I have made three attempts at character writing and discarded them (threw them into the waste basket). After reading the result after each attempt (fiasco), I would feel uncomfortable (embarrassed) in presenting it since the class does so well in this area. I wish to try to explain (weasel word) why I am having difficulty.

In the technical field we are required to read voluminous amount of material and to understand its minutia so that subsequent material could be understood. In my spare time I would read historical novels to try to understand world events, Michener’s earlier stories my favorite. I would also read other stories with elaborate description and dialogue. My background in reading and the time constraints would train me to skim the dialogue and descriptive materials and get at the essence of the story as quickly as I can, missing most of the feel of the stories. Later in life and in retirement I have begun to understand the beauty and the “touching of soul” that dialogue and descriptive material elicit.

The result is it is going to take some time before I am able to produce what I now feel is essential in communicating with others in the non-technical field. Having said that I ran into something in the LA Times this morning (September 30, Sunday paper) that adds to our lesson and I present them here. “Coming to Terms” by Steven Parker in the OPINION section.

He writes how words are formed. “Words can be coined in several ways. Most new words are simply assembled out of old ones. (For example:) we can figure out what a defragmenter is thanks to our familiarity with de-, fragment, and –er.” And he gives examples of others.

“But where do the raw ingredients of words come from? The most obvious source is onomatopoeia-when a word resembles what it sounds like oink, tinkle, barf, woofer, and tweeter. (Words that would fit well in our lesson…) But onomatopoeia only applies to noisy things, and the resemblance is usually in the ear of the beholder. A more fertile source of new words is the phenomenon called phonesthesia, ‘the feeling of sound,’ in which snippets of vowels and consonants vaguely remind people of something because of the way they are pronounced.

“Many words beginning with sn-, for example, have something to do with the nose, because one can almost feel the nose wrinkle when you pronounce it. They include words for things associated with the nose (sneeze, snippy, snooty). Another example : cl- for a cohesive aggregate or a pair of surfaces in contact: clam, clamp, clap, clasp, cleave, clench, cluster, etc.

“We can infer that phonesthesia was the source of recent words such as bling, bungee, glitzy,……………. They are not built out of pre-existing parts like prefixes, suffixes, and roots. Their sounds either remind people of their referents (as in bungee and glom) or vaguely resemble words with related meanings (as in glitter, glamour and ritzy for glitzy, or scum, scuff, and fuzzy for skuzzy).”

While the above is not what MJR was suggesting, the above words are both eye catching, novel, precise, and accurate as to the feel of the subject, which is what our lesson is driving at. Now I would have to just go do it (quit making excuses).

PS (It’s meaning understood): There is more to the article than what I have written. I hope its presentation is new to some of you as it is to me.

Assignment # 7

Reiss duPlessis

The insistence of the ring convinced me it was not a dream. The phone was ringing. Who’s sick? Who’s died?

“Hel... Hello?”

“Your porch light is on!”

“Huh?

“Your porch light is on. Turn it off!”

“It's Three O’Clock in the morning.”

“Your light is shining into my bedroom and I can’t sleep. Turn in off!”

Weeks before, she had knocked on my door, at Nine in the evening to tell me my light was on. I agreed to turn it off and, after that encounter, rarely used it. I did not want to be the cause of some poor lady not sleeping.

“Ah, you are her new target,” laughed the neighbors. “She will try to push you around. Don’t let her or you’ll be sorry.” The neighbors, I realized, were serious. They, they said, all had their turns with her.

“Turn your light off!”

“Lady, my light cannot be shining into your bedroom. Your place is too far away, This light is the one placed there by the original builders and is, in no way, against regulations.”

“Turn that light off or I’ll......”

“Take your best shot lady!” The phone, as it was slammed onto its cradle, made enough noise to keep anyone awake.

“Hello Security? I’ve just had a call from a lady telling me to turn my light off. I need someone to come out and tell me if my porch light is out of compliance.”

“You had a call about a light...at this hour? We’ll send someone out.”

“Hello sir, we’re here to investigate a light? Which light?”

“That one over your head. The porch light.”

“Someone complained about that? Why? Where? Who?”

“Oh. We’ll talk to her.”

A week later, a copy of the letter sent to her arrived in my mail. Good letter.

She’s never bothered me again.

Uncle Charlie by Diane Marcus

He was one of the kindest, most gentle man I knew. So frail that that his thin six-foot-five body looked stretched. His legs gave one the impression that he grew up riding a Palomino across the plains of Montana, yet the only horse he ever saw was the tired old mare that pulled the vegetable wagon in his Italian neighborhood in lower Manhattan. He was a severe diabetic but the only way we knew it was from my aunt who complained about him. It was hard for him to walk; his legs couldn’t hold his weight no matter how light. Because he was the weakest link in our family my grandmother, always angry at somebody, picked on her least successful daughter, my Aunt Ruth and her husband, my Uncle Charlie.

