Four Favorite Books

 Four of my favorite books on creative writing

My four favorite books on creative writing are: 

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg 

The Heroine’s Journey Gail Carriger 

The Elements of Style by Strunk and white  

On Writing: A Memoir Of the Craft by Steven King 

I read Writing Down the Bones at least four times and I was always inspired to keep writing, Nathalie Goldberg’s style and suggestions are as relevant today as when first written in 1986. Her intention is to free the writer within and she accomplishes just that. You can read it by picking up at copy at your local library. What impressed me about this book is that there are endless ways to tap into my creative writing on a regular basis.  

The Heroine’s Journey is a very recent read. I had no idea there was a difference in the hero’s journey and the heroine's journey.  Read this about the Heroine’s Journey https://storygrid.com/heroines-journey/, read this about the Hero’s Journey, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey.  Who knew the Odysseus is a hero’s journey and Harry Potter is a heroine's journey?  

The Elements of Style taught me on page 70 to place myself in the background and just write, my style will eventually emerge. This book is a staple for all writers; you can pick up a copy at your local library.  

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, is written true to Mr. Kings style, he is direct and to the point and very realistic as what to expect on being a writer. No scary clowns or monsters, just real down to earth advice and his detailed experience on being a writer. You can pick up a copy at your local library. I found this book very inspiring.  

Georgia

Aug. 2021

My Favorite Season

 I was never a summer person, too hot and uncomfortable. I hibernate in the summer just like a bear waiting for Springtime.  

Fall is my favorite season; the air is crisp, cool and energizing. Sweaters are cozy; fireplaces are crackling, walking on crunchy resplendent leaves, and the smell of damp earth lovingly, enchantingly hiding cicadas and worms for next year.  

Jack-o-lanterns for Halloween, ghosts, scary masks, harvest time, yellow and orange gourds, brown haystacks, apple cider, warm chestnuts, soggy November nights, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, turkey dinner.  

Collecting pine cones to spray paint gold and make fire starters.  

The days become shorter and the nights become longer. Days of gusty winds, bouncing acorns, brilliant white clouds and the Autumn Equinox.  

I must find my mittens it will be Christmas soon enough.  

Georgia

Aug. 2021

An Important Book

 My mother was 16 years old when in 1910 she and her sister Ida who was 17 went to America from a small village in what was then part of the Austrian Hungarian Emplre. Their father was in America already hoping to earn some money, but was unsuccessful. It was Ida’s intention to tell their father he had to go home because he had a wife and several children there. He was told my mother and Ida would remain in  America for a  few years, earn some money and then return to Europe. So he left America.. In 1914 World war one erupted in Europe and it was not possible to return. The war ended in November, 1918 at which time my mother and aunt Ida were both married and each had a chid. They were not going to leave. In 1919 there was a world wide influenza epidemic that killed millions of people. My mother’s father and mother both died within two weeks of each other. In the 1920s  with the exception of a younger brother, the sisters in Europe did not want to go to America. The brother did come to here but sadly, the sisters and their families who remained, were all victims of the Holocaust . During the next ten year period my mother gave birth to five children of whom I was the youngest. Knowing what happened to much of her family, my mother was overly protective raising her children. I considered it very fortunate to grow up with immigrant parents and understanding how they had lived their lives and did everything to make sure their children did better. My father died at the age of 52 and my mother at the age of 93. Right up to the death of my mother, I was grateful to  have had my parents’ DNA.

There was a section in Irving Howe’s book World of Of Our Fathers in which he seemed to describing my Jewish mother.  He wrote,

“ Yet even behind the most insufferable way of the  Jewish mother, there was almost always a hard-earned perception of reality. Did she overfeed ?  Her mind was haunted by memories of a hungry childhood. Did she fuss about health? Infant mortality had been a plague in the old country and the horror of diphtheria overwhelming in this country. Did she dominate every one within reach? A  disarranged family structure endowed her with powers she had never known before, and burdens too; it was to be expected that she should abuse the powers and find advantage in the burdens. The weight of centuries bore  down. In her bones, the Jewish mother knew that she and hers, simply by being Jewish, had always to live with a sense of precariousness.” 

Howe went on to say, “ Venerated to absurdity, assaulted with venom that testifies obliquely to her continuing moral and emotional power, the immigrant mother cut their path through the perils and entanglements of American life. Everyone spoke about her, against her, to her, but she herself left no word to posterity, certainly none in her own voice, perhaps because all the talk about her “role” seemed to her finally trivial, the indulgence of those who had escaped life’s primal tasks. Talk was the a luxury that her labor would enable her son to taste.”

