NotWriting, the blog

"No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring." — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, March 17, 1857

"One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in." — Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Chapter XVII

I've always been a fan of Thoreau. Until recently, I owned five or six copies of Walden, including a fine hardcover version this terrific guy gave me, but my wife made me donate half of them. My interest in Thoreau began in high school, when every junior in America is required to read "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," and while my classmates were rendered comatose by the 19th century prose, I was entranced. As a kid who had grown up in the countryside (first Maine, then rural New York), I spent ALL of my time in the woods. Finally I was reading about a guy who thoroughly embraced Nature, just like I did, and I was determined to learn more.

My interest in Thoreau was part of the reason why I decided to study philosophy and religion in college. The ideas of spirituality and harmony with nature that Thoreau touches upon in Walden excited my eager young mind. While still in school I started writing a play about him, as well as a biographical sketch for a humor book that was never published.

After college I was a reporter for my hometown newspaper, until one particularly vibrant autumn, when I once again felt the stirrings of Thoreau. I decided to quit my job so I could spend the entire season walking in the woods around Millbrook, learning the names of all the trees.

Sixteen years later, I'm still enamored of Thoreau, and I still enjoy walking in nature as much as I always did. Yesterday was the first non-winter day of the year, so I took a long walk to see what I could see. What I saw was the cusp of spring.

It was cold when I started out, and I was dressed in layers: T-shirt, Oxford shirt, heavy wool sweater and wool topcoat. A mile into my walk, the sun appeared at my back (to the southwest) and heated up my shoulders. I had to remove the coat and carry it, then remove the sweater, put the coat back on and carry the sweater.

The roads were dry—even the dirt ones I walked on—but the shoulder was a squishy mixture of mud and last fall's leaves, which actually made walking easier on the feet.

A waterfall in Glacier National Park.

I passed two waterfalls on my way out of the village, and both gushed as loudly as the ones I saw while hiking through Glacier National Park in March six years ago. Heavy, jagged icicles clung to the shaded corners of the falls, and I wondered how long they would last. The last signs of winter. Would they make it to April?

The snow has all melted, a fact that the squirrels were happy about. I observed a pair of them chasing each other around a fat oak, scolding me and each other, then racing into a knothole. Pheasants, one of the stupidest birds on the planet, strutted in the road at a nasty curve. As I approached, they flapped away and hid in the brush.

There is an alive stillness in the early spring. While crossing a meadow between two roads, I stopped, closed my eyes and listened. In winter you hear nothing but the wind or far-away traffic. But as the air begins to warm, you hear the first signs of life. If you listen really closely, you can almost make out the ground itself stretching, the grass readying itself for another growth spurt. This silence isn't clouded by the buzz of insects, which will be the case in another few weeks. It's a brief interval between the absolute nothingness of winter and the full-blown glory of spring.

I passed an old-timer who was pouring buckets of sap into a steaming vat beneath the trees, and I was carried back 25 years to when I helped my great-uncle Holland make maple syrup. The old man saw me staring and we shared a nod. It takes a hell of a lot of sap to make just a quart of syrup. I remember that well. I walked on.

Some Vermont kid back in my great-uncle's time making syrup.

The thoroughbreds in the fields were still wearing their horse blankets, and when I approached a fence, a couple of the bolder ones walked over, hoping I had a snack for them. I didn't. I patted their nuzzles and kept walking.

In the corner of a field, I spied a collection of beehives. Foolishly, I went over, squatted beside them and listened for any buzzing. It was faint, but it was there. Soon the bees would be zipping in and out of there all day long.

After a couple of hours, I reached one of my favorite spots along a nearby creek. It's a fallen log next to a bridge, where I like to sit down and eat my lunch. I had a corned beef and swiss sandwich, eating very little of the bread, as I looked out at the bare branches and the pristine sky. Spring was coming. It would be here, full-blown, within a couple of weeks. Breathing deeply of the clean, quiet air, I was glad I'd set out on this little walk, and gladder still for leaving the city behind and getting back to my Thoreauvian roots.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 09:00 AM | Permalink

My question is simple: why are mousepads still so damn expensive?

When I went into Staples the other day to try to replace my tattered doggie mousepad, if I weren't in the shape I'm in, I would have had a heart attack.

