%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |  It's who we are. It's what we stare at in the middle of the night. It's a bug zapper. |
|
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 |
| My youngest son, Adam, just turned thirty-three; so doing the math, that makes me seventy times seventy. Or is that how many times he has to forgive me? Well, whatever. Adam is my philosopher king. He’s the kid who is happy to give me less than five stars on my various full-length novels. The Amazon.com gods worry that our children or family will be overly positive when it comes to leaving reviews on their website, so they forbid such. I never have to worry about that. He’s also the child that likes to engage me in a plethora of idea related debates. Then he films our discussions. And then he posts these interactions on line. I’m not sure how I feel about this. He never lets me put on makeup or change my shirt, and I’ve usually just finished cooking Sunday dinner for a mob of beggars so there may or may not be gravy stains on my clothing. The only light he provides is an electric GE camping lantern, if he can find it. So, half the time I look like I’ve smeared gravy in the bags under my eyes. And there’s never any rehearsal. It’s just shoot from my gravy stained hip. That I’m okay with. The next debate he’s scheduled is titled, The Value of Reading Fiction, and on this topic, we’re probably going to be in sync. Fiction makes everything clearer. For example: Thomas Tryon, a horror writer in the 1970’s wrote a truly cautionary tale called Harvest Home. In it, he detailed a remote northern town whose corn cult required human sacrifice and a fertility ceremony. I read it and made notes: never move north, never become a corn farmer, and never, ever peak at the secret “corn making” ceremony if you want to keep your tongue and your eyes. Sure, it’s fiction, but you never can tell. Stephen King wrote a book about vampires before the vampires got sexy. My husband worked nights at the time, slept days, and I never saw him conscious when the sun was out. Never. I read Salem’s Lot and learned how to recognize a vampire when I saw one. It’s not a coincidence that the town where vampires were crawling all over the town dump was somewhere up north, probably next to the corn cult creeps. And who, after reading Pat Frank’s Alas Babylon, doesn’t understand the importance of storing up salt against a nuclear attack from Russia. I’m ready. Every work of fiction provides dry runs for life. What would you do if? What would you think when? How would you cope after? Where do you go during? When we read books, we walk into worlds that don’t exist and face monsters that can’t be true, but at the end of every imaginary journey is the possibility that we will discover some small gem of truth that will aid us on our way in the real world above the fiction. Linda (Ready For My Close Up) Zern |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
