UPDATE - LIVING WITH DYING       

  I won’t pretend that I have been swamped with requests, but several folks have asked if I intended to publish my Living With Dying blog series in Kindle and paperback versions. Well, Amazon has those available now. If you are interested check them out at THIS LINK.

  MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH,    TURNING THE BLOGGERS LOOSE

 Sometimes it takes very few words to make a point. This may be the shortest entry I’ve ever posted. But for those who are drawn to the subject it can provide literally hours of enjoyment.

  You may recall that from time to time I have made a big thing of how so many of our October/November peers are having their say online. I do that with this October Years blog. But rest assured, I am just one of hundreds who are adding their voices to the late-life conversation.

  Fortunately, the proof of that is close at hand----elder blogs by the dozens, covering a wide range of topics. The Elderbloggers List contains hundreds of them. I hope you will check them out. In the meantime, do any of these blog offerings sound interesting to you?

*** Fools Rush In - senior humor                      

*** The Fabulous Geezersisters

*** Dying Man’s Journal - eh?

*** Fat Man on a Blog

*** Chez NamasteNancy - in French

*** Dirty Laundry - makes you wonder

*** Geriatric1927 - the internet grandad

***Help! Aging Parents - inching to 80 

*** Hootin’ Annie’s Chronicles

***Journal of a Writing Man-(in French)

*** Life in London After 70

*** Letters for George - Crypotids ???

*** Living in the Bonus Round

***Minding Our Elders -caregiver help

***The Next Stage - retirem't for women

*** Recollections of a Vagabonde 

*** Retirement - a Full Time Job

***Xtreme English - (love notes to the English language)

Or how about my favorite? 

*** The Rant - (‘your very own cesspool of naughty, left-wing propaganda’)

  And where, you ask, can you find those tantalizing possibilities? Look no further. THIS LINK will transport you to As Time Goes By. Once there simply scroll down the page to review the dozens of late-life blog offerings. Somewhere on that list is one or more that were written just for you.

  Have fun and enjoy.

Late-Life Stories---welcome to the real world

 Enough of my health issues and today’s the never-ending political/social drama. I am ready to venture down a different path this time. More to the point, I want to return to my original reason for filling these pages. From its beginning, four years ago, this has been labeled a ‘Writer’s Blog.’ And that is what I would like it to be today.

Fact is, I plan to indulge myself a little, or a lot, by returning to the roots of my storytelling. I want to focus on some of what I have created over the years. On a purely selfish level it feels like I need to remind myself of those times and results.

You see, I’m a storyteller. I can’t seem to help it. It’s what I do. Apparently it started early. Why else would each of our children have a copy of my epic Cabinboy Cal tale---seven hand-printed pages written in the summer of my eighth year? Turns out, that childhood obsession only grew stronger in retirement

Of course, it’s one thing to decide that you want to tell a story, and quite another to know what you will write about and what you intend to say. However, for reasons I still don’tunderstand, when I began to scratch that writer’s itch again, I knew without thinking twice the kind of stories I would be telling. By then I had learned that the best parts of life are about relationships. Invariably it is the people we encounter along the way who make life worth living. 

So from the beginning I realized that I would be telling “relational” stories. I have mentioned before that my first post-retirement story, begun on the eve of my fiftieth high-school reunion, about a pair of brothers whose fiftieth reunion becomes a springboard to new relationships. The story itself is not all that original---a fellow who had been a not-so-promising high-schooler is still pursuing his adolescent dreams of the coed who had always been miles out of his league. Sure, it was predicable. But the story, which took two books (650 pages) to tell, felt real and worth telling to me.

So there I was, telling ‘relational’ stories, though I knew that was not what everyone called them. Thing is, I prefer that label to the other possibility -- ‘romance.’ After all, what kind of eighty-year old admits to writing ‘romances’? More to the point, does that label even apply to the sometimes stumbling efforts of the seriously Beta male characters I portray? Anyway, in the end I always settle for ‘relational.’

It took a while for me to move beyond the embarrassment of admitting that I wrote such stories---until I finally accepted the fact that it’s hard to imagine any story that is not at its heart a relational story. Whether it’s about young lovers, time-traveling vagabonds, Intergalactic warfare, zombies and vampires, or in the extreme---late-life seniors---at some point you and the author will probably be exploring the role of relationships in the lives of the characters.

Most of us have experienced the April version of relationship at least once. I think they still call it ‘romance’ at that age. You have been there, haven’t you---the young dreams, young love, and young hormones? (Remember those?) It was a time of new experiences, when anything seemed possible. That was April love. Thankfully we’ve been there and done that.

However, as you can imagine, or know from personal experience, the October/ November version of relationship is bound to be something different. The Tanner seniors I depict may think they know how to play that game. After all, they have played it before, sometimes more than once. Yet chances are they have never started over with someone who, like them, brings the baggage and barnacles that come with October and beyond. Of course the resulting relationship will be different. Why wouldn’t it be? After all, they have spent a lifetime becoming someone very different than that April person they vaguely remember.

