The Perils of an Outhouse by Katherine Pym

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~*~*~*~*~

Canvas Tent in the Woods

Based on true events, you are about to read a grumbly tale:

One weekend my dad announced we were going camping. He professed it was cheaper than motel rooms with 7 people crammed on beds and rented cots (2 adults and 5 kids), and all the meals eaten in restaurants. My parents were new to this and had borrowed the gear.

Brown Bear ready to Eat me.

Camping never appealed to me. Far too rustic and dangerous, crevasse-like gouges marred trees where bears had scraped their claws down the length of the trunks. Deep lakes and river rapids spoiled the fun. Never heard wolves howl in the distance, but we were warned of skunks and wolverines. Rabid squirrels had been found in the area. Biting insects swarmed about our ears. Horrible.

I disliked going on vacation only to work my fingers to the bone: Cooking over a campfire and lugging buckets of cold water to wash tin dishes took away from swimming and exploring. The soap always thinned in the hard water or seemed to go away altogether, which meant stuck-on food took forever to scrape off. Then, I had to find a way to dump grease from the cast iron skillets so that beasties wouldn’t find their way into camp.

I was given the task to air out sleeping bags in the morning and return them to their places in the afternoon. They always dwarfed me as I dragged them across the ground, and the sun beating down on the old canvas gave the tent a strange smell.

Headaches plagued me after sleeping on the ground. One trip we were without a tent, and arriving late to the campground, the only place left was on a hill. The next morning I had slipped to the edge of a precipice and nearly died in the night.

Memory: when between chores, mom and I walked along a path by the river, where we found a dam made of branches and sticks. “Now, Kathy don’t let your brothers disturb the dam,” Mom said. “It might be a beaver’s house with baby beavers inside.” It was interesting to think a small animal could make such a large footprint, and disturb an entire flow of a river.

Outhouse in the wilderness

Going to the toilet in the bushes or wait my turn at the outhouse was always the worst. Flies were a terrible bother, and one never knew if a bee’s or wasps’ nest had taken residence somewhere in there.

We used flashlights to guide our way through the groaning, spooky forest in the night, sit over holes where many others had squatted, and smell the leavings from those bodies. Really gaggingly horrible.

One night my brother dropped the flashlight in the hole. He returned the next day with my other brothers, one of whom was around the age of 5 or 6. They realized the flashlight hadn’t taken a dive into the sludge, but fallen onto a large pile of poop topped with toilet paper. Horrifying with stinky residue, but retrievable.

“Hey Jimmy,” Tom said. “We’ll lower you down so you can grab the flashlight.”

John nodded. “Sure. Let’s do it. We won’t drop you.”

With heartfelt innocence, Jimmy smiled at them.

“We promise,” John said as he raised the platform with the holes.

A Two-Seater

They grabbed Jimmy around his ankles and slowly lowered him into the cesspit. 

Birdsong paused. Insects stopped flying, their buzzes strangled. A raven cried terror from a tree.  Even the breezes had died in morbid expectation.

Lower and lower Jimmy went until his ankles were just above the walls of the pit. 

“Can you reach it?” Tom yelled.

Jimmy coughed. “Almost.”

Tom and John lowered Jimmy so that his entire body was beneath the pit’s rim. “Can you reach it, now?” John demanded.

“Got it,” Jimmy yelled. “Get me out of here.”

They hauled him up, clutching the fouled flashlight. “Here.” He handed it to Tom.

They ran out of the outhouse with their prize, placed it in its proper spot for the next person, never telling anyone where it had been.

Until much much later.

Truly horrible. 

~*~*~*~*~

Many thanks to wikicommons, public domain & my memory.

The Who, What, Where, Why and WHEN of Writing - Part 5 by Diane Bator

 

By Diane Bator

Today we’re at the end of my original list of the five Ws of writing. We’ve already gone through:

Who – as in Who are YOU as a writer?

What – for What do you want to write?

Where – location, location, location.

Why – what drives you?

This blog post is brought to you by When. When can mean a couple of things, the best time of day to write or the best time of your life to start writing. Let’s start with the time of day, shall we?

