Calling All Linemen

If there’s an ice storm in your future, there could be a lineman there, too. I’ve fallen under the spell of a Jimmy Webb song about a lineman, made famous by Glen Campbell. “Wichita Lineman” may be the song of the week if the Weather Channel knows what they’re predicting about an ice storm, and if Webb was referring to Wichita, Kansas.

The lines that seem the most relevant to the forecast go like this:

I know I need a small vacation/
But it don’t look like rain/
And if it snows that stretch down south/
Won’t ever stand the strain.

Little did I know until this week that I was already a Jimmy Webb fan back in my preschool days when my record collection included the 5th Dimension.

Other Jimmy Webb songs include “Up, Up and Away,” "MacArthur Park" and “Highwayman.” Here's to all the great lines by Jimmy!

I hear you singing through the wire/
I can hear you through the whine.
Jimmy Webb, "Wichita Lineman"

Some Answers and a Bigger Question

Here are the answers to yesterday’s tagline quiz:

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

Godzilla

Erin Brockovich

Meet the Parents

And now here is a question: How come a root problem is often overlooked while the consequent, lesser problems get full attention?

Let me tell you a story. Several years ago at my daughter’s high school, there was a violent attack. I was scheduled to speak on tobacco prevention at the school that afternoon, and that morning my daughter sent me an e that read: “Mom, don’t come to school—too much violence.”

I didn’t read her e before leaving home that day. When I got to the school, the halls had been secured and the knife had been confiscated by the authorities. People told me what (they thought) happened.

I didn’t find out what really happened until several days later, in the evening, in the school gymnasium during an address by the principal that I had requested he give. The district superintendent was present as were many concerned students and parents.

It turns out that there was a student attending the school who had severe psychological illness. His illness was manifesting in many ways, including alignment with Nazism. The white student had been picking on black students for weeks. The black students couldn’t take it anymore.

Prior to the outbreak of violence on campus, the administration of the school, not recognizing the student’s mental illness, went to the trouble of hiring a mediator to come to the school to fix the poor race relations. The mentally healthy students were forced to sit in a room for several hours a day with the mentally unbalanced student to try patch up their differences.

Only after violence erupted at the school, did administrators look back on the situation and say, “We didn’t know what we were dealing with.” I can still hear those words as plain as day.

Mental illness goes unrecognized all the time. Awareness of mental illness is lacking. Until we address this problem, violent acts like the one at my daughter’s school and the one at the Safeway in Tucson will continue.

It is growing increasingly difficult for me to bite my tongue when every day, a new spin is given to the Tucson shootings—the need for concealed weapon permits, the consequences of political hate rhetoric and anything else you want to mention. The moral of the story should be let’s do more to spread awareness of the symptoms of mental illness and to make the general public aware of how to report mental illness.

What's My (Tag)line?

It’s time for the Golden Globes, and in 1962, “What’s My Line” won an award for the best television show. If you don’t remember it, no worries, it’s not the Ambien amnesia setting in; the show stopped airing in 1967.

The panelists had to guess the contestant’s line of work (hence line) through a series of questions. You might enjoy this clip of Frank Lloyd Wright on the show.

Yesterday I played a different kind of What’s My Line. I tried to finalize a tagline of sorts for my novel manuscript. A tagline is a marketing slogan, often used for movies. And while I do have a treatment for a screenplay on file with WGA, this month I’m writing query letters to agents, and I need to succinctly capture the plot of my novel manuscript in a sentence.

Despite posting on Facebook that my resolution for this year is to drive to the beach the first day it’s 70 degrees in Wilmington, a more serious endeavor is working on my novel manuscript every day. It’s amazing how inspiration flows in effortlessly when you commit to fifteen or thirty minutes of imposed concentration a day. And I really prefer moments of inspiration to hours of fretful consternation.

Yesterday my inspiration came to me over lunch. Since I’m reading The Herald-Sun while my neighbor is away for the weekend, I peeked at the newspaper TV listings for the first time in a long time.

Have you ever paid attention to the taglines of movies in the TV listings?

