CIVIL WAR MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE DECODED

STEVE SZKOTAK : "The code is called the "Vigenere cipher," a centuries-old encryption in which letters of the alphabet are shifted a set number of places so an "a" would become a "d" — essentially, creating words with different letter combinations."

A 147 year old message definitely arrived to late!

TEENA MARIE I'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE

Just picking up news and learned that one of my fav's Teena Marie has passed into the next life today at 54 at her home in Pasadena...

MARK TWAIN Quote

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." Mark Twain

AMY WINEHOUSE SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME

BRANDING CHRISTINE TRZYNA MAGAZINES I READ IN ORDER OF IMPORTANCE

For someone who once read everything in sight including cereal boxes, this is a very limited list...

EVERY WEEK

LA Weekly (A ritual)

EVERY MONTH

Vanity Fair
LA Yoga
National Geographic
Vogue
Rolling Stone

SEVERAL TIMES A YEAR

Esquire
Smithsonian
Mother Jones
Ebony
Newsweek
New Yorker
Hola

RARELY

Oprah
People

BRANDING CHRISTINE TRZYNA : READING STOPTISM by LEE EISENBERG MADE ME THINK

Favorite Cheap Shampoo : V05 has it over Suave any day!

(Whatever happened to BRECK ?)



Favorite Expensive Shampoo : Pantene of course (got any samples?)



Toothpaste : Crest - flavored - Citrus, Cinnamon, anything but minty!



Favorite Cheap Soap: Tone or anything with Cocoa Butter


Favorite Expensive Soap: Oh the expensive soaps I was once gifted and could never find or afford again! (Paris) I prefer scented soaps to perfume.



Favorite Perfume: A personal mix I have made every few years in Malibu. Through time I have sometimes worn men's cologne as I prefer non-floral scents.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN INSTITUTE and the ARMONICA

So the other day I was in a public library in another city when I noticed a table of Christmas CD's and one of them featured songs performed on the ARMONICA... Turns out that my favorite Benjamin Franklin invented this instrument... Marie Antoinette was one of those who learned to play it. There were once 5000 in existance and now? ! maybe two or three players in the whole world... Linking to the site that explains it all...

William Zeitler is dedicated to bringing this instrument back from the endangered musical instruments list... The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies was originally written for the ARMONICA!

THE CAMPBELLS SOUP CANS WERE SUBVERSIVE

I think the CAMPBELLS soup cans were subversive because Andy grew up in the town where the HEINZ was made; soup, ketchup... By giving CAMPBELLS free advertising through pop art, Andy Warhol was promoting Campbells, or declaring war on Heinz... and all those factory jobs in Pittsburgh where you could smell the soup cooking in the air.

What's your favorite flavor Campbells? Mine is a tie between Bean with Bacon and Scotch Broth (rare to find on the shelves these days.)

Christine Trzyna


Copyright 2010 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

BRANDING CHRISTINE TRZYNA or WHILE WRITING I EAT CRACKERS AND CHEESE

Favorite Grocery Store of ALL TIME (Particularily during the Ralphs/Vons strike) : TRADER JOES (Does civilization exist where Trader Joe's arn't?)

Favorite Nail Salon/Polish : OPI (All things OPI are wonderful. Do exotic vacations take place where no one is wearing OPI?)

Favorite Chewing Gum to chomp while on the Internet: ORBIT Maui Melon Mint (The trendy pop art packaging lured me to try it.)

Favorite Crackers to read books eating : KEEBLER Townhouse Flipsides Pretzel Crackers

along with

Favorite Cheese to read books eating : SARGENTO Reduced Fat Swiss Cheese.

(Hint: Stuffing a holiday stocking for me should be simple with these clues.)

ANDY WARHOL TRIBUTE

BRANDING CHRISTINE TRZYNA or I THINK OF ANDY WARHOL

I've been thinking a lot about BRANDING. (And that Andy Warhol was a futurist in his understanding of this concept.)

Branding is a marketing term for moving a product (a person/writer is a product) into a category that is evocative of the essence of that person/writer, sometimes through associated product.

State that again?

It is assumed that what I buy says a lot about me - my personality, character, values, class.

I think maybe what I DON'T BUY SAYS MORE!

I'm in love with cutting edge advertising as pop culture. I love paging through a VANITY FAIR or a VOGUE and looking at the ads - what models are being used - what is the "story" each pictorial promotes. (High fashion ads are sometimes creepy. I hated the lurking molester/rapist of young sexy girls jeans pictorial a few years back.) But I can't say that I have bought anything I've ever seen advertised in either magazine.

Anyway, I'm going to have fun with this idea of me being a BRAND, as associated with PRODUCT, during the most materialistic time of the year in this "Christian" country; the Christmas season. I'm going to pitch products I like, just like I used to play at being a TV commercial actress and promoting a box of cereal when I was a kid.



C Christine Trzyna/ Writerly Life 2010 All Rights Reserved Including Internet and International Rights
C 2016 Christine Trzyna Blogspot

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES / PERMISSIONS

ALL ORIGINAL WRITING OF THIS BLOG and the design and composition of this blog is and remains the INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY of CHRISTINE TRZYNA.



All videos, art, and writing linked to or quoted REMAIN THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY of others. I claim all Rights to my ORIGINAL WRITING, and the design and composition of this blog, including INTERNATIONAL and INTERNET RIGHTS. As a requirement for using my intellectual property, I must be contacted in advance for permission. (If you do not contact me and get it in writing, then the answer is NO. )



CHRISTINE TRZYNA and CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITERLY LIFE are NOT ASSOCIATED WITH ANY COMMERCIAL SITE. I/we do not endorse any product or petition that is using links to this site. I/we also do not endorse the sale of any product, book, chapbook, etc being sold on the net using my name or authorship or links to this site for the purpose of sales.

LEO KOTTKE RINGS

Woke up in the middle of the night thinking of this song... which I haven't heard in years.

ONE RED PAPERCLIP - HE TRADED A PAPER CLIP FOR A HOUSE : KYLE MACDONALD

Great news in depressing economic times. KYLE MACDONALD link is here! He started with a red paperclip - following his story here!

ANOTHER STUPID THING (MOSTLY MALE) PEOPLE SAY TO WOMEN WRITERS

... Another stupid thing that people - mostly male people - have said to me as a (woman)writer is that I should have sex with them, and "really live," and THEN I WILL HAVE SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT!

Ego driven people like this get more pathetic sounding by the minute.

Why would I have to have sex at all to have something to write about?

I'm not a sex writer!
C Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights

ONE OF THE STUPIDEST THINGS PEOPLE SAY TO WRITERS ....

