Trailer for Roman Polanski's 'The Ghost Writer' released

EW.com
Pop Watch
By Mandi Bierly
Categories: Movie Trailers, Movies
Jan 14 2010


The international trailer for Roman Polanski’s latest film, The Ghost Writer, has hit the Internet. Translation: Don’t mind the French subtitles. Ewan McGregor plays a writer helping a former British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan, acting quite the badass) complete his memoir — if what he uncovers doesn’t get him killed. Kim Cattrall appears to have a role that will require her to have zero sex. Fascinating!

One word of advice: If you try to YouTube this trailer, be sure to type in the full title. If you just type “Ghost Writer trailer”, you could end up with the preview for a film directed by Alan Cumming, starring him as a music teacher who takes in and apparently murders a street hustler/writer (David Boreanaz), then passes off his novel as his own. You’re going to click aren’t you?

Chapter One: Łódź before the Ungodly Ghetto

An Excerpt from a Work in Progress: "Simon Says"

The Memoirs of a Polish Jewish American Who Survived the Holocaust - Living through Ten Different Internment Camps, Including two in Auschwitz and two Death Camps


Chapter One: Łódź before the Ungodly Ghetto


My name is Simon Lewenberg. I am a Polish-American Jew surviving the Holocaust/Shoah who encountered both hideous and happy circumstances during this time of supreme stress and unmitigated sorrow. Weirdly enough, I had an incredibly wide variety of amazing experiences; some were absurdly pleasant, given they all transpired within a continuous setting of unjust misery, unending hardship and deeply unendurable, interminable pain.

I lost almost my entire family, and the pain from this is permanent, ruining my whole life. Yet for reasons unknown to me, I grew up as a boy in our Nazi ghetto, not to mention a total of seven slave labor camps, while keeping in close – friendly sometimes – contact with those outside my forced labor, including many Germans. Roughly, I ran into Dr. Viktor E. Frankl’s two types of people, “nice” and “mean,” learning systematically how to deal with them.

Which type are you – nice, or mean? I hope you’re all nice!

Now that I’ve begun, please allow me to whisper into your willing ear every peculiar detail of my unique odyssey, as I endured the most ridiculous, far-fetched tortures contrasted with the strangest episodes of sweet relief – including my newfound pleasures of growing sexuality. The Holocaust/Shoah manifested every type of good and evil people and their idiosyncratic times, as I doglike sweated and slaved in the camps side-by-side with local Germans – some nice, some not.

My journey began on July 15th, 1923, when I was born to Icek and Gela Lewenberg in the northern region of Łódź, Polska (Poland). The word “łódź” in Polish means “boat” – ironically, years later I was one of the few people who survived the infamous Cap Arcona incident, when Germany’s finest luxury liner was blasted to twisted smithereens by British planes near the end of WWII.

Our town was home to the second-largest Jewish community in Europe. She was a thriving industrial burg, home to 672,000 people, some 233,000 of which were Jews. This lovely miasto (city) eventually became the site of the second-biggest Jewish ghetto created by the Nazis during the Holocaust/Shoah, as there was an even bigger one located in Warsaw, Poland.

In our times, Łódź was the textile or cloth-making capital of Eastern Europe. During the 1800s, she had become textile production center of the Russian Empire. Poles, Germans and Jews were the groups contributing intensively to our city’s industries; many of her founding industrialists were Jewish. Łódź was even a major seat of the early Socialist Movement in Europe.

I was our family’s third son, my brother Morris being the oldest, followed by my brother David and then finally me. We were a family of meager means, five of us living in one tiny but tidy room in Łódź, where her soon-to-be ghetto would be one of the first to be formed and one of the last to be liquidated. My family, before the ghetto times, lived in a section of town where most residents were Jews, as over a third of our population happened to be Jewish.

I must tell you that the majority of our neighbors didn’t have any further in the way of belongings or income than us. So I did not see any spectacular differences between our living conditions, whether Christian or Jewish. However, many of these folks were much poorer than our family, as I would observe their small children running around totally barefoot most of the year.

Only when winter’s snow softly descended, piling up into gorgeous white and frosty heaps, did they bother to wear shoes. On the other hand, I was fortunate enough to have well-shod feet the year long. But my leather shoes were repaired often, as I was always on my feet – racing through our large courtyard! Yes, we certainly had tons of fun in those days.

The building we lived in was made from wood, being one of two in our area’s courtyard. The outside consisted of two brick buildings, connected to one another on the corner, where two of our streets met. One was Młynarska #8, and there were also Pieprzowa #24 and Pfeffer #22 Street. As was standard in those times, the courtyard was almost completely sealed off from the outside, and was thus a relatively safe, normal and comfortable environment inside.

We had no plumbing, as in 1920’s Łódź where I lived, there was none. Some other sections had forms of modern sanitation. However, in our open-air courtyard there were two water pumps, and we kids used to go down there with pails to fetch our water. Thanks to the icy temperatures of winter in our Poland, it was always chilled and wonderfully fresh. But back then, we didn’t have any regular method to dispose of the piles of garbage accumulating in our houses, nor our used water that needed to be discarded.

Toward the end of our courtyard there was an outhouse; next to it was a long, enormous wooden box into which we emptied our garbage and water. A wooden pipe was connected to it which leached the used water out onto the street, where it was then fed into a lake somewhere nearby, possibly Wielkie Laki.

Dozens of rats gathered chummily inside that box, festering and teeming in the box’s water runoff. So we did not have the cleanest of living conditions, but it was at least straightforward, and we were not exactly dying of diseases. Plus this, we had a method for combating our overpopulating vermin.

Our local kosher (Yiddish or Ashkenazi Hebrew: conforming to Jewish dietary laws) butcher kept his shop in one of the brick buildings, having a vicious dog that helped catch any rats outside the disposal box. We kids found this eminently useful – as we attached long pieces of rope to the dead rodents’ tails, swinging them from the doors of mean other Jews who wouldn’t let us play soccer in our courtyard on warm summer days.

It was a thoughtless, cruel thing; but we kids didn’t know better.


*************************


During those splendid olden days, my father often told us fascinating stories. In one case, he would begin spinning a tale about how old Kramer sat, waiting patiently at a table in our courtyard each Friday to collect the rent. The wooden building we lived in belonged to his German family.
Often, a renter would groan to Herr Kramer, “I cannot pay rent this month. I’m out of work, and my children have not eaten for days.”

Herr Kramer would draw a couple of złotys (Polish dollars) slowly out of his wide cloth pockets, forking it over to the overjoyed renter and sighing, “Buy food for your family. You will give it back to me when you can.”

When he died, the whole neighborhood attended his funeral, including my father and me. I was only a little boy, and one of our non-Jewish neighbors lifted me up above the crowd. Thus I could view the coffin of Herr Kramer, who appeared to be only lazily lounging around in there, sleeping like a stiff rock. Shortly afterward, a female member of the Kramer family took over rent collections. She was tough as rusty iron penny nails, and nobody whatsoever liked her.

Also, our building kept a Polish janitor. But several months before the German invasion, our German landlady hired a German family for this position. There were about 136 tenants in our combined buildings, but only six happened to be non-Jews. I guess we had a vast lot of Polish Jews living with us.

One Gentile man, whose name was Wladek, lived there with his family many years. Their children, our friends, even spoke Yiddish – as we Jews did. We were not renowned for being native Polish speakers. Wladek used to attempt inciting people to kill that German janitor, but when the German Army invaded Łódź, he turned against his Jewish neighbors – as many Poles did.

We endured all manner of anti-Semitism: before the war, during and after it, and of course to this day. For instance, there were two Jewish brothers surviving the concentration camps. One of them headed back to Poland, to reclaim the house where their family lived before the war. However, the Polish family who took their house and were staying in it refused to give it back.

Instead, they got angry and simply killed him. Such events were typical, as times were tough; but the goodness of some Poles toward Jews was more than matched by the bestiality and brutality of the other ones.


*************************


Not far from our house dwelled a pushcart man selling candy and food, and also he owned several fizzy bottles of seltzer water for sodas. One day, we kids asked him to give us free delicious pieces of candy, but he refused our honest entreaties. So when he wasn’t looking, we opened up the spigots on the many soda faucets, all the ones he normally mixed with the seltzer water.

