Moving to Substack

It's obvious that I don't post here anymore. The last post was two years ago. With all the different social media platforms and outlets, it can just get overwhelming. I've had to chop a lot of stuff out of my life and concentrate on the most important things. So... I still like to post more long-form ramblings on occasion. Stuff that's too much for Twitter or too controversial for Faceboop. I only have Insta' because a few friends and family post almost exclusively there, but I rarely do. Snapchat and TikTok: nope. 

I've entered a new phase of life where I'm getting serious about my writing, and working toward actually publishing. Almost every author I know stays in touch with readers and peers via Substack, so I'm trying it out. So far it's kind of confusing. Is it a blog or a newsletter or some kind of weird hybrid? O well, I'm there now. So far I've made one post...entry? Hope to see you there!

https://nancyfrye.substack.com/

Celluloid Days #9 - Thomas Edison: The Variety Stage & Oriental Dance

For several years I enjoyed, and sometimes contributed to, a fun podcast called Coffee With Jeff. Jeff has a new podcast where he focuses on movies and film history. It's called Celluloid Days, and I just had to stick my finger in that pie, too, and have become a regular contributor with my "natterings".

Since podcasts are audio only, and sometimes the things we talk about really call for imagery, I’ve decided to put my segments on my blog, with appropriate pictures. Here we go! This entry covers my segment for Episode 9: Thomas Edison, released on March 6, 2022.

You’ve probably deduced by this point that I like movies, or as we used to say back in the day, the “moving pictures”. One of my favorite genres is historicals or “costume dramas”. I’m also a sci-fi buff, and when you combine sci-fi with history you get another one of my very favorite genres: time travel stories. 

Not content to merely read or watch time travel stories, I wanted to experience it, so by the time I was into my teens I was into historical clothes and material culture. There was no internet back then, so I got my information from reading historical novels, straight history books, and historical film and television. I wanted to live in the past!

Later it would dawn on me that living in the past meant no antiseptics, anesthetics, or hot and cold running water, so I decided just visiting was the better option. In my college years I discovered the wacky world of historical reenacting. These are the people who study history by DOING it. Medievalists, neo-Victorians, and Civil War reenactors all fall into this category, and I’ve participated in just about all of it except Roman Legions. 

At one point in my life I ended up living in the Bay Area of California. I was heavily into American Civil War reenactment at the time, where I started out as a Confederate cavalry trooper, then a sailor, then switched sides to drive wagons and an ambulance for a Union Artillery unit (See photo, right, of me as a Union Hospital steward. Ferrotype by Wm. Dunniway). I met some amazing people, including my second husband, through this hobby. One of the people I met was my friend Elizabeth. She’s an architect who also loves historical clothing and cooking and everything else. She was also a big fan of traditional oriental dance. 

You might know “oriental dance” by its modern, westernized term: “belly dance”.

I can't remember the inciting incident, whether it was around the campfire one night after a day of robbing trains in the Santa Cruz Mountains, around the punch bowl at a Victorian ball, or at a potluck at somebody's house, but somehow we came up with the idea of doing old world, old style belly dance. We had no interest in modern belly dance, with its full orchestras, skimpy costumes, and sequins. We wanted to emulate the professional folk dancers of Egypt and North Africa. Characters like the infamous “Little Egypt”, who was in reality a number of different dancers using that name throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

There’s plenty of documentation for folk costumes of the world, but reading about dance isn’t a great way to reinvent it. Several books on the origins of belly dance reference footage shot by Edison, or more likely his associates, including one by Donna Carlton literally named “Looking for Little Egypt”…which is literally what we were doing. 

If you go to the Library of Congress web site and search the “Variety Stage” film collection, you’ll find a window into the history of ethnic dance in America. Unlike the Black Maria footage, Edison’s Variety Stage films were shot at places like the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, and the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY in 1901. 

Some of these very short documentary films, or “actualities” as they were called, are clearly of the dancers imported from Algeria and elsewhere, while other clips are most likely priceless documentation of burlesque performers who blended a few ethnic moves into their existing “hoochie koochie” style and called it “oriental”.

It all helped us add some authenticity to our existing folk dance vocabulary, and for several years we had fun performing as 19th century “oriental dancers” at reenactments, parties, and sometimes our local Moroccan restaurant. (See image, left, of my friend and me, Nabila, as "Little Upper and Lower Egypt". Ferrotype by Wm. Dunniway)

Edison may have been a cad, but time travelers like me are grateful his films have been preserved for the ages.

 

Covid recovery update #2

 As of today, my taste and smell are up to about 90% or more, depending upon the thing I'm trying to taste or smell, so that's pretty nice. I'm also about 90% back to full muscle strength and general stability. My weight is hovering around 170, down ten pounds from my pre-covid weight, so that's good, too. I have some more weight to lose, but let's not to it via a pneumonia this time, 'kay? 

On the minus side, I've lost about 40% of my hair volume. This is not breakage, this is hair falling out by the root. Really disheartening, but according to a slew of other long-haul koofers this shall most likely stabilize and re-grow. Yay! In the meanwhile I'm taking collagen and silica and washing my hair with stuff that's supposed to stimulate growth. Baking soda "no poo" with vinegar rinse, some fancy hair growth shampoo and conditioner, etc. Once a week is plenty. My hair doesn't get greasy, especially at this time of year (cold), and I'm not swimming and getting all salty (because it's cold).

