And folks wonder where I get my characters’ names

 

 

                I usually ignore the current bandwagon and have to run like the dickens to get even close. Right after the newest census report came out, many columnists wrote about names. Even as late as last week in the local paper, one gal was opining (negatively, I thought) about the names of celebrities’ children.

                As I’ve probably said before, for several years I’ve kept a list of given names found during my reading. You’d think there couldn’t possibly be any more to be added. But every day, the NAMES line in my journal has from several to many new-to-me entries.

What if, I said to myself just one morning, I shared a few names from each letter of the alphabet.  26 letters times 500 words in a post. Hmm. I should be able to solve for “x” if I could remember the equation.

                I did that, but failed to consider the introduction and summary, so my figures are off. Since I usually begin lists with A, I never get around to the end. This time, I’ll start with Z.

                Z––Zoal, Zola (97-age at death) / Zola Elizabeth (96), Zollie, Zona, Zondra, Zooey, Zora, Zyonna and Zyria.

Y––Yingluck (female), Ylshume, Yolanda, Yonnia, Yo-Yo, Yoonshin (f), Youman.

X––Xann, Xanton, Xanus, Xelphin, Xenia, Xon.

W - Wyley/Wylie, Wylladen, Wylon, Wyma/Wyman, Wyndham, Wynema, Wynika.

V––Vonnie Lee, VonSheila, Vontaze, Vontrel, Vounda, Voyne, Vurnice, Vy(ceil).

U––Unique, Unity, Utha Lee (83), Uthal, Uvadelle, Uvalde, Uvee.

T—Tylon, Tynslee, Tyrann, Tyreese/Tyrese, Tyrice, Tyson, Tyus.

S—Surhaver, Susana, Sutilla, Suzanne, Sweetie, Sybrina, Sylvester.

R—Rozonda, Ruby Jewell (93), Ruby Mae (95), Russtina, Rutherford, Ryn/Ryne, Ryon.

Q—Quintana, Quintes, Quintine, Quintis, Quinton (f), Quintus, Quory.

P—Prince/Princella/Princess, Prudence/Prudie, Pryor, Purcell, Purvey.

O––Ova Laverna (94), Ovetta, Ovia, Ovine, Ovis (m), Ozelia, Ozelma (93), Ozie Ree.

N—Nuria, Nute, Nyah, Nydia, Nye Lottis, Nyline, Nyna, Nyra.

M—Myrtice, Myrtilla, Myrtle Geneva, Myrtle Rose (90), Myscha, Mystic.

L—Lynville, Lyra Lee, Lyric, Lytha, Lyudmila, Lyvonne.

K—Kyndalle, Kyndrian, Kynlei, Kyralee, Kyri, Kyrie, Kyrin.

J—Junko, Juponda, Jurinda, Justic, Justice, Justinian, Juvita.

I – Iwilla, Iwona, Izalia, Izeta/Izetta, Iziah, Izola.

H-- Hutoka (f-92), Hycianth, Hyla, Hyle, Hyman, Hyrum, Hywanna.

G – Gwena, Gwendolyn, Gwendy, Gweneva, Gwenna, Gwynne.

F – Frisby, Frona Hazel (94), Fronie (92), FutureMae, Fuzzy, Fynnley.

E—Excell, Eydie, Eyren Carrold, Eyvonne, Ezekiel, Ezma, Ezzard.

D—Dwindell, Dwyane, Dwlya, Dyan, Dyle, Dynasty, Dystany.

C—Cynamon, Cynde/Cyndy, Cyril, Cyril Quinton (89), Cyrilla (nun), Cyrene.

            B—Buzzy, Byford, Byard, Byna, Byrd, Byron Luster (94), Bytha.

            A—Ayszessie, Azealia, Aziz/Aziza, Azline (94), Azra, Azzle (b.1911).

           

Now, don’t tell me to get a life––I have one. Plus a list of over 6,000 names.