One of the stupidest things people say to writers, when we share (and since we are expressers, we share) instead of the horridly patronizing "Thank You For Sharing," is "You should write a book."
Our every harsh experience is dismissed or deemed worth experience for the "learning value." We are often told by people that these experiences are worth it because they give us SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT. As if we don't already experience life as worth writing about without the angst. As if only harsh experiences are somehow illuminating or invigorating or inspiring! AS IF OBSERVATION, RESEARCH, or pure IMAGINATION are not enough!


C 2010 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
C 2016  Christine Trzyna/ Christine Trzyna Blogspot

THOSE LITTLE LIBRARY PENCILS ARE A WASTE OF MONEY!

As you may know, I blog a bit about LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY. Recently a librarian expressed to me the waste of money that those little (about 3 1/2 inch presharpened) pencils are. NOBODY WANTS TO SHARPEN THEM! And I do, but they are good for about ONE SHARPEN before they become near impossible to put into the electric sharpener. And at that length they dig into a person's hand. They are uncomfortable to use as well.

WHY NOT JUST BUY FULL LENGTH PENCILS THAT HAVE MORE SHARPENING LIFE IN THEM? I see these sold for as low as $1.00 a six pack!

OLD SCHOOL LIBRARY BOOKS WERE A SECRET METHOD FOR

passing notes back and forth in the 8th grade. Usually these notes were simply silly but sometimes a boy and a girl would pass love notes this way. The note was put into the pocket pasted inside and all the teacher thought was going on was the return to of a library book to the person who it temporarily belonged. Passing notes in library books was especially done in English class. I suppose this was because our teacher went wild on a daily basis and sometimes didn't show up at all. The boys in my class drove her wild with various goof ball antics that proved they/we were not paying attention. I think we made our way through about 3 chapters of the book the entire year. I didn't like English classes.

It was READING that made me want to be a writer myself.

C Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

NEXT MAGAZINE REDUX : NIGHTMARE ON C STREET by CHRISTINE TRZYNA

This was a feature article in the November 1994 Next Magazine, by me, Christine Trzyna.

NIGHTMARE ON C STREET

Last night Pan was trying to seduce me into the Poetry Cult. Maybe it wasn't the old cloven footed trickster himself, but a naked surfer waving the latest copy of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, from Dutton's. These definitive reference books for the 90's wordsmith keep flying off Dutton's dusty NoHo shelves like B-52's with UFOs on their tails. Maybe Pan, knowing I'm a poet, didn't think his stupendous butt or the long slender fingers of a slide-to-hell guitarist were enough!

He was dripping with seaweed. One piece of it hung seductively over his right nipple. He was carrying a surfboard with a screaming lime NEXT...logo airbrushed on it. Gosh! He looked like Killer Dana's Gary Wright...or maybe it was GMT himself!

His voice was full of maple syrup. "Hey you sweet young Pancake, you," he said. Definitely not Gary or GMT. "Wouldn't you like to enter into the dark den of the gypsies, tramps, and thieves?" he said.

He went on to mention the allure of the Anti-Menites, the Idealogues, and the Revolutionaries, like Psycho Boy did last month, but they all sound so like Jungian archetypes. This was my dream and I wanted crazy Sigmund and his coke addiction.

"Get involved in the poetry scene and before you know it, you'll get all the tarot and rune readings you ever wanted. Married women will turn gay and try to seduce you while their husbands are out paying off the charge cards. Pretty soon, even you will be working for cash under the table," Pan said.

"Wait a moment, Pan. This sounds a lot like a Music Business seduction to me. Did we meet at Lollapalooza? I asked.

"Nah. Too muddy," he replied. "Listen, Christine, follow me and you'll be important. You'll have friends all over the place. You'll drive...drive..drive to readings., No matter what, people will clap for you. I'll see what I can do to rig the slams. By the 30th of the month you'll be frantically searching for NEXT... so you can intelligently plan your month. And you'll start drinking coffee, even though it does taste like crap and puts cellulite on your thighs," he added, glaring at my skinny rump in a way that made me tremble.

"NO! NO! I heard myself moan. But I had sleep paralysis and my efforts to flee were canned. Somewhere in the background, like all good feminists, I heard Mick Jagger singing, "Under My Thumb."

"All I ever wanted was financial security!" I yelled. He vanished into thin air, but I heard his laugh all the way down the beach.

If you're reading this propaganda, you may already me a member of the poetry CULT. And Darling, there is no escape.

C 1994, 2008 Christine Trzyna

Commentary: When I read this silly article years later, I was impressed with my own sense of nonsensical fun and realized it had been a long time since I had written so freely. This was a first write so there wasn't time for both the editor in my head and the press deadline. Of course I see myself trying to tickle (with a jab) certain members of the poetry scene back then.

Duttons closed about a 2 years ago. It was a North Hollywood tradition. Hello to Dave Dutton! (The place is now a yoga studio!)

C 2016  Christine Trzyna / Christine Trzyna Blogspot

GARRISON KEILLOR doesn't think PUBLISHING WILL LAST

As reported by TIME magazine, June 7, 2010 and as originally reported in the CHICAGO TRIBUNE

"I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a literate time, and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numerals (U R 2 Wonderful)... the future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75" - Garrison Keillor

EPIC MESSAGE IN THE BOTTLE JOURNEY

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE found in Ireland...

Here's the Yahoo Buzz on it.

Have you ever thrown wine bottle with a message into the sea?

What was your message?

LARRY DOSSEY - THE PATH TO HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS...

CHAPTER : CHURCHES AND CURSES
from BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRAY FOR
by LARRY DOSSEY M.D.


(Note: an author who has written about the power of prayer now turns to the power of cursing... pages 26 and 27.)

"When he eventually obtained his Ph.D. in English literature, Richard felt poised for a bright future as a writer. Ten years later, however, none of his work had been accepted for publication and he felt a failure. The rejection slips contained the usual comments about "streaks of brilliance" and "great promise," but something was not clicking, something he could not put his finger on. Richard did not give up. He began to attend writers' conferences and seminars, hoping to remedy flaws in his technique that he could not see. Still nothing worked. Nearing forty, he began to console himself by recalling that many great writers had late beginnings... Following his latest rejection slip from a major publisher, he decided to set his work aside and visit his mother for Christmas.

MOM: "Richard, I know why you haven't become a writer. Since you were a teenager I've prayed to God Every night that he would give you something else to do."

Richard was stunned. "You mean that for twenty-five years you've prayed that I would fail as a writer?" he stammered....Why have you done this?" Richard demanded angrily through tears.

"His mother, too, began to cry, "Richard, I love you. I want only the best for you." Then she said, almost coldly, "Writer reveal things that should not be told - about themselves, about their families. Writers tell secrets that are nobody's business."

Note: Richard went to psychotherapy and began to pray for PROTECTION FROM HIS MOTHER'S PRAYERS. He published a novel with a major publisher three years later.

