With the November and December holidays approaching, I’ve been thinking back to how we celebrated in the past. As I was growing up, every holiday get together took place at Grandma’s house. From New Year’s Day through New Year’s Eve (including all the birthdays), everyone gathered at Grandma’s for too much food and drink, and sometimes way too many presents. After dinner, we’d often crowd around the dining room table for a poker game.
How I learned the crucial life skill of playing poker
By the time I had my first son, my mom and stepdad had bought a restaurant overlooking Mono Lake, and Grandma moved up there with them. After that, we celebrated at least Thanksgiving and Christmas in the dining room of the Mono Inn. It was a long drive (7 hours) with a toddler and a baby, but so beautiful once we were there.
Left, the family restaurant, middle, the restaurant dining room with all of us crowded around the table, right, Mono Lake CA
All those years that Grandma hosted the holidays, she did all the cooking. When I was old enough, she’d let me do the relish tray, but other than that, it was all on her: the turkey (for Thanksgiving and Christmas) or ham (for New Years and Easter), the mashed potatoes or potato salad, the yams or her incredible baked beans. She did it all. Amazing.
The dessert table, as if we had room after a huge Easter dinner. It’s possible I made the bunny cake.
How do you do your holidays? Always in the same place, or do members of the family trade off? Let me know in the comments. It would be great to share stories.
I loved Halloween as a kid. Spooky decorations. Carving jack-o-lanterns. Dressing up in a costume and going out door to door in the neighborhood.
And candy, candy, candy! After I got home from trick-or-treating, I immediately dumped out my candy on the living room floor and took stock of what I got.
My mom could be pretty creative with the costumes. One year she made my two older sisters matching pumpkin costumes. I don’t know why, but Mom tied them together by the wrist. Maybe she didn’t want them to get lost? One of my sisters told me she was in tears the whole night.
The next Halloween it was my turn to wear the pumpkin costume. Mom stuffed a bunch of newspaper into the big orange bag to make it round like a pumpkin. I remember how scratchy it was to wear. To give you an idea of what it looked like, here’s Gnorm the garden gnome wearing a pumpkin costume.
Pinocchio was one of my favorite books, so another year, Mom made me a Pinocchio costume. It had shorts with suspenders and a white shirt. To make me look like a wooden marionette, Mom wrapped brown Kraft paper around and around my arms and legs. I couldn’t bend my elbows or knees. Not sure how I made it around the neighborhood to trick-or-treat.
As a grownup, I’ve dressed up for the occasional Halloween party. A couple years ago, I attended a horsey Halloween. Those horses were saints considering what they put up with. Hershey, a quarter horse mare, was especially sweet to the kids despite being decorated with fake spider webs.
What are your memories of Halloween? What candy did you always want to see in your trick-or-treat bag? What was the coolest pumpkin you ever carved? I’d love to hear from you how you celebrated (or didn’t celebrate) the holiday. Let me know in the comments.
Is it just me, or did someone mess with August and make it last twice as long? Between triple digit heat here in Northern California, wildfires, and the ever present pandemic threat, I thought August would never end.
There are two other things I thought might never happen. One, I thought the fruit on my Flavor King pluot tree would never ripen. Two, once it did ripen, I thought I’d never get all the fruit off the tree.
In my last blog post, I talked about a Very Naughty Squirrel that stole all the fruit from my pluot tree. That tree was my Flavor Supreme, which only produced about a dozen pluots (it rarely produces much). The other pluot tree, the Flavor King, ripens much later in the summer. And this year the Flavor King exploded with fruit.
With all that bounty, you would have thought that Very Naughty Squirrel would have had a field day. But there has been no sign of any pilferage. For some reason, Mr. VNS doesn’t like Flavor King pluots Considering how much fruit there was, I might have welcomed a little thievery.
Whenever I’ve gone out to harvest, I’ve brought in the same enormous amount. And I swear to you that when I’ve gone out the next day, it looked like the tree had replaced the fruit I’d picked with a fresh batch. I brought in the last of it over the weekend, and I’m a little afraid to go out there again. There might be more.
I shouldn’t complain because these pluots are the most delicious fruit I’ve ever tasted. And the jam I make from them is like nectar of the gods. I just never thought I’d have such a large harvest that I’m sneaking bags of pluots into other people’s houses. 😉
I did can some (which was a disaster—can you say “exploding fruit?”). I plan to make more jam. And of course we’ll be eating fresh pluots like there’s no tomorrow. As good as they are, I don’t think we’ll get tired of eating them. I’m just worried they’ll overripen and go to waste. So, does anyone out there have some great recipes using stone fruit? I’m sure anything that calls for plums or apricots would also be good with pluots. If you have any suggestions, leave a comment.
