You’ve Got To Be Kidding

One thing I learned moving to Southern California from the Midwest is given the human condition we find ourselves capable of complaining about nearly anything.  In my first month here I learned some natives wish there were more cloudy days.  All right, sunshine may get a little tedious at times.  Then, someone started complaining about the humidity. In this part of the country humidity, if you can call it that, arrives in winter.  Most of the time it hovers in the seventy to eighty percent range. When it reaches ninety people start to complain and threaten to leave for the dry lands of Arizona or Nevada (only later did I learn those places have monsoons). Most summers in the Midwest the humidity hovers in the low nineties and in the South its almost always-pushing one hundred percent. The concept of stickiness never really arrived in California before the invention of polyester.

Photo courtesy of DebbieDoesPhotography.Blogspot.Com

Another complaint heard from those who migrated here from other regions is the lack of four seasons. Now, that’s ridiculous. Anyone who looks up on the six days the smog isn’t blocking the view of the mountains can tell you the peaks have snow on them in the winter.  In fact, if you venture up to the higher elevations, even if you don’t plan on skiing, you are likely to find snow on the ground, a true testament to winter existing in Southern California.  The other seasons are a little subtler.

Photo courtesy of DebbieDoesPhotography.Blogspot.Com

For instance, the temperature in fall plummets from the eighties and occasional ninety-degree days of summer to a much cooler seventy degrees.  Instead of forests filled with color, there are eight liquid ambers (I think it’s a designer maple created especially for trendy Californians) that lose their leaves and the dozen people whose lawns are covered, myself included, complain vigorously about having to rake.

There are definitely more clues to the arrival of spring. For those individuals into racing the tracks open for a new season, and if you prefer the four-wheel kind the city of Long Beach hosts an impressive Grand Prix. Of course there is the start of our national pastime with three major league teams—the Dodgers, Angels and Padres—holding their home openers during the last two weeks.

Unlike the rest of the country where spring brings rain and life to the earth, it marks the end of our wet season and a return to irrigation both in farmers’ fields and urban landscapes.  Being in the third year of a drought the desire to see more rain fill up water tables and reservoirs finds Southern Californians petitioning to extend the season before they start complaining about restrictions on the days and amount of water they can provide their lawns.

The rebirth of nature inspires many lines of poetry, one of my favorites being:

Spring has sprung

The grass has riz

Oh, how pretty

The flowers is

Photo courtesy of DebbieDoesPhotography.Blogspot.Com

While the change in temperature is less drastic with thermometers moving from highs in the upper sixties and low seventies into the mid-seventies and low eighties, we always run a chance for an early preview of summer, like we did earlier this week.  When the warmth of the sun caused me to open my windows and the mercury (do they still use the stuff in conventional thermometers; I’m just too digital) touched ninety, my wife first moved to the shade and a short while later came inside complaining it was too hot. You’ve got to be kidding.

Oh, Now I Get It

Growing up my cousin Jim was quite adept at taking the wind out of the sails of those of us who thought we had the ability to deliver a joke. Standing in a small group of between five and ten friends I concentrated on getting through the punch line without snickering or laughing before it was delivered. Relieved to the point of exhilaration when the group responded with a burst of laughter, I figured I was a born comedian with brilliant timing. Then, as everyone quieted Jim would scan the assembled, look at me, and pause long enough to garner everyone’s undivided attention—even those outside the group—and say, “Oh, now I get it!”

"You've got to be kidding. Don't they know everything gets
reduced to a soundbite?" (Photo courtesy of iStock.com)

His impeccable timing is what satire is supposed to achieve in its most effective form.  However, the danger of satire gone awry is not only can it be misinterpreted it can completely backfire.  If you aren’t certain what I’m talking about, then perhaps a definition of satire is in order.  A well accepted definition of satire is “the use of humor, irony, exaggeration or ridicule to expose and ridicule people’s stupidity and vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.”

Sometimes the humor gets lost in the translation. Two satirists with a large following are Jon Stewart on the Daily Show and Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report.  Both appear on the Comedy Channel making the intent of their satire fairly self-evident.  Yet, nothing could be further from the truth with the satirical material Colbert attempted to deliver last week.

I have no objection to the name
the Santa Dogs.

An issue that has confronted American society for some time is the name a sports team takes.  Teams with animal names like the Bears, Tigers and Lions are rarely the source of controversy, except for perhaps when it comes to performance.  In my hometown of Milwaukee we had a professional baseball team called the Braves.  Whether or not that was an acceptable name became a mute point when the team moved to Atlanta.  The replacement team chose a name closely associated with the city’s history, the Brewers.  Marquette University, in the heart of the city, chose to change the name Warriors to Golden Eagles—again, nobody seems too concerned about the rights of animals when it comes to sports monikers. However, one team does seem to raise the ire of a whole nation of people.  The owner of the Washington D.C. NFL franchise, Dan Snyder, has invoked his right as owner to maintain the name. In response to those leveling charges of racism he formed the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation. To point up the irony of this organization and its name Colbert proposed starting his own Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever.  

