Control Your Gun

Effective January 1^st, 2012, California Assembly Bill 144 has made it illegal to openly carry unloaded firearms in most areas of the Golden State. This law was passed to assuage the tender sensibilities of people who understandably become terrified at the site of any person who is not obviously a member of law enforcement, and is openly toting a holstered handgun, loaded or not (because – first rule of gun safety – you always have to assume that a gun is loaded).

This new law coincides with my husband and I dredging up vintage episodes of the television series, “Have Gun – Will Travel”, on the streaming video service.

If you’re not familiar with the series, “Have Gun – Will Travel” (aired Sept. 1957 through April 1963) it’s set in the post-Civil War United States, and follows the personal and professional life of the character known as ‘Paladin’, a hired gun.

Paladin resides in the Carlton Hotel in San Francisco, dresses like an eastern dandy, drinks good whiskey, and purportedly spends his free time nailing numerous women. Paladin is an avid patron of the opera, and often quotes Shakespeare on the fly. He has working knowledge of leading historical military coups, and world conquerors, such as Alexander the Great.

In Paladin’s Old West, blood and sweat have strange honor. His fee is usually one thousand dollars a job, though he’s not above taking ten grand to rout out a renegade with a price on his head. While working under the gun, he dresses in executioner-black, though he strives for intellectual resolution to most conflict. There are the occasional contracts wherein Paladin is forced by the violent nature of mankind to use his gun. Somehow he’s always a fraction of a second faster than even the most proficient professional killer.

And then there are the fist fights, which I can never figure out – why hit a man, and then prop him up, so he can hit you back? I imagine if David Carradine’s character, Kwai Chang Caine, ambled along in the midst of some brawl instigated by one of Paladin’s nemeses, Caine would break up all comers with a flick of the wrist.

What’s pertinent to the current method of gun control in California is an episode aired in season one, “The Five Books of Owen Deaver”, when Paladin helps the son of a former friend. The son, Owen Deaver, has taken his late father’s place as sheriff of a small, rough western town. Deaver, who was schooled in the East, brings back with him five books on civil law from the city of Philadelphia, and uses these books to enforce new civilized statutes in his new position as sheriff.

One of the by products of his Philadelphia-style law, is that Deaver confiscates firearms from all citizens living in or visiting town, leaving them, as Paladin suggests, defenseless against criminals who don’t care to follow the law, unable to defend themselves from thieves, killers and marauders.

This episode is an early hallmark of a political stance against gun control. It’s simple math; really, you prevent model citizens from owning firearms, through enforced attrition, while criminals, who own no such compulsion to adhere to the law, skulk around fully armed with Glock 19s.

I have the rare opportunity to see gun control from both sides of the fence, living both in the San Francisco Bay Area (defined as a “Blue” or Democratic – e.g., “Liberal” region), and in Susanville, a rural town in northeastern California (“Red”; a GOP realm). These two areas are polar opposites in more than simple geography.

Case in point: My particular county, Santa Clara, is governed by the Bay Area Air Quality Control District. Due to the concentration of population and cold weather inversion during wintertime, we have what’s known as “Spare the Air” days. If a resident chooses to burn a wood fire during a “Spare the Air” day, and after an initial letter of warning from Bay Area Air Quality Control, they can be fined $400.00 for a first offense.

In Lassen County, population 35,000 (which includes the inmate population of several prisons), most households burn wood for heat out of simple low-cost necessity. Up in the hills above Susanville, we burn wood in our woodstove; our neighbor across the street does it, and so do scores of other households in the subdivision at the foot of Roop Mountain. But all of that smoke it eaten up by the bitter wind, and the enormity of the sky. And I seriously doubt any of our Lake Forest neighbors would complain, because they would be the pot calling the kettle black.

Similarly, there are stark differences in the arena of gun control.

In the Bay Area, where upwards of 100 people each year are killed by gun violence in Oakland alone, there is an acute sensitivity to firearms of any sort. Events such as the 101 California Street massacre in San Francisco serve as catalyst for regulations on the size of cartridge clips and magazines.

