Sharon and Yang Boldly Go

Dr. M'Benga, James Cawley, Mr. Sulu, Sharon Healy Yang, Sharon Yang, Star Trek, Star Trek Museum, Star Trek sets, Ticonderoga, , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been so busy getting out my two mystery novels that this is the first chance that I’ve had to share with you pictures from the September trip Yang and I took to Ticonderoga to see the Star Trek museum.  This museum recreates all the important sets from TOS Star Trek, based on the original blueprints that James Cawley received.  Cawley, himself, produced one of the best fan continuations of the original series, called Phase II, after the title for the never-realized return of Star Trek t TOS to television.

Anyway, to see the museum from the outside, you would have little idea of the magic that dwells within.  You might think this was just a building in a strip mall. You can see me checking out the timeline of the various incarnations of the series on the outside here. 

Ah, but once you walk inside!  The lobby is way cool!  There’s one of the models of the Enterprise!

Also on display are props and costumes –

and even a hatching baby Gorn!  Awww!

 

 

 

 

Once you enter the museum, the fun really begins.  Here I am ready to beam down

 

 

 

 

And then I’m gone!  But it looks as if we left behind the Medusan Amabassaor in his little metal carry on.  If he opens up the lid, don’t peek!

 

I also got to see the newly arrived Galileo Seven.  Yang and I didn’t get to take it for a spin, though.

Next, I decided to stop off in sickbay to see if Bones could give me something for my osteopenia.  He wasn’t in, but Dr. M’Benga and Nurse Chapel let me check things out.

   

Enjoy some neat shots of McCoy’s office.  Dig the way-out alien skulls! 

And don’t miss the lab where they experimented on those flying snot things from Deneb.  In fact, one is under glass here!  Don’t lift that cover!

 

 

So, down the corridor we go!  And, of course, we have to pass the Jeffries Tube.

 

 

 

 

There’s a stop in the conference room, which would also be re-dressed for filming as the rec room.  Mr. Spock left his lyre just hanging around, and the formerly silver-spray-painted styrofoam cups are now wax-paper silver spray-painted cups.  Ecology on parade.  Good enough. 

Next, it’s on to the Captain’s quarters! Whoo Hoo! 

So, here’s the work station.  Nice little personal computer and ship’s intercom.  What are the books behind the desk?  Our guide Ashley told us that they regularly switch the volumes.  When I was there, the books consisted of a volume of star charts, multiple volumes on Abraham Lincoln (remember Jim’s hero), and Moby Dick.  I wonder if the good Captain at one time had a copy of Bait and Switch?

Here I am in the boudoir section of the quarters.  Uh,oh.  Don’t worry, no Kirk around – and Yang was there to protect my honor, not that I haven’t done pretty well in that department on my own.  You can take this as you will, but these beds are awfully narrow.  One roll-over and you’re on the floor. Where do you put the cat?

Now, when filming the seires, the same rooms might be re-used for multiple settings.  So this would be the same setting for Uhura’s quarters in “The Tholian Web.”  Look at how high the mirror is here.  They had to switch to a longer mirror to catch the reflection of the petite Ms. Nichols when she looked in her mirror. The one I’m looking at would only reveal the top of her bouffant!

Let’s not forget Engineering and auxiliary control.

 

 

 

And now the bridge!

 

Here I am at the console of my bestie, Uhura.

Of course, I have to drop by the helm/navigation console to say hello to the two cutest guys (after Yang) on the Enterprise:  Sulu and Chekov. 

This is the navigation thing that the boys are always checking on, even though we can’t really see it on our screen

 

 

Yang got a picture of me  with our wonderful tour guide, Ashley.

So, let’s wrap up with Captain Sharon R. Yang in the captain’s chair, boldly going where no English professor has gone before.  I must say that chair is comfy!  So, warp eight Mr. Sulu, and don’t spare the horses, er, dilithium crystals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Made for TV Horror 3: Spectre (1977)

Dan Curtis, Dark Shadows, Gene Roddenberry, Gig Young, Gothic, Halloween, Horror films, horror television, horror tv, Majel Barrett, Robert Culp, Samuel Peebles, Spectre (1977), Star Trek, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Spectre (1977)