GRAHAM WALLAS on CREATIVITY

"According to Graham Wallas, a sort of re-ordering process takes place in the brain during creativity, which he calls incubation, A creative person develops interest in a particular subject, gathers supporting material, and studies everything possibly related to it. He calls this first stage preparation. After some time, the accumulated material reaches a boiling point and something incomprehensible goes on during the period of incubation that forms a prelude to the next stage, illumination. In three stages - preparation, incubation, and illumination =- the creative person receives a new insight and finds a solution to the problem, or can rearrange the accumulated material to put it under an all embracing principle."

As mentioned in THE KUNDALINI BOOK OF LIVING AND DYINIG
Gateway to Higher Consciousness
Ravindra Kumar and Jytte Kumar Larsen

JULES FEIFFER Quotation

"Success is nothing to sneeze at but failure, too, offers great possibilities."
- Jules Feiffer

TERRY MC MILLAN Quote

TERRY MCMILLAN 10 Questions Time Magazine September 13, 2010

Q: How do you feel about the label "Women's Literature?"

A: I don't like the label. It's right up there with using the term chick lit. They don't refer to books written by men as men's literature. I think its really sad that we have to use labels for anything. I'll be glad when they stop referring to me as an African-American writer and just say I'm a writer. That would make my day."

page 10

I LOVE MY LIBRARIAN AWARD $5000 (5 more days till the deadline!)

There are 123,000 libraries in the United States and 10 librarians who, if selected, will win $5000. Nominations started August 2 and go on till September 20, 2010. (That means act NOW!)\

IS THERE A LIBRARIAN THAT YOU TRULY RESPECT AND ADMIRE?

Go to I LOVE MY LIBRARIAN and fill in the blanks!

BOOK EXCERPT : REFLECTIONS IN A SILVER SPOON : PAUL MELLON

By Paul Mellon (with John Baskett, his London based art dealer.)
page 391 C Paul Mellon Published by William Morrow

"I have been an amateur in every phase of my life. An amateur poet, an amateur scholar, an amateur horseman, an amateur farmer, an amateur soldier, an amateur connoisseur of art, an amateur publisher, and an amateur museum executive. The root of the word "amateur" is the Latin word for love. and I can honestly say that I've thoroughly enjoyed all the roles I have played...

COMMENTARY ON JAMES TAYLOR PLACES IN MY PAST

This one goes out to Karen, a friend of mine from art school days, who died of a brain tumor about year ago, leaving a daughter about the age we were when we first met and had our artistic adventures. Only distance allows me to speak of her, and someday to write about her.


"Sometimes I can laugh and cry and I can't remember why."

New Video Summer 2016

ERICA JONG Quote

"A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive." - Erica Jong in "O" Magazine 2003

SMITHSONIAN : THE OUIJI BOARD USING, NOVEL CHANNELING AUTHOR, Patience Worth,

Gioia Diliberto writes about PEARL CURRAN, who channeled the spirit of writer Patience Worth, who published novels and poetry in the early 20th century.

(Click on the title to get to the full article now!)

"Speaking through a Ouija board operated by Pearl Lenore Curran, a St. Louis housewife of limited education, Patience Worth was nothing short of a national phenomenon in the early years of the 20th century. Though her works are virtually forgotten today, the prestigious Braithwaite anthology listed five of her poems among the nation’s best published in 1917, and the New York Times hailed her first novel as a “feat of literary composition.” Her output was stunning. In addition to seven books, she produced voluminous poetry, short stories, plays and reams of sparkling conversation—nearly four million words between 1913 and 1937. Some evenings she worked on a novel, a poem and a play simultaneously, alternating her dictation from one to another without missing a beat. “What is extraordinary about this case is the fluidity, versatility, virtuosity and literary quality of Patience’s writings, which are unprecedented in the history of automatic writing by mediums,” says Stephen Braude..."

BOOK EXCERPT : MATT RIDLEY THE RED QUEEN

"Gossip is one of the most universal of human habits. No conversation between people who know each other well - fellow employees, fellow family members, old friends - ever lingers for long on any topic other than the behavior, ambitions, motives, frailties, and affairs of the other absent - or present - members of the group. This is the reason the soap opera is the quintessentially effective way to entertain people.: Matt Ridley

FROM PETER NEWCOMB in VANITY FAIR AUGUST 2010

Q

"Which moves more units; a BILLBOARD Number One album or a NEW YORK TIMES Number One best seller?

A

"It wasn't long ago when music labels could release almost any kind of pablum and watch it move more than 15 million copies... These days just selling a million copies is seem as a major victory.... Chart toppers sell 100,000 to 300,000 units a week.

Book sales are less predictable... According to Nielson Book Scan, the best selling adult fiction and non-fiction titles of 2010's first 18 weeks sold between 40,000 to 200,000 copies."

Peter Newcomb/ Vanity Fair - August 2010

CHRISTINE TRZYNA PERSONAL DIARY : FUNNY : THE COSMO BOY I PICKED WOULD PICK ME!

HOT MEN FROM ALL 50 STATES ?

by Christine Trzyna

I was in a waiting room, wasting time, waiting, when I picked up a copy of a recent Cosmopolitan magazine.

Now as you know, I think what has happened to Cosmo since Helen Gurley Brown left is - well - traumatizing. Once in a while I go to a newsstand hungering for the OLD COSMO. But I have never once bought the magazine since THE BIG CHANGING OF THE GUARD over there in New York. (Use the search feature of this blog to see what I've had to say about Cosmo in the past!)

So... I picked up this Cosmo and there is a special feature, let's call it HOT MEN FROM ALL 50 AMERICAN STATES. Each state has one man elected (by ???) to represent all hot men from that state. There is one picture of each, a short profile of what the man is looking for in a woman, and CONTACT INFORMATION. A woman can SHOP these men!

I DECIDED TO AMUSE MYSELF by looking through these many pages of "hot men" to see if any of them walked on through the door that moment, I would be ATTRACTED. (When is the last time YOU saw someone and your heart went ping!?)

AND THEN - YEA - I SEE HIM! Whatever it is about him, I wonder, is it familiarity, because I don't have a "type" when it comes to looks.

Then I read what he has to say. He says,"I ALWAYS THOUGHT IT WOULD BE REALLY COOL TO MEET A WOMAN AT THE PUBLIC LIBRARY!"

ooooooh! CAN THIS BE? (After my own heart?!)

Slightly thrilled to have found him, I begin referencing Cher, Madonna, Pamela Des Barres, and an assortment of other women notorius for younger men. I even think to myself that up to 20 years in age difference is still workable!

Sad, sad, sad, he was way too young for me - but perfect!

