Mark W Tiedemann

Author: Mark Tiedemann

James Hogan, Troubled In His Stars

James P. Hogan had died.

He wrote science fiction. The books I read, over 20 years ago, were generally pretty good. He has the distinction for me of having written one of my favorite debut novels, Inherit the Stars. It was a murder mystery, a science mystery, a space adventure, and a thorough-going exposition on forensics of all sorts, including, in the end, “evolutionary” forensics (if such a thing exists).

There is profound irony in that. The plot hinges around a spacesuited corpse found on the moon at a time when it shouldn’t have been there. The story is the series of investigations finding out where it came from. Mars, it is ultimately learned. But the creature in the suit—hundreds of thousands of years old—could not possibly have evolved on Mars. Hogan employed genetics and evolutionary biology to solve the mystery.

The irony is that later in his life—for all I know, even then—he became an evolution denier. Go to his web page and you can find links to papers by such leading lights of woo-woo Intelligent Design as Michael Behe and William Dembski.

But that’s not all. He was a Holocaust Denier. He was careful not to put it up as a category on his site, with the other things he seemed to be opposed to. Yet he had made public statements to that effect.

I stopped reading Hogan when it became clear in his novels that he harbored an absolute hatred of communism and the Soviet Union, so much so that occasionally the polemic spilled into the prose and he seemed at times on the verge of blaming everything on them. I was never a fan of the Eastern Bloc, but science fiction ought to be about opening possibilities, not treating our entrenched fears as some sort of biblical dogma. I got bored. I never went back. I wonder sometimes how he coped with Perestroika and the collapse of the Wall.
I write this as a coda to the bit on Mel Gibson. I read many of his novels and enjoyed them. I had even spent time in his company and found it pleasurable. He could tell a good story, a good joke, he was witty, and certainly smart. But smart doesn’t guarantee rationality or a lock on truth. Very smart people sometimes hold the most bizarre ideas in the face of reality—of course, being very smart they can explain their misconstruals in such a way that undoing them can become nearly impossible.

But the work was one thing, the man something else. I doubt, knowing what I know about his politics and beliefs now, I’ll bother to read another of his books—there’s too little time and too many other books, so any method of cutting back on the list is viable—but all I can do in retrospect is shake my head and wonder at the dark cul-de-sacs humans sometimes slip into and never get out of.

July 13, 2010
Mel Gibson and Other Musings

So Mel Gibson has been exposed (once again) as an intolerant, sexist, abusive person. A recording of a phone conversation with his former girlfriend is now Out There on the internet and one can listen to Mel spill molten verbiage into her earpiece while she calmly refutes his charges.

All I can wonder is, So what?

What business is this of ours? This is private stuff. People lose control. Between each other, with strangers, but more often with those closest, people have moments when the mouth ill-advisedly opens and vileness falls out. The question is, does this define us? Are we, in fact, only to be defined by our worst moments?

That would seem to be the case for people like Gibson. The reason, I think, is that for most of us, the Mel Gibsons of the world have no business having shitty days and acting like this. For most of us, there is just cause for having these kinds of days and attitudes, because for most of us the world is not our oyster and we do not have the luxury of squandering time, friends, and money. Mel Gibson is wealthy and famous and, at one time, admired. He ate at the best restaurants, appeared on television, gave interviews, has his picture on the covers of magazines. Is seen with other people, regularly, who fall into that category of Those Who Have It Made.

They aren’t supposed to have bad days. They aren’t supposed to be shitty to their lovers. They aren’t supposed to act like people who are desperate, down on their luck, and bitterly outraged at the world.

The question, though, is, do people who are down on their luck and bitter with their (admittedly pathetic) lot in life act that way? How would we know? Joe Asfalt doesn’t get interviewed by People or Us and when he has a falling out with his girlfriend the tabloids do not follow him or them around, looking for a scoop on their latest battle. When Joe or his girl toss each other out of the house, no one is watching except the neighbors. So how do we know how they behave?

Maybe we assume they behave that way and it gives pleasure to see Mel Gibson being a jerk. Makes him “one of us.” Except he isn’t.

But I don’t really give a damn about the private uglinesses of either Joe Asfalt or Mel Gibson. It only matters to me when their private shittiness emerges into a public display, as in the case of Tom Cruise’s asinine, Scientology-driven jeremiads about post-partum depression. That matters because he is Tom Cruise and, like it or not, people put stock in what he says, and that incident had impact on peoples’ lives, not the least of which was Brooke Shields. If Mel Gibson went berserk during an interview and made pronouncements about “the proper attire, place, position, and attitude” of women, then I’d care about what he thinks and says, because that would have consequences.

What is unfortunate is that such things affect how we view their work. It’s not fair, really. People run the gamut, from really wonderful to really awful, and some of those people are artists. Some of those artists are really good and create wonderful things, even those artists who may otherwise be reprehensible human beings. In this regard I can understand the attitude of someone like J.D. Salinger or Thomas Pynchon, who have done all they could to keep people out of their private lives. They given almost no interviews, they never made a big deal about themselves in public, eschewing the limelight. In the case of someone like Salinger, the hermit approach actually contributed to his celebrity, fueling further book sales, because it becomes part of the myth about him. It would not matter if he had done what he did with exactly that in mind, it would have happened anyway. Pynchon less so, perhaps.

But I can respect the idea that this was done precisely so the work wasn’t colored by the personality of the artist in ways that have nothing to do with the work.

Society at large has a hunger for the viscera of the artist. People who may never see a film, read a book, listen to a record with any genuine appreciation for the content of the work will nevertheless pay attention to those things in direct proportion to how much celebrity is attached to the artist. So much so that we have phenomena like Paris Hilton who is famous for being famous.

I’ve been mulling these ideas over lately because of the reverse question—how well does any artist know his or her audience?

And do they want to?

Demographics seem to drive everything today. Targeting your audience correctly is the holy grail of promotions. Is that movie geared toward the 18-to-24 crowd? Women more than men? What income bracket? Education? In the case of books, this leads me to ask, if they are in “my” demographic target, does that mean they will buy my books because they are predisposed to reading them, or is something much less causally connected, like those people who actually read who are part of that demographic may be more likely to buy my books than people who read who are part of some other demographic…

But what is it about those other demographics that precludes the likelihood that they’ll buy my book? That they’d more likely buy some other author’s books, based on the perception that he or she writes for the 25-to-45 upper middle class crowd.