If I wanted a mousepad without the STAPLES logo burned into it (which I did), it would cost me a minimum of $9.98, plus tax. I left empty handed.

A lot of R&D has gone into mousepads, my friends,
which explains why they're so expensive.

The puppy on my current mousepad is looking more forlorn than usual. Maybe I don't even need the thing. Perhaps the pup would prefer life in a landfill to having a red laser light burning his ass all the time.

However, none of this explains why mousepads are so friggen expensive. I asked the kid at the register about it. As all young clerks are, he was extremely helpful.

"I dunno," he said. "Maybe it's the plastic?"

"Yeah, that must be it," I said. "'Cause nothing's made out of plastic."

"Maybe it's 'cause they know they got you," he said. "Like highway rest stops, why the gas costs so much."

"You're getting warmer," I said. "Do me a favor, will you?"

"What?"

He looked at me like I'd just asked him to compete in the Iditarod.

"Have your manager put in a formal complaint."

"We've got a form," he said. "Can you fill it out?"

"Yes, I can," I said. "But I won't. Goodbye."

And so I left, sans mousepad, and at this very moment the pup on my disintegrating one is staring back at me.

"You cheap bastard," he says. "Just buy a new one and let me rest. I'm tired."

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 05:30 PM | Permalink

A classic problem given to first-year philosophy students is Buridan's Ass. For those of you who don't know it (or knew it and forgot), here it is:

A hungry ass stands between two piles of hay, both equally large and equally fresh. Because it has no rational reason to choose one over the other, it chooses neither, and as a result starves to death.

Although I consider myself a decisive person, I've thought about this problem a lot over the years and quite often find myself in similar situations. This morning, at the grocery store checkout, both registers were available, and both of the cashiers are equally pleasant, competent people, so I was frozen between the two for a few seconds. At the diner, I've faced with this problem when both of my preferred seats on either side of the diner were open, and the two waitresses were equally attractive. What usually happens is that I catch myself in an endless loop, like the old BASIC routine of

10 PRINT "I can't decide!"

20 GOTO 10

I mention this because lately I've been stuck on what I should be writing about. I have several equally interesting projects to choose from, all at the same point in their development, and for this reason I find myself, like the stupid ass, unable to choose any of them.

The cubbies where my piles of hay are stored.

Yet I won't be stuck like this forever. Ultimately I'll sense myself leaning towards one project more than another, and the farther I lean, the closer I'll be to that project and the more sense it will make to go with that one instead of the other.

While many philosophers have critiqued the problem of Buridan's Ass better than I ever could, the issue I've always had with it is that it fails to take into account the concept of entropy. Just about any system, if left alone for a while, will tend toward disorder, and the more disorderly a system becomes, the greater likelihood there is for imbalances—one option becoming more appealing than another.

In the meantime, I'll let myself be stuck, just like that ass.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 12:00 PM | Permalink

A little over a week ago, I broke the Prime Directive of writers—NOT to have relatives read and critique your writing—by having my father, "Big Al" read my latest PI novel. In case you missed the first installment of this story, you can read it here.

Well, I promised you an update, and here it is.

Al, in complete shock after reading my latest novel.

For dramatic purposes, it would be more interesting to be able to report that Al had ripped the book to shreds or fawned over every word, but the truth is he did an excellent job as a reader. Not only did he catch missing articles and verbs (victims of the latest round of edits), he also was very clear about places in the book where he got confused.

I always believed my father would have been a great detective. In 25 years as a school principal, he became very good at piecing together "crimes" perpetrated by students; he is a master at seeing the result and reasoning back to the causes. I don't have this ability. I can weave ideas together, spin a yarn, but I can't figure these things out logically to save my life.

Al especially helped me regarding beefing up certain suspects' motives. He didn't buy into a couple of the suspects' reasons for potentially committing the crime, and in saying so, he will be helping me to fix it.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the Big Al Experiment. Contrary to what you might think, reading and going over the novel somehow brought us closer. I will definitely employ Al again as a reader. Even though, as a lefty, he can't write for shit.

Looks like I'm going to be crossing the street a lot to decipher his comments.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 02:00 PM | Permalink

Hello, and welcome to the sixty-fourth installment of NotWriting.com, an open journal on how one writer spends his time when he really should be writing.