We only needed to do this once. After that, the seltzer man always gave us plenty of candy, just to keep us away. This was our childish version of a “protection racket.” Like the ropes with swinging dead rats, it was a mean and cruel thing to do – as I see things nowadays. But we children were too swiftly boorish and selfish, and usually we didn’t have a lingering care in the world!

Growing up without any home entertainment such as radios, though they had them in those days, our childhood free time was spent playing soccer, Poland’s national pastime. And on weekends, there were breathtaking games presented at the football stadium – between our opposing town’s teams!
Each time there was a professional Jewish team versus a professional Polish team, everybody in town clamored wildly to attend. However, we kids couldn’t afford this expensive luxury. Of necessity, we found a way to enter the stadium illegally by climbing or digging under the fences, thereby gaining front row seating. Kids, you know, will do anything fun to pass the time.

But at the age of ten, during a period when our Jewish teams were winning, I began to experience first-hand Polish anti-Semitism. We tired youngsters were leaving the stadium late one day to go home, and suddenly local Polish children appeared, beating us harshly, heaving rocks at our retreating backs! After such disasters, we learned not to stay late when a Jewish team won. This way, we avoided the abysmal wrath of Poland’s husky, anti-Semitic youths.

We children were also reluctant to enter other Polish neighborhoods, because their kids threw rocks at us. At one time, the last day of Passover, some Poles passing through our neighborhood stabbed a Jew coming home from the synagogue; this was done for no discernable reason, as the man was a deeply religious Jew. Clearly, it happened solely due to anti-Semitism.

However, there was a group of Jewish Mafia loafing around a nearby storefront, their typical indoor hangout. Hearing the violent commotion outside, realizing what was happening, they spurted out the door, swinging iron-scaled weights. Taking vengeance on those Christian stabbing perpetrators, they almost killed the men before making them run, as the creeps loudly protested in fading echoes that we Jews would pay for this “crime.”

That same night, the Poles started a pogrom, or time of Christian persecution when Gentiles killed Jews. Pretty soon there was a curfew, and Christian police on horseback patrolled the streets. These atrocities against the Jews included the hatred and repeated incidents of violence against us. It was a normal part of my growing up, strongly affecting my family and neighbors.

Another example: my father worked for a factory named Chmielnicky, owned by two Jewish brothers. It was distant from our house. My father, who had to walk to work, sometimes taking the trolley, was oft subject to discrimination. This was not unlike that encountered by blacks on buses in America’s 1960s. He wasn’t allowed to take a seat if it was crowded, or they forced him to sit somewhere else – in a less “popular” section of the trolley.


************************


Now I need to turn away from our frequent heartaches, telling you something about the fun part of my life at that tender age: sex and its peculiar practices. Although it was the Roaring Twenties, sex was taboo, and nobody talked about it at home. What I infrequently heard about sex came from my oldest brother, who was found discussing it occasionally with his friends. Naturally, I was hugely fascinated by sex, even though it was a mystery to me – and I was too young to get properly involved.

Nonetheless, we had in one of our buildings a family with this beautiful daughter, coming from an Eastern European sea of intriguingly appealing women in her family, and I became engrossed and absorbed by her strangely comely loveliness. She was certainly an exquisitely pretty, 20-some-years-old lass, and made quite a sight, being an attractively…“nice” girl.

My oldest brother came home late at night, much too late for it to be from his work, and I found out what he was doing was fooling around with her. I heard him talking about it with his friends, too. Also, other young men were doing the same thing, so she was kinda promiscuous. That’s what I eagerly learned about sex as a ten-year-old; maybe, I figured, someday it will even be my turn!

I had to wonder years later: how do I get real fun out of sex? There was a twelve or thirteen-year-old red-headed girl whom I liked. I was about the same age, and owned a fine deck of sweet playing cards. I bribed her with it, luring her over the fence behind one of the wooden buildings where my family lived.

On the other side of this fence were several open storage bins, and one of them belonged to her family. The two of us scooted inside, shutting the door softly behind us. I didn’t know quite what to do, only pulling her pants down and lying sprawled on top of her, squiggling and wriggling like a worm!

That was the sexual experience I had at twelve or thirteen; but there was another family nearby with an attractive young daughter. On weekends she dressed in style with fancy, fluffy colorful skirts and high stiletto heels, prancing into the ritzier section of town to meet her expectant boyfriend.

We teenage boys frequently goggled at her, hoping for a “peek” into her window and a chance to see her naked. Then one day, everybody noticed her stomach had grown. In spite of this, she remained awesomely sexy. All the adult neighbors – our whole neighborhood – stared and pointed. Being pregnant as a single woman was tantamount to murdering someone back then.

To make it short, she traveled to a small town nearby to deliver her baby, straggling home sans child. It was the talk of our area, which wouldn’t let her get over it. That tactically sums up my “sexual experience” of those days…virtually nil.

I never dreamed that in the due course of time, I’d encounter much more daring lovemaking than I’d ever experienced in my family’s tidy little section of Łódź!

Cheap Ghost Writing Isn’t Easy - But It’s Worthwhile!

By Karen Cole Peralta
Word count: 1000


This article is about how ghost writing is a developable field. Most people seem to think it is solely about hiding the ghost writer, making money, or otherwise pushing around extremely talented writers. Seriously, it is about taking the work up for overburdened people at low prices so they can afford to be our clients and otherwise manage to keep the field of literature going in the face of “vanity publishing” - self publishing in other words.


You might think that selling yourself short is a sure way to not be a success in the ghost writing field. And your eyes are probably dancing with the very large figures of money that you’ve heard ghost writers pull down, in yearly figures such as $60,000 to $100,000, or amounts such as $15,000 to $60,000 per each book you write. You’re a writer, you love to write, and you believe that this is the way to go when it comes to writing.

This is especially so when you’ve started to break into the field and you’re a ghost writer -- or ghostwriter -- who has never really ghosted a book for someone else before. You’re probably thinking big bucks, major book contracts, large amounts of cash advances from publishers and huge percentages from the books you will be anonymously writing for big time authors.

But let’s face some facts. The first time writers, people with no time to invest in writing a book, and who may have fantastic stories to tell don’t always have the enormous amount of financial capital available to hire any such “cheap” ghost writers. They simply don’t have the money. They’re bound to enter some psychological difficulties when they see that the payments to you are the whopper figures such as those listed above, and that those are the only sorts of prices accessible to them. By laying out such enormous fees, you could be stuck losing a huge customer base of clients with fantastic stories to tell -- but without the major wherewithal to pay you to tell them. What if, say, your potential author, the person hiring you to write his or her story, has only $5000 or less to spend?

I know what I’m talking about, and I can create a decent work of cheap ghost writing in a month or so for that amount of money. You do that, and there’s your $60,000 per year! It really isn’t all that hard.

Most other ghost writers I know are as capable of doing so as I am, but some of them do charge the higher amounts. The clients of the latter group tend to be people with enormous sales potential, not the typical first time authors who have a great story but often don’t really go anywhere with it – the so called “sucker market.”

It might be worthwhile to consider charging less, or negotiating a deal with such a “first timer.” Over the years, I have drawn the conclusion that there are an awful lot of such people out there. I have been ghost writing books for people for as low an amount as $5000 per book, and as I have sources of income from other types of writing, I have been finding an immense amount of personal satisfaction from helping such would be authors actually obtain what they are looking for in a cheap ghost writer who charges a reasonable price for the quality and quantity of work done for them.

This works out to be less “greedy” on my part and more of a service that I provide for authors who are typically dreaming of getting their books on the top of the New York Times Bestseller lists. They often know that such are their dreams, not necessarily their realities. These are frequently people who have reached the ends of their ropes when it comes to negotiating a lower price for their books. They usually have nowhere else to turn when it comes to putting out their own personal stories, and they need someone with a willing ear and pen to listen and help them set down their tales before it’s too late for them to be told. Also, some of these people simply don’t know what they’re doing and need a guiding hand to help them. They usually need their letters of query written up, their brief biographies put together, and their book proposals crafted. They are dipping their toes into the writing field and getting them wet for the very first time.

