Lisa Hendrix

In the movie Gandhi, there is a scene where Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and his followers decide to break the salt monopoly. India being a tropical country, salt is critical for food preservation and for daily life (to replace the body salts lost through sweating), and the British government and their flunkies raked in huge profits by controlling the production and sale of salt throughout the country. Literally  no one else was allowed to evaporate water and collect the residue, and one of the first major acts of civil disobedience in the campaign for Indian independence was the 1930 salt march to the sea.

One day, the Mahatma leads a line of men to non-violently take over a salt plant. They line up in ranks, some eight or ten abreast, and the first row steps up to the gate to ask for salt. The guards, on orders from their British masters, club down the men. The women step forward to carry away the bleeding men to be bandaged, and the next row steps forward. They are beaten, carried off, bandaged. The next row. The next row.  As the men are bandaged, they take their places again at the back of the line, and when their turn comes again, they once more step forward, not to fight, but to simply stand there with their eyes open, letting the guards crack open their skulls for the hideous crime of asking for salt, an interminable line of stubborn men who know they are right and who are willing to put their lives on the line to prove it. In the film, a reporter called Walker (the real life Webb Miller) reports the day with the words, ”Whatever moral ascendancy the West once held was lost here today. India is free, for she has taken all that steel and cruelty can give and she has neither cringed nor retreated.”  

I wept when I first saw the movie. I weep every time I see it, and I am weeping as I write this, just thinking of that courage. I’ve always wondered if, when the time comes, I will be able to muster that inner strength to stand up like that, to face down tyranny with such grace and calm determination, to neither cringe nor retreat. I hope so.

But in the meantime, there are men and women stepping forward every day. Some risk their lives, others their reputations and their livelihoods.  They all do it because they know what is right.

One of those is Mark Klein, a former AT&T engineer who blew the whistle on the secret monitoring system the NSA built within AT&T’s internet switching center. He is now righteously furious at Congress’s recent overthrowing of the FISA Act which required that security agencies get permission for wiretapping.  Yep, now, thanks to your Congressmen and Senators, the feds can listen to your private communications without asking anyone, and the telecoms who enable them are protected from lawsuits, using the logic that “if the President says its okay, it’s legal.”

Shades of Richard Nixon. No, shades of Big Brother. You can read more about it in this article from Wired.com and in this one, from BoingBoing. But best of all, read Klein’s own words, including his original memo about the spying program, necessary reading for anyone who lives in America.

And here’s a little tidbit that may reveal something about AT&T’s attitude about the whole thing. Ms. Suspicious?  You bet I am, but not about online billing, hon.

So here’s to Mark Klein and brave souls like him. When I spot one, I’m going to mention him or her here. They are important. They are heroes, every one.

Who are your heroes?

I’m blogging at Rose City Romance Writers today, where I made a very public confession of one of my most serious lifetime flaws, complete with pictures. Get a glimpse of my psyche.

And my kitchen.

Did you know that the low hanging, large, reddish moon that would be called a Harvest Moon in late September/Early October is called a Strawberry Moon when it happens near the solstice? 

The summer solstice was yesterday, June 20, at 7:59 PM EDT, so I thought I’d do a quick roundup of  ways some folks mark this longest day of the year.

Traditional

Flowers: Gathering nine different types of flowers and placing them under your pillow on the solstice is supposed to make you dream of the person you will marry. Nine is a number sacred to the old Nordic and Saxon gods (which is why there are nine Vikings in my crew of Immortal Warriors.)

Weddings: Druids celebrated the summer solstice as a marriage of heaven and earth, which is why June is the month for weddings

Bonfires.  In Cornwall in the old days, every peak and hall glowed with light on Midsummer Eve as the fires begged the sun not to retreat into winters darkness.

Spirals:  Ancient solar dances would spiral in to the center and back out again, representing the path of the sun.

Herbs: Practioners of herbal magic believe that herbs gathered at the solstice are imbued with extra potency.

