August 12th, 37th entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook
Born
1762 George IV king of England (1820-30), who was the biggest slob England ever had
1866 Jacinto Benavente y Martìnez Spanish dramatist (Nobel 1922),who was so right when he said that new loves are like newborn babes, not until they shed tears do you know if they are alive
1911 Cantinflas (Mario Moreno) Mexico, actor (Around World in 80 Days)smoking like a chimney, he made us laugh as only he could do it
Events
1508 Ponce de Leòn arrives in Puerto Rico ,worst thing to ever happen to them except when USA stepped on them1553 Pope Julius III orders confiscation & burning of the Talmud, knavish and superstitious old fart who created his own harem of guys in the Swiss Guards
1851 Isaac Singer granted patent for his sewing machine, had to be a Jewsih guy
1898 Hawaii formally annexed to US ,while poor former queen Liliuokalani made quilts under arrest1898 Peace protocol ends Spanish-American War, signed,but Spain had Guam,Philippines and Cuba torn off her side
13 August
Born
1655 Johann Christoph Denner inventor (clarinet)how did he made it sound so smooth?
1860 Annie Oakley Drake Ohio, frontierswoman (Buffalo Bill's Wild West)as a sniper,I admire her 1888 John Logie Baird Scotland, inventor (father of TV),was he aware of the damage being created?
1899 Alfred Hitchcock London, director (Psycho, Birds, Rear Window)genius,genius,thanks Alf for all the ideas you gave me
Birthdates which occurred on your SELECTED date of August 14:
born
1774 Meriwether Lewis Charlottsville VA, capt of Lewis & Clark Expedition, a good sexist who believed Sacajawea only belonged in the kitchen
1867 John Galsworthy England, author (Forsyte Saga-Nobel 1932) ,if you want a good read get this guy`s books1869 Armas Jarnefelt Vyborg Finland, composer (Berceuse),lovely tunes
Deaths which occurred on August 14:
1936 Rainey Bethea hung, last US public execution 1951 William Randolph Hearst newspaper publisher, dies in Beverly Hills, what a sense of ridicule he had, he knew his mistress Marion Davies liked Charles Chaplin better, but played the role of cuckold,and once threw a tantrum because he couldn`t buy the Louvre
1988 Enzo Ferrari Italy, sportscar manufacturer (Ferrari), dies at 90,what a heartless womanizer he was!
events
410 Alaric sacks Rome, and had so much fin doing it
1842 Seminole War ends; Indians removed from Florida to Oklahoma ,in what could only be called the trail of tears and blood.White man`s greed, as usual creating havoc for everyone1846 Henry David Thoreau jailed for tax resistance, I agree with him,would have done the same
1941 Atlantic Charter signed by FDR & Churchill ,the NATO is born1945 V-J Day; Japan surrenders unconditionally to end WW II 1947 India granted independence within British Commonwealth
THE THIN PURPLE LINE
I have always said that sometimes fiction writes in blood many stories that are worse than those we may create in fiction. As a horror story writer since infancy, I know what this means. My own life has had such violent roller coaster movements that I can avow this is true for real life too. But is there a thin red line, like the movie?I call it the purple line of imaginary ether that separates reality from fiction. Writers of fiction really understand what I am talking about. I often get the question: how do you manage to keep your imagination and your historical writings divorced one from the other? In first place I never knew that my two fields of writing had ever been married,least of all to each other.But the question I get most often is where does my fiction begin and where does the author take off from.
Being a person with a lively imagination hasn`t been easy. Many people lead a safe life precisely because they do not have a lively imagination,so they stay away from harm.
I have always written short stories, and I had a little book of them called The Book of the Dead,which was lost when my parents`properties were confiscated by Daniel Ortega in 1989. So officially my short-story writing began while I was the musicologist at the classical radio station Radio Gueguense, where I had enough silence and isolation, apart from a very understanding boss, to allow my concentration. There I wrote The Messenger from Nowhere,based on Mozart`s death legend. My boss, Lorenzo, who had always wanted to write himself but hadn`t ever had time to do so due to his paternal duties,would just draw a stool next to my desk and watch me enthralled while I wrote. He wouldn`t even blink.
He was the first to read the tales as they came out steaming from the old typewriter, and afterwards, from the computer. He would read them, peruse them, give his opinion, and save a copy. As they came forward, he would tie them together with powder-blue ribbons.
