http://shelleymickle.com/Blog.htmlen-usThu Sep 09 03:12:48 EDT 2010Thu Sep 09 03:12:48 EDT 2010CommuniSite RSS Generatorhttp://shelleymickle.com/Blog.html0http://shelleymickle.com/Blog.html?NID=101 Tribes By Shelley Mickle I’ve been thinking about tribes lately. I don’t mean Native American tribes or African tribes; I’m talking about those groups we all belong to: Work-place tribes, religious-denomination tribes, political-party tribes, and well, you know, look at your own life and count how many groups of people matter to you. And when people matter to you, you want to please them and not lose them. And with that desire comes a curious exchange of power. Actually, the fact that I’ve latched onto the word “tribe” is curious in the first place. Because, it’s a word older than mildew. Apparently it got its start when men in Greece walked around in those gorgeous gowns. Usually tribes had something to do with DNA and bloodlines. And yet I can’t think of a better word to describe how centuries later, I found myself joining up with a look-alike group of teenagers, and then finding other tribes to either get into, or BEG to get into, or break away from. Actually, belonging to tribes never really ends. I also think about the day a little boy in our neighborhood stood outside the fenced backyard where my 4-year-old daughter and her friends were playing. He was mosquito-bitten, as pale as biscuit dough, and—I hate to say it—“but he was generally puny.” He also looked as lonely as an empty package of gum. Every morning for three days, he hung on the gate, watching the girls cook up mud pies and pop them in a make-believe oven made out of a shoe box. “Why don’t you invite him in?” I asked the girls.“He’s a boy,” they said. “So?” I asked. “He won’t like to play what we play, “they explained... “How do you know?” I questioned. “We tried him,” the oldest girl said. “And for maybe five minutes he did what we said, then he knocked down our playhouse kitchen and threw around the pots and pans. Oh yes, it’s always a sad state of affairs when a boy won’t take bossing from a girl, and even worse when he doesn’t behave in the kitchen. But then again, tribes have rules. The next morning I glanced out the window and was stunned speechless. There was the neighborhood boy sitting at the picnic table eating a mud pie with a spoon and wearing a look on his face that said he was purely loving it. OH, the taste of belonging is always sweeter than the taste of what is on our spoon. But then a week later, I watched that oldest girl lead the boy down the street to introduce him to some boys playing soccer. Now, some could say this was her way of getting rid of him. But I see it as practicing the best of tribe behavior. Because she empowered him to test his wings with her blessings for success and not with hidden hopes for failure. And, she wasn’t just thinking of herself. After all, he was the only person in the universe who could tolerate her pies. Sat Oct 04 00:00:00 EDT 2008http://shelleymickle.com/Blog.html?NID=87 “A love affair with Pass Christian and Darn that Witch, Katrina” No one taught us more about the complicated love affair we can have with a place than William Faulkner. When I was eighteen and heading off to college, I wrote Mr. Faulkner a letter and told him I was coming. I said if he ever saw me walking across the campus of the University of Mississippi, it would be all right to introduce himself. Because, I wanted to be a writer too. And I knew he knew a lot he could teach me. Shortly before I arrived, he died, which I thought was a rather drastic way to avoid me. But it didn’t interfere with my long and complicated love affair with his place. It was the gulf coast of Mississippi that heated my blood. I visited it in dreams. I thought about it on trips to other coasts. I lived with it in my imagination for years, and it really caught heat when my son was born there. I may have lived on that coast only a few years, but I found I needed to keep it with me in the only way I knew. I wrote a novel set there. I centered it in Pass Christian, a town whose name is a secret. Spelled as though it should be pronounced Christian, you have to visit to really know how to say its name. PASS CHRIS-TI-ANNE. Roll it out on your tongue like the name of a seductive woman. And then sometimes shorten it to simply, “The Pass.” How eerie it felt to be putting the final touches on my novel, THE ASSIGNED VISIT, as Hurricane Katrina was barreling down on “The Pass,” just as Hurricane Camille aimed its eye across it thirty years before. Because THE ASSIGNED VISIT, set in the Vietnam era, is all about that time when Pass Christian bravely struggled to heal from Hurricane Camille. So now, like an old friend, who I have heard has been deathly ill, I have to follow the little city’s recuperation from Katrina. The bed and breakfast, where I liked to stay, is gone. It was a grand old house built in the early l800s. And though it has survived many hurricanes, it did not make it through Katrina. Once when I was there, the owner told me in great detail his adventure of staying in the grand place while riding out Hurricane Camille. But during Katrina, the historical old house collapsed and crushed my friend. Katrina’s wrath has changed the place I love. The grand houses that for decades looked out into the gulf like a line of naval officers in dress whites—yes, the grand old houses that had once been refuges from heat, yellow fever and war, places designed for summer fun with a festive air—were almost all stolen by Katrina. Even now, those that remain still wear the gaunt hollowed-eyed look of the desperately ill.  