Spectre (1977) is a made-for-Television film that I had read about but was not able to catch for many years.  The premise of two investigators of the supernatural, one a wealthy and erudite believer (Robert Culp) and one a disgraced doctor and skeptic (Gig Young) ,  investigating the paranormal had piqued my interest – something of an ancestor of The X-Files duo – except Scully wasn’t a heavy drinker, though working with Mulder certainly could have pushed her in that direction.  About 20 years ago, I caught the last ten or fifteen minutes of it and was intrigued, hungry for more, which I finally got some years later.  At the time, I was pretty well satisfied with what I saw; however, watching the movie again, this month, my approval dropped precipitously.  There are some good things about the film.  The early interactions between Culp and Young, as Culp tries to convince the latter that he is the victim of voodoo, do raise mystery and suspense.  Clever is Culp’s figuring out that the unexpectedly arriving sister of a fellow expert is a succubus via her subtle avoidance of a chair he offers her to rest, a chair with a cross design on the back, and his disposal of her/it by pressing an arcane sacred text against her.  Lilith, the laconic, knowing housekeeper who guides Young’s character through Culp’s moderne abode further establishes an air of mystery and eeriness.  Then, there is the inexplicable rough weather that nearly downs the investigating duo’s trip to England, piloted by Culp’s British fellow expert in the supernatural (John Hurt!).  Equally good is Culp and Young’s arrival in London, searching for another expert to help them, taking them through a London rain-slicked and shadowy like a noir metropolis.  There, the tension grows as they enter a mansion where something demonic has horribly mangled the man they seek and only a pentagram can keep them safe.  Produced by Gene Roddenberry and cowritten by him and Sam Peebles, the movie led me to expect good things – even if the film does fall into the ’70s trap of assuming an over abundance of harpsichord music is always scary.

But things fall apart, especially when we get to the orgy/satanic celebration and sacrifice toward the end.  Like too many 1970s films, even horror ones, there’s just too much filler light.  The final sacrifice, as it were, actually looks pretty damned (so to speak) cheery with lighting as full and bright as you see in most sitcoms.  And don’t forget the artificial rocks of the cavern walls, all nice and shiny.  Director Clive Donner and Cinematographer Arthur Ibbetson really ought to have taken a gander at Edgar Ulmer’s work in The Black Cat, where impossible angles on stairs, altars, crosses, and doors in chiaroscuro  unsettle with an unnatural, Expressionist vision of reality.  Then there is also the fine example of disquieting cinematography in the use of shadow and darkness in Tourneur’s Night of the Demon.  In the ’70s,  even Dan Curtis gets the lighting right with his use of blue filters and eerily obscuring (dark) shadows  (I couldn’t resist) in the Norliss Tapes.  Click here for my review of that made-for-tv movie) 

It gets bit creepier when Culp goes up against demon Asmodeus, but the monster is till a rubber-mask dinosaur-type.

Furthermore Spectre’s demonic festivities look more like a lascivious New Year’s Eve Party.  We are supposed to be shocked by all that sexuality, especially the repeated  shots of ladies’ boobs  escaping their flimsy scarlet costumes and jiggling around.  My pearls remained unclutched. All I could think of was that one shot in Airplane mocking gratuitous nudity where, amidst the panic of the passengers, a topless woman suddenly jumps in front of the camera, shakes her girls, then disappears.  Apparently, this material was added for a theatrical release of Spectre.  Obviously, 1970s television wouldn’t have been ready for such hot stuff.

In all fairness, it does get a bit creepier when Culp goes up against the demon Asmodeus, but the monster is still a rubber-mask dinosaur-type.

The one gem in this movie was Majel Barrett as the housekeeper Lilith.  Tall, stately, beautiful, and commanding in a long black dress reminiscent of a chi pao, she was also a wry breath of fresh air.  Barrett’s Lilith was fully in charge of Culp and Young through her practical magic, guiding characters with a wonderfully wry, subtle sense of humor.  What a breath of fresh air.  This made-for-TV movie was a pilot for a proposed series by Roddenberry that didn’t get accepted.  Still, with some fine-tuning and more of Majel Barrett (aka Mrs. Roddenberry), we might have had something here.  Anyway, it’s still worth a watch. 

For more background on the film click on the IMDB link and the Wikkipedia link.

All images screen shots from Spectre (1977, Twentieth Century Fox), author’s collection)

No copyright infringement intended by use of the properly attributed photos.  If you feel there is a problem, contact me about removing the images.