I didn`t know he did that until one night that we were working hard on a new program, he sent me to fetch something out of his enormous metal desk. In the drawer where he had several folders, I saw my short stories ina neat little pile,tied with a silken ribbon. I said nothing to him, but later, while cooking at home, I realized this was the first show of fan worship I would get as a writer. It was a different satisfaction than the one I got bymaking chicken lasagne and having someone tell me it was as good as the one my mother made(my mom was a chef).
It was obvious that my first topics would be related to the rarefied environment of classical music. After all, in 1992 I was still composing a few pieces of music for piano on my own.
In this period in which I was deserted from the army, music was very important to me.
I was even teaching my daughter her first lessons with music, like the alphabet with the Alphabet Song by Cri Cri the Singing Cricket. I would continue to sing to the food so it would have a good flavour, as my mom used to say. I would even sing to my daughter and my cats. I still do, only now it embarrasses the hell out of her if I do it in front of her boyfriend or classmates. Once Franz peter Schubert said that the first symphonies,as the weak puppies of a first litter by aprize bitchm should be drowned or given away. Maybe the drowning sounds too drastic for my taste, but my first stories could have been better. Which is why I think I shouldn`t have published them in a small volume of 13 horror tales under the title of The Succubus. It was too premature. Not that they are bad, mind you, but dearest among all my readers, now I look back on them and see they could have been better.
As I began publishing in magazines and newspapers, and then in my own websites, I realized that most people confuse the writer`s life with that of his or her characters. Although it is true that many things I poured into my tales have a relationship with my own life events and landmarks, I cannot by anything in the world be like Salvador Allende`s pompous little niece Isabel who even details to her writers how she wipes herself when she goes to the bathroom. That it the outward limit! But when I wrote and published the humongous Taylor, about a gently born medic who clones herself to give the clone to her demonic lover, so many people wrote to me commiserating on my awful woes and offering sympathies, free abortion coupons at a clinic and tickets for the newest premieres. I have drawn inspiration from the most assorted sources you can imagine, which is why one of my students says I have several muses in blue jeans and windswept saris. Some of them come in a block of three, like the sequence which contains The Violoncello of Serbia , My Own Telltale Heart and the Letter from the Russian Heart. Although one is not the sequel of the other, the role model for the main character is the same person in both of them. The woman in the tale MY Own Telltale Heart is the only person who has been fit to be our chanceller in my country, too bad she passed away from breast cancer without really having a chance to tell her how much I cared for her. As usual, too late, too late, I would say to Nora Astorga, our extraordinary chancellor. Everything I couldn`t verbally express in real life was poured into those short stories. Too bad I cannot acknowledge the paternity or maternity of most of my tales or I would have World War III starting at home. As usual,men have had the liberty to write without restrictions, but the married writer who is a woman must be tactful enough not to offend the dignity of her husband who prefers her in the kitchen cooking up filet mignon instead of “wasting time” at the computer keyboard.
When I changed the keyboard of a Wurlitzer piano for that of a Compaq computer, I guess I took a wise step for myself. I have been able to pour not only knowledge but also all those feelings and sensations that are usually censored in a woman`s life. Like Mary Shelley who was able to produce her Frankenstein in one single night at age 19, as if foreshadowing all the anguish and doubts she would experiment while being pregnant several times, all my war traumas and painful memories have gone into a genre that fits me as snugly as a Frederick`s of Hollywood negligee. History has been incorporated into my tales, and many characters like Queen Margot of Valois, King Stefan Cel Mare of Moldavia, Radu Cel Frumos of Wallachia and his infamous Vlad III Tepes(who was really the best thing that ever happened to Romania),Edgar Allan Poe, Frederick the Great of Prussia, the regent Philippe D`Orleans of France, and Modest Mussorgsky have been brought into our times by my very peculiar time machine. I have tried to exorcise the gentle ghost of my dead friends Oscar Cortes Marìn and Augusto Gòmez, and it has been good therapy.
Fiction.How much of it is really true and how much just a lion figment of my cat imagination? Many tales still linger in the fertile womb of my imagination. How many yet to be inmortalized? Who knows? Maybe it is true that life is a we remember it, not as it happened, as says Gabriel Garcìa Màrquez. But I wouldn`t have it any other way.