C Christine Trzyna 2010 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

BOOK EXCERPT : SHOPTISM by LEE EISENBERG

SHOPTISM
Why The American Consumer Will Keep On Buying No Matter What
C 2009 by Lee Eisenberg
Free Press
pages 125-126

"... copy writing ... read any good selling paragraphs lately? The world's gone visual. The long copy block is dead. Studies point to an "endangered reading brain," the result of our overexposure to digital media. It's all about eye candy now. I open my wife's copy of Vogue. Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson is on the cover, aglow in a burgundy duchesse-satin dress by Carolina Herrera and Fred Leighton diamond earnings. Her face bears an assortment of hopes-in-a-bottle: Blushing Blush Powder Blush in Sunset Glow; Colour Surge Eye Shadow Soft Shimmer in Enchanted Sugar Sugar (sic); Cream Shaper for Eyes in Black Diamond; High Definition Lashes in Black/Brown; Brow Keeper in Almost Black: Full Potential Lips Plump and Shine in Blackberry Bloom - all from Clinique (BTW, a major Vogue advertiser)... Hundreds of photos, no words, spread after spread after spread of bronzed, long-legged, plump-lipped, sultry, unsmiling, icy hot, and scary-skinny models dressed in a sumptuous variety of shorts, day dresses, gowns, thongs, slinky tops...These women never smile, they scowl. This, too, is the result of methodical investigation. Scowls signal higher social standing, says a professor who runs experiments on the nature of smiles... Specifically lower status individuals appear to smile more than higher status individuals...

CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW of THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKE by AIMEE BENDER

BOOK REVIEW by CHRISTINE TRZYNA c 2010

According to the Library of Congress this book is classified first under TASTE, then FAMILY SECRETS, and then PSYCHOLOGY.

But as I read it, it was clear to me that PSYCHOLOGY is the pivotal issue, in a family of members who all have little quirks or serious mental problems; we as readers are struggling through the shades of gray to DEFINE what is wrong with this one or that, which confuses us because we don't know how much we can believe, though we want to believe, through the narrator, Rosie, whose gift or curse is that she can taste other people's emotions through the food they prepare. Maybe the story as Rosie's proves that it is Rosie who is cracked.

Here are the FAMILY SECRETS not secret to us readers: A mother who takes a long time to find and accept her talent after much dabbling, who can't openly admit a cold and distant marriage, an affair that may be preserving her and her family somehow, or that she has a seriously mentally ill son, Joseph, mother's hope being what it is.

Joseph makes it through school as a science nerd with one friend in the world but is never property diagnosed or given help. He "disappears" after many a trial run. Then there's the father who is a successful lawyer but can't step a foot in a hospital, not even for the birth of his children, who hides his thoughts and feelings, without hiding in a bedroom like his son does. And the far-away mother/mother in law, who may be loosing her mind, and who no one visits or invites in, sends boxes full of discards, emptying her home bit by bit. Rosie is a daughter who feels obligated to let the life of a college student pass her by, though that is her heritage, because her brother can't achieve his goals and is railroaded to the community college instead of Cal Tech.

Was it intended or is this book an accidental case of magic realism?

The Particular Sadness of Lemon cake was sad. And it held my interest from beginning quirk to facing the reality that the family can't.


The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
C 2010 Aimee Bender
Doubleday is the publisher

CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW of MACKENZIE PHILLIPS HIGH ON ARRIVAL

BOOK REVIEW by Christine Trzyna C 2010

Maybe in part, because I recall the urgency of her voice, I feel the tone of Mackenzie Phillips' memoir is incessantly passionate till exhaustion. As I passed this book on to others to read, I warned them, "Be prepared to be devastated." Do memoirs ever help others really? (I think sometimes they do.) Was this one intended to imply forgiveness to one's self and others? Isn't forgiveness over-rated?

Reading this one, I remembered years ago I read the memoir of Mackenzie's dad, John Phillips, famous writer of hit songs sung by the early 1960's quartet The Mamas and the Papas. I was stunned by his calm unapologetic amorality. He shrugged his shoulders about what an unmoved Papa he had been. He had not protected his daughter.

John Phillips, who used up most of his song writing money on drug addiction, had other children - a son, and two daughters by Michelle Phillips, Mackenzie's sisters, who may not have had the same experience of good ol dad. But maybe it's biology; whatever was amiss with John Phillips that his moral compass kept spinning was passed on to just one. "The problem," was and is, apparently drug addiction. But maybe drug addiction is too convenient and superficial the excuse. Mackenzie has had a horrible life, despite being supplied with economic and opportunity wealth, and despite all the pain she describes which we imagine she FELT, she did not know better to not participate in (drug fueled) incest as an adult with her father.

None of us who read this book believe Mackenzie will stay off drugs and a few of us felt irate that she did not know better.


High on Arrival was written by Mackenzie Phillips with Hilary Liftin
It's a Simon Spotlight Entertainment book
C 2009 Shanes Mom Inc.

MERCE CUNNINGHAM, Dancer and Choreographer QUOTE

"You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no painting to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls." - Merce Cunningham


Quoted in the December 28 2009 - January 4 2010 TIME magazine, page 150.

E.M. FORSTER Quote

"ALL THAT I CARED FOR IN CIVILIZATION HAS GONE FOREVER AND I AM TRYING TO LIVE WITHOUT EITHER HOPES OR FEARS - NOT AN EASY JOB."

E.M. Forster ; Author of A Room With A View (1908) and Howard's end (1910) and Passage to India (1924)

FEDS WANT TO "REINVENT" JOURNALISM

JOURNALISM is in trouble...
WOULD YOU LIKE TO WORK FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO STAY EMPLOYED?

Today I found this article about how the FEDS are looking at the way journalists can barely make a living, newspapers are having trouble making revenue; a long article but take a look because it's PROVOCATIVE.

BOOK EXCERPT : CATCHING THE BIG FISH by DAVID LYNCH

From DAVID LYNCH
CATCHING THE BIG FISH
Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity
Jeremy P. Tarcher/Pengiun Publisher

Chapter called SUFFERING page 93

"It's good for the artist to understand conflict and stress. Those things can give you ideas. But I guarantee you, if you have enough stress, you won't be able to create. And if you have enough conflict, it will just get in the way of your creativity. You can understand conflict, but you don't have to live in it...

In stories, in the worlds that we can go into, there's suffering, confusion, darkness, tension, and anger. There are murders; there's all kinds of stuff. But the filmmaker doesn't have to be suffering to show suffering. You can show it, show the human condition, show conflicts and contrasts, but you don't have to go through that yourself. You are the orchestrator of it, but you're not in it. Let your characters do the suffering...

It's common sense: The more the artist is suffering, the less creative he is going to be. It's less likely that he is going to enjoy his work and less likely that he will be able to do really good work..." DAVID LYNCH

ANNE LAMOTT Quote

"I do not understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are, but does not leave us where it found us." -Anne Lamott

ANNE SEXTON FOR JOHN, WHO BEGS ME NOT TO ENQUIRE FURTHER

For John, Who Begs Me Not To Enquire Further

by Anne Sexton

Not that it was beautiful,
but that,
in the end,
there was
a certain sense of order there;
something worth learning
in that narrow diary of my mind,
in the common
places of the asylum
where the cracked mirror
or my own selfish death
outstared me.