Although it may be daunting, that ‘second time’ path I lay out before them, the Tanner relation seekers I portray are a tenacious bunch, not the kind to be easily put off. The fellow may win the lady in the end, or he may not. We know that October endings are not always happily-ever-after. But even then, it won’t be for lack of trying. That too is something we have learned over a lifetime. When you’re dealing with what might be your last chance, most of us are not apt to give up easily.

The challenges my Tanner friends face are as unique and individual as the characters themselves. The one constant throughout their stories is their determined desire to make their lives complete and whole again in spite of their personal issues. (Time out---I realize it is not that wa for everyone. Lots of folks are ‘whole and complete’ without another relationship. That, however, would not serve the story I want to tell.)

So what are these Tanner Chronicle stories I tell? Are they simply about old guys and old gals getting together. Is that where the ‘relationship’ thing comes in? Well, yes, the story is likely to include a relationship---but always in the context of how, at the same time, my October friends are dealing with their own real late-life issues. Let me offer some examples.

***In Becoming, while Carl Postell is falling under the spell of his father’s caregiver, Jack Benz is pursuing a longstanding interest of his own. When he finally meets her, months after her stroke, he scarcely recognizes the woman she had become. She looks different and her speech is hard to understand. Yet wonder or wonders, she seems to like him. 

***In Conversations With Sarah Hank Rolland is widowed and looking for answers. When he finally realizes he has been looking in the wrong places he retreats all the way to the Mendocino headlands. There, in the shelter of a knarly Alpha Tree, he is finally able to make sense of the future Sarah had always envisioned for him.

***Going Poor deals with a different sort of October becoming. Lane Tipton’s dreams of a happy ending have gone terribly wrong. He is sixty years old, disappointed, dejected, and depressed. Yet even in the midst of all that, his dreams of relationship, and being the man he believes he should be, have not died. They don’t look the way he expected, but they are still alive and well.

***Or what about a relationship that deals with one of the ultimate challenges---when the deep shadows of dementia intrude? In Best Friends and Promises Aaron Peck deals with that distressing change of course. Leona is still there beside him, but the love and companionship she has always represented are gone. In time his October trials will be further complicated by the all-to-human need for companionship, and the upsetting attention of the kind lady who is willing to ease his loneliness.

***For decades Tom Fedder has dodged the issue, but now there is no avoiding a return to Tanner. With his step-son in tow he is Going Home. But will he be able to take care of his business without crossing paths with the wife and daughter he had deserted forty years earlier? And what could possibly go wrong when his step-son takes a fancy to the granddaughter Tom has never met? By then Going Home is growing more complicated by the day

***In October Bold David and Marian have spent a few minutes together on a Music City dance floor, then gone their separate ways---to oppositie sides of the country. Though the possibility of ‘more’ was intriguing, their wanting was constrained by mutual timidity, reinforced by a mutual unwillingness to risk relational failure. Clearly they would need all the boldness they could muster to fulfill the promise of their dance floor meeting.

***Adopted as an infant, Jerald Rogers, now a young father himself, sets out to find his birth parents. In the course of Closing the Circle long-buried memories are resurrected, questions are raised, and lives are impacted---including those of Jerald’s birth parents, reluctantly reunited after a twenty-year separation.

***In today’s late-life universe being ‘underwater’ is not all that uncommon. As their once-hopeful retirement dreams slowly unravel, Jim and Anita Camden have come face to face with that unwelcome reality. The need to downsize is real and depressing----and complicated by their differing ways of dealing with what comes next. Apparently Breathing Underwater is best learned when there is no other choice.

***They are Family Matters, the ways a couple and/or family copes with the realities of family, home, and career. Along the way ‘compromise’ is bound to be part of the formula. And when that coping and compromise are no longer effective---what then? Dan Padgett had nursed his elaborate retirement plans for years. So why is Nell being so stubborn. Why can’t she just accept the liberating logic he has so carefully constructed?

*** And finally, back to my favorite, to where those late-life stories began. It was their fiftieth high-school reunion. And though Clint and Gary Harris were on hand, they were certainly not looking for relationsips. Yet sometimes those things just seem to happen. In the course of Second Chances and Long Way Home there would be a trail of unexpected alliances, resurrected rivalries, dire threats, and surprising admissions---as the brothers stumble toward the Cinderella-like possibilities of ‘one-more-time.’.

At every turn the Tanner senior population offers late-life stories waiting to be told. And though the stories I tell will include relational elements, you can tell they are not the stories of youthful abandon, the ones that line the supermarket bookshelves. And while you’re at it, throw away your dated stereotypes---of used-up seniors and their altogether boring lives. To be sure, every one of the October seekers I depict is dealing with his or her own late-life issues, while trying to overcome the emptiness of life lived alone. I happen to think those folks are worth getting to know. I hope you’ll be willing to check them out.

Are we addicted to Existential Anesthesia?

