Welcoming a New Grandkid Into the World

Yes, my photo post is late. It's been ... a week. One of those weeks; details are most likely forthcoming. I considered not doing one this week at all, but then I was sent some photos I was happy to share.

Meet Silas Noah. He seems confused. Welcome to reality, Silas.

He would be my sixth grandchild, and ninth if you count the step-grandkids, which I do. That means I have as many grandkids as my father had siblings down in Kentucky, at a time when that was much more common.
 

 I know everyone thinks their offspring is born beautiful, but we all know most babies come out red and wrinkly, and look a little bit like those aliens your crazy old uncle used to go on about. The exception would be my grandkids, who were all born beautiful.

 You can tell we're related, because we both like to sleep. A lot.

His big brother had to make a lot of trips down to Riley Children's Hospital (he's fine now), but Silas (or will we end up calling him Noah?) is perfectly healthy. Sure, he might grow up to love Heavy Death Rap Metal--and that might be a thing, by then--but for now he's doing okay.

 

Shhhhh......

 

 

When you need a naptime break, there are always books:

 

·        Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

·        Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/search?attributes.contributorId=13727646

·        Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

·        Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

·        Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

·        Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

·        Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

·        Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

·        Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

·        Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

·        Substack:  https://substack.com/@markrhunter

·        Smashwords:  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

·        Audible:  https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter&ref_pageloadid=4C1TS2KZGoOjloaJ&pf

 

Remember: You never have to change a book.

 

 

 

RIP Dennis Smith: Hero

Dennis Smith passed away a couple of weeks ago, but I got sidetracked by weather stuff in writing about it.

 

As I've said before, the term "hero" gets thrown around way too much these days, and often at people who haven't earned the title. There are many people I admire who aren't heroes. Those who truly are heroes will insist they are not.

Dennis Smith was a hero.

He didn't look like a hero. Heroes rarely do.

He was an author of sixteen books and otherwise led a successful life, but what made him a hero is the eighteen years he spent as a firefighter for the City of New York. He took the oath in 1963, and a few years later transferred to Engine Company 82: The busiest single fire company in New York and, it's believed, the busiest one in the world at the time.

He didn't retire for another ten years after his first book, Report From Engine Co. 82, became a best seller. In 1976 he founded Firehouse Magazine, which became the most popular periodical for firefighters in the world, and he was a civic leader in many other areas. He was an advocate for firefighters, and even produced a series of training videos.

 

Then, on September 11, 2001--almost twenty years after he retired--Dennis Smith showed up at Ground Zero to assist his brothers and sisters. He spent 57 days helping with rescue and recovery efforts, later chronicled in Report From Ground Zero.

He didn't have to. But see, that's what a hero is: Someone who does something for others, despite risks to their own selves, when they don't have to.

I became interested in firefighting in my late teens, and there were few books on the subject at our local library. One was Report From Engine Co. 82. I read it over and over, of course, then I went searching for his other books.

He had a spare, matter of fact style of writing, and when he told stories about his work in the FDNY he didn't brag: He just told what happened, straight out. The risks they take, the injuries they received, are shocking to the reader, but just another day for Dennis and his coworkers.

Dennis Smith influenced me as both a writer and a firefighter, and I'm forever grateful to have that influence in my life. Rest In Peace, Firefighter Smith. If anyone earned it, you did.

From Wikipedia:

Dennis Smith has written sixteen books in his career, among them:

• Report from Engine Co. 82
• Final Fire
• Glitter & Ash
• Steely Blue
• History of Firefighting in America
• The Aran Islands – A Personal Journey
• Firehouse (accompanying photographs by Jill Freedman)
• Dennis Smith's Fire Safety Book
• Firefighters – Their Lives in Their Own Words
• A Song for Mary
• Report from Ground Zero
• San Francisco Is Burning – The Untold Story of the 1906 Earthquake and Fires
• A Decade of Hope – Stories of Grief and Endurance from 9/11 Families and Friends
• Of Love and Courage

For children:

• The Little Fire Engine That Saved The City
• Brassy the Fire Engine

book review: The Annotated Wizard of Oz (centennial edition)

 You want a great book to give this holiday season?