Some writers swear they are the most creative early in the morning. In order to be at their best, they start the day by doing Morning Pages as per Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way. Julia describes Morning Pages as “three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness.” (The Artists Way, page 10.) A lot of writers I know use this time to clear the noisy thoughts from their minds so they can focus on the task ahead. Their creative writing. Some writers even find ideas come from this flow of consciousness, sometimes while they sip their morning coffee or tea.

For me personally, I used to get up before I awoke my kids for school when they were younger and was happy even when I only had time to write a page or two out on my back porch. Now, I’m able to carve out time in the morning before my full-time job since my kids are much older. At least a couple days per week, I will use my half hour lunch break to write as well and like to keep a couple evenings open to create as well.

Recently someone on social media asked how old you have to be to become a writer. That created a whole new conversation and received a lot of answers. Some not so nice as people are bound to be online. It did prompt me to do a little digging.

I’ve been a storyteller and writer since I was young and still have handwritten stories and poems from when I was a teenager when my first two poems were published. I was about 15 years old.

There are no real age limits to writing or even being published. The youngest person I discovered online was Dorothy Straight who wrote her books at age 4 and was published her book “How the World Began” at age 6 in 1964. The oldest was Jim Downing who published “The Other Side of Infamy” in 2016 at the age of 102!

A few of the more famous authors published at various ages are:

·       Age 21 – Victor Hugo and Mary Shelley (Frankenstein)

·       Age 22 – Margaret Atwood and Ray Bradbury

·       Age 24 – Ernest Hemingway and Jack London

·       Age 28 – Jack Kerouac

·       Age 30 – Agatha Christie and Mark Twain. It is also interesting to note Stephen King had published Carrie, Salem’s Lot, and The Shining all before the age of 30.

·       Age 41 – Maya Angelou

·       Age 50 – Bram Stoker (Dracula)

·       Age 57 – Anna Sewell (Black Beauty)

·       Age 66 – Frank McCourt (Angela’s Ashes)

I belong to a writing group and love that our ages range from 25 to mid-eighties. Some are published, some have been working on the same books for many years, and some just attend to write and learn. We all have that one common love though: Writing. It has no age limit, education, or socio-economic limits.

All you need is a pen and paper to get started…

DianeBator

Author of Wild Blue Mysteries, Gilda Wright Mysteries and Glitter Bay Mysteries

Mom of 3 boys and 2 cats and a mouse who is too smart for mousetraps...

I Miss Camping - But so much more to do

  

A couple years ago, we sold our camper and bought a house. It was the right decision. Camping was only a couple months a year and maybe six camping trips at best, where as the house is permanent. 

Of course along with the house comes other responsibilities. Cleaning and painting, just to get the house ready to live in for one. The place was filthy. I think they previous residents had food fights in every room. Seriously, there was food streaked down every wall in every room. Okay, every room but the bathroom. 

Apparently the people who lived here previously (renters) had tempers. I heard she kicked the man out several times and he broke in. Obviously, the missing screens, windows replaced with Plexiglas, and damaged entry doors was proof that someone broke in or attempted to break in often. 

At any rate, we had our hands full just cleaning. Add to that discovering a hole in the bathtub, that even the inspector missed, we ended up gutting the bathroom. 
But all of that is done and out of the way.  On to the outside. Of course there's normal lawn maintenance, cutting the grass, which is fairly easy in the front. I have a self-propelled lawn mower. The shrubs needed trimming, which I attempted and came to the conclusion, they're too old and will have to be replaced. Next year's project or at least not until fall. I planted a few flowers in the front and my son painted our house - it was in desperate need and we'd really have loved to reside it, but that wasn't in the budget. Besides, we needed a new entry door and  storm door. Once the garage door is painted, the house itself will be done. On to the back yard.  Lord, help us. We aren't sure what to do there.  We had the maple tree cut down last year - it was leaning toward the neighbors and the roots made it impossible to cut the grass. It scared the heck out of me every time we had a storm. So down it went. This year we had the oak removed after we noticed several squirrels going into a hole where a branch had previously been cut. And there were several other

holes just not as deep.  I asked for a price in trimming the tree and cutting it down. I pointed out the hole, and he didn't even give me a price for trimming it. The maple tree, he had said there wasn't anything wrong with, that it was healthy. Not so the oak. (Not to mention I didn't care for all the leaves to rake and the acorns, oh the acorns, millions and millions of acorns. I won't miss that tree.)