And if I tried
to give you something else,
something outside of myself,
you would not know
that the worst of anyone
can be,
finally,
an accident of hope.

I tapped my own head;
it was a glass,
an inverted bowl.

It is a small thingto rage in your own bowl.
At first it was private.
Then it was more than myself;
it was you,
or your house
or your kitchen.

And if you turn awaybecause there is no lesson here
I will hold my awkward bowl,
with all its cracked stars shining
like a complicated lie,
and fasten a new skin around it
as if I were dressing an orange
or a strange sun.

Not that it was beautiful,
but that I found some order there.
There ought to be something special
for someone
in this kind of hope.

This is something I would never find
in a lovelier place,
my dear,
although your fear is anyone's fear,
like an invisible veil between us all...
and sometimes in private,
my kitchen,
your kitchen,
my face,
your face.

C Anne Sexton

QUOTE from KEN BRECHER, PRESIDENT OF LIBRARY FOUNDATION OF LOS ANGELES

From ALOUD Summer 2010 brochure.

Q: What is the future of libraries in such a technology driven world.

A: The internet and e-book are both additional resources for libraries, offering us another way to spread reading and knowledge. Reading is reading, whether it's done on a computer screen, a Kindle, on the pages of a coffee-stained paperback, or in the rare books room of the library. Books aren't going anywhere; the American appetite and curiosity for learning will ensure that we are adding new ways to access knowledge, not subtracting old ones."

PERSONAL DIARY : CHRISTINE TRZYNA : THE VERY WORST THING ANYONE EVER SAID TO ME TO DISCOURAGE ME FROM WRITING

THE VERY WORST THING ANYONE EVER SAID TO ME

TO DISCOURAGE ME FROM WRITING

by Christine Trzyna

For some time, I spent a large chunk of my day, sometimes every day, in a privately owned coffee house on a major boulevard in a ritzy shopping district. That it was a ritzy area is mentioned here, only to say that a lot of people who came into this place had a lot of money and time to burn. But not everyone. Not most of the writers who decorated the place. I was one of those writers who was tolerated for hours with my laptop taking a small table, though not without purchasing. I bought a lunch and nursed a few refills and once in a while one of those people with money to burn filled my cup for another 50 cents.
My purpose was to write in an environment that was somewhat stimulating so that when I needed to take a break and have a good, intelligent, conversation, I could. I wanted to write in a place where food and beverages were easily affordable and available and that wasn't too far from my place. (I did meet some interesting conversationalists there.)

I think a lot of writers do the same, escaping their environments not supportive of their writing by taking their laptops and heading out. There is even a kind of club for some that suddenly ups and goes to X, abandoning Y, making the owners who counted on them, for their bread if not their butter, wonder what they did wrong. Usually it's just the in-crowd as they think of themselves excluding someone they are tired of.

HERE IS THE VERY WORST THING ANYONE THERE EVER SAID TO ME ABOUT WRITING and PUBLISHING A BOOK:

"You go to the book sales at the libary or to garage sales, and you buy books for a dollar or a quarter, and after all the time and effort, that's where your book ends up."

The guy who said this to me was a rich bum, the equivalent of someone satisfied to live off a trust fund and not do much of anything, not even volunteer work.

Of course I think it's WONDERFUL that books get recycled and go from one reader to the next, that those books got cleared out of attics and bookshelves, so that SOMEONE ELSE could READ THEM! I know that the moment for the author themselves to profit from the sale of such a book is over, yet, this is how some people become familiar with a writer, through an old book. You can't put a dollar on that. And writers write for publication because they want to share with the world. When I get a book from the library that I love and want, I too look for it at library and garage sales. I THINK "GREAT! AT SOME POINT A WRITER GOT PAID FOR THIS WRITING!" That's better than being ripped off from the get go!

SO NO I AM NOT OK with someone stealing my intellectual property, which has happened. That's one of the reasons I don't send work out as I used to, having trust and faith because someone claims they have a great opportunity for me; it seems that promises made by certain chap book publishers (I should sue) and even people with Doctorates in Literature who put out anthologies (I should sue) turn into BS.

A steaming simmering pile of BS...

Hey, thanks for reading!

C Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

Are YOU a CAT PERSON or a DOG PERSON ?

Used to be a lot of my friends had a thing for cats and a lot of my friends had a thing for horses. But when it comes right down to it, I'm a dog person and I was never "horse crazy."

Maybe it's time for me to make new friends who have dogs?

HORACE MANN UPSTANDER AWARDS

THE HORACE MANN UPSTANDERS BOOK AWARD will be presented at Antioch University during the THIRD ANNUAL CHILDRENS LITERATURE CONFERENCE June 28th 2010. The event is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC but space is limited and you must register at the upstanders award link provided here.

"GIVEN ANNUAL TO AN AUTHOR OF CHILDRENS FICTION for grades K through 6th, THE HORACE MAN UPSTANDERS BOOK AWARD honors a piece of literature that exemplifies the ideals of social action, and therefore encourages young readers to become agents of change or "upstanders" themselves. An "upstander" is a person who recognizes injustice and acts in a way to right the wrong.

IS YOUR LIBRARY UNABLE TO BUY BOOKS DUE TO BUDGET CUTS?

Recently I checked to see if any of the books I suggested for purchase at my local library system had been. None were. (I am particularly dying to read THE TALENTED MISS HIGHSMITH (about a favorite writer of mine Patricia Highsmith) by Joan Schenkar. Ah well, there is near no money to buy any new books. If the library buys ONE copy of a book it will suffice and we can be put on an electronic waiting list for our turn to read it.

I WONDER IF THIS WILL FORCE READERS LIKE ME TO COME UP WITH FUNDS TO BUY MORE OF OUR OWN BOOKS or if DONATIONS to the LIBRARY of BOOKS will be taken more seriously and provide the library with books to be put on shelves and loaned out rather than books to be SOLD at library book sales?

Been Reading OPRAH by KITTY KELLEY

I've been reading " Ophrah" by Kitty Kelly... and I'll leave you to read it and learn what impact Oprah has had on book buying and getting books she and her staff have selected onto best seller lists... OK HERE IS A CLUE... the higher Oprah held the book - the closer to her BREASTS - the more copies sold.

BOOK EXCERPT: GRACE KELLY by DONALD SPOTO

page 139 C by Donald Spoto

"Terms like "lady," "genteel," "elegant," "patrician" and "reserved" were most often used to describe Grace - along with puns and plays on her first name. It's almost impossible to keep count of the number of articles, over thirty years, that were titled "Amazing Grace."