I call it ‘Elder Wisdom.’ The kids and grandkids are apt to describe it as “Gramps has gone off the rails again.” I suppose the truth lies somewhere between. Still, when my sometimes-suspect mind pauses to consider the matter it finds an ever-growing mountain of evidence to support my logic. The concerns that I first addressed in late 2014, as Oregon prepared to legalize marijuana, were real then and even more real today.

“But why be so upset?” I ask myself. What had me so upset back then about what I saw as a cultural dilemma? (And still do.) After all, I am not a social critic. I write about late-life relationships. What prompted my emotional detour? Whatever it was, I have not outgrown it. With that, I offer Existential Anesthesia Redux

~~~

I suppose I am a bit worked up, trying to find the logic in their illogical claims. Whatever the reason it is enough to turn today’s BLOG into a RANT. I suppose it has been building up for a while and finally spilled over.

You see, a while back my beloved Tanner, along with the rest of Oregon, became a legal marijuana zone. As willed by a vote of the people my mythical city, in the heart of a very real Willamette Valley, became part of a rapidly spreading social experiment---one that offers our population the freedom to indulge themselves with impunity. As you might suspect, I have some October (& November) reservations about the wisdom of that so-called “progress.”

Let’s begin with the obvious---ours is already the most medicated culture in history. A large part of that medication is deemed legal---for instance the opioid epidemic that threatens our nation---the product of human frailty along with highly effective corporate lobbyists who spend hundreds of millions to convince us, and a cadre of well-funded lawmakers, that we need what they are selling. 

Disclaimer - I will be the first to admit that when I seek the relief and healing of today’s medicines I am thankful to have them available. Like a lot of you, there have been times when I owed my life to their effectiveness. Yet I realize that even as they heal me, they are also instrumental in creating and funding a delivery system designed to insure huge profits for both vendors and providers---while leaving our citizens to pay by far the highest health-care costs in the world, for what are sometimes less than the best results.

Yet beyond those legal and socially acceptable forms of medicinal intervention our society, indeed the whole world, is awash in a sea of chemical “coping” agents---from booze, to narcotics, to pot, and a whole array of manufactured “designer” drugs. 

Our citizens are increasingly addicted to pharmaceutical aids, both legal and illegal. All around us lives are being ruined and families destroyed. At the same time governments rely more and more on the tax revenues generated by the sale of those products. And all the while a thriving underground economy is equally addicted to the profits that our ‘coping’ produces. Bottom line---more than ever before our “land of the free and the brave” is addicted to its addictions.

And now we find ourselves living in a world that includes yet another round of ‘socially accepted’ means of coping. Marijuana, long relegated to the shadow-side of the conversation, has been liberated. There, firmly established in the daylight, it is available for one and all---young and old. As I mentioned above, tipping the scales in the sometimes contentious debate leading to its legalization was pot’s undisputed ability to be a productive source of coveted tax revenue.

But before I dig deeper into my state’s “progressive” expansion of pot’s availability, let me take a moment to limit the scope of my objections. Like many states Oregon already had in place a modest medical-marijuana program. Though not everyone agrees with that, I accept the evidence of the drug’s medicinal capabilities and have no problem with it being available in that form, given proper regulation and oversight.

Rather, it is the brave new world of universal marijuana acceptance that has me concerned about what lies ahead---the wonderfully misnamed era of ‘recreational’ pot, i.e. 'Pot as fun.' What could possibility go wrong with that?

Though that new reality has yet to make its way into any of my Tanner stories, rest assured that it has more than a few of us October and November types wondering what good or bad, help or harm, will come from this new state of affairs. At least one old fossil I know feels the need to have his say about that.

To be clear, I don’t pretend to speak for anyone else. I may be the only one who harbors unsettling visions of where our chemically-sated society is heading. Of course, mankind’s efforts to escape the harsh realities of life are nothing new. Those tendencies are surely as old as the species. Everyone of us has moments when he or she wants to avoid hurtful circumstances. There was a time when scotch-on-the-rocks was my favored retreat. Fortunately, somewhere along the way I learned that whatever I was running from would still be there in the morning.

But I worry that in today’s increasingly chaotic world---with its ever-growing availability of more effective, even lethal, ways of avoiding life as it is---more of us are relying on those means of escape. I am so concerned about that trend that I have given it a name. I call our societal attempts to escape reality Existential Anesthesia or EA.

Of course, with true late-life logic I tell myself that if anyone needs Existential Anesthesia to face their circumstances, it would be us October and November types---the ones worn down by decades of dealing with real life. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

But instead it seems that more and more of our young people are succumbing to EA in one or more of its often-enticing forms. And they are doing that at an ever-younger age. At the very time of life we hope they are curious, alert, and clear minded---preparing for the daunting challenges that await them---it seems that too many, overwhelmed by those possibilities, are turning to EA---seeking an emotional retreat that is too often a dead end. 