My kids wanted the wood from both trees so, the tree removal crew stacked everything in a pile, cut to firewood size.  The kids rented a log-splitter and came over and split the wood. It was an all day project. We started the day with coffee and donuts, I made sloppy joes for lunch and hubby grilled a turkey for dinner. Of course, it was one of the hottest days this year, but they did a great job and they'll have plenty of firewood for next year.   They took the wood from the maple (cut last year) for their camping trips. I don't mind telling you, I was happy to see it disappear, although I now have another huge pile and this time in the middle of our yard. since the back part of our yard floods something terrible. One of my neighbors said there used to be a creek back there before they built the houses. Truthfully, I wish they would have left the creek. I don't need a pond every spring. We even had ducks. After the rainy May and June, I didn't think the yard would ever dry.  

Which leads me to my next problem. What to do? It would take truck loads of dirt to fill it in.  And I'm not sure that would even solve the problem. For now I guess I'll just keep cutting the part of grass that isn't under water and leave the rest for another year. We have an idea what we'd like to do back there, but that will be a project for another year. 

Anyway, back to my original statement. I still miss camping. The kids all went for the 4th of July and it's the first year we've been alone. Usually we celebrate with them, but this year, it was just the two of us. I really really miss camping - or maybe I just miss the kids. 

August New Releases from BWL Publishing and monthly Free Read

BWL PUBLISHING'S AUGUST RELEASES

visit http://bookswelove.net and click the book covers for book details and purchase information

---

August's free read is from Susan Calder

A Mystery set in Calgary, Alberta home of the world famous Calgary Stampede

visit http://bookswelove.net  to download a free PDF of Ten Days In Summer

Revisiting and Revising by Prscilla Brown

From its first incarnation, this contemporary romance was ruthlessly reworked; 

the character on the cover received a new name and personality.

http://books2read.com/Class-Act

  

I've been involved in a textile arts exhibition showcasing items which the artist has revisited, upcycled, recycled, remodelled, or transformed in some way.  Think jeans cut off above the knee, rebirthed as shorts and decorated with bright fabric, or, with appropriate stitching, reappear

as a bag again embellished.A floral skirt way out of fashion is reconstructed into a shade for a table lamp; several kinds of textiles, fabrics, knitting, crochet, in pieces of carious sizes and colours, are hand-stitched together covering all surfaces of a second-hand wooden dining chair.

 

As I chopped up boring old scarves into sections and reassembled them onto a length of fabric, the new cloth to metamorphose into a wrap, I thought about how I use the rethinking terms for this kind of creativity in my fiction writing.

With all my novels, having reached what I initially consider to be the final draft, I print them out and put them aside for an indefinite time. I do enjoy editing and prefer to edit this "final version" on hard copy.

Write without fear. Edit without mercy. 

(Quotation found on Internet, source unknown.) 

For me, returning to a manuscript always reveals assorted plot holes, inconsistencies, repetitions,

weak characters and other glitches. Class Act (not its original name) remained in the drawer for the

longest period, four or five years. When I revisited it, I was shocked. Is this the best you can do?  Too long. Too much detailed backstory. Too many secondary characters. Extraneous events and trivia. Unbelievable female protagonist (insufficient qualifications and experience for the job she's appointed to). I wrote this while I was working in the same environment as the story is set, and this version now read as if I'd wanted to include several incidents which did happen but which were entirely out of place in the novel.

A major revision was required.

The prologue had to go, all 4000 words of it. Necessary information was salvaged and worked where appropriate into the first and second chapters, which also better defined the personalities of the protagonists. Realising I was making more changes to her than to him and to some of the scenes together, I severely chopped up and altered her backstory, reassembling the pieces into a shorter and more credible version (her one-time Mexican lover was not necessary), and stitching bits into the story where relevant.

