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Posts Tagged ‘pat bean’

Sassy Squirrels

Posted in Journeys, Nature, tagged , , on June 8, 2014| 2 Comments »

“If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.” – George Eliot

When I hear a squirrel chattering away in a tree, my first thought is what bird is that. But then the little gray cells chime in, informing me that it's a sassy squirrel. -- Photo by Pat Bean

When I hear a squirrel chattering away in a tree, my first thought is what bird is that? But then the little gray cells chime in, informing me that it’s a sassy squirrel. — Photo by Pat Bean

Scattergories

I love playing Scattergories, a game in which you are given a letter of the alphabet and a category — like an R and restaurants. If you came up with Red Robin, you would get two points for the double R.

So one time when the letter was S and the category animals, I wrote down sassy squirrels, but the other players wouldn’t allow it.

Now I ask you, have you ever seen a squirrel that wasn’t sassy?

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: The Pop Up Camper: http://tinyurl.com/kpqedtj Capturing memories, and doing it quite well. Memoir writers might truly enjoy reading this one.

            Bean Pat: Abandoned Resolution http://tinyurl.com/l3orww7 I simply can’t get enough of this blogger’s sassy art. It usually makes me laugh at myself, and that is one of the most freeing things in life.

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What’s Your Hurry?

Posted in Favorite Places, Journeys, Nature, tagged , on June 6, 2014| Leave a Comment »

“We are all treading the vanishing road of a song in the air, the vanishing road of the spring flowers and the winter snows, the vanishing roads of the winds and the streams, the vanishing road of beloved faces.”   – Richard Le Gallienne

Find a stream and sit be it. Listen to the birds, glance at the sky, become one with yourself. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Find a stream and sit by it. Listen to the birds, glance at the sky, become one with yourself. — Photo by Pat Bean

Sit a Bit

” Everyone should sit by a stream, and listen, ” was a bit of advice I recently read.

I couldn’t agree more.

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: Wyoming breezes http://tinyurl.com/ndu87gh Everyone should also look to the sky … and simply breathe in the beauty.

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Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub

Posted in Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , , , on June 5, 2014| 1 Comment »

“I noticed every time I spent a lot of time in the bathtub, I would just get fantastic realizations about myself, and they were so valuable and liberating.” – Leonard Orr

I don't care who invented it, but of all the bathtubs out there the best is the claw-footed, whose shape invites one to soak and read at the same time. I can't tell you how many books I've read over the years that ended up waterlogged. A bathtub was the only thing I truly missed in my nine years of living on the road in Gypsy Lee. -- Wikimedia photo

I don’t care who invented it, but of all the bathtubs out there the best is the claw-footed, whose shape invites one to soak and read at the same time. I can’t tell you how many books I’ve read over the years that ended up waterlogged. A bathtub was the only thing I truly missed in my nine years of living on the road in Gypsy Lee. — Wikimedia photo

Don’t Believe Everything You Read

One of the blogs I follow is called Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.

http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/  I thought it an odd name for a blog, but that’s as far as the little gray cells went – until I read “The Crocodile’s Last Embrace,” a Jade de Cameron mystery by Suzanne Arruda.

Jade is constantly using odd phrases as a substitute for cursing, and in this particular book, one of those phrases is Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub. My little gray cells lit up like a neon Las Vegas Strip sign on coming across a second reference to the phrase. It was a sure sign that I was going to learn something new this day.

But I don't think I would have missed this early version of the bathtub. -- Wikimedia photo

But I don’t think I would have missed this early version of the bathtub. — Wikimedia photo

It seems that in 1917 (Arruda’s book takes place in the 1930s in Africa), H. L. Mencken wrote an article about the introduction of the bathtub to America, saying it was opposed until President Millard Fillmore had a bathtub installed in the White House in 1850,  which made it more acceptable.

The article was entirely false. Not only had an earlier president had a bathtub installed in the White House, but the tub’s invention was much earlier than 1842, which is when Mencken said it was invented.

Mencken fessed up in 1949, saying: “the success of this idle hoax, done in time of war, when more serious writing was impossible, vastly astonished me. It was taken gravely by a great many other newspapers, and presently made its way into medical literature and into standard reference books. It had, of course, no truth in it whatsoever, and I more than once confessed publicly that it was only a jocosity … Scarcely a month goes by that I do not find the substance of it reprinted, not as foolishness but as fact, and not only in newspapers but in official documents and other works of the highest pretensions.”