A few World War II vets who've died recently and how/where they served

 I haven’t mentioned plants blooming around Couchwood for a spell, so here’s a list as of mid-August.  Abelia, African violet (blue), airplane plant, begonias, cannas (yellow), crape myrtle, dianthus, lamb’s ear (late), liriope, (small, yellow) lilies, marigolds, mini-roses (pink), moss rose (second-season),  (an occasional) mum, oxalis (Janet Carson calls it a weed), periwinkle (second season), sansevieria (mother-in-law’s tongue), shamrock and (red) verbena.

                I cleaned out the two existing iris beds and added a new one for the yellow iris I begged from Aunt Frances.

               Since the anniversary of the end of World War II is around this time, and in memory of those who served and who died recently—I will share a list I’ve collected for a year or so while writing novels set in the 1940s. These names are from obituaries in the state paper and are quoted exactly as written.

                A. B.C. –Navy—medical corpsman, hospital ship, the USS Bountiful in the South Pacific.

                B. G. – Enlisted at 17 in the Navy. Saw submarine service aboard the USS Medregal. Later, witnessed the signing of the Japanese surrender in 1945.

                C. H. H. –Served in Occupied Japan.

                C. J. “P” S. – 2nd Lt., 6^th Marine Division; awarded the Purple Heart after being wounded during the Battle of Okinawa in June 1945.

                C. W. G.—Joined the Navy a year earlier than was legal. Served as waist gunner on a B-17 bomber in the Pacific. Discharged as a disabled vet; spent time in the Army/Navy hospital in Hot Springs Ark.

                D. C. H. –Joined the Army in 1941. Discharged as technical sergeant in 1945.

                E. R. E. –Entered the Navy at age 18. Basic training at the Great Lakes Naval Station, then to the destroyer, the USS Lang, which saw many combat missions in the South Pacific, earning the ship/crew 11 Battle Stars.

                E. T. P. –Served with the 732 Railroad Battalion in the Philippine Islands and later in South Korea where he was senior yardmaster of the large Seoul railway yards, in charge of moving the Japanese out of South Korea by rail to the ports.

                F. L. H. –Worked for the War Emergency Pipeline.

                G. F. R., Sr.—Earned a Victory Medal and Army of Occupation Medal in the Army during the occupation of Japan.

                G. L. C. –Merchant Marines.

                H. C. “C” B. Jr.—US Marines. Ordered along with other Marines to observe atomic-bomb tests at close range.

                J. A. “S” C. –Enlisted Army 1945, assigned to Company D, 25^th Battalion, 7^th Regiment, and later to 2^nd Infantry Division, Fort Lewis, Washington.

                L. “B” M.—US Navy on Guam.

                M. F.—Teletype operator for the State Dept. at the Pentagon.

                M. L. “L” Y. –Joined Army Air Corps at age 17, was transferred to the USAF.

                N. A. –Army. Battles: Normandy, Northern France, Ardennes, Central Europe and Rhineland. Honorably discharged Oct. 26 1945.

Lest we forget!

A fictional tale based on a true story

[Google image]

                During the early evening of Valentine’s Day, two young women dressed in red frocks stood in the side door of Gram’s farmhouse. They’d heard something outside, and chattered like crickets.

                “There’s somebody . . . in that tree!”

                “That’s just a cow that got out of the feed lot.”

                In the dark, neither wanted to investigate and the men were in the back room sprucing up.

                Next Monday, Uncle Budd would be leaving for the Navy and Uncle Rollo, the Marines. Tonight, they were taking their girlfriends to a dinner-dance.

                A light snow had fallen since noon, whitening the trees, garden, chicken yard and outhouse. The lane to the main road was still safe enough, Gram said, for Uncle Budd to drive.

                Because the women said something was outside, I crawled into Gram’s lap. She rocked fast and hummed loudly. It would be morning before I knew why.

                I slept with Gram. The front door of her old unpainted house opened into her bedroom, and every night, she forced a table knife into the door frame for protection. Grandpa had died years ago.

                I awoke to breakfast smells. Bacon sizzled, and Gram’s coffeepot stuttered on the wood stove. Biscuits baked. Gram was humming a song I had learned in Sunday school: “If I have wounded any soul today; if I have caused one foot to go astray . . . dear Lord, forgive.”

                A sob grabbed her voice. Tears rippled down and dripped onto her apron. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and turned away when she saw me looking. I drank my cocoa and bit my lip, trying not to cry myself, hoping it wasn’t anything I had done.

