If Clowns Ruled the World

Yes, my mom DID save everything. So she could give it to us as Christmas presents when we became adults and de-clutter her house…

“Hey, any McDonald’s employees in the house tonight?”

Our table at the Riviera Comedy Club was so close to the stage we could have tripped the comedian on his way to the mic. He couldn’t help but notice my hand in the air; it was the only one in the room raised.

“Oh my God, you actually ADMIT it?”

Yes. Yes, I do. My declaration of McDonald’s loyalty provided about three minutes of comic fodder along with enough embarrassment for my husband that I’m no longer allowed to raise my hand at comedy shows (I have to keep my hands at my sides for auctions, too, but that’s another story). I’m sure there were more of us in the Vegas crowd that night. There had to be. Roughly 1 in 10 workers in the United States have been employed at McDonald’s at some point in their lives. And their website currently touts 761,000 employees in their U.S. restaurants alone. That’s a lot of Hamburglars.

I worked on two different McDonald’s crews, several years and hundreds of miles apart. The lessons I learned as a grill jockey became an important part of my work ethic and while working at McDonald’s may not be anyone’s dream job, there are a lot of people who could benefit from being part of the crew.

In this election year, what if we required every candidate for public office, regardless of the level, to work at McDonald’s for one week? Here’s what they’d learn:

Basic Economics: The simple rules of supply and demand. Estimating quantities to avoid excessive waste. Handling money responsibly. And learning to make change because sometimes things should cost LESS than people expect.

Teamwork: McDonald’s employees work stations during their shifts: drive-thru, counter, grill, fries. When one person doesn’t man their station, it throws everybody off. Do YOUR job and encourage those you work with to do THEIRS. One person can’t, and shouldn’t, do it all.

Flexibility: Work a McDonald’s counter on a Friday night when two busloads of high school kids pull in right after the grill is cleaned and the floor‘s mopped, and you learn to roll with the punches. Put a smile on your face, say “How can I help you?”, listen to what they want and give it to them if you can.

Respect: For yourself, your co-workers and the public you’re serving. You get what you give; give respect and 85% of the time, you’ll get it back. Don’t expect 100% because it‘ll never happen. There will always be that customer for whom the fries are too salty and the coffee‘s too hot.

One week, working for Ronald McDonald, can make you a better leader. It worked for Mayor McCheese. And if you don’t get elected, at least you’ve got some marketable skills for life after politics.

What lesson do you think political candidates should learn before they run for office?

He’s a Keeper

Carton 12 of 12 in the big move.

It costs more beer to get a dozen boxes of books carried across a front lawn than it takes to get a six-hundred-pound hide-a-bed couch shoved through a front door.

“ANOTHER box of books?” groaned the friends who were helping us move, as I handed over the last carton.

“It’s just paperbacks,” I said. “Did I mention there‘s beer?”

By the time we moved into our current house, I’d been amassing reading material for about 25 years. I am now 40 years into my collection. New selections are added and familiar tomes recycled continuously. I thought the Thompson library was pretty impressive until I read about Brewster Kahle’s little project to save the world’s books.

Kahle is an Internet entrepreneur whose goal is to collect one copy of every book ever published. With more books going digital, he wondered what was going to happen to all the hard copies? Now, he and his staff of 150 helpers are packing them away for safe-keeping in shipping containers in a warehouse in Richmond, California. They’re being digitized first but should something happen to the electronic copies, the physical ones, with covers and spines and pages you can turn the corners back on, will still exist. Kahle’s crew has half a million squirreled away already with a goal of 10 million altogether.

The number of books published since publishing began is many times more than 10 million. So how does he decide what to keep? For my own culling criteria, if I look at the book’s cover and know the butler did it with a candlestick in the dining room after finding out the mysterious woman he was having an affair with is really his cousin, it can go. But if I scan the book jacket and find one tidbit I don’t remember reading, it’s a keeper. My old books are usually passed along to other readers but there was one book that sucked so badly I actually threw it away. If I could have tracked down every copy of it and shredded them all to save the reading public from trudging through such crap, I would have. At least I was able to save one unsuspecting thrift store bibliophile from making the same mistake I did.

You can learn more about Kahle’s project at the Internet Archives, an online respository which includes archived text, video and audio. Another great resource for free audio books and stories no longer in print is Librivox, a site for which I’ve actually recorded some selections.

Mr. Kahle, best of luck to you in your efforts. I can’t imagine how much beer money it’s costing you to get the job done.

If you were saving hard copy books from extinction, what book would you make sure made it into the archives?

Writing the Rails

The truth of man’s existence revealed…on a Soo Line railroad car:

Who knew philosophers carried spray paint and hung around railyards?

I did. Because I looked. What’s the best rolling poetry you’ve ever seen?

