Today!

More reviews of sci-fi shorts! This will shock you!

Before I review any I will note that in many instances although the CGI is terrific and there are great effects and exo-armor suits and currently fashionable multi-barreled weapons, the actors  in most of these shorts don’t really move all that well. Are not limber, are often clumsy. Like Van Diesel. It is often hard to notice because of all the whiz-bang and dazzle.

Terrific! Gets the Ta Dum! Prize!

‘Planet Unknown’. The two robo-planter Discovery-type units are splendid, They are friends, they are on a mission, they rescue each other. The interesting thing is all the verbiage that is presented when you look it up, explaining the background etc. but there is not one word of dialogue or narrative in the film. I watched it before I read anything about it and understood it with no trouble. No dialogue! Except the usual beep beep boop boop and various sounds indicating sadness, yelps of surprise. It is very short but the writers understood the basic concepts of storytelling and stuck to them.  1.) two friends have mission. 2.) Proceed on mission, repeated failures, shows friendly relationship between the units. 3.) Danger! External dangers fall upon them! 4.) Friends rescue each other from external dangers! 5.) Does mission succeed? Click on it friends.

‘The Nostalgist’ As a way of insulting our intelligence this short film tells us over and over and  over that a man in the future is paying much $$ to live in a virtual world. The virtual world thing is getting frayed around the edges. Jack Vance did it in the 60’s only he postulated sort of magical contact lenses. So there was no need to belabor the point and show illustrations over and over again of the contrast between the two worlds. The man character is all victimy. He has no plans not to be a victim. Massive amounts of unnecessary dialogue. Looooong reaction shots every time something happens, like when a chess piece gets moved. He has a little boy who in reality is a robot. Cruel policemen attack him. Boy robot gets BTFO’d. So never mind, I’m sorry I mentioned t.

‘the Oceanmaker’. This is great, many stars. It’s animated, terrific flight scenes. Again, not one word of dialogue but you understand he story with no trouble, it is all told visually. A very dry world —- oldish-tyle airplanes seed what clouds there are to get a little rain —they fight over clouds! Brave girl pilot holds out against evil menacing airplanes from somewhere else.

And so that’s it for today. The drought has become extreme — as bad as 2010. And it’s just this little part of Texas, everywhere else in Texas is getting a lot of rain. Unfair, unfair.

We had almost no rain all this spring, and it is hard on the deer especially. Found this day-old fawn in the middle of the road. Saw its mother run off into the brush and cedar, and when I decided I might try to pick it up to see if it was dead it finally got to its feet and ran off.

Fawns instinctively drop and become very still in the brush as the mother distracts the danger but this little creature tried it in the middle of my road. At any rate it was all right.

I am leaving out alfalfa for them; it’s better than leaving corn because then the wild hogs come and a wild hog will kill and eat a fawn. What a hard world to be born into just now — the terrible hard drought and heat.

The other night I shone my flash into the woods north of the house and saw three pairs of eyes glowing close to the ground, so I thought they were racoons or possums or…but then all the glowing eyes began to rise and I realized it was deer standing up from where they had bedded down close to the house. They had been laying there in a group, in the night, watching my house. It was a magical moment.

British forces with captured Germans, D-Day June 6th 1944.

We made out to the NAN Ranch on the Mimbres in New Mexico, a ten-hour drive in one pickup with trailer and three horses. April drove all the way. We met at the Lonehollow Barn as early as we could and loaded up, an exhausting process and then started out. It was a beautiful place, near the Arizona border, the Mimbres Valley a long green oasis in the desert. I was worried about Buck’s health, still am. But he’s getting old! I’m old already! What can one expect, But April and June were great companions, hardworking and knowledgeable and funny. The ranch is mainly a guest ranch although they run some cattle up the valley — also up the valley was the archaeological site which we were not allowed on of course; spirits of pot-makers lingering around the ancient clay beds, listening to the sound of the only river for hundreds of miles.

When we pulled in the gate was locked — they had forgotten to tell “the boys” to leave it open for us, so we had to climb over it and walk to headquarters, only about a mile, over a suspension bridge over the Mimbres.

I would load more pictures but this site is taking forever to load every photo. I get up and go downstairs and feed the dog and lay out my work for the next morning, come back up — still not loaded, still circles going around and around — and for this I got a new high -powered computer? I feel like drawing on the screen with a wax pencil.

So back home and no more traveling, Memorial Day today, thinking of my dad and his memories of Iwo Jima, when he saw the flag go up on Mount Suribachi — as always — got my flag up this morning. Rodeo last night down at the arena and from my place here on the ridge I could hear the announcer and the cheering and later the music from the dance. Too hot and too crowded for me but was relieved not to hear any sirens or medivac helicopters like last year, everybody okay, men and animals wrestling around in the heat and the dust, takes a lot of determination and guts. Also, nice to have the honor and prize money. Maybe some pictures from others if I can get them.