"Enough with the stereotypes. We're just two cute kids
on our way to school." (Photo courtesy of iStock.com)

Context is crucial to satire, especially when it is used to ridicule someone or something.  Most viewers caught the intent and saw the humor.  However, when someone from the Colbert staff, not the satirist himself, tweeted the new venture without the relationship to the actual Snyder foundation, a Cancel Colbert campaign erupted on Twitter sparked by reaction from Asian-American activists.  Nothing gives conservatives more satisfaction than watching two normally aligned liberal contingents fighting each other.

To show satire does not play favorites two days ago conservative Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann posted a cartoon featuring a door saying April Fools with people waiting in line to sign up for the Affordable Care Act. The problem was the previous day those enlisting in the program exceeded projections by more than a million.

Looking for an Agent

As soon as you read it you ask yourself, “Why?” Why in this day and age when everyone is self-publishing FB pages, posts, tweets, instagrams, blogs and books, does anyone need an agent.  An agent works with traditional publishers, a dying breed to say the least. Besides, does anyone read books anymore?

Could she be the right agent?

If most writers are like me, they are more interested in the writing process, the telling of the story than the selling of the story. Still, it’s much easier, if not simpler, to cut out the middleman or woman, especially in this electronic age, and publish books directly on Amazon, Lulu, or whatever available format one chooses. In fact, it’s so attractive a method that more books are published in this manner than the traditional method. So, why on earth does someone want to pursue an archaic method of reaching an audience, other than masochistic proclivity?

After pouring their heart and soul into their writing many new authors avert the tradition of groveling at the door of some publishing house. The move to self and independent publishing has soared into the stratosphere. Average sales reach into the tens of copies. 

Meanwhile old school publishers with their deep pockets and fancy marketing campaigns refuse to look at a book or its author unless they can sell thousands of copies in its first printing.  Not only that, their policy is not to negotiate or pay authors.  Authors, new or otherwise, present their work and are compensated through their agents.

Would you trust him to be your agent?

For the past eighteen months, since the completion of my first novel I have pursued literary agent representation. Most, if not all, do not accept unsolicited manuscripts, phone calls or visitors without appointments. The proper method of groveling is called the query letter. One cautionary tale—and there is nothing satirical about it—is anyone who asks for a reading fee to look at the manuscript is not to be trusted.  For this reason, legitimate agents, who receive a dozen or more of these queries each day, only ask to read material that peaks their interest and they believe they can market.

I'm just not sure about her negotiating style.

During this year and a half I have sent fifty-four queries, received twenty-six responses declining my offer, and understand the other twenty-eight are not interested either.  Although the standard response indicates selection is a subjective process and the respondent wishes me well in my continued pursuit of getting my manuscript to publication, it doesn’t diminish the sense of wandering in a cave looking for hidden treasure trying not to get hit in the head by a stalactite or trip over a stalagmite, all the while wishing I had worn something warmer and hoping I can remember my way back once I have found my destination.

Still, if I want to continue to poke fun at those who choose to self-publish rather than wander through illusive query caves, I have to pick up the pace. Not only is it time to get down to work on the second novel, it is time to send more than one query a week—those doing the math will know I am about twenty queries shy of that rate at this writing. So, look for an update in about six months, or better still have your literary agent contact me.  

Meanwhile Back at the Beach

One hundred eleven years ago when my maternal grandmother boarded the ship bound for America she had no idea she would never get the chance to sun bathe on the beaches of Crimea.  Her little shtetl outside Kiev was burned to the ground in one of the czar’s famous pogroms—picture Anatevka in Shalom Aleichem’s Fiddler on the Roof.  At five years of age she was unable to make a clear assessment of whether the sailors who laughed at her mother lighting candles were from Ukraine or other portions of the Russian empire.  Their amusement arose because they felt certain the red-haired peasant was confused and could not possibly be Jewish. Until most of mine fell out some of the remnants of the recessive gene appeared as highlights among my brown waves.

Crowd leaves beach as sunset approaches.

Speaking of waves, resorts along the Crimean peninsula are already feeling the economic pinch because Ukrainians, who make up sixty percent of their guests during warm weather, are booking in other parts of Europe. All the happy days are here again spectacle of Russian speakers welcoming the unmarked troops of rough and rugged Vladi Putin lose their luster when the rubles dry up. (It should come as no surprise the troops wore no insignia; after all, Vladi was top spook in the KGB.) Even Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who took over as Prime Minister of Ukraine, when Vladi’s buddy Vik Yushchenko was ousted, made concessions to his Russian-speaking constituents earlier in the week, saying Russia would remain an official language in Ukraine. He said it was the language his wife used predominately, "and she, like millions of other Russian speakers, does not require protection from the Kremlin.”  Of course, he can rest easy knowing the U.S. and E.U. will buy up vast quantities of Ukraine’s natural gas, if Russia tightens its grip on its oil supply in retaliation for the sanctions imposed by each.