Born
1762 George IV king of England (1820-30), who was the biggest slob England ever had
1866 Jacinto Benavente y Martìnez Spanish dramatist (Nobel 1922),who was so right when he said that new loves are like newborn babes, not until they shed tears do you know if they are alive
1911 Cantinflas (Mario Moreno) Mexico, actor (Around World in 80 Days)smoking like a chimney, he made us laugh as only he could do it
Events
1508 Ponce de Leòn arrives in Puerto Rico ,worst thing to ever happen to them except when USA stepped on them1553 Pope Julius III orders confiscation & burning of the Talmud, knavish and superstitious old fart who created his own harem of guys in the Swiss Guards
1851 Isaac Singer granted patent for his sewing machine, had to be a Jewsih guy
1898 Hawaii formally annexed to US ,while poor former queen Liliuokalani made quilts under arrest1898 Peace protocol ends Spanish-American War, signed,but Spain had Guam,Philippines and Cuba torn off her side
13 August
Born
1655 Johann Christoph Denner inventor (clarinet)how did he made it sound so smooth?
1860 Annie Oakley Drake Ohio, frontierswoman (Buffalo Bill's Wild West)as a sniper,I admire her 1888 John Logie Baird Scotland, inventor (father of TV),was he aware of the damage being created?
1899 Alfred Hitchcock London, director (Psycho, Birds, Rear Window)genius,genius,thanks Alf for all the ideas you gave me
Birthdates which occurred on your SELECTED date of August 14:
born
1774 Meriwether Lewis Charlottsville VA, capt of Lewis & Clark Expedition, a good sexist who believed Sacajawea only belonged in the kitchen
1867 John Galsworthy England, author (Forsyte Saga-Nobel 1932) ,if you want a good read get this guy`s books1869 Armas Jarnefelt Vyborg Finland, composer (Berceuse),lovely tunes
Deaths which occurred on August 14:
1936 Rainey Bethea hung, last US public execution 1951 William Randolph Hearst newspaper publisher, dies in Beverly Hills, what a sense of ridicule he had, he knew his mistress Marion Davies liked Charles Chaplin better, but played the role of cuckold,and once threw a tantrum because he couldn`t buy the Louvre
1988 Enzo Ferrari Italy, sportscar manufacturer (Ferrari), dies at 90,what a heartless womanizer he was!
events
410 Alaric sacks Rome, and had so much fin doing it
1842 Seminole War ends; Indians removed from Florida to Oklahoma ,in what could only be called the trail of tears and blood.White man`s greed, as usual creating havoc for everyone1846 Henry David Thoreau jailed for tax resistance, I agree with him,would have done the same
1941 Atlantic Charter signed by FDR & Churchill ,the NATO is born1945 V-J Day; Japan surrenders unconditionally to end WW II 1947 India granted independence within British Commonwealth
THE THIN PURPLE LINE
I have always said that sometimes fiction writes in blood many stories that are worse than those we may create in fiction. As a horror story writer since infancy, I know what this means. My own life has had such violent roller coaster movements that I can avow this is true for real life too. But is there a thin red line, like the movie?I call it the purple line of imaginary ether that separates reality from fiction. Writers of fiction really understand what I am talking about. I often get the question: how do you manage to keep your imagination and your historical writings divorced one from the other? In first place I never knew that my two fields of writing had ever been married,least of all to each other.But the question I get most often is where does my fiction begin and where does the author take off from.
Being a person with a lively imagination hasn`t been easy. Many people lead a safe life precisely because they do not have a lively imagination,so they stay away from harm.
I have always written short stories, and I had a little book of them called The Book of the Dead,which was lost when my parents`properties were confiscated by Daniel Ortega in 1989. So officially my short-story writing began while I was the musicologist at the classical radio station Radio Gueguense, where I had enough silence and isolation, apart from a very understanding boss, to allow my concentration. There I wrote The Messenger from Nowhere,based on Mozart`s death legend. My boss, Lorenzo, who had always wanted to write himself but hadn`t ever had time to do so due to his paternal duties,would just draw a stool next to my desk and watch me enthralled while I wrote. He wouldn`t even blink.
He was the first to read the tales as they came out steaming from the old typewriter, and afterwards, from the computer. He would read them, peruse them, give his opinion, and save a copy. As they came forward, he would tie them together with powder-blue ribbons.
