Jackson's Actions

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire. --Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC) <

Blogspot has eliminated the special connection to my FTP server, so now many of my photos do not show up here, and the FTP side of things is all duplicated and indecipherable. I've tried to sort it out but it's not working like it used to, so I am going to stop posting here and start a new
blog using Blogspot all by itself. I shall come back to post the link when I'm set up.

I'd like to move some of the photos/posts to the new blog, but not sure how I can do that yet.

It was all lovely for a long time, but everything must end, they tell me. (why???)

Here's an interesting little project that is running around the country.

Thought you might be interested.

FREE ART!

Random acts of kindness can't be all bad.

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Being a retired person who paints and writes for accolades, it occurred to me that I needed to earn some money if I want to do more travel in the future (before I'm too old to travel at all!) A friend of mine, Wendy Kirkland, wrote and published a book called "Option Trading in Your Spare Time, a Guide to Financial Independence for Women." I bought it in the spirit of supporting her endeavors; I read it because it sounded intriguing -- and perhaps might provide some avenues for me to earn money.

The book is exactly what I needed. It is simple language, and while very technical in some respects, it's laid out in a way that if you're interested, you can follow it. I no sooner finished it than I realized I was interested in the stock market for the first time in my life!~

One thing led to another, and after several books I joined a mentor program at OptionsXpress. com, where I trade. I am learning stock option trading (which I won't even bother to explain, but it's a LOT cheaper investment than buying/selling stocks!) There's a lot of levels of learning, as there are in any venture you can think of (poetry, painting, fiction, hair dressing, plumbing or sales). And so I am hooked, really enamored of the 'game' of it, and how to make it as risk free as possible and still make money. I'm trading "virtually" (in a fake account with fake money) while I earn, but earning I am. I can't wait to "graduate" to the real thing.

BUT--the purpose of this post. Sleeping with the Enemy. I find myself smack dab in the middle of books, TV shows, and political frenzies which mostly indicate to me that Republican Capitalism is GOD on Wall Street. I have heard insane and really crass things said. Like "if Brown wins the Senate seat in Massachusetts, it will be great for the market." (Jim Cramer). And similar statements after Obama went after the banks (outrage, defensiveness, attacks), and THEN the Supreme Court's decision to allow corporations to contribute political funds WITH NO LIMITATIONS to candidates will undoubtedly change our political climate forever. The bankers go on TV and manage to double talk their rotten acts. It's amazing to me. Health care? They could really care less. Health Insurance lobbies galore. I have to tell you it turns my stomach to listen to some of them. Cramer especially makes it clear (with no tact or morality) that MAKING MONEY is his only purpose. Screw the country.
And all the lousy Congressmen and Senators who have NO backbone are just as bad. We are in dire straits. I have met the enemy and it is us.

Yes, I'm going to trade options. But I'm buying "Puts" (betting on downturns) on all those corporations and "too big to fail" banks I hope that fail. Look out, I'm a witch~!

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Karen Noel, an Asheville artist, has the gentle and sensitive nature that one would expect after seeing her delicate and beautiful paintings. She seems to paint series of things: flowers, a series called "She", and currently some gorgeous circular mandalas.

I wanted to share a few photos of her work. Her medium is watercolor, collage and colored pencil.









Unfortunately my amateur photography doesn't do justice to her work, but it's just too beautiful not to share. Thank you, Karen!

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When my publishing company, Lit Pot Press, was in full swing, I got a note from Walter Cummins, the well known Editor Emeritus of the Literary Review, asking if I would take a look at a special book of poetry written by Michelle Cameron which he was hoping to see published. The book was titled IN THE SHADOW OF THE GLOBE,


a story in poems about William Shakespeare's years at the Globe theater. It was a thrilling and original piece of work which I couldn't wait to publish. The work has been performed on stage and is treasured by all who are seriously interested in Shakespeare or narrative poetry. Cameron is a consummate poet, but more, she researches and historically fact-finds in order to create fictional realities that are so believable that you almost think they're true. And indeed they are. Almost.

Well, she's done it again with a new book. This time it's a debut novel called THE FRUIT OF HER HANDS, to be published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, in September 2009.

Michelle and I became friends when we did a book tour together for her first book, and so it with great pride and excitement I asked her to grant me an interview--to find out a bit more about this new project.


BEV: Congratulations, Michelle! That incredible talent of yours just keeps producing utterly unique and fascinating literature. I would imagine Simon & Schuster is a bit more exciting than Lit Pot Press, so tell us your experience getting this book into the big leagues. So many fine writers out there want to know how it's done.