"At exactly the same time, Paramount's publicists helped journalists with their descriptions of Audrey Hepburn, who was routinely termed "elfin" (although elves are spiteful, malignant dwarfs), "gazelle-like" (despite the fact that gazelles are spotted antelopes), "coltish" (although colts are male horses) ; and, most often, "gamine" (which means a street urchin or a homeless waif.) With Audry and Grace, new vocabularies were needed for new styles, and the publicists pored over their dictionaries. In "real life," if Grace or Audry were seen in a restaurant or at a public event, there was quite literally a collective, audible intake of breath, it was the appearance of a goddess to mere mortals."

From HIGH SOCIETY THE LIFE OF GRACE KELLY by DONALD SPOTO

Once-married-then-frustrated-actress Grace Kelly once found it acceptable as a Princess to read poetry.

Page 265

"With the actors Richard Kiley and Richard Pasco, she participated in "The American Heritage," prepared In honor of the U.s. Bicentennial. Grace recited poems by Anne Bradstreet, Carl Sandburg, Ogden Nash, T.S. Eliot,and Robert Frost. (Originally staged at the Edinburgh International Festival, the program played later in Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Princeton, Harvard, and Washington D.C.

"The staged poetry reading continued sporadically from 1976 through 1981 and were a source of great pleasure for Grace and her audiences. She canceled them early in 1982 when she suffered the first of a series of severe headaches that seemed to be migraines but were not. No cause or remedy could be found, except that her blood pressure was abnormally high, and she could not tolerate the side effects of most antihypertensive medications then available to her. The headaches came and went, but her blood pressure was not well controlled. These ailments were the first signs that she was suffering form vascular disease, just like several members of her family.

C 2009 Donald Spoto
Harmony Books

COCO CHANEL Quote

"Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity." - CoCo Chanel

ELTON JOHN : COME DOWN IN TIME

LA TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS at UCLA

Sat, Apr 24, 2010 - Sun, Apr 25, 2010

UCLA FESTIVAL OF BOOKS LOS ANGELES TIMES

It's always great to be around other people who are crazy for books!

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO LINK - LOTS OF GREAT LITERARY INTERVIEWS and MUSIC

Love listening to NPR... NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO

POLAND'S TRAGEDY AND POLISH-AMERICANS (LIKE ME!)

As a Polish-American, it is difficult for me to believe that the Polish plane that crashed over Russian the other day, was not a kind of holocaust staged by the Russians. For all of those who would wish me to believe that Dan Brown's DaVinci Code is a revelation of conspiracy theories rather than a fictive novel, let me say that many Polish Americans believe that THE COLD WAR GOES ON! This plane crash, because of the importance of so many passengers now dead, is a HISTORY CHANGING EVENT.

The fact that President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, and so very many people important to today's Poland, were on their way to Katyn, a place in the Russian Forest where Polish intellectuals and military officers were dumped in an unmarked grave 70 years ago by Russian soldiers, is especially upsetting. I'm one of those Americans who has ancestors said to be taken away by Russians, never to be seen again. I have been unable to verify or locate these people and I would like the records of the names of those prisoners to be opened.

In one LA Times article I read (in paper) "I just have this feeling that Katyn is a diabolical place in Polish History." Tomasz Lis, journalist and author.

There are so very many links to this story on the Internet. But let me say this. I am linking to the Russian point of view above. So if you are by chance one of my readers from Poland, or Hungary, or Slovakia, please understand the reasons behind this. I'm trying to be fair. I'm trying not to believe that a pilot with experience, with knowledge of his passengers, and warned not to land, would do so anyway. I'm trying not to believe that there was not a terrorist on board, or some character who put a gun to his head.

C Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights. Please contact me via comments.

From PEONY IN LOVE by LISA SEE

"The Ming dynasty fell in 1644 and the Qing Dynasty, led by the Manchus, began. For about thirty years, the country was in turmoil. Some women were forced from their homes; others went out by choice. Literally thousands of women became published poets and writers. The lovesick maidens were part of this phenomenon. The works of more than twenty of them have survived today.

"I have followed the traditional Chinese style for rendering dates. Emperor Kangxi reigned from 1662-1722. Tang Xianzu's opera The Peony Pavilion was first produced and then published in 1598. Chen Tong (Peony in this novel) was born ca.1649. Tan Ze Ca 1656, and Quian Yi ca 1671. In 1694, The Three Wives Commentary became the first book of it's kind to be written and published by women anywhere in the world."

Lisa See C 2007
Random House Publisher

CONNECT TO LISA SEE's BIO by clicking on the title above

WILDERNESS by LORINE NIEDECKER

WILDERNESS by Lorine Niedecker

You are the man
You are my other country
and I find it hard going.

You are the prickly pear.
You are the sudden violent storm.
The torrent to raise the river
to float the wounded dear.

****
Saw this poetry on the bus and quickly wrote it down...

SKIRBALL : MONSTERS AND MIRACLES A JOURNEY THROUGH JEWISH PICTURE BOOKS

Link now to the Skirball Cultural Center....

"Showcasing more than 100 original illustrations, this delightful exhibition takes visitors on a journey through the world of Jewish picture books from the 16th century to the present.... "

Included are Maurice Sendak, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Lemony Snicket, and Art Spiegelman." (These are the authors I've read. I have Singer and Spiegelman in my collection." Christine Trzyna


Skirball
2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd.
LA, CA 90049

CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITERLY LIFE COPYRIGHT

Christine Trzyna Writerly Life Rights Information  AKA Christine Trzyna BlogSpot AKA Christine Trzyna

Every once in a while I'll be posting a notice like this one that reminds readers that the content of this blog is Copyright Christine Trzyna with all rights reserved including Internet and International Rights.

If interested in communicating with Christine Trzyna please send a comment that includes your e-mail address and full name.Comments do not automatically appear on the Internet and are moderated.

THANKS!

C IN PALE BLUE

GOOGLE DUMPS CHINA - A GOOD MOVE IN MY OPINION

The recent good news, reported in the Los Angeles Times and so very many other media, is that Google decided to withdrawal from China - but for the censorship free-er Hong Kong, despite the fact that they have also withdrawn from the World's largest potential market. Recently I received a number of messages in Chinese characters in the e-mail associated with this blog. I wondered if that was part of the cyber punishment China was using to revenge Google for their decision.

A news story by reporters Jessica Guyun and David Pierson in the LA Times on March 23, 2010, said that international websites such as Facebook and Twitter were always blocked by China. Obviously China does not want its citizens to be influenced by the values of people outside of China.

I'm going into my e-mails to eliminate all China originating or Chinese character messages and this blog will continue to not provide a translator in Chinese.

Christine Trzyna

DISCOVERY EDUCATION CROSS WORD PUZZLES MAKER - FREE ON LINE

THIS CROSSWORD PUZZLE MAKER IS A LOT OF FUN and it is free! Make your list of clues and words now!

THE "RING" OF TRUTH by CHRISTINE TRZYNA

THE RING OF TRUTH
by Christine Trzyna C 2010 All Rights including Internet and International Rights Reserved.