 

Before and After

Three early mornings a week, I hit the gym. It’s a new habit I’ve been cultivating since the middle of January. I’m the slightly overweight middle-aged chick on the first elliptical machine just past the treadmills, the one whose mini T.V. monitor is always turned off and whose ears are bud-free. It’s not because I’m that focused; I just want to be able to hear any bones break or muscles tear before the excruciating pain gets to my brain.

I warm up by walking the dogs a few miles and when I go to the gym, I start on the elliptical. I finally know how to program it but I consistently miss one little step: entering my weight and age. A minute into the workout, the digital readout reminds me of the omission and I dutifully punch in the numbers after which the screen cheerfully reads, “Weight and age accepted!” I snort amidst the panting. If I accepted my weight and age, I wouldn’t be sweating my ass off in a gym at an hour when across town they’re up making my favorite apple fritters at the Donut Shop.

Aside from the walking thing, which I am obsessively devoted to and have been for years, I’m a slacker when it comes to organized exercise. Prior to this year, the last time I was a gym member, legwarmers and belted leotards were fashionable exercise attire and if anybody asked if you did Pilates, you might have answered, “No, but I tried ‘shrooms once at a keg party.” It’s not exactly a lack of commitment that’s kept me from being a “Body by Somebody”. It’s that starting out in a gym can be so damn intimidating.

My current gym is open 24 hours a day and not knowing what constituted peak hours, I went my first morning at about 6:30 a.m. I walked into a two-story hive of buzzing activity, and as the door closed behind me, I had a sudden urge to run screaming out into the dark parking lot. The scene was worse than I had imagined. Not only was most of the equipment occupied but the place was chockfull of “Afters“.

In the weight loss ad of life, I’m a “Before“. It’s what you start out as when you finally realize that cold mac n’ cheese is not the perfect breakfast food, and that a chin-up isn’t something you hold to get your shirt buttoned. “Afters” run backwards on treadmills without falling down and count zero as both a body fat indicator and the size of their yoga pants. I’ve never been an “After”, but I knew that morning that if I was ever going to stop being a “Before“, I had to waltz into that gym and do what needed to be done. So I sucked in what could reasonably be constricted without causing me to pass out, grabbed a towel and marched to the first elliptical machine.

I stepped on cautiously. If you knew my history of broken bones, torn muscles and strained tendons, you’d understand why I approach anything that sways when you walk on it with trepidation.  Grabbing the arm supports, I waited for the slimming to begin. Half a minute passed before the whip-thin blond on the treadmill next to me paused in her Bionic Woman dash to say,” You need to move your feet back and forth to get it started.”

“Thanks,” I said, flush with embarrassment. I swung my good leg (actually the lesser of my two bad legs) forward and the screen came alive with instructions. I had just settled into a lumbering rhythm and could feel the sweat beading on my forehead when a 20-something with calf muscles like chiseled marble stepped up.

“When it’s busy like this, you’re not supposed to hog the machines. People are waiting,” he said.

I stopped, feeling like an idiot for what was so clearly “Before” behavior. I apologized, and quickly wiped the machine down so he could take his turn. A spot opened up on a nearby recumbent bike and I pedaled for 10 minutes before heading upstairs to use the handful of weight machines I knew how to operate. Twenty minutes later, I was in my parked car texting to my BFF Lynnette (of Wordtabulous fame) about the horrible mistake I’d made in joining a gym.

I didn’t go back for three days. I did my pre-dawn walking as usual, rode my bike at home, lifted some weights and wondered why skinny, fit people had to be so bitchy. They weren’t all BORN “Afters“, were they? Some of them HAD to have started out as “Befores“. So what was their problem?

The more I wondered, the less I cared. I paid my membership dues like everybody else and “Afters” or not, I was using that gym. I now go earlier when traffic is minimal so I can use the equipment as long as I want; I follow an actual routine so I’m not just wandering around asking myself, “Will that machine make my ass smaller?”; and I’ve begun talking to some of the other people who work out the same time I do. Sometimes they even answer me back, though the most I get from the power lifters is a nod and a grunt between reps (it seems like a positive response and even if it isn’t, I’m taking it as one).

So join me and rise up, “Befores” – it’s our time. We’ll worry about “After” when we get there.

Can We Build It? God only knows…

He saw us coming from a mile away. We weren’t the only ones wandering through the home improvement store that morning with hand-scrawled building plans and a valid credit card but when the guy in the blue vest standing behind the counter saw the determination on my husband’s face, he knew he had a live one.

This building project we’re considering is my husband’s vision. My job is to find a way to make it happen. His job is to explain it in such a way that we can get a quote to take to the bank so I can do my job. The home improvement merry-go-round at the Thompson house never stops, and this year the painted pony we’re chasing is a new garage to replace the single stall version we have now.

A garage was the big selling point when we first bought our house. “We can put your car in it in the winter. No more scraping windows!” Hubby said enthusiastically.