New symptom as of a week or so ago, gradually worsening: lymph node pain, left armpit, radiating out to lower rib cage and around to my back, all left side. Gets worse as the day goes on. At night I'm doing contrast hydrotherapy to flush out the nodes, which alleviates a LOT of the pain and helps me get to sleep. By morning it creeps back up to "annoying" levels, and I'm avoiding waistbands because after awhile they just hurt. I'm a sensitive flower now, for awhile. Whee. The plus side is that every day seems like a net positive gain, so there's that.

Covid Recovery update

For those who don't know me personally, my spouse and I had Covid in the first part of September. He lost three weeks of work. I ended up in the hospital with pneumonia and ventricular tachycardia. We're "recovered", but full recovery is taking a lot longer than any virus should. We've had some devastating flus before, this is different. This is dystopian sci-fi territory. This should make you think. Anyway...

This week's symptoms: 

Dull pain, bottom rib left side...which is kind of weird, since I had a dull pain bottom rib right side the month before I got the coof. Precursor? Coincidence? I was checked out and was not gallbladder issues, etc.

Hair is still coming out at approximately 60% more than usual. I've lost about 40% of my total hair volume at this point. Taking collagen, biotin, etc. should help, according to other long-haulers. We'll see. Not ready to chop off what I have left just yet.

Still having GI issues, as in everything just shoots through me. Actual diarrhea about half the time. I wouldn't mind so much if were actually losing me some weight, but, no. I'm hovering around 170. Could be worse, since I was around 180 BC (before coof).

Can't get blood O2 above 93. Gordon has been at 100% for weeks, the stinker. And that's another thing I'm noticing between our personal experience and the accounts I'm reading in the Covid Long Hauler support group on Facebook: this virus is NOT normal and natural. Read into that what you will.

Everybody has a different experience and different symptoms long-term. There are some commonalities, like diminished taste and smell, fatigue, hair loss, etc., but then it just feels like everybody else is experiencing a super specialized reality after that. Rashes, cardiac issues (mine was only at onset), swollen digits, recurring pneumonia, continuing weight loss, lack of appetite, numbness and/or tingling in extremities or an entire side of the body. The list is long. I really wish people in that support group would list their BC medical conditions and what prescriptions they're currently taking, because I think that is a huge factor in all of this. I think Gordon and I are amongst the very few of the cases who aren't obese and/or on one or more drugs.

Still happy to be in the "vaccine" control group, though. Wait this out, people. The next five years is going to be interesting, but probably not in a 100% happy way. Tell your friends and family you love them, whatever their medical choices.

Book review: The Madness of Crowds, by Louise Penny

The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

*****Spoilers*****


I love Penny's fictional village of Three Pines, tucked in a valley in the woods somewhere between Montreal, Quebec and the US border. I love her characters, from Chief Inspector Gamache to Ruth the irascible poet laureate to all the other denizens of Three Pines and Gamache's fellow LEOs. What I don't love is how socio-political topics are becoming more and more prominent in her stories. Although not unexpetcted, it's getting to be a bit much.

It's not like she hasn't telegraphed this tendency. Since the first novels in this series, I've been a bit dubious about her giving Gamache an aversion to firearms: a veteran LEO, who's very capable of using a weapon...but won't carry one unless he has to (how does one determine that unless you're pre-cognizant). In this installment even Jean Guy decides not to pull the trigger in the story's climax, because, per the author, of "love". He feels he'd be a terrible father if he were capable of taking a shot at a person threatening another person with a shotgun. I think a man incabable of lethally defending an innocent person is not a "good man". What if it were his child being threatened? If he can't step up, he's useless.

The most onerous facet of this novel is the fantasy "post Covid" world she has constructed. Obviously this novel was written during the worst of the "pandemic", and Penny has drunk all of the government and media Kool-Aid regarding this crime against humanity. This novel takes place a few months "after the pandemic". The vaccines have solved the crisis, there is no more Covid, and everything is back to normal. Yay! Needless to say, this story will not age well in coming months and years. Firstly, things are NOT back to "normal" anywhere. Depending on your location in the world, you may have a free and open society again, or you may be facing restricted travel and economic ruin if you don't have a "vax passport". There are people, as I write this, who are so traumatized by all the fear porn from the government and their media lackeys, that the mere sight of an unmasked person makes them flinch. Secondly, as we deal with increasing cases of vaccine injury and death, coupled with the monumental ineffectiveness of the experimental mRNA drugs (they are not vaccines), this novel, unlike her others in the series, won't be "evergreen". 

Also "post covid" in this novel is a crackpot academic (reduntant?) who has posited that, post covid, the world's resources are limited and that forced euthanasia is the answer. What the actual heck? I have no problem with writing a character like that, but having half of Canada think she's right?! Sorry, not plausible. There is never a reasonable presentation of this character's arguments in the novel, such that a moral, reasonable human being would go along with her proposal. It's literally absurd.

Here's hoping the next novel sticks to a solid murder mystery and leaves the wacky sociopolitical fantasy out.

