MUSHROOM CLOUDS AT MIDNIGHT

MUSHROOM CLOUDS AT MIDNIGHT

            It doesn’t pay to think in the middle of the night.

            Even my computer messes with me, protesting that I should cease and desist . . . and a voice whispers in my head, Don’t write this stuff down. It won’t do you any good, and it won’t help the world. Besides, who wants to read it?. 

But tonight I can’t help it.

What set me off was a warning on TV about nuclear power plants—a pediatrician describing how nuclear plants spew carcinogens into the air, causing malignancies in those who live nearby . . . how Germany, having discovered their children dying of  cancer, is shutting them all down.  But here? Our country plans to power them all up, even extending the licenses of aging plants.

I’m in bed and can’t sleep. Power plants billow before my eyes. Then I see forest fires exploding in Washington, walls of flame raging skyward as though hurled by demons--and elsewhere, fields and forests alike burning freely, as though this is the natural order of things . . . and I think, God, please . . . can’t you spare some rain? Just three days’ worth? 

Like the fire, my thoughts rage on . . . houses swept into rivers, people escaping  city-wide floods in boats . . . tornadoes tearing up the land . . . and this winter in Boston, snow piled higher than anyone has ever seen. Every month a new disaster, until it’s clear that “normal” weather no longer exists. Yet the Florida governor will not allow the words climate change used officially--even as the ocean threatens to work its way inland. Meanwhile, half the members of Congress insist that global warming is a hoax. Don’t try to fix it, Obama. We’ll sue. 

What global warming doesn’t do to us, we do to ourselves. Half of us are dying to own guns. Well, we’re dying, all right, at least 30,000 of us a year, and the more guns we  own, the more of us will die. But the NRA doesn’t believe in statistics; they believe in firepower. If guns are good, assault rifles can’t be bad. If adults need shooting lessons, so do eight-year-olds. They also believe money buys votes. Who has more power in Congress, anyway? The dead children in Newtown, or the NRA?  

Just today, two women on a TV crew are shot—in daylight, on television.

Of all the bad things that occur to me at midnight, none are worse than ISIS. Not since ancient barbarians poured down from the hills and killed indiscriminately have we seen more brutality, more slaying without reason, more beheadings, more destruction of precious antiquities, more enslavement of women.

In the same area, of course, Assad is gassing his own people.  

Enough, I think. Here and there in our country we see glimmers of hope: Little children collecting groceries to help grownups who are hungry. A new head of the FBI whose principles are stronger than his ambitions. Kids learning to play violins. An old man setting up his sewing machine on a sidewalk to mend clothes for strangers. A cute little boy with two new hands. And miracle of miracles—a possible cure for melanoma. 

So it isn’t all grim, even in the dark hours of the night.

THE HITLER PHENOMENON

THE HITLER PHENOMENON

            None of us lived through those days, but we all know about them.

            At first, everyone made fun of Hitler. He ranted like a fool, and he looked half-crazed—above that nasty little mustache were wild eyes, and pasted-down black hair.

Germany’s intelligent citizens shook their heads and clucked in scorn. He makes a lot of noise, they thought, and says what he damn pleases, but to most Germans it was all  show and idiotic nonsense, aimed at people who didn’t know better. So who could take him seriously?  For heaven’s sake, he was a house painter!   

To this day, intelligent Germans cannot fathom why so many people were comfortable with Hitler’s venom, and ultimately accorded him power that the rest of the country could never take back. In “The Past is Myself,” Christabel Bielenberg, a Brit married to a German lawyer, described--with appropriate horror--what she and the vast number of intelligent Germans lived through. With amazing detail she records the surprise, and then dismay that this could possibly happen. Over the next eighteen years, her book was re-printed twenty-three times! 

Everyone I know or read about made similar noises of scorn when Donald Trump entered the Republican race. His message was ludicrous, and so disparaging of Hispanics it bordered on dangerous--and besides, he looked terrible. Even he admits people make fun of his hair.

