Velvet's Editing Services

A fellow writer, a member of my critique group, is also a great editor.  Here's her web address: www.proofreadandeditpro.com

documentary project

I am starting a new project, a documentary about a small rural school that won - against tremendous odds - a national championship.  To gather data, I will conduct extensive interviews.  Any suggestions?

elevator pitch for BOB BALMAR, A ROUTE 66 KID

In 1955, ten-year-old Bob Balmar feels scrawny as he picks up rocks from a hot, dusty field; by 1959 he is grateful for the muscles he’s built from farm chores and that a growth spurt helps him get on the basketball team and finally he can outrun his favorite girl cousin.  If only he knew what girls looked like under their clothes – Oh!  New girl in summer band camp -  with – with enormous mazoombas!

new posts 27 April

"Jersey Cream Cake" and "Abandonment" -- scroll down

a story for adults

The Hiccup   - revision # 5

writer's note:  The title change from "The Apple Rum Raisin Hiccup Pie" now makes the story a metaphor.  The ending is tweaked because some readers were confused - "white" is now "black".  Note the penultimate line to "get" the over-arching metaphor.  Tell me if you like the changes - you may post anonymously.  Thanks!

What’s wrong with me? Compliments on my cooking usually pleased me, except today I grew more annoyed with each compliment, almost sniping, “Blah!”  I felt the urge to slap the speaker.  It got worse until I—horrified at myself-- fled, pleading a sinus headache.

Mom would’ve laughed, figuring I was going through The Change. But Mom was gone and I had no one to talk to.  I did nothing maudlin like going to Mom’s grave and talking to the dirt, nor did I call or email my angst to any friends, because they wouldn’t have a clue as to what was going on with me.  My compulsion to break the compliment ritual simmered.  I had to do something dramatic with cooking, to- to- to win a pie contest!

The compulsion to win a pie contest grew by the minute.  Still, I stewed privately, because anyone I confided in would try to produce a cure through pedicure appointments, or drag me on unwanted shopping trips.

Monday morning, daughters back in dorms and husband in his man cave grading papers that provide his cocoon against the world, I started experimenting.   I first used frozen pie crusts, laboriously transferring them from their aluminum pans to my own ten-year old unused pottery pie baking dish. I hit myself on the forehead when I realized the pie contest required my own crust.  Aargh! 

Grandma made great pie crusts.  I dug out Grandma’s old rolling pin, surely a good luck omen. 

Lard or Crisco?”  I opted for the natural, and dug again, resuscitating a 1908 cookbook to get the right proportions of flour, salt, water, fat.  The measures pleased me; I related to “a pinch,” “a dash,” and “just enough to make it hold together” directions.  My fingers seemed to channel Grandma, as I worked the dough.

Crust battle won, I went to my sunroom to think up a filling.

What kind of filling would please my pie-challenged palate? I closed my eyes and willed myself into an alpha state to see what might reveal itself, then put the recliner into three quarter back position, feet up.  A wandering sunbeam jolted me awake, and a pie recipe dream flashed.  An apple-raisin pie. 

First, I had to refine the ingredients.

I sliced Fuji apples and pre-cooked the filling, recording measures of apples, sugar, salt, and butter, then added 1/3 cup of pre-soaked raisins. The mix looked good, but the taste wasn’t unique as I’d dreamed.  Hmmmm.  Hmmmm. Rum!  I’ll add a shot of rum to the raisins! 

Thanksgiving dinner produced the usual bland compliments. For dessert, I produced the expected home-cooked, store-bought pecan pie, alongside my Apple Rum Raisin Pie.  I didn’t say it wasn’t store-bought; they assumed it. 

“What’s this?  Smells good.”  My oldest daughter helped herself to a piece. 

“May I try that appley-raisin pie, too?”  Her dad grew adventurous.

“Wow!  Put that one on the menu again.  Was that was a Mrs. Smith’s pie or Marie Calendar’s?

“Mmmm.  That rum gave me the hiccups.  What a hoot.”

To the questions of pie origin, I replied nebulously, and turned away to hide a smirk.  Inwardly, I chortled.

