What would Martin Luther King say?

An excerpt from Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech: 

 

"But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the worn threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

 

"We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protests to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy, which has engulfed the Negro community, must not lead us to a distrust of all white people. For many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom."

 

 

 

Was he perfect? No, who is? But when that guy got to talking, man, he could cook. And he understood that hate just begets more hate.

The Joy of Cooking: It's In the Eating

While my wife recovered from surgery a few years ago, I did most of the cooking. I learned something about myself during that time:

I hate cooking.

Oh, who am I kidding? I already knew that.

That is to say, I hate doing the cooking; I do enjoy eating the cooking of others.

Ordinarily she cooks and I clean the kitchen, which has the benefit of us not coming down with food poisoning. I pretend this is a huge sacrifice, but sometimes a little mindless work can be nice and non-stressful.

But cooking? Pure stress, a panic filled hour of spinning from place to place, measuring and timing and trying not to burn the house down. I hate cooking with every bran fiber of my being.

Except for S’Mores. S’Mores are definitely worth working for.

Some people love cooking. They revel in it, joyful in their creation of fancy dishes.

Can we not do something with these people? Help them, somehow? How can we let them just wander around in the streets, searching for ingredients and the newest kitchen device? Isn’t there some medication that could help bring them back to reality, some procedure to help them see the real world? What kind of society are we?

When I told all this to Emily – okay, after a week and a half of cooking it was kind of a rant – she just looked at me calmly and said, “You know, some people think the same thing about writing.”

That hit home, because she and I have been known to spend hours happily pecking away at our keyboards – and no, that’s not code for something.

Okay, maybe the love of cooking isn’t a mental illness. Maybe it’s a … choice. But when it comes to cooking, I choose no.

I didn’t even cook all that much, by most standards. The day of Emily’s surgery, my mother brought over a gallon of spaghetti, a truck load of bread, and enough salad to clean out a whole field. For at least two other days we had takeout, because contractors tore up the kitchen. (I know what you’re thinking: suspicious timing. Let’s just say I left a calendar, with a twenty pinned to a certain date, for the roofer.)

A few times I sneaked in something really simple, along the lines of: “Remove cover. Heat at 400 degrees for thirty minutes. Be careful, product will be hot”.

Once I sneaked over to another family’s carry-in dinner, and ran out with two plates full. Whatever keeps me out of my own kitchen.

Emily couldn’t give me advice even when not heavily medicated, because as a cook she’s what's called a pantser. For her a dash here, a bit there, 350 degrees or so until it looks done … I need an amount, doggone it, and a time. Sometimes I think she just faked being asleep whenever I ran through the room with my hair smoking, yelling “But what does parsley DO?”

So I avoided cooking for as long as I could, but we’d bought ingredients and planned meals. Once she got to the point where she could get up and shuffle around a little, it became too hard to sneak Chinese food through the back door.

After that, from time to time I had to throw together more than three items to make one item, which is when I start to get Harried and Confused, which will be the title of my autobiography. The more items, the harder it is for me to keep my head straight. The more different dishes – and apparently meals are supposed to have, say, veggies and fruit along with the meat – the more confused and stressed I get. Cooking, for me, is like doing brain surgery would be for you. Unless you’re a brain surgeon, in which case you can probably afford a cook.

For awhile it was a tossup whether I’d burn the house down, kill us with salmonella, throw a pot through the window, or all three at the same time.

The joy of cooking was the very opposite of joy.

But then she makes me a brownie heart, and everything’s okay.

This brings me to the big discovery I really made about myself. I already knew I hated cooking, no shocker there, but my epiphany was on a grander scale. Since my teens I knew I wanted to write for a living, and be successful at it. I wanted to be so successful that I could do what I want in my life.

Now I know that I picked the absolute worst career path for financial success, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

And was my ultimate goal a beachfront house in Hawaii? A yacht? Private plane?

Nope.

The older I get, the more I realize all I really want is to hire a private cook, and if they can stick around to clean up, so much the better. Emily might disagree, as she’s one of those poor, sickly souls who like to cook. But I know the true secret of happiness.

And it wears a chef’s hat.

 

 

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Coming Attractions: The History of the Drive-In

This was meant to go out way back a year and a half ago, when Coming Attractions was first released, but somehow it got lost in the shuffle. I decided to post it now to remind everyone that Auburn-Garrett Drive-In is still open and could use the patronage in this particularly rough year for movies ... and also, of course, that Coming Attractions is still available, and I could use the patronage, too!

 

Remember the joy of going to the drive-in movie theater when you were a kid?

You don't? That stinks.

You're missing a unique experience. All the way back in 1921 a fellow named Claude V. Caver projected films in downtown Comanche, Texas, which people didn't have to use speakers for because the films were silent. In fact, 2018 was the 85th anniversary of when a guy in New Jersey patented the idea to watch movies from the comfort of your car. I do have to wonder how many people thought he was insane, when there were perfectly comfortable movie houses that gave you some extra amount of shelter from the elements, but by the 50s there were four thousand drive-ins in the United States.