People like that don’t need to face down what looks like to them to be a million dollar price tag – when what they are looking for is describable as a cheap ghost writer. They want an actual inexpensive ghost writer or ghostwriter who understands their needs, both budgetary and otherwise. Someone capable needs to be able to sit down with them and negotiate a fairly low amount of money to be paid out by them, so they can figure on at least getting some kind of returns from their own books.

These potential authors are not Presidents of the United States or famous movie actors, whose books are guaranteed to sell. Many of them find themselves “stuck” with what used to be called vanity publishing, nowadays called self publishing. They won’t necessarily find a commercial publisher who wants to take a chance on huge returns from their books in today’s multifaceted but still challenging world of publishing.

These clients need literally cheap or inexpensive ghost writers. They don’t need to spend a small fortune on their books to find out that they dead ended in a huge warehouse, didn’t sell as widely as they thought they would, or they otherwise came out on the short end of the stick. They need good, cheap professional assistance and publishing help to face down today’s Internet oriented book market, and multiple inexpensive ways to promote their books.

Help them. Consider bargaining and bartering at a lower price sometimes, and not at a higher price. It might be worth your while. Try it and see!


THE END


Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole Peralta writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is a world renowned inexpensive professional freelance book authors, ghost writers, copy editors, proof readers, coauthors, manuscript rewriters, graphics and CAD, publishing helpers, and website developers international service corporation.

RAINBOW WRITING, INC.

Bio of RWI and its President, KLC

Rainbow Writing, Inc.
Karen Cole
Executive Director

www.rainbowriting.com

By Karen Cole
Word Count: 600 words


KAREN COLE


I have been on the Internet since 2003 as a ghost writer, rewriter, copy editor and proof reader of book manuscripts, and I have performed many other types of freelance and contracted writing jobs. I have a combined degree in journalism, creative writing and the fine arts, and have been creating and editing books, documents and papers for people since well before 1980.

I have worked on some 150 books over my lifetime, ghost writing, rewriting, copy editing and proof reading for book authors. I usually only take credit as the “editor” when I ghost write or copy edit for an author, and my fees are lower than industry standard rates for most ghost writers, rewriters, copy editors and proof readers.

You may visit our websites at www.rainbowriting.com for more information about Rainbow Writing, Inc. We have been on the Internet since 2003. We do inexpensive freelance writing, ghost writing and copy editing, and all other such writing services and web development for very cheap. We offer links exchange services and many free professional services, as well as graphics and CAD - and some publishing assistance for a fee.

I have won awards for my journalism, poetry, short stories and articles. I am multiply published and have had my own novels, novellas, short stories and scripts published. I am currently working on “The Rainbow Horizon,” a humorous fiction novel set in a small town in Washington State. I have contributed to national and international magazines and newspapers, as well as a multitude of online publications.

I am always on the lookout for new projects and first time clients.


RAINBOW WRITING, INC.


We are a professional - sometimes cheap, sometimes high end - freelance and contracted book and manuscript authors, ghost writers, copy editors, proof readers, rewriters, coauthors, cowriters, graphics and CAD artists, publishing assistants, web developers, free professional services - and non-partisan politically - international online corporation.

We have been officially in business online since 2003, but our president has been involved in the writing fields since well before 1980.

We have access to writers and artists with decades of experience in a wide variety of areas, and we set out to both serve your best interests and make our own ways in the professional world of writing and the arts. We often ask for upfront payment, as we need to remain strictly professional.

If you deal with us, you will find warm and humane conduct, as we help both first time and current book authors ghostwrite or otherwise copyedit their books as our main services. We charge commensurate to your budget, without undercutting our own professional work, as much as humanly possible.

We ask you to consider our services by providing free samples of our work done on your preliminary writing. We also provide verbal phone contact and note taking when appropriate, and good great expert fine superb book and cheap or high end excellent ghost writing in general. We also prefer to do as much of our work over the Internet as humanly possible, although we will help to prepare entire books over the phone.

We have recently streamlined our website to accommodate the need for proper search engine optimization, and we have a steady stream of clients coming in on a regular basis. You may enter this client stream by emailing karencole@rainbowriting.com . Your letter will be answered - and I will do my utmost to find someone on our team to assist you. When I am available, I will even take on your job myself, giving you good quality services.

If you have a book idea, a screenplay, some art you need done, a website you need developed or created, please contact us. And thank you very much for considering our book ghost writing services.

THE END

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is a world renowned inexpensive professional freelance book authors, ghost writers, copy editors, proof readers, coauthors, manuscript rewriters, graphics and CAD, publishing helpers, screenplay writers, editors and analysts, and website developers international services corporation.

Gardening Tips and Tricks for Late Autumn

Gardening Tips and Tricks for Late Autumn

By Karen Cole Peralta
Word count: 5400


Once it gets around fall time, it’s time to begin pullin’ up that chair to the fireplace and drink your boiling warm tea. But there are many other things on the horizon, things that require your attention in the autumn.

Preparing for the Winter Months: Gardening in October

When you feel that first solid bite in the breeze and you see the songbirds winging their way south, and the trees are bursting with fire-laden hues, you know you can't be spending the weekend curled up by the fireplace with a good book. Not for long.

While the weather is still gardener-friendly, you must shorten your "to-do" lists for the coming of late fall and early winter. Now is the time to attack your lawn and garden by planting your spring bulbs, buying and maintaining your trees and shrubs, doing your late autumn lawn care, using common-sense watering strategies, building a compost bin and making your own compost, controlling the many common garden pests, and winning at the weed-whacking war before the sudden onset of the fickle, cold and all-enveloping winter season.

Planting Your Perennials

Plant the spring-flowering bulbs until the ground becomes frozen, and prepare your tender but tenacious perennials for the coming seasonal changes. Remember that in the milder climates, bulbs can still be divided and transplanted. Plant hardy bulbs anytime before the soil freezes, but it's best to plant them early enough so the root systems can grow before winter arrives. In some climates, you can plant until Thanksgiving or even Christmas. Late-planted bulbs develop roots in the spring, and may bloom late. But they'll arrive on time by next year.

Be sure to position the bulbs at their proper depth. They must be planted so their bottoms rest at a depth two-and-a-half times each bulb's diameter. In well-drained or sandy soil, plant an inch or two deeper to increase life and discourage rodents.

Bulbs look best planted in groups. So use a garden spade instead of a bulb planter, which encourages you to plant singly. Set the bulbs side-by-side and plant groups of them in holes the size of a dinner plate, or dig curving trenches and position the bulbs in the bottom. Water your bulbs after planting to stimulate the roots to grow.

Interplanting creates maximum flowering in a tight space and eliminates bare spots when "dead" bulbs don't grow. For a succession of blooms and foliage, plant perennials around the bulb holes. As the bulb foliage dwindles, the perennials will grow, camouflaging the bulbs' yellowing leaves.

Choosing Your Trees and Shrubs

October is a wonderful time to shop for trees and shrubs at the nursery. They're now showing their best and brightest colors there. You can plant them now and over the next few months, so that strong, healthy roots will grow over the winter.

You must carefully plan out your landscape to choose which trees you wish to plant for providing proper lawn coverage and the most beautiful scenery. When an appropriate tree is purchased, selected and planted in the right place, it frames your home and beautifies your land, making both more enjoyable. Trees can greatly increase the resale value of property, and even save you on energy costs.

Visualize your new trees at maturity while realizing that some trees develop as much width as height if given enough space to develop. Picture each tree's size and shape in relation to the overall landscape and the size and style of your home. Trees peaking at forty feet do best near or behind a one-story home. Taller trees blend with two-story houses and large lots. Trees under thirty feet tall suit streetside locations, small lots and enclosed areas such as decks and patios.

There are two basic types of trees you will be considering for purchase. Deciduous trees include large shade trees which frame areas with a cool summer canopy and a colorful autumn rack of superior colors. In winter, their silhouettes provide passage for sunlight. These trees can shade a southern exposure from summertime heat, and allow winter sunlight to warm the house. Evergreen trees have dense green foliage that suits them for planting as privacy screens, windbreaks or backdrops for flowering trees and shrubs. But they are handsome enough to stand alone. They do not lose their leaves, called needles, and provide year-round shelter and color. You should be sure to include a wide variety of both kinds of trees in your landscape to avoid losing them to diseases or pests. Buy disease- and pest-resistant trees.