Still, the advocates of that brave new world tell us we must accept the reality of a ‘new way’---one that makes pot available to everyone. They tout its “decriminalization,” a change that will allow future generations to avoid the legal residue of youthful indiscretions. And I’ll admit, those arguments ring true. Yet how many lives, young and not-so-young, will be impacted by the freshly reinforced message that we have the right to indulge ourselves in potentially harmful, but perfectly legal ways? How many of us will learn to cope by retreating into a TCH haze?

They tell us that escape, in a socially accepted manner, is fine---even therapeutic. That it can be a wonderful stress reliever. Yet in the end how often do those forms of retreat, be they booze, drugs, or 'recreational pot,' resolve the ills that drive the urge to hide and escape?

The fact is, of course, in the end this is not an argument I am going to win. The forces pushing for the acceptance of marijuana as a valid form of EA are growing stronger. They will eventually have their way. I may not agree, and will sometimes give thanks that I won’t be around to see how it ends. 

But then I will pause to remember that my children and grandchildren will be there, dealing with that outcome. It seems that I must pray for their well being and accept what I cannot change. Unless, of course, I choose to pour myself a tall scotch-on-the-rocks and try to forget about it.

So what do you think? I’m guessing that you have an opinion on these matters. I’d like to hear what you think. If you would like to “Comment” feel free to choose “Anonymous” to avoid exposing your personal details. If you are inclined to share this post I hope you will. 

Ah, Young Love --- at 81

Enough already! I'm the one who claims to promote ‘thriving in late-life.’ Yet the last few posts have concentrated on my own ‘unthriving.’ It is time for a change, to focus on something more upbeat, yet just as age-appropriate. With that in mind I’ve dusted off an earlier post that I loved the first time around. Surprise---I still do.

                  ~~~

Just imagine the possibilities. What could a storyteller like myself make of it? Former high-school sweethearts, Jack and Betty, are eighty-one years old and about to meet again for the first time in sixty-two years. Months of letters, emails, and phone calls have fanned old feelings, setting the stage for a much anticipated reunion. Now, as we watch, Jack prepares himself for that moment of truth.

Sounds like something beyond October, doesn’t it? Eighty-one has the ring of November. But no matter the label, our friend Jack is awash in anxious ‘schoolboy’ feelings, facing questions he has not asked, or answered, in a very long time. 

I have made the point before. The often-timid fellows who inhabit the pages of my Tanner Chronicle stories are not the torn-shirt, Alpha Males you see on the cover of supermarket paperbacks. In a moment, when you meet Jack, you will know what I mean.

In any case, as his plane descends to the airport where he and Betty are to meet, those questions are growing more urgent by the second. What will she look like? Will he even recognize her? And what will she think when she sees the “him” he has become?

It must be a bit disorienting at that age---the unlikely revival of schoolboy dreams. As silly as it sounds, Jack is caught up in a new and hopeful ‘geriatric adolescence.’ As you watch the video I’ve linked to the end of this post the results may strike you as funny. That’s okay. You’ll notice that he too sees the humor in his dilemma. 

Yet there is no hiding the deep and powerful feelings behind his embarrassed chuckles. From beginning to end his story is a testament to late-life love, with a dose of teenage anxiety thrown in for good measure. Of course, those feelings of his may be over-hopeful---but there is no doubting their reality.

Truth in tell---when I used this clip in a post a couple years ago I was just a kid myself---78 going on 79. Now, with 81 lurking just around the corner, making me nearly as old as Jack and Betty, I am better able to empathize with their situation. In a word, I can ‘relate.‘ Matter of fact, they strike me as a perfect illustration of October Boldness, the willingness to take a chance when the calendar seems to say it is too late. (Apparently that works in November too.)

You can see the questions on the face of our anxious ‘video hero’ as he takes the next timid steps (actually he is in a wheelchair) toward their reunion---fueled by still-powerful recollections of a much earlier time. Sure, he is old enough to realize that every stage of life brings hardship and disappointment. For October and November folks those obstacles come in many forms---infirmity, the painful loss of a loved one, financial setbacks, even relational concerns. Still, though Jack’s limitations are there to be seen, you can tell that he is counting on new, but long-familiar feelings to see him through.

Most of us have known the healing power of loving affirmation. We understand how much we need someone’s special caring when we are tested. That is true at any time of life, but especially in late-life. With its unique challenges, there is no other time of life when the enabling support of love and caring is more important. 

And with that caring support comes its working partner---‘Hope’---the necessary catalyst that makes it all happen. You can hear that in Jack’s story. Whether at eighteen or eighty one, it is those feelings of love  that nurtures hope. Or is it hope that nurtures love? Either way the two go hand in hand---reinforcing each other, impacting what we feel and shaping our perception of what is possible. It’s a reality that I try to capture in my stories---the affirming effects of caring and hope, and how they enable us to keep Becoming in October and beyond.

For the lucky ones among us it’s always been that way---though of course husbands and wives at seventy or eighty are very different persons than they were at twenty or twenty-five. (I think I hear Roma shouting her agreement.) But after a lifetime together we scarcely notice those changes. Why would we? We have made that journey together. More importantly, we remember those years (as well as we remember anything these days) and all those changes through the prism of love.

So, you might ask, what is it that has an old fossil like me carrying on about that sort of kid’s stuff? After all, it was a long time ago---those heady, hormone-driven years. Right? 