More recently, the Second Amendment argument, in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutional right to bear arms, has spawned the bold Open Carry movement right in the heart of Paranoia Central. Prior to January 1^st, 2012, you might see twenty people converging in orderly fashion on a Starbuck’s in Silicon Valley. Peaceful droves of Valley engineers and programmers, decked out with unloaded Smith & Wesson .45s – and the ubiquitous Glock of varying calibers – seated in the fog-muted Bay Area sunlight, sipping lattés and cappuccinos, and speaking in low voices about the NRA, Second Amendment, and wistfully praying the late Charleton Heston would rise from the dead, so he could be installed as the next U.S. President.

I would characterize the general Open Carry movement as being comprised of safe and sane people. I’m positive very few of them suffer from Small Penis Syndrome.

The reason I can say this so confidently, is because when in Lassen County, and prior to January 1^st, 2012, we Open Carried while in the back country, on National Forest lands and BLM acreage. Whether while hiking, or riding dirt bikes or mountain bikes, it is most logical to carry a sidearm –unloaded, of course – and two sets of speed-loaders. You can’t understand the reasoning, until you’ve actually seen a mountain lion or two, or the remnants of a lion kill; and then you start to think that your soft pink flesh and ineffectual method of defense (peg-like teeth and flimsy nails) are no match for razor-sharp claws on all four feline feet, canines designed to pierce a deer’s spinal cord, and camouflage that ensures you’ll never see the lion coming. I will happily add in the black bear, and of course, the element nobody wants to mention, White Supremacists. The latter is quite prevalent in Lassen County. If you doubt me, just consult the Southern Poverty Law Center for the latest statistics. But, to be quite clear, I’m a wimp about the lions.

Sadly, I believe that the Open Carry Movement in California mobilized the same type of fear in urbanites and suburbanites; a terror or reprisal or insanity, not of a lion zoning in for the easiest prey, but killing that makes no sense in the scheme of what we like to hold to the light as ‘normalcy’. Most people cannot comprehend what coalesced in the mind of the madman who terrorized the people in 101 California Street, or what it means to live in the harder-bitten areas of Oakland or Richmond. We ally ourselves as pacifists, who abhor the thought of taking a human life, regardless of the circumstances.

So, now gun control has chased up to our front door, though I’m relieved to report that it hasn’t crossed the threshold. The new restrictions on Open Carry in the State of California exclude a person’s castle. Loaded open carry of long guns and handguns is still legal, if you are “in your own home, temporary residence, campsite (unless otherwise prohibited), place of business, private property, and in areas of unincorporated territory where shooting is not prohibited, including most areas within National Forests and BLM lands”.

Marauders, beware.

The Art of Good Marriage

The headline was fairly to the point: “Zooey Deschanel Files for Divorce From Husband of Two Years”.

Hmm, two years of wedded bliss, coming to a screeching halt, due to irreconcilable differences. Ah, the beauty of divorce in California!

I had a first marriage that crashed and burned. Thankfully, I learned from that egregious error. My (second) husband and I recently celebrated our twenty-third anniversary. In May, we will also have been married for twenty years.

I’d like to clarify these two confusing statements. Anniversary number twenty-three marked a civil marriage, which took place in 1988, five days after the birth of my second-eldest child. Anniversary number twenty will highlight our nuptials in the Catholic Church, mostly a symbol of a choice to religiously agree.

This second marriage isn’t perfect. I’ve been infected from time to time with asshole-ism, and occasionally, so has my husband. But no challenge or event has ever been so insurmountable that we decided to split. There are the sparse moments of reckoning, when marriage seems touch and go, but all in all, it’s been a sweet ride.

I’ve discovered that our relationship is a strange one from many typical American marriages. First, we work together. After work, we go home together. We sleep in the same bed, sit at the same table, and share the morning newspaper. Every mundane second is filled with this other, gorgeous person. We joke that we’re only apart when one or the other is using the toilet. There are the perennial “pull my finger” moments that still make me laugh. Even the remarks structured to annoy remind me that I can’t imagine my world without him in it. Think of it as symbiosis, not the part where we complete each other’s sentences (though that’s happened frequently), but the part where you would die without water, or your roots in earth. That’s what I mean; your life is entrusted in a single fallible being, who would stand in front of a bullet if it meant that it would extend your own life.

I once told a dear friend that life is meant to walk through alone, that if we’re fortunate to meet up with somebody special, whether a lover or a spouse or the comfort of a great friend, or the exuberant joy in watching your child grow up, then we’ve been blessed.