When buying a tree, look for healthy green leaves if it has any, and also well-developed top growth. Branches should be unbroken and balanced around the trunk, and on dormant or bare-root stock they should be pliable. Examine the roots, which should form a balanced, fully-formed mass. Reject trees with broken or dried-out roots. Avoid trees showing signs of disease, pests or stress such as wilting, discoloration, misshapen leaves, scarred bark and nonvigorous growth. Consider the size of the tree. Young trees have a better rate of success when planted, and most flowering trees grow quickly, so start with less expensive, smaller specimens. And be sure and buy all your plants from a good quality nursery with a decent reputation.

Don't prune a newly planted tree unless its form needs improving. Prune flowering trees in spring, after blooming, to correct unsightly problems. Crab apple trees are an exception and should be pruned in late winter. But you can remove diseased or dead branches anytime of the year, and much of this is done during the winter. Apply fertilizer when needed in the second and subsequent growing seasons. Mulch to conserve moisture, reduce weeds and eliminate mowing near the tree. Spread wood chips or bark four inches deep and as wide as the tree's canopy around the base. But don't mulch poorly drained oversaturated soil. Wrap tree trunks after planting to prevent winter damage from weather and pests. And stake young trees, especially bare-root trees and evergreens, to fortify them against strong winds. Stake loosely and allow the tree to bend slightly, and remove stakes after one year.

Shrubs are often planted and used merely as foundation plants or privacy screens. But shrubbery foliage is vastly more versatile, and can go a long way toward livening up your landscaping. Countless varieties of gorgeously hued and beautifully leafed shrubs are available through nurseries and garden catalogs.

You must start by learning what varieties thrive in your area. Try visiting your local arboretum, where you may view different kinds of shrubs and decide whether they fit your gardening plans. Decide what overall look you want at different times of the year, and then find out which shrubs will be flowering, producing berries or sporting colorful foliage at those times. Compare what you find to the inventory at your local nursery, and ask the professionals who work there lots of questions.

Understand the characteristics of each shrub before you plant it. Flowering and fruit-bearing shrubs enhance a new home, but improper pruning and care will ruin the beauty of all your hard work. Some shrubs bloom on second- or third-year wood. If you're maintaining a shrub because you're hoping it's going to blossom, but you're cutting off first-year wood every year, it's never going to bloom.

Some varieties are a foot tall at maturity, while others reach over fifteen feet. A large shrub will usually require more pruning. Also determine the plant's ability to tolerate various soil conditions, wind, sun and shade. You don't put a plant that's sensitive to the elements in an open area. Use hardier plants to shelter it.

Not all shrubs work in every climate. Witch hazel, for example, blooms in fall or winter and is hardiest where minimum temperatures range from thirty degrees below zero to twenty degrees above. It would not be a good choice for very dry, hot climates. But some shrubs such as buddleia, hydrangea and spirea perform well across a wide range of growing zones.

Most shrubs are relatively fast-growing. Those that follow the shape and scale of a home will do more to make a home site look established. For example, if you have a long, ranch-style house the shrubs should be rectangular. If you have a two-story home, you're going to want some leafy shrubs that are a little more upright.

You could try buying larger shrubs instead of trees because they don't cost that much more than smaller shrubs and they help a landscape look fuller. Larger shrubs will go through some shock recovery, but typically it doesn't take a shrub as long as a tree to bounce back. Position shrubs as if they are full-size, leaving ample room for them to fill out. Viburnum, barberry, honeysuckle and hydrangea are all good choices to surround almost any house.

Late Autumn Lawn Care

Aerate lawns in mid- to late-October, while the grass can recover easily. If you core aerate, make your cores three inches deep, spaced about every six inches. Break up the cores and spread them around. If your lawn needs it, thatch and follow with a fall or winter fertilizer. Even if thatching isn't needed, your lawn will be happy for a dusting of fertilizer to help roots gain strength before the spring growing season. Overseed bald patches or whole lawns as needed.
Rake and compost leaves as they fall, as well as grass clippings from mowing. If left on the ground now, they'll make a wet, slippery mess that's inviting to pests.

Good gardeners use heavy-duty molded plastic for shaping neat edges of beds. You can buy these from garden centers, nurseries and mail order suppliers in rolls of flat, four- to six-inch-tall plastic, and the edging installs easily. You'll save yourself countless hours of removing grass and weeds that otherwise creep into your beds.

Watering Your Lawn and Garden

You can't forget about watering in the middle of fall. The summer's long over, but proper moisture now is key to your plants' survival over the cold winter months. You're likely to hear two pieces of advice on watering. One is that you should give established plants an inch of water per week, whether from rain or irrigation. The other is that personal observation of your own garden is the only way to judge how much water it needs. One fact about which there is more agreement: the ideal is to maintain constant moisture, not a cycle of wet soil followed by dry soil.

Although overwatering can be as big a problem as underwatering, most gardeners err on the side of too little. Your needs will vary through the year depending on the rate of evapotranspiration in your garden. Evapotranspiration refers to the two ways that plants lose water. There's evaporation, the loss of water to the air from soil, water and other surfaces. Then the other way is called transpiration, or water lost primarily from the leaves and stems of the plants. You can often obtain evapotranspiration rates for local areas from water departments and other agencies. You will see a graphic description of how a plant's natural need for water changes during the growing season.

In the meantime, keep these pointers in mind:

1) Water when it's needed, not according to the calendar. Check the top six inches of the soil. If it's dry and falls apart easily, water. Your plants will also show signs that they need water. Wilting, curling or brown leaves mean that your plants may lack adequate water. Meanwhile, bear in mind that excess water creates a lack of oxygen in plants, making them show similar symptoms to underwatering.

2) Water slowly, not more than one-half inch of water per hour. Too much water can be lost to runoff. This is why handheld watering cans or handheld hoses generally work only for watering small areas.

3) Water deeply. With established vegetables and flowers, six inches is a minimum. With trees and shrubs, water one to two feet or more. Shallow watering does more harm than good; it discourages plants from developing the deep roots they need to find their own water. Except when you are watering seedlings, soil should never be wet only in the top layer.

4) Water in the morning, never during the hottest part of the day. Too much water may be lost to evaporation. Watering in the evening sometimes causes problems in humid climates, particularly with overhead watering, which wets all the foliage. Plants that remain wet at night sometimes come down with disease and fungal growth.

5) Don't allow runoff. On heavy clay soil, one inch of water will probably cause runoff. At the first sign that water is not penetrating the soil, turn it off. Irrigate in an hour or so, after the initial water has penetrated.

The increased use of piped municipal water and the invention of sprinklers have made mechanical irrigation the most commonly used watering method, particularly for lawns and large areas. Sprinkler irrigation works best with well-draining soils and shallow-rooted plants, or where a cooling effect is desired. But sprinklers have several disadvantages. They waste water, since much of it is sprayed on areas other than the root zone around the plant. Because much of the water is thrown high in the air, loss due to evaporation can be significant. Sprinklers can also foster fungal diseases and other problems with some plants such as roses that don't like having wet foliage. Sprinklers require good water pressure and are best used on plants which are not in bloom. Several types of sprinklers are available.

Drip or trickle irrigation using low-flow hoses or emitters can save more than half the water that overhead sprinklers lose due to evaporation or runoff. It also reduces disease, because the foliage is never wetted. This type of irrigation never saturates the soil, so there is little bad effect on overall soil structure. Since the area that's watered is smaller, weed growth is reduced as well. And drip systems don't require trenching. You can design a simple drip system to direct low flows of water to individual plants, either by laying polyethylene tubing on the ground or burying it shallowly. Or you can buy a more sophisticated custom-designed system. But drip systems have their limitations. They don't work for lawns or broad areas, and they can be damaged if children or pets dig them up. The required number of emitters, misters and sprayers can add up costwise. A drip system also may require a water-pressure reducer to keep low-volume fittings functioning properly.

Soaker hoses are similar to drip systems in some ways, but are even simpler. Soaker hoses "leak" water along the length of the hose. You can buy flat plastic hoses or soakers made from recycled rubber tires, known as sweaty hoses or leaky pipe soakers. And garden stores are filled with many other kinds of gadgets and tools to help you water your garden, such as rain gauges, mechanical and electronic timers, and watering cans.