Pondering this makes my brain hurt. Of all the factors that contribute to defining a demographic likely to do A rather than B or C, which factors contribute to a strong likelihood that none of them will fit the demographic that will pay attention to your work.

And if some of those factors have to do with your public persona, then you have to ask which part? The part that no one is ever supposed to know anything about (like a private phone call to a soon-to-be-ex-lover) or the part that you might tailor exclusively for public consumption. In which case, isn’t that as much a work of art as the work of art you’re trying to sell?

But at the end of the day, I’m still left wondering just why anyone is really interested in someone’s private life they do not know. Not, mind you, in the sense of being disinterested in biography as history—the private labyrinths of a Howard Hughes become, over time, fascinating because of the archaeological nature of examining his legacy—but in the sense of trying to find a one-to-one relevance between you and a celebrity. In that sense, it becomes legitimate to ask what purpose was served by the years of public attention to some like Wynona Judd and her seeming inability to have a happy life. The feedback loop between personal tragedy, public perception-reception, and attempted “managing” of the personal in order to accommodate a publicity machine creates an ongoing kind of performance art that eventually has less to do with authentic experience and more to do with Artist As Subject, and therefore becomes increasingly artificial, at least in presentation, regardless of any reality—a reality which, under pressure from the attention, retreats further from the limelight and takes on further burdens in the attempt to be private. You could see the whole thing as a kind of therapy conducted on the couch of public opinion, but to what benefit? The thing receiving the therapy becomes less the person than the image.

And then who is being served? Is this merely entertainment or is there in fact a public function in all this closet-revelation?

One thinks of politicians immediately, in particular with respect to sexual impropriety. Do the private practices of an individual have anything to do with his or her ability to do a particular job?

I suppose it’s a matter of what job they are required to do. A senator whose campaign, election, and office concerned fiscal responsibility and who by any measure performs this task competently if not excellently is revealed to keep a mistress or two. What does the one have to do with the other? Nothing, really. Private pecadilloes matter when the impropriety is directly connected with the job—for instance, if said senator had a history of insider trading or embezzlement.

But then those would not be private, would they? They would involved public factors. Not sex, but monetary impropriety, even if kept private (and how could it be unless we’re talking about a loan from a brother-in-law that was never repaid?), has a direct public impact.

Another senator whose campaign, election, and subsequent legislation bear on families, divorce laws, obscenity laws, laws governing the dissemination of birth control or the availability of abortion services or even information about birth control and abortion, or perhaps support of a foreign regime in which women are oppressed, then turns out to be cheating on his wife or has a history of using prostitutes. Well, that bears directly, doesn’t it? The hypocrisy of a Family Values politician keeping mistresses certainly is relevant to public policy.

As unlikely as it might be that such a politician would be elected, someone who declared openly that he or she has had and may continue to have partners before, during, and outside of marriage would not, in my opinion, raise a question of moral conflict under these circumstances. We could vote for or against from the beginning, there would be no deception. Likewise with the politician who had exercised “poor judgment” in fiscal matters.

But the complicating factor in such instances would be how the private matters were disclosed. This hinges on the question of whether or not a person can and does change over time. The recently deceased Senator Byrd’s past affiliation with the KKK is an example. Given the opportunity and time, he demonstrated that, at least in the performance of his office, that circumstance had been left in the past. Whether he had truly changed in his sentiments is beside the point next to his subsequent public record.

What all this has to do with Mel Gibson is relevant only in the question of when and how the revelation of private failings is legitimate. Does the knowledge that Mel Gibson can be a foul-mouthed, abusive, sexist racist impact anyone or anything outside his circle of acquaintances? Because they, presumably, judge him and act accordingly without public input. Does this kind of “news” serve any function beyond attracting and increasing the kind of attention that sells tabloids?

Because everyone has a part of themselves they would rather keep exclusively between themselves and their chosen intimates. Would it be fair if all of us were recorded displaying our less wonderful aspects and having said recording sent, say, to prospective employers or the dating services we might use or our new date or to the shopowners and restaurateurs we frequent or to business associates? If all their dealings with us to date have been positive, how are they supposed to react if something like that were suddenly dropped into their lap? And how would we defend ourselves from the predictable reactions?

I’m just wondering.

July 10, 2010
Context

Well, well, it seems I’ll be doing three conventions this year. I’d planned originally on one, but then I found out about MadCon 2010, in Madison, Wisconsin, which is ostensibly Harlan Ellison’s last convention. He claims. Not that I’m inclined to disbelieve him, but…

I’ve been asked to participate in programming at Context 23 in Columbus, Ohio. I’ve heard many good things about this convention and some friends have been pestering me to attend for a long time. I’ve been reluctant to do conventions that cost me anything out of pocket unless something really special is going on, because, well, I don’t have a book coming out or anything else to promote. But one friend is conducting workshops there and another (also conducting workshops) has made still another friend an offer to do the driving for the three of us and so I decided, what the hell. Confused? Don’t be. I’m not.

Way back in 2002 I attended another Columbus convention. Marcon. My then-editor at Meisha Merlin was invited by them to be their editor GoH and he suggested maybe I should attend as well and we could do a release party for Metal of Night. I agreed. It entailed my going through a flight from Purgatory, which turned into a good story around drinks. But then upon arrival we both sort of realized we’d made a mistake.

Marcon is a fairly large convention. The reason? It’s predominantly media. Within two hours we noted half the cast from Earth:Final Conflict, Virginia Hey from Farscape, the ever-energetic Richard Hatch still (then) on his endless circuit to get Battlestar Galactica remade, and a number of other media guests. The reading-and-writing component was in the minority. One good thing about that con was I got to meet Dr. Demento.

Going through the program book, I came upon an add for Context. The tagline read “the convention for those of us who actually read the stuff.”

So now I’m going. I have to fill out the programming questionaire. Who knows? Maybe before then I’ll have sold a new novel and have something to brag about. What? It could happen.

July 6, 2010
Test Flight

Last night we did something in this house we’ve not done in years.

We broiled steaks.

Oh, yes, we like our new stove. We filled the manse with the aroma of good things to eat and lo, they were good to eat. Our taste buds did happy dances while we feasted. I assume our guests likewise experienced satori, possibly with each bite.

