I always want to pronounce it the way the French do, plastique. This in turn brings up an image of some sort of gooey gel used to blow things up.

Plastic—malleable, easily formed—that was the original meaning of the word and somehow it has morphed into—rigid, unchanging. Of course, it’s both and those of us who are English speakers rely on the context to figure out which description fits.

I was looking at my four-year-old granddaughter’s Barbie doll the other day. If you didn’t know, Barbie has gone modest. She now has little molded briefs on her attenuated body. How demure.

She’s still plastic.

Somehow this musing brought me around to television these days; gooey, amorphous, rigid, unreal even in reality—plastic and totally false.

The Word Plastic is a post from: Janet Taliaferro

GET THE INSURANCE COMPANIES OUT OF MY HEALTH CARE

And

GET THE NEWS MEDIA OUT OF MY ELECTIONS

The first one is relatively easy to understand and would not be supported by a lot of people on the right side of the spectrum. The second one is more complicated, and should appeal to everyone.

First, as a senior who has been on blessed Medicare for fourteen years, I am an advocate of the single payer and the “everyone covered” school of thinking. Medicare works just fine, thank you, and if there was some logical way to contain the rising costs of medical care (care that comes without commensurately good outcomes) we could swing this deal, just the way other countries with some sense have done. Single payer is the only thing that will work. There will always be a role for the insurance companies for medi-gap. Naturally, doctors, hospitals and a plethora of others, including drug companies, would not make as much profit. In my opinion, that puts them squarely in the corner of most Americans who haven’t seen their take-home rise in twenty years. Look to the states that have tried really health care. It’s a doable deal.

As for the second demand, it takes some explanation. I don’t mean we will all be relieved of the endless television ads. They are a necessary tool in a campaign. I believe we have been concentrating on where the money comes from instead of where it goes. This is the wrong end of the stick.

Let me tell you a story. Last weekend I went to the home of former Senator Charles Robb and his wife Lynda, who gave a thirty-year anniversary of his election as Governor of Virginia. I had worked not only in that campaign, and in his Lt. Governor’s campaign that preceded it.

At the party I ran into Derwood Settles, a retired accountant. He and I had worked a number of campaigns in the 70s.*

* Congressman Joseph L. Fisher gave us two instructions; first, no contribution larger than $100 from any individual or more than $500 from any PAC and second no debt. If you run out of money the campaign was to close.  These dicta were followed in all four of his House races. We did it, so I know it can be done. However, there are some caveats, and that’s the subject of a separate blog post. 

My job was to raise and expend the money for the campaigns and to work with the vendors. He acted as campaign treasurer. We both set the budget and kept an eye on the appropriate regulatory agencies, some state and some federal. He helped with the onerous reporting. It was those budgets we discussed at the party.

If you’ve ever set a campaign budget you know where the lion’s share goes. To staff? Nope. Campaigns run on volunteer effort and peanuts. The most I ever made for managing a Congressional race was about what a part time slightly better than minimum wage worker would make—and the hours were very, very long. It would have been a full time wage, still minimum, but I had a co-manager. Half for two full time employees was all the budget would stand. Consultants? Nope. Here’s where the Media fit in. You pay tons of money (up front and in cash—because that’s what the networks, radio and print demand) to the consultants. Of course they have production and other overhead, but they are essentially advertising agencies that get their percentage cut—fifteen percent like regular advertisers if they are lucky, but often less than that. The vast bulk of political money goes straight into the pockets of big Media. They LIVE for election years. They clean up. Then they either ignore you or beat up on you. GREAT GAME!

The second big blow to a budget is the United States Post Office. Even at bulk, political rate, all those mailings you hate cost a lot to produce and mail. And be honest, without them would you even know an election was going on?

Then there are the phone calls. Here is where things have gotten cheaper. We used to spend a lot on installing phones and paying the phone companies. The cell phones that belong to volunteers are a real savings. Robocalls are cheap.

If you are lucky you have a little money left over for field work, bumper stickers and yard signs.

But it’s the media that absorbs most of the money. When I first started in the political business, it was the news papers that had the whip hand. They charged the highest going rate, prepaid. The election reforms after Watergate forbade them to charge those rates. They had to give politicians the same rate as everyone else. At least the USPS has a political bulk rate for mailings.