For small areas, container plantings and seedlings, watering cans work well. Make sure your can has an attachment so that water can be delivered like a fine rain. When picking a can, keep in mind that they are quite heavy when filled. A two-gallon container full of water is as heavy as most people can carry. Make sure that the handle and the rest of the can are designed for ease of carrying.

Building a Bin and Making Your Own Compost

A bin will contain your compost pile and make it more attractive as well as keep it from spilling or blowing over into your yard. A circular or square structure can be made from fencing wire. The idea is to push the compost material together to make it heat up and rot properly. The bin should be at least three feet wide and three feet deep to provide enough space for the spreading material. Use untreated wood or metal fence posts for the corners and wrap sturdy wire fencing around them. The fence mesh should be small enough that rotting materials won't fall out. When the compost is ready, unwind the wire and scoop from the bottom of the pile. Then re-pile the undecomposed material and wrap the wire back around the heap.

Many hard-core gardeners feel that three compost bins are the best for serious composting. By building a trio of bins you can compost in stages: one bin will be ready, one will be brewing and one will always be starting. Installing a cover, such as a plastic tarp or a piece of wood, helps to cut odor, control moisture and keep out wild pests. You will also want to use the right ingredients for a proper, lovely smelling rotting compost heap.

It's easy to cook up your own pile. At first, layer grass clippings with a dash of leaves and twigs to create a concoction that turns into humus, the best plant food. Added ingredients for the compost comes from everyday waste in the kitchen and yard. But avoid any items that ruin your compost. Use green materials such as fruit and vegetable scraps, eggshells, coffee grounds, and grass and plant clippings; and brown materials, such as leaves, wood and bark chips, shredded newspaper, straw and sawdust from untreated wood. Avoid using any meat, oil, fat, grease, diseased plants, sawdust or chips from pressure-treated wood, dog or cat feces, weeds that go to seed or dairy products. These can befoul, spoil and make smelly and rancid a perfectly good productive compost heap.

There are two types of composting: cold and hot. Cold composting is as simple as piling up your yard waste or taking out the organic materials in your trash such as fruit and vegetable peels, coffee grounds or egg shells and then piling them in your yard. Over the course of a year or so, the material will decompose. Hot composting is for the more serious gardener; you'll get compost in one to three months during warm weather. Four ingredients are required for fast-cooking hot compost: nitrogen, carbon, air and water. These items feed microorganisms, which speed up the process of decay.

To create your own organic hot-compost heap, wait until you have enough material to make a pile that's three feet deep. To ensure an even composition, first create alternating four-inch layers of green and brown materials. Green materials such as vegetable scraps, grass clippings and plant trimmings create nitrogen. Brown materials such as leaves, shredded newspaper and twigs create carbon. Sprinkle water over the pile regularly so it has the consistency of a damp sponge. Don't add too much, or the microorganisms will become waterlogged and won't heat the pile.

During the growing season, you should provide the pile with oxygen by turning it once a week with a pitchfork. The best time is when the center of the pile feels very warm. Stirring up the pile helps it cook faster and prevents material from becoming matted down and developing a bad odor. At this point, the layers have served their purpose of creating equal amounts of green and brown materials throughout the pile. Stir it thoroughly, turning it over repeatedly. When the compost no longer gives off heat and becomes dry, brown and crumbly, it's fully cooked and ready to feed to your garden.

Concentrated Pest Control

Slugs and other pests don't disappear as the weather gets cooler. You'll find them at all life stages in October, from eggs to youngsters and adults. For slugs, use whatever measures you prefer, salt, slug bait or saucers of beer to eliminate them. It's best to catch them at the early stages to stop the reproduction cycle. And keep the ground well-raked and tidied to reduce their natural habitat.

Here's a list of common garden pests and how to control them:

Thrips: Adult thrips are about one-sixteenth-inch long and have dark bodies with four fringed wings. Their size makes them difficult to detect in the garden. They attack young leaves, flower stalks and buds. Spray young foliage, developing buds and the soil around the bush with an insecticide containing acephate.

Cane borer: This insect is the maggot of the eggs laid by sawflies or carpenter bees in the freshly-cut cane of the rose after pruning. One telltale sign is a neatly-punctured hole visible on the top of the cane. To remove the pest, cut several inches down the cane until there are no more signs of the maggot or pith-eaten core. Seal all pruning cuts with pruning sealer.

Japanese beetle, Fuller rose beetle: These will eat parts of the foliage and sometimes the flowers. Pick beetles off the bush by hand. Or spray foliage and flowers with an insecticide containing acepate or malathion.

Leaf miner: This insect can be spotted on foliage by the appearance of irregular white chain-like blisters containing its grub. Remove foliage and discard it to prevent further infestation.

Spittle bug: This small, greenish-yellow insect hides inside a circular mass of white foam on the surface of new stems, usually during the development of the first bloom cycle in early spring. Spray a jet of water to remove the foam and the insect.

Roseslug: When you see new foliage with a skeletonized pattern, indicating that it has been eaten, chances are it's the roseslug. Remove the infected foliage and spray with insecticidal soap or an insecticide that contains acephate.

Leaf cutter bee: As its name implies, this very small yellowish-green insect jumps on the undersides of foliage to feast, often leaving its white skin behind. The damage caused by this insect often results in defoliation. Use an insecticide containing acephate or malathion to prevent it from establishing a strong colony.

Rose scale: This insect hides under gray scales, normally on old canes or stems. It feeds by sucking the sap, weakening the plant. If the infestation is localized, try removing it with a fingernail. Or spray with an insecticide containing acephate.

Spider mite: It builds huge colonies underneath leaves, giving the appearance of salt-and-pepper particles. If the problem is detected early, you can control it chemically with insecticides containing acephate or malathion. Spray the underside of the leaves. Or you can apply a fine misting of water to the foliage's undersides to wash the mites to the ground. They can't fly, so they will die on the soil surface.

Rose aphid: This is the commonest insect enemy in the rose garden, and is often referred to as the greenfly. It's a small, green soft-bodied insect often found in large colonies, particularly on the first lush spring growth, sucking sap from stems. Control by washing off the rose stems with water or spraying with an insecticide containing acephate or malathion.

Plant bugs: This is a large group of insects that includes the lygus bug and stink bug. Plant bugs attack the developing bud by sucking the sap. While feeding, they inject a toxic substance that breaks down plant tissue, causing the distortion and premature death of the bud. Apply a systemic insecticide such as RosePride Systemic to prevent further attacks.

Weed Whacking Made Easy

Actually, this is a slight exaggeration. There's no rest for the wicked. Keep staying ahead of your nasty weeds all this and next month. They serve as Home Sweet Home for all manner of pests and bugs, and destroying them before they flower and seed will save you much work in the future.

Preparation is the key. All gardeners know what it's like to have their yards invaded by unwelcome plants. Although there's no really easy way to banish weeds, there are a few solid techniques you can use to reclaim your turf. At the very least, you can limit this utmost in hostile takeovers.

Here is a simple outline of effective battle strategies you can use in the fall:

1) Be a mulching maniac. Mulch acts as a suffocating blanket by preventing light from reaching weed seeds. At the same time, it holds moisture for your plants and provides nutrients for your soil as it decomposes. Apply coarse mulch, such as bark or wood chips, directly onto soil. Leaves, grass clippings, or straw work better as a weed deterrent with a separating layer of newspaper, cardboard or fabric between them and the soil.

2) Water those weeds. Pulling weeds is easier and more efficient when the soil is moist. You are more likely to get the whole root system, and your yanking won't disturb surrounding plants as much either. No rain? Turn on the sprinkler or even water individual weeds, leave for a few hours and then get your hands dirty. Just ignore the strange looks from your neighbors as you lovingly water your weeds.

3) Cut weeds down in their prime. Weeds love open soil. But if you till or cultivate and then wait to plant, you can outmaneuver the weeds. Till the ground at least twice before you plant. Your first digging will bring dormant weed seeds to the surface where they can germinate. Watch and wait for a few weeks until they begin to grow. Then slice up the weeds again with a tiller or a hoe, only don't dig as deep. Now it should be safe to put precious plants into the soil.

4) Pass the salt. Try sweeping rock salt into crevices between paths. Although more harsh, borax also works well. Be sure to wear rubber gloves with the latter material. You might need to apply a few doses, but be aware of any surrounding plants because both products kill the good plants along with the bad.