While having coffee at the Millbrook diner yesterday morning, an old-timer named Bill and I got talking about politics. Usually I refrain from these discussions, but I've learned that just about everyone agrees our current President is an idiot, so you can bash him in public and no one seems to mind.

Teenagers in this country have to take written and road tests to get their driver's licenses because the machines they're operating are dangerous. But for the the biggest, baddest machine of all—the United States government—there are no tests at all.

As our current situation proves, you can be a complete moron and still get to take out grandad's hot-rod for a spin. You can go off-road with it, do donuts and drive-bys, and you don't even have to put gas in it before you bring it back, because fuck it—it's the next guy's problem.

Which led me to the idea of Presidential Driver's Licenses. What if, to be the Leader of the Free World, you actually had to know stuff? Like, hmm...maybe U.S. history?

Ten years ago, I taught American Studies (history and English) at Freeport High School, in Freeport, Maine. The school's playing fields abutted the L.L. Bean parking lot, and yes, I would go over there during lunch sometimes to salivate over stuff I couldn't afford at the time.

I mention my experience teaching high school students because recently I dug up the multiple-choice portion of the final exam I gave my juniors in 1997, and I was shocked by how insanely difficult it was. There were 80 questions, all intricately worded. Here's a PDF of the exam so you can see for yourself.

Don't believe me? Here are just a few questions from the test:

4. During what years was the country engulfed in hysteria and suspicion?
A) 1613-15
B) 1691-93
C) 1901-03
D) 1977-79

(Bush and his cronies probably know the answer to the next one very well.)

9. Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 of the Constitution--the “elastic clause”--does what?
A) It gives Congress the power to do anything it wants
B) It allows Congress to do things it deems “necessary and proper” for executing the foregoing powers
C) It enables Congress to stretch the truth about what it intends to do
D) It provides Congress with a back-door way of getting what it wants

35. In the case McCullough (McCulloch) v. Maryland, the Supreme Court established which of the following precedents?
A) “separate but equal” facilities must be provided for blacks and whites
B) state governments reign over the federal government
C) “the power to tax is the power to destroy”
D) McCullough was considered property
E) the federal government is supreme to the state governments
F) none of the above

51. The Coal Mine Strike of 1901 and the Northern Securities Case of 1904 are important because they
established the precedent of
A) government looking out for its own interests
B) using government power to protect the interests of working people
C) laissez faire
D) Rugged Individualism

76. Below are several groups of events, movements, or events in American history. Choose the group that
makes the most sense in terms of chronological order.
A) The Civil Rights movement; the Civil War; Civil Disobedience
B) The American Revolution; Reconstruction; Westward expansion
C) The New Frontier; Watergate; the Gulf War
D) The Constitution; the Articles of Confederation; the Emancipation Proclamation
E) The Panama Canal; World War I; Prohibition
F) both A and D
G) B, C, and E
H) A, B, and E

As I recall, I had an exceptionally smart group of juniors that year, and most of them not only passed the test, but scored in the mid-80s. I'd like to see our current clown do that.

It's time to make these guys pass a driver's test before they get to tear around in our car.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 01:15 PM | Permalink

Hello, and welcome to the sixty-third installment of NotWriting.com, an open journal on how one writer spends his time when he really should be writing.

I'm finally prepared to admit it. One year ago, I was hooked on the H.

Not a day went by that I didn't need my fix of this special brand of H—the LH.

I had to have it. I set up my life to get three doses a day: two in the morning, one at supper. 'Cause one thing I learned was, you can never get enough LH.

In case you're wondering what the hell LH is, it's Little House on the Prairie. Now don't laugh. That show had me hooked, I tell you. It started back when I was a kid in the late 70s and early 80s. Unbeknownst to anyone except my sisters, I watched reruns of LH between episodes of CHiPs and Magnum, P.I., and I never missed a show.

Charles and Caroline Ingalls. Or, just Pa & Ma to me, thank you.

All last winter, Alexas was unemployed, which honestly was a lot of fun. Every morning we'd rise at eight o'clock, or before dawn if there had been a storm during the night, and go out and shovel. (For Alexas, a California gal, shoveling snow was a novelty, and one I was glad to share with her.) Then we'd have breakfast— johnnycakes with maple syrup—and watch LH.

I'm something of a lay expert on LH, and I'll admit, I did my fair share of showing off to Alexas. At the outset of each episode, I would recite the plot—often within one minute. Mind you, I hadn't seen this show at all for 20-plus years.