10/28/26

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer Gardens in Auburn, PART One, Flowers

black-eyed susans, flowers, gardening, gardens, massachusetts, morning glory flower, New England, rose, summer, sunflower, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , ,
So, since I have a little time for a break between the two novels I’ve been working on, I thought I’d do a new post.  This one celebrates the success in the gardens that Yang and I have had this year.  First, I’d like to share with you how lovely the flowers have been.
We had lots of beautiful flowers this year.  Toward the end of April, Yang kept up his tradition of putting in the Impatiens by the end of the driveway.  Boy did those guys thrive all summer long!  If you can believe it, they are still going strong now at the end of September!  We had put in some pansies on the level above them, but now the pansies have passed.  Happily, one of last year’s Mums has returned and I will soon find a companion to plant with it.
The Black-Eyed Susans were especially prolific this year.  They were here when we moved in, and every year they come back. We’ve added some variations to the standard version, so there are some nicely differing versions.  These are one of Yang’s favorites.  He even keeps an old driveway spot clear so they can proliferate there.

We even have our share of roses.  Years ago, my mother-in-law gave me two roses, one yellow and one pale peach.  The yellow one is still going!  sometimes I get two flowers; this year only one, but it is a lovely one.  And it has such lovely associations for us.
 Last year we also rescued some mini-rose -shrubs from our cemetery Memorial Day decorations for family.  This year, the roses came back just lovely and the bushes, though still small are growing much bigger!

 

 

Our Morning Glories are quite a pleasure to see every day when we get up.  I did buy some more seeds this year; however, I always harvest seeds from the orchid and magenta colored ones.  There are so many deep purple ones (default color), I don’t need to save the seeds of those.  I especially love when we get a hybrid, the orchid one with a streak of deep purple or even half and half colors.  Later in the season, we also had white with pink centers and large blue or white with light blue streaks.

I also have flower boxes, which I love to arrange with complimentary colors and shapes of flowers.

 

 

 

 

We also had quite a crop of sunflowers.  These pictures were taken before everyone had attained his full height.  So, some are much bigger now.  They were very gallant, fending off the June bugs that usually devastate them in particular.  It didn’t hurt that I went out every afternoon before dark and sprayed a water and tabasco sauce mixture on them for a month.  I’ll try to post some more recent photos later, though their flowers  are now a bit droopy.  The birds are enjoying the seeds, anyway.
I’m not sure what kind of sunflower this one is.  I’ve seen the rusty colored sunflower as a single stalk and maybe one or two flowers.  I’ve seen the gigantic, multi-headed sunflower before in yellow.  I’ve never seen the shape and color combined like this before.  Well, maybe on The Outer Limits.  Anybody out there who can identify this one?

 

Well, anyway, let’s close with one of my favorites, a delicate wildflower.  The Asiatic Dayflower.  The shape is so delicate and the blue petals with the yellow stamens make a beautiful color combination.

 

 

 

 

A Visit to Burrage Pond in Massachusetts

birds, Nature, Rufuous Towhee, Sandhill Cranes, summer, , , , , , ,
My husband and I had been hearing about the Sandhill Cranes in Burrage Pond for several years now.  We’d made two earlier visits to try to see them.  No luck.  Then, Yang decided to try a different entrance from the last two we had tried.  Paydirt!
We left the parking lot and trotted down the trail until we came to a crossroads.  Go straight ahead or take the trail curving to the right?  Fortunately, we were greeted by this guide who pointed us in the correct direction.  We wanted to offer her a tip, but were afraid she might snap our fingers off.  Fortunately, she didn’t chase us down the trail. She wasn’t as big as our friends Gamera or Mrs. Gamera in the Erie Canal, but she had  good enough chompers anyway.

 