Each year, I either visit or call to learn how the place I love is healing.  Each year, just as this one of 2008, more of the city's outward character is visible.   It's the love of place that is hard to measure.  THAT is best seen in the tenacity of those who stick.  And love is more readily touched in the words we write and the stories we tell. Thank goodness love encourages the sharing of memories. And thank goodness memories remind us love has the power to heal. Sat Aug 30 00:00:00 EDT 2008http://shelleymickle.com/Blog.html?NID=85 Vacation By Shelley Mickle My best friend has gone on vacation and left me her dog. I don’t much like her dog. He is little and yippy with white wiry fur, and his teeth don’t meet in the center. But the real truth is, he reminds me of my high school math teacher. He sits down there on the floor looking at me while I fix his dinner, and everything on his face is saying, “You can do better than this.” His name is Charley, the same name my math teacher had, too. The day my friend flew off to a dude ranch in Montana, she drove Charley over to my house and left me with a list of how to care for him. She was so afraid he would grieve over her leaving that she made him a tape. I was told to play it when he seemed agitated, and he would think she was there with him, and everything would be all right. Well, to me, Charley looks agitated all the time. So right off, I started playing the tape. By the time I’d played it twenty-three times, I thought surely Charley would calm down. But instead he kept running around the house rooting under the couch and in all the closets and outside behind every tree and bush, looking for my friend. A few days of this and I couldn’t take it anymore. I burned the tape right in front of Charley. I hid all the pictures of my friend, and I wouldn’t even say a word that sounded like her name. Then I shut Charley up in the laundry room and went to the kitchen to call her. “I’m having trouble with Charley,” I said. “Why?” she asked me. “Well, he misses you,” I said. “And he also reminds me too much of my high school math teacher. I’m starting to have bad thoughts about him.” “Oh, for heavens sakes,” she said, “put him on the phone.” When I went to get Charley, I found him in the clothes hamper sniffing through the socks. I carried him to the phone and put the receiver over his ear. In a few minutes, he wiggled loose and calmly sat down at my feet and looked up at me. I put the phone to my own ear. I was so afraid my friend was going to tell me to just suck it up and stick it out that I shut my eyes so I couldn’t even see Charley. But instead she said, “Okay. Put him on the next flight out of there. But I swear to goodness, sometimes the thing you most need a vacation from just up and follows you. Wed Aug 13 00:00:00 EDT 2008http://shelleymickle.com/Blog.html?NID=76 Hot Dogs By Shelley Fraser Mickle There’s nothing like a hot dog in July. In fact, July is the birthday of the hot dog. And while its ancestors might have been just an old everyday German sausage, the hot dog became clearly American in l906. That’s when a Chicago cartoonist Thomas Dorgan at the age of 29 drew a picture of a dachshund dog inside of a frankfurter bun. And that was it—the idea stuck and American hot dog was born. Easy to store, quick to cook, the American frankfurter started off leading a good life. But in l917 a rumor started on Coney Island. A fellow named Nathan Handwerker was selling hot dogs for 5 cents, and other hot dog dealers spread the word that a five-cent-dog could make you sick. But that Nathan Handwerker was no slouch. He simply hired people to stand around his hot dog stand wearing white jackets with stethoscopes hanging out of their pockets, and all the while eating his 5 cent hot dogs as quickly as he could slap them in a bun. Actually that didn’t exactly help the reputation of the hot dog—for soon it became known that the American weenie was a staple in the pantry of poor folks. In fact, when I was growing up in a little cotton town in Arkansas, if your mother served you more than one hot dog a week, you knew your father was out of work and your mother was having a nervous breakdown and wasn’t up to doing anymore than boil a dog and stick it in a bun. Back in June of l939, Eleanor Roosevelt worked on the reputation of the hot dog. She decided to serve it to King George the 6th on his royal visit on June 11, l939. Eleanor’s decision nearly gave Franklin’s mother a heart attack. For she was sure that the king would be insulted at being served what many regarded as a poor man’s food. Grilled, boiled, covered in chili, resting on sauerkraut or attending a cocktail