When I was in a writing class at a community college years ago, I ran into the problem of people critiquing my short fiction using the word "YOU" instead of "YOUR NARRATOR" or "THE FIRST PERSON." Now, I used the first person as my tense in most of my stories because I consider that the most personal and immediate voice, with other tenses too distant and maybe abstract, and so I can understand that what my stories had was "THE RING OF TRUTH."

Our professor emphasized that THE RING OF TRUTH was a very good thing. My readers cried at my stories or laughed at them. This was pre-computer and I was not a great typist. Sometimes I was irked because someone who read my story was irked by a typo that could be caught and fixed in no time with today's SPELL CHECK. (I never use the other editing functions on computers since I intentionally write breaking some of the rules as is but thank-you SPELL CHECK!)

Although my short fiction had THE RING OF TRUTH but was not the truth (I would call it non-fiction) some of my fellow writers continued to treat me as if I COULD NOT POSSIBLY HAVE HAD THE IMAGINATION I DID (or DO). For instance, I wrote a story about a young woman coming to terms with not having a father, a coming of age story in which the tension was between the young woman and her mother. From that point on, though I told him I had been born into a stable marriage and had both parents in the household, one of our group members always talked to me personally as if this was an issue for me. I guess when one has IMAGINATION it may include EMPATHY.

Maybe part of the problem with having the prized RING OF TRUTH in my work was that few believed my truths because they themselves were turning their realities into "fiction." Still, even if you know this is true of a class, round table, or workshop member, I think it's best to use THE FORMAL LANGUAGE OF CRITIQUE. You have no right to further the belief among strangers that what you know to be true of a friend is true!

SIR ARTHUR HELPS Quote

"Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought." - Sir Arthur Helps

HERMANN HESSE Quote

"Be on guard against too much cleverness." - Hermann Hesse

MY OLD WRITERS GROUP WAS TERRIFIED OF SENDING WORK OUT

I belonged to a writers group years back that was comprised of some talented people who were dedicated to short story writing. But they were so perfectionistic, that despite writing and rewriting stories, and going through our critique process, they were terrified to send work out.

THE REASON WAS NOT JUST REJECTION! The reason was that they feared that everyone in publishing knew each other - and that if they had the nerve to send out a story that some editor thought of as less than A-plus, unworthy, then they would face something equal to being blackballed out of being published - ever. Their efforts - their very name -would exclude them from the very world they so desired to be in, that is if there were a lot of truth to this almost paranoid notion.

Being published does not make you a writer, writing does. And the best way to become a better writer is to write. No doubt being published can sometimes be a personal rather than professional matter. I simply do not believe that a writer who wants to be published should worry that rejections, even a series of rejection, means that they will become infamous within publishing circles.

If you have had an experience that would prove the paranoid notion, please contact me and tell me your story!

Christine

SHEILA WELLER DANCING AT CIRO's

pages 155-156 C Sheila Weller "Dancing at Ciro's" Published by Saint Martin's Press

Helen Hover Weller, Sheila Weller's mother, was a reporter in Hollywood writing on celebrities. Weller is setting up the mood of Hollywood at the grand opening of her uncle Herman's new restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. It is World War 2, the troops have invaded North Africa and Winston Churchill is optimistic. It is the day after Christmas... and the doors open.

"Consequently, "they came in twos and fours and sixes," Herman recalled..... Joan Crawford ...Cary Grant... Lana Turner came with her new husband, restaurant owner Steve Crane, and my mother - supervising the cigarette and coat-check girls with one eye, sleuthing for column items with the other - got the actress she most avidly chronicled to sit down with her in the cigarette girls' lounge.

"The movie stars of the forties had a combination of qualities that are the mirror opposite of their counterparts today. On the one hand, they gave off a glamour unheard of in our era, when ten-million-a-picture actresses wear jeans on David Letterman. But the jeans-wearing actresses are sophisticated; those glamour girls were not. They were often socially naive contract-worker-bees completely beholden to studio bosses. They were raised in a culture that still inculcated obedience and in an America deeply gridded by the caste system. A lot of them were insecure about their rough edges (high school drop out Betty Hutton told my mother she kept a dictionary on her bedstand to look up words whose meanings she didn't know) and their recent poverty (ex-elevator operator Dorothy Lamour remembered when she and her mother had to stretch $1.75 to last five days. However, they were still able to be human beings. They didn't have minders and bodyguards; they opened their own front doors; they worried about getting pregnant; and when they got drunk, they would pour out their hearts in a powder room.

CHARLES JOHNSON Quote

"It has been well said that all true art is a contagion of feeling; so that through the true reading of true books we do indeed read ourselves into the spirit of the masters." Charles Johnson.

AMMA Quotation

"Stuck in the intellect,
we fail to get to the heart.
Since the intellect is very calculating,
we need spirituality to find our way.
Mother is not saying we should
completely eliminate the intellect,
but that we need a discriminating intellect
that distinguishes between truth and untruth.
Awareness is the most important act of all."

As edited by Janine Canan

HATING WOMEN by SHMULEY BOTEACH American's Hostile Campaign Against the Fairer Sex

QUICK REVIEW by CHRISTINE TRZYNA
HATING WOMEN
American's Hostile Campaign Against The Fairer Sex
10 Regan Books an Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

Schmuley Boteach sounds like a feminist, or at least that's the best way I can categorize his Jewish-religious based POV that women need to be respected and the hell with pornography and adultery and all those things that degrade women. He hates what Madonna and Donald Trump have done to American morals so much that he refers to them repeatedly.CT's O

pinion: Where does erotica end and pornography begin? When did women agreeing to be victimized as porn stars become "Positive Sex Feminism?"

page 33 in Chapter Without Ladies, There Cannot Be Gentlemen

"In 2004, the biggest-selling relationships book in the United States was coauthored by a man and a woman, both of whom were screenwriters for "Sex and The City." The book is called "He's Just Not That into You," and its premise is that a man who treats a woman poorly does not have a real character flaw, but rather, "he's just not that into her." The book tells women to stop blaming men for being jerks, and just accept that they have a right not to like any specific woman that much: If he doesn't like you, move on and enjoy life. Amazing, isn't it? A book that says if men treat women like garbage, it is because, essentially, they are just not hot enough. So we have come full circle. Rather than asking men to take responsibility for their selfish behavior towards women and finally become gentlemen, we are telling women that they empower themselves by being honest enough to admit that, when men dump with barely an explanation, it is because in the men's eyes they are no great catch...
CT's opinion: I read "He's Just Not That Into You," and while I believe it counsels women to be strong and not accept bad boy behavior from men they are having romantic-sexual liaisons with, I don't believe it's an excuseology for men to be selfish or to victimize women.
Page 183

"The cleaning woman mentality leads directly to husbands having empty sex with their wives, with no sense of reverence and with no sense of awe. When a man makes love to his wife but thinks about another woman, then climaxes and climbs off his wife, he has treated her like an available whore who is there to satisfy his needs.

