WIP - Soren Valor - Day 4

“I’m ready,” chimed Mr. Wexler, “turn toward me; straighten your shoulders, boy; and the missus, please flatten your collar. You’ve fussed over everyone else, but no one bothered to primp you.”
Sonja quickly scanned her mother’s dress. “You look fine to me,” she pouted, but reached to smooth her mother’s lapel, starting to curl upward.
They all looked at the camera and the flash popped.
“Print up two of them, one for us and the other for the Markusson family in Sweden,” Far stated. “Astrid, you can mail it to my mother.”
“Far, what about Mor’s mor and far? Won’t they want one, too?”
“Usually, Mr. Markusson, I take several photos and you pick the one you like best.”
“The one you took will be fine.”
“Also, each ordered print is $1.17 unless you order five, then each one is $1.05,” Mr. Wexler said.
“A dollar and seventeen cents,” Far grumped, “I could buy over ten gallons of gasoline with that kind of money.”
“Then you go right ahead and buy ten gallons of gas and see how far it gets you,” the photographer shot back at him.
“If I didn’t want to go through this sitting again with another photographer, Mr. Wexler, you can bet your sweet buck-teeth I’d march out of here without paying you a nickel.”
“Nils, let me take the children home now. I’ll address an envelope, stamp it, and drop it off with Mr. Wexler. He can mail the photo out to your parents.”
“What about Mor-mor Gustavsson and Far-far Gustavsson?” Sonja asked again.
“You can draw them a picture,” Far said through gritted teeth, “come on, Sonja. We’re leaving.”
That evening as Sonja and Sören cleared the table from supper, she asked her brother why Far didn’t want to send his in-laws a photo.
“He didn’t want Aunt Marta and Tor to be in the photo.”
“Why would that matter?” she asked.
“Far-far and Mor-mor Gustavsson would want to know what happened to their youngest daughter and their grandson.”
“We could just say that the photo was only of our own family. Why wouldn’t that work?” The dishes were now all in the kitchen and the blond-haired girl began to fill the sink with water already heated on the stove.
Sören shook out the dish towel to dry dishes. “But Sonja, Aunt Marta and Tor are a part of our family. Far just doesn’t want them to be in the photograph.”
“He doesn’t?” she replied, handing her brother a wet plate. “Doesn’t he love them?”
“Yes, he loves them, Sonja. That’s a dumb remark. But he doesn’t love Tor’s far, not at all and he doesn’t want Aunt Marta to be in a picture without her husband.”
“Well, that’s silly, too, Mr. Smarty-pants,” she said, blowing a soapy bubble at him. “Tor’s far is fighting the war over in Europe.”
“Right. But whose side is he fighting on?”
“He’s fighting on…well, I guess I don’t know. I thought he’d be fighting on Britain’s side.”
Sören snapped his dish towel in the air then lowered his voice. “No, see, that’s the problem. Aunt Marta’s husband is fighting for the Nazis.”

Beryllium

Beryllium was once known as glucinum, which means sweet, since beryllium and many of its compounds have a sugary taste. Unfortunately for the chemists that discovered this particular property, beryllium and many of its compounds are poisonous and should never be tasted or ingested.



On the beach to the Baltic Sea, a saltwater body that eventually divests into the Atlantic Ocean, hundreds of Germans along with a few foreigners disrobe as they soak up a tepid sun--even less present throughout the previous season. Close enough to the Arctic Circle to feel the effects of near-polar days and nights during the year, these Germans thirst for sunlight to reset their circadian clock.

My sister, Michelle, and I sit at the back of the sandy, stony beach. I slowly look around at the myriad, white bodies. Many are clothed, but at least a third of the crowd lounges sans textiles. A few intrepid individuals bravely confront the brisk waters.

I think about what I see--small children, school-aged kids, parents, grandparents--clad in nothing but their skin and wonder about the power of our nude bodies. To me, it completely takes away the power of pornography.

While on the one hand, the only bodies that are featured in X-otica-type magazines are truly perfect without sags, wrinkles, or rolls thanks to starvation and the air brush, what I see on the Baltic beach has little resemblance to the centerfolds of Playboy. But not only do the bodies look different on this "nude" beach, the range of people does not compare. The patrons of this beach span all ages and include both genders. It would never sell on the magazine rack.