The story still won’t die. Even today there are sources that quote Mencken’s story as fact. Now I ask you, in this enlightened age of the Internet, how many other stories do you read that are fabrications of the truth?

Too Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub many for sure.

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: A Mixed Bag http://tinyurl.com/prdkb6c If you want it, then make it happen. Lots of good advice on how to do it.

Bean Pat: Antelope horns and gray hairstreak butterfly  http://tinyurl.com/kqdhgxm If you like nature, you can’t help but love this blog. I had never seen a gray hairstreak butterfly before. It’s beautiful.

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We’ve Come a Long Way Baby

Posted in Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on June 2, 2014| 8 Comments »

I find it deliciously intriguing that Miranda James is a male author posing as a female author.

I find it deliciously intriguing that Miranda James is a male author posing as a female author.

“After all those years as a woman hearing not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough  … I woke up one more and thought, I’m enough.” – Anna Quindlen   

And Ain’t It Great

I nearly bust a gut laughing when I discovered that Miranda James, who writes the “cozy” Cat in the Stack mysteries that I enjoy reading, was actually a male author.

Shades of George Eliot and Harper Lee, I thought. George and Lee were just two former female authors who used male pseudonyms for a better chance of getting published and read. Eliot, who was the author of such Victorian era books as “Silas Marner” (1861) and “Middlemarch (1871), was actually Mary Ann Evans; And Harper Lee, author of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” is actually Nelle Harper Lee.

Nelle Harper Lee is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, November 5, 2007 -- Wikipedia photo

Nelle Harper Lee is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, November 5, 2007 — Wikipedia photo

Other early day authors who used male pseudonyms included Louisa May Alcott, who wrote as A.M. Barnard before “Little Women” was published under her own name; The Bronte sisters, who first published under the names of Currer Bell (the first editions of “Jane Eyre”), and Ellis Bell (the first editions of “Wurhering Heights”); and Karen Blixen, who wrote “Out of Africa” as Isak Dinesen.

I guess just as these women writers thought to get more attention as males, author Dean James, AKA Miranda James, realized readers of cozies might be more attracted to mysteries in this category written by a female.

I suspect he’s right. What do you think?

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: Queen of the Gypsies http://tinyurl.com/p7m4gog I read blogs because of all the trivia I learn. And this one intrigued me. I’ll stop by the next time I’m in Meridian, Mississippi. I love the early-day motorless version of my RV Gypsy Lee, and wondered what it would be like to travel the country in that.

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Red-winged Blackbird

Posted in Birds, Journeys, Nature, tagged , , on May 31, 2014| 4 Comments »

            “In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.” – Aristotle

Red-winged blackbird sketch I made after seeing this bird during an Antelope Island outing. -- Illustration by Pat Bean

Red-winged blackbird sketch I made after seeing this bird during an Antelope Island outing. — Illustration by Pat Bean

Puzzle Solved

            I didn’t become a passionate birdwatcher until 1999. Until then, while I enjoyed watching the winged miracles when I saw them, unless it was a cardinal, blue jay, mockingbird or a few other quite common species, I couldn’t name them.

Female red-winged blackbird. -- Wikimedia photo

Female red-winged blackbird. — Wikimedia photo

But when the birding passion hit me, I became obsessed with identifying any bird that came into view. So it was that I spent nearly an hour at Green River State Park north of Moab, Utah, one afternoon trying to identify the bird pictured in the photo on the right. There were more than a dozen of them flitting around the reedy edges of a small stream of water.

I went back and forth through my birding field book without success. Then a male red-winged blackbird flew past – and the light finally penetrated my little gray cells.

I finally knew I was looking at female red-winged blackbirds, whose gift of nature are feathers that camouflage the girls when they are sitting on eggs and raising chicks.

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: Photo Nature Blog http://tinyurl.com/nymzhmb   One of my favorite birds — and this is a great photo capture of a red-winged blackbird  in flight.            

Bean Pat: 47-million year-old bird fossil http://tinyurl.com/ncbdvtr I found this discovery fascinating.