The Hispanic comments supposedly finished him. Except they didn’t. Next he attacked John McCain, (who really was a hero), and said, “My heroes are people who don’t get captured.”

The McCain slur should have finished him.

But it didn’t. Next he made hash of another Republican.  And then he said, “Sarah Palin makes sense. She will have a place in my cabinet.”

To all of us watching in surprise, it seemed unthinkable that Donald Trump rose in the polls—and kept rising.

Surely, we think, nobody takes him seriously. But like the intelligent Germans who couldn’t believe what happened to them, a lot of us can’t believe what is happening right here in America.  

It seems that plenty of people take Donald Trump seriously. REALLY! How easily we dismiss them, how cavalierly we assume their hero will soon implode.

But will he? 

Don’t be so sure.   

                       

WHY SO MANY DOCTORS ARE QUITTING

WHY SO MANY DOCTORS ARE QUITTING

            First it was the HMOs.  Now it’s the Nerds. 

            Thanks to nerds who write computer programs for doctors without consulting doctors--and thanks to a government that insists all medical records be electronic--today’s medicine is a mess. Instead of treating patients, doctors spend patient-time staring at computers. In some programs physicians can’t, for instance, refer to the term “blood.” The nerds have decided the operative word for blood should be ostag.   

Computer systems written by techs with no medical input have created an expensive, frustrating electronic hodgepodge . . . in which computers from one doctor’s office can’t speak to those in another’s, in which hospitals can’t communicate with other hospitals, in which record-keeping in every doctor’s office is currently like dealing with an ever-growing but insane octopus.

Diagnosis codes, for instance, have expanded from 40,000 to a little over half a million—with huge penalties if the systems aren’t implemented. It’s so bad now that one or two-doctor offices can no longer exist. Doctors must practice in groups, because they need several people full time just to keep the octopus under control.

Did you know that most hospitals require their doctors to create a new password every month? Tell me . . . who can keep track, mentally, of twelve different passwords a year? Inevitably, doctors have to write them down. Which defeats the whole idea.  

I’m not a doctor, but I’m surrounded by them. One is my son, three are good friends, and another is a breast-care surgeon with whom I’m writing a book. Lately I’ve been thinking that America’s doctors—if they weren’t so busy—should rise up and revolt.

Somebody has to straighten out this mess.

If doctors were businessmen instead of doctors, the chaos would soon be gone. Think of aviation: when a pilot speaks to a control tower, every pilot in the world uses the same language—English. And every pilot communicates with the same alphabet:  Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot . . .

Think of the movies—when “color” first came out, all filmmakers began using the same technology.

And remember when Beta Max promised to be the sole means of recording TV programs? But then VCR came along and took over. Later, as a group, we moved over to DVD. But at least we’re all using the same system.    

The problem is, good doctors want to practice medicine. Most are in the business because they care about people. They want to communicate with patients, not computers. If they MUST deal with computers, physicians want them to make sense.  Today, few electronic medical systems make any sense at all . . . they merely waste time. So some very good doctors are giving up. 

If enough doctors quit medicine, something good will definitely happen. Wait and see. There’ll be a day when nobody will hire a computer nerd unless he’s also a doctor.    

OUT-TRUMPING DONALD TRUMP

OUT-TRUMPING DONALD TRUMP

            Donald Trump is a “Jackass.”  

At least that’s what Senator Lindsey Graham called him, according to yesterday’s Los Angeles Times.

REALLY!  How fascinating that Graham saw such a different image beneath the forward-leaning hair . . . but Graham ought to know, he’s from South Carolina, and maybe he’s seen other donkeys with a backcomb.