                From the kitchen window, I could see my uncles out by the oak. They bent down, pointed, and then tracked through the snow out to the lane.

                The women came out from the back room, bundled for a trip to the outhouse.

                When the grownups came back in, Uncle Budd was carrying a pair of snowy shoes with holes in the soles. Someone HAD been in the tree, and he’d left his shoes on the back porch.

                Gram couldn’t hold her secret any longer. “When you were getting ready last night, Mr. Ubergang came to the door hoping to get warm. He was in such a state he could hardly talk. I was afraid and shooed him away.”

                The old dairy farmer must have walked from his home in the woods, across the nearby creek, past Gram’s, up the lane and then down the highway to Tucker’s Grog Shop. A neighbor said the owner had closed down before the weather turned bad, and that Tuck had sent his customers home.

                Mr. Ubergang had stopped at Gram’s and when she refused him entry, he lay down on the lowest tree limb. Sometime during the night, he must have found a spot on the back porch out of the wind, taken off his shoes and lay down.

                At daybreak, Mr. Ubergang had trudged home in his stockinged feet. My uncles followed his footprints to the low-water bridge.

                We heard later that his feet had frozen and had to be amputated. 

We never told Gram.

Exclamations over stuff in the newspaper & otherwise

photo by C. Hoggard- sisters' trip/13

 When Kid Billy’s gone, there’s only the cats to talk to, so I’ve begun to—you guessed it—talk to them (snicker) and myself—out loud.
 

 For instance, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE! A UAPB linebacker dies from gunshots.
 

 OH, NOW, COME ON! Here’s an 86-year-old’s obituary that listed his father’s name as Hangerup!
 

I’LL BE DOG! Here’s a 64-year-old whose only survivor was his guardian.
 

OH NO! A sentence in a small newspaper: “A dog was ran over.”
 

WE SHOULD GIVE HIM THAT. A picture of former president George H. W. Bush in a wheelchair shows him wearing clown-striped socks to the 5,000^th daily Point of Light Award ceremony. I think I read later that they were mis-matched.
 

WHAT A WASTE! Paying $8 for a deluxe wash at Big Red only to find afterward that the oak detritus/mold was still on my car.
 

WHAT A GOAL! “I’ve worked my whole life to be a head coach.” – Paul Petrino, now of the Idaho Vandals.
 

OH DEAR! “People can protect the (frog) population by not letting cats live outside . . . A housecat can kill hundreds . . . a year.” –Julia Sonn, a doctoral student at Tulane, on a fungus causing already the extinction of 122 amphibian species. Cricket frogs, leopard frogs and the Ozark hellbender salamander are affected.
 

NO, NO, NO! NOT IF YOU’VE BEEN TAUGHT RIGHT! My answer to the reported response by a mother of an actor accused of disrespecting gays and women, and praising Hitler’s speaking abilities, “If you’re in a group, you go along with the group talk…”—Item in Paper Trails, AD-G. Linda S. Haymes.
 

DUH! “Journey” is now defined to mean ‘beyond the county in which the person lives.’ – M. Wickline, AD-G.
 

EPIGRAM? “Trains pass through a station, but their journeys end at a terminal.”—article about the Grand Central Terminal.
 

OH, MY GOSH! Here’s a name: Okla Homer! 1936-era.
 

WHERE DID THAT COME FROM? In a dream, I was beset and assailed by three men and two women who commandeered my house and threatened me. Luckily, I awoke before actual violence happened. (Could it be from reading the police reports in the daily newspaper?)
 

YAY! I KNEW ALL OF THESE! The Swiss Family ___________; A Journey to the Center _____________; Twenty Thousand Leagues __________; Treasure _________; King Solomon’s ____________; Little Lord ______________; The Wonderful Wizard _______________; Rebecca of _________________; The Secret ________________.
 

SAW on a truck side: Infidelity. (Double take.) WAS: Fidelity. (Oh.)
 

TSK! TSK! Only part of a chapter written.
 

ISN’T THIS REDUNDANT? “Old-fashioned heirlooms”? (Janet Carson)
 

I MADE THE FRONT PAGE OF THE COURIER! Below the fold, playing at Campeeting Thursday night.
 