We have to sever the connection between special interests and the need to feed the Media. There are ways to do this.

Public financing is often cited, but I’ve always been suspicious that to do this directly opens the door to a lot of unforeseen consequences. First, to add this to the national budget is going to make law makers want to skimp. You have to have enough money to run a credible campaign. Yet, there is a limit to what is really needed. There could possibly be a consensus on what that is, but the amount would never stay the same. There is that little thing called inflation. Can’t you just see the Congress voting to raise their campaign limits? They’ll bite the bullet and do it for their salaries, but campaigns? Never.

I’m for making the TV outlets give time to candidates and more than thirty seconds, which is a non-starter if you really want to inform. What candidates ought to get is fifteen to thirty minutes, and if you have to boot the Simpsons out of their time slot, tough. This will probably never happen, but I have been fascinated with a trend toward something like it. Somehow the political debate has moved from the League of Women Voters to—the media! Actually, I have thought the various networks have done a pretty good job of showcasing the candidates. Too bad they are only interested if there is a race to the top, so all we’ve seen are Republicans. Whatever happened to balance? I know you can’t have a one person debate, but you can give coverage.

There are a number of innovative ideas out there that make money available to candidates without raising it the old way or direct public financing and certainly not by resorting to secret PACs. See Lawrence Lessig’s OPED article in the New York Times, Thursday, November 17, 2011. His scheme has some holes in it, but at least it’s a new look at an old problem.

The point of all this is that if you eliminate the need for candidates to raise the money themselves for what is necessary to run a credible campaign the K Street gals lose their clout. They have to go back to the old fashioned and honorable way of being a lobbyist. Back in “the old day” lobbyists stuck to their vital function of bringing facts and a point of view to Congressional staff, so that intelligent decisions could be made on important and complex issues.

Anyway, here are a couple of foci for the Occupy Wallstreet folks.

Answer to a Constant Complaint is a post from: Janet Taliaferro

Grab that lefty rag, the New York Times or go on line and read Ross Douthat. I guarantee you four things. One, you will not agree with him. Two, three and four come as a package. You will get his side of the argument with facts he is not afraid to back up with references or citations, a history of whatever point he is trying to make and context. Facts, history and context are rare qualities these days, so savor them.

My second suggestion is about television. Pay special attention to whatever John Harwood on CNBC says. I have discovered during this debt ceiling crisis that he is the only reporter in Washington who can 1) remember that we pass legislation by casting votes, not talk and 2) he can COUNT!

My advice to libs and teas alike is fasten your seat belt. The votes have never been there—ever. If you think those new Repubs are going to play by the old rules, forget it. Poor Boenher never had the votes for any sort of compromise bill. Now he may lose his seat, perish the thought. On the Dem side, there were never going to be enough votes for a compromise bill either since everyone has had to move further right than anyone on that side of the isle wanted even to get a “look-in” at a possible compromise.

Finally I would like to point out the American electorate is going to get what they deserve. All those DFs around the Country Club lockers and at the corner coffee shop are going to get their way and it is going to be really ugly. Can’t you hear them over the years? “Boy, I know what I’d do, I’d just cut off the funds to those suckers in Washington! I’d cut ‘em right off at the knees.”

Hey, guys. The knees belong to all of us. Ooooooooooooooooooooops!

Listen Up Liberals! is a post from: Janet Taliaferro

Someone once said to me, “You know, we all want things to be perfect, but we have to settle for progress.” This reminds me of housecleaning, which I hate. Once I get through dusting and sweeping and washing, I want it to stay just that way so I won’t ever have to do it again. However, dust motes and usage have other ideas. So, what was “perfect” slowly slides into chaos. What that means is I get to do it all over again. The progress part comes when I manage to keep a fairly decent house while not letting the cleaning ruin my attitude or become an obsession.

And we do get progress, but it only comes with change. With change, it seems we get a lot of repetition. My philosophy professor, Dr. Gustav Mueller, used to say (he was German-Swiss) that the Dark Ages didn’t seem so dark to the Germans. After all they were a bunch of Teutonic tribes who won their wars and got to run countries. It’s true, they didn’t have much respect for all that Greek and Roman learning, but as it happened, a lot of that was preserved by those brilliant monks in the Northwest corner of Europe so we got to rediscover it in the Renaissance.