Appearances are over — not taking any more invitations. Things get so far out of hand here at home that I have not even hauled off the old water trough, it’s just laying there in the pasture rusting. Finally got the intrusive salt cedar prayed. We are in a serious drought again and so hauling hoses around trying to water trees, write, clean and all those chores that pile up when you’re gone…

But April June and I are heading for New Mexico with the horses, next week, a trip for pleasure, mo obligations to speak or sig, which I enjoy actually but it is exhausting.

Catch-up pictures:

I love this picture. This is June and Evelyn in Close Canyon, Big Bend State Park. I didn’t go this year (this was in February). You have to walk the canyon, and people pile up rocks in the most creative way. The year I was there we made angel statues. A very mystical place, love it.

This is me after with basal cell carcinoma surgery, one week ago. Another reason I haven’t got things done. Very small but haven’t played with the group in front of people with this dressing on my face. I am now down to a Band-Aid. Back to the pennywhistle. Next song to learn, ‘The Lonesome Boatman’.

Home-grown fruit! Went to Fiesta with my stepson and daughter-in-law and granddaughter and her husband and grandson and in fact almost the entire Johnson family and affines, in San Antonio, where they had an orange tree in the front yard and sent me home with a sack full. We sat up most of the night and drank and talked. This is the civilized way to celebrate fiesta in San Antonio. Different from commercial — more rind, less pulp, sweeter. Then the neighbors here gave me homegrown peaches — sweetest fruit I have ever tasted. These are my neighbors down the road, He is a hunter on one of the big ranches and some people he took out to hunt turkey misfired and shot him in the face with #7 bird shot. He went in today to have the last of the pellets removed. I am sure the peaches will be consoling. A very nice guy. So I went down to take them some oranges and both he and I had big bandages on our faces. Something in the air.

Cowboy Bar Nocona Texas

But this really is the end of my traveling. At any rate, a trip to Indian River Florida was very good, an audience interested in the Captain and Johanna and they laughed at my jokes, what more could I ask for? Long walks on the Atlantic beaches, good people. Beautiful venue at the Orchid Island Yacht club.

Drove in from San Antonio airport and got home at 2:00 in the morning and then up the next morning to load for North Texas — June, April and I and the horses all headed for Nocona. We rode at the LBJ National Grasslands where there is no grass but forest. Fairly thick, too. We stayed with Dee and Clint at the Half-Circle Eleven ranch, June’s husband’s old family property. Then that Saturday night went into Nocona with Dee and Clint for ‘Nocona Nights’, good band, the most over-the-top cowboy bar I have ever seen. It was a great trip even if I was tired and not talkative. Worn out with talking in Florida. Do we live on talk? You wonder. I could go without talking for weeks on end.

Us in over-the-top wonderful cowboy bar in Nocona Texas.

Easter was great this year.

News from the community; an elderly lady here is the aunt of Tammie Jo Shults, who piloted the Southwest flight to safety when an engine blew out and a passenger was almost sucked out of a blown-out window. The men who tried to save her were a Texan oilfield worker and a firefighter. They did not save her life, unfortunately.  The elderly woman said that Tammie Jo told a reporter, ‘I felt the Lord was wrapped around me’. In answer how she was able to fly the plane to safety. I didn’t see this as I don’t have a television.

Tom the fiddler and I and Becky Gring worked hard on two Irish pieces ; Inisheer and Sheebag Sheemore, That was delightful, a great experience, complicated melody on Sheebag Sheemore, very fast, and Tom just tore into it and if I missed the first three notes I couldn’t catch up until the bridge, scrambling like crazy to get there at the same time he did. Also on Inisheer I used my big Low G whistle and had to switch to D for Sheebag Sheemore. (Properly spelled Si Bhaig Si Muir). We played for a fairly large audience. Pastor Chuck great on the mandolin as always.

Terrible dry windy weather, allergies ascendant.

Happy Birthday to Woody the Lighthouse person, and to the memory of my mother whose birthday was today.

Easter is coming and  am getting a new dress and new shoes!

I am back home from my travels, and everything is calming down. Met so many great people on trips to Galveston, Dallas and Poplar Bluff, everybody being really kind. But I need things to be calm, quiet and regular because so much is going on in my head when I write. Voyages, fights, dragons, storms.

Got the new pump-house finished! thank you Ryan!

I keep trying to upload a simple phone photo of Ryan working on the pumphouse but can’t get it to upload.

Writing Advice; A story.

Years ago when Jim and I were restoring that old stone house in the King William historic district of San Antonio, we were of course short on money because everything was going into the restoration and I did not have a paying job so I tried to make something extra by freelancing. I did a couple of end-papers for the weekend magazine of the Houston Chronicle. The editor there was wonderful. Smart guy, knew writing and what writing was about. I sold him (wish I could remember his name!) one story about a pony express re-creation ride down near Carrizo Springs. He loved it. It was about me riding my mile with the mail. It was actual mail. About when I was a child I always dreamed of riding with the Pony Express and now in my late middle age I got to do it. Made some money! Then I wrote another; it was about a day when the temperature hit 112; about what it was like, watching the creatures in the water garden outside our French doors, how the doves came down one by one to drink, how a green frog rode a dipping leaf that flipped down and back in the waterfall and so on. I worked hard at it.