Okay, yeah, my books, but this one isn't about self-promotion. I'm talking about a book Emily got me, one of my favorite gifts: The Annotated Wizard of Oz.

 For those of you who think the whole thing began at MGM in 1939, "centennial edition" means it came out in 2000--exactly one hundred years after "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was originally published. There were actually two other "Wizard of Oz" movies before Judy Garland danced down the Yellow Brick Road.

Naturally the story is by L. Frank Baum, who in his relatively short life wrote 14 novels about Oz, in addition to 41 other novels, 83 short stories, over 200 poems, and at least 42 stage and movie scripts. Most of this was in a period of about twenty years.

But much of the writing in this volume is by Michael Patrick Hearn, who did a deep dive into Baum's  life and works. Hearn has earned his bona fides, and is an expert on both Baum and children's literature in general--he's written other annotations, and I can't imagine how much time it takes to track down so much information.

We know the story, of course, and it's printed here along with the original illustrations, in their original color. Little Dorothy (she doesn't get a last name until a later book) gets swept up in a tornado to the magical Land of Oz, where she gets a little help from her friends in reaching the Emerald City. The Great and Powerful Oz (who for some reason needs a kid to do his job) sends her to Winkie country, where--spoiler alert!--she takes out the witch, returns to the Emerald City, exposes Oz as a humbug, and loses out on her chance to get back to Kansas.

Dorothy and her friends then embark on an entirely different journey, absent from the MGM movie, to reach Glinda the Good and discover she would have saved a lot of walking if those darn silver (!) slippers had only come with an instruction manual.

https://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Wizard-Oz-Centennial/dp/0393049922

Hearn covers a lot about the book, including how it does and doesn't relate to real world happenings, and about Baum himself--both the good and the bad. He also touches on the other Oz books and Baum's entire volume of work, how his childhood led up to Baum's writing career, and his travels with his family. (It turns out "Kansas" was mostly based on a drought-stricken South Dakota.)

Of particular interest is the Baum family relocation to the little, orange-grove dominated village of Hollywood, where Baum became an early leader of the burgeoning film industry. Like most businesses he got involved with, the Oz Film Manufacturing Company had a rocky life.

"The Annotated Wizard of Oz" would be worth the cost just for the illustrations, from both the book itself and other works by Baum and his co-creators. As for me, I'm in the middle of writing a novel in which Lyman Frank Baum has a part, and the background info was not only fascinating, but helped me get inside his head in ways just reading the stories couldn't. If you're a fan of Oz or literature, this book would be of interest. If you're not a fan of Oz, I'm puzzled but I forgive you.

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

 

Happy birthday to Wizard of Oz -- the movie

I started scratching my head recently when I noticed buzz about this being the 80th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz.

Um ... no, it's not. It's the 119th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz, as of this summer. What kind of over the rainbow scheme are they trying to pull off, here?

What the pundits are actually talking about, of course, is the MGM-made movie The Wizard of Oz. Not only does the book precede it by 39 years, but it isn't even the first movie version.

Fun fact: At no time did Toto climb into a giant "O".

Just for the record, L. Frank Baum wrote fourteen Oz books, and some related short tales. After his death, other authors took over writing "official" Oz books. (Oz fanatics will mention the "Famous Forty", which sadly aren't so famous anymore.) With Baum's original books in the public domain there are now dozens of unofficial Oz books, not including the one I've been plotting out in my mind.

Baum produced a multimedia stage presentation about Oz in 1908, and the first actual film, partially based on a 1902 musical play, came out in 1910. There were several more related movies, including the 1925 movie called ... The Wizard of Oz.

I'm just sayin'.

The original cover. I have what are called the "White cover" books. They're white.

Ah, but it's the 1939 movie everyone thinks of, these days. When I was a kid you could catch it on TV exactly once a year--no DVR, no reruns, no second chances. I cleared my schedule (which was easy, because I didn't have one) and caught it every year; yes, I love the movie and always will. I have no issue with the MGM movie beyond it leading people to believe Dorothy Gale is a brunette. (She's blonde, dammit! Depending on who you ask.) I love musicals anyway, and it remains a favorite of mine.