The point is progress is not only a matter of point of view, it is also acceptance of the fact that progress comes in fits and starts. Stock market goes up–stock market goes down, repeat ad nauseam. But the market never quite goes down to where it was before. The whole thing reminds me of the guy in the Escher etching, climbing the stairs. In one way it’s as though he never gets anywhere, but he’s still forging ahead. I prefer that to sitting down and becoming a mushroom.

And while we are trudging along, it is a good idea to pay attention to all the positive things happening right now. A large dose of gratitude is a help. Think of it, it’s gloomy and raining today, but I don’t have to water!

Image courtesy of Frieda de Witte (freaky03) of stock.xchng

On a happier note… is a post from: Janet Taliaferro

The concept disappeared somewhere in the 1970s when, I believe, the generations that could not remember the death and destruction of World War Two when so much of our world was falling apart.

Last week I drove up to our Episcopal Church in Northern Wisconsin and admired the lovely addition built on it in the past five years. I suddenly had a memory that has occurred to me over and over since 9/11. Sometime in the 70s, I was riding the train from Washington to New York City on business. When we got to New Jersey, across from New York, I found myself staring at the World Trade Center. I had never liked the buildings and thought their extreme height and placement at the tip of Manhattan was jarring and out of place. I got to thinking that at some point they would have to be torn down and I found myself going over scenarios of just how one would do that. To deconstruct them from the top would be an enormous job. I remembered the implosion of a downtown hotel in Oklahoma City, and thought what a mess that would be in structures so tall. Never would I think I would live to see them fall down from a hostile action, but I had visions of them, ivy covered stumps in some far distant landscape.

The sight of the church reminded me that in a thousand years, it will not be here, or at least not in its present form. This is not to say that some things last a long time; the step pyramid at Sakkara, Angkor Wat, Chichen Itza, Cusco and Mesa Verde come to mind. But they are not the same and the civilizations which surrounded them are totally mutated.

Somehow, attached to our cars, our houses and sometimes even our families, we fail to recognize what children grew up knowing in another age. Nothing on earth is forever. This is a concept deeply imbedded in Eastern philosophy. Somehow America has to relearn the paradox of letting to receive. That being and becoming must always be taken together. It’s not easy when you are terrified of not getting something you want or losing what you have. But it is a lesson nature will force on us.

Falling Down is a post from: Janet Taliaferro

About three years ago I finished a novel.  It had a rough birth and childhood.  It started as a short story but since I liked the characters, in a moment of folly I decided to give them their own book.

After wrestling the thing through three rewrites, from third person to first, the addition of four chapters to tell more of the story, and a year with the able help of Chris DeSmet, I thought the book was ready for publication.  So I put it up on Amazon e-books in January.

Just about the time it went up on line and was read by all of two people, I received a call from a friend I haven’t heard from in thirty-five years.  She found me on Face Book, liked my stuff, and said she and a friend had started a publishing company.  It’s a POD, but they do know how to market.  Also, I would be getting some first hand, hands on, hands all over my work.  Since this is the element severely lacking in most POD companies, I said “sure.”

Along with the offer to publish came the requests for rewrite.  For the last three months I have been struggling to reorder the book, change some characters and flesh out others while trying to keep it all straight.

I don’t know how you start to rewrite, but I start by doing the laundry.  Then I make the bed, clean the cat box and straighten the kitchen.  If I had a dog I would walk it about this time.  Finally, I’m at the computer.  I track my changes, because otherwise, I wouldn’t know what I wrote, what I cut and what I just might want to add back into the text.  I also go into “writer’s mode.”  The way it affects me is that I am perpetually distracted.  I rarely speak to my family and am reminded of a quote from an author who said, “It’s hard to tell my wife I’m working when I’m staring out the window.”

While in this attitude of mental suspension, I keep an eye and ear out for things that don’t ring true in my own writing, including things I have now read endless times.  Poets do this all the time, which keeps them fiddling with their writing long past publication.  Luckily with prose you have to stop somewhere this side of copyright.

I don’t work well in a complete vacuum, so there are a few people I let read my stuff after about three drafts.  My method of operation with poetry does transfer here to prose.  If someone comments and suggests something and I immediately think, “Eureka” I change whatever it is.  If I am doubtful, I wait until three people tell me the same thing.  Then I swear under my breath and do some serious rewrite.

