Spring Began Yesterday

Tucson Weather Today

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Yesterday was the first day of Spring but the weather here in Tucson was disappointing; cold winds blew a succession of drizzling rains up and down the streets and across the boulevards of the city. I heard, though, that a great many areas of the nation were favored with abnormally high temperatures. Illinois, Minnesota, and some other states suffered through days and nights of summer like conditions. The news people grabbed onto it to reinforce this as further evidence for man made climate change. They lamented the lack of familiar snow and cold and ice in Northern regions. Who ever heard of such balmy weather in March?

Whine, whine, whine.

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Is there a right way to write? Must one adhere to formalized rules in order to produce a publishable piece of fiction or an acceptable fact filled memoir? It does seem so.

To be considered worthy of appearing in print, it is well established that a submitted manuscript must contain material that a goodly percentage of the population will want to read. Why else would a publisher wish to accept it if not to please a book-buying audience?

But I wonder, if that is so, if that is a commandment chiseled in stone, then why do editors cry out for original writing? And why do the readers themselves grow weary with the same old same old and complain that there is nothing new and exciting available these days?

I am convinced that truly innovative works, especially in the field of creative fiction would, if accepted by publishers, be heartily welcomed by the general public. But sad to say, this will probably not come about. Readers (and publishers) must have their Harry Potters.

Who then might submit new forms of fiction? I can think of a few. Me? Oh no! I am too timid to expose my seemingly shameful 'secret' stuff to the culturally conditioned eyes and minds of the properly educated and morally unforgiving masses of properly compliant law-abiding folks. And so it seems, does another writer of my acquaintance, although he will probably never admit it, to others... nor to himself.

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Once again, using Photoshop Elements 2.0, I merged three pictures I took of the Santa Catalina mountains while facing North at the intersection of Speedway Boulevard and Pantano Street to construct a panoramic view of the range. There is a crown of snow on some of the peaks.

(Click photo for full size view)

The change of lighting intensity caused by altering the little camera's direction relative to the sun for each of the three shots created a triple light variation in the finished product. It was immediately visible to me, but the casual viewer should not notice it. I suppose it could be fixed but I'd rather not spend the time on doing so right now.

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Word For Today

Bombast
arrogant, pompous language

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Although I did not take the picture below, it fascinated me so much that I decided to post it on the blog anyway. The photographer (Dessert Survivor) back home in Indiana has given me permission to do so.

Link to Rensselaer Adventures http://rensselaeradventures.blogspot.com/

The fascination I feel for that glimpse of swampy scenery must be related to some lingering mental whiff of Hoosier boyhood memory. Can't think of a better explanation.

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Happy Birthday

Matthew Broderick

(Bueller . . . Bueller . . . Bueller . . .)

Born March 21, 1962

By the way . . . Matthew Broderick is married to Sarah Jessica Parker

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"Either write something worth reading
or do something worth writing."
--Ben Franklin

If You Will Kindly Indulge Me

Tucson Weather Today

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If you can start the day without caffeine,

If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,

If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,

If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it,

If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,

If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,

If you can conquer tension without medical help,

If you can relax without alcohol,

If you can sleep without the aid of drugs . . .

Then You Are Probably



The Family Dog!


(The above was sent to me in an email from my son.)

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While sorting through some photographs from the closet, I saw the old and faded one below, and it illustrated (to me) -- something or other -- can't remember what it was.

My grandson, Tim, born in 1984, with his
Great-Great Grandma Morris born in 1898

Now what was it that provoked me to include that photo in today's blog entry? Probably something to do with time . . . life spans . . . family, or something like that.

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Word For Today

Crepuscular
adjective
1.
of, pertaining to, or resembling twilight; dim; indistinct.
2.
active at dawn and dusk
3.
Zoology
appearing or active in the twilight, as certain bats and insects.

Crepuscular animals are those that are active primarily during twilight, that is during dawn and dusk.

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Here is another old picture I found in a crushed and broken shoebox.

Charles Gene Chambers

(42 years old)

Graduation Night May 1982 --
Valparaiso Technical Institute

A friend and former classmate who is planning to write an article for a historical journal asked my permission to use a pair of my archived pictures from our fifth grade photo. Of course I agreed readily. Below is section 1, which is the section containing your's truly... me. I am in the bottom row, wearing my cub scout uniform.

(Click photo for full-size view)

The tallest girl in my row, near the center is Darlene Robinson. She was to later become my date three years later for the eighth grade prom. I have been told, sadly, that she has since passed away.