But the books are better.

Well, most of them. Baum had to rush his product to feed his family, from time to time.

The Wizard eventually came back to Oz. Um, spoiler alert! Notice Dorothy temporarily traded Toto in for a pink kitten (long story). Also, she traded her hair in for blonde.

My parents got me the collection of Baum's fourteen books, and as soon as I finished reading the last one, I'd go back and start the first one over again. Although I didn't know dozens of others even existed at the time, the first fourteen were enough to cement my love of reading, which in turn kick-started my love of writing.

Without the Oz books, I maybe would have found a better paying part-time job. But, without the Oz books there would have been no twenty-five years worth of humor columns, no extra credit short stories in English class, no working on the school newspaper, no researching and writing about local history, and no ten published books. No love of reading--who knows what kind of trouble I would have gotten into, without books to keep me busy?

So thank you, Oz ... no matter what the media.

Dorothy as a blonde, Ozma as a brunette. You know ... Ozma? Ruler of Oz? It's in the books--! Oh, never mind.

Cold, Colors, and Candy

As published first in the Kendallville Mall:

http://www.4countymall.com/mark-hunter---slightly-off-the-mark

Slightly Off the Mark

Unless you’re one of those people of questionable sanity who likes cold weather, October has little to offer Hoosiers except autumn colors and Halloween.

But by Halloween the leaves have usually fallen and the days are short. This gives me a feeling of bleakness and dread that … come to think of it, bleakness and dread are very Halloweenie.

But no matter how you feel about the weather (it stinks), Halloween is the beginning of snack season. Through Thanksgiving and Christmas and on to Valentine’s Day, we get to pack on a nice layer of fat against the cold.

It doesn’t really help. But what the heck, any excuse for chocolate.

As with most things, Halloween is more fun to kids. These days I’m expected to turn on my porch light and give candy to other people. I’d rather hide in the dark and let the dog scare off anyone who approaches. There’s a cocoa shortage, people—chocolate charity begins at home.

But when I was younger, it was one of the highlights of the year. In elementary school we’d spend October making decorations of ghosts, witches, and of course pumpkins with scary faces.

I wonder if that’s allowed, these days? They’ve probably banned that kind of stuff from public schools, along with cardboard pilgrims and anything Christmas. I liked the pilgrims, although even then I knew they’d be toast without Squanto and his corn crop (not that they had any toast).

Where was I? Oh yeah—candy. My family didn’t exactly hand out candy like candy … back then treats were, well, a treat. But on one glorious night we could collect enough candy to keep us going until Thanksgiving.

It wasn’t seen as a dangerous holiday, at the time. (This would be in the 70s. No, wait. Let’s change that to the 80s. Yeah, the 80s.) On the contrary, this was the night when it was quite literally okay to take candy from strangers.

Our dad would load us into the back of his El Camino for a trip to the store, which had highly flammable costumes and masks that rendered us mostly blind, then—

Oh, the El Camino? Well, it’s kind of a half car, half pickup truck. We didn’t worry about belting into the too-small front, because there were no seat belts.

Anyway, we waited until it got pitch dark and then hit the streets, methodically knocking on every door. Sometimes we’d get apples, which was not exactly a jump for joy moment. Packaged candy was okay, but the really nice people would make things from scratch, like those wonderful popcorn balls or caramel apples—which beat plain apples hands down.

The only glitch I remember is when we reached the home of a deaf old fellow who had no idea it was Halloween. He was probably the guy who later invented the idea of only trick or treating at homes with porch lights on. Or, maybe he was hoarding his chocolate.

Just as our parents passed out the last of their candy, we got home with more candy. It was important to eat the homemade stuff, like caramel apples and popcorn balls, first. If you weren’t too much of a glutton, you could string the rest along for weeks.

The times were so much less dangerous.

Now, some of you might be horrified by this. Some might smile at the exaggeration, then be horrified to discover it wasn’t an exaggeration: That’s the way it happened for some of us in the small towns of the mid-70s—I mean, 80s. This was a time when, if we did something stupid like walk in the middle of the street, our parents would get three phone calls and be standing at the front door by the time we made it home. When everyone knows everyone else, it’s not as dangerous as it sounds on paper.