            Whatever . . . Trump is currently Number One in the polls, and for some of us it’s because we can’t wait to hear what he’ll say next—which insult he’ll hurl, or where it will land. Years ago he was simply “The Donald,” and he was basically a caricature you could cluck over and ignore. Now lots of voters are hoping he’ll hang in for most of the electoral season, because politics is seldom this out-of-control or this funny . . . and here’s this one-man wrecking machine, wildly swinging away at half the politicians in his own party.      

            But Trump can’t claim full ownership to “Startling and Shocking.” Other luminaries are shocking, too, only some are tragically unfunny, like Bill Cosby. Few of us can imagine that this once-paragon of family values and personal ethics has now been turned over and exposed, like a rock with bugs on the other side. Bill Cosby?  Really?

            I’d be more stunned over both of them--if I hadn’t personally known a couple of men who were also Startling and Shocking but, like Bill Cosby, were one hundred percent not the person I’d always believed.  

            I actually co-authored a book with a man who once stood out in my mind as the soul of ethics. The first time we met (in a restaurant, over breakfast), he took a couple of moments to pray quietly over his meal. We talked about his son and how he’d like to write a book about fatherhood. We discussed the failings of today’s prison systems, and why a different approach would “rescue” and “rehabilitate” young men locked up for their addictions. We decided, informally, to write a book on the topic. We agreed to collaborate, we shook hands, and that was it. We never felt we needed a written contract.   

After the book came out, we traveled to other counties in his official car—to TV appearances and radio shows.  We discussed ethics most of the way.

Newly elected to a high office, he was adored—first locally and then nationally. And suddenly it all fell—like a brick wall shaken to earth in a quake. He began to be discredited. The Los Angeles Times called me to refute certain parts of our book, which I wouldn’t do; I believed he’d told the truth as he saw it. Rumors appeared in the Times. Friends reported to me absolute knowledge of an affair—which I found hard to believe.

It got worse. He tried to “pick up” one of my writer-friends. Then it developed that the man’s closest two buddies were both crooks. Eventually he was tried as a crook—with so many misdeeds on the docket that only the Statue of Limitations saved him from a very long prison sentence. He did, however, serve four years.  

I was stunned. Who was he, anyway?  The man I once knew?  Or somebody else, entirely different?   

A second man that Rob and I knew well for over fifty years, became, after death, a complete stranger. Once a neighbor and, with his wife, a couple we saw frequently, the man was a respected local attorney . . . and in fact at one time he was president of the State Bar. Both Rob and I found his sense of humor engaging.    

Then the pair moved to the beach area, and we didn’t see them much. Yet after he retired, the lawyer spent time in a trailer in the desert, working on a fascinating novel, for which I did some editing.   

During this interval we heard a sad story about the husband traveling alone in Turkey, and how he woke up one morning to find himself tossed into a ditch. We were surprised at both the strangeness and his bad luck. 

Then, after a long dry spell, the four of us met at Soup Plantation for lunch. It was exactly like old times. The lawyer’s great sense of humor surfaced, and so did Rob’s, and the four of us spent about two hours reminiscing and laughing. Nearby, a lady leaned closer and said, “It’s good to see four people having so much fun.” 

For Rob and me, that lunch was memorable as an interval that proved old friends could still enjoy as much hilarity together as they’d once had.

Exactly four days later we received a shocking phone call—the wife reporting, in a voice thick with tears, that her husband was dead. We soon learned that a vagrant out in the desert had entered his trailer and killed him. 

But this wasn’t even a start to the story. Gradually it came out that the attorney had spent time in the desert for more than writing—that he’d employed a pimp to bring him . . . well, male sex partners. That fatal day our friend did something that so enraged his latest conquest that the man killed him. 

We never saw the wife again . . . and never learned whether she was told the truth. Both Rob and I had a hard time believing there could be a side to our friend that was kept entirely secret—until after his death. 

The short conclusion here is that a few individuals are capable of being two entirely different people, and you never know for sure which one was “real.”  Every new revelation about yet another such person comes as a  shock . . . until the group gets so large, with so many people out-trumping Donald Trump, you’re not flabbergasted any more.