A week later, I drove to the pie contest location with Gas-X and Immodium handy for the anticipated nervous reaction that, thankfully, did not happen.  Serene, I carried my things inside the exhibition hall, set up my station, and as I printed the name of my pie on a form, amended the name to “Apple Rum Raisin Hiccup Pie.” I smiled, tied on my chef’s apron, created my pie, watched and listened to the judges critiques, and heard the winners announced as if a routine day. 

Contest over, I packed up and started home in a light but cold, sometimes freezing rain.  I was re-living the contest, and didn’t see the approaching semi crowding my lane until the last microsecond.  I jerked the wheel, slid, then over-corrected and the car swiveled and swayed toward a gully that eroded the blacktop roadside of the old farm-to-market road not designed to accommodate today’s big rigs.  My car became airborne and my family’s faces flashed.  I think I screamed.

The semi roared on, but a car behind witnessed the accident and speed-dialed help.

I awoke in a hospital intensive care bed, with tubes and rigging tending my body while my family and friends held vigil talking, reading aloud, and playing Bach-- willing my brain back to reality.

My first question, after “How long have I been out?” was, “Where’s my bag?” 

It was stashed in a hospital locker, along with clothes the paramedics had cut off me.  My throat hurt from the ventilator tube and I whispered for my husband to please bring the bag.  It was a mess.  I had grabbed the handle as I popped my seat belt and leaped from the car as it slid toward the gully and bounced into Willow Creek some fifty feet lower.  My right hand somehow stayed clamped around the handle. 

My husband began pulling out checkbook, wallet, Puffs-- the usual bag detritus.  “Looks like its all here, honey.” 

Inside. Pocket.  Zipper.  Look!”

“Easy now, don’t get upset.”

I heard the zipper, and then he held up a large envelope.

“Open it.”  I coughed.

“Honey, please!  Stay calm or they’ll chase me out of here.”

Chastened, I smiled and whispered, “Sorry.  Please look.”

His face flashed from white-lipped frown, to eyebrows-up question, to a wide, smile and he whistled.

“Holy crap!  A check for five thousand dollars is stapled to a piece of paper that says, Lawrencetown Annual Pie Contest First Place!  It- it- the award says it’s for your original creation of Apple Rum Raisin Hiccup Pie.”  He chuckled.  “You never cease to amaze me.”

The last I remember was my husband saying, “You are one very special woman.  Wait ‘til the girls see this.”

Then I heard him shout as a machine whistled. I felt warm and wonderful, then everything went black.

Biggity - a short story for adults, based on a true event

Biggity  - DRAFT i.e., revision #3

The 1939 community 20 miles outside Nome, Missouri was a rugged place for a family of nine.  Eli strong-armed the 80 acres into production. Cora and the kids did their fair share.  Toddlers could help pick up potatoes—or rocks from a new field, and a seven-year old could milk a cow or butcher a chicken. 

By banker’s standards, they were poor.  Even so, they were better off than many because the kids had clothes for school and church— threadbare and patched, but clean.  “You don’t have to be rich to be clean,” Cora would say as she built up a weekly outdoor fire to boil clothes, scrub with lye soap, and  then rinse in a cold water tin washtub summer or winter, hands burned red from exposure.    

When Grace, the youngest, asked for a brush for the scraggly little dog that appeared in their yard a couple mornings back, Cora, who rarely raised her voice, sputtered, “A brush for that dog?  Don’t be foolish, girl.  Go along now and gather some lettuce from the garden so we can have a mess of wilted greens for supper tonight.” 

“But, Momma.  His tangly coat bothers him.  I want to help him.  He likes it when I tend to him.”

Cora sighed.  “I’m sorry, Grace, but I don’t have a brush for a dog.  And I need your help.”  She softened her voice and smiled.  “Go get the lettuce now.”

“Yes, Momma.”

Cora scrubbed harder on last night’s potato soup pot.  It’s a throwaway dog.  Likely dumped by someone from town.  Too small for a farm dog and no sense about herding cows. Cute little thing, though.  She gave the pot a vicious swipe. The idea that someone would think that a 1939 farm family would have food to spare for a useless dog!  