I stupidly swallowed the bait. In 16 years, my car has spent less than 60 days in our garage, which has been taken up with motorcycles, snowblower, lawnmower, off-season patio furniture, tool boxes, coolers, a wall-length workbench (which doubles as a doghouse), three cabinets that Hubby is going to “do something with”, a small propane furnace that threatens to suffocate us every time we turn it on, and a rusty refrigerator that a friend brought over after HIS wife told HIM to get it out of THEIR garage. It lived in ours for several years as a beer cooler and liquor cabinet until it developed a suspicious fuzz problem and had to be put down. We need a new garage.

I have yet to meet a married couple who are on the same page when it comes to building projects. Oh, you may think you are but not only are you not on the same page, you’re not even reading the same book. The “vision”, as it was explained to me, was for a simple two-stall garage with a little extra room for a workshop. The “vision”, as it was explained to Mr. Blue Vest, was a little bit different.

“How big are we going here?” he asked. Hubby gave him the dimensions which turned out to be roughly the same size as our house, minus two feet on one end. What? We need three windows and a steel entry door, he continued, and one garage door that’s 10 feet wide and one that’s 9 feet wide. Huh? Sheetrock, electrical for a 220 hook-up, overhead lighting, lumber for a workbench, an air conditioning unit, oh, and a heated floor. Now, wait a minute, I said. Heated floor? That’s a carrot that was dangled in our home improvement discussions before when the basement bathroom was installed. I lost that battle. Our current floor heating system down there is a 50-year-old pyromaniac space heater that habitually toasts bathrobes and carelessly tossed pairs of underwear. But the garage was getting a heated floor?

At that point, I stomped off, and went to the only part of the store with things hanging from the ceiling I could swat at in frustration: the lighting department. If you find yourself stressed in a DIY store and you decide to go this route, swing at the plain white light fixtures. If you accidentally break one, they’re cheaper.

Hubby eventually wandered over, quote in hand. Dodging the swinging pendant lights, he waved the sheaf of papers at me and said, “Holy crap, the garage I want could be kind of expensive.”

I sent a Mission-style chandelier swinging with one poke. “Yep.”

“We probably don’t need some of this stuff, huh?”

“Nope.”

He scrutinized the figures, crossed out some options, and did some quick math. Folding the quote in half, Hubby surreptitiously slid the paper across the shelf to me.

“How’s that figure look to you?”

I curled back the corner of the page to see the number circled on the bottom. “I think I can make that work. Let me talk to my people.”

“You folks have a nice day!” The blue-vested minions called as we walked out to the parking lot. My husband waved and said, “See you soon!” I just kept walking.

The visit wasn‘t all stressful. Here’s a little item I found on my trek through the store I thought you might find interesting:

I asked a passing clerk where I could find them just to see if I could get her to say, “Stalkers in aisle 7.” But she wouldn’t play. Poop.

I Dub Thee

I began writing a new short story this week and it’s going fairly well. The storyboard looks solid, the premise is plausible, the twists (there are two) are just tricky enough to catch readers off-guard. The stage has been set, and all of the supporting characters know their jobs. There’s just one snag: my main character doesn’t have a name.

It’s not as if I’ve been avoiding her or calling her “Hey you”. She appears in the manuscript as “MC” (Main Character) and every time I see those initials, “Can’t Touch This” pops into my head. No, not really a big MC Hammer fan. Hated the pants. We are now far enough along in the project that she needs a name. She pointed that out to me during a writing session earlier this morning.

“I deserve a name,” she said. “A good one. What have you come up with?”

Knowing this time would come, I had drawn up a short list of possibilities but couldn’t make up my mind which one to use. “Just tell me what they are and I’ll pick one,” she offered.

I grabbed the Astro Pink index card and began firing them off. “Dara.”

“No.”

“Rachel.”

“Nope.”

“Jolie.”

“Pass.”

“Careta.”

“Eeuuww.”

I glared at her from across the desk. “That was my grandma’s name.”

“Sorry. What else you got?”

“Vikki.”

“Now that one I….yeah, no.”

“Astrid.”

“Really?”

“Just seeing if you were paying attention. How about Erika?”

The sudden silence was surprising and I looked up to see if she was still there. Lips pursed, head cocked, she considered. Then she smiled. “No likey.”

“Gah! That’s the last one. I got nothing.” The index card sailed onto the desk.

“I have one picked out. Want to hear it?” She said.

I closed my eyes and shook my head. “Sure.”

“Natalie.”

My eyes popped open. Natalie. Huh. I opened the manuscript and replaced every “MC” on the first page with “Natalie”, then read it back quickly. The flow was there. Problem solved.

“Natalie it is.” I sighed with relief, tinged with frustration. “If you had a name already, why didn’t you just tell me?”

“’Stubborn and difficult’. Page one, paragraph four. Remember?”