View all my reviews

Counting blessings or else go mad

Today was one of those days that started out relatively smoothly but rapidly degraded. Since I haven’t posted anything here on the blog for awhile, the backstory is that Gordon and I are recovering from Covid, which we contracted back in September. It’s a long, sordid tale, but suffice it to say that this was not the “I was sick for a few days, it was basically a bad cold” kind that folks we knew got in late 2019 or early 2020. Gordon was flattened for a couple of weeks and I ended up in the hospital for a week. Now, a month later, neither one of us is 100%. Gordon’s energy is about 95%, and he’s back to work full time. My energy can get to around 90%, but any kind of activity knocks me back down pretty quick. I’m lucky if my blood oxygen reaches 93%, I’m fumble fingered, and, thanks to the hospital giving me Remdesivir (without consent) instead of monoclonal antibodies, I’m losing my hair. People like me, with major lingering symptoms, are being labeled Covid Long Haulers, which sounds like the drudgery it is.

By early afternoon today I was reaching for the niacin because I was losing patience with myself and everything around me and working myself up to start throwing things. It didn’t help that my 84 year old father, who we’ve been trying to get to come live with us, decided today that he’s staying where he is for another year. He’s only eight miles away, but he lives alone, doesn’t like to cook, usually doesn’t answer his phone, and has increasing health issues. Add to that he fact that we’re on day six or so of nonstop dumping rain, my general lethargy and brain fog, and the current state of the economy and cultural hysteria over Covid mandates and other political nonsense, and today just kind of went downhill. 

At some point I had to get a grip and remind myself that I had a roof over my head, food and clean clothes, and nobody was shooting at me. Yeah, it was the “count your blessings” response. I’m still tired, and at the moment up way too late, but I’m dry, did some free weights his morning, have a purring cat next to me, and the coffee maker is set for the spouse in the AM. Here’s to attacking another day tomorrow.

Yearly Check-In: relocation blues

This is not going to be another "2020 was a train wreck" essay. I'm sure many other bloggers have covered that. Suffice it to say that I've had no film work in over a year, other than virtual pats on the back and editorial contributions to artwork for the last two films I worked on before everything went haywire. See sidebar (R) for Burn it All and The Stairs (currently doing well on the festival circuit).

I'm actually ok with not working right now, because until the mask mandates are lifted I just can't do it. I'm not going to breathe my own exhaust for 14 hours a day because people are afraid of a virus with a 99% survival rate. Everybody I know who's had it was sick as a dog for a few days then got on with their life. The only people I know personally who've been hospitalized have been damaged by the vaccine, not the virus itself. Take your vitamins. Get fresh air and exercise. Turn off the "news". Live your life. End of speech.

In other news, the spouse and I are finally, really really, getting in gear to sell our current domicile and re-locate farther west to the Olympic Peninsula. The market is nuts right now. We'll never get a better price for our place. The downside is that because it's such a ridiculously disproportionate seller's market, it's a TERRIBLE buyer's market. Everything is overpriced and the pickin's are super slim. The other issue is that anything that goes up for sale is gone NOW, so you have to have cash in hand if you're serious. This means pre-qualifying for the loan to bridge the gap between buying and selling. Luckily, that gap won't be long, since we have a very desirable horse property to sell.

The most daunting part of it all, besides all the grown-up paperwork and bank stuff, is just thinning out our junk and packing it all up. Luckily, my health is better than it has been in years, so I think I'm up to the task. Up until about two years ago I was lucky to have enough energy to accomplish one or two things in a day, and then took a 1-4 hour nap in the afternoon to recover. Breaking my arm last October galvanized me into getting healthy and fit, because I was barely able to take care of myself for the first few weeks. Thank goodness I had some good friends who would show up once a week and re-braid my hair (or even wash it!) and help with stuff around the house. Everything is harder with one arm. I can't imagine how awful it would have been had I been super overweight or unfit to boot. I immediately got on boron, extra C, calcium, and a bunch of other supplements I had been slacking on. 

My ortho surgeon recommended a bone scan, and I came out of it with an osteopaenia diagnosis. Whoops. I immediately started walking and doing weights. I don't drink sodas, smoke, drink, or do other things that contribute to bone loss, so I'm hoping for good results by my next scan. I still have 30 lbs I'd like to lose, but I'm building muscle in the meanwhile. 

Anyway... the hunt is on for "that perfect place" over on the peninsula. Private, not right on a busy road, a few acres to mess around on. Scarcer than hen's teeth at the moment, but the Lord works in mysterious ways. I'm actually kind of glad there's nothing at the moment so we can get our ducks in a row and not be in a panic about it.

Stay tuned!

I Heart Jane (Austen)

On a bit of a Jane Austen kick, reading/listening to the novels then watching various filmed versions. I still think the '95 Pride and Prejudice mini-series with Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle is the #1 version of P&P, and I don't think I'm alone. For Mansfield Park, the Francis O'Connor/Jonny Lee Miller ('99) version is my favorite, even if some of the women's costuming is a bit weird. For Emma...so much to choose from. I like Jeremy Northam's Mr. Knightley in the '96 (Gwyneth Paltrow) version, but I like Kate Beckinsale's Emma in the other '96 version (BBC TV) better than Paltrow's. Both fine actresses, just different interpretations, plus, again, some odd costuming, and hair, in the Paltrow film. I watched the newest Emma ('20) a few days ago, and while Bill Nighy is his usual delightful self as Emma's father, the whole production, despite some lovely costuming, just felt like it was trying too hard to be quirky and spunky and clever. Overall it feels like a bunch of scenes jammed together with a big budget: glorious visuals but not so much heart.