Steak, asparagus, rice, sour dough rye bread, salad…we did it up royally. Two excellent bottles of wine. (My mother, by the way, would be amazed that I’d eaten asparagus willingly. As a child I was most decidedly anti-vegetable. I’m still less interested in them than in meat, but since I’ve learned what some of them taste like when properly prepared…)

Yes, I am a carnivore. Proud of it. Should the Vegans seize control of the nuclear arsenals of the world and force the U.N. to adopt resolutions eliminating the consumption of flesh by humans, I will take up arms to depose them. I long ago adopted my metric, which is that any animal I would have as a pet will not be served as dinner in my house, but as I am disinclined to make a pet of cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, and so on and so forth, it is a narrow range of critters exempt from my dietary preferences.

And last night I demonstrated to myself once more why.

There is an excellent store in St. Louis Hills, an old Tom-Boy that has become part deli, part butcher shop, part catering company. Le Grand has the best cuts and I bought three one-pound rib-eyes, two pork steaks, two pounds of ground beef and cooked last night. Friends were over. We feasted. The star of the evening was our new appliance, without which….

It may be a while before we broil again—it’s summer and the kitchen is, after all, small—but that leaves a great deal to play with on the range.

Anyway, I just wanted to report that we have inaugurated the stove and it proved worthy.

Hope the weekend is a good one for you.

July 3, 2010
The Great Kitchen Update

When we bought our house, it came well-equipped. Two bathrooms, a refrigerator, central air, a garage…and a stove. This one, in fact.

I have no idea how old that thing is. It’s a Fridgidaire all-electric, 40 inches wide. Side-by-side ovens, self-cleaning, for its day no doubt state-of-the-art.

And Donna couldn’t wait to get rid of it. She wanted a gas range. Well and good. Of course, having just shelled out money to buy the house, we didn’t have a lot left over to start replacing appliances. We did get a new refrigerator and over the years we’ve updated things as needed. Both of us are too cheap, er, frugal to toss something like a stove out just because we don’t like it, so we decided to replace it when (a) we were really flush or (b) when it died.

Little by little it began to die. The burners mainly. Till a couple of years ago we were down to one full-functioning burner and a warming one. Well, last month the whole thing went blewey. Great, brilliant sparks shot out of the control panel, the circuit breaker flipped, it is dead, Jim. Dead.

“Damn,” was followed immediately by eager grins.

We shopped for a new one. This would be a standard size, 30 inch. We decided that as long as the space was empty, let’s replace the floor.

Here you see the choices we came down to. Naturally, we considered doing stone. We love stone. Stone is good. Stone is also very expensive. Besides, the only stone we found that we both loved was the single sample toward the left-hand corner. That’s sandstone. Terrible material for a kitchen, where liquids get spilled all the time. Besides, we’d have to seal it every year and things like that we’re not so good about.

So we come to the two shades of tile. Black marble and something called Eurogrlacier Ice. We both liked both, Donna the marble, me the ice. (Yes, I know that was ungrammatic, but “I the ice” just don’t sound right.) We compromised and opted for a checkerboard. This is not stone, this is just tile. But we liked it.

But first we had to have a gas line run and the electricity changed from 220 to 110.

You can see here, also, just how yellowed the old floor had become over the years. Definitely time for a new look.

So we hired a young man (actually our friend Jim’s son-in-law) to do the work. Jeff is very fast and competent and we are pleased with his work.

Last Saturday, the new stove arrived. Unintentionally, we ended up with another Fridgidaire. This is all gas, with five burners. This is just what we wanted. Installed, there was but one more detail to take care of. (Well, one for now.)

Note the gap between stove and counter and cabinet. We talked about building a cart to slide into the space, or just getting a piece of countertop to bridge the gap. In the end, we opted to move the entire cabinet.

Moving the cabinet also gave us full access to the drawer and the cabinet below, both of which had been partly blocked by the refrigerator (because we bought the biggest damn ice box we could that would fit that space at the time!) and also affords us a bit more usable counter space.

Now, of course this isn’t the whole project. We still intended to paint the walls and ceiling and eventually get the cabinet doors refinished, but this alone has given us a strikingly new look. At the moment, I don’t care. All I care about right now is that I can now cook. Really cook.

I just hope I haven’t forgotten how.

p.s. I should point out that we intend eventually the replace the countertops as well, but given the cost we can make do till…later. We’re thinking track lighting, too. Again, later.

June 29, 2010
A Few More Memories

I thought I’d post a handful of photographs from Clarion ’88. Just a few. The temptation to try to do humorous captions is great, but I decided to simply be informative. Enjoy.

The entrance to Owen Hall, the dorm building

Van Hoosen, where the workshops were conducted

Tim Powers, our first week writer-in-residence, in session

Pizza with Powers

Daryl Gregory, doing his Tim Powers “I Got No Story” Clarion Blues

Kelley Eskridge arrived already injured, with sprained ankle, but as optimistic as the rest of us

One of many outdoor meals held in the courtyard of Van Hoosen. Lisa Goldstein, second week instructor, is in the midst of students here

One of the other eateries in East Lansing frequented by Clarionites

Chip Delany, third week instructor

Nicola Griffith

Andy Tisbert, Me (attempting inscrutability), and Kimberly Rufer-Bach during a workshop

Kate Wilhelm, Kim Stanley Robinson (fourth week instructor), and Damon Knight. Kate and Damon were fifth and sixth week

We had our own t-shirts and sweat shirts made, with a logo for our year, and “reading matter” on the back. This was the day they arrived

During the last week we wrote a “group story” which blatantly abused all the “rules” we’d learned. This was it’s one and only performance. Daryl Gregory, Brooks Caruthers, Me, Lou Grinzo, and Kelley Eskridge

The quality of the photos may not be the best, but these were done long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. The memories cannot be contained in so few pictures, yet for those of us who were there, they may trigger the infinity of all that we shared.

June 27, 2010
Clarion

Tomorrow, June 26th, is the 22nd anniversary of my arrival at the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop, on the campus of Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. The following piece was written for an anthology about Clarion several years ago, one which firstly did not take the essay and secondly seems not to have appeared at all. Be that as it may, I’ve decided to post it here. Enjoy.

And to all my fellow Clarionites, Happy Anniversary.

Baked Grass and Surgical Evisceration

The room could double for a steambath late into the night. When we arrived—seventeen of us from Maine to California, plus one from England—the weather was the last thing on our minds. Now, four weeks into it, ignoring the weather was a consuming pasttime. East Lansing was a torpid landscape of browning grass, heat mirages, and wilting humans. Earlier it had been 103; as the sun vanished it left behind an afterwash that, I swear, raised the heat index.

Owen Hall. Seventh Floor. So this is Clarion.