And then there’s The Donald himself . . . the one man who can never totally surprise anyone.   

  

HELP! I'M A PRISONER OF PUBLISHER'S CLEARING HOUSE!

HELP!  I’M A PRISONER OF PUBLISHER’S CLEARING HOUSE!

           

Okay, I’m a sucker, ready to be exploited, I know that already. I also know there’s one of me born every minute.

Somehow I drifted into this PCH prison months ago, when Publisher’s Clearing House first offered to put my husband on their list of possible winners—you know, the roster that promises somebody will soon win $5000 a week for life. When I first signed up, “soon” was touted as the end of June. Yes—last month. The date has now been extended to end-of-August.      

I never should have read their literature--never should have given them the slightest nod. Most important, I NEVER should have shared my email address. 

Since that moment of passing stupidity, my inbox has been bombarded with two to four messages every day, which vary from bright, golden promises “Just press this button and you’ll be forever on the list—don’t you WANT $5000 a week?”  to threats—“If  you don’t sign in NOW, you’ll forfeit every chance . . . ” and I find myself thinking, “Well, I’ve come this far . . .”

Any jailhouse crew would call this the “Good Cop, Bad Cop” approach, which seems to work fairly well with criminals and  . . . well, me.        

Oh, they use it, all right. But nothing is as simple as pressing a single button. Once tapped into their site, you’re bombarded with bells and kaleidoscopes and music, and then a continuous parade of bargain merchandise, a list that, if scrolled on paper, would reach from my second floor office down to the basement (if we had one), a list you can’t get out of until you’ve viewed each and every item—or alternatively, turned off your computer. 

Most days I bravely ignore PCH . . . until finally an irresistible message arrives, and I once again press a button and walk where only fools would dare to tread. And once more I put myself on a merry-go-round from which there’s no escape.

But here’s the amazing part—this isn’t just crappy merchandise. 

Among the “stuff” are dozens of household items I’d like to own . . . and more than that, hundreds of  merchandisers who are so respectable you can’t imagine why they’d stoop to advertising on Publisher’s Clearing House. Time Magazine. The fancy Atholl Palace Hotel (already booked by us in Scotland), every insurance company, every magazine, every household item, every gadget, every business service you’ve ever heard of. Like me, PCH has roped them all in.

How did they do it?  How does it happen that their list gets longer every day--and yes . . . more respectable? 

Somehow PCH realizes they’ve gotta keep us pigeons going, must keep harvesting those millions of dollars in sales . . . a tactic which is now heading in the direction of ending months from now—long past August.  

When you think a little deeper, the answer is simple: as we all know, there’s a sucker born every minute. But a whole lot of them happen to own businesses.

HOW MY STUDENTS KEPT ME FROM TEACHING

HOW MY STUDENTS KEPT ME FROM TEACHING

            The semester started off bad and never got any better. 

Each evening as they piled into class, one student, then another, dropped a ten-page manuscript on my desk and turned to write his name and submission title on the board. In dismay, I’d see the names and manuscripts pile up.  Two or three at first, but by the time we were underway, there’d be eight to ten. And one day—eleven! I kept stealing looks at the board, knowing I’d been committed to tons of work at home.  More than a hundred pages of line-by-line editing.   

I pretended to like it, but I didn’t. Eleven manuscripts to read on my stationary bike. But worse, another class session coming up with no time to teach. 

In prior years I’d known our absolute limit was five or six manuscripts—leaving most of an hour for concentrated, hard-core lecturing. Hey, I’d be thinking, I’ve been at this for years, and there’s so much I need to tell them.  When my sessions threatened to spill over with too many manuscripts, I limited the number they could bring to class. I imagined I was doing a terrific job.

But this year I got careless, let the students write all they wanted. And now I was paying the price. 