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Travels with Maggie

Posted in Journeys, Travels With Maggie, Writing, tagged , , , on May 27, 2014| 3 Comments »

            “Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.” — Cicero, 106-43 BC

Maggie, sadly, has left this world. I couldn't, however, have had a better companion to explore this country with than this spoiled brat -- and I say that lovingly, and all who knew her would agree with the description. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Maggie, sadly, has left this world. I couldn’t, however, have had a better companion to explore this country with than this spoiled brat — and I say that lovingly, and all who knew her would agree with the description. — Photo by Pat Bean

Step by Step

I laughed out loud when I read the above quote, which started off a recent Blood Red Pencil blog http://tinyurl.com/m33au3r  that I often read because it usually has a lot of good advice about writing.

Gypsy Lee, Me and Maggie's home for eight years. Pepper was my companion for the final year of my living on the road life style. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Gypsy Lee, Me and Maggie’s home for eight years. Pepper was my companion for the final year of my living on the road life style. — Photo by Pat Bean

Today’s was especially meaningful, as I have completed my book, “Travels with Maggie,” and now want to self-publish it. I’ve not been doing anything toward this goal for the past six weeks, sort of like that person who is just one class short of earning a college degree, but then drops out of school.

Come to think of it, I have two other books I’ve written that went no farther than a first draft. “Travels with Maggie,” however, has now had three rewrites, and I feel good about the content

So I’m going to take the advice given in the Blood-Red Pencil blog to do one thing every day toward getting my book published and marketed. Actually this is a pretty good goal for any project.

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: The Wanderlust Gene http://tinyurl.com/nx9qv3m  If you love trees, you’ll love this blog.

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A Seedy Question

Posted in Food, tagged , , , on May 26, 2014| 1 Comment »

     “A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search for truth or perfections is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life. – Lewis Mumford

I bet you can easily guess what kind of seeds come from this California poppy. -- Wikimedia photo

I bet you can easily guess what kind of seeds come from this California poppy. — Wikimedia photo

Mystery is the Spice of Life

OK. You’re not supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth.  “It’s the thought that counts and not the gift,” my mama drilled into me.

But do you know what these seeds and spices are? I think I've correctly guessed all but the top right. The two white ones are just special salts.

But do you know what these seeds and spices are? I think I’ve correctly guessed all but the top right. The two white ones are just special salts. — Photo by Pat Bean

I took the lesson to heart, which is probably why I get disgruntled when I hear anyone complain about something that was given them. That’s just downright rude – but then I have no problem with re-gifting as long as the giver never finds out, and one truly believes the gift is something someone else can truly use. Is this hypocritical?

That said, I’m puzzling – not complaining – over a recent gift I received from a friend. She’s a chef, and she knows I love to cook. So she gave me some special spices, individually packaged in plain white envelopes.

Then she laughed, and said that I add to figure out what the spices were.

I guess it’s a good think I love to solve mysteries.

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: Story Fix http://tinyurl.com/m5cq2t2  Great blog for writers, and this post is a gem, even if you don’t like barbecue.

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Geography Questions

Posted in Books, Favorite Places, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , , , on May 23, 2014| 4 Comments »

  “Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write, one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying…” – Pablo Picasso

The Vermillion Cliffs in Northern Arizona is part of the Mongollon Rim. -- Photo by Pat Bean

The Vermillion Cliffs in Northern Arizona is part of the Mongollon Rim. — Photo by Pat Bean

The Mongollom Rim

            I don’t quite agree with Picasso’s reasoning. While I do think of painting a landscape when I’m writing, I’m totally satisfied doing it with words. But then finding the right words to let a reader see a specific place never comes easy – at least it doesn’t for me. And reading about a place in a book often never satisfies me.

Oak Creek Canyon, which follows the Mongollom Rim between Flagstaff and Sedona, Arizonia. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Oak Creek Canyon, which follows the Mongollom Rim between Flagstaff and Sedona, Arizona. — Photo by Pat Bean

Take this morning, for example. I was reading a chapter in “The Desert Southwest: Four Thousand Years of Life and Art,” and within a few sentences, authors Allan and Carol Hayes, mention the Mongollom Rim, the 38th Parallel (which of course made me think of the Korean conflict dividing line) and the Tropic of Cancer.

Now while all three terms were familiar to me, I didn’t know exactly how their locations were being used in reference to the American Southwest. Having a mind that must be satisfied, I did a bit of research.