MICHELLE: Bev, you're making me blush! And that's a loaded question. You know how grateful I am to you for having published IN THE SHADOW OF THE GLOBE, and how much I enjoyed working with you on that book. And I can state, categorically, that having a publication like that to my credit didn't hurt me in convincing both my agent and Pocket Books to take a risk on me.

But it can't be denied - there are definitely differences. Just to give you one example - I thought it made sense to have a reading in Manhattan and mentioned it to my wonderful Pocket Books publicist, Ayelet. And 10 minutes later, she wrote back with a date and time for a reading at the Park Avenue Borders. There's no question that the Simon & Schuster imprinteur has clout.

But to answer your question - how to break through. It's not easier, and frankly, according to my agent, it's getting increasingly harder as the publishing companies get squeezed in the current economy. And it's as tough - maybe tougher - than writing the book in the first place.

But here's the roadmap I used. I hope it can help someone out there:

*Know your genre, know who the big names are in it and research how they made themselves successful. My models were Anita Diamant and Maggie Anton. I was able to mention them in my query letter, state why I was like them, and how I was distinctly different.

*Research who your best agents are. (You can't do this without an agent any more, at least not in fiction.) Check what the writers in your space have to say about their agents. If you can't find the information for a specific author, try a Google search of author-name + agent. That's actually how I located mine.

*Read what the agent requirements for submission are. This is critical. They are looking for reasons to reject you (not out of malice, but because they are drowning in submissions). Do what they say. Don't try and convince yourself that it will be okay if you ignore their requirements. It won't be. Write the best letter you can, and make sure you consider how you can contribute to the marketing of your novel. This is a business. Jane Austen herself would have to be out there on tour nowadays (actually, she might have liked that).

*Hope, pray, light a candle - and take no rejection personally. (That last part is hard.)

Once you have an agent, there are still no guarantees. I have several very talented friends who have agents - but their agents couldn't sell their books. I received 15 out of 16 rejections before I got the single "yes." You have to hit the right agent in the right mood on the right day, and she has to do the same with the right editor, who has to convince a committee that the book is worth a shot. It's no wonder it's getting harder all the time!

BEV: Thanks so much. That is just wonderful information for a lot of writers out there in the throes of this struggle. It doesn't seem like it ought to be so hard, does it? I am so pleased when talent finally get through the dollar signs of the biz. I think #3 in your list above, "requirements for submissions to agents" is something nobody ever seems to talk about. I do hear about the query letter (a need for a good one) but this is gold. Do agents actually show their requirements some place? (I'm so not in the 'know' of this stuff, but I suspect some other writers aren't either. Most of us bumble along until someone saves us from ourselves.) Could you tell us some of your agent's requirements, just as an example?

MICHELLE: Most list them either on their Web sites or in books like Writer's Market. My agent's requirements were pretty straightforward - a synopsis and two chapters. But I've seen some that required filling out an extended form (mostly about marketing) and said NO query letters allowed, and one agent wanted two pages sent to her. Two. (And on the strength of those two pages, she passed!)

BEV: I read an early version of your new novel, Michelle, and it was wonderful then. I can hardly wait to read the finalized version. Could you tell our readers some of the personal history that led you to write this? I find it fascinating, and also give us a little recap of the book. The historical aspects are fascinating (I got a whole education reading it! Things I never knew!) But besides the earth-moving historical significance, this is a powerful love story. I'd love to hear how you came up with the bones of this. The intimacy mixed with the enormity of history is special indeed. What was your progressive process to choosing this, and developing it. I love to know how writers think and what surprises take them over once into the process.

MICHELLE: It was after I had finished IN THE SHADOW OF THE GLOBE, and I was casting about for a new subject. My mother had told a story about the woman I was named for, and I thought it might be fun to write that story. So I started poking around in my family tree. (Lucky for me, one of my distant cousins had created a very comprehensive one.)

It was then that I stumbled on a mention of Meir of Rothenberg. My mother had always said we could trace our roots back to the 1200s, and here was evidence that this wasn't totally a myth. I struggled to understand what was written (the account was in Hebrew, which I speak well, but am not that fluent in reading). I learned enough to send me to Google, to learn more. And then to start serious research.

Meir of Rothenberg was the leading rabbi of his time. He witnessed the burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1242 and wrote a moving elegy about it. He moved to Germany and established a seminary (yeshiva) there. He wrote thousands of letters -- I have the two-volume collection of what has survived -- ruling on issues of custom and law, based on his studies in the Talmud. And, when he was in his 70s, he resisted King Rudolf I's attempt to subjugate his Jews.

