from Jacqueline

This is not a post, not in the usual way of my posts here on Naked Authors - but I am here in the Virgin America Clubhouse at Heathrow Airport, waiting for my flight back to the USA.  Been here a couple of weeks to see my Mum, and return to a crazy couple of months because I have a serious deadline looming.  I managed to hit just about everything on my to-do list - there's always a to-do list - and really, I wish I were going on vacation RIGHT NOW! I cannot remember when I last had a vacation.

So, before you think I have won the lottery, being in the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse and all that, let me just say that some years ago I decided I would not use my accrued Virgin miles to get a free flight, because I could never get the date I wanted from the airport I wanted, so instead, it's easy - I use those miles to upgrade.  Can't always do it, but if I book far enough in advance, it works just fine - and believe me, on a 11-hour flight from Heathrow to San Francisco, that cushy seat in Upper Class makes me feel less like Quasimodo running from the bells when I get off the darn 'plane, jet-lagged and less than gruntled.  I just hate that term, "Upper Class" though, because, really, I hate elitism.  But what can you do?  I think I'll just have another glass of bubbly while I work that one out.

Whatever anyone thinks of London - I usually spend a few days in the nation's capital on these trips home, though most of my time is spent in rural Sussex - London is by far and away the country's economic powerhouse, with investment coming in from across the globe.  And it shows.  Culturally, it's hopping, more than anything I ever experienced even twenty years ago.  Walk down the street and you hear every language under the sun spoken, and the restaurants are amazing (I know - London has finally moved away from the stigma of food overcooked in lots of water to make the best of wartime rationing).  And here's the interesting thing - there's money about.  People - ordinary people, not skillionaires, although I am sure there are a goodly number of them on the street - are dropping a lot on eating out, on clothing, cars, and, well, the things people with disposable income buy.  Perhaps it's all on credit, who knows?

A friend I had dinner with last Sunday - he works as a consultant to large corporations on developing customer service strategies - told me that Britain is basically being kept afloat by two things; London's golden economy and Scottish oil.  Two ends of a country keeping up the middle.  Perhaps that's true anywhere you go in the world - I'll have to think about it, and not being an economist, I can't comment. But I do know this.  Walk around London and you are always aware of its history.  On Tuesday morning I meandered alongside the Thames as it swept past Chelsea, and there it was, a working waterway since before the Middle Ages.  There were the water taxis, the lighters tied to a pontoon in the center.  The tide was out, and as I looked down at the mud and scanned for treasure, I imagined the mudlarks of Victorian times - another booming age - who would search high and low for anything of value fallen from a ship coming into the docks, or from the pockets of sailors having had too much to drink.  My mind skipped a century, and I could imagine the searchlights at night, as bombers came during Hitler's Blitzkrieg to hammer those same dock - and along with it the lives of so many east-enders.  And I looked at former warehouses, now upscale apartment buildings.  London, like New York, like Boston, Paris, Berlin, Shanghai or Madrid - is an old city with its ancient bones showing. But there's something these cities know that the younger inhabitants don't know yet, those star-struck whizz kids, and I guess many of us have been there.  It's that every dog has its day.  What goes up, must come down.  And every booming economy floats on an underbelly, which, in my humble experience of life, is most raw when the gold on top is shining brightest.

     

By Cornelia

1. This excellent news from The New York Times, because, as my sister says, "There are two kinds of food in the world: food that's good, and food that needs more salt."

No Benefit Seen in Sharp Limits on Salt in Diet

     

From the messy desk of Paul Levine

JOHN BOEHNER: RASTAFARIAN-IN-LAW 

Cool! House Speaker John Boehner is dead set against legalizing marijuana, even for medical purposes. His daughter, Lindsay, just married Dominque Lakhan (pictured), a Jamaican-born construction worker with waist-long dreadlocks once arrested for marijuana possession in Florida. As Bob Marley said, "herb is the healing of a nation. Alcohol is the destruction." Have a drink, John.

     

Patty here...

I recently stumbled across a guest-post I wrote for another blog after my fourth book was published. I'm reposting it because yesterday was Mother's Day.