Nine-year-old Grace pushed the scraggly dog in an old baby buggy.  The screechy buggy wheels—rubber long gone, went by the kitchen window.

 “Come along Biggity.  You can watch while I pick Momma’s lettuce.”

She’s talkin’ to the ragamuffin dog sittin’ in that old baby buggy as if the world were an easy place. 

Cora suspected Grace gave the dog part of her breakfast biscuit— she, pencil-thin from whooping cough the past winter.  They didn’t need this dog.  Old Jack helped with the cattle so earned his living.  Not this—thing, this burdensome dog.  Cora gritted her teeth, not feeling good about what was bound to happen. 

Eli’s not likin’ how Grace is babying that dog.  But it’s cute, her pushin’ that little thing in the buggy. I might get a picture of her and the dog when her grandmother comes by Sunday next.

The older kids were now coming to the pump in the yard and washing up from morning farm chores. Cora smiled.  Seven kids, stair steps— each different, yet similar when they smiled with their eyes.  She called out the window, “Time for school.”

The kids giggled and jostled into the house, grabbed lunch pails and headed out.  They had to pass her inspection, and she spit-bathed a spot or two on one or the other boys’ cheeks.

“Mind your teacher!”

“Yes, ma’am.”  Lincoln bellowed over the others’ mumbled assents with a crooked smile and a black-Irish glint in his navy blue eyes.

Cora now cried silently in her tiny lean-to kitchen, as she washed breakfast dishes, hurting for her children who did not understand this life that required so many sacrifices.  She used her dry forearm to brush two loose curls out of her face and back toward the braided coronet of grey-specked coal black hair. Outside her window she could see the kids walking through the south field to the stile. They would have two more fields to cross before gaining their one-room school.  Howard was dragging his heels, last in line today.  He’d begged for an extra biscuit that morning to give to a boy who brought no lunch to school and was so thin and tired he couldn’t play ball at recess. Cora figured that Howard shared his own biscuit and fried egg sandwich with his friend, even though she told him not to.  

“Landsake, Howard,” she had said that morning.  “I can barely make enough biscuits for my own kids.  I’m sorry, but there isn’t enough for someone else’s kids!” 

Howard had picked up his tin lunch pail, an empty lard bucket, head hanging and shoulders slumped.  He’d said no more.

I probably sounded cross. He’s tryin’ to be charitable. Doesn’t understand The Great Depression. The times.  

So now Cora cried silently, kids out of sight as she washed breakfast dishes in one tin dishpan and rinse-scalded in another with water from the kettle kept perpetually hot on the wood cook stove.  She thought of the look on Grace’s face as she told the scruffy little stray that she had to go to school but would see him later that day.  Biggity.  How’d she come up with that? Talking as if it could understand.  That child is gonna have to learn to be tougher-natured or life will be a constant sorrow. 

Cora took the dishwater out to the potato patch, rinsed the pan at the well and put it aside to air dry.  She picked up a hoe and chopped weeds as she sang, “Bea-u-ti-fyl I-i-isle of Some-mm-where.”

As Cora got the kids off to school, Eli finished barn chores.  He checked that the kids had thoroughly washed the milk separator.  Satisfied, he picked up his single-shot .22 rifle and put one shell in his shirt pocket.  The single-shot rifle was all he ever needed whether hunting squirrel or shooting a rabid skunk.  There was no money for wasted bullets and he’d gotten a slap from his Dad when he missed.  He did the same with his own boys. But today, he would have to sacrifice a bullet to settle a problem.  He loved Grace dearly, their last and sweetest child.  Everyone loved Grace.  But she was too thin.  Couldn’t be sharing her food with the mutt that she babied as though it were a human child.

Eli got a piece of rope and made a leash.  He caught the stray dog that Grace called “Biggity” and led him into the woods north of the house, opposite the kids’ school path.

After hoeing the garden, Cora turned toward the chicken brooder house for her next chore.  She saw Eli leading the scruffy little dog into the woods and clamped her jaw.  “Well, it’s over. Grace will cry, but not for long. She’ll survive this and more.”