Below are the links to the two class pictures just in case you are of a curious bent. They feature the full-size photos with the names of all the students.

http://www.genechambers.com/5thpart1.htm

http://www.genechambers.com/5thpart2.htm

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Carl Reiner

Born March 20, 1922

According to Wikipedia:

On December 24, 1943, Reiner married singer Estelle Lebost. The two were married 64 years until her death in 2008. At the time of the marriage, he was 21 and she was 29. His wife Estelle is probably best remembered for her line "I'll have what she's having" in the deli scene of their son Rob's 1989 film When Harry Met Sally. She died on October 25, 2008, at age 94.

Reiner, who is Jewish, has described himself as a Jewish atheist.He says, "I have a very different take on who God is. Man invented God because he needed him. God is us."

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We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.
--Shirley Abbott

What Is A Successful Blog?

Tucson Weather Today

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According to the owners of several successful bloggers, it is important to have a focus -- in order to build a 'brand' one must be associated with an idea. Aha! So that is why I have so few readers, or at least so few that bother to comment on my unfocused renderings of random content.

A successful blog attracts readers who agree with what is offered, but I tend to write about too many conflicting ideas on too many different subjects.

And I do that very thing . . . every day.

This lack of focus is something I believe I can conquer, but to do so I would have to give up the idea of posting to the blog every day. I am just not that prolific a writer. Or else I am not that skillful or intelligent enough.

Or do not care enough.

And . . . do I even want my blog to be successful?

I'll have to think about it.

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I read an online newspaper's headline that stated: Thai state media: Thai billionaire who created Red Bull energy drink dies at 89.

And this brought home a fact that I have almost always known --

Everybody dies!

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Gene Weingarten: Publish and perish is the title of a column from The Washington Post that might (or might not) be of interest to new writers hoping to be published.

Weingarten wrote: This is excerpted from a speech I gave last week at the Tucson Festival of Books -- and then he went on to give his opinion about the modern literary scene. Below are some of the highlights:

". . . books do not sell."

“. . . jacket copy, which is the material on the book jacket, lavishly complimentary about the author, and often written in the third person by the author himself."

"Publishers love blurbs; it’s their system of influence peddling. The dirty little secret about blurbs is that they are often written by someone who not only isn't familiar with the writer, but sometimes hasn’t even read the book. He is writing the blurb as a favor to his publisher."

The column is supposed to be an insider's somewhat comical rendition of what book publishing is really all about.

I doubt its veracity, and I didn't think it was funny at all.


By the way . . . I did not attend last week's Tucson Festival of Books but a member of my family did, and she had her picture taken with author Terry Brooks, a famous American writer of fantasy fiction.

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Word For Today

inveterate
(adj.)
stubbornly established by habit

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Bruce Willis

Born March 19, 1955

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Now that I have started thinking about becoming a successful blogger, I can't seem to let the thought go.

Damn!

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A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.
--David Brinkley

"Ain't Nothing But A Hound Dog"

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I have mentioned many times in earlier blog entries that I was born in 1939, but did you know that there were a great many noteworthy events and subjects of great interest at that particular time in history? Well, it's true.

For one thing, 1939 was the year when World War II began in Europe when Adolph Hitler's German army troops invaded Poland. Also, a Douglas DC-4 began passenger service between Chicago and New York carrying 40 passengers. A refrigerator cost $22.98 - A man's suit cost $13.95 - A washing machine cost $39.95 - A bicycle cost $28.95. And only 3% of Americans qualified to pay income tax

In 1955 I turned 16 and the Hot Songs were: Rock Around The Clock by Bill Haley and The Comets - Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White by Perez Prado - Sincerely by The McGuire Sisters - Sixteen Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford - Love Is A Many Splendored Thing by the Four Aces - Yellow Rose Of Texas by Mitch Miller - and The Ballad Of Davy Crockett by Bill Hayes.

In 1955 the popular movies were: Battle Cry with Van Heflin - Blackboard Jungle with Glenn Ford - Marty with Ernest Borgnine - and To Hell And Back with Audie Murphy. More than one person (teenage girls) at that time told me that I looked a lot like . . .

Audie Murphy

Who was I to dissuade a teenage girl?

Read all about Audie Murphy here

Also in 1955 (when I was 16) came the debut of . . .

THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB

And speaking of girls . . . I was captivated from the beginning by . . .

