Channeling Cecil

Cecil was my mother's mother.  She was widowed with five children, the youngest being 9 months old, on April 1, 1941.  During the Great Depression.  She had a 6th grade education and no job skills.

The saving grace was the farm that was given to her by my great-grandfather, her father, who won it gambling on Tennessee riverboats.  It became truly a working farm, nearly self-sufficient save for coffee, flour, spices, and sugar.  

Cecil found work at the local nursing home, as a nurse's aide, aka grunt work.  All five children were afforded a college education, a rarity in those days.  I often wonder how she did it.  She told me once that she knew she could not fail.  Faithful reader, does that sound familiar?

The lovely and attractive mu-mu featured in the photograph, above, belonged to Cecil.  Wonderful Sister spied it in a box of clothes in my parent's basement and sent it to me.  On particularly grim days when I'm in the Black Hole (or Black Hell if you choose) which is chronic depression, or my ankle is hurting so bad I just want to cut it off, or words won't come for my ongoing Stubborn revision - I put on this old, worn-out mu-mu and channel Cecil.

Bonanza, or, I've Finally Gone off the Deep End

Faithful reader, I am still nursing a broken ankle.  It still hurts.

Nearly two years ago I was involved in a head-on collision and broke a bone in the same foot that is now connected to my broken ankle.  At the time, Stubborn was just an idea churning in the back of my head.

I decided to do a warm-up piece before I seriously started writing Stubborn.  Here is what I wrote.  It provides insight into what was, and still is, running through my head:

Bonanza

You knew everything was going to be OK when you saw the Cartwrights riding up - or even just one of them.  The good guys would prevail and the bad guys would get their comeuppance.  In the end, 60 minutes later, all would be right with the world and as a little kid I could go to bed and sleep well.

I wasn't very old when it came on, every Sunday night, at 8 o'clock.  It took a special dispensation from my dad to watch Bonanza - bed time was also at eight but it was only one night a week so I was pardoned.  

And so every Sunday night I was at the Ponderosa where I was welcomed as a guest into Pa Cartwright's house.  

I rediscovered Bonanza so many years later when I was sidelined with a broken foot and two bum knees in December, 2009.  It was reassuring to see the Cartwrights again - albeit interspersed with commercials for motorized wheelchairs, portable oxygen suppliers, innumerable scam insurance ads, and ambulance-chasing lawyers.  

At least  somewhere justice was still clean-cut and so was right and wrong.  And I was still welcome at Pa Cartwright's house.

Yah, the acting and scripts  were terrible and so were the plots - but so what?  Good and Bad and Right and Wrong.  All right there and wrapped up in a tidy 60 minutes.  

And really cool horses.  I was always a sucker for the horses.

Not too long ago Adam (aka Pernell Roberts) passed on to be with the rest of the Cartwright family on the Big Ponderosa in the Sky.  He was the last of them, you know.  Who besides me shed a tear?  I bet more than one little kid from the 60's.

What I wouldn't give to be living on that Ponderosa.

Knowing You Cannot Fail

Faithful reader, I have been struggling for a while now - continuing with my revision of Stubborn.

Sometimes you feel like you've lived too long...
The days drip slowly off the page


And then you find yourself
Pacing the cage.


These lines are from a song I've identified with for as long as the song has been sung.  It is a variation of the common cries of anguish - due to living a life of unfulfilled dreams.

Everyone has this inside of them.

There's another common anthem:  The Road Not Taken.

They're the same, really.

When I began this epic of writing a screenplay that was gifted to me, I also started closely examining the lifestyles of successful people.  One that stands out is Jay Leno.  I read his autobiography, Leading With My Chin.  

He knew he could not fail.  It was simply a possibility he could not comprehend.  Hence, he didn't.

That is a key theme in my screenplay:  You know you cannot fail.  Who knows how or why?

When I was a young girl (ages ago, maybe eons) and so attuned to horseback riding, I had a very skittish and clumsy very tall horse.  There were huge ditches that laced my grandmother's farm where I would ride, fancying myself as a (1) fox hunting rider; or (2) steeplechase jockey.  I would urge poor clumsy Sinbad over these huge gaping chasms with the thought:  "Throw your heart over the fence and the horse will follow."  He never stumbled once.  Maybe that's all it takes.  I am trying.

An Air Cast

It's Sunday evening and my broken ankle hurts.  A whole bunch.

I've been outfitted in something called an Air Cast.  It is a link between the world of ambulatory people and the world of people who have to plan events ahead of time such as visiting the bathroom.

No joke.  If you can't walk, dear, you're screwed.  Think about it.

So - a healthy appreciation of the ads I see when watching Bonanza re-runs.  The Scooter Store!  Hah!  I know from whence they speak.  But I'm still not buying into the crappy insurance ads.

Another regress from Stubborn world.  I promise, I am working on it.

The Friend of a Friend

My very first blog post was about finding a person with Connections - or an "In" to get my screenplay into an Important Person's hand.  There, faithful reader, you met the Friend of a Friend.

Hubby and I were delighted to welcome the Friend into our home on Thursday.  Here is his photo, taken at the Atomic Testing Museum:

His name is Chuck DeCaro and what an amazing person he is.  A one-man dynamo who has two speeds; On or Off.  Chuck was on the way back to his home in West Virginia from California.  Accompanying him was his faithful Weimaraner, Oliver Prozac.

One of Chuck's many talents is consulting for Belisarius Productions.  He's worked on Quantum Leap, Airwolf, and NCIS, to name a few.  That's where he met Raven; and he is the one who introduced me to her.

He had some great stories to tell.  Come back soon, Chuck!  You are a Life-force.  A true Renaissance Man.

Two Cool Things

The first Cool Thing:  had to take the little MacBook in to the Genius Bar on Friday because I am not.  A genius, that is.  Waiting for a resident Genius, I was chatting with one of the help staff.  Turns out, she's an aspiring movie trailer writer/producer in a NY film school and is taking a break for the summer.  I told her the plot line of Stubborn and she loved it.  I mentioned I wanted Willow Smith attached as the lead and she suggested someone else in case Willow was a non-player:  China McClain, who is in a Disney show called Ant Farm.  Looked her up, cripes!  She would be fabulous as well.  Plus - she already has a contract with Disney, obviously, and this is very obviously a Disney movie.

Cool.

The second Cool Thing:  Hubby and I had dinner last night at Piero's, an Old Vegas Mob eatery that is Cool in itself, with an ex-colleague of Hubby's that is now a Newspaper Editor.  The conversation rolled around to Famous People we've met.  Editor won hands-down:  he interviewed Captain Picard last month; has his e-mail address and phone number, and (gasp!) is very certain CP will be here for a Las Vegas adaptation of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.  He then went on to assure me that he would be throwing a party for the production and we will be invited.  I would be introduced.   Introduced!  (double-triple-gasp!)

To.

Captain.

Picard.

Way Cool.

A Boat Anchor

Faithful reader - this muse has not much to do with my screenplay saga.

Rather - it has a lot to do with incapacitation.   (Hope that's a word.)

Long ago, living with my grandmother, she had it in her head that one of our horses was harassing her cattle.  Hence, she had a chain strung on the poor horse's neck and affixed to it was a long metal pole.  Her rationale was that he would not harass the cattle with this chain dragging a pole attached to his neck.

It was a stupid rationale.  But I was a little girl and as such had little power to change the poor horse's fate.

But the horse survived.  After a few months my grandmother deemed the miscreant horse 'cured' and she removed his cruel fetters.  He was a good horse.  He survived worse under my grandmother's hand.

So - what has this to do with Stubborn?

You make the call.