Cora couldn’t bear the thought of losing another person and she’d feared for Grace’s life more than once during the whoopin’ cough episode.  She had already lost twin daughters, stillborn at birth and her first-born son at age six years, her sweet-natured, smart little Lyle.  Lyle died of typhoid, two weeks after his daddy, her first husband, died of the same.  They’d been sloppy with washing the cream separator while Grace stayed with her sister, Hannah during her first birthin.’ 

Cora flinched when she heard the rifle shot, then went inside the brooder house to sounds of baby chicks’ “peep, peep, cheep, peep, cheep.”

“T’mere, babies, dinky dink.”  Cora put fresh water and corn meal out for the babes and picked one up to let it cozy in her cupped hands next to her ear.  The peep-cheeping grew softer and the baby nuzzled her hair.  She held herself quiet for several precious moments, then put it down and talked more baby talk to the chicks.  Aware of time passing and chores undone, she went to the hen house and threw corn into their pen. “Heeeere chick chick.  Chiiiick chick chick!”  The hens jostled for position, elbowing each other for the best corn bites, and Cora watched to see that none got injured in the melee.  She scattered the corn tosses so that the spread of golden kernels eased the crowd to the fringes and lessened the competition.  Satisfied, Cora returned to the yard and the smoke house with its basement store of canned goods.  She made herself focus on dinner and supper plans.  I’ll fry Eli some salt pork and - and boil the last of the potatoes.  Supper’ll be cornbread, milk and some fatback. Maybe tomorrow we’ll have new potatoes…

When the kids came home from school that afternoon, Cora took Grace aside and tried to explain they couldn’t afford to feed a dog that didn’t know how to hunt its own food.  She saw Grace’s chin start trembling and when she dug fists into her eyes, Cora admonished, “And don’t you take to cryin.’  Your dad feels bad enough, doin’ what had to be done.  Doin’ what those town people was too cowardly to do when they dumped that dog on us.  Now, go get your slate and practice your numbers.”

At bedtime, Grace was nowhere to be found.  Cora panicked, wringing her hands and muttering “Oh law, oh law.”  Eli frowned and started toward the door. Howard intervened.

“Let me take a lantern, Ma.  Pa.  I think I know where she is.”

Howard found Grace sitting by the body of Biggity.  She was sobbing and saying the Lord’s prayer.  When she saw her older brother, she wiped her nose on her sleeve, quietly got up and took the hand he offered.  They walked hand-in-hand back to the house and to bed.  

Jiffy Jersey Cream Cake from A ROUTE 66 FAMILY

 ~ adapted by Juanita Balmer from the 1940 WPFA 

“Good Food” cookbook

Into your measuring cup put one-fourth cup melted butter, break one egg, and fill the cup with Jersey cow’s cream.  Sift together one and one-half cups flour, one cup sugar, two teaspoons baking powder, and a pinch of salt.  Combine the two, add flavoring, and beat vigorously.  Bake in a loaf pan in a Moderate oven.  Good for short cake, or put Divinity Icing on top when strawberries are out of season.

 Joyce's note:  The Jersey milk was unpasteurized, and thicker than modern Half n Half.  For today's chefs, use half and half or whipped cream base or some combination of the two.

a poem inspired by Niven's Velva Jean ~ with apologies, as needed

Abandonment

You dare look at me

Old house with siding grey and spare

You stand tall and—

proud?

Fraud!

You, empty of life

 years gone gone gone

How dare you look proud

As if still housing families

and Sunday dinners with offspring

and their children?

Gone 

All gone

to modern houses with insulation

and electric lights and indoor baths

Vanished

one by one all slipped away

your people are no more.

Say— !

Don’t you hear?

You have no purpose save to remind me

Of winter nights with chamber pots

And hot summer nights rank with sweat

Where, shaking with fear I saw

wild creatures in woods

That bite and sting

My mother lived in you, old house

- and died.

Stop

stop hoping

and pretending

Fall down

Go

Let me

Be.

the winner ...