Page 296

"Let me explain just why pornography is so nefarious. Far from being a healthy outlet for raging hormones, pornography is a cancerous proclivity that slowly undermines healthy relationships. On a basic level, excessive viewing exposure to nude, female bodies contributes to the penchant of men to think about other women while making love to their wives. In fact, 84 % of men admit to doing just that (and they're dumb enough to believe that their wives don't notice.) We can even go so far as to say that once you bring another woman into your bed. even if only mentally, you are practicing a form of mental decapitation and merely using your wife's body for friction, replacing her head, her essence, with the images of another woman. The Torah, which is very concerned with fostering the mental and emotional intimacy that physical intimacy is meant to promote, actually calls men to task by deeming it a prohibition to fantasize about other women while being with one's wife....

COMMENTARY ON PINK GLITTER IN THE AIR

My favorite from last night's Grammy's ? PINK... the lyrics of the song are a relief from so much raunch... imaginative and romantic and the acrobatics in air? Perfect for the mood... Nearly nude yes but erotic not pornographic. Did you expect this of me after all the bitching I did about the American Music Awards.

New Video Summer 2016

VANITY FAIR ON THE TWITTER PHENOMENA

Queens of Twittering may send up to 1000, one hundred forty word, messages a day, and so far there is no direct financial profit in it. This Vanity Fair article by Vanessa Grigoriadis is about the way some people embrace new technology and hire GHOST TWITTERers to keep their fans updated with the minutia of their lives.

I personally have no time to Twitter and am not that interested in the minutia nor do I imagine anyone at all interested in mine. Really impactful personal "sharing" dates in coffee houses are rare to come by as well. Seems to me the best use of Twitter-like reportage is for purposes of MARKETING.

I believe that some people DO NOT KNOW THEY EXIST IF THEY ARE NOT CONSTANT WITH THE REPORTAGE.

Have you experienced meeting someone for coffee and feeling like you may as well come alone since the person across the table is too busy with their cell phone - texting - to pay much attention?

Christine Trzyna

J.D. SALINGER CATCHER IN THE RYE AUTHOR PASSES

Breaking Yahoo news... the author of the book that was taught at Eastern Prep schools and became famous as an inspiration for the murder of John Lennon passes away.

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTINE TRZYNA - WRITERLY LIFE - THE BLOG

Recently, I got a couple of comments that advised me that my blog was getting better all the time - funnier - and maybe more interesting. I was also complimented on the high quality of the blog - that reading it is a pleasure.

But I have mixed feelings about writing for approval and the truth is, I'm really not. Though I do hope my writerly blog is of support to other writers, and am a very bookish person who admires many other writers for what they have written, this blog is for me first. I write it as if no one is reading it! I don't see that my goal in writing my blog is to make people like me, approve of me, or my humor or my attitude, though it's nice if they do. (I need support too!) That's why I haven't installed an ego-tickling ticker to count hits. Now Google rates by hits, while Yahoo has apparently dumped me because I don't have an impressive number of links!

This blog is my diary. I know the stories behind certain posts that I would never tell. But when I personally click click click to an old post, I remember. For the reader I would say this is a tease. Like Sally Rand, I'm keeping a lot of parts covered, on purpose. That's my pleasure.

And as far as being funnier, I do have a sense of humor and it's one that is not always appreciated, so when someone gets me? OK! That's an ego stroke akin to a full body massage with exotic oil, OK.

But deeper to the accupressure point, I am just so glad I have this blog as well as WES BRYAN-MY LIFE IN MUSIC to express myself with, because right now the time I have to write, the time I have to even think my own thoughts, or go without interruption, is severely limited. I fantacize about going somewhere - escaping to a place - where I cannot see or speak to another human being for weeks if I choose (OK I'll take Wes' calls!) and WRITE WRITE WRITE!

I also KNOW that the time is coming when I'll be writing a book which will take all my efforts NOT TO CARE WHAT MY READERS THINK OF ME. In fact I will consider it my duty to piss off my readers; when it comes to a full range of human emotions I have them. And I won't want anyone to tell me not to write it, or how to write it, or that what I need to say need not be said. (As a hint, read the holocaust poem below!) It's going to take true fearlessness to get my truth down, so yes, my readers will cry.

---

OK thanks D, yes hopefully laugh too!

IF NOT FOR HER SAVING ANNE FRANKS DIARY... WE WOULD NEVER HAVE READ IT! 100 YEAR OLD MIEP GIES PASSES AWAY !

Link now to this Yahoo news story about Miep Gies, who put the papers that were Anne Frank's diary away in her desk... Anne's diary was required reading when I was in the fifth grade. I'm not sure we understood the Holocaust, focusing instead on Anne falling in love with Peter... There were many heroic individuals who risked their own lives to hide other people in Poland, Germany, the occupied countries during the Nazi terror.

CARLOS CASTANEDA quote

“Intent is not a thought, or an object, or a wish. Intent is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated. It operates in spite of the warrior’s indulgence. Intent is what makes him invulnerable. Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity.” Carlos Castaneda

HOLA MAGAZINE (A SECRET PLEASURE) I'M MOSTLY INTERESTED IN THE ROYAL SITUATION IN MONACO

A few months ago, I began "reading," Hola! Magazine, which is available at Los Angeles Public Library branches with high Spanish-speaking populations.

Truth is I can't read it but I can look at the pictures and glean the content through some word identification.

What is fascinating me about the LATIN MENTALITY OF HOLA, is that aristocrats and royals are featured celebrities just as they were in Europe for hundreds of years. So, if you are interested in what the Spanish Royal family is up to or the titans of industry, this is the magazine for you.

I'm mostly interested in the Royal Situation in Monaco. The Royal Family of Monaco is one of the worlds most publicized dysfunctional families in the world and the whole question about the line of succession because Prince Albert has no legal marriage or legitimate offspring (rumors abound about a California love child...) has been intriguing to me. Maybe it's that Princess Grace-American angle. Maybe the Princess Caroline-Feminist - a Woman Should Be In Charge- angle.

Albert has taken over where his father left off and Caroline's first son, a beautiful young man in his prime, is the heir next. Caroline's husband Ernst seems to have been missing in action from some recent ceremonies and Caroline has a dreadful stoic look on her face.

A recent article about the Royal Situation in Monaco revealed something else about Hola! Magazine. Apparently, they do not airbrush like similar publications in the Northern Hemisphere do, revealing every wrinkle (Caroline very very wrinkly, even shockingly so, after seeing images of her that have been fixed...), varicose vein, and so on. And, couples that feature both the man and the woman in swim-gear with excess fat are not cropped to be more attractive. Maybe it's the Reality TV influence.

ROBERT LEE FROST Quote

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader."