Got up this morning and put the radio on and probably will be listening to coverage of the Storm Sandy, or Super Storm Sandy, which has already sunken the HMS Bounty pirate ship, and is on the way to New York, New Jersey... the eastern sea board ... all day. And night.
The new York subways are shut down, so is Wall street, so are thousands of air flights, and listening to Heraldo Rivera broadcasting from new York this morning, it sounds as if the streets are deserted, with just a few dare devil cab drivers determined to make their fares. Videos show sea foam whipped up by the wind covering beaches like snow. Millions of people have loaded up on emergency supplies of food and water, there's been a run on flashlights and other survival gear, but even with shelters open, it seems to me that the majority must simply STAY PUT. Who can even afford the gas prices and the motel rooms to flee?
I'm thinking about Art Bell, the radio host who began Coast to Coast AM and was on the air most nights for maybe a decade, and Whitley Streiber, the author of Communion and other UFO Abductee themed books, who with Art wrote a book called THE COMING GLOBAL SUPERSTORM. (I was a huge fan of Art Bell!)
I ordered this book from my library several years back and finally it came in. I settled back on the sofa to read the book on a day off, and did so cover to cover without any television or radio or phone on to interrupt my concentration. The book had short novelesque chapters between science - or alternative science - fact. I was very impressed with it.
It proposed that when the Gulf Stream and Atlantic Ocean current, which is the result of variant water temperatures reacting to each other, changes, the result is not global warming but a rapidly occurring ice age. According to this theory, snowfall would make much of the Northern Hemisphere unlivable. When I finished the book, I turned on the radio to hear, shockingly, that the Tsumani had just hit Thailand.
WHITLEY STRIEBER's UNKNOWN COUNTRY link here for a better explaination.
C 2012 Christine Trzyna / Christine Trzyna Writerly Life
All Rights Reserved including Internet Rights and International Rights.
10/29/12
10/28/12
MOP MEN : INSIDE THE WORLD OF CRIME SCENE CLEANERS : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW
Narrative nonfiction : Alan Emmins MOP MEN was a terrific book, sensitive and just gory enough. He was the everyman gonna look at that long dead body, and finally he overcame his gagging reflex and started doing some clean up for cash himself.
I think the recent Costa Concordia cruise ship beaching story, which I follow, might have influenced me in picking this book up from my library new book shelf (even though it was C 2008). You see, the story of the search for drowned bodies off the coast of Italy or on the sunken ship had been in the news almost daily. Nothing has been so newsworthy when it comes to finding drowned bodies since JFK Junior crashed his plane off the coast of Martha's Vineyard.
Alan's experience depends on Neil, who owns Crime Scene Cleaners, Inc. Neil is just the kind of guy who is business minded enough to consider what a top writer could do for his business if he lets him follow him around.
In the end you're not going to learn exactly how they do it, no Murphy's Oil Soap apparently, though elbow grease is in order. Instead you get inside the brains of Alan Emmins; what he's thinking, what he's feelings, and how the experience of cleaning up from murders, suicides, and accidents changes him. Luckily, not for good.
MOP MEN book is C 2004 and 2008 Alan Emmins Thomas Dunn Books
Saint Martin's Press
C Christine Trzyna 2012 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
I think the recent Costa Concordia cruise ship beaching story, which I follow, might have influenced me in picking this book up from my library new book shelf (even though it was C 2008). You see, the story of the search for drowned bodies off the coast of Italy or on the sunken ship had been in the news almost daily. Nothing has been so newsworthy when it comes to finding drowned bodies since JFK Junior crashed his plane off the coast of Martha's Vineyard.
Alan's experience depends on Neil, who owns Crime Scene Cleaners, Inc. Neil is just the kind of guy who is business minded enough to consider what a top writer could do for his business if he lets him follow him around.
In the end you're not going to learn exactly how they do it, no Murphy's Oil Soap apparently, though elbow grease is in order. Instead you get inside the brains of Alan Emmins; what he's thinking, what he's feelings, and how the experience of cleaning up from murders, suicides, and accidents changes him. Luckily, not for good.
MOP MEN book is C 2004 and 2008 Alan Emmins Thomas Dunn Books
Saint Martin's Press
C Christine Trzyna 2012 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
10/17/12
MY CROSS TO BEAR : GREGG ALLMAN with ALAN LIGHT
Midnight Rider is one of my favorite songs of all time and it's Gregg's too. Allman Brother's band, after the death of Duane Allman, always had one Allman - Gregg, who prefers Gregory.
OK, Gregg's writerly voice was preserved though working "with" another writer, which is always important, as is his sensibility, philosophy of life, and confessions. He has five children, all with different women, four musicians and a nurse out of those, has drunk hard, used lots of drugs, and been a heroin addict, notably married to superstar Cher.
I've been thinking about how much of the music I love(d) has been written and performed by alcoholics and drug addicts, in particular heroin addicts. I haven't knowingly welcomed any drug addicts in my adult life, but the ones I've met in coffee houses tell me that all addicts are liars who know how to hide their habits, even from those they live with. They seem to think that Twelve Step Programs are the way to go.
OK, Gregg's writerly voice was preserved though working "with" another writer, which is always important, as is his sensibility, philosophy of life, and confessions. He has five children, all with different women, four musicians and a nurse out of those, has drunk hard, used lots of drugs, and been a heroin addict, notably married to superstar Cher.
I've been thinking about how much of the music I love(d) has been written and performed by alcoholics and drug addicts, in particular heroin addicts. I haven't knowingly welcomed any drug addicts in my adult life, but the ones I've met in coffee houses tell me that all addicts are liars who know how to hide their habits, even from those they live with. They seem to think that Twelve Step Programs are the way to go.
****
video went poof! Taken down Nov 2022
10/16/12
10/10/12
LISA SEE : DREAMS OF JOY : A FANTASTIC PART TWO OF THE SHANGHAI GIRLS STORY : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW
Dreams of Joy is C 2011 Lisa See
LISA SEE : DREAMS OF JOY : A FANTASTIC PART TWO OF THE SHANGHAI GIRLS STORY : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW
This book is a fascinating page turner rich with historical details, cultural and generational conflict.
The story begins where Shanghai Girls left off. It's 1958, Mao is in power, and China is Red with Communism. Joy, the young daughter of two sisters, May and Pearl, has just found out that her aunt is her mother and that her father was a somewhat famous artist in China 18 years before who used her aunt and mother as models for his advertising posters.
Thinking herself to be one Chinese-American who wishes to return to the country of her heritage to embrace Communism wholeheartedly and stay there, Joy finds herself living in a village commune and marries the first man who has ever sparked her desire. Life in the country is much different than in the cities, and only by youth can she bear it. The communes banish western thought and individuality and starve doing so. Can May, the sister who raised Joy with her husband, who recently commit suicide and left her a young widow, make it to Communist China from Canton or Hong Kong and live there long enough to find Joy and bring her home?
You know she will, but not until years of struggle.
There will likely be another book to carry this story of the sisters May and Pearl, who came to the United States through arranged marriages, forward into the 1960's.
These women shared a daughter and kept the secret of her parentage until she was 18. Now they return to the United States with an entourage that includes Joy's birth father, a new husband, and an adopted son. Now with the sisters who stick together through everything ready to start life over, and some would argue for the first time, tell me, how can there not be more story?
C 2012 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
LISA SEE : DREAMS OF JOY : A FANTASTIC PART TWO OF THE SHANGHAI GIRLS STORY : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW
This book is a fascinating page turner rich with historical details, cultural and generational conflict.
The story begins where Shanghai Girls left off. It's 1958, Mao is in power, and China is Red with Communism. Joy, the young daughter of two sisters, May and Pearl, has just found out that her aunt is her mother and that her father was a somewhat famous artist in China 18 years before who used her aunt and mother as models for his advertising posters.
Thinking herself to be one Chinese-American who wishes to return to the country of her heritage to embrace Communism wholeheartedly and stay there, Joy finds herself living in a village commune and marries the first man who has ever sparked her desire. Life in the country is much different than in the cities, and only by youth can she bear it. The communes banish western thought and individuality and starve doing so. Can May, the sister who raised Joy with her husband, who recently commit suicide and left her a young widow, make it to Communist China from Canton or Hong Kong and live there long enough to find Joy and bring her home?
You know she will, but not until years of struggle.
There will likely be another book to carry this story of the sisters May and Pearl, who came to the United States through arranged marriages, forward into the 1960's.
These women shared a daughter and kept the secret of her parentage until she was 18. Now they return to the United States with an entourage that includes Joy's birth father, a new husband, and an adopted son. Now with the sisters who stick together through everything ready to start life over, and some would argue for the first time, tell me, how can there not be more story?
C 2012 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
10/7/12
I ADMIT IT! I NEED SPELLCHECK
I admit it! I need spellcheck. Don't know about you but at some time way long ago when I was either first learning to spell or first learning to type (and I HATED TYPING!) I began to chronically misspell certain words. I find my fingers typing these words wrong time and time again, and you'd think will SPELLCHECK that I would sort of get the hint already and start spelling these words correctly.
But the real reason I need spellcheck is that I think faster than I type and as I get tired of typing and make more and more typos, but I don't want to stop and be an editor at that point, I just want to get my thoughts down.
I typed four words wrong just now. The SPELLCHECK got three of them.
But the real reason I need spellcheck is that I think faster than I type and as I get tired of typing and make more and more typos, but I don't want to stop and be an editor at that point, I just want to get my thoughts down.
I typed four words wrong just now. The SPELLCHECK got three of them.
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