Funny thing, though—I began noticing a few students were writing better. And soon, without letting the thought filter through and become  “Geronimo!” I began seeing they were ALL writing better. Every darn one of them. In class each week, we discussed what they’d created, and I had the fun of pointing out some unique, amazing, or even great lines. And then great scenes. Or I found mistakes, and instead of offering all the corrections myself, I made them suggest changes.    

We discussed what they’d once done wrong . . . and how the “wrongs” were now going away.      

I never felt I was “teaching.”  I was always just “going over manuscripts.”  And while in prior years, the manuscripts diminished in number as the semester progressed, this year there was no letup. My students, darn their eyes, simply wouldn’t stop writing!  

On the last day I mentioned my regrets to a favorite student. “You know,” I said, “this semester I never found time to teach.” 

She looked at me in surprise.  “Well, you didn’t lecture much.  But those were just words—and I’m not sure they all sank in.”  She paused. “We learned more by studying other manuscripts and figuring out what was wrong. And then hearing your comments and the changes you offered—or let us offer.”  She paused again. “Haven’t you noticed we all got better?”

“Well, actually, I did. But . . . there weren’t any lessons.  No real lessons at all.”

“What do you think ‘getting better’ means?”  She looked at me, letting it percolate. “This was one of the best semesters we’ve ever had.” 

“Really?” 

“Oh, yes,” she said.

I walked away with one of those cartoon light bulbs floating over my head. Before I got to the car I was thinking, Well, hot damn, how did this happen without my noticing?  All these students improving and me fussing about no time to teach.

My husband had come this last night, and now the car was moving, but I was hardly aware of it.  While he drove, I began smiling to myself.

I must have been teaching after all. 


"DAMN THE REJECTIONS, FULL SPEED AHEAD: THE BUMPY ROAD TO GETTING PUBLISHED."    Available on Amazon--or Maralys.com 

HOW TO KILL YOUR CREATIVITY

HOW TO KILL YOUR CREATIVITY

I just did it again--rushed into the family room with a great new idea. Couldn’t wait to tell my husband the core message for a new story—meaning something I meant to write immediately, starting in a few minutes. Unfortunately, I got the wrong response. He said “EEEYOOOGH!” exactly the way a teenager says it when you suggest he trim his father’s ear hairs, or put on that new shirt from Aunt Helen . . . or worse, stop showing his plumber’s crack.    

I don’t know how to spell the sound, but you’ve all heard it. It’s the world’s briefest auditory conveyance of No Way, You’ve Got to be Kidding, or That’s a Rotten Idea If I’ve Ever Heard One.

My idea for the new story fizzled like a party balloon with a pin prick. The creative air seeped out, faster and faster, and I just stood there, dismayed. And finally I said it. “Well, I’ve just broken the first rule of creativity.” 

Rob simply looked at me. He doesn’t know the rule, and he wouldn’t care about it if he knew. But he’ll gladly give me his first reaction to anything he considers even slightly ludicrous.

Have you caught on to the rule? 

In case you haven’t, the rule is, Never share the first blush of a creative idea with ANYONE.  Not until you’ve got it down on paper, not until the thing is mostly written and you can’t easily unwrite it.  

If it was a dumb idea in the first place, you’ll soon know. If it wasn’t, you risk letting someone kill your baby while it’s still in the womb.

Everyone who writes knows this rule, and no one better than I. My inner voice invariably says, Don’t share this, and I should have listened, but I didn’t; instead I rushed out to expose my great new vision to toxic fumes. Not too smart. 

I finally said, “Nora Ephron’s book is called, ‘I Remember Nothing.’ Do you think that’s a good title?” And he said No. 

Well, that was some comfort, anyway. I’m sure Ephron has sold a million copies of this very funny book with the mediocre title. Except I happen to love it, bad title and all.  

I’m also willing to bet she wrote the book first and asked for opinions last. Which means, among all her other talents, Ephron knew enough not to stifle her creativity.