If the human body is normalized and undressed, figuratively as well as actually, so that none of it is forbidden, then what power can others have who wish to exploit it, to profit from revealing its secret caves and knolls?

I made three attempts to submerge in the frosty sea. Upon the second try, I only made it up to my waist before shouting, "Es ist kalt! Es ist kalt!" About fifteen feet away, a man who'd already splashed rambunctiously into the sea, sloshing water on his male companion, grinned at me and asked mischievously, "Wollen Sie helfen?" while fanning the water with his hand.

I stood in the water up to my middle, looking directly into his eyes, both of us bare-naked, and laughed, "Oh, nein! Danke! It's too cold!"

I felt more comfortable naked than in my bathing suit. In my suit, I'm covering something up, worrying about how the suit accentuates the fat that hangs out at my thighs, wondering if the suit shows off the parts of my body that I hope will be attractive.

In the nude, there is no covering up, no pretense and so I am free to be honest and real.

I want to be nude.

WIP - Soren Valor - Day 3 snippet

I wrote a quick snippet this morning using prompts from Charli Mills at her Carrot Ranch writer's blog. Here it is in an unedited version. For Charli's prompts, participants stick to 99 words exactly. Mine, here, is 138 words.

Sonja sneaked downstairs, hoping to be the first one to dig into her Easter basket. She spied Tor, who had spent the night in her brother’s room, popping jelly beans into his mouth.

“You’re not eating any of my candy, are you?” she asked.

“Heck, no. Besides, the Easter bunny only left you some little brown souvenirs,” he teased.

“You mean bunny poop? He did not!” she protested.

“Uh-huh, sure did, my little cousin.”

Sonja stared into her basket, shocked to see small brown pellets.

Suddenly, Tor popped one in his mouth. “They taste good, though, try one!”

“Torsten Martin Gustavsson! Spit that out!” she yelled, mindless of the earliness of the day.

Instead, he scooped them all up and started to eat more. “Funny how they taste like raisins,” he said, laughing with his mouth full. 

WIP Soren Valor Day 2

I've built myself up with expectations so highly I found myself near paralyzed today as I tried to write. I have a dozen qualms about what I ended up doing, but I must go forward if I want to go at all. Today's clip is a revision of a piece I wrote years ago. ALL comments are welcome.

Sören Markusson fiddled with his ready-made bowtie, pulled the shirt collar snuggly around his thin neck then wrapped the ribbon around and fastened the hook and eye. His mother had carefully sewn the hook with extra thread so that he wouldn’t accidently rip it out.

He heard feet run down the hall as he inspected the shoulder of the white oxford he was wearing. The shirt belonged to his father; his own shirt lay folded on the mending pile with space for three buttons that had fallen off and a torn pocket corner.

“Sören,” Mor called from sitting room.

“I’ll be right there,” he replied, tying his shoes, one which squeaked whenever he climbed up the stairs. However, there were no stairs in this studio so he walked swiftly and silently to where the rest of the family had gathered.

His father stood near the window, fidgeting. The slightly balding farmer glanced at his son, but offered no comment or smile. Then Far palmed his hair down and squinted at the camera box.  Wexler Photography, Nils’ brother had advised. Use Wexler and he'll give you a deal. But no deal had yet emerged.

Far cleared his throat and began to massage the webbing of skin between his right thumb and index finger.  Seeing this ritual begin, Sören tensed, knowing it was less a calming technique and more the prelude to something volatile. Then the foot began to tap rapidly.

From behind the camera balancing on a tripod, the photographer said, "One more minute, Mr. Markusson, please! I'm adjusting the meter."

“Don't know why Astrid didn't use the Brownie to take our family picture,” Far growled to Sören. Out loud Nils said, "You push the button, we’ll do the rest!” Then with an edge, “Get on with it, man!"

            "Focus…I'm focusing! Look at my handsome picture of our brave President Roosevelt.  It's on the wall across from you.  Say now, his countenance resembles yours, Mr. Markusson, a look of patience and power."