Rock Pickin' and I've taken it down because I'm putting it back where it belongs best - the first chapter in a middle grades/YA novel.  Thank you for suggestions on how to make it better as a stand alone short story, but I'm giving it a bigger role as anchor chapter for my second novel.

note to novice writers

I have two published books,several academic articles, some poetry and a few short stories.  Long ago I learned that critiques from fellow writers is essential.  I don't know anyone who can thoroughly edit her/his own writing.

short story "Deciduoso"

Deducioso, the Flying Meat Eater   ~ by J.Ragland

He swoops majestically across the green yard, stopping for only a flicker of time on a wild Black-Eyed Susan.  Same for the White Star Coneflower.  Ditto the beautiful deep purple petunias in the sunny garden, and the deep pink Impatiens in the shady garden.  He ignores the sunflowers and Russian sage.  PFFFTT—ZOOM!! ! The various beautiful flowers are insignificant distractions, best left to hummingbirds and bees.  He has something much meatier for his destination so only pauses for a quick sip of sweet flower nectar here and there, flexing his muscular wings as he feeds.  Sip.  Sip.  Flex.  Flex.  He is blue-black all over except for circular tattoos of blue-purple and yellow-beige high on his arm-wings. 

Swoop!   He is up and away again like Batman on a mission.  He is on a mission.  His mission is to seek out his life-sustaining source.  Where is it? Where?  Where?  He swoops and zooms around the oak tree, around the dogwood clump, over the vegetable garden and past the hickory grove out to the rocky hillside where the grass is sparse and finally, finally, there it is!  He zooms in and lands and feeds on a big beautiful circle of …….dog poop.  Sustenance at last.  He feeds and feeds, almost un-mindful of the human stalking him with the silvery thing with the shiny blackish eye.  He feeds and flexes his wings, fanning his now too-warm body as it glistens in the sun.  He will return to the purple petunia only after several long and delicious minutes of devouring his fresh, meaty meal.  

The human mentally names him Deciduoso after observing his deliberate actions, decisions, skimming first one plant than another, to get to the interesting – and tasty? stuff.  Yuk!

The butterfly is a curiosity to the human with the digital camera who wonders why it stays so long on the disgusting pile of Golden Retriever waste and why it so briefly on the beautiful flowers with the sweet-smelling nectar.  This is a mystery to be solved.  Destination library, after first stopping for an online search.  Is this normal behavior for this species of butterfly? 

A search entry for “black butterflies” online reveals several photographs.  Deciduoso is actually a Black Swallowtail and the one in the yard is a male because of the distinctive coloring. 

“Yessss!!”  says Jake, clicking on a link for more information.  Wikipedia posts lead to details.  Butterflies are insects.  The Black Swallowtail butterfly’s scientific classification involves the Arthropoda Phylum, Insecta class, Order Lepidoptera, something Family, Genus and Species.  Hmmm.  Whatever.  This is free information, so Jake reads on, not terribly interested in the official name stuff.  Jake actually recalls some science class stuff -- that insects pollinate plants and they help recycle garbage as links in the natural food chain.  Another link.

“After mating, small, yellow eggs are laid, typically on garden plants from the carrot family, including dill, fennel and parsley.”  None of that in our yard, Jake knows.

“The Black Swallowtail has an orange ‘forked gland,’ called the osmeterium.  When in danger the osmeterium, which looks like a snake’s tongue, ejects and releases a foul smell to repel predators.”  Jake is intrigued.  A butterfly with a snake’s tongue! Yowee! Cool! But what about food choices?  Back to the browser’s search page.

Click.  The next link is www.butterfliesandmoths.org and this site’s information includes a statement that adult butterfly food is nectar from flowers including red clover, milkweed, and thistles.  Nothing about dog poop.  Interesting.  Ver-r-ry interesting.  

Jake emails the seventh grade science teacher, not mentioning the dog poop picture, and receives more information about butterfly feeding habits.

“With few exceptions, adult butterflies don’t really eat but they do drink various liquids to maintain their water balance and energy stores.  It’s generally the caterpillar stage that does all the eating so the butterfly stage can focus on procreation. There are some carnivorous butterfly, such as the Harvester butterfly.  However, most butterflies are strict vegetarians.” 