Sun paints the sky red.
Photo courtesy of debbiedoesphotography.blogspot.com

In the recesses of my mind are many fond memories of times spent with my maternal grandmother during my youth in Milwaukee.  Not one involves a beach—none along Lake Michigan, nor any among the inland lakes of Wisconsin.  Perhaps that is part of the reason I always pictured Russia, and the rest of the countries previously bound together in the Soviet Union, as void of parcels of land covered with sand and scattered torsos lying next to bodies of water.  It was shocking to learn Crimea has long stretches of beach.  Not so surprising was finding out they are popular amongst corrupt Bolsheviks like the bare chested horse riding Vladi, who spent $60 billion on his winter Olympics, and his buddy Vik, who sold the apartment he bought for $100,000 to the people of the Ukraine for a mere $17 million.

Ocean swallows up sun.
Photo courtesy of debbiedoesphotography.blogspot.com

One of the reasons I may not recall ever seeing my maternal grandmother at a beach was the lack of opportunity. The swimming season in Milwaukee is three weeks in July.  Their temperature today will climb to a whopping forty-three degrees.  Certainly this was a factor in deciding not to waste the opportunity the weather provided in Southern California this weekend.  While the thermometer reached the 90 degree mark at home in Yorba Linda, it was a much more comfortable 85 degrees when we arrived at Laguna Beach on Sunday.  We ate lunch on the veranda of the Ocean Avenue Brewery, and sat listening to the various languages spoken by visitors to the beach as we waited for the sunset. Among the litany of voices the sweet sound of Ukrainian was heard. Crimea’s loss is California’s gain.

Real Family Values

During the past couple decades I have learned how little I knew about family values.  Most of this knowledge has been courtesy of the outreach provided by politicians who have made preservation of these values their mission. After all, they have said, what is more truly American than the family?  In fact, one architect of the plan to restore order, pointed out it is the role of conservatives everywhere to maintain these values in the face of liberal and progressive agendas that seek to undermine this holy institution and bring about change.

Deb standing by her exhibit
at last Friday's Art Walk in Fullerton

Having grown up with Ozzie and Harriet, Donna Reed, Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best, I don’t know how I failed to notice the collapse taking place right before my eyes. One of the key indicators according to these concerned citizens is the blatant disregard for the sanctity of marriage. Half of all such unions end in divorce. I am a victim of divorce. We even elected a president who was divorced. (One of the great mysteries for me is explaining how the only person we ever elected president who had been divorced, Ronald Reagan, became the heart and soul of the conservative movement in this country.)  As a result, a number of the younger generation and the formerly married are choosing to skip over the ritual and just live together.

Further disintegration occurs when these co-habitaters begin having children.  According to at least one member of Congress it is bad enough when people cross our borders and give birth to unwanted citizens, but when our own young people become so disrespectful of the appropriately sanctioned process it should sound an alarm in all true Americans who cherish real family values.

My 86 year old mother with my oldest daughter, Beth,
who will make her a great-grandmother for the first time
in about 6 weeks.

Deb with her sisters. Conservative politicians gave them a
family values exemption because they live 2,000 miles away
in Wisconsin.

For the past few weeks I have been helping Debbie prepare for her third photography exhibition. Unlike previous exhibits, we needed to borrow a canopy and arrange for lighting, because it was outdoors at night. The venue was the mall outside the museum on Wilshire Boulevard, which served as the site for the Fourth Anniversary of the Art Walk in Fullerton.  If I remember my lessons from Ozzie Nelson and Ward Cleaver, not to mention my own father, the role of a good husband is to support his wife. The husband of the jeweler, who shared the same boutique—Lolo’s—as her sponsor and space under the canopy, told me how he had been helping his wife set up her display for years.  Apparently, he also received instruction in family values. I forgot to ask him if remediation from conservative politicians was the main source for his rehabilitation.  At any rate, it was clear they were on the right track because his young teenage son and daughter lent a hand.

A key influence in recognizing the talent my wife developed and encouraging her to make her photographs available to more people has been my sister-in-law.  Maria was among the first to purchase some of Debbie’s photos and recently purchased a couple to hang in my brother’s office.

While my brother and Maria, who find it difficult to stay awake after long days during tax season, were unable to attend, my own sister came to support her sister-in-law. After driving more than four hours from her home in Paso Robles, she brought our 86 year old mother with her to participate in the night’s festivities, which included walking around the exhibits and purchasing dinner at one of the food trucks. I’m not sure how much attention my sister or mother pays to conservative politicians, but they do seem to exemplify real family values.