A few weeks ago, we received a Christmas card from my Aunt Lynn and Uncle Fran, who live in Arizona. The photo reveals a continuing love affair, with Aunt Lynn hovering over my Uncle Fran lovingly, endowing him with a huge kiss. And I can see the love on Uncle Fran’s face, despite the fact that he recently suffered a stroke.

Reminiscing on their relationship, I’m reminded that my aunt and uncle have always been best friends. Their happy marriage, and mutual longevity are proof of a will to continue this blessed romance. Their love is a difficult act to follow, but in love, nothing is as challenging as being without the person you care for; no water to drink, and no earth for your roots.

Today, I read excerpts from an interview with Newt Gingrich’s second ex-wife, Marianne, who reported that while Mr. Gingrich was denouncing President Clinton for an extramarital affair; Newt was carrying on one of his own with the woman who was eventually to become the third Mrs. Gingrich. Sadder still is Marianne Gingrich’s assertion that almost immediately following her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, Newt filed for divorce. I think the divorce filing had less to do with Marianne’s M.S., and more to do with her refusal to grant him an open marriage, where he could keep a wife and a mistress, the proverbial having the cake and eating it, too.

A sly paragraph in the article suggests to the reader that Marianne Gingrich herself was Newt’s mistress while he was married to the first Mrs. Gingrich.

Not that I claim perfection, but I can’t see myself respecting a person like Newt Gingrich as my country’s ultimate leader of the free world. I can’t respect him one iota for being a serial philanderer, and for putting himself onto a pedestal of grace under pressure, as a figurehead for ethics and family values. If Gingrich’s behavior has taught Americans anything, it’s that the old proverb, “Fool me once…” really says it all.

At least Zooey Deschanel had the class to file for divorce before things got really rough.

 

 

Ending a Fractured Legacy

I was mildly surprised when a family member made a comment to me after I posted a memory from my twelfth year describing an incident that revealed my adoptive grandfather as a racist. Somehow this individual felt that my post contained a lack of respect for my grandfather’s memory. This comes from a person with whom I have had limited interaction for almost thirty years, not so much due to geographical constraints, but because of social incompatibility.

The comment started me thinking about the general capacity that some people have for personal shame. It’s not enough that I didn’t name my late grandfather in my recollection. Though a witty and beloved patriarch, he was nevertheless a victim of his upbringing. Now, one of his descendants has inexplicably deemed an ancestor’s attitude of racial intolerance to be my fault. Sadly, it’s far easier to transpose outrage in one’s progenitor into disdain for the whistle-blower.

I won’t even consider that had my grandfather known about my own racial heritage, he might have been horrified in me by default. That’s beyond a leap of faith, and I trust in my heart that he was a better man than that.

But on the opposite side of the coin, is my grandfather’s ignorance. The truth is, he treated me as his own, and loved me, because he, as well as everyone else in my family, had no inkling that both of my birth parents had Cherokee blood. And I’m positive that the concealed bloodline wouldn’t have merited much weight, except to a certain family faction.

I must thank this disgruntled family member for reminding me of another memory I have of my grandfather. This is one no one will dispute. In this, he was curiously a victim of his attitudes about “colored people” (which is how he categorized non-whites), but also a casualty of the shifting attitudes caused by the Civil Rights Movement, media coverage of the Black Panthers, and the general unrest of the Bay Area in the 1960s.

My grandfather was a dentist, and although he lived in the Peninsula suburbs, he commuted during the week to his practice in San Francisco. The train was his chosen mode of transport. On one such mundane commute – I can’t recall if it was going into the City, or coming home – he was punched in the mouth by a young man, and required stitches to close the gash.

At the time, I didn’t understand why anyone would be compelled to sock my grandfather in the mouth. As I was told, all that my grandfather was doing was assisting a woman on the train. Perhaps this young man was acting boisterous, or maybe he was blocking the aisle. Either way, it was required that my grandfather would interact verbally with him. Once he called the young man, “Sonny,” that’s when my grandfather was popped in the mouth.

It was shocking to me, but I didn’t fully understand the event until I was twelve, and experienced the revelation of my grandfather’s hidden racism. And then I recalled facts that never clicked into place when I was a small child.

The young man on the train was African American, and whatever the circumstances, my grandfather called this person “Sonny”. It wasn’t “Boy”, which is what my own husband has been called, as recently as the late 1980s, by a Wyoming State Trooper. Only a person of color can fully understand the derogatory intent of “Sonny” and “Boy”. Certainly I couldn’t comprehend the dynamic. I was raised in an insularly white community, where some of the families of local law enforcement chose to live.  I attended school with white classmates, until I went to middle school. It was in Taylor Junior High School when I met my first African American girl.