Annette Funicello

And my awe of her lasted through the years, all throughout the later Beach Movies (I was always so jealous of Frankie Avalon.)

Annette as an adult

Here is a link to a Youtube video of the Mickey Mouse Club singing "Now it's time to say goodbye."

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My hometown back in the so called good ol' days.

Rensselaer, Indiana, mid-twentieth century

(Notice the old cars parked along the street)

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Two Words For Today

bathos
noun
1.
a. An abrupt, unintended transition in style from the exalted to the commonplace, producing a ludicrous effect.
b. An anticlimax.
2.
a. Insincere or grossly sentimental pathos.
b. Banality; triteness.
Synonyms:
sentimentality, gooeyness, lovey-doveyness, mawkishness, mush, mushiness, saccharinity, sappiness, sentimentalism, sloppiness, soppiness.


pathos
[pey-thos, -thohs, -thaws]
noun
1.
the quality or power in an actual life experience or in literature, music, speech, or other forms of expression, of evoking a feeling of pity or compassion.
2.
pity.
synonyms
desolation, emotion, feeling, passion, pitiableness, pitifulness

Pathos is a word that throughout my lifetime I have pronounced 'PAH - those' but now (at age 72) I find it should be pronounced 'PAY - thaws' -- Oh well, live and learn.

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Edward Everett Horton

Born March 18, 1886
Died Sept. 29, 1970

Edward Everett Horton narrated 'Fractured Fairy Tales' on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show, and in a scene in Friz Freleng's cartoon Hare Trigger, Yosemite Sam (in his debut) calls himself "the meanest, toughest, rip-roarin'-est, Edward Everett Horton-est hombre what ever packed a six-shooter!"

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I prefer the mystic clouds of nostalgia to the real thing, to be honest.
--Robert Wyatt

Today is A Green Holiday

I don't know if my forebears came from Ireland or not. Don't know for sure whether they were Irish or not. I was told by someone in my early years that my ancestors had once resided in County Mayo, in the North of Ireland. Who knows?

View The Chambers Family Crest

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Tucson Weather Today

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During my daily walk yesterday I took several pictures of the Santa Catalina mountains and when I got back home I decided to do some experiments with them using Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0. So I did a Photomerge with 3 separate photos, thereby creating a single panoramic picture. Below is the result.

(click the picture to view full size)

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When I arrived at the Fry's Supermarket loafers' area just outside the front entrance, I snapped a quick shot of the smoker's bench. I know, I know... Ive posted a shot of it before, but maybe some new readers have now joined as followers of the blog and have not seen it before.

No one else was around at the time so I sat down on left bench and took a picture of the parking lot and the mountains in the background.

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Shemp Howard

Born March 17, 1895
Died Nov. 22, 1955

My mom used to tell about taking me to the movies when I was a little squirt and how I would start to cry when The Three Stooges came on because they would always hit each other with hammers and stab each other with swords and shovels and pickaxes and the like. But I do not remember it, of course, since I was somewhere between the ages of 1 and 2. Later in life I developed a taste for their antics. Still watch them in old re-runs. Occasionally.




The first movie I can remember viewing at the old Palace Theater in Rensselaer, Indiana was when my Grandpa Morris took me to see his favorite cowboy, Hopalong Cassidy, played by William Boyd.

William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy

Early 1940s

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Saint Patrick was a gentleman
Who through strategy and stealth
Drove all the snakes from Ireland
Here's a drinkee to his health!
But not too many drinkees
Lest we lose ourselves and then...
Forget the good Saint Patrick
And see them snakes again!

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There are only two kinds of people in the world, The Irish and those who wish they were.
--Old Irish Saying

A Bit Of A Hotchy-Potchy

Tucson Weather Today

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In The Writer's Almanac I read that Robert Goddard received a grant from the Smithsonian Institution that enabled him to do research and publish a paper on "A Method for Reaching Extreme Altitudes" in 1920. In the paper, he speculated that rockets could be used to reach the moon. The New York Times heard about his paper and ridiculed him. He went from being a relative nobody to a laughingstock literally overnight. But he persisted, and on this date, March 16, 1926, he completed the first successful launch of his liquid-fueled rocket in Auburn, Massachusetts.

Perseverance sometimes conquers all sorts of interference from outside forces, or so it seems to me. But persistence in the ever-sneering face of self-deprecation is surely the most difficult of obstacles to overcome.

God! I am such a weakling. Such a whining, shiftless, incompetent, wastrel. A quitter. Gutless.