My fourth book just came out, and my mother has “read” all of them. I use quotation marks because my mother is what we euphemistically call “getting up in years,” and now lives in an assisted living apartment. Her mind is sharp but her body is frail from the ravages of age, the worst of which is the loss of sight from macular degeneration. Because she can no longer see to read, she has listened to the audio version of all of my novels except the latest. Cool Cache is dedicated to my parents. When I gave my mother her copy of the book, I guided her finger to the spot on the page where her name was printed.

“Is it there?” she asked.

“It’s there.”

“Daddy’s name, too?”

“Uh-huh.”

“He would have been so proud!”

“Yup.”

“Read me the first chapter.”

With the first words, my mother pushed the button on her blue recliner and drifted into peaceful reverie. When I finished, I glanced up and saw her staring trance-like into space as if she was the proverbial deer caught in the headlights.

“Mother?”

No response. My mother’s hearing is perfect. There was no way she couldn’t hear me. On closer inspection, she seemed unusually still. Her facial muscles were rigid and her eyes glassy. All I could think of was OMIGOD! I’ve killed her!

“MOTHER!!!!!!!”

She blinked with a start. “Why are you shouting?”

“I thought you were…well, never mind.”

“I was just caught up in the story. Is that the end of the chapter?”

“Yes.”

“It was very exciting. What comes next?”

“Chapter two.”

“So? What are you waiting for?”

I stopped reading after the second chapter because I had to leave for an appointment. A couple of days later I was talking to her on the telephone. She told me the suspense was killing her (bad choice of words, if you ask me), so she asked her caregiver to pick up the slack. In no time, they were on chapter nine.

“Lita keeps laughing,” she said.

“Maybe she’s tired. Exhaustion can make you hysterical.” I could say this with authority, because deadlines have made me an expert on hysteria.

“No, she’s laughing at your writing. Today she was giggling at lunch about something you said, and she didn’t even have the book with her.”

A little bit of family history here. My mother doesn’t have a sense of humor. If life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel, my mother is a big-time feeler. As a result, I live to make her laugh, sometimes by shocking her reserved sensibilities. Example, during a recent discussion on global warming, I asked if she knew that excessive farting by sheep in Australia and New Zealand was destroying the ozone. She laughed, which was a miracle because when I was growing up, the word “fart” was never spoken in our home. In fact, all references to flatulence were verboten. My sister and I were told that those strange sounds coming from my father’s direction were, in fact, barking spiders. I had a serious case of arachnophobia until I entered first grade and sniffed out the truth. I digress. So, it was not surprising that my mother wasn’t laughing. I just hoped Lita was laughing with me and not at me.

“Lita and I think you’re talented,” she continued.

Thinking a daughter is talented is the primary job of mothers and those who work for them. Truth be told, my mother isn’t a reliable arbiter of my talent, because she thinks everything I do is brilliant: navigating L.A. freeways, clearing my throat, folding laundry (If she could see those naughty little Victoria’s Secret thongs in my laundry basket, she would definitely drop laundry-folding from the list.) That night, I told my husband the story.

“I think you should redirect your marketing strategy,” he said. “It’s clear that seniors are a material audience.”

“You’re basing your hypothesis on one person, and she’s my mother.”

“Okay. Ignore the empirical evidence, and do so at your own peril.”

Despite the fact that I live with a man who uses “empirical” and “peril” in the same sentence, his words caused me to ponder. My books are very popular among my mother’s friends, but I’d always assumed that was because she carries a publicity poster in the basket of her wheely-walker and makes Lita slip my bookmarks under everybody’s daily dish of breakfast prunes.

Frankly, it’s difficult for me to narrowly define any specific audience. Still, on those days when I find myself alone at a book signing or stung by a critic’s tart words, it’s comforting to know there is someone sitting in a blue recliner, hanging on every word I write. Lita’s laughter is just frosting on the cake. I know you can’t read this Mother, but thanks for being in my corner.

My mother was my biggest fan. She died in August 2010. After that, I stopped writing for a very long time.

     

from Jacqueline