            Sonja giggled while her brother bit the inside of his lip.  Mor raised her brows at the photographer’s attempt to appeal to Far’s vanity, but winked at her fourteen-year old son. Sonja spoke up, “Our far’s no president, Mr. Wexler!”

Her father leveled his gaze first on the ten-year-old girl and then on the photographer, “Take the picture, Mr. Wexler, or we are walking out of here!”

      Sören clenched his teeth.  Sonja's eyes grew wide as she slid the palm of her hand into her brother’s.

     Suddenly Mor's clear voice cut through the warring air, "Du gamla, du fria, du fjällhöga Nord, du tysta, du glädjerika sköna!"

     Sonja, with a catch in her throat, joined in with the English words they had learned, "I greet thee, thou loveliest land on the earth, Thy sun, thy skies, thy verdant meadows smiling."

    A tear welled up in Far's eye and he abruptly turned back toward the window.  "Å min kära Sverige, my dear lovely Sweden..."

WIP Soren Valor Day 1

I'm leaving in the morning to fly to California. I'll be staying at a friend's house taking care of her cats while she attends to family business elsewhere. My primary goal is to produce a finished first draft of my novel, WIP-Soren Valor.

If you'd like to follow along and offer encouragement, I'd love to have you join me. Each evening--California time, I'll post about how the day went and include a snippet of what I wrote that day.

I am Suma

Family situations change with rapidity these days. As I was growing up in a small southern Minnesota town in the 70s, I remember the first time I ever encountered anyone whose parents had divorced. I was ten years old and close to flabbergasted at the thought of living in a blended family as my new classmates, Karen and Denise did. The two girls lived in the same house, but they had different last names. They each had their own mom and dad who didn’t both live with them and now they also had step-parents.

Step-parents. I’ve never had to introduce someone to my step-parent. My own parents will soon celebrate 55 years of marriage. But Karen M. had to introduce her 4th grade teacher to her new mom at parent-teacher conferences.

The first part was straight forward. “Hello Mrs. Zimmerman, this is my step-mom, Mrs. Martin.” But then did Karen turn to her step-mom and say, “Step-mom, this is…” or did she call her something else? Mrs. Martin? Jan?

Having a formal modifier, step- or half- or birth-, to describe the nature of relationship that exists between two people seems…distancing.

Several years ago my husband and I served as sponsors to a couple who wanted to join our church. It was a random match of volunteer sponsors, which we were, with new members, who turned out to be Sue and Lisa. We stood up with the couple as they were blessed and accepted into our church. Eventually, Sue and Lisa began a family together.

I never asked, but I did wonder if their children called them both Mom. Each woman, having given birth, was now a mom with the addition of first a daughter and then a son into their family. But wouldn’t that get a little confusing as the children grew old enough to talk? “Hey Mom!...No, I mean the Other Mom.” I don’t think calling them Mom-Sue and Mom-Lisa would be necessarily comfortable to the kids as they entered into school and their friends would overhear.

Calling someone a second mom can be an affirming thing as in the case of my 21 year old’s best friend. Emily refers to me as her second mom and I like it. No one’s nose is out of joint because the types of relationships are clearly defined. Emily’s mom is her Mom and has no fear of being unseated. I am Em’s second mom by agreement and welcome the opportunity to extend a little maternal love on a dear young woman.

Now I have a new situation. The daughter I placed with another family through a closed adoption in 1985 sought me out and, with my previously granted permission to the adoption agency, found me. Now Jenny has two moms. Of course her adoptive mom is called Mom as it should be. But Jen and I have created a new term for me.

Jennifer calls me Suma. We didn’t want there to be distance between us by calling me birth-mom and we didn’t want to imply a diminished relationship by having to describe her Mom as her adoptive-mom. She didn’t want to call me by my first name because our relationship is closer than that. So a special name emerged so recognize my new position in her life.

What’s wonderful is that it can apply to all of the situations described above. Karen Martin could turn to her step-mom and say, “Suma, I’d like you to meet my teacher, Mrs. Zimmerman.” Lisa, who gave birth to the eldest of her children can be called Mom by that child and Suma by her younger child. Emily can affectionately refer to me as Suma without concern of hurting her mom’s feelings.