You asked about the love story. The first part of the equation was Shira herself. When I discovered that the story I wanted to tell was about a renowned medieval rabbi -- well -- I panicked. How could I encompass such a personality? The answer really lay in how I tell stories - from the side, looking in. So who better than his wife?

Now, there are no records of what Meir's wife's name was. Women's names weren't considered important enough to write into the family documents. But Meir himself wrote about his daughters, and my family tree named his son. Clearly he had a wife. But there was no way of knowing what she was really like. So I got to imagine her.

Shira's love for Meir is deep and transfiguring. Yet they don't have the most peaceful of lives. Shira is a brilliant woman in her own right -- she's been called a "first class mind trapped in a second class existence." Meir doesn't always respond well to his wife's desire to learn and to grow. And Meir is jealous of an earlier relationship she had, with the nemesis of the story, Nicholas Donin.

Donin was a real person, a Jewish excommunicate who converts to Catholicism and seeks revenge against the people who cast him out. He was slightly older than Meir, but the two of them were contemporaries, traveling around to the various Jewish yeshivas. It made sense that they would have met. It made sense that Shira would have been raised by a rabbi herself -and that Donin would have come to her father's home. And this gave me the chance to introduce a fictional love triangle that made both Donin's and Meir's feelings toward one another even more acute.

BEV: Well, it's done in a such a way that the characters truly come to life for the reader. I've never forgotten your characters, with so many memorable chapters because of your details, fascinating information, and the veracity of it all. And at the same time, a moving and powerful story, not a dry reenactment of historical fact. The truth that Jewish persecution was as rampant and widespread in medieval Europe as it was in the days of Hitler was really shocking to me. That's just my ignorance of history, of course, but in my mind we jumped from Jesus's crucifixion (he was a Jew) to the ovens of Auschwitz, and it wasn't like that at all. You have managed to bring to life some of those very real and heartbreaking realities in the disgraceful history of anti-Semitism, as well as the edifying cultural and educational contributions made over the centuries by the stature and strength of the Jewish peoples. Was it your intention that this book would be such an illustrious tribute to the Jewish tradition as a whole? It's an amazing story.

MICHELLE: I'm not sure novels should set themselves such lofty goals. I think the storyteller should care about telling a good story, first and foremost. What drove me to this one was the indelible image of Meir (and Shira) watching the Talmud burn in that market square in Paris. The novel grew up around my questions: how did they feel in that horrific moment? what happened before this? what happened after? A friend and fellow writer always asks this question at our critique group: What's at stake? To make sure my readers understood what was at stake throughout Meir and Shira's lives, they had to fully grasp the implications of medieval persecution -- that it was in the process of transforming from a general sense of suspicion and isolated incidents of terror to something that, at times, equated to a kind of national policy.

But I'm flattered that you think the finished novel is a tribute to Jewish tradition - it's wonderful to think I might have achieved that!

BEV: To this day, Israel is fighting for her survival. Can you tell me a bit about how, why and when you went to Israel. I do think that sometimes our unconscious motives might find their way into our writing. Were you involved in Israel's daily strife? You've had such an interesting life, I'm sure readers would like to know more about you.

MICHELLE: My parents moved me to Israel when I was 15. You can probably imagine what I thought of the idea. I was still sulking the day an Israeli Phantom jet chased two Syrian MiGs out of Israel - right over my head. It was Yom Kippur, 1973.

I was at boarding school some eight kilometers from the Syrian border. We spent the next two weeks in a bomb shelter. I'll never forget what it looked like during the first couple of nights, when we'd come out for a breath of fresh air and saw the little fires burning all over Mount Hermon.

That war turned me into an Israeli. Like every other Israeli, I went into the army. I served in the air force. By that time, it didn't feel unusual. It was just what was expected from you.

I lived in Israel for 14 years, only returning to the States when my husband and I decided our career goals (I wanted to be a writer, he was working in TV/film) would be better served in America. I often wonder what my life would be like if we hadn't made that decision.

BEV: Well, selfishly, I'm very glad you made that decision or I wouldn't have had the honor of publishing, reading and knowing you. You have a husband and two college age sons, a full time job, and yet you manage to write consistently. How on earth do you do it all?

MICHELLE: Ah, that's a question I get asked all the time. Up to three years ago, it was a struggle I was losing. I'd write in fits and starts, when I could sneak it in. I was writing poetry for awhile, because it took less time than a longer piece. Though the storyteller in me kept fighting to come out, even in the poetry. (Which explains IN THE SHADOW OF THE GLOBE, a little.)

But there were so many other priorities in my life, my writing took a back seat. And I HATED that.