Today I finished a mini-series version of Emma that I'd missed somehow. The 2006 version with Jonny Lee Miller is a gem. Normally a parade of janky costuming is a big turnoff for me, but everything else about this version is so good that some strange gowns with 20th century detailing and sloppy sashes, and unfortunate female hair (side parts? On women in the early 1800s?! Ugh.) are forgivable. Being a long-form version, the writers have time to cherry pick more of Austen's dialog and craft it into some skillful character development and backstory that is usually missing in film versions of this novel. The women's makeup, unlike the hair, is perfect and natural looking. The women look real, not like painted dolls. It also helps that they tried to light every scene with at least the appearance of natural or period lighting sources. This means that night scenes seem even more atmospheric and intimate, unlike previous versions which are usually over-lit. I know that shooting digital makes this easier, which makes me wonder that costume dramas don't try to do more of this. If you want to see a classic film that excels at this, on actual film, check out Barry Lyndon some time. Gorgeous.

4th Turning or Just the Rise of the Angry Toddler?

Rant time!

I recently finished a book called "Outlaw Ocean", which dealt with the crazy crap that goes on at sea outside of the 200 mile limit of any sovereign nation. It's not pretty. In one chapter, the government of a SE Asian country finally cracks down on a business that supplies what amounts to slaves to a fishing fleet, while styling itself a "staffing agency". The secretary, who works the front desk of the office in the city where the work force is press-ganged, is arrested and goes to jail, while the actual owners and operators of the company sit comfy in Hong Kong or elsewhere. It solves nothing and puts that woman in a prison camp indefinitely.

The point of the above illustration is that I think it applies to the riots, raids, and vandalism going on in the western world right now. The people on the front lines of this fomentation, the ones currently in the news and on a variety of "wanted" posters, are being used by agitators who are happy to stand back and let the unwashed suffer the consequences of their long-form divisive agendas. We have whole segments of society ripe to be manipulated like this. People with dubious education, stunted maturity, and demostrable lack of impulse control. These are not the kinds of people who should be driving cultural change like angry toddlers who throw all their toys out the window because mummy and daddy expected them to eat their dinner before having dessert.

Complacency of the voting population, plus Marxist dogma fed to functionally illiterate students at all levels of education, has contributed to this mess, I believe. If you don’t believe the current output of any college-level humanities department are rife with ignorant drones, just look at the idiocy aimed by them at, say, rural (agricultural) communities and non-city dwelling people in general. “People in rural areas are evil and make bad life choices!” they scream. Everybody’s entitled to their opinion, but where do you think your food comes from, hot shot? Where is your electricity coming from? Your water? Is there a magical, high-volume spring at the center of every urban area? Does the city have a giant rain catchment system that feeds your millions of little apartments? How will Los Angeles, say, fare if those “stupid rural areas” decide they’re tired of sending most of their water to the filthy city instead watering their crops?

I’m rambling. Done for now.

Weed Whackin'

As my health has gradually improved through better diet (basically eliminating things that don't like me), better sleep, and better pain management (avoid NSAIDs, switch to CBD products and mineral supplementation), I've found I actually have the energy to, you know, get things done. "Things" includes massive amounts of catch-up yard work. The biggest project is attacking the blackberries that have rolled over us like a kudzu-esque tsunami.

Halfway there...for this chunk, anyway.

One of the few bonuses to this whole "stop the world" response to the COVID-19 outbreak is that my spouse is working only a few days a week outside the home. This means he's here to help with the jungle reclamation project: yay! One day we excavated the deck house, covered in roses and clematis which were getting right through the shingles. Ugh. Then it was time to go after ye blackberries. It's been a few weeks, but we're making headway. Soon a big chunk of the pasture will be reclaimed and the raspberries freed from persecution. Onward!

It's going to be a bumpy ride...

Just like the sourdough starter in my fridge, it's time to revive this blog. A lot has happened in my life in the past year, reflecting the "lot of things" going on in the world right now. Just as in the greater world, my life consists of overt activity with deep, crazy stuff going on above our view and below the surface.

Buckle in.*

* Yes, I know she said "night", not "ride". I reserve the right to mangle quotes as fits the situation.

My First Production Trailer, Ep. 3: Cut to Montage

This old truck used to haul draft horses,
a toy hauler will be a piece of cake.

 Another week-and-a-half gap, and it's time for a progress report. It's a week until load-in/wheels-up on the next feature film project. Let's just say I'm taking a lot of niacin to keep from panicking. So much left to do, including getting the truck, a '98 Ford F350 diesel dually crew-cab, back up and running. Due to a snafu with the insurance company, precipitated by my forgetting that I needed to add the truck back to the insurance until day before yesterday, arranging to have it towed to the shop turned out to be a giant cluster beyond SNAFU and heading for TARFU. I get that the dispatchers for the big insurance companies are all in outer Mongolia or Florida or wherever, but would it kill them to look at a map (they have them online!) before they set up a tow job? Lynwood isn't far from me as the crow flies, but there's a wee bit of water between me, in Kitsap County, and the west side of Puget Sound (Seattle side). When I hear "Your tow will cost $250+", I know they've looked at mileage and not geography. I wonder if people in upper Michigan have the same problem with remote call centers? Anyway, yesterday's tale of woe is ultimately boring, suffice it to say that after starting the process around 0903, I finally got the truck on the way to the shop at 1730. Whee.