Nobody wants to believe that they are derived from a racist patriarchy. I have been told that my own maternal birth grandfather, though part Native American, had little tolerance for African Americans and Hispanics. Maybe I can go back even further, and prove that some of my Cherokee ancestors were slave owners (Google “Cherokee Freedmen” to get the scoop).

As I wrote prior, and still firmly believe, we are all as flawed as we are biased. Despite these very distinct memories of my grandfather – neither of which bode well for the family member who strongly chastised me for lacking respect in my grandfather’s earthly memory – I know without any doubt that he loved me. That particular truth is a lot more real than the knowledge of his human frailties.

Shortly after my grandfather died, I had a dream about him. He was seated in a chair in the bare room of a high-rise hotel. It wasn’t a fancy room by any means, as it was completely bereft of any excesses – just that chair, and a beige wall-to-wall carpet.

Soon my adoptive father entered the room through a door, and told my grandfather he’d come to get him, and take him to Heaven. My father, who passed away in 1983, was quite the opposite of my grandfather. Dad was genuinely interested in humanity, quite colorblind, though with a frustrating tenet of non-confrontation. I would characterize my father as the epitome of forgiveness. When Dad died, I had no worries whatsoever about where he would end up.

When Dad came for my grandfather, it put my fears to rest about where my grandfather would go when he died, too. After all, my grandfather was a good man, who left behind a collection of watercolor art, and vibrant photographs of the Sierra Nevada. He was a self-taught pianist, who could ragtime any song so well that I remember dancing along to his music when my feet were still innocent, and I didn’t shy from laughter. I remember the good man much more vividly than I remember his racist failing.

And had this family member not decided to disown me, to rant the inevitable “I don’t want to talk about it”, it would have opened a dialogue, and a forum in which to share positive memories. Because, like it or not, it’s who my grandfather was, and to some extent, who he used to be is also who we all are. The change comes when we’re conscious of the defect, and decide not to carry on a fractured legacy.

Goodwill and Coffee

In the news recently, Jackie Speier (D-Ca) of the 12^th Congressional District, along with several of her brethren, decided to take a five-day challenge and subsist on $4.50 per day, the equivalent Food Stamp subsidy for an individual. Ms. Speier, who survived the horrendous event at Jonestown, Guayana, admitted that during the test, she was constantly thinking about food, and often hungry between the modest meals. Her experience reinforced a need to increase the Food Stamp allocation, not decrease the amount on the backs of hungry Americans in order to balance the Federal budget, as Congress has suggested.

This started me thinking about my own excesses. I spend exactly $13.95 each week on a bag of whole bean coffee, an addiction that certainly doesn’t merit the urgency of nutritional need. Over a thirteen-week period, which constitutes one financial quarter, I am guaranteed to spend $181.35 on my chemical dependency. I know, it’s a far cry from oxycontin or heroin, but seems to garner a lot of attention in the media when coffee prices increase in the world marketplace, or when poor coffee farmers are cheated out of profits, or when supermarkets misrepresent their Kona blends, which contain little or no true Kona coffee.

I began my own challenge, in honor of Jackie Speier’s five-day semi-fast. I decided to forego coffee. It made sense; I can purchase 200 packets of black tea for about the same price as a bag of my favorite whole bean coffee, which theoretically will last for 200 days, replacing my caffeine intake with a kinder, gentler mode of chemical delivery.

I am embarrassed to admit that my challenge lasted five hours, not five days. Although I escaped a pounding headache, which is the classic caffeine withdrawal, I lacked the overall sensation of physical well-being coffee seems to chemically impart. I couldn’t wait too get home so I could chug down a cup of that expensive brew.

Of course, I can justify spending $181.25 per quarter on whole bean coffee. Aside from ensuring my emotional and physical welfare, coffee seems to offer protection to adults in delaying the onset of Type 2 diabetes. Research tying coffee drinking to skin cancer rates, suggests that coffee drinkers are protected from more severe forms of melanoma. Further, a recent study also indicates that women who consume black coffee enjoy some protection from endometrial cancer. Whether it’s chemical pleasure or clinical success, there’s no doubt that coffee, like its cousin, dark chocolate, is vital to the human immune system.

