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 |  It's who we are. It's what we stare at in the middle of the night. It's a bug zapper. |
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My friends, When we were young and newly hatched—also young and in love—my husband and I lived with our four young children on the Space Coast of Florida. The massive propulsion of rocket and shuttle launches from Cape Kennedy often rocked the windows and doors of our little love cottage. We were always properly respectful and impressed by the reach of mankind’s achievements. It was a point of pride to stop whatever we were doing (dishes, dinner, dancing, sleeping, fist fighting, etc.) to watch the eastern horizon—hands on hearts, tears in eyes—as the United States of America raced into the frontier of space. One deep, dark morning (about 2:00 am) I shook my husband awake to watch yet another triumph of human advancement. “Get up,” I mumbled to Sherwood, “the shuttle’s going up. We gotta’ watch.” Sherwood moaned, “The garbage is out all ready. Let me die.” He did not open his eyes. “Come on. We should watch. Night launches are amazing.” He dragged himself upright and clung to the window ledge behind our bed. We knelt, with our chins braced on the ledge, our bleary eyes fixed on a blazing light in the eastern sky. We watched. The light did not appear to move. We stared some more. The light remain fixed. We struggled to focus. The light blazed away. We waited for the light to fade into the blackness of space. It did not. We watched and watched and watched. The light stubbornly refused to move. At last, collapsing back into my pillow I said, “Honey, go back to sleep.” Sounding confused, miffed, and a little whiney Sherwood asked, “Why?” “Because for the last eight to ten minutes we’ve been staring at our next door neighbor’s bug zapper.” He went back to sleep. And I lived to worship at the altar of space exploration another day. This story pretty much sums up who we are, and how we got this way—excessive staring at bug zappers. And this is my blog, a space-age way of recording one’s thoughts, ideas, embarrassments, and foibles for the entire known world. Once upon a time, I would have made this record on papyrus, rolled it up, stuffed it into a ceramic jar, and asked to have the whole thing buried with me in my sarcophagus. I still might. Disclaimer: Some of the stuff you will read here is true. Some of it is not. Some of it is the result of wishful thinking. Some of it is the result of too much thinking, and some of it is the result of too little thinking. But all of it will be written with joy and laughter, because the alternative is despair and weeping, and isn’t there more than enough of that stuff out there? Thank you for your support, Linda (Zippity the Zapped) Zern |
| Friday was a beautiful day in our neighborhood. The weather sang. The day sparkled. The grandchildren ran wild. I called off science club in light of the beauty of the great outdoors and said, “Run free, little birds, run free.” And off they went to do what children do. And what did they do? They engineered a new game. They dug a hole in the sand hill. They propped up a piece of plywood with hunks of scrap lumber. They aimed and angled the plywood at the hole. They located a bowling ball. They took turns sitting in the hole. They lugged the bowling ball to the apex of the inclined plane and let it fly at the guy sitting in the hole, legs spread wide. The object of the game? To jump out of the hole before the bowling ball smashed into your genitalia. The name of the game? Bust Your Balls. I gave them homeschool credit for the proper use of an inclined plane, engineering a free-standing structure, a scientific demonstration of gravity, a sound understanding of anatomy, and cooperative gameplay. My hairdresser once expressed concern about her son when he refused to come inside to make a reindeer ornament out of a paper plate because he and his buddy were too busy outside chopping something with an ax. She wanted to know if I thought he’d become an ax murderer. I said only if you make him come inside to make a reindeer ornament out of a paper plate. Boys. They need bowling balls and plywood and dirt and outside and the vague possibility of crushed nuts. Linda (Don’t Come Crying to Me) Zern |
Book reviews are tricky creatures. Authors want them. Writers need them. Artists hunt high and low for the wily beasts through patches of tangled feedback trees. I am an Indie author of eight books (plus or minus, depending on how you count the short story collections). I write across genre lines. I write for love, for dreams, for kicks, for readers. I write for reviews. Good reviews are the sticks we use to build our rickety storage units of approval. The bad ones are sticks we use to beat our confidence over the head. We send words out and hope for some to come back. Reviews. I’m hoping to review more this year, but I’m looking at the mother of all writing dilemmas: telling the truth, keeping the faith, guarding the gate without sending people into fractured confidence comas. And I think I’ve figured it out. I'm going to review books under cover of anonymity. No titles. No authors. Just the words and what works and what does not work. But not stars. Not a star rating. Three stars. Five Stars. Nope. Snacks. I want a snack rating. One snack bag of Fritos if I can make it through the first five pages. Five snack bags when I hit fifty pages, and I haven't run into one of the big three: telling not showing, obnoxious grammatical roadblocks, or characters made of cardboard. Halfway and I salute you with a full-size bag of Fritos. And if I get to the end of all the lines, all the way to the great big resolution at the end, I'm making a toast, with lemonade, my favorite. 1 snack bag = five pages 5 snack bags = fifty pages (this is my elementary school teacher's standard if I'm not in love with it by fifty . . .) Halfway = full-size bag of Fritos If it goes off the rails before the end = party sized bag The big finish = lemonade toast Disclaimer: Please be advised that I have never picked up a book and not wanted to adore it. NEVER. EVER. I want to be transported. I want to be swept up and away and farther than that. I want the author to step quietly to the back of the room to watch me being transported. I want to love every book I read. ALWAYS. Linda (The Unknown Reviewer) Zern |
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