Moving along, we could hear a distinct songbird calling repeatedly overhead in the pines.  Yang had put the Audubon bird identifier on his phone – an excellent investment that I recommend to all.  I proposed we were hearing a Rufous (Eastern) Towhee, and the ap confirmed my conclusion.  So, maybe people don’t need the ap on an expensive phone, they should just hire me (at a much more reasonable rate) to accompany them on bird-watching trips.  Then, again, is there enough of me to go around?  But I digress.
We circled the trees, trying to pinpoint the bird’s location by sound.  Lo and and behold!  A male Towhee was singing his little heart out!  Yang got some nice shots, even though the day was overcast, so it was hard to effectively capture the bird’s colors.  Still. I don’t think we did too bad. The Towhee wasn’t a lifer for us, but he was a first for 2026.
Yang also got some neat shots of the Barn Swallows.  Their iridescent dark turquoise backs are always a lovely delight to behold.  Just try to catch them on digital when they’re flying every which way!  Well, they have to catch their breaths some times!
And now for our Lifer!  The Sandhill Cranes.  We first thought we spotted them way across the marsh.  They were greyish, or more black in silhouette.  But the stance was wrong and we couldn’t pick out the tell-tale red patch on the forehead. Turned out to be Great Blue Herons. Turning around to  go back, we saw some big , cranelike shore birds. Two adults with two fuzzy kids.  But they were brown.  I conjectured they might be Glossy Ibises, but they weren’t terribly glossy, their beaks weren’t long and thinly curved enough, and they were kind of too big.  When we got closer, my binoculars gave me a better look –  I saw that tell-tale red patch!  Yup, here was our Lifer, the Sandhills!
At first, we thought that we had two Mommies, each with her own offspring.  However, Yang did some research and discovered that these crane mates stick together to raise their chicks, often multiple ones. He also noted that these chicks went back and forth between the two parents, clearly connected to both adults. So enjoy these shots of the Sandhill Crane Family.

 

The day done, we were exhausted from our long walk on an overcast, but still warm day.  We know that if we come back, there will definitely be someone to keep an eyes on us.

 

 

 

 

More Adventures in Writing: Dusty’s Christmas Surprise

1940s mystery, 1948, Barbara Struna, cats, Christmas, Christmas Noir, Cloisters, fashion 1940s, Holiday Noir, Jessica Minton, Joan Bennett, mystery, Mystery writing, Natasha, New York City, New York films, Sharon Healy Yang, Skating in Central Park, The House Across the Bay, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , ,

Previously, I blogged on the complexity and hard work behind developing Memories of You.  Well, now that draft #2 of Memories is marinating on my D drive, I’ve plunged into turning the outline for my fifth Jessica Minton mystery into an actual book.  However, Dusty’s Christmas surprise has not flown easily from my pen, despite the detailed outline crammed into a stack of variously sized, lined pages, all written down at multiple points over the past two years.

First, there was the background research for 1948, and not just December of the year when the story unfurls.  My general research started with an interesting little tome called Live It Again 1948. Lots on politics, the economy, home life, and domestic and international events.  Harry Truman’s hard-fought presidential victory, the Soviet Blockade and resultant Berlin Airlift, and Citation winning the Triple Crown were just a few important events. Did you know that Kitty Litter and Scrabble as  we now know it both came on the market that same year?  Dusty will certainly delight in the former. With Liz’s penchant for mangling the English language, I’m sure she’ll make some intriguing contributions to the latter.

You can see the notes I’ve been taking from this book above. Also observe that the picture to the right shows how I made up a calendar for December 1948 with room on the squares for each day to write in events occurring in the story – but written in pencil!  Once you start actually writing, you find that events may notconnect in the ways you’d expected or fit the order you’d originally planned.  Hence, a little erasing and a little rewriting, in pencil, enables you to make adjustments, so that you are always looking at the big picture over the weeks the story covers. It helps me to see the plot in a linear layout.

Another big help was a stack of movie magazines from 1948 that my fellow author Barbara Struna graciously donated to me.  They gave me the lowdown on what 1948 people were experiencing – directly, by reporting on films, gossip, music; indirectly, by showing advertisements for films, consumer goods, and photos of hair and clothing fashions.   Primary texts give you a nice picture of people’s everyday life in the time period of your choice.  Closer to creating a final draft, I’ll be looking at the New York Times for December 1948, to get more depth on world, national, and city concerns – as well as on entertainment, what people are buying and the costs, and personal interest stories.

Now, I also needed help with some nitty-gritty details.  Only three chapters in and I had to figure out how one character could check whether a thirty-eight was loaded, without getting fingerprints on the gun. God bless the Internet (sometimes).  Here you can see that I retrieved and printed instructions on how to check for bullets, while also getting a picture of the gun itself to see all the parts described.  So, I was able to describe how to handle the weapon without getting pesky fingerprints all over it.

Many people tell me that they love my descriptions of my era’s clothes,  often asking how I can create those images so vividly and accurately.  Here’s my “secret.”  I draw on photos of the actual styles of the era.  As I’ve mentioned in other of my blogs, I’m inspired by classic-era actors when I create my characters.  With Joan Bennett as an inspiration for Jessica, I often turn to images of her to inspire both scenes and descriptions of what she’s wearing in those scenes.  For a Saturday morning visit to The Cloisters, I selected this number from House Across the Bay.  Now, House was released in 1940, but the longer plaid skirt and nip-waisted jacket turned out also to suit (if you pardon the pun) 1948 fashions.