I soon had my bride hooked on LH to the point that, if the evening cycle of episodes ended on a cliffhanger, she couldn't sleep that night. She had to know what happens. Invariably that's when the laptop came out and Alexas started trolling the internet for all things LH. Soon she longed for the meatier, conflict-laden episodes, just like her husband.

"Toad..." she'd say, using her pet name for me, "when does Mary go blind...?"

"Soon, Frog," I'd say. "Soon."

As chance would have it, we had just missed the "Mary goes blind" episodes and had to catch them when the cycle started over again. I know what you're thinking: this is a lot like waiting for a comet to return. But it did, and after the Part II of that episode, Alexas was content.

"That was awesome," she said.

"See?" I said.

I suppose you're wondering why I love LH so. Well, let me count the ways.

First, there's Pa, played by Michael Landon. As Alexas said, "He's SuperDad." That's right, Alexas, he's SuperDad. Pa works unbelievably hard to provide for his girls, once traveling 100 miles to find work. He's strong physically, mentally and spiritually. The guy can do anything—build a house, make furniture, transport blasting oil, split rock, raise a crop, and lead the church. But I think the facet of Pa's character that I admire the most is his Job-like faith. Despite all of the terrible things that happen to him, he never loses his faith, and somehow, everything turns out right in the end.

Then there's Ma, or SuperMa. Caroline Ingalls. Always fresh-faced and lovely, Ma bakes the best pies, sells the best eggs, makes the best dresses. And of course let's not forget the darling of LH, Laura. In the course of 203 episodes (not including the TV movies), we see "Half-Pint" evolve from a spunky tomboy into a feisty redheaded woman, all the while torturing squeaky Willie Olson and exacting revenge on evil Nellie.

But I think it's their trials that hooked me the most. The characters are consistently placed in tough situations and must perform at their highest capacities to overcome obstacles. In short, there's conflict in every show, and often high-stakes conflict. Will they lose the farm? Will Mary survive her operation? Will teenage Albert and Sylvia run away together? Will the children die in the blizzard?

I realize that many of the above conflicts have appeared in soap operas as well, but LH was much better than any soap opera. The writing was better, the acting was better, and the direction was infinitely better.

Landon wrote and directed most of the episodes, and the show bears his mark. As you probably know, before LH he was a TV icon for years on Bonanza, and he brought a lot of the Western sensibility to LH. In my opinion every LH show that he directed feels like a mini-movie. There is a great sense of story, and every scene heeds the advice of screenwriter William Goldman, who admonished creators to, "get into scenes as late as possible." In other words, cut all of the warm-up crap and just show the heart of the conflict.

Another thing that made the series great was something that I think can easily be overlooked, and that's Landon's use of establishing shots. This might sound trivial, but somehow over the course of 200+ episodes, Landon succeeded in never duplicating the same establishing shot twice. If you watch every episode closely, you'll see that he always shot from a slightly different angle or vantage point. The result is a tacit sense that no matter how well you think you know Walnut Grove, there are surprises around every corner.

The Little House collection by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Perfect for 10-year-old girls or tough yet sensitive
men in their 30s who long for simpler times.

Once Alexas realized how juiced I was for LH, she asked if I'd read the books by the real Laura Ingalls Wilder. I hadn't. In fact, the only children's books I remember reading were The Little Engine that Could and The Pokey Little Puppy. So, for my birthday last February, Alexas bought me the boxed set of the books that started it all.

For a week, I was enthralled. There were dozens of adventures that didn't appear in the TV version. My favorite of the set, without question, is The Long Winter. As the snow piled up outside, I read about the trials that Laura and her family faced in the Dakota Territory. Here's the jacket copy:

"The first terrible storm comes to the barren prairie in October. Then it snows almost without stopping until April. Snow has reached the rooftops, and no trains can get through with food or coal. The people of De Smet are starving, including Laura's family...."

And I thought I knew hardship, having to shovel my neighbor's walk and cut back on eating out. Meanwhile, during The Long Winter, Laura's family had to

• Braid hay together until their hands bled to make "firewood".
• Grind up seed wheat in a coffee grinder to make flavorless brown bread.
• Sleep in sub-zero cold during the night to conserve fuel.
• Tie a rope to themselves when they went out to the barn so they wouldn't get swallowed up by the latest blizzard.
• And much, much more!