We did know about the dangers, as shown in the very first short story I ever had published, in the late … 80s. It was about a hungry vampire who drinks his own blood after biting down on a razor blade inside a Halloween apple. If anyone still has that old copy of the Central Noble High School Cat Tracks, you’ll find the story to be very, very bad.

Just the same, the worst thing we ever experienced was a tummy ache.

As is sometimes necessary with marriage, my wife examines me for brains.

Splash Pad: The Safest Place To Freeze

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

            I had a chance to watch my grandkids playing in Albion’s splash pad the other day, and it took me back to my childhood: Jumping in the water, splashing around, screaming …

            Freezing.

            A splash pad is a really cool place for kids, because you get the splash part, but not the worries of going into water too deep. Plus, it’s clean water. There’s no such thing as a play area where you absolutely can’t get hurt at all (and what a boring place that would be), but that beats the heck out of the “good” old days.

            When I was a kid, there were several places you could go swimming, if they were within biking range, or you could talk an older person with a car into taking you there. Some of them were beaches, and occasionally we’d even find a lifeguard at one.

            We avoided those places. The lifeguards were too much like … adults. No roughhousing, no throwing stuff at each other—it never occurred to us that they could save our lives.

            No, we’d go to the places where the beaches consisted of gravel, or to good old fashioned swimming holes. I’m not sure what the difference is. I can tell you that lakes beat ponds, if you were at all disturbed by stuff squeezing between your toes. Clean water? Never entered our minds.

            One of our favorite places to go was the Skinner Lake beach, and it’s a perfect example of the revelation I had while I sat there, safely out of the water, watching the grandkids:

            When I was their age we’d get out of the car at Skinner Lake, and it would take me five minutes to cross a gravel driveway. I’m one of those kids who always wore shoes, and now I was barefoot, on my way to the water. It never occurred to me to take shoes with me, or wear what, in those days, we used to call thongs. Believe me, the thongs of forty years ago protected an entirely different area than the thongs of today do.

            Then I’d work my way down the beach, and put one toe into the water. The water was freezing. It was always freezing, no matter where we went. Heated swimming? Unheard of.

            My brother, along with whoever else my parents made drag me along, would dive right into the water, which was of a temperature about the same as what Jack and Rose dropped into during Titanic. After a while, I’d recover from the shock and dip a foot in.

            Then a toe of the other foot. Goose bumps popped up all over my body, including inside my ears. Every hair stood on end. By the time the water reached my knees, I’d be shivering uncontrollably. The others would be tossing a Frisbee back and forth, or splashing around in inner tubes.

            The water would reach my swim trunks, seeming momentarily less cold until it reached the top and touched my bare abdomen. My belly would suck in against my spine.

            Eventually, about the time the sun reached the top of the trees, I’d get just comfortable enough in the water—by which I mean, still freezing but now up to my neck—that I’d start splashing around a little.

            At this point the others would call from where they were drying off on the beach, to tell me it was time to come home.

            This was called having fun.

            It was many, many years before I fully understood that I just got colder than other people did. Others wear shorts, I wear pants. Others wear t-shirts, I pull on a sweater. Others enjoy autumn, I’m digging out long underwear and a winter coat. Others love winter, I … don’t.

            I should have just stayed on the beach.

            To this day, I love being on big bodies of water—lakes, rivers. By that I mean on, as in a boat, or a raft. It took me all these years to figure out that, as much as we used to beg adults to take us swimming, I rarely liked it much (unless we were there at least a few hours, by which time I was numb enough to have fun). The first time I remember completely enjoying myself from the start (outside of discovering heated swimming pools) is when my wife and I went into a river in southeast Missouri, where the water was almost bathtub-like, late in their hot summer.

 
            As much as I loved watching the kids running around in the splash pad, I wouldn’t want to join them. Well, not until the temperature touches 90, at least … let’s not get too silly about this whole cold water hatred thing. Goose bumps will never beat heat stroke for unwanted side effects.


The best reason to take grandkids to the splash pad? There's a place for the non-wet to sit.