My motto as an editor: Authors are the authority on their work. I'm a full-service editor. For a reasonable fee, I'm your writing coach from the first suggested revision to the correction of the final typo.
Helene made herself quite the unwelcome guest last night, but we made it through the storm more easily than a lot of people.
I had the Little Pump That Could ready for floodwaters in the backyard, but it didn't rain much. The problem was the wind. Tree limbs crashed down all night.
Here's Penelope checking out the yard this morning.
More than 100,000 people in Jacksonville are without power. We are not among them. I'm not sure what time it was that the power flipped off and on multiple times, but eventually, it stayed on.
At one point, a Roomba and a mopping robot decided to leave their charging stations to clean the house. Maybe they thought all the noise had dirtied the floors.
I'll have a lot of cleaning up to do in the front of the house, too, but the yard refuse truck came around first thing and picked up a big pile of debris I already had at the curb.
Helene blew in and broke the gate to the backyard. Rebekah and her husband, Franklin's beloved Uncle Eddie, effected a repair so the dogs can still go out.
If you were in the path of the storm, I hope you came out as well as we did. We didn't have any serious damage and no one was injured. We didn't get a lot of sleep, but we're fine.
Here's the calm after the storm:
If Helene came your way, please let me know how you are.
One of my favorite writers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, was born on this day in 1896.
I think he looks very sensitive and handsome in the above photo, although he does not seem to have been a very sensitive person in practice. He didn't have a lot of compassion for the people who loved him. If I recall correctly, his daughter, Frances Scott Fitzgerald [Scottie], didn't talk about him much but once told a friend that her father was a son-of-a bitch.
Would he have been as famous if it hadn't been for his personal life? I've enjoyed reading some biographies and a book with letters Scott and wife Zelda wrote to each other. He and Zelda were the embodiment of the Jazz Age––riding on the roof of a taxi, jumping in the fountain at The Plaza, getting kicked out of a hotel because of their wild behavior. Scott performed gymnastics in the lobby and Zelda slid down the bannister. The other guests tired of them and complained.
Lovely young Zelda
Scott mined Zelda's life, her words, and her writing for his own work. When Daisy recalls the birth of her daughter in The Great Gatsby, her words are almost an exact copy of what Scott quoted Zelda as saying after Scottie was born Oct. 26, 1921. Zelda resented the way Scott used her and wanted her own success.
The alcoholic son of an alcoholic, Fitzgerald struggled to find success after the 1920s. During the Great Depression, readers began to lose interest in his work, which so often incorporated wealthy characters. Flappers were no longer in fashion. He failed in an attempted career as a Hollywood screenwriter.
Zelda was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1930. She spent years in and out of mental hospitals. When she was out, she usually lived with her mother and only saw Scott occasionally. Scott wrote short stories and desperately tried to sell them to pay for Zelda and Scottie's care; he seldom had time to work on novels. His drinking ruined his health. A number of people recalled his cruelty when he was drunk. By 1936, the royalties from his books amounted to $80. Scott sent Scottie to a fashionable boarding school. During her breaks, she lived with Scott's literary agent, Harold Ober, and his wife, Anne.
On December 21, 1940, Scott died from a heart attack at age 44. He believed he was a failure. His books were no longer carried in bookstores. On March 10, 1948, Zelda died in a fire at a mental hospital. She and some other women were in a locked ward and couldn't get out. Scottie became a journalist, a writer, a prominent Democrat, and married twice. Her first marriage produced four children. The children played with remnants of their grandparents' lives, dressing up in their old clothes kept in a trunk. Cancer killed her June 18, 1986, when she was 64.
My all-time favorite novel is The Great Gatsby, which is very highly regarded now but was not a success when it was published in 1925. It's beautifully written––lyrical and doesn't have a wasted word with a perfectly planned plot.
Scott Fitzgerald didn't like his own short stories for the most part and thought they were a necessary waste of his time. Many of them are classic stories that are much appreciated now. My favorite is considered "minor Fitzgerald," The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I love it for its whimsy. (I didn't like the movie of the same title that is only loosely based on Fitzgerald's story. The movie doesn't capture the nature of his writing.)
When we moved to Maryland, on our first full day there, I insisted on a trip to Saint Mary's Cemetery in Rockville. In that beautiful churchyard, I visited Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's graves. They are side-by-side. Scottie is buried close to them.