You can also see in the picture at the beginning of the previous paragraph that I have a layout of The Cloisters on my writing easel.  I had planned to take a trip there to refresh my memory for recreating that setting; however, I was unable to do so before writing this passage.  After checking online articles about the layout and exhibitions of The Cloisters in 1948, I blended that map with images and descriptions from those articles to create the setting of two dangerous encounters for Jessica.  Can you guess where Jess was hiding when she overheard a telling conversation?

Before things get dicey, this faithful dog memorialized beneath his nobleman owner’s feet leads Jessica to ponder if Dusty would do her similar honors, in stone, What do you think?

Additionally, I’d planned a scene where Jessica is pursued across a skating pond in Central Park by a mysterious predator. However, Yang claimed that the skating ring in the park was an open arena that wouldn’t allow any surreptitious, threatening chases.  Again, a little research confirmed that Yang’s rink only opened in 1950, but there was, indeed, a frozen skating area called The Pond fitting my needs exactly.  Its memory had haunted me from the 1948 film Portrait of Jenny.  The hair-raising chase was back on! So, enjoy these images that I discovered.  The article that particularly helped me was “NYC in film Portrait of Jennie 1948.”

Of course these photos were all taken during the day.  Jessica’s adventure had the added threat of taking place at night by lantern light.

Lastly, I needed an expert to certify that Dusty’s catlines is fully accurate.  Here’s Natasha, exhausted after her thorough vetting of what I’ve written so far.  Yup, ’Tasha Yang gives me two paws up – but she has to lean on something when she does it or she’ll fall over.

 

Scrabble Image: https://connecticuthistory.org/scrabble-copyrighted-today-in-history/
Truman image:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dewey_Defeats_Truman.jpg
Images from The Cloisters:
-Author’s collection:  dog resting beneath owner’s feet.
– Image of the Gothic Chapel: “The Cloisters,” Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cloisters
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cloisters_Chapel_(3220524245).jpg
original sources:  This image was originally posted to Flickr by Sharon Mollerus at https://flickr.com/photos/38315261@N00/3220524245 (archive). It was reviewed on 29 July 2018 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.
Images from Central Park
Aerial shot:Golden Age of Travel, Associated Press –
https://www.facebook.com/groups/811703519221774/posts/2113878869004226/
Skaters on Ice (2 images):
“Portrait of Jennie on Film” NYC in Film, Finding Movie Locations in the Big Apple
https://nycinfilm.com/2022/05/07/portrait-of-jennie-1948/

 

Mystery Making: sisters in Crime Style

Barbara Struna, Cape Cod, mystery, Mystery writing, Mystery Writing Workshop, Nicole Asselin, Sharon Healy Yang, Sharon Yang, , , , , , , , ,
Last month, January, I joined two of my Sisters in Crime (NE) authors (Nicole Asselin and Barbara Struna)  at the Centerville Library on the Cape for a fun presentation:  “Mystery Making .”  The Speakers Bureau of Sisters in Crime New England offers loads of exciting, informative, and enjoyable programs, but this is one of the most popular.  The audience gets to help us create a mystery  right before their eyes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