Here is where this project has taught me new lessons.  One of publishers is a long-time creative writing professor.  We went back and forth over suggestions.  I let my MO take me through this and made some extensive changes to the structure of the book and to some of the characterizations.  In all honesty, it was an improvement.  I have a better manuscript.

Then we got to style and voice.  The professor objected from the beginning to my style.  I never quite squared that with the further observation that the publishers, “loved my writing and that it jumps off the page.”  She took the first pages of the novel and edited them.  I didn’t like the edits, but also didn’t want to rely on my own prejudices about taste.   I sent the drafts to five readers I trusted and waited.  The verdict came back as a unanimous, “don’t change a thing.”

Now I’ve been writing for thirty years.  I have a voice and a style that is mine.  It’s not the clickety-clack style of modern writing but I do have an ear for appropriate dialogue.  In addition, the poetic muse does intrude a lot.  This has never been a problem for my readers, since my first novel sold reasonably well with no marketing and I have published the best of my short stories and poetry.  Some of these have even won money in the form of cashable checks.  In addition, some of the best advice I ever had was in graduate school from the head of the department.  She was going over a short story of mine with me when she stopped.  “You know,” she said.  “You don’t have to change a word if you don’t want to.”

I informed the publishers I would not make the additional changes.  They informed me they wouldn’t take the manuscript without them.  We dissolved the contract.  It would have been nice to see a publisher’s logo on the spine of the book, but not at the expense of what was between the covers.

I’m back to negotiating with Create Space.  I’ll let you know what happens.

In the meantime I’m doing what I call final polish.  Every day I print out 20 pages of the text.  I don’t edit well on the screen, so I read the pages with my trusty red pen.  I read for clarity, word choice and continuity.  The following morning I plug into the text on the computer any changes and then print out the 20 pages to be edited that day.

Today I’m also e-mailing this to Coach.  I’m sure he’ll want some rewrite.

Let’s Talk About Re-write is a post from: Janet Taliaferro

Several years ago I was asked to give a lesson on changing behavior. The text we were using mentioned the Seven Deadly Sins. Curiosity sent me to the dictionary and in an old Funk and Wagnall’s I found the following definition. “Sin—any character defect that impedes spiritual growth.”

The absence of guilt, admonishment or threat in the definition impressed me, reminding me that fear, guilt and my own willpower never changed me one whit. How often had I given up smoking for Lent only to have the habit creep or rush back as soon Easter came?

Prayer helped during Lent as I counted down each day to Easter. So I started an experiment. First, I had to accept that I had the character defect. I didn’t smoke because someone or some circumstance outside of myself made me do it. I had a lust for nicotine!

Each morning I asked God to help me that day to remember to seek His help when I wanted a cigarette. At night I said “Thank you God” and made a little list of things I accomplished that day with the time I saved not smoking, or things I enjoyed more, like the taste of food and smell of flowers.

Progress wasn’t instantaneous and the process was long, but it still works so long as I take responsibility, ask God’s help and stay mindful daily of the task at hand. It is amazing how much the sunlight of the Holy Spirit gets through when I am not standing in my own way, or obscuring it with smoke.

2011

“You. Snake. It’s me, Eve. You just lie there with your head on a rock, still sleepy from winter. Don’t you know I could bruise your head with a stone in your present condition? But I won’t. You’d be surprised to know that I’m grateful to you. If it hadn’t been for you I would never have been able to figure out good from evil and then, when I was tempted I wouldn’t have any frame of reference? Sure, I’ve suffered some consequences and one of them is that Adam and I are still having that argument about who did what when and whose fault it is. We don’t seem to be able to break the habit. That’s the bad news. The good news is I have my kids. Without knowing good and evil, I wouldn’t have known pain—or fabulous joy. I had to learn everything in life is a choice and you better have a standard to measure against. Choices have results, too. But you learned that, didn’t you? You’ve been mute ever since we had that little chat in the garden. God is just, isn’t he? Too bad for you. Oh, you just lie there and look at me with those beady eyes. I know you’re just waiting to take aim at my heel again, but I’m watching you, too, buddy. ”

