A new series to add! I see “Abdera Miscellany” as a collection of half-baked ideas about Abdera, Florida.

I did something similar at the beginning of 2019 with a short-lived series of fictional posts from Abdera.

Below, for example, is excerpted from a post about the Bloodorange Hotel.

The Rise and Fall and Rise of Dr. Bloodorange’s Independent Hotel

In addition to buying and selling real estate, William Bloodorange was one of Florida’s most successful optometrists, and an early innovator in franchising vision health stores. In the boom years after the second world war, Dr, Bloodorange built The Independent Hotel between the Tamiami Trail and the Gulf of Mexico. It was one of the grandest of its era, and notable for its Renaissance-era baroque architecture. Dr. Bloodorange meant for the hotel to spark the tourism trade in Abdera.

The structure was beset by problems almost from the very beginning. In 1958, only five years after the grand opening, the hotel burned to the ground. Bloodorange vowed to rebuild the Independent bigger and better. And he did. The gala opening of the new Independent Hotel in 1961 was one of most celebrated events in Abdera history.

The tourism trade never caught on in Abdera, and since Dr. Bloodorange’s death in 1971 the Independent Hotel has passed through numerous owners, and for a few years in the early 1990s sat empty. In the mid-1990s the city council nearly purchased the hotel to destroy it. A last-second intervention by New Moon Properties to buy the hotel and restore it gave the Independent a new lease on life. Currently the Independent Hotel is half permanent residents, half hotel, and the first floor has been renovated to allow for a dozen small shops to serve the Shoreside neighborhood.

Some claim they can still hear the ghostly screams of those who died in 1958 fire.

An “Abdera Miscellany” will include writing exercises, notes, fragments, figments, snippets, characters, moods, moments, places, and whatever else I can shoehorn in.

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 019 of 100)

Nothing to post today, but I want to keep the streak going, so here’s a deer I saw in November.

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 018 of 100)

According to the General Social Survey (GSS) we are unhappier than we’ve ever been.

“Taken all together, how would you say things are these days–would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?”

For the first time ever there are more ‘not too happy’ responses than ‘very happy’ responses. (Though to be fair the ‘pretty happy’ category has been in the mid-fifties for the last decade.)

The GSS is a venerable representative survey of US adults. (Learn more here if you’re interested.)

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 017 of 100)

This week’s playlist kicks off with Shirley Bassey, but not the song below.

Oh, and the Glen Campbell version of “Elusive Butterfly of Love” is the creepiest.

This week’s playlist is eleven songs and 28 minutes.

TMBG came up randomly with someone I was chatting with this morning. The person was a fan of the more child-friendly songs, and all I could think of was —

I’m so tired of the waiting
My heart is cold
The sky is dark
I’m curled up in the ashes

We die alone we die afraid
We live in terror, we’re naked and alone
We die

(from “Last Wave” by TMBG and in this week’s playlist)

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 016 of 100)

UPDATE: The Lowland Hum version of “This Will Be Our Year” is lovely.

Oh no! I have a busy night ahead of me and still no post.

Go buy my book! Or, just as good, leave a glowing review of how awesome it is.

(Whoops. Just realized I need to update my Hillsborough River Press page. The Green New Deal book is out of print. It was getting a little long in the tooth so I decided to pull it.)

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 015 of 100)

I’m not sure if there’s a known source for this quote about advertising, but I’ve seen it referenced about a zillion times – “Half my advertising spend is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”

Something similar comes into play with craft books (or podcasts) about the creative writing process, or self-improvement podcasts (or books). There’s probably (certainly? possibly?) some value in reading books about plot development or character development or scene structuring, etc. But there’s also a lot of magical thinking going on when I read or listen to those kinds of works.

So, to paraphrase — half of what I read about the writing craft isn’t useful, the trouble is I don’t know which half.

For most of my life I’ve avoided books categorized as self-help, self-improvement, motivational, positive thinking, etc. There’s just too much chaff, and not enough wheat.

But in the middle of last year I decided that even some positive-flavored chaff might be better than the hypercritical self-talk constantly looping through my brain.

I started with The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh to start learning about mindfulness and meditation, and Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg to refresh my thinking about writing.