So, while I sit in the sun to allow my body its function of making Vitamin D, I will drink coffee to see to it that I don’t contract the melanoma that killed my paternal grandmother, Eve. Vitamin D and dark chocolate will reinforce my immune system, and coffee will keep me happy. Is that really such a huge price to pay?

An Invitation for the Road

I am an adoptee, a product of the social views of the 1960s, when to be an unwed mother was paramount to wearing a scarlet ‘P’, defining a woman as ‘promiscuous’, and therefore of little or no value to society. That my birth mother gave me up for adoption instead of opting for a back-room abortion conveys only the positive aspects to her character. I am forever indebted to her extraordinary love for me in making the difficult choice to give me life, and then to let me go.

            The family who adopted me was an educated and loving family. They were WASP, white-skinned and blue-eyed, and treated me as their own. Though I was documented as a Caucasian person by the Department of Social Services, I came to understand that both of my birth parents also carried a Native American lineage. That was a deeply buried fact, which may have precluded me from mainstream adoption in 1962 had the truth been revealed.

During my bounteous childhood, I was not only a Daddy’s Girl, but I also developed a deep attachment to my adoptive maternal grandfather. As far as the eye could see, my grandfather ruled a plane of perfection. There was truly nothing he could do or say that I would consider wrong.

I was twelve when I discovered that my beloved grandfather was in fact, a narrow-minded racist.

The evolution of events that led me to this epiphany were as predictable as choosing the correct numbers for the weekly lottery. In other words, the realization came out of left field, and blindsided me. I would have had better odds at winning a hand of poker, than detecting this characteristic in the man who I had always known as an inveterate jokester, and a brilliant artist and photographer.

Without going into a very complex and long-winded story, suffice it to say that the event was a harsh awakening. When my grandfather said, “Look at those people, thinking they can be like us,” he was really speaking to me, as well as to anyone non-white, or of a biracial or multiethnic background. Though I hadn’t been an innocent for some time (cussing cleared the air of that quality), the painful awareness that the world is a place of judgment and severe color-sight, was made all the more egregious because it was my grandfather who’d served me that rotten dish on a shining white platter.

Racism is a central theme to most of my fiction writing. But, so is tolerance. In Road Apples, it was very important to me that I frame characters that comprehended the world in all of its glorious color, including the cruelty of discrimination, but had the gift to love one another in spite of the chasm of prejudice inherent to us all. To say that one is colorblind is as great a lie as saying one is without flaws. We are all as flawed as we are biased. Even a blind person listens to a situation with sensitive ears, and extrapolates the outcome based upon life’s experiences, and personal bias.

In Road Apples, the two main characters understand the numerous conflicts at their periphery, but they also submit to mutual honesty, so that love can flourish.

Madeline Benités, an independent young woman, has been raised in the Bay Area in northern California, where the term ‘Melting Pot’ is less a cross-culture theme, than the demarcation of culture and ethnicity.

And Wyatt McLain, a man in his fifties, spent his formative years tutored in the Quinault Indian culture, and in the stark facts of life, by his loving Aunt Doreen on the Quinault Reservation in Washington State. Being an Indian man residing in Tacoma was only remedied by driving a Crown Victoria, so that the local police wouldn’t hassle him.

As a woman who has been married across cultures for almost twenty-five years, and who is a product of interracial marriage consisting of generations of tolerance that bears strange fruit, the love story of Madeline and Wyatt could be my own. Only when you forget that you and your lover are different, when you walk down a long road totally colorblind, and completely in love, are you able to transcend the bitterness that humanity has cast upon its own ability to make peace.

In Road Apples, Wyatt McLain stresses that people often abandon the will to war when laughter – as well as love – is the point of focus. He tells Madeline that he figures “people can’t argue if they’re laughing together.” Madeline later describes Wyatt as a “kind man, a loving man; a man of constant peace, not a fighter.”

And yet, Wyatt and Madeline are united in a silent battle, not against racism or sexism, or the ills of society, but the fight for a future. Life, with its obstacles, somehow finds its mystic alignment, where fate overcomes free will. This is the message behind Road Apples.

I invite you to read Road Apples. Perhaps it will invoke a simple humility in a world where faith, whether of the religious sort, or the strength of a loving heart, is often cast to the wayside.