5) Lay down the law. Try using landscape fabric as a weed controller. Landscape fabric is usually made of a nonwoven, porous polypropylene material which enables air, water and nutrients to reach the soil but keeps weed seeds in a dark, cool environment where they can't germinate. You lay down the fabric, cut a hole where your plants are positioned or will be planted and then cover the fabric with a two- to four-inch layer of mulch or gravel. However, landscape fabric doesn't work well on steep slopes or a windy site, where the mulch often slides off or is blown away, exposing the fabric. Never use plastic, as it prevents moisture and air from reaching your plants' roots.

6) Boil them alive. If you have pesky weeds in a spot with no nearby grass or valuable plants, boil water and pour it over the unsuspecting weeds. To control the stream of boiling water and to save surrounding plants and your toes from a scalding, use a teakettle.

7) To compost or not to compost. After you've labored to rid your garden of weeds, be careful that you don't throw them onto the compost heap where they can drop seed and infect your entire yard. When you pull or till young weeds, leave them where you chop them and let the sun dry them out, and then use them as mulch. Throw mature weeds on a hot compost pile where they should cook at two hundred degrees or higher for several weeks to ensure the seeds are killed.

8) Cover your ground. Cultivate plants close together or grow winter ground cover in areas that typically suffer from weed invasions. A thick mass of plants not only is attractive but also shelters the soil from direct sunlight, making it more difficult for weed seeds to prosper.

9) Old-fashioned elbow grease. Weed every couple of weeks throughout the growing season in order to stay in control of the weed situation. If you're going to get down and dirty, use a comfortable knee cushion or try pads to lessen the impact of weeding on your body. You can also try an upright tool such as the Weed Hound, which prevents excessive bending or body strain.

10) Solar-powered soil. Solarization uses heat to disinfect your soil. If you have a large planting bed or area of lawn that you want to reseed, till the area to clear all vegetation. Then water the area until it is saturated. Wait one whole day, and then cover with clear three- to six-mil plastic sheeting. Bury the edges of the sheeting to seal it. Let the soil cook for four to six weeks, then remove the plastic. If any weeds appear, till them lightly without disturbing the soil. Wait a few days for the soil to cool and then start planting. This method gets rid of many soil-borne diseases as well.

11) Kiss my grits. You can try a natural weed control such as WOW! (WithOut Weeds) which is made from a byproduct of corn. It acts as a preemergent, and is best applied during the spring, killing weeds before they germinate. A second application at the end of the growing season kills weeds that sprout late in summer and go to seed in the fall. Its nontoxic formula is safe, and it releases nitrogen into your soil.

12) Identify your weeds. If you can ID the sprouting menaces in your yard, you can control their reseeding habits better. Annual weeds complete their growing cycle from seeds to plants in a few months and then die. Unfortunately, they can leave behind thousands of babies if they go to seed, so always try to remove annuals before they drop seeds. Perennial weeds usually live for at least three years and are more difficult to banish, so at first sighting remove them immediately.

13) Time is tight. If your weeds are starting to grow but you don't have the time or energy to pull them up at the moment, suffocate the weeds by covering them with a block of wood or piece of plastic. Better yet, use a few large decorative stones, a big-based work of art or a birdbath. At least you'll stop the weeds from spreading so you can tackle them when you have time.

14) Off with their heads. To stop weeds from spreading, pluck off their flower heads before they drop seed. This technique can be especially helpful with annual weeds, which love to provide generation after generation of seeds.

Food for Thought

In addition to performing these autumnal lawn and garden duties, you may want to harvest your fall vegetables such as the perennial squashes. Do a taste test and harvest them when flavor is at its peak. If you'd like to extend the harvest of carrots, turnips and other root vegetables, leave some in the ground to mulch as the weather gets colder. Early next month, before temperatures drop too much, seed cover crops such as clover, peas or vetch to enrich the soil. It will serve as a natural fertilizer, stifle weed growth and help loosen up the soil for next year's crops.

As for your houseplants that you've put outside for the summer, if September was mild enough that your geraniums and other such plants are still outdoors, be sure to make them cozy inside before the first frost takes a bite out of them. Take geranium cuttings of two to four inches to root indoors. If you treat houseplants chemically, be sure to keep them warm and away from direct sunlight. Fertilize houseplants now and they won't need it again until March. And remember to get your poinsettias and your Thanksgiving and Christmas cacti ready for well-timed holiday color. Give them a daily dose of ten hours of bright daylight or four hours of direct sun and fourteen hours of night darkness. Cacti need a cool environment of fifty to sixty degrees, while poinsettias prefer a warmer sixty-five to seventy degrees. Be sure and let your cacti dry out between waterings.

For a true gardenaholic, winter is often considered to be the enemy. But with a few steps toward preparation in the early- to mid-fall, you can take care of your lawn, garden and houseplants in a way that will keep them thriving and surviving until the dawning of yet another most welcome and bountiful springtime.


THE END


Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole Peralta writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is a world renowned inexpensive professional freelance book authors, ghost writers, copy editors, proof readers, coauthors, manuscript rewriters, graphics and CAD, publishing helpers, and website developers international service corporation.

Herman the Fool

Herman the Fool

Alias: A Tear Jerker, otherwise known as a Tragedy


By Karen Cole Peralta
Word Count: 1,500


A dummy sits on the shelf, broken, twisted, its life deformed by the many obstacles it has faced. It is both soft and hard to the touch as your eyes fondle its many parts. It has no sex, no life, no meaning, and yet you can tell something about it is different as you ruthlessly scan it. It is not a dummy - and it stands out.

It’s sheer luck when you stand out completely, all your entire life.

“Hello,” the little dummy seems to say to you as you slowly draw closer to it. What does it really look like? It has hair, teeth, clothing, and a mystery to it. There is a poking out of black, yellow and green hair. It does not seem to look like anything, sort of sexless, a clown that could be anything. Is it really a “gay” dummy? Yes, but no, it seems to scream somehow it was once male at you. And it seems once - it altered itself to its basic soul.

Yet you know you have met this person before, perhaps as a woman. Pushing past the forces of nature, realizing you might get caught and thrown into a mental institution; suddenly you wake up and see bright lights all around. You are at a simple store, a shop of sorts. As you look around, the imagery resolves into a woman at a puppet store.

Fascinating, isn’t it? You are staring at the dummy in your hand. You have picked me up well, the dummy’s lips say, in your own mind. You are now that woman, but it is all in the past, as human life on the face of the planet is over. Well, maybe in a few years.

“Pick me up, woman of my soul,” it told her as she lifted it to her lips.

“I’ll take it,” Sandra sighed at the cash register. “No problem. Just make sure you take care of Herman when he comes home with you. He always takes up too much space.”

“Well, the little fellow does seem small for that.” Easing away from the cash register, Sandra pushed herself out the door, as she weighed over 300 pounds. She now had a new friend for her collection of Pierrot dolls, she knew to herself, heading to her own apartment downtown. She could not be a lesbian any longer.

She was too old and fat - mattered - to her previous lover any longer. And she knew she had to die. Her lover had gone out the door once and simply never returned. She was a nobody. Her lover had often given her this feeling, partying on her sometimes.

She had never really been a lesbian, Sandra smiled to herself. She had known the only heaven was in the afterlife. But her body groaned and creaked as she made it go up the stairs after she keyed into her small but dingy apartment building. She made it up the steps to the top floor where she was forced to live. It had taken a long time to find the small studio apartment, as demand was incessant in the area in which she lived, far away from the boyfriend who had always made fun of her, in an occasionally fun way. He had been an actual man, before the lesbian.

He was a Daddy. He had his own kids earlier, or had made it up. Anyway, he was long gone far away, due to his own personal war with her over poverty, over the lack of children due to her fat, over life.

Far away from the man she had almost driven into killing her. The man had interesting hair too, like this Pierrot doll, but it had been all black and shady, spikes in the morning, feathers at night like her other lover’s hair had been.

There had never been any such “love” going on. Still, Sandra smiled. She knew now she had no such “soul,” but it had been fun playing let’s pretend.

Some days, she wondered if he had murdered her. He had driven her into becoming an overweight lesbian, or not. Was it her fault or his? It was a “he says she says,” and he had eventually found another such somebody. She thought maybe she had said something, and he had taken offense. She now weighed enough to die.