party as a pig in a blanket, Americans are now eating 20 billion hot dogs a year. Personally, I like them roasted on a stick on an open fire, just as I cooked them in my childhood. But if I don’t drip mustard on my shirt, I know the dog wasn’t half the dog I intended it to be. Mon Jun 30 00:00:00 EDT 2008http://shelleymickle.com/Blog.html?NID=39Recently, renowned equine photographer Mark Barrett and I have teamed up to work on a book together called, "Horses Always Make Me Smile. "He has over 100 photographs, which he has collected from his photo shoots of horses doing funny, and sometimes outrageous things--such as jumping off the ground when they weigh a ton, or snuggling up with a cat or dog while grinning like a possum. One photo is of a girl dressed to the nines in hunt clothes standing in front of her horse, and at the moment the camera catches its truth, the horse inserts its head over its rider's head, so it looks like the horse is wearing those fancy hunt clothes.  We're considering making this photo the cover of the book.  At any rate, I am working hard on writing the text, attempting to make it not only funny but informative. Right now, I am researching the history of horse culture--and how amazing  it is to think that the automobile has been the defining transport in the last 100 years, yet the horse culture was around for centuries, and little of that history is left.Furthermore, how unaware we are of that strong influence! Just think of how many idioms from the horse culture linger in our language.  I.E.  "Rein 'em in," "hold your horses," "long in the tooth,"  "horse's ****," and "don't look a gift horse in the mouth."  And that's only starters.Can you think of more?  If you have a funny horse story, please send it along.  I'm collecting them to cull to put in the book.  For instance, this one, which a professional  hunt-seat trainer recently gave me:   she was training her own race horse, and when she was ready for the horse's first race, she asked a trainer-friend to get her a jockey and she would have the horse ready at a certain time at a certain race track. When she got herself and the horse there, her trainer-friend said, "I have your jockey, but unfortunately he did not pass the weight test; he is a few ounces over.  However, I know how to fix it."  So when the jockey appeared, the trainer said, "Okay, Cal, spit out your teeth." Which the jockey did, and the horse owner held them while the jockey rode, and the horse came in first!" (Of course, she returned the teeth in time for the winner circle's photograph.)                                                  End of great story.Happy June, and send me your thoughts.Thu Jun 05 00:00:00 EDT 2008http://shelleymickle.com/Blog.html?NID=35Julie Painter of Port Orange, Florida, sends these comments to add to our conversation about Eight Belle's death:    Showing the final death throes of a horse, who has given her life for her masters and her sport, would have been a mistake.  As Sally Jenkins mentions in her May 5 column (in the Daytona News-Journal), 'Death was a painful look at the harsh truth that horses want to run and they want to please us. They will run at our pleasure until they fall.  To have shown that on TV at the time it happened would have been not just poor taste but cruel and detrimental to the innocents in the home viewing audience.We were already affected by the obvious loss.'      As for what can be done so these tragedies stop and the sport of kings contiunes, I have a few suggestions to make horse racing safer for the horses, our equine athletes.  We must give up our love of unreasonable speed and breed better seed for sturdiness and balance.  Do away with the January 1 birthday for all thoroughbreds so that mere chidlren in horse years are not out there straining their bodies beyond any limit we would force upon our young dancers, Olympian entertainers, and other human ahteletes, for whom we have only slightly more respect.Wed May 14 00:00:00 EDT 2008http://shelleymickle.com/Blog.html?NID=33Dear Ms. Mickle, thank you for your commentary on Mid-Florida Public Radio on the death of Eight Belles.  I work with thoroughbreds, preparing them for a career in racing. Whenever I send off the young horses I have worked with, knowing them since they were foaled, I so worry for their safety.  Yet, like you, I both love and hate horse racing. And yes, the industry needs to address making it safer--for one, stop drug use, and for sure, stop scraping track surfaces to try to break speed records--that's insane!Sun May 11 00:00:00 EDT 2008http://shelleymickle.com/Blog.html?NID=32 Horseracing—Is it cruel?By Shelley MickleHorseracing is once again on the hot seat. And that makes me crazy. You see, I both love and hate horseracing. I am addicted to watching the poetry of horses in motion and yet hate the physical risk of racing. And nothing has recently brought the issue home like the recent Kentucky Derby, when we watched the death of the beautiful filly Eight Belles on the race track. I admit, just thinking about Eight Belles today makes me still feel sick. And I force myself to ask over and over again, is horseracing cruel? But, is it realistic to think we humans would ever give up contests of speed? I don’t think so. No doubt in the time of the Romans, if two men met at a crossroads on horseback, one would say, “Bet mine’s faster than yours.” Frankly, witnessing the speed and power of a horse racing at ground-thundering speed is heart-pumping exciting. Feel that once and you want to feel it again. It’s actually like being in the presence of one of the earth’s greatest mysteries. There’s something primeval and awe-inspiring about it. Some people climb mountains. Others watch horses race. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, I think experiences such as this remind us of our own size and limitations. And to understand how much thoroughbreds themselves love speed, just stand beside a pasture and watch a couple of youngsters go at it. And, I’ve never seen a foal come out of a pasture without a scar of some kind. They will run and wrestle and race without any encouragement from us. So okay, contests of speed are here to stay and are natural. And from this desire, the horseracing industry has grown to include thousands of people. Complicate the love of sport with that other undeniable human interest: money and betting, and you’ve got the whole human show. I don’t think it’s going to go away.Now, let’s say that horseracing is cruel and fraught with greed. That horse owners are all sitting on the board of fat-cat corporations, that they play for the prestige and the excitement and care nothing about their athlete. Let’s say that jockeys whip their horses into potentially tragic efforts and that the horses are made to run with existing injuries at too-young an age in bad weather, on drugs, and all for the sake of the almighty dollar. Oh, how I wish I could say all that, because it would make the answer so easy. But from what I have seen from doing research on the sport for a book I wrote, the answer depends on how open you are to looking at the whole canvas. There are as many different people in the horseracing industry as there are in the phone book. Believe me, the trainer of Eight Belles personally ran each of his hands carefully all over her everyday, and especially on the morning of the Derby, looking for heat or any sign of a injury. He rode her himself to feel her mood and to listen to her own messages of well-being. He and most others at that level of the sport would gladly donate the prize money to have her back. My only question would be, was she really fit enough to last the length of the Derby? ABC news reported that her breeding included relatives with leg problems. This accusation needs serious research. And this is where the owners come in. They could fund this study. She had run 9 races, won 5, and most by great margins. So running her in the Derby was not likely a matter of her owner’s ego or impatience. But I hope they will use this tragedy to work toward the answers. As for the jockey whipping Eight Belles to a deadly injury, I can say that most likely that was definitely not the case. From knowing the nature of an Alpha mare, I’m sure Eight Belles would have done everything to overtake the stallion in the lead with or without a jockey. A jockey’s whip, if the horse has been trained properly, is like a pointer in a power point presentation. It’s to point out what is important. And believe it or not, horses running together are sending signals to each other in their own language. A reminder from a jockey to keep an eye on the goalpost is usually the purpose of the whip, and also to protect their mount from injury if they are about to bump the rail or another competitor. Simply, horses try to intimidate each other when one tries to pass. Synthetic track surfaces? Some say the surface might be the answer. Yet, the synthetic surface holds the foot longer than dirt, somewhat like Astroturf, which might result in different sorts of injuries. Run later at older ages? Some say two-year-olds build bone by galloping early, similar to us humans strengthening our bones with weight lifting. Oh, how I wish there were one answer and a clear way to prevent all tragedies. Somehow blaming one or two practices makes us feel better, but it doesn’t solve problems. The industry itself and the breeders need to conduct solid, scientific research to see if track surfaces, two-year-old bones, or any other variables can limit the injuries. That’s where the money should go. As long as we sit in our living rooms as weekend jockeys and horse owners, the answers are short-sighted and fraught with anthropomorphism. I’m hoping horseracing itself, which I both love and hate, races toward the answers.Thu May 08 00:00:00 EDT 2008http://shelleymickle.com/Blog.html?NID=30 Boomers on the Loose, wearing America all over them & Florida on the Brink   I don’t speak for all Boomers, only those who have jet lag and haven’t been anywhere. In fact, my neighbor and I were talking about that the other day.  He and I ride horses together about once a week; and while we do, we talk about how we feel now that each of us has lived for six decades and thirty of those years in Florida.             