How is this mutual creation accomplished?  I’ve seen slight variations of this method, but here’s what usually happens on the presentations in which I’ve been involved. We, the writers, collect anonymous suggestions from the audience in bags marked “names,” weapons,” “motives,” and “setting.” Then we pull suggestions from the bags without looking – well, we look enough to see that we actually get our hands in the bag – reveal what we see, then post it on a white board at the front of the room.  We really get the ball rolling by each making  suggestions and cooperatively shaping characters to go with names, shaping those characters’ lives in terms of setting.  Pulling together how setting and character relationships create motive and how all three are reflexively related to the weapon(s) used.  Of course, the order of the discussion might change at different events, but our joking interplay always brings out how all the elements in creating a mystery are interlinked.
Especially fun is the audience’s participation, as they help create the mystery novel, not just by their suggestions on the anonymous paper slips, but as we gradually invite them in for more and more participation in drawing the elements of writing a mystery into a final form.  It’s a blast to hear people arguing over what weapons are plausible and which are not (big argument over the efficacy of spatulas), or helping us weave a plot in a setting where weapons like a surf board, a yoga mat, an awl, a kazoo, and, (yes) even a spatula can be elements of doom. Really neat, a member of the audience suggested that if the yoga mat would be involved in the murder, we should call the book Savasana:  The Corpse Pose.
Click on the photo above to read the suggestions.
And then, along the way, as we talk with the audience about how we might integrate all the different elements into a tale, we get to talk about how people write (e.g. pantsers vs. plotters) and how the type of mystery you write shapes what elements you will use and how you will use them.  Nicole writes baseball-centered tales in something of a cosy mode, I write historicals in a 1940s noir mode, and Barbara writes tales set on the Cape where the mystery arises from questions of the past.  So, the audience gets to see how and why the mystery genre is so richly varied.
The beautiful thing is that getting a program like this is so easy for your library or other organization.  You can also get your pick of authors (according to availability) from the various members of Sisters in Crime New England.  Just as wonderful, the Speaker’s Bureau has other programs, as well, that focus on writing, publishing, promotion, mystery genres, etc.  Just contact Leslie Wheeler at speakersbureau@sincne.org or go to the Sisters in Crime New England web site, Speakers Bureau.  Hope to see you at an event in the future!
By the way, here I am proving that a spatula can be a deadly weapon.  so there!

Photos courtesy of Judith Marshall at Centerville Library, and De-Ping Yang

Precious Blood Cemetery, an Autumn Visitation

Angel monuments, Autumn, Cemeteries, Fall, Gothic, massachusetts, Precious Blood Cemetery, Sharon Yang, , , , , , , , , ,
Earlier this fall, Yang and I took a trip to the Precious Blood Cemetery in Woonsocket, where my patron saint is buried.  Here’s a picture of her grave – though technically she was never canonized.  Does that mean I was never really a Catholic?  Oh well, I’m an Episcopalian now anyway.
It’s a wonderful graveyard on the edge of the city with some lovely statuary – and on a grey Saturday afternoon, the trip seemed perfect for the season.   As a Catholic cemetery, there are statues of saints that you just don’t find in the Protestant cemeteries.
Many people seem to have valued the Little Flower, Saint Therese de Lisieux.  Not surprising since she is a French saint and the large number of Catholics here are immigrants or descendants of immigrants from Canada.  I actually took Therese’s name as my confirmation name because she had to struggle with a bad temper with  incompetent people – guilty as charged.  Those who know me can let me know if you think it helped.

I also saw  a mini St. Anthony, 
and a St. Anthony with the baby Jesus – in statuary form, that is.  Remember, if you’ve lost something, Anthony is the go-to guy.

Jesus also made other appearances – again only in statuary form.
Here’s the sacred heart.

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a bronze relief of Christ’s passion on the cross affixed to a grey granite monument, his suffering conveyed through the twist of the metal form.

 

 

 

One grave was surmounted by a life-size bronze of of the three Marys suffering along with Jesus as they witness his crucifixion.

 

 

 

There were also  funerary sculptures that you might find in more secular or not Catholic cemeteries.  Everyone has angels!  Here are some of my favorites from the visit.  There is this child angel.

 

 

And this grown-up grieving angel

 

 

 

 

I saw many women, grieving, bearing their crosses of repentance, or descending with grace for the departed

 

 

 

 

 

I was particularly taken by some of the mausoleums.  One looked like a French or Canadian farm house.

 

 

 

Another was a circle of columns raised above the cemetery on a hill.  It was like a classical ruin.

 

 

 

 

Yang took a moment for contemplation.
I was looking out on vistas of graves

 

 

 

to view this:

 

 

 

And aren’t these graves always the saddest ones of all?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research Follies

1940s mystery, Amberoid, Boston, Boston Public Library, Great Fire of 1947, Joyce Butler, massachusetts, Memories of You, mystery, Mystery writing, Surprise!, Vicki Westlake, Wildfire Loose, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
I recently saw this meme in my feed on FaceBook and said to myself, “Oh, how painfully true!”
You may plot out the most deliciously intricate and logical outline for your masterpiece.  Every piece may seem to interconnect beautifully in your initial set up; but, darn it, not only the devil is in the details but Belial, Beelzebub, Moloch, Asmodeous, Lucifer, and the whole gang are too!
Case in point, my current project, a sequel to Surprise! with the ironic working title Memories of You.  I knew where I wanted to move my main characters, scene to scene, but creating those scenes, developing them, dealing with new and tempting possibilities once I got started, that was another kettle of guppies – sometimes sharks, hammerheads!
For example, I knew Vicki Westlake would clue in to some important information about a dangerous man from her veteran husband’s past while she was doing research in the Boston Public Library for a new mystery novel that she was planning.  Simple, then, kind of.  If I plunk her down in the library, I have to describe the library to create a genuine sense of place – except I hadn’t been doing research at the BPL for many years.  Field trip!
Off Yang and I went to that gorgeous receptacle of knowledge to take pictures and just drink in the impressive architecture as we explored the layout – part of which led me to a side room that would help me develop a new part of the story.  Problem solved.