She gazed longingly at the dummy, as though expecting the mystery event. But she smiled her own smile as she held back against the heart attacks. They were bursting her chest out inside. And she was holding her 1001 Pierrot doll.

For you see, her apartment was stuffed with Pierrot dolls, the Crying Clown, the smiling clown, the clown everywhere. She had built small wooden shelves from kits. These were her children, for she had aborted only one once, but there were none available now. She was going to join the only child she never had, in outer space.

He was worried, the little Herman, for her. She shook him. Then she shook him hard. “Say you’re sorry. Say you’re sorry, Daddy, for telling me there is an afterlife, and that you were God. There is too a hell in this life called War.” The doll shook, oh how it was shaken. Suddenly, Sandra noticed Herman’s little face was cracked. Ouch!

She had broken her favorite pastime doll. Not only, that, her death sequence was starting to seem a little pathetic. Pant pant pant, hold doll. Look at doll. Pant pant pant did I waste my time back there? Yes, I did.

“Daddy,” she murmured to herself, “Daddy, you are broken now. Come to my home,” she intoned as the melodious…mommy. She placed Herman neatly on a shelf. She couldn’t or didn’t want to remember any of their other names. As she looked around, the place resounded with marching band dolls, sophisticated dolls, Barbie dolls, kewpie dolls with their little blond heads, Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls which were stuffed with wonderful candy hearts by her as she had sewed them in herself, plastic dolls made by anyone whatsoever, purple and green ceramic dolls and some which were merely other kinds of clown dolls than Pierrot dolls.

The camera that was her eyes refocused on her brain. Something had been in there long ago, recording anything as she slumped to the floor, falling into her fat, having whittled down to the skinniest person in the universe. She smiled at me, thought Herman. She had finally gotten on SSI and her own apartment was all hers. It happened the very day she noticed she was dying.

Now I am home at last. I hope, he thought to himself. He hopped up and immediately walked over to her. “Godspeed, my dear, but I don’t know where you went. You have probably disintegrated. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I would say altogether. Now we can party down. Yet somehow, I would have liked to get to know you, my sweetheart, my…” Herman stopped, and he saw a small glow surround his chest. He gulped, and realized the worst fate had befallen him. This could not be Heaven.

He looked up at the ceiling. He looked down at the extremely filthy carpet with trash all over it. He looked at the peeling, cracked walls. He felt at home, and extremely brave. Then all resolved into a perfectly livable apartment. He was happy.

“Hello!”

There was absolutely nothing left but dead silence.

Herman crouched down next to the dead body, and wept. For he was stuck forever, in an insignificant little apartment, blithering on to a rotting corpse. He had been from England once, and the teeny weenie little white tag said it out loud so strongly. In tiny hard to read blurry print. He couldn’t help that someone else had been his Maker.

Many doors slammed downstairs to let little him know this: that he had only his survival urge and his urge to have fun somehow left. There was no little boy to play with; there was no errant ear in which to fathom the obscurity called time.

He even tried mounting it, but there was nothing there.

As it grew time, over the years, he groped in boring devotion to the nonexistent dead woman. But as he was unable to do anything to bring her back alive from the dead, they finally killed him. Bugs, weasels, cockroaches, and tiny spirochetes: all ate him. Mildew really, but he had to remain alive to suffer through it all. Finally, he just keeled over already. And the gods were not there to pronounce his fate.

Who are they? No one, nothing at all.


THE END


Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole Peralta writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is a world renowned inexpensive professional freelance book authors, ghost writers, copy editors, proof readers, coauthors, manuscript rewriters, graphics and CAD, publishing helpers, and website developers international service corporation.

Bubbleator 2044

Bubbleator 2044

By Karen Cole Peralta
Word Count: 2,200


“We are like animalculae in a drop of water . . .” Fredric Brown


AN UNDERGROUND TRANSIT System operated for twenty-four years through President, Calaveras, and Snohomish Counties without suffering a solitary mishap. The Regional Transit Authority’s “Vision 2020” had been well realized. Sat 4 JUL, 2044, President County’s Chief Exec Cho-M’Bobea lasercut the SoulGold(k) across Pioneer Square Main Station’s . . . and Sealth’s . . . newest public toy.

The former King County had been renamed after President Rice, first USA black president, died during the Virus Riots of 2017.

Literally thousands of “shoeboxes” dotted the landscape of “Pretzel” County, 1342 in the City of Sealth alone. The eighty Underground Access Elevators of Pioneer Square propelled twenty thousand people an hour through SEAPAC’s three levels of transit, linking the rail systems, van transit, the flyways and the new underwater marine channels to cities all over Western Washington and downcoast into Oregon, California(k), and well into Mexico.

CE M’Bobea, a naturalized human Pan-African, spraypainted her name with harmless vegetable dyes outside Main Station’s shoebox, or UAE, on the ever-changing Rainbow Motion Board. ComPugenta(k) cool air, sights, sounds, smells and textures emanated from the board, overpowering a crowd of metallically dressed men, women, kids and natuchildren(k) gathered to watch as members of SEAPAC’s Planning Committee prepared to ride the giant “Levitator.”

“You wouldn’t believe our track improvements,” murmered Zien Pea, a grown natuchild of ten and comember of 2044’s SPC, to a Globavid reporter from East Kenya, then a white-held territory.

The reporter, David Hopdotter, an Anti-Sectionist Jew, was a known crusader on behalf of brown nationalist groups, and a Western Bloc government-paid news agent. He was nearly keeling over himself from Compugenta’s Virtual Reality show, while most of the crowd could barely converse, even in TAP.

“Isn’t work boring you?” David mouthed back. He hated TAP.

But Zien, eyes large and blue-green, TAPPED slowly, in a way sure to enforce her ideas SOUNDLY into David’s mind, that she LOVED the shiny clothes generated for comembers by Seabell/the Coastal Transit Project. “I HATE autoleather. It’s SQUISHY, growing viraclothes in labs. They mined TONS of Snohomish County gold building the tracks!” She pulled his sleeve, signaling “NO WAY.” Always TAPPING the latest permafrozen slang, Zien.

You TAP using the other person’s whole body. That lets in the Deaf-Blind. Zien could see and hear, some, but used a Chair. The entire crowd surged forward when the huge Main Elevator doors opened, letting everyone into the biggest shoebox in town. Zien and fifty other Chairpeds backed in. Padded grabbars merged as the thirty-foot wide doors whispered shut on the hunplus-foot deep shoebox. A natuvoice came on, explicating the UAEs.

“Built to accommodate Sealth’s six-and-a-half million people, not to mention the two million traveling through, the shoeboxes also help generate energy, pumping out excess water from First Level. A circulating hydraulic system drives the new, totally safe, pollution-free Levitator . . .”

The leviathan elevator swooped around in loopdyloop passages. “We’re going through the pretzel now,” David gently TAPPED on Zien’s right shoulder, “if my stomach survives all the twisting.”

Sure enough, the UAE inserted into the Water Table, the very first Underground restaurant in Sealth, just waylay enough to switch corridors while inundating all 328 passengers with gentle virtual reality tastes and aromas, one meal with drink at a time on “hunger display.” Only Tokyo’s cafes surpassed its quality.

The giant elevator then merrily zoomed along sideways, its foot-thick Plass front allowing full display of THOUSANDS of tiny restaurants/drug bar fronts, markets and businesses, the six-mile Mall River Forest Park, the PoliBuilding, and Sealth Aquarium’s Salmon (Coho, Chum and Steelhead) Causeway on Mezzanine Level.

David loved the salmon causeway, mouthing and TAPPING at Zien constantly about fishing privileges and waiting lists. “Next month, honey, when I drop in from Qakar (Kenya’s new Pan-African name) I’m gonna take you fishing, up-up-up, I promise!” Zien didn’t care. David’s third daughter, via fertilization of two women and much frantic labwork to fuse her halved body parts—David had been overtested for IDC (k) (Immune Deficiency Condition) during the Virus Riots of 2025—had a mission. Her singleminded purpose was to promote awareness of genetically altered people as legitimate human beings, in spite of their strange looks, multiple disabilites, and scary potentialities.

Other than that, she ECSTATICALLY loved organic beancream!