When I had applied for the workshop it was an act of measured desperation. I’ve always, in one way or another, wanted to be a writer, but not until 1981 or ’82 had I done anything about it. Even then it was more a hobby than—well, than the passion it has become. In the fall of ’87 I filled out the applications, placed my two stories with them into an envelope, and sent them on their way, like a bottle with a note for help cast out to sea. I had every expectation that this, like most of what I had written in the previous five or six years, would be rejected. I had solemnly told my companion-best friend-lover Donna that if Clarion did not want me I would give it up. The writing. Like a junky I was not at all certain that was possible. But rejection after rejection adds up and the demand of the Gods Who Edit And Write The Checks seemed unachievable. I had reached the end of my sanity. I had no idea why I was unable to write salable work. I had no idea what I was doing wrong. I had no idea why my offerings came back unwanted. If there was one thing I knew clearly about my expectations of Clarion it was that this question be answered. What was I doing wrong?

Being accepted to Clarion was not quite as great a relief as a cancer patient being told he is in remision—but I think I have an inkling what that must feel like.

Now, the heat sapping what energy was left after workshopping and writing, my thoughts drifted toward doubts of a different, though kindred, sort.

What the hell am I doing here?

Long distance to Donna (glumly): “I don’t know what I’m doing here. There are some incredibly talented people here. I feel like…I don’t know…I don’t measure up.”

Donna: “Do you want to come home?”

Me: “I don’t know. Yeah, maybe.”

Donna: “Okay. Then walk. And make sure you bring everything with you.”

I had brought a coffeebrewer, my own coffee, a MacIntosh computer, half a dozen reference books, a tape player and two dozen cassettes, vitamins, and clothes. Oh, yes, a small portable fan, which in this heat had become a cooling fan for the computer, lest it seize up on me and mightily crimp my progress.

The white screen of the MacIntosh seemed as daunting as the proverbial blank sheet of paper so many writers have mentioned. I was supposed to fill that screen. Hm.

Clarion was a six week escape. I had never had, and would probably not have for a long time afterward, so much time to simply write. I wanted to take advantage of it. I hyped myself into overdrive whenever the least thread of a story line presented itself to me. Get it out, get it on the disks, don’t let it get away whatever you do!

Fourth week. The story I had finally finished the previous night had come out easily enough, but then I printed it out. I listened to the insect buzzing of the printer and with each pass of the ribbon felt worse. Another piece of crap. Another failed experiment. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. So much for improving.

I stepped out into the hallway while it printed. From around the corner at the far end—emerging from the “girl’s hall”, a result of MSU sexual prudery or something (which never made sense because there were regular MSU students of both sexes strewn up and down both corridors, which meant only the Clarion students were segregated…)—Daryl, Andy, and Brooks came advancing toward me, Andy aiming a video camera and Daryl reciting some narrative like a demented Inside Edition reporter.

Everyone ended up doing a spot for Daryl’s tape, a video documentary of bits of Clarion. When the excitement had died down and the camera was gone, I went to bed.

Swelter, swelter. Listen to heat melt the oxygen in the air.

In the morning I woke to the gurgling of my coffeemaker. I looked over the story again, grimaced (there is a word, are we in the sf genre aware? that almost never appears in any other form of fiction, and I have heard solid arguments from english professors why sf will never be significant because we insist on using “grimace”), and stared out at the highrise shimmering across from our building. It was already too damn hot.

I read the last story that had to be critiqued that day, made my notes, knocked back some more coffee, and dressed. I left my cubicle and headed for the back stairs.

Behind Owen Hall a narrow river, the Red Cedar, runs through the campus. A forest area sprawls against the river. There are trails and it is preternaturally quiet and beautiful. I had gotten into the habit of going this way to Van Hoosen every morning, camera in hand.

Van Hoosen is a conference hall connected to rows of fairly nice apartments surrounding a grassy courtyard. The writers-in-residence live in one of these spacious apartments. They are air conditioned. We had commented to Al Drake and David Jones, our director and assistant director, that many of these other apartments seemed empty. It would have been nice to have been allowed to occupy them rather than the monk’s holes on the seventh floor of Owen.

“Expensive,” David had said.

“They’re empty,” we replied.

Van Hoosen was air conditioned. Mercifully. I handed my manuscript to David for xeroxing and got another cup of coffee.

This was week four. First we’d had Tim Powers; then Lisa Goldstein; Chip Delany; now we had Stan Robinson. Stan brought with him memories of his Clarion experience, a quietly academic approach, a croquet set, and we were considering blaming him for the heat.

The workshop was conducted in the round. Each of us took a turn, rotating clockwise, starting at the given week’s instructor’s left and coming full circle back to him. After the writer, then Al Drake would add something. Each of us did what we could to avoid being First.

It’s difficult to describe what goes on at such a workshop. Stan had congratulated us for not indulging in shotgun/machinegun crits, as, he explained, had happened during his Clarion. We spoke to the story in hand, examined it technically, almost clinically, and tried to keep our visceral reactions objectifiable. Sometimes that wasn’t possible. Sometimes a story was either too good or too bad to be objective about and sometimes that aspect had to be addressed. But we tended to be—if this is applicable to students—professional about it. From some of the stories I’ve heard some workshops had been bloodier than a Brian dePalma flick.

The workshop went until lunchtime. Then we had time to write. Or wander the campus. Or go into town and blow it off.

I was written out. I felt dismal about my story. I mentioned it to Kelley, but I couldn’t explain without telling her the story, and we had all gotten into the habit of not discussing the specifics of our stories before they were written. I felt by and large out-of-place here.

I grabbed my cameras and walked down Bogue St. into town.

Bogue dead-ended at East Grand River Avenue, which borders the campus, separating it from East Lansing proper. It’s a broad street with islands running down the center, and containing shops, restuarants, message boards with layers of posters and personal notes tacked to them. One of these boards had caught fire recently; no one had cleaned off the charred remnants and now more messages were being tacked over the blackened tatters.

I hesitated before Curious Books. This had become the bookstore of choice for us, not least because the owner, Ray Walsh, had arranged for each of our instructors to do a signing every Wednesday. It was a wonderful bookstore, crammed with used and new, the air permeated with the heady odor of printed matter. I’d already spent a small fortune here. I walked by.

I went straight to the Olde World Soup Kitchen. As far as I had been able to tell I was the only one who had discovered this place. I adore a good bowl of chicken soup (they make excellent sandwiches, too) and I wasn’t unhappy about being alone. I could sit and think.