Momma, thank you for enabling me to talk.

Ben Haber

The Lake Down the Hill

The prompt in the Creative Writing class referred to The Wind in the Willows. The Water Rat invited the Mole to come “mess around in a boat.

 

While we didn’t have a boat on the lake on Scheinman’s Farm, we did have a raft to “mess around” in.” The big boys built this primitive vessel using  any logs and lumber they accumulated and  then gave it great buoyancy with a huge empty gasoline tank. I was very honored if my big brother gave me a ride around the lake on this raft. We also enjoyed sailing the four inch small canoes we crafted from the birch bark trees (probably a bad idea for the beautiful tree's longevity).

Lake? Pond? Most would say it’s their size , a lake is larger; a pond is smaller. That information is wrong; the difference is actually their depth. In a pond, the sun’s rays can reach the bottom. Ponds will often have frogs, turtles, fish, snakes and lots of insects. So, even though it was actually Scheinman’s Pond, to the guests on the farm, it’s the lake down the hill.

The water in this lake was usually warm enough to bathe in and this we did with a bar of soap (ivory, of course). It was far more desirable to use the soap as shampoo in the lake rather than the cold, outdoor shower behind the rooming house known asThe Old House). The house had indoor toilets, but no bathtubs or showers. 

A trip to the lake was an every sunny day event from after lunch until almost dinner time. With soap, towel, sand pail, shovel and inflated rubber tube,  getting down the hill took time and skill. To the right of the path, was the cows’ grazing meadow. Beware of any cow flop that may have been deposited on the path. In addition, the trip was made barefooted. This was before the era of flip flops and one pair of shoes was all a child might have back at the rooming house (white Griffin shoe polish made then dressy for the sabbath). One had to tread carefully over the many rocks and pebbles jutting out of the soil.

My older brother or sister would accompany me, No lifeguards to supervise; siblings had that role in all families. The parents rarely seemed to use the lake. Momma was busy cooking dinner  and baking the pies and cakes in the communal kitchen back in the Old House. Poppa was working in the hot City and would only join us from late Friday (with traffic, it could take more than 5 hours) to early Sunday.

The lake offered a fun waterfall. The farmer had built a 6 foot concrete wall on the right portion of the lake. When the water reached the wall, it went crashing over and created a small magnificent waterfall. The water was shallow at the bottom of the fall. It was so crystal clear you could see the colorful pebbles and small fish on the stream bottom. The cascading waterfall enabled even the little children the joy of standing behind the fall along the concrete wall. Looking through the falling water screen reminded me of the sight my drenched  Bronx window made on a rainy day.

A frequent pleasure during our two summer months on the farm was the campfires around the lake. A large circle, framed by rocks was a permanent campsite. The older kids assemble the logs, twigs and newspaper. Someone must have been a boy scout who knew how to get the flames going without rubbing two sticks together. Potatoes (mickies) were baked in the fire and claimed when the flames were extinguished. My brother or sister toasted the marshmallows for me on long twigs. We were  admonished to always blow on the crispy, burnt marshmallow before nibbling. Songs were sung; ghost stories were told; I imagine there was some “smooching” going on. The sheer wonderment of the star filled sky remains with me eighty years later. But  now it’s time to put out the fire, to gather up the blankets, to find the flashlight and start the trek up the steep hill from the lake.

Ethyl Haber

August 202

Sailing???

  Early in my marriage I gave thought to having a small sailboat. I managed to acquire a portable boat which I could to keep on my property next to the garage. I also bought a small two wheeler to hook up to the rear of my car that enabled me to move the boat. I went to a small water area in an attempt to learn to sail. I made some progress, but I was not really that  capable. One summer day, I asked my ten year old daughter if she would sail with me and she answered in the affirmative. So, off we went to an area next to the Long Island Sound. We disconnected the boat and pushed it into the water and climbed into it. There were many boats floating in the area waiting for their owners. It was necessary to move my boat around these others and that required a better skill than I had. Since we were not using a motor, only a sail, that required dealing with the wind and constant turning to and fro. Sailboats are steered by an underwater moveable fin or blade called a rudder. The rudder is fixed under the water at the very back of the boat. It is connected to a tiller ( a long wooden rod ) that allows the person in the boat to steer. It is the wind that causes the boat to move forward by manipulating the sail and the rudder. It took my amateurish twisting and turning almost two hours just to  sail around these other boats and out to the open water. I finally got out to the open area, when all my efforts were for naught. My daughter said, “Dad I need a bathroom.” That meant I had to spend considerable time to return to the land and more time to again sail out to the open water. I did reach the land and located a bathroom for my daughter. Did I attempt to return to sailing? No!!! I had enough and in fact decided my sailing days were over. I decided to sell the boat, but I did better. A friend of mine was a teacher at a high school in Far Rockaway and told me the school had a boating program and would appreciate it if I donated my boat. Suffice it to say, I agreed. They came to my home and hooked up the wheeler to their car, and off they went.