The Miracle of Mindfulness led me to Tara Brach and this free course – Mindfulness Daily at Work with Tara Brach & Jack Kornfield. I found working my way through the course immensely beneficial, and I grew very fond of listening to Tara Brach. I now listen to her podcasts occasionally and follow some of her guided meditations. It’s all very soothing.

I probably read Writing Down the Bones thirty-five or forty years ago. I don’t know how much it actually helped my writing, but it is comforting to read about someone else facing recognizable creative challenges.

The trap I fall into easily is listening to a podcast about the craft of creative writing, or reading a new book about craft, and feeling that that is a substitute for actually doing the work of writing. And this is the problem with even the best human potential books — their effectiveness drops off radically if you (I) don’t do the homework. And, who wants to do homework? Reading the book makes me feel like I’m doing something, but the exercises are too much (I don’t have time for that!), so whatever benefits the book might hold are short-lived.

Last year I read the following books on the craft of writing and on the writing life (Heroine’s Journey stands out from everything in the following list. It is excellent.):

• Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenbourg
• Never Say You Can’t Survive by Charlie Jane Anders
• The Heroine’s Journey by Gail Carriger
• Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different by Chuck Palahniuk
• Starve Better: Surviving the Endless Horror of the Writing Life by Nick Mamatas
• A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders
• The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling by Charles Johnson
• The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

And I read the following on human potential/self improvment:

• Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives by Gretchen Rubin
• Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach

I suppose the point I’m making to myself with this post is to dig deeper when I use these sorts of books, and spend time doing the exercises. Use them as workbooks instead of a respite from the work I actually want to do.

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 014 of 100)

I grew up in Texas. I was six years old when Coach Landry of the Dallas Cowboys couldn’t decide between Roger Staubach and Craig Morton as the starting quarterback and so had them alternate games, and in one game, alternate plays. The six year old me greatly approved of this strategy. I thought it was a very smart way to get the next play into the huddle and as a bonus it would keep the quarterbacks fresh.

Coach Landry and I, however, were the only people to appreciate the cleverness of this strategy, and after the different-quarterbacks-on-alternate-plays game, he settled on Roger Staubach who reeled off ten straight wins, including Super Bowl VI.

That means, thanks to Wikipedia, I can pinpoint my earliest football memory to the exact date. It was October 31, 1971.

I’m embarrassed to out myself as a Cowboys fan, but I came by it honestly. My father lived in Texas when the team started and he adopted them from the beginning. I grew up in Texas and until I was eleven or twelve I joined him in front of the TV every Sunday (and occasionally Monday nights) to watch the game. When I was eleven I tried to switch my allegiance to a franchise expansion team (I chose the Buccaneers), but that never really took hold.

I still follow NFL football more closely than I like to admit publicly. I recognize that it is a complete shit show. It’s blatantly racist, deeply misogynistic, and takes a brutal toll on player health. And all for entertainment. And yet, I find it interesting and engaging in a way I don’t find with anything else.

The other thing I learned during those Sundays was the awesomeness of Velveeta cheese mixed with Ro-Tel diced tomates and green chiles. Not a treat I indulge in anymore, but absolutely my favorite game snack.

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 013 of 100)

I like this technique used by Lynda Barry to transition from monkey mind to a calmer brain ready to create.

Here’s a longer explanation of the exercise she does after the spiral.

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 012 of 100)

REGULAR BLOG FEATURES: It’s coming back to me now. Back when I blogged regularly I’d often have some sort of regular feature. I remember at different times I had Music Monday, Chanteuse Sunday, Politics Monday, Across the Tampa Blogosphere, Syndicated Sunday, Wednesday Books, etc. So, I think I’ll do an Idle Thoughts round-up on Fridays while I’m doing the 100 Days of Blogging.

POLITICS: I also used to write a lot about politics. Often the political gripe du jour would prompt some sort of comment or explanation or question. I don’t think I’ll be doing that this round. Y’all know how to get political info, and I’m not tuned enough to the local scene to provide anything useful.

MUSIC: Wednesday Night Song List looks like it might be a regular feature during these 100 days. About 5 or 6 years ago I stopped listening to music. Pretty much almost completely. This was weird because music has played an important role in various ways through my life. It’s really only a year or so ago I started listening again. It occurred to me today that I probably used to control a lot of my self-talk by singing to myself in my head. It was the period I stopped listening to music that my self- talk started becoming unwieldy.