Today there are only about 330, with none at all in Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Louisiana, or North Dakota.

When I was a kid there were three within a more or less easy drive from my home. One was up in the Angola area, as I recall, and later went to showing X-rated movies (if you can imagine a time when you couldn't stream those directly into your home). One was the Hi-Vue south of Kendallville; because its screen faced the highway, it generally showed family films or other G to PG rated fare. The third, the Auburn-Garrett, had a screen facing away from the road, so that's where any R rated features would show up, at the time. By the time my kids were old enough, only the Auburn-Garrett remained.

So that's where we went, and after my divorce that became a go-to days off trip for my kids and me. Then I married again, and my wife--gasp!--had never been to the drive-in, so as the kids started families of their own I had a new partner for the double feature.

Yeah, the drive-in meant a lot to me.

I like to get there early, to find a good spot. As a writer I'm always looking for more time to write, so I came up with an idea: Why not spend that pre-movie time working on a new novel?

But … whatever would that novel be about?

So, with my kids helping to plot it out and create characters, I outlined a new book about--a drive-in movie theater. Write what you know. The main characters include a single father with two kids, and … well, write what you know pretty much covers it.

While the drive-in that appears in Coming Attractions isn't quite the same as the Auburn-Garrett (for instance, the marquee along the highway is different), that's definitely where I got the inspiration. It's a quirky place populated with some sometimes odd and wonderful people; I hope it will invoke nostalgia in some, and curiosity in others, and bring drive-in theaters more business. It would be great to see my great-grandkids going there, someday.

Find all of our books at:
http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

new from New Mexico and New York on a new 50 Authors From 50 States ... who knew?

 New Mexico enchants with author Vicky Ramakka:

 https://annettesnyder.blogspot.com/2020/08/new-mexico-enchants-vicky-ramakka.html

 

Meanwhile, author June Trop's look at New York includes the oldest living street in America! Well, I mean, the street isn't living ...

 

https://annettesnyder.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-deadliest-thief-by-june-trop-of-new.html

 

 

Also meanwhile, I finally finished sorting photos for our newest writing project--working on the first draft (mostly captions) now.

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

Derecho Isn't Just a City in Texas

 I woke up late and had a fire department meeting in an hour, and it was a horrible day for a drive, so we went for a drive.

In our defense, it was a time-sensitive errand ... and we didn't know it would be a bad day for a drive. As I dragged myself out of bed Emily told me about a line of thunderstorms to the west, but we were headed east. Surely we could get things done and be back before it hit.

We didn't know it was a derecho, which is meteorological term meaning "big honking storm like a hurricane except in the middle of the country", which wouldn't have fit as easily in a headline. We also didn't take into consideration that the system was moving at 60 mph. By the time we got back it was, as the old timers say, all over but the shouting.

Just after we turned back I crested a hill on a country road and almost ran down a group of wild turkeys. Um, flock. Herd? Wait, let me look it up ...

Huh. Rafter. A group of turkeys is called a rafter. Who'da thunk it? Anyway, that was my first clue that this wouldn't be an ordinary trip.

Your rafter may vary.

There would be a lot of shouting. And wind. And those big huge drops of rain that look like there's a bucket full in each drop, and yeah, a little hail mixed in with that. We hit some of that, then about five miles out of town Emily told me the clouds were rotating, which I could believed because by then the western third of Noble County was under a tornado warning. (We were under a thunderstorm warning, which in retrospect seems underwhelming. It occurs to me there should be a derecho warning, or possibly they could call it a land hurricane, which sounds cooler.)

We pulled over at a good spot to watch. (In other words, safe.) I got out to see, yes indeed, there was a small rotating wall cloud going over our heads. I never thought to get some video, which is odd, because I'm usually all about grabbing the camera; but I stayed standing outside the car long enough to see it wasn't just a random cross wind--it was, indeed, rotating. I didn't see a funnel, and so far as I know all the damage around Noble County came from straight line winds ... which did just fine by themselves, thank you.

Emily, who's much smarter than me, and the dog, who's also no dummy, had stayed in the car. So I was the only one who got clobbered when another wall of those bucket-sized raindrops reached us.

We tried to drive on, but have you ever tried to drive while inside an automatic car wash?

You have? What the heck's the matter with you?!?

So we didn't drive, for a while, having found another place to get completely off the roadway. Eventually we went on, once all the foliage around us was no longer leaning at a 90 degree angle. Or 75 degree. Or ... oh, who am I fooling? I hated math. They were blowing sideways, okay?

Now, people can sometimes cause problems by trying to do the right thing. As we inched down the highway, an oncoming car flashed its high beams to get out attention. It was probably the driver who did it, not the car, but never mind.

They were trying to warn me, but it had the opposite effect, because I was looking at that passing car when Emily said "TREE!"

My wife doesn't yell about trees unless they suddenly appear in front of us, in the twilight haze of sideways rain. It had blocked about half of State Road 8, and it wasn't something I was going to move, so I called the Sheriff Department business number.

It was busy.

Different storm, same action.