Some of the things I thought about were facets of Clarion that nobody ever talks about—at least, they didn’t tell me.

One: you learn just how much you can accomplish on five hours or less a night sleep.

Two: there are worse things than not being able to write at all—being able only to write garbage.

Three: you discover just how much alcohol you can take in and still be coherent. Sort of.

Four: the workshop structure of Clarion lends true insight in just what an editor must go through daily dealing with the slush pile.

I had my soup and a sandwich and I thought about these and other things. No conclusions, just mental exercise. At this point I wished I could have turned my brain off for awhile. When I had no more excuses I stepped once again into the blastfurnace and made my roundabout way back to Owen Hall. As I entered the lobby George was passing through.

“David’s looking for you,” he said. “Something about missing a page of your story.”

“Shit. Where is he?”

George had a number jotted down and I called on one of the lobby phones. David explained that I was shy the last page of my story, could I get him another and run it over to him?

What else was I supposed to say? No, David, let everyone read the damn thing and guess the ending. I ran up the stairs—the elevators took too damn long—sprinted to my room and booted up the story. I printed out the last page, closed everything down, and bolted for the stairs again. The copy room for our use was two buildings away. I ran.

When I entered the building I encountered a large group of Asian exchange students, all talking animatedly in their own tongue. I strode through them, silent, out-of-breath, and sweating profusely, a lone sheet of paper in my hand, and somehow did not seem to attract their attention.

David was in the basement. His eyes widened slightly when I entered the copy room.

“Here,” I said, handing over the page.

“Thanks. I’m sorry about this.”

“No problem. My fault. But I don’t understand how one page could’ve gotten lost.” I glanced at the pile of copies he’d been running. We had a lot to read tonight. At least I didn’t have to go through my own story again.

“Well, yours was the last one in the stack and I’d gotten all the rest copied, then I couldn’t find the last page.” He scratched his head. “I’m glad George found you.”

I opened the copier lid. A sheet of paper lay there. I picked it up. We both stared at it. My original last page. David winced.

“Sorry.”

I didn’t mind too much. This building had fully functional air conditioning.

When he finished, I walked with him back to Owen, talking about various things that didn’t require a lot of thought. David slid the copied stories under the door of each room containing a Clarionite. As I watched each copy of my effort disappear under each door I felt worse by degrees.

We parted at my room and I locked the door behind me. The small, rather noisy refrigerator I’d gotten from management contained a couple of six-packs of wine coolers. I stripped, showered, and sat staring out the window, downing one after another. In the middle of the third one I started reading the small pile of stories.

I’m a slow reader. I was worried about that when I came and found out what the schedule was. I had to read all these tonight, critique them, and be ready to be constructive in the morning. As long as the stories were short I had no trouble, but once in awhile someone—like Daryl—would dump a novelette or novella on us, hence a night that basically allowed me about three and a half hours’ sleep. Tonight there were four stories, including mine. Well, I didn’t have to read mine. One of the others was about nine thousand words. I read that first.

It was dark by the time I finished the other two.

I was on my fifth cooler.

Instead of trying to sleep in the sauna of my room, I decided to go down to Stan’s room to soak up some atmosphere—cooled atmosphere.

(I’m also not a party sort. I tend to be horribly shy in groups larger than two, so I hadn’t attended very many late night bashes with instructors. To be fair, there hadn’t been many till Stan’s week.)

When I arrived at his room, my head nicely encased in cotton from the coolers, things were quiet. Stan was holding forth about his Clarion. Andy was there. Sharon and Glenda, too. I had no idea what time it was. I helped myself to a glass of white wine and sat and listened.

“—no, we weren’t even here,” he was saying. “We over in ____ Hall. The workshop room was in the same building.”

The air was nice. I sort of nodded off.

“Wanna go for a walk?”

I looked up. Andy was standing before me. “Hmm?”

“We’re going for a walk with Stan,” he said.

“Where?”

“Over by his old hall.”

I glanced at my watch. It was nearly midnight. I was tempted to stay in the room and enjoy the air, but what the hell? I had missed a lot of this sort of thing so far (I thought) so I shrugged and stood.

It had actually cooled down somewhat. The night air was maybe ninety degrees? The grass crackled sadly underfoot, like we were walking on small snack crackers.

The stars were brilliant, though.

Stan spoke in semi-reverent tones about water fights, group readings, the horrible cafeteria food, tristes, trials, and travesties. I thought, my what a placcid, boring group we are compared to his. (Later I asked Damon about that and he opined that the 88 Clarion class was an older median age than the others, older enough that we didn’t—well, behave younger.)

We arrived at a gothic manse of a building that hulked in the night like a troll’s mound.

“This is it,” Stan announced and bounded up the front steps. He grabbed hold of the door handle and pulled. The doors rattled. “It’s locked…” He tried the other doors. “What time is it?”

“Twelve ten,” I said. I stood next to Andy, hands in my pockets like a tourist, watching Stan go from door to door, peer through his framed hands into the dimly-lit interior, grow visibly disappointed.

“I guess they lock up at midnight,” he said. “Well, my room was over here.” He crossed the law (crackle, crackle, crackle) to a row of windows that looked into the basement. He started searching. “Damn. They aren’t dorm rooms anymore. They look like store rooms.”

I walked up beside him and looked in. Boxes, old desks, unmarked rolls of something (maybe maps) filled the rooms. Stan went to the next, then the next.

“I don’t remember which it is,” he said.

“Let’s try the back door,” Sharon suggested.

I nodded and followed Glenda and her to the rear parking lot. The doors were all locked. Stan and Andy came around then, Stan talking once more about his days at Clarion. I told him none of the doors were open and he gave the building a sort of wistful look.

“Oh, hell,” I said, pulling my pocket knife out, “there’s always a way in.”

Stan looked at the knife. “What are you going to do?”

I shrugged. “Find a way in. What are they going to do, arrest us?”

Stan frowned. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Andy was grinning.

“For nostalgia’s sake?” I suggested.

Stan shook his head. “No. Let’s get back. It’s not important.”

I raised my eyebrows, trying to look very Spockian, then shrugged and closed the knife.

We wandered back to Van Hoosen. Daryl was walking his computer down from Owen.

“What are you doing?” Andy asked.

Daryl gave us a frantic look. “I can’t take it anymore! I’m melting! I can’t think! I won’t stand for it, I tell you, I just won’t!” Then he grinned. “I’m setting up in Van Hoosen.”

I faded away from them then and wandered back up to my monk’s hole. The coolers, the wine, the walk—hell, I passed out.