While my sister was very sick but still at home my aunt and uncle got a Christmas tree and asked us to decorate it. We lived in a Jewish neighborhood and new nothing about decorating a tree let alone buying the colored balls and tinsel. Uncle Charlie suggested we get magazines with pictures, cut them out and paste them on cardboard and then pull a string through to hang on the branches. He even bought us the crayons and paste and all other supplies. I remember my sister Carol and I working together, and taking pride in our accomplishments. Carol needed to rest a lot of the time and though it annoyed me to stop when her eyes couldn’t see, I wanted her to do as much of decorations as I did. At five I didn’t understand the severity of Carol’s illness, but I sensed that I wanted her around and promised I would never fight or be unfair to her if she would get better and then we could go ice skating again.

When my sister was hospitalized and until she died my Aunt Ruthie and my Uncle Charlie took care of me. He called me Cookie. He was the only one that ever called me by that name. “I call you Cookie because you are the sweetest little girl I’ve ever known. Your hair is like the color of butter that is needed to make them. When I hold you on my lap I can tell that you are also made of lots of sugar and when the cookies are baked and out of the oven I can see your sweet face and great big smile.” I loved sitting on my Uncle Charlie’s lap even though it wasn’t very comfortable. His skinny legs and knobby knees sometimes poked my thighs, but it was worth it just to hear the special stories he told me that were only for me--just like my name Cookie. During the months that my parents spent most of their time at the hospital hoping Carol would get better and knowing that was impossible I lived with my Aunt and Uncle. My Aunt taught me how to do crossword puzzles as we worked them together. But my Uncle Charlie, who was the only person to ever call me Cookie, made me feel safe and not alone, and not abandoned.

My Uncle Charlie had a routine and every day at four pm he would take the elevator to the first floor of their six story building to a special alcove where the mail boxes were located for all the apartments. The alcove was dark with a very small light, and up three steps. My uncle would get one leg up on the stair and drag the other up repeating this three times. One Friday when the Social Security checks came he went down at the same time repeating the same routine for the thousandth time when two juveniles grabbed him by the throat in an attempt to strangle him and knocked him down to the cold marble floor leaving him to die in the darkness. Three days later, after being on life supports, my kind and gentle Uncle Charlie, the only person to call me Cookie, died of asphyxiation when his daughter took him off life supports to allow him to die in peace and with dignity.

Dave Blodgett - Assignment #7

“Ever see one of these? It’s a hand grenade. OK? I’m going to pass them out, but listen up! Once you pull the pin, hold the handle down. That’s the trigger. When you release the trigger, count to three—one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three—before you toss it. It goes off in five seconds. If you throw it too soon, the ‘Nips’ will scoop it up and toss it right back. OK? Remember, count to three before you throw. Then duck.”

Oh, my God! Does our commanding officer think we’re as crazy as he is? We’re dead.

Ten thousand Japanese in landing craft are headed our way. Thousands of Japanese paratroopers are climbing into planes in Manila to rain death on us. We’re all dead. I’ll never see my dearest wife and baby boy; and, instead of praying with us, he’s giving us a lecture on the care and handling of hand grenades.

We are amazed at this fearless, macho madman and his promise that we will all die the night of December 26, 1944—our blood soaking into the sands of Caminawit Point on Mindoro Island in the Philippines, our bodies torn asunder from red-hot slugs or exploding shell fragments splattering flesh, blood and bones in a blinding curtain of death.

Forty-five of us are dug in—if you call “dug in” two feet down in a narrow slit trench. Three feet down is salt water. Our other 105 base force comrades decide to haul tail into the swamps behind our encampment. They choose not to fight. The odds are lousy.

Our eight operational PT boats—out of twenty-six—are itching to launch torpedoes at the remnants of the Japanese fleet sitting off shore and bombarding us with armor-piercing shells that scream over our heads and plop unexploded into the muddy swamp. But the Army general orders our boats not to attack but to patrol the shoreline to intercept the Japanese landing craft while his 10,000 troops head for the hills in panic. Our command is to fight to the death.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He leadeth me beside still waters. He maketh me to lie down in a stinking, sandy ditch. Lo, I walk through the valley of the shadow of death and am terrified. My .45 automatic. Maybe I’ll use it on myself, but it’s so clogged with sand it probably won’t fire.

Darkness falls.

Suddenly, the pitch-black night is lit up by magnesium Japanese star shells brilliantly illuminating sea and sand and quaking cocoanut palms. The deafening roar of aircraft engines and staccato burst of machine-gun fire fill the air. Every plane—ours and Japanese—has its landing lights on, so enemy fighters can strafe our planes as they sit down on Mindoro’s three-day-old airstrip to refuel and rearm.

The blinding flare glow, the red tracers arcing and streaming across the sky, the night-fighter engine racket, the red-orange flash of the cruiser’s big guns, the barrage of 20-millimeter cannon fire—all combine to heighten my terror.