My neighbor is a new-age Republican—rural-bred who believes the right to bear arms and own a horse is fundamental to who he is. I’m a Franklin Roosevelt Democrat who grew up in the South when almost everyone was a Roosevelt Democrat.  I guess you could say my neighbor is as red and I am blue, and it’s the love of horses that brings us together.  Almost every day my neighbor asks me to marry him even though he knows I celebrated my fortieth anniversary last year. He explains, “When I ast ya, don’t it make you feel good?”             “Well, yes, it does.”             My neighbor and I might have different political philosophies, but we agree completely on seven things.  That war and racism and religious intolerance are the scourge of the planet.  That Brigette Bardo was completely right when she said it is not GOOD to grow old, but it IS nice to ripen.   That as of next fall, Florida is going to be hottest political place in the nation. And that we’re also pretty ticked-off that our voices have been robbed in the primary.             We’re wondering if we can ever live it down.  I mean, becoming a celebrity by gumming up the works in 2000 and now throwing a monkey wrench in the primary battle. Yet, we, the average Floridian did nothing to bring this on ourselves. We trusted the leaders of our parties.  We trusted those with the power to do things right, to simply run an election where every vote is counted.  But now, we’ve become the nation’s whipping boy and fodder for late-night jokes. Well, if you don’t like the way we vote, wait till you see us drive. I’m betting that our sweet revenge will be in the fall when once again we become a make-or-break player in choosing the nation’s president.             No doubt, the media will move in here thicker than love-bugs. My neighbor is thinking about renting out RV space in his pasture. Our phones will ring almost non-stop with pre-recorded messages from the candidates’ mother and children, maybe even their dog walkers. They’ll call it “getting out the base,” but my neighbor and I are going to call it “getting our due.”  Frankly, I’m looking forward to all this attention. It’s not everyday I can feel like I do when the electricity comes back on after a hurricane!             Thu May 01 00:00:00 EDT 2008http://shelleymickle.com/Blog.html?NID=26 HELLO, READERS! WELCOME TO APRIL. Recently I got one of those reading gizmos. You know, the new thingamabob that lets you read off a screen no bigger than a paperback book. And it will hold newspapers, magazines, and up to 200 books in its little electronic brain. As an author myself I thought I ought to weigh in on this. For, I’m wondering: will it put me out of business? Or, will it juice up the opportunity for my written words to pay off? The first day I got it, I plugged it in to charge it up. And I was thinking, I’m really going to hate this—I’m not going to have the feel of a solid book in my hands. I’m going to be robbed of the whispery crackle and pop of a new book opening. I’m not going to get that spicy marigold smell of book-binding glue, nor the finger-tickling thrill of thumbing pages. But as I turned on the gizmo and its Home Page lit up, I was as delighted as a kid at my own birthday party. Yep, this reading gizmo is likely to recharge reading. It could become to books what the I-pod is to music. And no doubt for kids born these days practically texting in the womb, it’s going to be as much a part of their lives as cell phones and cheeseburgers. Of course I had to call the 1-800 number to really get the gizmo working. For, even after reading the instruction booklet, I couldn’t get the darn thing to turn pages. When I admitted my stupidity to the tech specialist, she decided to use me as a test case for rewriting the instruction manual. And I sure made it clear that no real writer had written their how-to-book. They hadn’t used any of the laws Hemingway taught us. Yeah, sure, the sentences were short; but the words were fuzzy. I suggested a little Faulkner should be written into the manual. At least then if you couldn’t understand the words, you could at least “feel” the meaning of the sentences. And you’d come away with a sense that you’d done just what Faulkner said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech when he reminded writers they should always write about the heart being in conflict with itself. Now, what about these awful statistics coming out-- that about 1 in 4 Americans read a book a year? I’m betting this new gizmo might make a difference. There’s just something magical in ordering a book and seeing it appear on your screen in about the same time it takes to sing “Yankee Doodle.” Well, it’s been a few weeks now. I’ve read my first whole book on my new gizmo. Frankly, there’s no substitute for the intimacy of having a real book in your hands. But I HAVE had fun clicking and clacking through the pages. So here’s the low down and my final my opinion—This electronic reading will relate to books as the coming of the camera once related to painting. Yes, we will choose lots of books to read on a screen; but the ones in our homes will be the ones we buy as art. Sat Apr 05 00:00:00 EDT 2008