Um, not exactly.  I was visiting the library in 2025; my story takes place in 1947.  Things change over the years.  So, off to the internet to find architectural plans and photos of the library that would work for the time period of Memories.  I even found a floor plan of the first and second floors! Side note:  I’m now really enjoying the FB group Boston Mass. Vintage.  It’s a great site to help me with future mid-century writing projects.

 

Another vital part of my outline hit a little bit of a “roadblock” as I moved to the end of “Memories,” where the two main characters journey to Maine in October 1947 in order to learn vital answers about the husband’s past in the war from his retired commanding officer.  Did you know that 1947 was known as the fall Maine burned, as massive wildfires swept through much of southern Maine, as well as other parts?  Can you get any more exciting than having your denouement occur in the midst of devastating, inexorable flames?
Piece of cake to write?  Um, no!  My heroine and spouse have to travel to a more northern part of Maine, so I have to figure out how they can get through southern Maine without being caught by fire but end up at their destination just as another blaze is heading for them, then be able to get out without being incinerated.  Fortunately, I have Joyce Butler’s Wildfire Loose, The Week Maine Burned, a brilliantly thorough and exciting recounting of when and where the fires started, how they progressed with speed and almost omnipotence, how they were fought, and how people escaped by the skin of their teeth (sometimes not).  So, in order to time my main characters’ journey from Boston to Maine, I created a chart of where the fire was each day, as well as whipping out a road map of Maine and blocking off in pen the areas where the fires blazed through, based on Butler’s citing the towns affected.  I also had to factor in the time their trip would take considering the lower travel speeds of the 1940s, as well the routes available.  Fortunately, I passed fourth grade math.
Of course, I also had to use a roadmap to chart my characters’ route from Boston to their destination in Maine, which creates problems of its own.  Today, we can shoot straight up Interstate 95 and save scads of time.  Unfortunately, no  95 in 1947.  I had to look over the routes listed on the map, determine if they were state roads, and find out if they existed in 1947.  Joyce Butler’s book provides plenty of helpful references to routes in existence, as well as does  the internet on history of specific routes.  The internet was surprisingly unhelpful in providing road maps from the time period – unless I wanted to shell out to ebay or some other source.  Thanks to Yang for looking over routes, sharing research, and discussing driving.
So, all I need to do now is pick a town near a fire and away we go – um, not quite.  For reasons related to the plot, the town couldn’t be southern Maine – not isolated enough.  Some further north or west?  Well, the time frame wouldn’t work.  When those fires got going my characters would have been stalled  by the big blazes across the southern part of the state.  Anson almost made it as guest star town.  My solution?  The same  that many other authors choose:  make up your own town and date for its threatening forest fire.  Just make it fit the general setting where you locate it.  So, Amberoid, Maine was born.  How do you like the name?  An amberoid is actually synthesized gemstone containing crushed amber.  It’s also the name of the first horse I picked in the Triple Crown races.  He did not run in 1947.  I’m not that old.
So, anytime you think all a writer has to do is sit down and write – Ho boy, have you got another thing coming!
Intrigued?  Well, first, you should read Surprised!  Check it out here.

Images: Every effort has been made to ensure there is no copyright infringement in the use of images.  These images are for education and entertainment only.  If you feel your copy right has been infringed, let me know and I will remove the image.  syang@worcester.edu

Hammerhead shark:  Hammerhead Shark (28776238172).jpg:  Wikki Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scalloped_Hammerhead_Shark_Sphyrna_Lewini_%28226845659%29.jpeg

Modern Photos of BPL: author’s collection

Floor Plan of BPL: The Urban Imagination https://hum54-15.omeka.fas.harvard.edu/items/show/672

Older photos of  Bates-Mckim Reading Hall in BPL  https://lostnewengland.com/2016/07/bates-hall-boston-public-library/

Image of Maine 1947 fire from https://www.maine.gov/dacf/mfs/forest_protection/1947_fire.html (origin Guy P. Gannett Newsletters in Maine)

Natasha’s Excellent Summer Adventure!