So, you might ask, what is it that has an old fossil like me carrying on about that sort of kid’s stuff? After all, it was a long time ago---those heady, hormone-driven years. Right? I hope you will take a couple minutes to watch THIS CLIP. Put yourself in Jack or Betty’s shoes. Realize that as much as some things have changed, the overriding need to care about each other remains. By the end of their story you can tell that both of them understand that.

Finally, if it seems to you this is a message that deserves to be passed on to others, I hope you will consider forwarding it to those who might enjoy hearing the truth to be found in Jack's story.

You can do this

Let me begin with something of a confession. I am a bit pumped about today’s post. When I first addressed this subject a couple years ago it felt like I was speaking to the world in general, hoping that my message would resonate with someone, and perhaps lead to something tangible.

Well, guess what? I have recently watched a friend of ours follow the path I wrote about---from the gentle nudging of a good idea all the way to a finished product. I spent a few minutes with him early on, suggesting what seemed to me the right approach, then stepped back while he carried on. I have seen his results, and they are impressive. (More about that later.)

Let me begin with the fact of it. I have taken on a new cause, a deeply held belief I would like to share with you. As sometimes happens, I have a message to spread. 

Now before you start for the door, please know that I am not interested in limiting your right to carry an AK-47, or bazooka, or whatever other “personal protection” device you desire. Neither am I advocating for the need to take away the weapons you already have. And I don’t really care if your Parenthood was Planned or not. Those may be important issues, but they are not the gospel I am preaching. With those disclaimers in mind, I hope you will hear me out before you change channels.

I will begin with the obvious. If you are the kind who likes to poke around the internet, you have probably noticed how many October/November folks are out there---speaking their piece, asking their questions, and telling their stories. Without the noisy fanfare that so often accompanies Gen-X trends, our Gen-Oct/Nov peers are quietly exercising their new-found ability to speak up and let their voice be heard in the cyber world.

Spend a few minutes on the web and you’ll realize there is almost no limit to the ways you can have your say. Our October/November friends are telling their stories in the form of Facebook posts, blogs, videos, and chat rooms. 

Better yet, some of them are taking what seems to me the next logical step, They are writing and publishing their stories, in the form of family histories, family adventures, self-help manuals, non-fictional offerings of every kind, and a multitude of fictional offerings. (Have you checked out the Geriatric Vampire literature? It is quite ghastly.) 

How many of you have ever dreamed of telling your own story? Do you realize how easy it has become to produce and share e-books and Print-on-Demand paperbacks? Beyond the book itself, an Author’s Page on Amazon that lists a writer’s books and e-books and allows prospective readers to browse and perhaps buy those offerings, costs absolutely nothing. 

On a purely selfish level, you can bet I enjoy seeing my sixteen paperbacks lined up on my bookshelf. And with the modest blog you are reading now I can connect with October/November friends and potential readers all over the world. I can’t explain why these pages attract a steady, if modest, Russian and South Korean readership. But they do.

But let’s return for a moment to my stated cause, the reason for today’s post, the message I’ve come to spread. As a veteran of those story-telling efforts I would like to convince my late-life friends that they too ought to have their say, no matter what the content, in a quality, hold-in-your-hand paperback format. 

Whether ‘your book’ (that has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?) deals with family history, fond remembrances, favorites recipes,  gardening tips, or your own fiction---today’s technology provides a gold-plated opportunity to see your work in print. It is so easy and inexpensive that there are few excuses not to give it a try.

So why not? At your stage of life you probably have the time to do that. And given your history (whatever it may be), you certainly have stories to tell---if only for a limited audience of immediate family and friends. 

That is exactly what Roma and I have done the last couple years with a pair of books. They were personal stories, for and about our family. For each of the books we had five very professional-looking paperback copies printed, one for each of our children and one for Roma and me. If we never sell another copy we’ve accomplished everything we wanted to with those books. I guarantee that you can do that too.

Let’s consider the economics of it. In the old days, if we had a manuscript that publishers were not willing to underwrite, Plan B was what they called “vanity publishing.” That entailed paying an often second-rate publisher to turn your story into a book and print a given number of copies. The publisher would  require a minimum run, say one hundred books or more, enough to create economies of scale. The total cost would undoubtedly be at least several hundred 1970 or 1980 dollars. It was indeed a hefty price. Truth is, you had to be quite vain and a bit flush to afford that.

Today, as the author of a Print-on-Demand book you can probably purchase your own high-quality paperbacks directly from the POD publisher for $5.00 or $6.00 each. The book might be your family history, your personal life story, a collection of poems, or the family’s favorite recipes. There is no up-front cost and you can order exactly the number of copies you want---from one to a thousand---for that same low price. 

True, you will have to write and edit the material, enter it on a computer, then upload that file to the publisher’s template. Your investment will be one of time, not dollars. Most of us can afford that, especially when we are having fun in the process.