First I found a map that followed the 38th Parallel around the world, and learned that it bisected the United States north of San Francisco, south of St. Louis and south of Washington D.C.

Next I refreshed my memory on the Tropic of Cancer, which bisects Mexico south of the U.S. border, and relearned that it is the circle of latitude on Earth that marks the most northerly position at which the Sun may appear directly overhead at its zenith. This imaginary line is called the Tropic of Cancer because when the Sun reaches the zenith at this latitude, it is entering the tropical sign of Cancer.

So from this, I knew the area referred to in the book was located south of San Francisco and north of Baja California Sur.

I knew more about the Mongollom Rim because of my travels across this country, and knew I had crossed it quite a few times, but didn’t remember exactly where. The rim is the edge of the Colorado Plateau, and often the dividing line between landscapes below 5,000 feet and above 8,000 feet. Pin-pointing the rim on a map, I realized I had recently followed along it when I drove from Phoenix to Flagstaff on Highway 17.

And now you know what my wondering-wandering brain was up to this morning.

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat:  Losing Leroy http://tinyurl.com/pteym6y I once met Leroy. And this blog brought tears to my eyes – but joy, too. My mother

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Pepper and Dusty

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Dogs, tagged , , on May 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »

A friendly game of tug of war between Dusty, left, and Pepper. -- Photo by Pat Bean

A friendly game of tug of war between Dusty, left, and Pepper. — Photo by Pat Bean

   “A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.” – Elbert Hubbard

Best Friends

They like to wrestle, too.-- photo by Pat Bean

They like to wrestle, too.– photo by Pat Bean

Most late afternoons my friend Jean and I meet for a bit of chit-chat with our dogs.

I treasure such time with a friend. And so do Pepper and Dusty, who are friends, too.

Everyone needs friends.

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: Top 10 http://tinyurl.com/pb6ruhe Flowers that look like animals. This is amazing.

 

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Characters

Posted in Books, Journeys, Uncategorized, Writing, tagged , , on May 20, 2014| 3 Comments »

“Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all.” – Sam Ewing

“Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.” – Albert Einstein

My mother riding on the back of my brother's motorcycle when she was in her 70s. She was a real character, worthy of being a role mode for my fictional characters.

My mother riding on the back of my brother’s motorcycle when she was in her 70s. She was a real character, worthy of being a role model for my fictional characters.

Thinking About Creating Them

Back in my early teen years, I thought the way to be liked was to be nice and smile all the time. And it worked. But over the years, it turned me into a thin character, one whom people may have liked, but gained me little respect.

I love Maxine's character. Don't you?

I love Maxine’s character. Don’t you?

It took my mother, a feisty, plain spoken, quick-tempered, cigarette smoking (until she quit cold turkey at the age of 76 because the “damn” things became too expensive), to make me look at things differently. My kids adored her, and I had to wonder why.

It was her rough edges. And so, while I’m still nice and do smile

One of my favorite characters was Molly Ivins Now that's whom I would like to grow up to be.

One of my favorite characters was Molly Ivins Now that’s whom I would like to grow up to be.

a lot, I began to let the imperfect edges of my character leak out. I liked it – and evidently so did others because I gained more friends, and one of the nicest compliments I ever received was from a younger friend who told everyone “I want to be just like Pat Bean when I grow up.”

Currently I’m involved in a writing project with my oldest daughter, Deborah. After attending a writing workshop together,about the value of writing 20 minutes a day that Len Leatherwood taught during the Story Circle Network conference in Austin last month, we are both doing just that. Her project is a fantasy book that she has been playing around with for years. Mine is also a fantasy book that I’m making up as I go.

To keep us on track, we’ve established a slackers’ jar that is collecting quarters, one for each day one of us doesn’t write on our projects for 20 minutes a day. So far I’ve contributed a $1 to the jar, and my daughter only one quarter. She is also writing more in her 20 minutes a day than I am.

Right now I’m stuck on giving my characters character – the same way I was stuck for far too many years giving myself one. Ouch!

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: 20 Minutes a Day http://lenleatherwood.wordpress.com/ Thought you might want to see Len’s blog after I mentioned her. She mostly sits down at the end of her long days and writes whatever pops into her head.. It’s kind of a public diary, but I’ve gotten inspiration from many of those blogs. She is also an illustration, compared to me who must write early in the day or I don’t write, of how different writers write.

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