In the morning I woke up and sat on the edge of my bed staring at the coffeemaker that I had forgotten to set. No coffee. Shit.

I splashed water on my face, then made coffee.

A note had been slid under my door in the night. Sleepily, I scooped it up and returned to the edge of the bed. The coffeemaker gurgled energetically. After a couple of minutes I turned on the stereo behind me. Genesis came out.

I opened the note.

“Mark: just wanted you to know, loved this story. Your writing gets clearer and clearer. Keep up the good work. Kelley. Ditto, Mark. Nicola. Me, too. Glenda. Chin up. Peg.”

I sat there with a goofy grin—I could feel it, I know when I have a goofy grin—staring at that note. In one note I went from maudlin to mushy.

Later, in the workshop, they eviscerated that story. Of course. Being a friend means being honest.

That was the other thing nobody told me about Clarion.

New Fantasy Thugs, Clarion class of 1988: l to r (roughly) Lou Grinzo, Jay Brazier, Daryl Gregory, Kimberly Rufer-Bach,Kelly McClymer, Mark Tiedemann, Peg Kerr Ihinger, Brookes Caruthers, Sharon Wahl, Nicola Griffith, Kelley Eskridge, George Rufener, Glenda Loeffler, Sue Ellen Sloca, Mark Kehl, Andy Tisbert

June 25, 2010
Shaw

Given the subject of the last post, I feel this is appropriate. Add a little light to the dark.

Tomorrow—June 23—is the 15th anniversary of the closing of Shaw Camera Shop. I was there on the last day (and at least one day afterward) and saw it shut down.

I grew up there.

As I’ve noted, I became interested in photography when I was fifteen. Dad gave me his vintage Canon rangefinder, bought me a small lab—Acura enlarger, a few trays, tongs, mixing bottles, a plastic film developing tank, a safelight—and I was off. Interestingly, I now recall, we bought all the darkroom stuff at, of all places, Famous-Barr. They had a complete photographic department then.

Soon after I began making my first messes, photographically-speaking, we started hanging out at Shaw Camera. It was close and had more goodies than the other close one, Jefferson Camera. Besides which, we almost immediately took a liking to Gene and Earline.

Physically, it filled the ground floor of a large two-story building near the intersection of Shaw and Vandeventer. The corner building contained a liquor store—Bus Stop Liquors. Catecorner across Vandeventer was Irv’s Good Food, which was immortalized in Glenn Savan’s novel, White Palace. It was the classic greasy spoon diner. The cook was an ageless fellow right out of a Woody Guthrie world named Earnie. On the other two corners were gas stations, one of which closed down (the one directly across the street from the Shop) before I started working there.

It was also right up the street from Missouri Botanical Gardens, which became a major customer.

The neighborhood was old and, as they say, “in transition”, so for years it was a mix of urban yuppie and down-and-out Section 8. Highway 44 was visible from the front window.

The store part was bright—a long counter that turned in an L about midway in, with glass cabinets behind a central rack on which were photofinishing order envelopes, the phone, various catalogues, right next to a counter containing the bins for finished work and the cash register. The back half contained two rows of shelf space on which one found supplies of all sorts. When I first walked in there, it was a cornucopia of cool stuff. If you wanted to start up in photography—the whole thing, shooting and printing—Shaw was the place to go.

Along the right-hand wall, midway, you came to an alcove. A door within opened to another large space which housed their collection of cameras and other assorted collectible equipment. (The collection was world class and included an all-mahogany 8 X 10 view camera from the 1880s. It drew the attention of serious collectors, including once Martin Barre of the band Jethro Tull, who wanted to buy it outright. Earl wouldn’t come down enough for him, though.) This room had three corked walls. One was taken up with a white background against which Gene shot passport pictures. The other two were used to hang pictures. Customers could display their work.

Proceeding down the center aisle, back in the main shop, you reached a wide access that could be barred by a heavy accordion steel gate. They’d been robbed once. Bad enough that the thieves stole camera from the shop, they had gone back into the lab and opened every single box of paper, exposing it all, putting the shop in serious trouble. The cameras were insured, the material wasn’t. The small area immediately through this access contained the lunch counter and the copy stand. To the right were two doors—one to the bathroom, the next to the office.

To the left was another wide access, which led to the lab space.

The building had once been a bakery, so this entire back area was done in polished white brick. (A great uncle of mine had actually worked in the bakery, in the 20s.) A separate room had been built square in the center of this huge space, and inside that room was the darkroom. Three enlargers, standing alongside tray set-ups. Everything was done by hand. No automated printing machines at all.

At one time this section had been leased out to a film sound-striping operation, wherein the sound recording part of movie film was added to raw film. This was a separate business from Shaw. Part of the chemistry these folks used was carbon tetrachloride. They spilled some one day—a whole bottle. They took their time cleaning it up and the fumes drifted into where Earl was working. At that time she wore contact lenses. The carbon tet vapors his the lenses and shattered them. Earl had no corneas after that and when we knew he she wore very thick glasses through which her eyes looked truly weird. That she could see at all was amazing, that she could see as well as she could defied reason. The film-striping company was asked to leave after that.

Just for reference, here is an old photograph from a newspaper article about the shop and Earline, from 1964.

This was before I knew her and before the accident.

I went to work for them in 1972 as part of the first Distributive Education program at my school. Actually, it was before that, in the summer. I’d hoped to keep the job all that year. But I was a terrible employee. At 17, I simply didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Not the lack of training, that was a given. But the idea of holding a job, of being a self-starter, of being responsible—I didn’t get it. So they fired me. I deserved it.

I had three more jobs between then and when they rehired me in January of 1976. By then I’d figured out how to be an employee and Earl took a second chance on me. Apparently it paid off, because I worked there until June of 1995.

Most of our work at the time was custom. Fine prints for particular people. We did only black & white. Color work we jobbed out and we had a couple of labs for that, most of which are gone now. For the amateur photofinishing there was Rainbo Color. Custom transparencies, Master Slide. They later added custom prints as well. Eventually, there was a lab that did cibachrome prints, Novacolor. And, of course, there was the Great Yellow Father—Kodak. But we did the black & white.

A couple years after I went back to work for them, we got into the yearbook business. For a few years we were printing all the work for the three largest yearbook photographers in St. Louis—Vincent Price, Hal Wagner, Lyle Ramsey (I think, memory may be playing tricks with me)—and had to add new equipment and hire new people. Earl was still lab manager, but more and more the daily management was left to me, while Gene handled all the retail.