Try these and see if you can name the movie:

"A youth learns that his father is the Greek god Poseidon."

"A giant mutant lizard wreaks havoc in New York."

"A woman probes a power company cover-up over poisoned water."

"A man spends a disastrous weekend with his lover’s family."

I’ll post the names of the movies tomorrow on the blog.

Reading taglines really energized me yesterday. First, I was able to pick up my index card grocery list for Whole Foods and write a sentence about my story: A song takes a woman back to the man she loves. Next, I was able to frame my life past and future by considering what a writer would say the tagline of my life is.

If you’re looking for inspiration on the heels of your resolutions this January, think like a marketing executive and pen your own tagline. Try writing one for your past and go ahead and acknowledge a weakness if you must. But when you write one for your future, write yourself out of your current conflict.

May all your taglines come true!

She's making movies on location/ She don't know what it means/ And the music make her want to be the story/ And the story was whatever was the song--what it was
"Skateaway" Mark Knopfler

Lunacy

For those of you staying awake tonight to watch the total lunar eclipse, here’s some scientific reading I found through a PubMed search about the effects of the moon on humans. In particular, I like the article by the Swiss researchers because they reference a John Lennon song in the title.

This topic of a full moon brings back memories of my first days on labor and delivery as a medical student. The nurse walked us to the blackboard where each patient’s name was written along with facts like the estimated date of confinement (the lingo is telling my age) and the number of centimeters of, well, never mind that detail. Anyway, the nurse explained that when the moon is full, the board fills up with patients.

My mother-in-law once told me that the phase of the moon at the time of your birth influences your personality, and if you’re into that kind of introspection, here’s more reading for you. Unless you already know the phase of the moon on your date of birth, you may need a chart like this one.

My lunacy impacts two areas of my life: writing and sleeping. Where the pen’s concerned, I’ve noted it’s difficult for me to write fiction unless there’s a waxing gibbous moon. I have trouble sleeping when there’s a full moon, and I relate that to the light that comes in my room despite very thick draperies. When we were students on call for obstetrics, we slept in a room with about ten beds and no windows. The room was called the womb. Since that time I’ve always had trouble sleeping with even the tiniest amount of light. In hotels I put socks and towels over clocks, cell phone chargers and anything else neon that might wake me. Around two o’clock in the morning, I usually wake to find a beam of red or green light somewhere that due vigilance missed.

I’m hoping I won’t be awake for the eclipse tonight. Good night!

And it's a strange lamp that lights the path back into memory/ Showing you not what you have but what you need.
Scrappy Jud Newcomb, "I Think of You"

Blog Writer Plans Hibernation Day

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Doctoredits via Google account on the comment page for this blog

Blog Writer Plans Hibernation Day

Worthy Tips for Watching Television, Reading Random Stories, and Eating With Little to No Cooking

CARRBORO, North Carolina—December 14, 2010--I am officially hibernating. I last left home at 2:00 p.m. today and don’t have any plans until I fetch someone from the airport at 2:30 p.m. Thursday. And if I play this the right way, and Mother Nature decides to cooperate, I will be able to push that responsibility off onto my husband who’s a more suitable driver on an icy interstate.

Why hibernate? My fridge is stocked. My door is locked and my diamond is hocked? Not really.

I’m hibernating because I don’t like the cold unless it is accompanied by dramatic precipitation and Alpine terrain. I’m seriously living in the wrong country, and there’s nothing like December, January and February to remind me.

I’m hibernating because this is my coldest December on record in Carolina.

And what’s to do? Well, hm. I hadn’t thought of that. Perhaps this idea is not fleshed out.

Wait a minute. I could work on my 2010 taxes. I could fill out next year’s financial aid application. I could write query letters for my novel manuscript. I could update my will and spring clean a few months early.

This hibernation needs more thought. I’m already afraid I may squander it fecklessly checking Facebook. Wait! Television might be the answer.