But wait a moment, you may be saying, “How could I be expected to write a book or tell a story? And what about dealing with agents and editors---the experts who work with professional writers?” 

Well, the fact is, you don’t need those folks, unless you are aiming for a best seller, complete with a big-time marketing campaign. You see, telling a self-published story of any sort is a very personal activity. Regardless of what the so-called “experts” may say, there is no right way, no wrong way to do that. If you are writing for yourself, you are the only one you have to please. You are the one who judges the results. Does it work for you? That is the question. More than that, one of the beauties of Print-on-Demand publishing is the ease of revising and editing any or all of your book at any time in the future.

What can I say? I enjoy seeing my stories in print. Of course it’s a vanity thing. There’s no denying that. It’s an accomplishment I am proud of. More than that, it has proved to be a most liberating way to spend my October and November hours. As one who writes to please myself, (without worrying too much about what will sell), I tell the stories I want to tell, the way I want to tell them. In the end I am the only one I have to satisfy. Within those parameters, anyone who wants to tell their story---about anything, in any way they choose---can do that.

Please bear with me for a moment while I offer a specific example. It was mid-May a couple years ago when Roma first dropped her idea on me. I was finishing a story and would soon be ready to start another. 

“Why not write about our time in England?” she asked. “With all the crazy things that happened to us, it would be fun and funny. And I know the kids would like to know more about that time.”

Truth to tell, it took a few weeks for me to warm to the possibilities. But when I did, the fun she talked about was only just beginning. For days we sat in the living room, just the two of us, reliving those 1972 months when we lived on Ashley Close in Winchester, England. One recollection would lead to another. Before long the notes were piling up---about how we had ended up in Winchester, the life we lived there, the mistakes we made, the wonderful friends we met, and the life-changing experiences our children gained. Before we were done we had the stuff of a story---our story.

By September we had a first draft, a 54,000 word computer file. As I had done so many times before, I uploaded the file to the Create Space template. Daughter Amy, who would not see the finished story until much later, designed the cover using a collage of family photos from our time in England. Then, after proofing our online file, we made the first monetary investment in our project---$6.50, for a single copy of the paperback, including shipping and handling.

Long story short, that first copy was used to proofread and edit the entire story again. (Additional editing would come later.) A month later, we ordered six copies of the revised story we called A Year of Remember, by Gil and Roma Stewart---for a total cost of $30.05. That Christmas our children received their copies as gifts.

We had invested thirty-seven dollars, a few printer supplies, and a good many hours doing what we both found absolutely enjoyable. For that modest cost we had produced a fine-looking 254-page story that recorded a special time in the life of our family. Additionally, in e-book and paperback versions, it was now available to the public on my Amazon Author’s Page---where it has sold a few copies and received good reviews.. All in all I consider that a good return on our investment.

As for the story itself. Does this back-cover tease sound interesting to you?

“Gil was at it again. At the tender age of 35 he was on track for his third mid-life crisis in five years. For some inexplicable reason he had concluded that he was meant to be a writer. Now he was preparing to move his thoroughly confused family to England in pursuit of his career as a novelist.”

As I said in the beginning, my mission today is to make the point that everyone of us has stories to tell---memories to preserve, personal passions we would like to translate into a permanent, paperback form. 

Let me repeat, loud and clear---for next to nothing you can turn your family history or the fictional tale you have longed to create into something special for you and your family. Chances are you will find the process of revisiting the times, places, and people you are tranlating into print both fun and creatively invigorating. 

Personally I use CreateSpace.com to publish my books. I like their process and love their customer support. There are, however, several other Print-on-Demand publishers out there. You’ll find them online.

Okay. with that I’m through preaching. I hope you will take a moment to let your mind wander a bit---to whatever story you would like to tell, or topic you would like to explore.

PS -- I mentioned earlier the recent Print-on-Demand book I watched coming to life. Don Robinson is a retired Methodist minister, with stories to tell and a gift for interesting titles. I think his first book, Of Donuts, Toilet Paper, Grace, and Love, proves that. You can check it out by clicking Here.

Looking back -- a late-life luxury

     Remember, this is a writer’s blog, about the joys and pitfalls of life in October and November. That means, of course, there are times when our personal March and April are part of the conversation.

That is especially true when Imagination -- the mind’s third eye -- is turned loose to weave its mysterious, sometimes magical power. Given free rein it can take us to places we’ve never been, recalling events that perhaps never happened (at least not the way we remember them). With a bit of prompting, imagination can even conjure up stories of the dark and ancient past---all the way back to our adolescent school days.

The last couple years have provided me an opportunity to revisit my own often hazy memories of that earlier time. Reconnecting via the internet with a few high-school classmates has stirred decades of mental overburden---exposing youthful recollections and fuzzy images of young faces staring back at me from the pages of a long-ago high-school annual. 