“Right.”

Need help matching monikers with your characters? Author Elizabeth Sims offered some helpful tips in her article “Namedropping” in the January 2012 issue of Writers Digest. While I encourage you to read it if you haven’t already, here’s the short and sweet when it comes to naming:

• Check the root meaning.
• Get your era right.
• Say them out loud.
• If you have a big cast of characters, vary the initials and number of syllables for their names.
• Use alliterative initials.

Memorable names can pop up anywhere. I found a great one this week in a local obituary. The man’s name? Just Andersen. Consider the possibilities. What tricks or tips do you use to name your peeps?

The Little Girl Who Could

WARNING: Some of the links in this week’s post contain graphic images.

The room was packed, the crowd much larger than expected. People filled the seats, stood along the walls, knelt in the aisles, and crammed into the small balcony and entry way. At the speaker’s request, chairs were brought onstage so everyone who needed a seat (and there were several older attendees who did) could have one.

The speaker walked out wearing a smart blue suit and a brightly colored scarf, carrying a handbag the size of a suitcase. She stopped center stage and stowed it between a leather armchair and a small table holding a vase of yellow tulips. Then she said in heavily accented English, “I would like the lights turned up, please. I want to see everyone who came to see me.” The moderator, surprised, complied. The old woman smiled, sat down and began to talk. She is Eva Mozes Kor, a 78-year-old Romanian-born Jew and a Holocaust survivor. She was 11 when Auschwitz was liberated and she didn’t speak about what happened to her there until 1985. Eva has told her story hundreds of times since then and this week, I was wedged into a space along the crowded back wall of Meier Recital Hall on the campus of Black Hills State University to hear it.

When my husband asked why I was driving 3-1/2 hours to hear Eva Kor speak, I said simply, “Research.” For the last several months, I’ve been working over an idea for a WWII novel about a half-Jewish American broadcaster who ends up in a concentration camp and is forced to do propaganda for the Nazis. This was an opportunity to meet someone who had survived the horror of Auschwitz. But I also had another more selfish reason for going: I’ve been in a writing slump as of late, and I needed to hear a story that would slap me across the face and say, “LISTEN.” I got one.

You won’t find Eva’s whole story here; it’s hers to tell and it’s compelling when she tells it, as you’ll see when you check out the links. She’s sharp and funny, a spitfire at 78, grown from the firecracker she was as a child. Not even Auschwitz could extinguish that spark.

Eva was 10 when she and her parents Alexander and Jaffa, and her three sisters Edit, Aliz and her twin Miriam stepped off the cattle car at Auschwitz. They quickly became separated: Alexander, Edit and Aliz herded one direction, Jaffa, Miriam and Eva another. A Nazi came down the selection platform looking for twins and noticed Eva and Miriam were dressed identically. He asked Jaffa if they were twins. “Is that good?” she asked. He nodded. “They are twins,” she said. The girls were grabbed from Jaffa and led away. The last sight they had of any of their family was their mother screaming and reaching out for them. And Eva and Miriam Mozes became Mengele Twins.

Eva and Miriam Mozes are the two children on the right in this photo taken when Auschwitz was liberated. (from http://www.candlesholocaustmuseum.org/)

During the course of World War II, Dr. Josef Mengele conducted atrocious experiments on approximately 1,500 sets of twins between the ages of 2 and 16. The experiments were a daily occurrence; Eva recounted spending 6-8 hours a day naked, being measured, probed and injected. For others, the experiences were even worse. The experiments finally came to an end shortly before Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviets in 1945.

What happened to Eva, Miriam and the other Mengele twins is unthinkable. But what Eva did in 1985 in response to it is even more astounding. She publicly forgave Dr. Mengele and the Nazis for what they did to her and her family. Her controversial act (which drew criticism from Holocaust groups and other survivors) is chronicled in the documentary “Forgiving Dr. Mengele”.

The standing ovation at the end of Eva’s presentation was well-deserved. Her message of forgiveness, whether you agree with it or not, was profound. This should be the part of the post where I say that her speech was an epiphany for me, one that shattered my writer’s block and led me to produce page after page of the best prose I’ve ever written. Didn’t happen. I didn’t go there expecting an epiphany; I expected information which is what I got – specific details about how the gas chambers worked, what the prisoners were fed, what it was like on that winter morning when the Soviets in their white camouflage uniforms stepped out of the snow and gave the starving children chocolate. But I left there with something else I hadn’t expected – a sense of perspective about the power we have over our own survival and that to move past the obstacles in our lives, even those as small as the occasional bout of writer’s block, takes forgiveness, and sometimes that means forgiving ourselves.

To find out more about Eva Mozes Kor, visit: CANDLES Holocaust Museum,  “Surviving the Angel of Death: The True Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz”

Who is an enlightening speaker you’ve heard and what did you take away from the experience?