Stones: Tracking the sun was immensely important to early people, so they knew when to plant and harvest and when to honor their gods—so important that they would spend years building what amounted to giant stone calendars. Stonehenge is the most famous of these, but Machu Pichu, New Grange, the Sun Dagger of Chaco Canyon, and dozens of other stone sites around the world served the same function.

Modern

Parades: Seattle’s Fremont District (The Center of the Universe) holds a fair and a wild parade to celebrate the solstice and the amazing energy of the neighborhood. 

Nativity of St. John the Baptist:  This Christianized version of the solstice marks the birth of this important saint (unlike most feast days, which celebrate the martyrdom of the saint).  Particularly important in northern and eastern Europe and the celtic countries (where the solstice was also key), it is one of the most solemn of Catholic holy days, even celebrated when it falls on a Sunday (also not typical for a saint’s day).

Picnics and Bonfires: In Denmark and other countries, Midsummer is marked by spending much of the day outside, ending with a nice bonfire on the beach.

Stones: In the tradition of the great ancient builders, my husband recently put the item “Stonehenge” on the whiteboard that his team uses to keep track of projects at work.  Yesterday, he assembled his personal mini-Stonehenge kit (carefully aligned, of course) and crossed the item off the list. No one noticed. Sigh.

He intends to do it again in December anyway.

How do you celebrate Midsummer?

First, there is water on Mars. (Link to Wired article with nice image showing ice chunks subliming.)

Second, the Smithsonian now has their photograph collection up on Flickr Commons, with all photos hi-res and tagged as “No known copyright restrictions.” (Link)

Things like this give me hope. 

My friend and one-time critique partner, R. Scott Shanks, Jr., has been having some frustrations getting his website up and running, so he decided to post to his blog, instead.  Click the link. Read. Enjoy. Remember that he wrote the following in a timespan of approximately 17 minutes, and know that he is a far better writer than I—than almost anyone—and some agent should make a fortune off him when he finishes his book. 

( In an effort to distance myself from my ire, I pulled out the Majency Oracle and asked Shannon for a number. She quoth: 72, so that was the card I selected as a writing prompt. Thus: )

I’ve been experimenting with doing more thorough pre-planning/outlining/storyboarding.  I’ve always written a pretty thorough synopsis and had a clear idea of the overall story, but there came a point in each of my past books that I would get lost.  Somewhere between chapters 8 and 12, give or take, the synopsis would say something like “they spend several days tracking down the McGuffin.” It worked for selling the story to my editor, but left me to work out the details when I was actually writing.  So I’d try out 10 or 15 possiblities—by writing them out.

Ack! Days of wasted writing.  Sometimes weeks. 

Clearly, with a nine book series stretching out ahead of me,  I need to get a handle on that, so inspired by Cherry Adair, the Manuscript Mavens, and others, I decided to make a thorough storyboard.  I bought lots of sticky notes and and a big folding display board and started scribbling and sticking, just like Ally Carter, whose storyboard is to the left.

And promptly lost interest.  Too fiddly. Same with 3×5 cards. 

But I still need SOMETHING, plus I have this sense that if I find the right method, this is all going to fall into place. Read the rest of this entry »

That’s us out there.

The Earth and the moon, as seen from Mars.

Image acquired on 10/03/2007, by the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

King Ozymandias of Assyria was running low on cash after years of war with the Hittites. His last great possession was the Star of the Euphrates, the most valuable diamond in the ancient world. Desperate, he went to Croesus, the pawnbroker, to ask for a loan. Croesus said, “I’ll give you 100,000 dinars for it.” But I paid a million dinars for it,” the King protested. “Don’t you know who I am? I am the king!” Croesus replied, “When you wish to pawn a Star, makes no difference who you are.”

—-

Okay, my secret is out.  I like puns. If you do, too, please share your favorite in Comments.  I would love to start a collection.  Shaggy Dog stories are good, too!

If you don’t have a good one, check out  R U SERIOUS for more groaners.

Enjoy,

PS:  Per Wikipedia, paronomasia is “a phrase that deliberately exploits confusion between similar-sounding words for humorous or rhetorical effect.”  In other words, a pun.  See, you can groan and learn at the same time.