But she was more worried than excited about her entry into Underground Sealth’s “Hell Realm,” her Chinese aspect appalled by the special closing in around her, the lack of a beautiful blue sky overhead. She knew no color but loved blue. She was able to sense its vibratory pattern the best of all. She leaned against her IDC-treated father, a man who’d grown up in hospitals, screaming his lungs out to leave.

Care providers of the 21rst Century were a grand delusion of medical skills and elemental soul-casting, taking life quickly with huge doses of poison when it became unpalatable, steadily experimenting with people’s bodies. “They force us to be made sick and well,” according to megacare reformer Flo Ware X-806 .

Very few comembers were worried about this, Zien found, as she TAPPED on them; SPC Shirley Fung believed care an attempt “to help, not harm.” Bored with phrases, Zien wanted full citizen’s rights. She was already mayor of her Aboveground urban village.

Zien’s village led SeaTac region’s disposal of wastes into utilizable natural and methane gas pockets. Meanwhile plants, Earth’s chief oxygen source, had cornered AMCA’s inarable land.

Disabilities, racial/sexual issues and animal rights remained as distantly soluble problems for AMCANS after the World Bank released Engas, the special bonds freezing funds of all countries in Interchange, the major global work of the tens, twenties and thirties. But money as a concept was finally destroyed by computer exchange systems. They couldn’t keep track of theft!

Only human, natu, and animal efforts, computer signals and group co-op signatures were needed to start projects anymore. That meant a multilevel Washington connected by rail to upper Canada, the southmost Baja tip, and all points east by 2039.

Rail would have been global if not for planecars. Licensed drivers still flood the buzzing skies over most urban centers. They wiz around each other at lightening speeds.

Ten minutes after taking forty-three planned angle turns, the west coast’s tenth largest UAE phwoomphed to a gentle, caressing stop at the Third Level’s biggest platform, Denny RetroParque.

Right under the Upper Queen Anne Transit Island, the parquet was delineated by universal animal and plant symbology, as well as local Sealth landmark symbology. Aboveground, Metro TransVans provided all short trips within President and Calaveras Counties.

Ever one disembarked, some onto the moving platform, others onto the tree-lined walk/bikeway below. Zien chose the walkway, subfluorescence pulsing robin’s egg blue from the rounded walls. Third Level’s ceiling was an incredible 550-feet high, solar subfluorescence pulsing robin’s egg blue from the rounded walls. Light-emiting diodes wrapped each comember in a unique, 500-tone rainbow that caressed one’s body with orgasmically liquid warmth.

Much is being done at present to help prenatu eyes that reflex poorly against indoor light, disabling children from normal sight. Nowadays natus have all the worst vision problems as keratotomic surgery, widespread since the late ‘10s, has corrected all human vision problems. Some AMCA laws bar natus from the upper levels of the AMCA Armed Services, government and the private sector.

The Jewish father and daughter team deboarded with a knot of twenty comembers, shimmering to the tune of rainbow lights and foggy background attracter music wheezing from sardine-packed restaurants/drug bars, and arrived at the commemoratively named Belated Health Bar. The recessed front of the eight-foot wide, sixty-foot deep, hunplus-level, hydraulic transfloor Bar (stand on the Chairped-access leftpad hologrammed Sealth’s famed ruddy terrace-cotta. There David bought them one of the only family of drugs proven to benefit the human central nervous system by encouraging regrowth of damaged myelin tissue. They sipped twin cool sprinkice freshments with whipped cranboysenberry syrup, and felt the soothing effects of…PPOOOPPPPPPPP ! ! !

Both of them looked up as all light around Third Level boomed off. The last thing David saw was the glimmer of a pretty remate human’s . . . or was she natu? Silvamesh, pinfeather-lined dress.

A human-sounding voice vibrated their table as Zien clung to David, TAPPING frantically; the voice echoed like the usual David, TAPPING frantically; the voice echoed like the usual public address PoliSystem Regional Transit operative. But David sensed something amiss. Transit usually hired natus as Vocals.

“Do NOT panic. Your transit system and Underground parquet are SAFE while service repairs are made. You will experience TEMP darkness . . .” Troping the story to Globavid as he carefully listened, David also touched his cellwave phone, capable of wave rescending through fifty thousand miles of concrete, and called Field Supervisor Terno Farquar-el-Grey. A Pan-Arab infused with Korean body parts, Farquar was an old friend of David’s from the Virus Riots. “Far” accidentally took a viral explosion that saved David’s life by swerving his Boeing Eagle convertible, a flying car, into an oncoming blast of fuel, aimed at David, a war analyst for the Redmond Massacre.

“FARQUAR! My daughter is up a tree! She’s practically climbing into my outer pockets. Why’s it taking forever on this?”

“Tell your daughter to calm down, and press the receiver of your ear. Stat? Good. Third Level is being held by pro-Kenyan terrorists.” David stoked the word “safe” into Zien’s silver hair. Zien never believed anything but her own Formachair’s computer-laden Envir(k) was safe. But she kinda liked danger. Her chair did not have normal legs. It was not a Spider Chair. It hovered over the grown on a cushion of air, and the legs were receded into the frame.

“Oh, Garamond Adonai, yer HOLLOW!” David laughed.

“Nopers. We have about an hour to track down a team of White Party Nairobeans before they blow up Third Level with a SUBGUM of a thermo-nuclear explosion, imploding SEALTH. Y’COPY???”

‘NAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH.” Zien could tell something was wrong. Everyone else was pulling out pocket lights and marijuana (filtered) lightups, creating a flickering candlelit glow. She finally grabbed David’s pocket lighter and beamed his face.

“If you don’t tell,” she TAPPED, all over his body, turning on her background noise inhibitor so she could hear him, “I’LL TICKLE YOU ! ! !” That was Zien’s most dreaded trick.

Farquar steadily intoned David’s doom into one red-veined ear, giving him details the Metro PoliSafety Teams had uncovered through multicam TV detection systems. They’d spotted two alien men clothed head-to-toe in light-absorbing black Starcloth(k) when one of them idiotically lit an unfiltered hash joint.

“We turned on all the sprinkler systems to dampen their clothes so we can ranar ‘em better. The Purple Team saw them in Zone 14. Definitely the body shapes of human pro-phobics.

“Phobics” were what media called “white” people scared of racially merging with brown people. Worldwide. There were plenty of these, holding assets of resources in centers of power, since the Virus Riots; and the Darwin-based pleas for supremacy from the former rich wielders of money and securities. David, a former phobic, hated it passionately since natu Zien was born.

Zien’s mothers were the only match possible out of available candidates for BirthQuest(k) from David’s tired, medic-tampered body. By the time he pushed to have kids he had to face that. Two Szechwan women selflessly tolerant of his Life Profile were needed to combine every sustainable, undamaged chromosome.

“The City is the place where the diffused rays of many separate Beans of Life fall into focus . . .” said a Chinese proverb in 1994 on the wall of a Metro office. “Far, how in HELL does a Jew and a disabled natu enter Zone 14, alone and unaided, when we’re all the way . . . Zien, gimme light . . . IN ZONE 36 UQATI?”

“You don’t, we do. We’re in Zones 12 to 16, searching, and we’ve got ‘em surrounded. There go the batteries,” Farquar sighed as hundreds of backup superconductors flooded on. “They have a combined life of about a million years. Since the world lost money as a concept we can use either system anymore. But I lost money as a concept we can use either system anymore. But I guess we’ll pull easy handle on Third Level’s generator soon . . .

“Yup. McCaulough says they submicrowaved terminals in the fused Permaplates(k). One of the Green Team must be THEM. Oops. There’s only . . . all twelve of them just surrendered . . . their liason says Nairobi used to be allies with my old country!

“We have the thermo-nuclear BOMBO ! ! !” Enda problema.

Farquar’s words, reassimilating in David’s recording cells, pared down to an essential story. David troped film/voice to Globavid pretty much like sneezing. Smiling at his relieved daughter and their refreshing drugs, he touched the phone off.

MANY THANKS TO JOE AND YOSH AT METRO, PHYLLIS MILLER AND OTHERS AT SEATTLE’S CITY PLANNING DEPT, FOR THIS STORY’S BACKGROUND AND THE CLEARANCE TO HAVE IT PUBLISHED BY ME.