So there you are, the winter I was hooked on LH. I'm not ashamed. Really I'm not. I think LH was a great show, and we could do well with a new family program with real story and morals behind it. Michael Landon created something special that has stood the test of time, and will continue to.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 04:00 PM | Permalink

Hello, and welcome to the sixty-second installment of NotWriting.com, an open journal on how one writer spends his time when he really should be writing.

There are many drawbacks to being bipolar, but probably the most insidious is that when I'm on the cusp of, or in the midst of, a new manic cycle, I can become extremely irritable.

Petulant. Combustible.

When this happens, anything can set me off, and I have to exercise every fiber of self-restraint in me to keep from tearing people's throats out. I don't mean for this to happen, I honestly don't. I'll lash out at people and fifteen minutes later, like a summer thundershower, it passes and I don't know what I was so upset about. Like today with parking my car.

No Parking, biotch!

Since I moved back to my high school town of Millbrook, NY a year ago, I've been parking across the street in an empty spot behind my parents' building. It was convenient, and in exchange Alexas and I shoveled out the parking area that we shared with my parents and their elderly neighbors. A nice little arrangement.

Today when I returned home from the errands that a working writer/house husband does (speed grocery shopping, banking and office supply purchasing), I went to park my car and discovered another one in it. We've all had this experience. I hate fighting with people over knucklehead things like this, but I chose to confront the wrongdoers. I found out the vehicle belonged to a woman who works in a day salon across the street and went to their office and politely asked that the car be moved.

The woman said, as women have been wont to say to me from time to time, "Don't yell at me." I wanted to say, "Bitch, please...if I was yelling, honey—you'd know it." But Alexas has pointed out to me over the years that such behavior on my part is alienating and divisive, so I've worked hard at not doing that. Instead I just said (in an admittedly sharper tone), "Move the car."

The upshot was that the owner of the business, a usually pleasant enough woman, ran out and confronted me, stating that she had a commercial lease that entitled her to that spot behind the building. I replied that I found this interesting, given that I'd been parking there for over a year and during all of the blizzards last winter, I didn't see her once out there asserting her right to that spot by shoveling the parking area.

The bottom line here is, as soon as I cooled down below my melting point, I realized that she was right and immediately wrote an apology letter. But the first draft of the letter was only 10% apology and 90% "Take that, biotch!" I emailed the draft to Alexas for her thoughts, and as she pointed out with her always level head, the first draft would leave both of us feeling bad, and wasn't the idea to settle this amicably? Here's the 1st draft of the letter:

Dear Darlene,

I want to apologize for my confronting you about the parking behind the building. Now that I’ve had a chance to think about what you mentioned regarding your lease, I realize that you have rights to that spot.

My only wish is that you had said something a year ago, when my wife and I were out there, storm after storm, shoveling out that entire parking area (including your own spot closest to the back door). I find it interesting that when it was inconvenient (i.e., covered in a foot of snow), you didn’t make an issue about our parking there. But now that the weather is fine, well….

Now that we know you have rights to that spot, we will no longer be parking there. However, we won’t be shoveling any of it either. With the right comes the responsibility. Enjoy it.

Sincerely,

Chris Orcutt

Now the edited version:

Dear Darlene,

I want to apologize for my confronting you about the parking behind the building. Now that I’ve had a chance to think about what you mentioned regarding your lease, I realize that you have rights to that spot.

My only wish is that you had said something a year ago, when my wife and I were out there, storm after storm, shoveling out that entire parking area (including your own spot closest to the back door). I find it interesting that when it was inconvenient (i.e., covered in a foot of snow), you didn’t make an issue about our parking there. But now that the weather is fine, well….

Now that we know you have rights to that spot, we will no longer be parking there. However, we won’t be shoveling any of it either. With the right comes the responsibility. Enjoy it.

Sincerely,

Chris Orcutt

Whereas the first draft was the equivalent of taking a pup and pressing its face into its "accident" on the rug, the second draft was considerably toned-down. Which leads me to my point for this piece—the importance of always writing in drafts. It is very difficult to get it right the first time, and any piece of writing, even a lowly apology-complaint letter, benefits from a second pass.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go slash that bitch's tires order a fruit basket for my lovely neighbor.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 04:00 PM | Permalink