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The birds are chirping, the flowers are blooming, the chipmunks are chipping, and the temperature is climbing – Natasha knows it’s time to shrug off her winter lethargy and return to exploring and patrolling the wilds of our yard.
On the prowl, she determinedly sets off with her bodyguard, as any queen would do.  She’s always on the alert for danger and adventure, even if her guard is not!

 

Of course, she must look first one way . . .
Then another, for any signs of danger,  be it in the form of nefarious chipmunks, antagonistic avians, or ferocious ants.

 

What has Natasha discovered?  An insidious ant?  A taunting chipmunk?  A skulking mole?  We may never know!

 

 

 

Whew!  All that traveling and probing for danger is exhausting.  A rest is required.
Still, Natasha likes to check back with her human, to make sure he is not exhausted, frightened, or endangered.
Then, her other human (Me!) calls from the other side of the fence.  Like Lassie racing to Timmie or Fury to Joey, Natasha flies across the yard (at a brisk trot) and leaps over that fence to join me.

Later, her adventure completed, and the yard marked safe from rodents, insects, and feathered beasts, Natasha settles down, exhausted, to a well-deserved rest in my hat.  So there really is a cat in the hat!

“Autumn Reflections 2024”

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“Autumn Reflections 2024”

Well, we’ve had our first snowfall here in Massachusetts, so even the brown, greys, and maroons of late autumn are now sheeted o’re with white.  Still, it’s nice to recall the glories of September and October, isn’t it?  So, I thought you folks might enjoy an overview of some of the autumn travels Yang and I did to enjoy the lovely landscapes of autumnal New England.
Starting not far from home, Yang and I took a stroll along the board walk that takes you across wetlands and the Muddy River near the College of the Holy Cross.  We came across some beautiful colors, even as we noted how the drought had dried up much of the little river and the marsh.
We didn’t see any waterfowl, which was very unusual – not even any Mallards of Canada Geese.  No beavers were in view, either.  However, I did catch sight of this beauty and a chum galloping through the grass.  If you click on the photo, you can see her really well. You’ll notice that she looks as interested in me as I am in her!

 

Next stop on your Fall Tour is Montagu, Mass.  We went out there to sell some books at the Book Barn, have breakfast at Lady Killigrew’s, then take a stroll in the part of town nearby.  There were some absolutely beautiful colors to enjoy.

 

I love this picture of a New England farm.  It looks as if it had been painted in pastels.
Our bike ride  from Pittsfield to just above Adams, Mass. once more rewarded us with some exciting views of foliage.  There’s Yang, pedaling away from me through a tunnel of gold, tangerine, and green.
Here’s a row of scarlet and gold flanking the trail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Across the lake from us the shore blazed red, gold, and orange.

 

 

 

 

And the scarlet of some of the maples was exhilaratingly vibrant.  Here’s a nice shot of Yang under one such tree.

We finally made it to one place I’d been wanting to visit for years:  The William Cullen Bryant Homestead.  Though I’m more of a specialist in British Lit, Bryant was always an American poet whom I especially liked.  I’m sorry that the house itself wasn’t open for viewing.  From the outside, you can see it’s spacious, gracious, and beautiful.
The view from the house is gorgeous, crossing a meadow to reveal the color-splashed trees beyond.

 

 

 

 

We had an enjoyable walk in the woods near the house, still part of the homestead.  Here, autumn provides a tunnel of  dreamy, misty color.

 

 

 

Yang challenged me to be able to photograph the fascinating swirls of moss decorating the rough New England boulder layered with marble and blanketed with brown, crisped leaves.  I guess I showed him!

One of my favorite sights was this old tree with a gaping maw.

I just had to get a close up of said maw.  Really, isn’t it perfectly Lovecraftian? Do you see those jagged teeth on the upper part?

Finally, there’s one of my old favorites, Stafford.  Here are some of the traditional views.
Across the pond.

 

 

 

 

My Favorite Victorian House.  Couldn’t I really decorate that one swell for Halloween!

 

 

 

 

But some of the shots of foliage and sky thrill me even more.  I love the way the azure sky serves as a perfect complement to the golds, yellows, and orange flames of the autumn leaves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to sit down and rest.  All this traveling and photographing has me exhausted!