Thanks, again, to friend Rick, the skin and trim is back on the front of the trailer. Today I'll get it all caulked up and the lights back on. Oh, and replace the missing tank vent cap up there, too. I wish I could just cut to an "A-Team"-style montage at this point, but at least I have recorded books to listen to while I slam my way through the remaining to-do list. Still need to install new toilet, fix the fueling station, clean and paint the rusty areas on the front of the frame and propane tank pans, find the new plates (Oh, wait, they're in the file box in a folder marked "toy hauler", duh.) and put them on, and coerce somebody into cutting off one side of the mounting bracket for the new stairs and welding it back on because the stairs I bought are 2" wider than the old ones. Oops.

De-gunking front trim before re-attaching.

Then there's all the nickel and dime stuff I need to do inside: hanging peg boards, installing tie-downs for gorilla shelves...easy stuff I can do in my sleep. I've already picked away at some of it, including removing the sofa and settee(s) and finding them new homes, storing one of the drop-down queen beds in the garage (more head room in the "workshop"!), and painting the bed deck, which was raw particle board, in the forward berth.

Forward berth with new, sweep-able finish

I'm constantly amazed at how cheap a lot of the construction is on this rig. I knew travel trailers were ticky-tacky, unless you're springing for one of those NASA-grade Airstreams, but I had hoped that toy haulers would be more robust. They certainly have better frames, as in the actual bed of the trailer, since they're designed to receive a variety of sport vehicles, but the superstructure appears just as cheesy as most other trailers. Not only was the forward berth deck just raw OSB, but the little ports into the cubby hole storage "bins" was just rough-sawn edges with a coat of flat paint on them. A quick sanding, some primer, another sanding, and some satin paint I found in the garage in a matching color, and the forward berth is pretty much good to go.

Yesterday was Friday, and I decided it was time to take a break from movie prep and, um, watch a movie. I hung a white sheet off the trailer and treated the neighbor kids to their first viewing of My Neighbor Totoro, which they'd never heard of let alone seen. I sense a Miyazaki series in their future. It went over really well. The kids, from about 7 years to early teens, were mesmerized. Level unlocked. As an atmosphere booster, a giant, almost full moon crept up over the treeline at the back of the pasture during the last act. I've wanted to show movies outdoors since I was a kid, so even though it may seem banal to some folks, it was kind of a lifetime achievement for me and a great bridge into working on the biggest feature I've crewed on in years. Onward!

My First Production Trailer, Ep. 2: Pandora's Box

And lo, many ills were released, but also hope,
in the form of shiny new frames from cool neighbor.

It's been a week and a half since I took the leap and sprang for a "pre-owned" (2005) toy hauler. Might be a 2006. There's some disagreement in the paperwork. In the last chapter I outlined the rigamarole I went through negotiating the sale after discovering more damage than initially discovered. This chapter could be titled "Why people buy from a dealership, new or used".

It towed great with my friend Sarah's pickup. Definitely needs a solid rig to pull it. We have a Ford F350 dually that's going to fill the bill nicely after a few repairs, but that's another story. When we got it home and parked it in the back yard, the real inspection began. The first thing we found was that there was more than one leak in the front end. Not only was there damage down the front right corner, but the front left, where the ladder

Damage under ladder

attached to the roof, was even worse. Instead of lifting the skin and doing some minor repairs, we ended up removing the ladder and stripping the entire skin off the front end. Pretty much about 75% of the frames and a good portion of the inner skin were mush. That alone means I still paid more than I should have, but I doubt the guys in Tacoma would have gone lower. We ripped out the insulation batting over the sad areas, and friend Rick, who had some time, went to work ripping out the spongy frames.

Neighbor Marcel, who basically has an entire woodworking facility and machine shop in his garage, ripped me some nice cedar frames and cut a piece of steel to patch the bad corner of the roof where the ladder will be reattached. The weather has been cooperating, and the whole area is dry now, especially since we parked the trailer with the nose facing south. It's rained a bit on a couple of nights, but I just threw a tarp over the front end and that worked fine. Today I'll be pulling staples so Rick can finish the framing on Monday and stick in new insulation. Marcel suggested the pink rigid foam stuff, so I picked up a couple of sheets. The water damage seems to have only affected the nose of the rig, so that's a blessing.

Crumbling water heater is crumbly.

The second area of woe was the water heater. I don't think any of the previous owners had ever done a lick of maintenance on it. The zinc was down to a skewer, and the faceplate was rusted away at the bottom. I found one on Craigslist for $175 (they retail for over $300) from a guy parting out a trailer down in Belfair, and with a modicum of struggle we switched it out. A new anode/zinc was $18 from the RV parts place in Silverdale.

Third surprise was in the head. When we turned on the water pump the back of the toilet started spraying water. Looked like a bad gasket at the intake, which is fixable, but...I found almost the exact same model on Craigslist (again), new in box, from a guy right here in Kingston for $100 (they retail for around $135). I figured by the time I bought parts to fix the old one I'd be halfway to a bill, anyway, and the crusty unit in the head looks like it hasn't been cleaned in years so...bye.

Fuleing station box: wee bit precarious.