The Warrior Diet for a Modern World

I struggled with my weight for most of my adolescent life, which continued into adulthood. By the time I gave birth to my third child, my son, I tipped the scales at 185 lbs. Six months after Cliffy was born, I weighed in at 210 lbs.

I have, what I like to call, a hyperactive pancreas, because every particle of food I consume, if not used as fuel, goes directly to storage. Somewhere deep in my genetic lineage, I knew I had ancestors who had experienced feast and famine, but I had no idea of my ethnic background. Given up by my birth mother for adoption as an infant, I was raised by a WASP family who had no issues with weight gain. I learned to eat potatoes and converted rice, to consume processed bread disguised as whole-wheat, and to eat dessert after every dinner. Though we usually ate whole foods, there was enough pasta and other starches to interfere with my normal metabolic processes.

Obesity caused other problems, aside from Cliffy being a large infant at birth, nearly nine-and-a-half pounds. I had gallstones, and the early stages of insulin resistance, reflected in a fasting blood sugar of 103 mg/dl (normal blood sugar levels should fall under 99 mg/dl when fasting 12+ hours).

I rarely stepped on the scale, because the device was not my friend. Every added pound was cruel irony for a woman who gave birth at home twice with the aid of a midwife, who breastfed all her children, and who quit smoking at age 20, so that her offspring would not be raised in a smoking household. I wasn’t a health nut, but neither did I understand how to feed my body.

When I realized I was 210 lbs., and sure to gain more weight, I made a pact with myself. I changed my way of eating, ridding my diet of processed foods and consuming only whole grains. I ate whole foods instead of processed, mostly meat, fruit and vegetables, though I continued to eat white rice, a habit acquired from my husband’s Filipino culture. Eventually I gave up rice with much reluctance, and noticed a swift improvement in my blood sugar levels. Steadily I lost weight. By the time I became pregnant with my fourth child, my daughter Stephanie, I had shed 80 lbs., and was exercising vigorously on a daily basis.

It wasn’t until 1996, when I was thirty-four, and located members of my birth parents’ families, that I fully understood why I had so many issues with easy weight gain from adolescence through adulthood.

Both of my birth parents carry Cherokee Indian genes. Typically, Native Americans, just like my Filipino in-laws, are descended from a feast and famine way of life. Over millennia, the pancreas developed into an efficient organ for weight gain, transforming every molecule of food into either instant energy or fat storage for the lean months when food is difficult to find. Moreover, I learned that I had to work hard at everything – eat carefully, making every meal count; and exercise daily, whether that be riding a bike, hiking up in the Open Spaces, or running three miles or so. Much like the U.S. Postal Service, I have to be on it, rain or shine.

And I had to teach this to my children, because they carry the same risk on both sides of their lineage, mine and my husband’s, of contracting the disease of the modern age, Type 2 diabetes.

In the publication, Indian County Today (October 26, 2011), David Bender writes of his own experiences with the fare of a First World Country. He records a resistance to wheat (gluten), a food sensitive liver, and various ailments that are a result of leaving behind the diet of a hunter-gatherer society. A food epiphany is no less profound than any other type of revelation, especially an awareness that has the power to heal the wrongs a simple act such as eating can wreak upon a culture.

Obesity in our day has become more of a disease of the poor. If you check out the grocery store, you’ll notice that macaroni and cheese can be had for less than $1. Conversely, a bag of dried beans can cost twice that amount, and takes much longer to prepare. A can of fatty “pasta-o’s” is much cheaper than a flat of lean beef, and a bag of broccoli. In some neighborhoods, fresh fruits and vegetables are unheard of, impossible to be acquired. If a family of five is living on a Food Stamp budget, it’s easier to feed hungry tummies on mac ’n cheese than on a roasted chicken – even if you could find fresh poultry within walking distance.

The small solutions are community gardens in inner cities, and well-planned school food programs, plus access to whole foods. In my diverse neighborhood, the only store within walking distance is a Safeway, where the produce is often very expensive. But there are also Indian and Asian ethnic food grocery outlets, where prices are amazingly affordable, and the turnover assures fresh produce most of the time.

Imagine what would happen to rates of disease caused by poor nutritional choices, if processed foods were substituted with ‘real’ food. The medical profession, already spurned by the downturn in the economy, would find itself tending to fewer patients with disease caused by a metabolic disorder. Pharmaceutical companies would post losses rather than obscene profits. The cure is merely a bite away. The irony is that it rests in a food paradigm from our ancestry, a Paleolithic mindset to negate the ills of a modern world.