“Wow!”  Jake says out loud and thinks, Is the Black Swallowtail photographed in their yard some sort of weirdo creature? 

Back outside to the dog poop area with the camera and my, oh my there are two more, one yellow and one brown butterfly feeding on the poop -- and the male Swallowtail Deciduoso is back.  Or, maybe it is a different male. 

I wonder if our dog has been eating dill or fennel that has gone through to the poop?  Jake thinks, stealthily taking more photographs.  The science teacher also said that butterflies only live for 3 days so Jake wonders if this is the last day for this Swallowtail and maybe that is why it is eating different food?  Maybe as it dies it grasps for something… not its normal food?  Maybe its sense of smell has already died and the poop smells sweet?  Maybe this butterfly is just whacko?!

Jake does not find anything else online that is helpful about explaining Deciduoso’s food choices but Mom agrees to the library trip. 

The librarian recommends A World for Butterflies book because it has lots of photographs along with scientific information.   On page 183, Jake reads “The black swallowtail feeds on members of the carrot family…” and wonders if there are carrots in the Golden Retriever’s dog’s food. On page 190, the book says “Butterflies spend 50 per cent or more of their time looking for food.  Factors that affect food choice include the sex and age of the butterfly, the weather conditions, and the type of available flowers or other food sources.” 

“Other food sources”? Jake pauses a beat, “means… what?”

“Butterflies need the ‘high energy’ of flower nectar, composed mostly of sugar, to sustain their flight muscles.  … Favorite flowers include daisies, the mustards, and peas.”  Jake doesn’t think that mustards and peas are sweet, so butterflies must have very different taste buds than humans.  “Oh, wait, the book means the mustard and plant blooms -- flowers!”    Jake mumbles.  Reads more.  Finally!!  Page 192 reveals the answer to the mystery of Deciduoso’s feeding!    

“While it’s true that the nectar from flowers makes up the bulk of the diet … their need for salts, nitrogen, amino acids …drives their need to seek out alternative food sources.  These include wet soil, and such unappealing foodstuffs as rotting fruit or vegetables, the juices of dead animals, sweat, or dung.”  Dung?  Jake remembers that as another name for feces, and that means ….dog poop!  Jake turns the page and finds big color photographs of butterflies.  One is feeding on fox poop, another is feeding on bird poop, and one is feeding on owl pellets -- otherwise known as owl puke.  The article goes on to explain about plants not having all the salts that butterflies, like other animals need for survival.  Male butterflies often visit specific kinds of plants for special nutrients they need in order to attract a mate. Huh!? Jake laughs out loud.  Deciduoso is normal, after all.  Go figure. He’s trying to find a mate.

“Oh, well,” she thinks as Mom offers a visit to the St. Louis County Butterfly House when they are back in the car and Jake has explained her mysterious butterfly and her made up name for it.  The butterfly house is just a few blocks away from their subdivision.  “Can Jessicah go too?” she asks.  “Sure,” Mom says, “as long as her Mom sends her with admission money. I’m tired of always paying for both of you…”   

Selected References

Schappert, P.  (2000)  Buffalo, New York:   Firefly Books.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Swallowtail  retrieved 8/10/2007

http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org  retrieved 8/10/2007

academic books

My two academic books are available through Amazon.com, Selecting a Thinking Skills Program, and Women in Administration: Opening Windows, Pushing Ceilings.  Still timely and producing modest royalties.

writing

I write because I must. Sometimes I spend several days pre-writing and re-writing in my head; sometimes I write in my sleep. My preferred time is to write in the early morning, before email, before facebook, but NOT before 2 cups of British Breakfast tea with honey. Cinnamon toast on the side is a bonus.

 

Another necessary activity is reading. I read a wide variety -- what the bookstore has in stock for book groups, many mystery writers, lots of women writers, YA, middle grades.  EVERYone should read Richard Peck, Barbara Kingsolver, Sarah Dessen, John Sanford, Tony Hillerman, Ann Rivers Siddons, Annie Proulx, Lee Child, all stories in THE NEW YORKER, even though you won't like all.  Read the classics ... and whatever else grabs your eye.  Perusing book stores' fiction selections is a thrilling activity.