I know, I’ll place a glass of water and a Tupperware of gluten-free banana muffins bedside and stay under the covers all the way through American Morning, my favorite really early morning show. (Have you checked out the acoustic memories they play as they return from commercial breaks? Evidently, Jon Stewart doesn’t like them.) And this just in, John Roberts will not be on American Morning anymore after the month is up. What better justification for watching it past the point of 6:50 a.m. when I normally bail out of bed?

After American Morning I think I’ll walk to my sofa to watch The Holiday for the first time this year and the twentieth time of my life. When that’s over, I can boil some shrimp and green beans for four minutes while my potato absorbs microwaves for eight. Then I’ll take my tray to the sofa to watch last night’s PBS NewsHour minus the commercials. After lunch I can check my e-mail and see what has happened to my shares of GM stock that have a stop order on them.

Then I may have to finish "St. Mawr," the D.H. Lawrence story that Dr. Weldon Thornton recommended to me at a Derby party this year, before starting on Utopia by St. Thomas More (this may seem like a word association, but actually, utopia was the word of the day on WCHL this morning, and Dr. Wayne Pond told us the word originated with St. Thomas More).

Once I’ve tired of reading, I’ll make plans for my husband to cook my dinner when he comes home from the lab.

Individuals seeking ideas for a similar hibernation or needing a sound track for hibernation should contact me via the comments page.

-END-

Permission to reprint: You may reprint any two of the suggestions herein as long as you promise to wake me up when this cold weather is over.

Need an image? Evidently all my blog photos are being placed on Google Images by robots while I sleep. So far, it’s not keeping me up at night, and it probably won’t interrupt my hibernation.


I don’t want to get out of bed/ You don’t want to go out in the snow/ We don’t have to do the things Eskimos do/ Let’s have a hibernation day, me and you.

“Hibernation Day” Jars of Clay

Westboro Baptist Church Needs to Turn, Turn, Turn Away from Elizabeth Edwards' Funeral

Two things are making me sick today: one is a gastrointestinal bug and the other is even crappier. WRAL is reporting that the Westboro Baptist Chuch (based in Kansas) is planning a protest at the funeral of Elizabeth Edwards in Raleigh on Saturday.

These protesters would do well to listen to their acoustic memories, which have evidently short-circuited on the “do unto others” sound track. If that is the case, here is a song, based on Bible verse, for this misguided group.

To everything (turn, turn, turn)/ There is a season (turn, turn, turn)/ And a time to every purpose under heaven/ A time to build up, a time to break down/ A time to dance, a time to mourn/ A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together.

-Pete Seeger, "Turn! Turn! Turn!"

Give us our time to mourn, Westboro! Turn out of Raleigh!

Snow Was Falling Like Moravian Stars

Snow was falling like Moravian stars the day my son suggested we visit Old Salem. When we arrived we crossed a covered bridge and stepped back in time.  The bridge transported us to the eighteenth century.


The Moravians settled in North Carolina in the middle of the eighteenth century on land known as the Wachovia tract. Their religion, the first Protestant denomination, was founded by a Catholic, Czech priest who was burnt at the stake for heresy. The Moravian Church is still in existence today in the United States. At Old Salem, the church sits north of the square.


Farther down Main Street we came across the campus of Salem College for women. Perhaps you’re more familiar with Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The Moravians believed that education was essential for salvation. The day of our visit, children were rolling snowmen on the green while a trombone choir performed. The Moravians are credited with bringing classical European music to America.

Needing to warm up, we stepped inside the Winkler Bakery for some sugar bread. Serving sweet buns during a church service (the lovefeast) is one of the Moravian traditions.

In every gift shop, we came across the Moravian star, with its twenty-six points, a symbol of Advent.

Outside, snow continued to fall until it turned purple.



We walked along Main Street in the cold. That's my husband in the yellow jacket, strolling past the Single Brothers' House. Wreaths decked doors with diagonal designs. I turned to wave at the camera.


We saw homes that could have inspired the likes of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Up on the Housetop.” Our thoughts turned toward getting back home before the interstate froze.




The day ended with contemplation of the motto of the Moravian Church: "In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things, love."