might marry him.”
I looked at her face; she was serious for once.
“I’ve never seen you serious about a man before, Lila.”
“I know, it’s almost scary, huh? But he is serious, too! You should see his apartment, you could imagine Benjamin Franklin in there.”
At this moment our food came. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I smelled it. We thanked the waiter and dug in. My dish was some kind of tender light meat, which I thought might have been veal or lamb, but turned out to be kid goat. It had tiny mushrooms and probably large quantities of butter and wine. It was stacked in a small square with slivers of squash or something around it. These were arranged with white asparagus in a woven pattern on my plate. I hated to tear it apart for the lowly service of eating it, but I was hungry.
While I ate I listened with rather a sinking heart to her description of his wonderful eyes, his nice manners, blah, blah, blah. I am going to apologize now for my attitude towards that ephemeral pink haze people call Love. I am in the business of catering to Love, I run into bad and good every day. I sell wedding rings; I melt down used wedding rings. That; along with my bad luck in the field, has soured my view. I really was happy for Lila and told her so.

We finished with a dessert made with seafood. I’m not kidding. I had heard about this before, but never thought I’d try it, let alone grudgingly admit to liking it. And it was good.
As we stood on the street corner trying to flag down a cab, she grabbed my hand.
“It was so good to see you again, I wish we could do this more often. Really. Promise me you’ll do something for me,”
“Ok, what is it?” I asked her.
“No, I want you to promise me first, then I’ll tell you.”
“That’s crazy! What if you ask me to do something criminal?”
“Would I do that? Just promise me…”
I sighed, “Ok, what do you want me to do, I promise I’ll try it.”
“Try the online dating.”
“What?”
“It worked so well for me, just try it, ok. Tell me what happens. If you have one bad experience you can drop it, but at least you can say you tried.”
Whereupon her expert eye caught a taxi, she jumped in, and was swallowed up in a sea of yellow cabs. I stood around for a few more minutes trying to flag one down, and then rode in thoughtful silence back to my hotel.

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Click here for Chapter Two

Here it goes... The Novel.

Howdy folks, welcome to 2008. I have been working on a series of fiction books, and am now ready to begin releasing them online, one chapter at a time. Please give me your feedback, let me know if you want a print edition, and pass this on to whomever might be interested. {huge sigh of relief mixed with nervousness}
Thanks.

Click here for the first chapter.

Camping out Neah Cape Cawd

Miles Standish State Park, South Carver, Massachusetts. A peaceful enough place, with a few ponds and some pine-shaded campsites, vernal forest edging cranberry bogs and picturesque homes.
We pull into our little spot and level out the camper, weary after a full weekend of hawking our goods at King Richard's Faire. Having already visited the over-priced grocery store in Carver (pronounced Cawh-veh by the natives), we were eager to throw our meager meal in the wok and settle down with good books- Anna Karenina and Atlas Shrugged, respectively.
Cooking inside a truck topper camper gets a bit steamy, and not in the good sort of way. Michael cranked open the windows while I put the finishing touches on whatever slop sizzled on the two-burner stove. We ladled food into hand-thrown bowls, crawled into our cozy nooks, and had just cracked open our classics when The Voice assailed our ears.
It was a nasal voice, female and loud, with a heavy Eastern Seaboard accent, obviously shouting into a cell phone,
"Yeah, hi!" The Voice carried over several empty campsites and rattled our windowframes, "I'm out camping- yeah CAMPING. Oh, yeah... in Cawhveh. Camping. Ohmigod it's so peaceful heauh. Yeah, I'm cooking trawhout- grilling! GRILLING TRAWHOUT. I caught it myself, in the pawhnd. Yeah. Peaceful."
I cannot begin to explain to you, without personally mimicking her voice over the phone (which I will gladly do) just how loud this woman was. If you have been in that area of Massachusetts, you will probably be familiar with how this certain type of woman sounds, rather like the sound aluminum foil would make if run over a cheese grater, but amplified to about 140 Db.
The woman then proceeded to call every person on her Nextel call list, repeating the exact one-sided conversation, verbatim, approximately eleventy-nine times.
While I tried not to hate Kitty Shcherbatskaya for being such a muddle-headed fool, I tried even harder to block the woman's voice from my head. It was too warm to shut the windows in the camper, but after an hour our nerves could bear no more. We peeled off as many layers as we could, shut the windows, and ran the bathroom vent fan for white noise. Still, The Voice splintered through the trees,
"Yeah, CAMPING... cooking trawhout... so peaceful out heauh."

I love Massachusetts, but next time I go, I'm bringing my iPod.