I grew up in Los Angeles, and in all my time there I didn’t see much wildlife. Up here in Northern California, critters are everywhere—turkeys, ducks, and geese waddling down the road, the occasional deer in the front yard, skunks and raccoons causing a ruckus.
Then there are the squirrels.
Squirrels that climb my oak tree. Squirrels that use my back fence as a superhighway. Squirrels who bury acorns that sprout a million little oak trees in the spring.
And squirrels that strip my pluot tree of every last fruit. Grrr!
Full disclosure, they only stole the fruit from one pluot tree. What broke my heart was that it was the FIRST TIME that tree produced more than one or two fruits. I had lovingly wrapped each of those pluots in tiny stockings (like the ones you use to try on shoes) to protect them from the birds.
That didn’t slow down the squirrel at all. The furry invader ripped the pluots off the tree and left me tiny stockings and pluot pits all over the yard. It only spared one lonely pluot. Apparently the branch was too skinny to support even a squirrel.
I ate the pluot. It was delicious. Which only made me sadder for the others.
And that squirrel wasn’t finished. It discovered my tomato plants on the other side of the yard. And it stole not one, not two, but three of the four tomatoes on my Early Girl bush. They weren’t even ripe! Who eats an unripe tomato? At least before dipping it in breadcrumbs and frying it?
An uncouth squirrel, I guess. I even caught him in the act, up in my oak tree, chowing down on the tomato.
It’s too late for this year, but what do you do to keep squirrels from making a buffet of your garden? I’d love to hear from you, even if it’s just to share your favorite recipe for fried green tomatoes. Drop me a line with your ideas. Next year, we’ll show those squirrels who’s boss.
DGA director Regina Ainsworth on the set of Recombined.
As I described in my post Movie to Books to Movie to TV, I’ve been working with director Regina Ainsworth with an eye toward pitching my young adult sci-fi novels, the Tankborn trilogy, as a television series. Regina suggested we needed a visual expression of Tankborn‘s world as part of our pitch. To that end, I wrote the short script, Recombined, while Regina built relationships, raised funds, and gathered cast and crew who were as passionate about the project as we were. We shot the film December 1st, 2018 on one long (and very cold) day in Burbank.
I’ve written a number short scripts and have seen three of them made into films, but other than one SAG actor in one of those films, cast and crew were amateurs. The cast of Recombined were all SAG-AFTRA, and we had a professional union crew.
The Warner Bros. signature logo
The shoot took place at Warner Bros. Ranch, just down the road from Warner Bros. main studio. It’s where the iconic Friends was shot, and it’s currently the home of Veronica Mars.
It was an unusual arrangement allowing us to shoot a short film on the Warner Bros. Ranch lot (one of the security guards said “That never happens”), and we were all so grateful for the opportunity. The cast and crew blew me away with their performances and dedication to the film.
As screenwriter, my main role was to consult on the script as needed. I also volunteered to be amateur stills photographer (we also had a pro, Molly White, taking stills). I entertained myself by getting pictures of the action between shots.
Most gratifying for me as the author of the Tankborn novels was seeing my characters come alive. The lead actor, Naïma Hebrail Kidjo, did an amazing job breathing life into my main character, the GEN (Genetically Engineered Non-Human), Kayla. I loved how the makeup/hair artist, Alexandra Bayless, created the GEN tattoo on the GENs’ cheeks and how she did Naïma’s hair for her role as Kayla.
Naïma Hebrail Kidjo (Kayla) in the makeup chair getting her hair braided and standing for a shot in front of the blue screen.
The script is loosely based on a “wedding” scene that I’d originally written for Tankborn which never made it into the final published book. With several modifications, the scene became the script for Recombined. Since I started from my own source material, I had the freedom to add any necessary characters, including the GENs Gaddiel and the Intercessor who officiates the wedding (joining).
Left photo, Glenn Stanton (Gaddiel), right photo, from left to right, Dane William, Jessie Hendricks (Alia), and Leilani Smith (Intercessor)
Recombined is now in post-production, Regina working hard on putting together in a cohesive way the jigsaw puzzle of the shots we got that day. I can’t wait to see the final product.
A picture, or it never happened. Here’s me hanging out with actors Shay Ali (Ved) and Patrick McCarthy (Captain Ansgar) before the first shot of the day. Photo credit: Molly White