Then I attended the Poetry & Prose Winter Getaway, that takes place every year over Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend at Cape May. Because by now I was working on the novel, I took a workshop called "Finishing Your Novel." Apropos, no? And after we finished critiquing everyone's work, the workshop leader, Carol, asked, "So what IS stopping you from finishing your novel?"

My answer was easy. It was time. I had no time.

I listed all the things I had to do -- work, kids, part-time teaching -- and my fellow workshop attendees are nodding their heads sympathetically. But not Carol.

"I have two questions for you," she said. "How much do you want it? And how early can you get up?"

My alarm clock goes off, without fail, every weekday morning at 4:30 AM. I get up and stagger over to the computer and turn it on. And then, for two glorious, silent, me-me-me hours - I write.

BEV: Wow! That is a commitment to write! And the results speak for themselves. Thanks so much for your time, Michelle. I've enjoyed this interview very much. I cannot wait to get my copy of the book! Tell us the launch date and how folks can buy a copy. May you sell out and go to reprint immediately!! I must say to all my readers that if you don't read this novel, you're missing something very special. (and those of you who know me, know I don't say that unless it's true.)

MICHELLE: Thanks, Bev. I've had a blast. The launch date is September 8 and the books should start showing up in stores up to week ahead of that date. I'm happy to speak with groups and to take part in book clubs, either in person (if you live in the NY/NJ area) or via phone or Internet. You can find out more on my Web site www.michelle-cameron.com. You can also follow me on Twitter at @fruit_hands.

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# posted by bevjackson @ 8:19 AM 1 comments

The floor of my office is now a kennel complete with bed clothes in case I need a nap, and trust me, I do.

2009-08-22 S&S (dogs)

What was I thinking?

Someone gave me a wonderful cat a couple of years ago. He is named Henry and is very attached to me, but oh, so catlike in his independence and demands. He weighs 19 lbs. and because my mother had a penchant for poodles, he now has a pink one of his own.



I actually never liked my mother's poodle. It was white and named Honeyboy. She kept him clipped in the frou-frou fashion of the breed, and he was jealous of me and would tinkle on my shoes, and bare his teeth if I sat near my mother. When he finally died they had him enshrined in a pet cemetery with a headstone. My mother asked to be cremated when she died, and so she was. As shall I. Poodles! Harumph!

But here I am in my dotage obsessively watching episodes of Cesar Millan, The Dog Whisperer, and yearning once again for dogs. I visited a friend with a dog named Lucy and I fell in love with her. Then local friends adopted a husky puppy and she is beautiful, so my yearning increased. I always said I would have to wait for Henry to meet his maker before I could have dogs. But last week (or the week before) I said to myself "why?" Why can't I have what I want when I want it? Am I the pack leader or what??! And so the search began. Internet sites, rescues, shelters, breeders--I looked at them all. I chose two and lost them to other adoptors. (Yes, I said TWO. I don't want one dog, I want two.) But finally in Waynesville, I found Sarge's Rescue and their local shelter (where they kill dogs twice a week) and I grabbed the dogs that appealed to me the most. Both boys. Both poodles.

Go figure.

Sugar is from Sarge's rescue. He's being neutered this week, so he doesn't come home until mid week. He's a little white poodle. He was found lost, in someone's barn, eaten alive with fleas, and covered in mud and feces, rail thin. The foster home has done wonders for him and his coat is starting to grow back. He's like a gentle lamb,
sweet as sugar.







Spice only spent four days in the shelter. He was picked up with a full coat of matted curly hair. He looked more like a curly Yorkie than a poodle. Somebody at the pound got the bright idea to groom him, however, so now he looks just like a poodle, in a color called "Cafe au Lait." Spice HATED the pound. In fact he does not like boundaries of any kind. He wants to be NEXT TO his person at all times, and do I ever have my hands full. When I drove him home from Waynesville, I hit a major traffic jam on Interstate 40. Like L.A. rush hour traffic, cars standing still. So I let Spice out of the too-small-for-him carrier. He leaped on my lap, and stayed there the whole trip home. (It took 1 1/2 hrs to go 22 miles) Now whenever we get in the car, he insists on my lap. This is dangerous, and I have yet to figure out how to break him of it. (but it's so damned cute!) He and Henry are NOT on speaking terms yet, so it's been a harried couple of days around here. I haven't had much sleep.






I've been buying baby gates to segregate the house -- cat on one side, dog(s) on the other. When Sugar gets home, it should get really interesting. Sugar and Spice have not met, and they both have turned out to be velcro dogs, so let the lap competition begin.

I really do need to get some sleep.

I'm going to need it.

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