Scott's gravestone bears the last sentence of The Great Gatsby, and oh, what a sentence it is.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Infinities of love,
Janie Junebug
Sources:
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Matthew J. Bruccoli
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald -- edited by Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks
Thank you to my lovely friend Joanne at Cup On The Bus for posting the link to this excellent Robert Reich video that provides a cogent list of the worst things about trump's presidency––just in case someone is thinking about voting for him and can't remember how awful it was the first time around.
Reich actually gives us more than the 10 worst things during the former guy's term in office, but the list goes by quickly. If you think Reich missed anything, then please share it in your comment.
When Auntie Rebekah arrived in our home, coffee drinking commenced. Auntie Rebekah stumbles from her bed each morning, bleary and bluggy, croaking out her need for coffee. And she is not fit to live with until she drinks that stuff.
I do not understand this need for coffee. Mom Mom drinks water, milk that has achieved a score of 2 percentage points, and Diet Pepsi. Mom Mom does not drink coffee, although she assures me it is ordinary for most adults in our country to want coffee in the morning. Still, I do not approve because another problem with the coffee has come up.
When Auntie Rebekah drinks coffee and eats her breakfast, we have to stay very close to her in case she chokes on something and needs me to perform the Hymen maneuver. Princess and Fritz must join me to clean up her spills. In the photo above, she has a covered cup, but she usually has an open cup of coffee and my little sister, Princess, might have accidentally stuck her tongue in the cup and now she has developed a taste for coffee.
Every time Auntie Rebekah walks away from her coffee, Princess takes a drink of it. I told her she must not do that! She is drinking the germs and bacteria Auntie Rebekah spits into the cup. Coffee will also stunt her growth, and caffeine will keep her awake at night. I do not think I can deal with a sister who has chronic insomnia.
Thus far, Princess has not listened to me. She hasn't my years of experience that have led to my great wisdom and made me the paragon of virtue that I am.
Please help me explain to Princess that she must not drink coffee.
And please tell me this is not true:
I know it is not true that people who come to live in the U.S. eat pets. I am too smart to believe in such stupidity. I join Mom Mom in reminding you to vote for Kamala Harris.
I knew she was smart. I knew she was well educated. I knew she had been a prosecutor. I knew she would do her best to be prepared for the debate.
BUT I HAD NO IDEA SHE WOULD DO SUCH A THOROUGH JOB OF KICKING DONALD TRUMP'S ASS!
The sore loser had no idea what hit him, but of course, it's everyone else's fault––never his own.
The Mantel Gang is so happy.
They've been enjoying some post-debate memes they'd like to share with you, after they finish their meal of someone's pets.
And their favorite and mine:
We can't assume anything. The election hasn't been won. Don't think a good debate means she'll win. Trump will continue to lie incessantly and plenty of people will believe him no matter how crazy he is. Kamala does not have a lead. We have to give it to her.
Although it's not easy to watch, I recommend The Commandant's Shadow (2024, PG-13, produced and directed by Daniela Völker, streaming on HBO Max).
Last year's Academy Award winning The Zone of Interest introduced viewers to Auschwitz concentration camp commander Rudolf Hössand his family, who lived quite the pleasant life right next door to Höss's workplace, where he planned and carried out the "extermination" of at least a million Jews and other human beings judged to be less than by the Third Reich.
In this documentary, Höss's son, 87 year old Hans Jürgen Höss, recalls their life at Auschwitz as an idyll with their beloved father, whom he believed to have no real responsibility for the suffering and deaths at the camp, which he and his siblings believed at the time to be a prison that their father ran. He recalls that once a prisoner was shot along the wall of their home for trying to escape––nothing more happened to the people in the camp.
However, Höss undertakes a journey toward knowledge and responsibility with the filmmakers and his son, a pastor. The film also features Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who survived Auschwitz because the camp orchestra needed a cellist. At age 99,Lasker-Wallfisch'smemories of the suffering remain vivid, yet she pushed them aside for the practicalities of life and testified at the trials of some of her Nazi oppressors. She is accompanied by her daughter, a psychoanalyst.
In other news, The Little Pump That Could almost had the remnants of Tropical Storm Debby out of our back yard when we had torrential downpours the last couple of days. Princess loves flying through the even deeper than usual waters of Lake Junebug, and the pump is hard at work.
Tonight is the debate. I'll be watching and rooting for Vice President Kamala Harris, who will have to bear up under the insults and idiocy of her opponent. I will
💙💙💙💙💙VOTE BLUE 💙💙💙💙💙
and encourage you to cast your vote in favor of democracy, the Constitution, and living in a decent world without a dictator on day one or any other day.