St. James’ Lenten Series is a post from: Janet Taliaferro

Most of the letters are form. You know the drill…”thank you for your submission”…”not right for us at this time”…”good luck placing this…”

Now editors are different. They are real flesh and blood and many are kind people. In fact, my copy editor, Arni Friedman, is hilarious. He sends wonderful e-mails, and incidentally does wonderful work. Right now I don’t hear from him much, because he’s having a time getting his heart regulated. He’s a few years older than I am, so, you know how it is. It’s a little like driving a car with over two hundred thousand miles on it. You love this thing called “my body” but it’s not very reliable and everyday you just hope the ignition catches and the brakes hold. It has to go to the shop for check ups a lot, costs money, needs special gas and oil, and it creaks.

But I digress, I was writing about editors. The first one I ever met in person was a lovely woman at REDBOOK who liked my stuff. Way back in the 80s we met for tea at the Renaissance in New York and she tried mightily to get my stories in the magazine. A hundred years before that when I did some articles for “Campaigns and Elections” I learned that a good editor is a gift not to be ignored. The staff there improved my prose and taught me a lot. Later I worked with both Chris deSmet and Marshall Cook at the extension Division of the University of Wisconsin. They were both great to work with; Chris on Virgin Hall and Marshall on a memoir I did for my grandchildren. But there are editors like a certain poetry editor who took my work, changed the title, dropped some lines and essentially made it his, not mine. I was desperate enough to publish to let him do this barbaric deed. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

About publishers, more recently Dan Cafaro and his crew at Atticus Books have given me great feedback as well as publishing some of my stories and poetry online. It’s so great just to get an airing! Check out their web site.

If the agent takes the book, I’ll send up flair—probably a hundred or more.

Image courtesy of Zsuzsanna Kilian.

Agents, Editors and Publishers is a post from: Janet Taliaferro

I’ve been doing it all wrong and I apologize.

I don’t consider myself a newcomer to technology regardless of what the calendar says about my age. In the office we had an old TRS (Trash) 80 back in the ‘70s. In the 80s when I really began to write seriously, I bought a Compaq which looked like a small suitcase I could lug around. Instead of the ounces a lap-top weighs, it would have tipped a scale at more than ten pounds, but it preserved all my stuff on big, floppy discs.

But, networking? It’s like this. I love my friends and try to keep up, mostly by e-mail or visits because I like to write and hate the phone. So every time I got a message on Facebook, I dutifully sent of a private e-mail answer. “No, no,” said my web helpers at Chaos to Clarity. “Answer right on Facebook so everyone in the network can see and get to know you.” So, I’ve gone back and posted a lot of answers, some of them from way in the past. From now on, public, I’m yours!

Facing Facebook is a post from: Janet Taliaferro

Last year I went to the shelter to adopt a cat. I was looking for a perfectly black cat, my favorite and the same kind as my dear Sam who died a number of years ago. Instead I came home with Grace, who the vet says her genes couldn’t decide to be a tabby or a “tortie.” In other words, she has lots of brown stripes and a white chin below really spectacular whiskers. I did not want a tabby. However, from the time I entered the shelter, her eyes never left me. “Well, she seemed to be saying. When are we leaving? I want out of this place NOW.” Finally I had them bring her to me and she licked all the residual sugar from my hand left from a doughnut I had eaten. She had me.

She quickly established herself in my apartment, perfectly behaved so far as the litter box was concerned and aware of my displeasure when I disapproved of the places she was pulling her claws. We came to an accommodation on that score. Then she began to assert herself. She only likes beef. She can’t stand fish and tolerates chicken. The only dry food she likes comes at a cost from the vets. She considers any yarn in the house to be common property and “helps” with my knitting and needlepoint. When she is ready to go to bed, if I am on the computer she sits on the keyboard. My monitor attracts cat hair like a magnate. But she does keep my legs warm at night.

Frankly, I got a pet because I was depressed last year (Grace! Stop going through the mail!) Companionship, I thought. Yes, that’s true, but mostly she has taught me that paying attention to something other than me is the best cure for depression. And like my mother, she is insistent when it comes to teaching me anything. About that reincarnation stuff, my favorite poem about by mother is one I entitled, “She was Decisive.” Hmmmm.

Grace and Reincarnation is a post from: Janet Taliaferro