He rejected it. He said, more or less, that the writer, the ‘I’ of the piece, did nothing. Was inert. Was merely an observer. This made the piece flaccid and lacking in interest, in agency. Just sitting and observing things, he said, does not constitute a story. That the ‘I’ of the piece became a burden, in fact, in his/her inaction.

I really learned from that rejection. One does not always learn from rejections. But it was such a good insight that I began to look at other writings with the same thought in mind and it was like seeing for the first time a potential deep fault in many writings — in novels, in poetry, in essays. I thought about how to not do that and it can be really hard to not do that. Because it is so prevalent. It is a major tenet of many novels; the inactive, non-agency of so many main characters.  I think I have said this many times and so I will not go on.

It was when I was in the middle of trying to make Enemy Women work and it was as if a great creative light-bulb had been switched on. Adair started to come alive.

End of lecture on writing.

Now, this blog entry needs another picture of some sort. If not Ryan then something. I am off to search my downloads.

Thornwick Bay, Northumbria, where the knarr Lyt-Fahr  came to shore just north of Flamborough Head, where our hero the Bard Kenaty and the Viking crew sailed in to attack Jarl Tigurt’s stronghold, year 898.

This is I think the first week of the siege of the Alamo. They were fighting for the constitution of 1824 (Mexico) and fought under that flag.

It happens so often; after a revolution all the intellectuals get together and think up great stuff and write it down in lega language and voila! a constitution. The politicos then proceed to not enforce any of it. They line their pockets. They totally ignore the law and oppress the working people.  The lived in secure areas guarded by men with guns. This happened with the Sovciet Union’s constitution of 1936 which, laughably, included freedom of speech. Then they sent Solzhenitsen off to the gulag for making fun of Stalin’s moustache. So the siege of the Alamo was about men trying to get the Mexican government to obey its own rules.

there was another Mexican flag at the time of the Mexican Revolution that was called la bandera de las tres guarantizas, the flag of the three guarantees, that was very attractive, but I don’t know why they didn’t use it or what the three guarantees were.

So all over my little town here in West Texas they put up the flags, every year; the Come and Take It flag and the blue flag with one star in the middle and the above.

I was trying to catch it in a breeze and this guy came along and held it out for me.

Wonderful trip to Galveston last week. Girl Dog came with me — the Hotel Galvez said they would take dogs up to thirty pounds so she got to come! The audience there was wonderful , sponsored by the Rosenberg Library and my host was the ever-helpful Dustan Archer.

But alas, when I arrived at the mighty and distinguished Hotel Galvez the person behind the desk said smartly;

We do not take dogs over thirty pounds. I am sorry. Here’s a list of hotels that take dogs over thirty pounds. (She shoves a paper at me.)

Me: What!! She’s not over thirty pounds!

Hotel Nazi: I am sorry but we don’t take dogs over thirty pounds. Here’s a list of hotels that take dogs over thirty pounds.

Here is the Hotel Nazi ^

Me: Are you joking?? I just had a hard drive of five hours to get here! I’ve had this hotel reservation for a month! This dog is maybe a few pounds over thirty, I’m exhausted, are you just telling me to leave??

Hotel Nazi: We do not take dogs over thirty pounds. Here is a list of hotels that take dogs over thirty pounds.

Me: May I speak to the manager?

Hotel Nazi: (smirk)  I am the manager. Here is a list of hotels that take dogs over thirty pounds.

the beautiful and luxurious Hotel Galvez

So it was out into the rainy misty evening for me and Girl Dog, loaded my bags all over again and went down Seawall Drive to try to find a place for the night — first two on the list didn’t take dogs at all, but finally the Red Roof Inn was there like a lighthouse in a storm and the manager, or the woman at the desk, was the warmest, kindest human being I ever ran into. She was about six foot two, at least, African American with braid extensions dyed bright pink and she was just about the happiest person I ever met. A huge smile, a big welcome, “We’ll take care of you! Don’t you worry!”

Me: So you’re okay with dogs? She may be over thirty pounds…

Honey I don’t care if its an elephant, we got a room for you! How was your day? You’ve had a long drive. Well you are going to be all rested up, you and that dog,

And she was that way with every person who came through the door, black white or Hispanic. A huge smile, fast service, genuine caring. If I put somebody like that in a book it would be ridiculed as unrealistic, I am afraid. I am so glad Girl Dog and I were thrown out of the Hotel Galvez, I never would have met this person.

And it was a great audience, good questions, and Girl Dog and I had great walks on the beach.

That woman should give seminars on how to treat guests in the hospitality industry. But it’s not all that complicated, is it?

Book signing in Galveston