Of course, like me those folks have become someone very different than the adolescent youngster I remember. Still, weaving them into a story has been an interesting, if occasionally frustrating exercise---a pleasant excuse to return to my own altogether unglorious glory days.

Ours was a large high school. For a social misfit like me close friends could have been numbered on one hand, with a couple fingers left over. Most of the former classmates who have visited our online ‘Class of 55’ website were strangers to me in school, and still are. They are, however, strangers with whom I happened to share a particular time and place. What is it they say about ships that pass in the night?

Still, I have found an unexpected reward in the pleasant reconnecting with those folks, at least the ones who reply. You see, the stories I tell are not set in those youthful, heady days of old. But inevitably my own recollections of that time and those experiences ---the insights and sensibilities, the highs and lows---show up in the stories I tell. There are times when it feels like I’ve been given an opportunity to compare my own recycled recollections with the way my fictional proxies have remembered those times.

One example of how bits of the past can make their way into a late-life story is this scene from Best Friends and Promises, where Aaron Peck and Johnny Blanton are driving off to meet a one-time school pal, Press Fletcher, twenty-five years after their last visit with him.

They were fifteen minutes down the interstate before Johnny’s silent remembering turned verbal.

“Ole Press was always a cool one,” he said quietly. “There weren’t many like him, at least not that I knew. God, even as a kid he had a way with the ladies. He must have been born with it.”

“Yeah. He had the touch all right. There were a few times when he even managed to fix me up with the leftovers.” 

Aaron let those pleasant recollections rattle around in his head for moment, tracking back to the beginning of his friendship with Johnny. “You remember how I was then,” he said. “Back in the ninth grade. I was a gawky damn kid. I stuttered. Had terminal acne. And there I was, just beginning to understand why I liked girls.”

“I knew you’d eventually figure out that part.”

“Hey, that’s just who I was back then. That was the Aaron Peck everyone knew. What girl in her right mind was going to get excited about being around me? Without you and Press to lend a hand out I might never have had a date. I could have ended up being a hermit.” 

Aaron paused a moment to recall how he had managed to avoid that unfortunate possibility. “That’s just the way it was,” he added. “At least until I had a chance to start over.”

“Start over?”

“That’s right,” Aaron nodded.“It wasn’t a plan or anything like that. It just worked out that way. I went off to college. Away from Tanner---where no one knew anything about me. I didn’t have to deal with all that baggage I’d packed around all through junior high and high school---all the stuff that made the old Aaron Peck who he was.”

“So you reinvented yourself. Was that it? You became the new, improved Aaron Peck?”

“Well, maybe a little new. Probably not all that improved. The thing is, I was starting fresh. I didn’t have to live down anyone’s notion of who I was. There I was, making first impressions for the second time.”

“And that seemed to work, eh? Being the ‘new’ you.”

Aaron was grinning at the thought of it. “Do you think a classy girl like Leona would have paid any attention to me in high school? Not a chance. You remember how it was back then. By the eighth or ninth grade everyone had been given a label of some kind. Once they pinned that on you, there was no getting rid of it. 

“Just think back to our last reunion. It was fifty years after we graduated, and still there were lots of folks who remembered us by those old labels. That’s all they knew about us. In their minds that must be who we still were.”

“So what kind of bad stuff could they have pinned on you?” Johnny asked. “That you ran around with Press and me? I suppose tht gave them something to talk about.”

“That, and a few other vices I’d picked up along the way. Anyway, I went off to college the next fall and bingo---I met this very nice, really cute girl, who had never heard all that stuff about me. Turns out she liked me just the way I was, without ever knowing who I used to be.”

Then, from the story I call Becoming, here is Carl Postell’s recollection of the night he and Jack Bentz first connected, forty-some years after the high-school days they had shared at Tanner Southside High School.

The two of us had not been buddies in high school. As I remember we were both a part of the same niche group---bit players, hanging around the fringes, wanting to belong, with neither the self-confidence or social skills to make that happen. 

Ironically it had been our individual isolation that brought us together that night. It was our fortieth class reunion, a couple years after my divorce from Sandra---the first I had ever attended without her. 

She was there, of course, taking pains to be sure I noticed that she and Tom Ryan were being more friendly than necessary. She might have been disappointed to know I was silently wishing Tom the best of luck. As near as I could tell they deserved each other.

Anyway, while the two of them were refusing to act their age that night, I ended up at the same table as Jack---each of us alone, each of us lonely. After a few awkward glances at each other’s name tag we got talking. Actually we got drinking, then talking. In fact, the more we drank the more we talked.

For a couple of naturally insular guys like Jack and me, a real conversation was a nice change of pace---especially with someone who felt no need to “one up” everything the other said. 

Both of us still lived in Tanner, so once we became acquainted it was an easy thing to get together every week or so, which we had continued to do. When we had time we visited over lunch. If we were in a hurry we chatted over a beer.

Just think of how those adolescent years prepared us for what was to follow. For most of us that time was a launching pad---a place from which to begin a life journey we could scarcely imagine at the time. 