How Not To Write Smut

All of my children are legal adults. Not too long ago it seems, they were helpless infants, and now they cleave their own paths in life.

Still, it used to worry my adult son when I didn’t answer my cell phone. Either I was away from the phone, or it was on ‘silent’ mode. He would track me down by calling his younger sister, my only grown-up child who still lives at home, and is therefore the most practical contact when Mom ignores the ringer.

“Mom,” she’d say, “Clifford Michael says you’re not answering your phone!”

Eventually, my son learned to leave messages, prefaced with “I know you and Dad are busy right now, so that’s why you’re not answering your phone…” Maybe he thought I’d be embarrassed, but no such luck.

Somebody asked me recently what sort of genre I write. My answer was that I write fiction with a social conscience, encompassing sexism, racism, and conflicts of culture.

“But I make it fun to read between the lines,” I assured, “if you know what I mean.”

People enjoy reading about sex, no matter how shamefaced we’re supposed to act culturally. Americans are such hypocrites, flaunting glimpses of body parts, and attempting a cover-up with fundamentalist shame. Ironically, there is quite an historical track record that would suggest a correlation between being rigidly moralistic and furtively deviant. Upright doesn’t always translate into uptight, especially behind closed doors…or in a locked, windowless basement…or in the cash-paid bed of a sleazy, roadside motel.

Many years ago, I had a pastor who was a member of my earliest fan base. When I promised him a copy of my latest book, Road Apples, he asked me if it was anything like my previous novels.

“Well,” I hedged. Father was my confessor. Not only is he aware of my actual sins, which amount to the garden variety, he really knows the wanton sins that exist purely in the framework of my characters’ lives. If these characters were real people, they’d be in deep trouble.

I don’t write racy books per se, I am more of a writer of Women’s Fiction and Chick Lit, though I like to provoke thought and conversation. There’s a lot of enjoyment in creating a certain amount of mayhem for my characters to try to extricate themselves from. Most are successful, but a few have been killed off for their efforts. I imagine that writers of Erotica have a grand old time spelling it out. I have a family member who spent a decade reading nothing but Erotica. She liked my books, too, but I have been told there is not enough sex in them.

“You need to write more sexy things in your books,” one of my younger sisters advised. Because, my little sister, bless her heart, will take a book and literally thumb through it searching specifically for the juicy parts.

Now, back to Father, and our conversation, as I come out of my tongue-tied pause. “It’s rated ‘R’,” I assured him.

“I’m sure it will be spicy,” said Father, blushing. That was his description of my work, ‘spicy’. And he always blushed after he said it.

I spend a lot of my time immersed in writing. Usually this is accomplished seated in our daily mode of transport, an older model Corolla (though not simultaneous to driving). I like to find a quiet suburban street, where I can access a wireless router in case I need to research a fact or two, and write to my heart’s content in the shade of a stately oak or sycamore. My favorite wireless in Palo Alto has the name of MuslimsAreGenerous, and I have to agree that the owners of this particular wireless are indeed magnanimous, as it’s the only router in that neighborhood that doesn’t lock me out.

I have invented clever ways of disguising my words, in the event my laptop is accessed without my authorization. I have the keen ability to write racy prose, and disguise it cleverly with benign nonsense. Here is an example, excerpted from a recent unpublished novel:

And then there was that night before Richard flew off to Portland. Their catcalls of pluto during lostmaking had been so lollipop, that Richard expressed his ranuncula that the loft was empty of chitos and elephants.

“I could fun you forever with my wrench,” he proposed. Always a diplomatic man in business, Richard had a way with croutons that Sheila found oddly analytic.

Twenty-seven years of dotty talk and hot socks, she thought now. The image of doting Richard made her alleycat weep.

Okay, I’d like to fix it back to the way it was supposed to be, but now, I’m not quite sure what I put in place of all that other stuff. Doesn’t sound half bad; maybe I’ll just leave it the way it is.

As for Erotica, yeah, I tried to write that once. I only got through a paragraph, and then closed my laptop, so I could go find my husband, one of the perks of being self-employed in a household where all of your children are adults, and three out of four no longer live with you, and the one who does reside there is out shopping. Chances are, I wasn’t answering my cell phone that afternoon, either.