(WINCE) “This is the time of our lives when the children have drop-in privileges and it’s still wonderful to cook for them. . . .”- R. Burgess, retired. From the Grits and Grace column, Saline Courier.
 

Oh, besides the cats, and myself I also talk to my journal. Do you?

On Writing: A Collection of quotes and commentaries

                  picture from Google images

 

 

 

   *“I like a newspaper so I can underline & clip articles.” – Norma Blanton, columnist for THE (Amity, AR) STANDARD, May 31 2012

  * “My writing started with a prayer back when I was 32, and a single mom with two small children” – Judy Linze, Illinois, a member of the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum Educational Center’s writers’ retreat, June 4-8, 2012. HPMEC is located in Piggott, AR.

* “… drifted into journalism and never figured out how to drift back out of it.” – Seamus McGraw (January 15 2012)

 * Epigraph? “Time has passed, and that makes all the difference.” – P. Greenberg, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 12 2012

* Don’t use “reason why.” Use reason to, reason for, reason that.”-B. Madden, Letter-to-the-editor, AD-G, February 11 2012

* “Good research and good intentions don’t necessarily yield good novels.” – Sarah Fay, New York Times Book Review, October 23 2011, p.15

* A conundrum’s answer [should] contain a pun. [Check Your Knowledge newspaper feature]

* “I think it takes obsession, searching for the details for any artist to be good.” ––Barbra Streisand

* “A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.” ––James Dickey 

* “... [F]orgive your friends for their successes.” ––Dear Abby, February 6, 2010, Hot Springs (AR) Sentinel Record   

* When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.” – Enrique Jardiel Poncela

* “Be brave enough to live life creatively, the creative place where no one else has been.” – Alan Alda

* My idea for a good first line for a story, poem, essay, novel: “She always had a cigarette in her hand.” ––M. Horn’s great granddaughter after M.’s death at 94.

* Interesting usage of a noun as a verb: “...to scythe through...”

* Books can be harder to kick out than termites. – Laura Jofre, AP

* Writing is a profession of failure.” Robert Dugoni, The Writer, February 10 2008, p. 13

* “Get obsessed and stay obsessed.” ––John Irving, cited by Ron Hansen. Ibid

* Two similes found in one day’s newspaper, September 23 2009:

1. “... like grasping open air.” (Editorial, AD-G);

2. “... like hauling smoke in a wheelbarrow.” (Letter-to-the-editor)

* “You want to be a writer, don’t know how or when? / Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.” – Paul Simon (AD-G cryptoquote)

* “Writers make poor subjects for biopics, as they lead, on the whole, pretty dull lives.” (Claire Harman, Jane’s Fame, p.212) As I type this I see a misplaced antecedent. It’s the writers who lead dull lives, not the biopics.

* “[Jane] Austen left out the testosterone in her male characters.”(Ibid, p. 202)

* Paul Greenberg (AD-G) quotes satirist H. L. Mencken’s opinion of Warren G. Harding’s rhetorical style:

             “He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abyss of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.” -December 15 2010

* “Our interior lives are confabulated narratives, made of rags of hope and baled with madness. Our crazy frail hearts pitter until they stop.” – Philip Martin, AD-G December 19 2010

* “When I read the latest Arkansas Times poll and saw that John Grisham and not Don Harington or Paul Lake was the best Arkansas writer, I realized there was no point in a duffer like me even trying. So I’m giving up the writing game, getting into the painting game.” ––Jack Butler, Arkansas Times, August 9 1996

* “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” – Italo Calvino

* Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift is a 500-page monologue. –Nathaniel Rich, Harper’s, December 2010, pp. 79-80

* “Saul Bellow’s old men take solace in precise itemization.” Ibid, p. 81. A character in Mr. Sammler’s Planet says, “Knowing the names of things braces people up.”

This must be why I jot down all the words I don’t know—to ‘brace up,’ to feel intellectual, to feel knowledgeable, to feel, well, like a Mensan?

 Then how to feel when a fellow writer chides me for “sending her to the dictionary” when I used “inordinate” instead of “excessive” in an email?