Ready or not, we were taking the first tentative steps toward becoming the person we are today---complete with the dreams we have dreamed and the life we have lived---and the family and friends we have created along the way. 

Now, in the October and November of that journey, having reestablished contact with a few folks I knew back then, and renewing a few hazy memories of that time, I'll admit that I am enjoying the luxury of looking back. 

At the same time I give thanks for the way my personal journey has played out. Hopefully yours has been just as good.

October (& November) Magic

I can't make my way out of a straight jacket. Truth is, I sometimes struggle to get my shirt on and buttoned right. I don't do card tricks. And I've never sawed anyone in half---at least not on purpose. But a while back, in the course of a day or two I was reminded how something as simple as the first few notes of a long-unheard song can literally transport me to a different time and place. That struck me as a form of October magic.

It was the spring of 2014 when the two of us went driving---from Oregon to Kansas---to follow what remains of the Oregon Trail back to Oregon City. It was a long-awaited trip that had been set aside the year before when one of my ladder tricks landed me in the hospital. Finally, however, I was good to go, so off we went to retrace the wagon-train journey Roma's ancestors endured on their way to Oregon. (My family, being the practical ones we were, waited until the railroads were up and running.)

I had intended to set my blogging activities aside for a couple weeks, to concentrate on seeing the western half of our country from the road instead of the sky. I was quite surprised to find that it took only a few hours for an unexpected aspect of modern-day sightseeing to reveal what seemed to me an October insight worth exploring.

I learned that there is nothing like a long trip over straight and sterile interstate highways to renew old acquaintances---friendships that had not crossed my mind in a very long time. 
You see, to help pass the hours we were listening to The Fabulous Fifties---a set of CDs that Oregon Public Broadcasting had gifted us in return for a pledge. On those eight discs were dozens of classic tunes from our well-remembered heyday. (Well, it certainly felt that way at the time.) There we were, driving down the highway, listening to old friends, perhaps the same ones you knew in the March and April years of your life. 

If you are a pop music person like me, (not everyone is) it was quite a list of friends to whom we were being reintroduced. Perry Como, Nat King Cole, The Four Aces, Four Lads, Fats Domino, Patti Page, Frankie Laine, Kay Starr, Guy Mitchell, Johnny Ray---and on and on. Everyone has their own favorites. I had to chuckle a bit when I found Les Baxter's name on the play list. He was the one who nearly got me fired from my DJ job on the college radio station when I introduced him as Lex Bastard.

For mile after mile I was caught up in those songs and the memories they evoked---struck by their inexplicable power to connect me to my past. What was there about the music---which in one sense is nothing more than melodic noise---that grabbed me the way it did? 

What allows the ethereal reality of those sounds to remain in some seldom-visited corner of our mind for so long? How is it that decades later the unexpected sound of a few introductory notes is enough to unleash a flood of powerful emotions and still-warm recollections---hints of the oh-so-youthful persons we were at the time? How can those connections remain after all those years? What magic is at work?

Perhaps like me there are certain songs or tunes that strike you that way---creating an instant connection to a particular time, place, or person. Other bits of that adolescent music may lack a specific link, but still reinforce the mood and mindset of an era---perhaps a special school year, or the social connections that were part of that moment. 

True, I do sometimes march to a different drummer. I am sure that not everyone has endowed the first few notes of a well-remembered tune with the magical ability to resurrect bits of their personal history---the special moments, events, and persons they associate with those few musical chords---the memories they have carried with them all the way to their October and November years. 

On an allied note---I wonder if today's young couples have "their special song" the way we used to. Having heard some of their music that seems unlikely---though I  suppose that is a sign of my own November judgment bubbling to the surface.

For me it was the music of the Fifties that I endowed with the power to take me back in time. For you it might be the tunes of the Sixties or the Seventies that work the same magic. If you are living out your November years, perhaps the war-time tunes of the Forties can take you to a place you don't visit every day. As near as I can remember the attraction began early for me. I can recall a vivid "Shrimp Boats" moment from the eighth grade---a bit that would eventually show up in my Best Friends and Promises story. 

It was quite remarkable to consider all the places those few hours spent with The Fabulous Fifties were able to take me. But of course, I did have other options. I could have packed my "Country Music Favorites" and spent long hours driving along to the sounds of George Strait, Alan Jackson, and Travis Tritt. (Don't you love that name?)

I could have done that, and perhaps would have---except Roma made it clear I would be traveling alone if I did. You see, she has a thing about "twang." Rather than risk a solitary visit to the Oregon Trail, I settled instead for The Fabulous Fifties---and I'm glad I did.

It is tempting to end this bit of nonsense by assuring myself that everyone has their own mental library of March and April musical recollections. But I'm not sure that is true. Though I may not be the only one who gets swept up in those "memories set to music," perhaps most October folks have outgrown such childish behavior.

And that leads me to today's question. Have you ever felt that magic---the way a few bars of an old favorite can transport you to another time and place? If so, I urge you to take a moment to use the "Post a Comment" option (below) and share with us the songs or performers that had the power to work that magic for you.