As I mentioned before, they adopted me. When they realized how serious I was becoming about writing, Earline gave me an IBM Selectric for a Christmas present. (Later she gave us our first computer, a first-generation MacIntosh, which proved…inconvenient.) Annual bonuses were normal. Trips to the country regular.

We laughed all day in that place, even though we worked our butts off.

When I started seeing Donna and introduced her to them, they took to her immediately and folded her into the family. Donna used to ride the bus to and from her job and she got out early enough to come by the shop. She would come back at the point in the day when all the prints had to be dried. This was in the days, still, of what we used to call “real paper’—fiber-based, not resin-coated—and we used an enormous drum dryer. You’d lay a row of prints on the apron as it moved toward the polished ferrotyping drum, against which they would be squeegied. The drum, which was a good four feet in diameter, turned slowy and by the time they came round they would be dry and fall off into a tray. Donna would just come on into the back and start drying prints.

I think back to that time now and find a thick chord of nostalgia. Good times.

I worked there through an expansion that saw us making quite a bit of money. We started doing the b&w for several camera stores through Rainbo Color Lab. For a time I think we printed every black and white image sold in St. Louis. The roll-call of the stores is telling about how much has changed. Jefferson Camera, O.J.’s, Clayton Camera, Kreumenacher’s, Vazi’s, St. Louis Photo, Dicor, The Shutter Bug, Sappington Camera, Creve Coeur Camera, Schiller’s…

Of the bunch, I think Clayton Camera still exists and Creve Coeur and Schiller’s, all very much changed.

Earline had had her first bout with cancer in the mid-Sixties—uterine. When I went to work for them the second time, shortly thereafter, it came back as breast cancer. She fought that off. But then it came back again as a weird manifestation of lung cancer and that was when she began to lose. It metastisized and when it reached the brain she died. I occasionally still have dreams about her.

She’d started as a street photographer at 14. She was self-educated. When I went to work there in 1976, she was learning Russian. Just for the hell of it.

The demise of Shaw Camera Shop still causes a touch of bitterness. It didn’t have to happen. I’d offered a number of ways to change with the times, most of which, for reasons I won’t detail here but which were profoundly short-sighted and stupid, were ignored by the new owners. Little by little, customers went away and we didn’t replace them. Eventually, it just couldn’t be sustained.

Today if you go by there you’ll find it’s home to a lawn ornament/antique shop called Gringo Jones. They’ve gutted the insides, but, as I finally worked up the nerve to go through there last year, you can still see where everything was, a kind of archaeological trace. The liquor store is gone, too, but that had closed down while we were still open and was taken over by a botanical shop called The Bug Store, which is still there.

Irv’s Diner is long gone and where one of the gas stations was is now the forecourt of a research center owned by the Garden. Where the other gas station had been is a parking lot, also owned by the Garden. It’s a thriving neighborhood now.

Like many good things, I didn’t realize how much I liked working there until long after I didn’t anymore. I haven’t even touched on the wide range of characters we had for customers, a catalogue of unique people I doubtless mine in my writing. Many if not most brought smiles when they came in.

Occasionally, up on The Hill, St. Louis’s designated Italian neighborhood, you can still walk into a restaurant or a store and see a print we did hanging on the wall. One irony was that after two years of trying to break into publishing novels (and failing) I had to go back to a dayjob. I got one very quickly, at Advance Photographic, which was less than half a mile up Vandeventer from where Shaw had been. To my surprise and amusement, about half their black & white customers were my old customers. So for a brief time there was a bit of continuity.

But that’s gone, too, now. All that remain are a lot of photographs, memories…and a very substantial piece of who I am.

June 22, 2010
Gene

This is not the way I wanted this to be done.

I’ve talked here before about my years at a place called Shaw Camera Shop—4468 Shaw Ave, in St. Louis, Missouri. I worked there for 20 years. I did black & white processing, printing, waited counter, swept up, stocked shelves, eventually hired (and fired) people and ran the lab, finally, toward the end, ran practically all of it because the then owner more or less walked away from it and let it die. I ended my tenure there with mixed feelings.

But the first 11 years were the years in which I grew up.

The two people who owned it then and ran it were straight out of a Dickens novel in many ways. Open-hearted, fun-loving, generous to a fault. They tended to adopt people and I was one of the ones who got swept in.

We found Shaw Camera back when I was 15 and had discovered photography. They were the supply house, the advisers, the place to go to hang out and imbibe the visual air.

Gene and Earline Knackstedt were a second set of parents to me. I loved them both dearly. Earline trained me to be a printer. She was good, she was so good, at what she did. What was amazing about her was the boundless energy she possessed, in spite of the fact that she had been fighting cancer in one form or another since the Sixties. While working for them, she had a reoccurrence—three of them—and finally, in 1985, died.

Gene and Earline were, if nothing else, best friends as well as husband and wife. Quite unconsciously, I took them as the model for my own relationship. Donna and I are best friends. That has seen us through a lot of troubled times. The same for Gene and Earl (as everyone called her).

Gene took care of the retail end for the most part. He was one of those ideal shopkeepers—amiable, wide range of knowledge, good story-teller, the kind of man everyone seems to like. Neat, meticulous, in many ways still a kid. He learned to fly while I worked for them. He loved it.

Both of them loved. Everything. Good food, travel, good books—but mainly they loved their friends and made them all feel as welcome as possible. They had a house far from St. Louis in a lakeside development with a lot of open, undeveloped land around. I often spent weekends down there. Earl and I would go for long hikes, me lugging 20 or 30 pounds of cameras along. Gene came down Saturday afternoons after closing up the shop.

When Earl passed away, Gene sold the shop. He wanted me to buy it. That was hard. I’d decided by then that I really wanted to be a writer and I knew that if I took on the shop that would be all but impossible. Running a business is a hundred-hour-a-week proposition, and I knew that. I’d watched, I’d learned. So to his disappointment (I’m sure) I said no. I didn’t want Gene to do that, but I understood. Too many ghosts in those rooms. Earl was gone, the memories would be sandpaper and razor blades.

So he did sell it. And he sold it to someone who didn’t seem to understand what it took. In any event, Shaw Camera stumbled on for another 9 years before finally succumbing to the loss of its resident spirits—Gene and Earl.

Gene retired to his place in the country. Donna and I still went down occasionally, but it was clear that things weren’t quite the same anymore. And I got more deeply involved in my own dream, which took far more time than I’d ever imagined. But I kept in touch as best I could. For a time, Gene served as a deputy sheriff. He practically ran the local airport.