Fourth item on this list, and not a surprise since it was so obvious when we looked at the rig in Tacoma, is the fueling station. This is a nice feature on toy haulers: a gas tank with a hose and spigot for fueling your ATVs or whatever. The box that houses the hose and spigot is falling away from the frame, and the spigot is missing parts. Again: previous owners just didn't care, apparently. It's a project I can do easily, just not a #1 priority.

Shiny new frames almost done.

The rest is nickel and dime stuff: replace wobbly pedestal legs on the table with folding ones, remove dinette chairs, replace burnt-out light bulbs, fix the one broken window blind, clean and line drawers and shelves, and just a general overall cleaning. Found a couple of office chairs at Goodwill for two bucks a pop, and I've been collecting other little things to furnish the place over the past few months. Now I just have to make space in the garage to store the folding sofa, chairs, and extra queen bed. Or maybe I'll sell them...I don't know. Am I going to sell this trailer someday? Probably. If I sell it to another film industry worker they probably won't want that other stuff, either. I'll think about it.

The good news is the AC seems to work, the sound system functions, the generator fires right up, and there are no soft floor spots. I think we're on the way to a functional Props/Armorer/Scripty trailer.

My First Production Trailer, Ep. 1: Biting the Bullet

Last year (2018) I worked on a couple of film projects for my brother. One was a guerilla-style, run-n-gun deal where I wore a stack of hats (Script Super, wardrobe, utility PA, etc.). The other one was an indie feature where I...ended up wearing another stack of hats (Script Super, wardrobe, crafty, etc.) Lessons were learned. #1 lesson: Script Supervisor is a full-time job. It is not humanly possible, in this current linear space-time dimension in which we dwell, to do anything but Scripty and do it right. And not lose your mind. #2 lesson: trying to do a feature film by working out of the back of an SUV or the trunk of a car is for the young and fit, and possibly insane.

When approached to work on another feature this year, one thing that the Producer and I agreed on was that we were never going to work out of our car, or as she put it "From under a tree somewhere", again.

 "I'll be in my trailer!" 

The great trailer hunt began last November, not long after we wrapped principal photography on Burn it All, the aforementioned indie. It's in post now, by the way, and looks like it's going to be pretty amazing, if I do say so myself. Hats off to my brother Brady, also of many hats, who has spent his adult life as a kind of one-man-band of film making and is actually quite good at it. Anyway, after much consideration I decided a toy hauler type trailer was what I would ultimately want to plunk down several grand on. Sturdy, roomy, and fairly modular, plus a nice big gate in the back to lower into another deck cum work space. Having spent time on some big sets back in the 90s, I know how handy the right kind of trailer can be. It's also very Hoplite-esque to have trailers on location that all open the same way (from the back) for ease of base camp organization.

I went to the usual places: Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, Offer Up, etc. Big ticket stuff like trailers is a first for me, and I discovered some new scams, including the too-good-to-be-true price with a "Send me a deposit through this escrow service, usually eBay, and then pay me the rest when you come get the trailer in Idaho/Montana/Arizona" pitch. Um, no, I want to look at it first. "It's in storage." Can I see it? "I'm out of state right now." Uh huh. K thnx bye. The most popular scam seems to be the fairly typical, sadly, method of putting up an ad without full disclosure of issues. "Usual wear and tear" can be anything from UV hazing on the vent covers, faded decals, and stained carpeting, to full-on major damage that wasn't repaired until after rot set in, missing or non-functional generator, smoke and or pet smells, and Frankenstein-grade "improvements" too numerous to list. 

Not my exact model, but close enough to get the picture.

The long and the short of it is that, with the help of financing from Bank of Dad, I now have a 24' 2005 Tahoe Transport parked next to my garage. It fell in to the "too good to be true" category of non-disclosure of problems, but not to a degree that it triggered my Spidey Senses. I was willing to deal with some problems because 5k was a reasonable amount for a decent condition hauler of this type and size. It turned out, of course, to have more than just "the skin peeling up a bit in the front right corner". And the "that just happened while we towed it back from California" was a wee falsehood unless these guys are really unobservant. Yeah, there's some water damage (soft wall) in the lower front right corner, but no perceptible mold, and it's dry now. I left a $500 deposit, on advice from Dad, and told them I'd be back to pick it up the next day.

Spouse Gordon and Biker Dude friend Rick
survey new toy. Duct tape was to keep
things from flapping in the breeze on
the tow home.

Luckily, my friend Rick, an experienced toy hauler-er went with me to finish sealing the deal, because he discovered more issues that totally missed. It helps when you know what to look for. He's the one who discovered the soft wall..and also the external fueling station with the dysfunctional spigot, the missing propane tanks replaced with a little after-market/non-RV tank, the broken door lock, the excessive rust on the leveling jacks, etc. It's all stuff that can be fixed, but...yeah.

I'd already gotten the sellers down to $4,700 from $5,000, but the issues were starting to pile up, including the fact that they'd made no attempt to tidy up after living in it for a couple of months on a job in Bodega Bay (excessive rust explained: salt air). Moldy food in cupboard, dirty carpet. They'd told me they had ONLY slept in it but not used any of the appliances or the bathroom, but Rick did a quick control panel check and found the sewage tank 3/4 full.

Looking forward.