THE FUTURE: Why is the Long Now Foundation so white? Like, I can kind of understand how it might have started out that way, but it’s 2022, and the amount of whiteness seems statistically abnormal. It’s a little hard to tell from the thumbnails, but the last 17 years of guest speakers is also overwhelmingly white. And only one talk on Afrofuturism? I remember when I used to be so enthusiastic about their projects, and now they just look creepy and weird. #OurCreepyFuture

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 011 of 100)

(It’s been awhile since I posted a story. Here’s my most recent rejectee. Hope you like it more than the acquisition editors! Note: the following is a work of fiction.)

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 010 of 100)

I’d situated myself in my spot high up the live oak tree when I heard Uncle Dale bust out laughing and knew he’d gotten another one of his ideas.

My uncle Dale gets ideas. They are not good ideas. Mostly they are dangerous ideas. Dale thinks they are funny ideas. In the year 2020, the year of Covid, we all gathered at Granny’s for Thanksgiving. I don’t come from the sort of family that lets something like a global pandemic get in the way of a family gathering. Or even hanging out and drinking a couple of beers.

Dale’s ideas start with a joint, a shot of Jim Beam, and a couple of PBR tallboys, which then leads to — I have an idea. Sometimes he’s giggling so much we can barely understand him, but we’ve heard it so many times before we say the sentence for him.

On Thanksgiving morning his idea was to have our very own parade, complete with balloons. A Fuck Covid parade he called it.

My kin barely tolerate Dale, but Granny loves him and dotes on him. He’s been living with her since he got out of the hospital. She shares his sense of humor.

Thanksgiving is always at Granny’s farm. She inherited the farm and the Thanksgiving tradition from her mother who inherited the farm and tradition from her mother.

The farm was originally a shack in the middle of Florida. Granny’s grandparents built a house for themselves, and their son (her daddy) built a house for his family. The houses are close enough that Granny stretched a roof between the two houses, and that’s where we set the tables when we gather. It’s ramshackle but solid.

By lunchtime about seventy of us peppered the kitchens and the space between the houses and the porches. The place was as lively as an ant bed doused in kerosene when Dale got his idea.

My family drove up from Hialeah the weekend before Thanksgiving. I didn’t really hang out with Uncle Dale, he was grown and I was still a kid, but I hung out near him that week because he was funny. He was also sometimes sad or angry, and I steered clear when that happened.

Thanksgiving morning Granny nearly fell in the bustle of the kitchen but Uncle Carter caught her, so she ended up sitting on the porch with the other old folks watching the kids run around like little beasts.

Dale disappeared. Not that anyone noticed. I played tag with the kids and didn’t think about Dale and his idea again until he drove up in his raggedy green pickup with all the helium tanks and about a million balloons. Balloons of every color ever invented. I wondered where Dale got that stuff on Thanksgiving, but didn’t ask anyone. I figured he probably stole it.

Dale’s parade never worked since he couldn’t get anyone organized, but we had a ball and laughed so much blowing up balloons and sucking helium. Even Granny got in on the fun and hugged Dale and thanked him for making her laugh. The closest we got to a parade was all the littlest kids holding handfuls of balloons and marching around the horseshoe pit. Dale lost interest when Bubba and Merle showed up. They all vanished into the barn and Dale forgot about the parade.

The next morning we found Granny dead. She’d strapped a hose from the helium tank to a plastic mask she’d cobbled together and breathed it until she died. My dad found her behind the barn, and said at first he’d thought she’d fallen asleep in a lawn chair. Until he saw that she’d fixed that plastic mask to her face. Aunt Prossy read her note aloud, and we called the coroner, and everyone felt sad or angry or both. The note said she loved everyone and wanted to die with her family around her, and that her spells had been getting worse and it was time to go.

No one else heard him, but I heard Dale say softly, “I have an idea.” Mama told me to watch the little kids, but I followed Dale outside and climbed the oak to watch him. He carried the balloons and the helium tanks into the barn.

Perhaps the family should have been paying closer attention, but it was pure chaos as usual and no one realized Dale had gotten another one of his ideas until they saw Granny’s body tied to a bunch of colorful balloons and floating up above the house. Dale had removed the mask, and I could have sworn Granny was grinning. We watched until she was just a cluster of candy-colored dots poked through the top of the cornflower sky.

END