This is it—the final scene of an endlessly-repeated tragedy acted out by “civilized” man. The madness of war holds me in its deadly, unbreakable grip. The curtain is about to fall.

“Hey, remember, I’m still paying sixty cents for every Jap ear!” our noble commanding officer’s voice soars over the cacophonous roar.

Midnight comes. Then 0100, 0200, 0300. Silence descends on Caminawit Point and Mangarin Bay. The Japanese cruiser and destroyers cease their bombardment. The beach is bare, the sky empty. A cooling breeze is blowing away the stench of gunpowder smoke. The star shells fade, flicker and die, leaving a deep tropical night sky stretching like a protective canopy over our exhausted bodies. No landing craft. No paratroopers. No Japanese warships.

The first rays of dawn reveal our flag is still flying over the miserable, filthy forty-five of us squatting in our half-dug graves. A miracle. With forgiveness, we greet our slowly returning swamp mates—a mud-coated, mosquito-bitten, hangdog, motley lot.

We are the gallant survivors of the “Great Japanese Counterattack on Mindoro Island.”

U. S. Navy Intelligence strikes out again.

Conference on the Mound

I look into the dugout and I see Skip, his face redder than usual, with his hands on the back of his head. It’s the signal to stall. Olzewski needs more time to warm up in the bullpen. I take off my catcher’s mask, spit, and ask Burley, whose umpiring behind the plate, for “time”.
“OK,” he says but hurry it up. I’ve got a hot date waiting for me tonight.”
“The only hot thing you’ll have tonight is a bath,” I say.
I stick my mask under my arm and walk as slowly as I can to the center of the diamond. Spots is standing just on the outer rim of the mound, rubbing the hell out of the ball and looking toward center field. The crowd has grown suddenly quiet, as if 55,000 TV’s have been shut off at once. The only sound you can hear is from the vendors shouting “beer here”.
“And to what do I owe this great honor?” Spots says in a false brogue when I finally reach him.
“You looked a little lonely out there so I decided to visit.”
“That fuck, Gomez, really hit the hell out of the ball,” Spots says, still looking out to center field, probably trying to see exactly where his last pitch landed.
“Yeah, he did. Maybe that’s why he makes ten million dollars a year while we get a buck and a half.”
“My curve ball didn’t break.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
Spots is what you call a journeyman pitcher. He’s been in the majors on and off for about fifteen years, pitching at one time or another for twelve different teams. He’s thirty-nine years old now and long on experience but a little short on ability. He never had much of a fast ball, but his curve ball, which is his out pitch, seems to have deserted him. The club, desperate for a lefty, short-reliever, called him back up from the minors a couple of weeks ago.
“Shit, I wish I could have that pitch back,” Spots says, kicking some dirt with his spikes.
“Yeah, don’t we all,” I say.
Spots got that nickname because of his great control and his ability to throw to certain spots. His real name—no I’m not kidding-is Elbert. Sometimes I call him that just to bug him. We go back a ways-I played with him on the White Sox ten years ago when I came up as a rookie.
Spots picks up a resin bag, dusts his hands and throws it down. “This may be it,” he whispers.
“What?”
“I don’t want to go back to the minors. My ass is flatter than a McDonalds hamburger from riding all those fucking buses. I’m thinking of hanging it up.”
“So you made one bad pitch. You’re not the first. There’s you and Clemens and---“
“Yeah, but they only do it once in a while.”
No ballplayer likes to admit that his body is failing him and it’s a time all of us fear. I look at Spots more closely and I notice that his pot has gotten bigger. He always was on the heavy side, but it looks like he may be into the sauce again. That’s always been his problem. His wife finally left him about three years ago—too much booze, too much time away from the family and too much playing around.
“Somebody told me about a new steak house. Why don’t we try it after the game? We can talk about old times. I’m buying.”
“Uh, I don’t know. Maybe…” Spots says.
I see Skip leaving the dugout. Burley meets him as he trots out on the field. Skip raises his right hand and slaps the wrist twice with two fingers from his left hand, signaling that he wants Olzewski. Spots and I watch Skip as he gets to the pitcher’s rubber. The sweet smell of Juicy Fruit hits my nose. Skip must have stuck a fresh stick in his mouth and judging from the bulge in his cheek this is probably his fourth piece. He has an addiction to the gum that he developed a few years back when the league banned chewing tobacco. The more sticks, the more tense he is. It’s no secret that he’s walking on banana peels and may lose his job at the end of the season.
Skip doesn’t say anything. He puts out his hand and Spots hands him the ball. Skip then gives him the customary whack on the butt.
Spots adjusts his cap and begins the million mile trek to the bench. He walks as if in a funeral procession—his steps measured, his head down. He alternates at tugging at his cap and pounding his glove. He reaches the foul lines and does a graceful jig to avoid touching the chalk. He goes down the dugout steps to the accompaniment of scattered boos and shouts of “hot dogs, get your hot dogs”, throws his glove against the wall and disappears into the clubhouse.