I didn`t know he did that until one night that we were working hard on a new program, he sent me to fetch something out of his enormous metal desk. In the drawer where he had several folders, I saw my short stories ina neat little pile,tied with a silken ribbon. I said nothing to him, but later, while cooking at home, I realized this was the first show of fan worship I would get as a writer. It was a different satisfaction than the one I got bymaking chicken lasagne and having someone tell me it was as good as the one my mother made(my mom was a chef).
It was obvious that my first topics would be related to the rarefied environment of classical music. After all, in 1992 I was still composing a few pieces of music for piano on my own.
In this period in which I was deserted from the army, music was very important to me.
I was even teaching my daughter her first lessons with music, like the alphabet with the Alphabet Song by Cri Cri the Singing Cricket. I would continue to sing to the food so it would have a good flavour, as my mom used to say. I would even sing to my daughter and my cats. I still do, only now it embarrasses the hell out of her if I do it in front of her boyfriend or classmates. Once Franz peter Schubert said that the first symphonies,as the weak puppies of a first litter by aprize bitchm should be drowned or given away. Maybe the drowning sounds too drastic for my taste, but my first stories could have been better. Which is why I think I shouldn`t have published them in a small volume of 13 horror tales under the title of The Succubus. It was too premature. Not that they are bad, mind you, but dearest among all my readers, now I look back on them and see they could have been better.
As I began publishing in magazines and newspapers, and then in my own websites, I realized that most people confuse the writer`s life with that of his or her characters. Although it is true that many things I poured into my tales have a relationship with my own life events and landmarks, I cannot by anything in the world be like Salvador Allende`s pompous little niece Isabel who even details to her writers how she wipes herself when she goes to the bathroom. That it the outward limit! But when I wrote and published the humongous Taylor, about a gently born medic who clones herself to give the clone to her demonic lover, so many people wrote to me commiserating on my awful woes and offering sympathies, free abortion coupons at a clinic and tickets for the newest premieres. I have drawn inspiration from the most assorted sources you can imagine, which is why one of my students says I have several muses in blue jeans and windswept saris. Some of them come in a block of three, like the sequence which contains The Violoncello of Serbia , My Own Telltale Heart and the Letter from the Russian Heart. Although one is not the sequel of the other, the role model for the main character is the same person in both of them. The woman in the tale MY Own Telltale Heart is the only person who has been fit to be our chanceller in my country, too bad she passed away from breast cancer without really having a chance to tell her how much I cared for her. As usual, too late, too late, I would say to Nora Astorga, our extraordinary chancellor. Everything I couldn`t verbally express in real life was poured into those short stories. Too bad I cannot acknowledge the paternity or maternity of most of my tales or I would have World War III starting at home. As usual,men have had the liberty to write without restrictions, but the married writer who is a woman must be tactful enough not to offend the dignity of her husband who prefers her in the kitchen cooking up filet mignon instead of “wasting time” at the computer keyboard.
When I changed the keyboard of a Wurlitzer piano for that of a Compaq computer, I guess I took a wise step for myself. I have been able to pour not only knowledge but also all those feelings and sensations that are usually censored in a woman`s life. Like Mary Shelley who was able to produce her Frankenstein in one single night at age 19, as if foreshadowing all the anguish and doubts she would experiment while being pregnant several times, all my war traumas and painful memories have gone into a genre that fits me as snugly as a Frederick`s of Hollywood negligee. History has been incorporated into my tales, and many characters like Queen Margot of Valois, King Stefan Cel Mare of Moldavia, Radu Cel Frumos of Wallachia and his infamous Vlad III Tepes(who was really the best thing that ever happened to Romania),Edgar Allan Poe, Frederick the Great of Prussia, the regent Philippe D`Orleans of France, and Modest Mussorgsky have been brought into our times by my very peculiar time machine. I have tried to exorcise the gentle ghost of my dead friends Oscar Cortes Marìn and Augusto Gòmez, and it has been good therapy.
Fiction.How much of it is really true and how much just a lion figment of my cat imagination? Many tales still linger in the fertile womb of my imagination. How many yet to be inmortalized? Who knows? Maybe it is true that life is a we remember it, not as it happened, as says Gabriel Garcìa Màrquez. But I wouldn`t have it any other way.
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