And Jenny can introduce me to her friends and family with, “Grandma, Jessie, I’d like you to meet my suma, Susan.”

Are you a Suma? Do you know one or have a suma in your life? Share this affirming name with her and see what she says.

Bruce Schneier, Internet Security Expert, Tells All

I attended a talk by Bruce Schneier earlier this year. I found it so energizing, I wrote the following response:

Okay, so maybe he didn't tell all, but he did say a lot. And I'm not buying every thing he said. But what can I say about what he said that is pretty much axiomatic?

None of the following is a direct quote because I didn't confirm these statements with him when he spoke at the Twin Cities Media Alliance Brown Bag Lunch With A Journalist, this past noon on Wednesday, February 24 at the East Lake Public Library, Minneapolis, Minnesota. So, these statements are what I thought I heard and my own interpretations. If you wonder about any of this, check with Bruce.




1.Information Technology is invading our privacy on a scale we're never seen before--it's not malicious, it's just the nature of technology.


2.What was once ephemeral has become permanent with regard to shared data on the Internet.


3.What was once a one-time conversation has become permanent. Think about that one. It's easy to pull up posts, conversations from message boards, etc. from five, ten years ago.


4.What was once not worth saving, now is saved. And why not? It's cheaper to save than to figure out if it's worth saving. Again, think of how your parents or even you used to save all those documents and tried to remember the rule of thumb about "how long to save a piece of paper" as if the saving of such could save your life. Now we can just download it to a thumb drive and pop it in a drawer along with all those other thumb drives with wedding photos, baby-birthing-events, and the Top 1000 Songs of the 1970s.


5.It is illegal to market according to race, but it's perfectly legal to offer coupons to a target mailing list. Where do those mailing lists originate? This practice is such an easy, tempting, exploited roundabout to marketing equity.


6.Concerning privacy, it now must be made explicit what was once ad hoc. If you don't tell facebook flatout to keep its nose out of your business, you'll end up looking at ads and apps targeted straight at Who You Are. "How'd they know I was thinking about buying some seeds for the garden?" How, indeed.


7.The death of privacy is inevitable. This slope presented itself to our feet long before computers. Think partyline. Think urban dwellings. When was privacy ever sacred?




Bruce spoke most emphatically on the idea of a generation gap in technology. Yeah, sure, we know that kids can whip together websites and programs with their thumbs. But Bruce was talking more about how kids today (warning #1--a generalization, that's never a good sign.) aren't concerned about their privacy. They have grown up living a public life that's all out there on the Internet and they don't flinch from it.

I agree somewhat with Bruce's perceptions regarding high schooler, but here were my inner thoughts: In contrast to many of today's parents, my own parents didn't micromanage me. It often seemed that they didn't even know all that much about my homework, my classes, my teachers, my extracurricular activities. Nowadays, I see parents at the library with their older teenaged child, copying research for them, carrying their books, and telling them what they need to do.

So many parents have infiltrated their child's life in both academic life and social life, that their child has pretty much resigned him/herself to powerlessness. In the false belief that they are "helping" their child, they are undermining their child's sense of self, their child's self-confidence, their child's ability to become autonomous and self-sufficient.

What are the implications of this interference? Emotional paralysis? Indifference to privacy? Political impotency?

Bruce suggests that this waning control of privacy is detrimental and an acute breach to our security. I'm not buying that, either. Jeremy Iggers, executive director of Twin Cities Media Alliance, which sponsored the brown-bag-lunch talk, smartly asked me, in front of everyone, that if I thought privacy wasn't a big deal, then what was my salary? I quipped, "I don't have one. I'm a poet, remember?"

But the truth is, of course, I do earn money and I wouldn't have qualms about revealing that amount. It's not the information itself, but how it's used that's the problem. If we continue to delude ourselves with thinking we can keep anything private, we'll continue to run into breach of privacy and scandal.

We can choose to become a police state in practice all the while believing that we control our privacy or we can lay it all out on the table and say, "Here are the facts. There's nothing more to see, folks. Now go about your business as usual."

I guess I live, or want to live, in a Utopian World of Respect.