I had offered $4,500 the previous day but they said they'd already had several offers for that much, and we settled on $4,700. Now I went back to $4,500, and got "We already have an offer for that." First though: Now it's just "an" offer, singular? Second thought: Why didn't you take one of those offers, then?

Dave Ramsey says "Pay cash, and be prepared to walk away." I was prepared. I also had Rick's superpower of Biker Dude Hard Stare negotiating skills in my corner. They backed down to $4,200. I called for a conference with Rick. Conclusion: List of problems was getting too long. 4k or we walk. Production start date had been bumped out a couple of weeks, which gave me time to keep hunting even though we were getting down to the wire. Middle man sadly said no, and went to get my $500 deposit back. Then he came back with the paperwork and, "OK, 4k is fine."

Looking aft: ramp down.

I hate haggling, but dang if it didn't save me a chunk of change.

Now I need to find a hitch that will take sway bars, and install a brake-assist thingy in the Suburban, but...no more working under a tree! Now comes the fun part: turning it into my starter production trailer.

Book Review: "Dancing on the Wind" by M.C. Beaton

Dancing on the Wind by Sarah Chester
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Moll Flanders, only not depressing. Would make an awesome Masterpiece Theater series. Whomever designed the cover for this (audio) edition should be fired, since this is a late 18th century setting and the cover illustration is over a hundred years off, fashion wise. Sympathetic but quirky protagonist, detailed look at several levels of 18th century English society, and believable characters all around. There are several points in this meaty story that a lesser novel would have saved for the action-packed climax at the end, but this one just keeps the drama coming. A few bewildering moments where the author seems confused about what various items of clothing are called, the worst of which are references to petticoats. A petticoat is tied at the waist and supports one's skirt(s). It does not have sleeves(?!). The framework cage that supports late 18th century skirts is a farthingale or panniers, not a "hoop", and it most certainly is not sewn into a petticoat...that I know of. Minor quibbles, but the first time I've run into these particular errors. At any rate, I love M.C. Beaton's writing and was pleasantly surprised to run across in the "available now" section on my library's website. Not sure why this is included in a "Regency" series, since the setting pre-dates that period by at least a decade and should probably be called "Georgian".

View all my reviews

Star Wars Memories

A long time ago, science-fiction was kid stuff, and cinema and television were a vast wasteland relieved only by the occasional Twilight Zone or Lost in Space. For the most part, if we wanted sci-fi or fantasy we had to turn to novels by Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, Tolkien, Burroughs, and many others. For TV viewing, our choices were, for the most part, cheap, campy, and short-lived. Then came Star Trek. Airing in prime time, it told stories about people and ideas and possibilities. There had been nothing like it before, and it would be years before there was anything like it again.

The 1968 poster for 2001

In the early 70s I was a pre-teen looking for adventure and escape. I was an avid reader, but movie watching was something we did for the most part on our little black and white television. It seemed we never lived anywhere where a kid could walk or take a bus to a movie theater, and my parents were not avid film-goers. We hit all the major Disney releases and re-issues, and the occasional other odd film. Back in those days a mom could drop off her kids at a matinee double-feature without a qualm and grab a few hours of kid-free shopping or whatever mom did when we weren’t underfoot. Mom wasn’t always on the ball when it came to reading the movie listings in the paper. This could result in some surreal outings, like the day my little sister and I, aged around seven and nine, ended up at an inexplicable double feature of Disney’s The Song of the South preceded by Blue Water White Death, the classic documentary about great white shark hunters. I loved the shark documentary, but poor Cheryl was a bit restless until the Disney flick rolled.

Trippy, man...

Even if we had lived near a theater or been old enough to drive and spend our allowances on movie tickets, there just wasn’t a lot for a sci-fi fan out there. I was only five when 2001: a Space Odyssey had hit the theaters in 1968. One of the first blockbuster serious sci-fi films, it blossomed in that genre wasteland like a glorious oasis. Maybe it was just too far ahead of its time. It was re-released to theaters in 1974, and this time at eleven years of age I was old enough to notice. Unfortunately, perhaps in an attempt to appeal to more than sci-fi fans, the studio gave it the groovy tagline “The Ultimate Trip”. My mother, most definitely not an Arthur Clarke reader, took one look at that poster art in the paper and told me it sounded suspicious. I went back to my nightly Star Trek viewing. Thanks for nothing, studio suits.

I clung tightly to whatever genre viewing I could get. I subscribed to Starlog Magazine for all my sci-fi and fantasy news. When Space: 1999 was announced I was thrilled. It aired on Sunday afternoons, and I almost never missed an episode. When our parents made noise about us maybe moving to Lake Chelan in Eastern Washington, I went into a panic. The local TV station there, in the middle of nowhere, didn’t have Trek or Space: 1999! I saved up my allowance and bought an LP with a sort of radio theater version of the first two episodes of the latter on each side, but it wouldn’t be the same.

Luckily that move fell through. Instead, in early 1976 we packed up and moved from Vancouver, WA back up to the Puget Sound area from whence we had come. I was leaving my dear friend and fellow sci-fi nerd Renee behind, but we promised to write. We sent each other drawings and terrible short stories that would probably fall into the “fan fiction” genre today. Sometime late in that year we started to hear rumblings via Starlog and the occasional entertainment segment on the news about a new sci-fi film in the works: Star Wars. There was something about the breathless reports that caught my attention. This was going to be big. My response was my usual one for back in the day. I went to the book store and picked up the novelization. Nobody talked about “spoilers” back then. We were made of sterner stuff.