 

A number of secondary characters lost their places (she did not need to have a childhood nanny with whom she keeps in touch). I found several scenes which did not move the story along. Some were beyond redemption and permanently discarded (whyever did they go to the zoo?); those I had fun writing and wanted to keep received remodelling so that they did provide forward momentum (adding a thunderstorm while they were eating outside at a restaurant nudged their growing attraction up several notches); others could be reconstructed and their timewise position in the story relocated. These and many other repairs, including a re-vamped ending, in this extensive revision transformed both the energy and the length of Class Act, sending about 30 000 words to the bin.

And now, it's time to take out another manuscript from its incubation in the drawer. I'm wondering how much editing will be required for this one!

Enjoy your reading. Priscilla.

http://bwlpublishing.ca

 

https://bookswelove/net/authors/brown-priscilla-romance 

https://priscillabrownauthor.com

 

 

Bananas by Margaret Hanna

Visit Margaret's BWL Author Page for Details and Buy Links

Bananas!

Yes, the fruit.

Several years ago, I was scheduled to present a paper at a conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In early May.

Those of you who are familiar with prairie weather know, only too well, that “spring” in the prairies can bring any and all kinds of weather. Including blizzards. That’s exactly what happened that spring.

Four days before the conference was to begin, a blizzard hit the southern prairies. It raged for three days. All highways, including the Trans-Canada Highway, were shut down. Nothing, not even semi-trailers, moved. Traffic stacked up at both ends of the blizzard zone.

By the second day, grocery stores were running out of fresh produce. A woman roamed through my local Safeway, crying, “Bananas! There are no bananas!”  The manger informed her, “I don’t know when we’ll get more, the trucks are stopped in Manitoba.”

The third day, the blizzard began to blow itself out. The fourth day, the sky was blue and the highways were clear. A friend and I jumped in the car and began the six-hour drive to Winnipeg.

East-bound traffic was bad enough, but the west-bound traffic was constant, and consisted mostly of semi-trailers. Suddenly, the Safeway truck screamed past. We yelled, simultaneously, “Bananas!” and laughed.

                                                                          * * *

Addie learned what a prairie blizzard was like during her first winter on the homestead. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter Nine: “First Winter” in “Our Bull’s Loose in Town!” Tales from the Homestead.

The first blizzard came in early January. The wind had been blowing from the southeast for a couple of days – a keening wind that didn’t stop day or night. It whistled and whined around our house and went straight through you. Abe brought extra coal into the house and banked snow around walls. He strung a rope from the corner of the house all the way over to the stable. “When the blizzard starts, sometimes the storm is so bad you can’t see more than a couple of feet. People can get lost trying to cross the prairies in a blizzard.” At first, I thought he was joking but he certainly sounded quite serious. I began to get a little worried.

The day the blizzard hit started off nice enough. There was hardly any wind and the sun was shining. “Seems that blizzard you promised has decided to stay away,” I teased.

“Just you wait, it’ll be here sometime today. Now come help me put extra bedding in the stable.”

We walked the few hundred yards to the stable and pitched a wagon load of straw and extra feed in for the livestock and chickens. It took only an hour or so, but the world changed in that time. The wind was stronger, from the northwest, and it sent snow snaking across the ground. And it was cold, much colder.

Then I saw the clouds, grey ugly-looking things coming in fast. They hung low over the world and looked angry. I wondered if this is how the last judgement would begin. The first snowflakes were not those huge soft things that fall like feathers; they were hard, stinging pellets that cut into your skin.

“It’s going to be a bad one,” Abe said as we scurried back to the house.

Sympathy for the Devil

http://amzn.com/B00P9TW046

From childhood on I have been fascinated by myths. I wasn't selective; I began with the Greek and Roman ones, like any European American kid, but soon discovered a book in my mother's hand-me-down library called "Fairy Tales of All Lands" which was a thousand pages of stories from all over the globe. I read this during a long, long recovery from the German measles when I was not supposed to be reading at all because of “the strain on the eyes,” but of course books were my habitual refuge and it was just too hard not to sneak in a few pages during long lonely hours in my sick room.  In those days the world was black and white--the good guys and the bad guys--and the divisions were clear. 