 I was satisfied how the matter ended since I was done with sailing and more  particularly since I helped a local public school.

Ben Haber

A Leap of Faith

 

“Wow what a letdown!”

“All of my life from the time I was just a scrawny tadpole swimming around in the ooze I have looked up to you, the Master of our Species, The Pinnacle of Amphibian success, an Evolutionary Miracle of Selection, an Olympian Swimmer, the best bug catcher in the pond, sitting on your royal lily-pad!”

“Hum Hum, Hum Hum, Excuse me I believe I have a fly in my throat.”

“That’s better, now what was I saying?         “

“Oh yes, I looked up to you! But now that I am grown you seem worn down sitting like a bump on a log, as they say. The slowest swimmer, the worst fly catcher, and don’t even think about jumping. You are just hoping that an insect dies of natural causes so that you can catch him!”

“Oh well I guess that time waits for no frog.”

“But don’t worry, I will bring you food and divert the birds far away that would eat you. You will always be my inspiration even if you did not turn out to be a Prince Charming, but merely an overachieving Amphibian.”

 

Jim

July 2021

The Snowman

 

She appeared in the door lithe, winsome and unassuming in her stance dressed in a conservative blue coat and sensible snow boots looking more like a librarian than a detective from the metropolitan police. She removed the white wool hat and rested it on the dusty nineteenth century bureau, upon a portrait of the victims’ parents. It appeared that no change to the furnishings had occurred in the last fifty years. The police photographer was taking snapshots of the body as well as various perspectives around the room. The body was sprawled out face up on the worn out brown living room carpet. Paunchy and short, the slightly balding, middle aged male, with thick framed glasses had a hideous look of shock and pain forever engraved on his face. He had not died in peace but rather had a piece of his life rudely torn away. There were defensive wounds on the hands with thick coarse skin and long two inch bristles of white hair under the nails. Detective Smythe politely instructed the technician, who had just arrived, to take samples from under the nails for the lab work.

“Sir at your convenience please take samples from the nails for the lab work,” said Miss Smythe.

“Yes Mam “said the technician, a Mr. Nam.

The body had a large two inch diameter hole in the center of the abdomen where blood had pooled and dripped down to soak the carpet below it. To the right of the body a second smaller pool of water had soaked the rug and was still damp. A damp water trail of footprints led to the fire escape window. It was understood that the technician would take samples of the carpet from both pools but the detective waited to make sure that it was done properly having experienced incompetent procedures in the past. Miss Smythe directed the scene like a conductor conducting an orchestra, with polite manners but determination and authority in her voice. Frustrated that the Medical Examiner had not arrived yet, she waited patiently for the annoying man, a Mr. Punctuale who always had a perfectly believable and reasonable explication for his tardiness. The detective’s mind worked like a computer organizing the scene in her mind, chronologically depositing all relevant information collected into files as they occurred in her theory. Within each file evidence was filed alphabetically. All data was analyzed for its relative probability of correctness. Upon reaching the window and easily lifting it in spite of the blizzard outside Ms. Smythe was immediately drawn to enormous icy bipedal footprints that ascended the fire escape, that stopped at the window resembling human footprints. Who would walk around in this weather barefoot, she asked herself?

“Mr. Nam please take casts of these footprints as well. Thank you.”

“Yes Mam,” said Mr. Nam.

The photographer was also asked for close-ups of the prints as well as a panoramic view. Next Ms.  Smythe twisted her torso around noticing the large stalactites of ice hanging down from the fire escape above. A large one was missing based on the three inch bare section that was gone. Her mind raced realizing that this was the murder weapon with enough room for a grip and the rest jammed mercilessly into the abdomen of the victim up to a diameter of a full two inches. It would have been a perfect murder weapon dissolving in the warm apartment when the deed was done and eliminating the evidence…

 

Jim

July 2021