The story had it all: action, adventure, a relatable hero or two, a scary bad guy, big politics that were way over my head which made everything seem even more real and serious and important. I couldn’t wait for the movie to get to our little corner of Kitsap County.

On our family vacation late in the summer of 1977 we tripped around California, including a visit to San Francisco. I had no idea that Star Wars had already been released, albeit to limited cities, in May. Out in our benighted corner of Washington State it hadn’t really made the news, and definitely not the theaters. By August of ’77 the studios finally realized what a goldmine they had and re-released Star Wars with actual hoopla, premiers, and other fanfare. When we stepped off the cable car near a huge department store, I was astounded to see that the window display was entirely Star Wars themed, including a glamorous mannequin version of Princess Leia complete with impossibly long tresses being done up by another mannequin dressed as a hair stylist. Star Wars had gone big.

Back home in Kitsap County, I re-read the novel and scanned the newspapers for any tidbit about the film. When the Seattle Times ran a special photo spread covering the entire plot of the film, I cut it out and made it into a booklet. It’s in one of my old albums somewhere. Special Star Wars themed glossy magazines showed up at the checkout rack at the grocery store. I bought them. One morning I was almost late for school because I’d heard on the news the night before that Good Morning America was going to do a Star Wars spot the next day. I was mesmerized.

From the Kitsap Sun archives

Finally, the big day came. Star Wars had come to the Roxy Theater in Bremerton, and mom was going to take us right after dinner one evening. I was so pumped I could barely eat. I was worried we’d be late, but poor mom was trying to finish dinner then wrangle me and my two younger siblings into the car for the forty minute drive to the theater.

When we arrived, a bit late, the opening crawl had gone by and we walked into the darkened theater just in time for the blockade runner to roar over our heads…followed by the impossibly huge star destroyer. By the time our butts were in seats I was fully entranced. When the first quiet moment in the story rolled around, probably with R2 and C3P0 landing on Tatooine, I noticed I still had my paper dinner napkin clenched in my hands. It was shredded.

Up until Star Wars, I hadn’t really had a favorite movie except maybe Gunga Din (1939). Not only did Star Wars supplant it, but it took over my imagination and fueled years of short story writing, early costuming efforts, and dreams of escape from the mundane. My mother had always kept our hair short for expediency. In 1977 I rebelled and began to grow it out, determined to have long hair like Princess Leia. Except for a brief period in 1988 when I chopped it all off in a fit of depression, my hair has been long ever since. I built blasters out of bits of wood and metal. I decorated my room with posters of X-Wings and Y-Wings, and papered the ceiling with star charts. I built a little “control panel” box with switches and lights and levers and put it in my bedroom window to make my room into a spaceship. For Christmas that year my thoughtful Uncle Dennis bought me the double LP of the score by John Williams. I pretty much wore that out after a few years of constant use, then switched to cassettes, then eventually to a boxed set of special edition CDs in the 90s.

I read the subsequent novels, including two or three Han Solo adventures. Eventually I fell off the wagon of reading the related novels, but when The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi premiered, I was there, this time with friends in downtown Seattle waiting in long lines. When the prequels were released after many years of no Star Wars, having avoided the spinoff stuff, I was super jazzed then kind of bewildered by the results. So much to love, so much to groan about. My love affair with George Lucas was pretty much over. I will forever be grateful that he gave the world Star Wars, but I’ve learned over the years just how many people made that first project what it was despite Lucas’ best efforts, and much of my gratitude has transferred to them.

I never dressed up as characters from the films. These days it’s called “cosplay” and I’ve never been into that. I have, and still do on occasion, dressed as myself if I were in some fictional world or other. I don’t want to pretend to be somebody else. I want to go have adventures myself.

I was fourteen when I saw the first Star Wars film. Back in ’77 I had to make cut-and-paste books of pictures and buy magazines to relive the movie. I would play the tie fighter sequence music, sit in a rattan swinging chair with my feet propped in the windowsill, and pretend I was operating one of the Millenium Falcon’s quad laser guns. A few years later, a post college, older me, driving through the Cascade Mountains at night to a remote Medieval reenactment, put on a motorcycle helmet and cranked the asteroid belt track from The Empire Strikes Back, swooping around mountain curves in the darkness with a sky full of stars overhead.

It’s late at night as I write this, on December 13, 2017. Tomorrow I’m going to Seattle once again for the opening night of a Star Wars movie, this time a fabulous double feature of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi at the Cinerama. Now I’m fifty-four, and this will be episode eight. Eight! These days we have it easy. I can just pop in a disc or stream one of the films any time I want on a huge, flat-panel TV with amazing sound. Fourteen-year-old me, sitting in a theater with a shredded paper napkin in her fist, would have been beside herself with impatience had she foreseen the ready availability of media in 2017.

What a great way to put a cap on the past few months. Earlier this year I found my birth father and a couple of siblings I never knew I had. A few months after that, my father suddenly passed away. I was only able to meet with him twice, but even that was amazing. My mother passed away far too young in 1984, so I never met her. The silver lining is my two brothers, both great guys who have welcomed me into their circle.

They’re both sci-fi geeks, too.

We’re all going to see Star Wars together tomorrow.

I’ll try to leave my napkin at home this time.