In college, I read translations of the Icelandic Eddas. These stories have none of Wagner's Ring Cycle Victorian romantic overlay and many more god/demon characters. From these, I learned more about Loki, one of those ambiguous, powerful trickster figures that inhabit mythology world-wide. Loki, it seems, could be male or female at will. Sometimes, in the stories, he's helpful, usually pulling the wool over some antagonist's eyes to help out a more obviously central figure, like the Father God, Odin.

Loki, in different forms, had a whole series of monster children. As a mare, he conceived Odin’s horse, the eight legged Sleipner, but let’s not get bogged down in the fascinating details of that story. J The ones I’d like to discuss are Fenrir, a kind of wolf on steroids, Jormungandr, a serpent—also on steroids—and a little girl, Hel. Hel would be beautiful, if half of her face were not a skull. Hel gave her name to our Christian Hell.  

http://amzn.com/B00FKKAN98

Odin, after hearing a prophecy that Loki’s children will destroy him, Asgard, and all his god-kin, decides to kidnap them. This is a serious breach of Norse morality well beyond the kidnapping, because earlier Odin had sworn an oath of eternal brotherhood with Loki.  “Oathbreaker” was the most serious charge that could be leveled against anyone. (And it probably still should be!) Neverthless, Odin figures his first duty is to save himself and his kingdom, so he steals the children anyway. His first move is to co-opt the terrifying Hel with the gift of a kingdom of her own, Helheim. Hel is now ruler of the dead--the ordinary souls--not the few chosen warriors who will feast eternally in Odin’s royal hall of Asgard.

Fenrir is just a puppy when he is taken. He longs for his mother and he longs for someone to love him, as puppies do. The gods are all afraid of him, however, because of the prophecy. Only the God Tyr is brave enough to feed him and be kind to him, and so Tyr becomes the only god poor Fenrir trusts.  The snake, Jormungandr, Odin tosses into the ocean, but this doesn’t get rid of him or his propensity to grow. Jormungandr goes on growing until, hidden beneath the sea, he encircles the entire earth. Earth becomes his adoptive Mother, and he becomes her secret protector and friend.

Meanwhile, Fenrir goes on growing. More and more afraid of him, the gods go to the Dark Elves for a special magical chain capable of holding him. When they return, they pretend to play a game with Fenrir, putting on different chains and encouraging him to demonstrate how strong he is by snapping them. Every time he does do, they clap exclaim at his strength and power. At last, they bring out the Elven chain, but Fenrir senses their duplicity. He refuses to allow them to put this one on until Tyr puts his sword hand in Fenrir’s mouth as a show of good faith. “If you cannot break this chain, you may do with me as you will.” Such a heart-breaking story! Tyr has sworn loyalty to his master Odin but he’s also bonded with the wolf and he knows full well when he puts his hand in that hot mouth, what is about to happen.

The great wolf, trusting Tyr, allows the gods to “try out” the strength of their new chain. This one, so full of magic, cannot be broken. Tyr loses both his sword hand and his monstrous friend, while the hatred of Fenrir for the gods who have so abused him will now grow ever stronger. This is one of the saddest tales in the long string of the broken oaths and broken friendships which litter the ancient story.

Actions have consequences, although it seems the gods have so far believed these could be avoided. Too many rules have been broken, too many laws disregarded, and the finely balanced harmony of the universe goes spinning out of control. The time comes when Fenrir, as foretold, at last breaks even that magical chain. Then, he will kill the oath-breaker Odin and finish his vengeance by swallowing the sun. Jormungandr will arise, carrying the ocean over the land. Hel will unleash her army of the dead and the world-wide apocalypse the Norse called Ragnorak will bring utter ruin to gods and men.

When I was younger, I remember only being afraid of Fenrir,  Jormungandr and Hel, those black monstrous terrors, that break down of order. The rationalizations presented for Odin’s actions: “the ends justifies the means” seemed an inevitable part of the cruel, cynical "realism" that was part of adulthood.

Now, re-visiting the story, I have had the dizzying experience of seeing the old black and white change places. My heart breaks for Fenrir and the other stolen children; I can better understand the natural forces they represent. With a shock of recognition, I see Odin’s lies, his self-service, his delusion of total control, and also have a spine-tingling vision of how some forces are too huge for gods—or men—to imagine they can command.

  

 ~~Juliet Waldron

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