 

 

You gotta understand, that just doesn't happen often. My first impulse was just to leave them alone, but the tree was across a state highway, after all. I got through by portable radio, and after we determined we'd do more harm than good if we stayed where we were, we headed back toward Albion.

That's when we came across a tree branch, halfway across the road from the other side, but this one was something we thought we could do something about. It was obviously just a large, dead branch, so we hopped out, dodging cats and dogs (still raining, you see), ran over to it, and realized it was way bigger than we'd thought from inside the dry car, where the dog was laughing at us.

Okay, it was a tree.

But it was a dead tree, so by hauling on it together, we were able to break the worst of it off. then we threw the larger broken branches off the roadway, and then we got the heck out of dodge, because dodge was a highway and visibility wasn't exactly 100%. Especially since the pavement was starting to flood, and who knew which way other drivers were looking?

 Yeah, I missed the fire meeting.

But we made it home safely, and we had dry clothes, and even electricity, which is more than a lot of other people could stay. The moral of the story is, I suppose, the same as it's been all year:

Stay home.

(Just the same, after we were safely home I looked at Emily and said, "But now that it's over, it was kinda fun, wasn't it?" She agreed. The dog was a dissenting vote. And this attitude is how people get into trouble.)

I suppose I should advertise my novel Storm Chaser here, but the weather was a windbag enough for all of us.

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

Nine Thousand Photos

Getting back to work on my fire photo book project, the first thing I did was get all the photos together. I went through all my hard drives and thumb drives and backup drives, and even drove the car just to make sure I had all the drives covered.

After making the first pass through all the electronic photos already in my possession, I came up with 9,154 files in 184 folders, for a total of 17.7 gigabytes of pictures.

 "Great Scott!"

 

Yeah, that's a lot of gigabytes ... especially since I figured the finished book would have about 500 photos in it.

And I haven't even finished begging other people for their photos related to the Albion Fire Department. Heck, I haven't even tracked down all the people who said they had stuff for me two years ago, before I got off on several tangents and put the project on a back burner.

But it's just the first run through. A lot of those pictures will get passed over when I start on the final outline, for various reasons: not quite clear enough, too much like similar photos, not as good when converted to black and white, and so on. Plus, a large part of them are from the last few decades, and I'm really hoping someone steps forward with older ones--the AFD has been around since 1888, and I've only been taking pictures of it since 1980.

Organizing projects like this can be incredibly difficult and time consuming. I didn't really understand that while going into Images of America: Albion and Noble County. Now I do, but here I am, anyway.

But hey--it's a good social distancing project, right?

You want to talk about old pictures? This one predates the fire department: It's Albion's second courthouse, which was replaced by the third one in 1888. And no, I didn't take the picture--it was found at the Noble County Old Jail Museum.

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book review: The Twelve, by Justin Cronin

I planned to take a break from long works after reading The Passage, which I described as "War and Peace and More War". But my wife wanted to forge ahead into the sequel, and it's hard to say no considering how good the original was.

The Passage covered an entire century, starting with an ill-advised government experiment (aren't they all?) and ending with a world overrun by what we could loosely call vampires, with a few human settlements hanging on. Two of our constants are Amy, a six year old subject of the experiments, and Arbogast, a government agent who once had a daughter of his own, and against orders decides to protect the little girl.

As The Twelve opens we find ourselves right back at the beginning, following a small group of survivors as they try to escape the virus spreading through America. At first there seems little connection between them and characters from the previous book, but as their paths converge those connections do appear. By the time we jump forward to "present" day we're back with the people from the first novel, including a mysteriously slow aging Amy, who turns out to be the key to evolving events.

Speaking of evolving, the hordes of infected are now under the control of the original experiment subjects--The Twelve--and in a horrible city of human slaves they're planning a new order that could be quite literally a fate worse than death. The only way to stop them: Infiltrate the city, and kill The Twelve.

How hard could it be?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007GBTBMY

The Twelve is epic and complex, and yes, it's long, but my only complaint is that you might have a little trouble keeping track of characters. Luckily Cronin is good at keeping things and people clarified, for which I assume he has a flow chart marching along every one of his office walls. Its been awhile since I've been willing to trade sleep for reading, and this time Cronin is the reason why. The Twelve might not be right for someone looking for a light read, but for anyone who wants to be drawn in and actually care about the characters, this is the place to be.

Maybe--just maybe--The Twelve is actually better than The Passage. If that's so the third book in the trilogy, which we just picked up, will have to be pretty spectacular, indeed. And pretty long.

The City of Mirrors awaits me. If I disappear for a while, don't be concerned.

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

50 Authors from 50 States: Jennifer Wilck Shares Her New Jersey Home

Forget your preconceived notions! I've only been to New Jersey once, but the part I was in was beautiful. Here's another look, on 50 Authors from 50 States:



50 Authors from 50 States: Jennifer Wilck Shares Her New Jersey Home: I live in NJ, the Garden State, and yes, despite what you may have heard, there is an abundance of flowers, farms and beauty throughout my...