And then I lost track completely. When my first novel, Mirage, came out I sent him a copy and got back and enthusiastic post card. I called. Something wasn’t right, he didn’t speak well. It turned out that he’d suffered his own bout of cancer—they had taken out a part of his tongue and jaw. During the operation, he’d had a stroke on the table.

We visited. His companion absented herself during our stay. We knew her so this kind of surprised us, but it became apparent that, on her part, we weren’t welcome. We spent a last weekend with Gene, who was still sharp, though impaired, and we talked a great deal about the past and what had been and what might have been. We “took care of business”, as it were.

I thought we see him again. But that was 2000 and the next years were hard and difficult and disappointing and. Still, I thought we’d see him again. I meant to call, to write. Admittedly, we were both put off by the attitude of his companion, who took very good care of him, and were reluctant to add any discomfort. Still, I’d intended…

I suppose what hurts is no one ever told us. I had to dig it up on the web. Gene evidently passed away a few years ago, at 76. There had been no memorial service for Earline, per her request, and Gene felt pretty much the same, so that doesn’t surprise me, but no one, among all our mutual acquaintances, let us know. I’m not sure what to make of that.

Gene was one of my best friends. He taught me a lot. He was something. I shot this at one of the last visits we made before he’d become ill.

Farewell.

June 17, 2010
Dad

My dad. I have a lot of mixed feelings about him, as every child does even if they don’t admit it. Most of mine are positive.

To be clear, he is still alive. He’ll be 80 next month.

In his own way, he encouraged me in just about everything I ever did. The problem usually was that I didn’t appreciate his encouragement. Partly this stemmed from a profound misunderstanding between us of the reason for his encouragement—or perhaps I should say the purpose behind it. See, Dad was a Depression Baby. Even in today’s economically stressed climate, most people born during or after World War II really don’t grasp all that meant. For one thing it didn’t mean the same thing for everyone. But for everyone of that generation, it meant something that drove them to make sure their children and grandchildren never had to live through such a time, or such conditions.

The irony of this—which I think was largely successful—is that the children of these people can’t grok the essential nature of their fears. Oh, you can think your way to it—after decades of wrestling with some of this I believe I can describe it and write about—but at the time of life when they are trying their damnedest to both impart their values and protect loved ones from the severities of the Depression, there is a profound mismatch of perception and apprehension. My parents both wanted me to be safe from what they went through—but they also wanted me to share the value they placed on money and caution and common sense and success. To succeed in one meant the failure in the other. I did not for years understand why my dad got so angry with me over how I went about choosing what to do with my time.

For what we had, my parents lavished me with largesse. I took an interest in art, materials appeared. I took an interest in music, a 1964 Thomas organ arrived in the house, state of the art with a Leslie speaker built in. I took an interest in photography, a lab arrived, then cameras, then more cameras, then supplies.

And there was Dad, peering over my shoulder, encouraging and sometimes driving me to master these things. It often led to horrible days of screaming and crying and nastiness. He could not tolerate mediocre work or ambivalence or sloppiness or…

Or the fickle attention span of a child.

What I did not understand until about a decade ago was this: all these things showed up, underwritten, sponsored, encouraged because he was trying to make sure I had a skill by which to earn my way in life. Whatever I wanted to do, he wanted me to do it at a level where I could make money at it. All of it was aimed at a career.

I was a kid. I wanted to play. We ended up dealing with each other at crossed purposes.

Had I known this then, I suspect I would have kept my interests to myself. I did finally do exactly that when I took up writing. That was the one thing I did not share with Dad.

But all the haranguing and yelling and insistence on quality that had preceded it ended up going into the work on the page.

I can say now that all he did I know he did out of love. He was trying in the best way he knew how to protect me. To make sure I’d be all right. He just neglected to tell me that’s what he was trying to do. I accepted all the things he and my mother provided as any child might, as expressions of indulgence. As toys. And I played.

Unfortunately, none of what he tried to help me do came to fruition in the manner he expected. He might have been happier had I become a studio musician, but learning to play in the traditional manner (lessons, constant practice of boring music, etc) left me cold and frustrated. I didn’t really start playing well until I got involved in a rock’n’roll band and of course that was music he couldn’t stand. (Even so, when he realized what was going on, he and mom actually went looking at portable keyboards and started learning what I would need if it turned into something. I nipped that in the bud by being secretive about it. No way did I want another two or three thousand dollar millstone around my neck. But they would have done it.)

The photography turned out to be different. He pretty much left me alone to pursue it the way I wanted to. And in my usual approach, I jumped head first into the most difficult parts, ignoring the tedious basics. Sure I wasted a lot of film, a lot of paper and chemistry, but in two and half years I was doing fairly high-quality work.

As an example, here’s a portrait I did of Dad that actually got some outside attention while I was still in high school.

This piece actually got entered into a state art contest. It made it all the way up to second place at that level and one result was to change the mind of the head of the art department about the value of photography.

At the time this image was made, Dad posed for a lot of pictures. He was still working as a machinist. Hard, intense labor at the time. These were the days before numerical control machines. He had to do the calculations by hand, load the steel stock by hand, operate the machines by hand. He was immensely strong at the time. He’d come home covered in sweat and grime, shower, sit, eat dinner. And then ask what I’d been up to and did I need help with anything.

He has always been there ready to help. So what if he got the method wrong? It wasn’t all wrong and the results were nothing to complain about (at least, I hope not).

After getting out of the shop—because he was the only one to volunteer to take the training when the company he worked for bought their first numerical control lathe—he worked just as hard to ascend a management ladder and ended up head of an engineering department with nearly a hundred engineers under him. He built an entire factory from the ground up for a single project and came in under budget and ahead of schedule. He taught himself four computer languages and learned the complex ins-and-outs of procurement for an international corporation.

He was retired—asked to do so, offered a big bribe to leave—because, despite all this, he only had a high school diploma.

As I said, he’ll be 80 soon. Physically, he’s much diminished. But the mind is still as sharp as ever and he still challenges me. And once the stories and novels started appearing, he was not at all shy about bragging on my behalf. (“I don’t know much about this literary stuff,” he told me once, “but your mother does and she’s says you’re a damn good writer.” Which meant he thought so, too.)

I found this photograph recently, scanned it, cleaned it up a bit. I thought I’d share a bit about my dad. He was and is Something Else. I love him.

June 8, 2010