A writer? Me? Hah!

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Word For Today

execrable [ek-si-kruh-buhl]
Adjective
Extremely bad or unpleasant.
Synonyms:
abominable - odious - loathsome - abhorrent - detestable

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Henny Youngman

Born March 16, 1906
Died on Feb 24, 1998

One evening back in the 1960s (I think it was) while strolling through the coffee shop at Las Vegas's The Mint casino, I spied Henny Youngman seated at a large table filled with drinks, surrounded of course by a bevy of beautiful female casino employees. I paused and eavesdropped on the conversation (monologue) for a minute or so. Sure enough he was easily as funny as he always had been on TV. And all of his jokes were snappy repetitions of the old reliables, such as "Take my wife... please!"

Note: I deleted the word "babes" and inserted "female casino employees" so as not to ruffle the feathers of overly sensitive feminists. As if I had any feminist (or any female) readers.

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George Will's latest Washington Post column reveals a possible halt to taxpayer funding of union salaries. Of course, if you do not care for the Washington Post or for George Will's opinions, you can just ignore it. But it is somewhat informative, in my questionably humble opinion.

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While admiring some of Dmitrii Lezine's beautiful photography I ran across the following phrase, "...because I thought it was cool and unique in its own way."

Since the maddeningly ubiquitous misuse of the word unique (which means one of a kind) is such a fiercely long-held obsession of mine, especially when adding a modifier of degree such as very unique (how can something be very one of a kind?) I was immediately driven to question the expression unique in its own way. So I hastened to get the opinions of others I trust for the question: Is unique in its own way grammatically correct?

Here is the most convincing response I received:

"Consider a stack of brand new one dollar bills. They all differ, but only by serial number. They are all unique in the same way.

"Now let Hanna von Goeler have one of the bills to work her magic on, converting the banal slip of linen into a bespoke art piece.

"Is this bill more unique than before? No, unique is unique... but in contrast to the rest of the stack, it is now unique in its own way."

That response was from the owner of Quarkscrew and in light of that clear and lucid explanation, I now believe unique in its own way is grammatically correct.

So, 'nuff said.


By the way, one of Dmitrii's many compelling photos caught me eye.

Seattle At Night

Photo by Dmitrii Lezine http://sillymonkeyphoto.com

(Click photo for larger view)

A truly magnificent sight to see is that striking photograph.

Don't you agree?

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For NASA, space is still a high priority.
--Dan Quayle
Note:
The quote was originally meant as ridicule.
But it's not so ludicrous these days - right?

MISH-MASH OF MUDDLED MISCELLANY

Tucson Weather Today

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One of my favorite website's owner (Dessert Survivor) took a trip to Portland, Oregon and it was featured on today's edition of Rensselaer Adventures, which is the blog I visit first thing each morning to keep myself updated on the happenings in and around my old hometown in Indiana. There are some nice photos along with (as always) some interesting narrative text.

The link is HERE

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My Word For Today

demagogue
A political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular passions and prejudices. (Can you say San-TOR-uhm?)

Another word came to my attention during my site hopping earlier this morning. The word is preantepenultimate and its definition is fourth from the last. That makes sense to me. And since penultimate is second from the last, I deduce that antepenultimate is third from the last.

Cool!

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I recently read somewhere about those wild Mountain Men of the early American West (Kit Carson, et al.) and how they were skillful tellers of tall tales, creators and repeaters of stories like the one about the mountain valley in Wyoming that was so big it took an echo eight hours to return, so that a man bedding down for the night could confidently shout 'Git up!' and know that he would rise in the morning to his own wake-up call.

It seems that this ability to use one's imagination imaginatively has now fallen out of favor within the crowd of modern-day writers and published authors. Or perhaps I expect too much from the finely crafted reading material and its canny creators (manufacturers?) that usually happen to stray my way.

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Andrew Jackson

(7th U.S. President)

Born March 15, 1767
Died June 8, 1845

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A Deck Of Cards is a Youtube video that was called to my attention, and sure enough when I listened to the words I remembered how my dad used to listen to it on his home-made record player (he was a radio repairman) back in the 1940s. He was not a religious man but for some reason that particular story affected him emotionally... for some unknown reason.

Who can figure out why some of life's simplest things touch us, and why others, deemed deeply profound, do not So if you are not familiar with A Deck Of Cards please invest three minutes of your time and listen to it.

Again, the link is HERE.

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Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work.
--Ezra Pound