Bertram's Blog

Quarantine Chronicles

May 7, 2020 — Pat Bertram

The restrictions under which we are living, at least for those of us old enough to still be kept at home most of the time, are hard enough without adding dietary restrictions to the equation.

I’ve been doing well eating what I have on hand, using up all the things that have been in the refrigerator or freezer for a while, and buying mostly fruits and vegetables to round out the meals, but today I decided enough was enough. Although I usually don’t take my car out to do my few errands until Friday, today I grabbed my mask, fired up my bug and went to the grocery store. Except for employees, there were only a couple of other people in the store, so I was able to roam the aisles at my leisure looking for enticements.

I threw a small package of flour in the cart — well, I laid it softly in the cart so as not to break the package, but that doesn’t have the drama of throwing. The small package cost the same as the five-pounder, but I figure there was no sense in tormenting myself. I’ll make the biscuits and pierogi, as I planned, and then maybe I can go back to a more wholesome diet, though to be honest, the flour was the least of my splurges. I haven’t had ice cream in ages, but when I saw that a premium ice cream was on sale for less than half price, I figured that was a sign, so that, too ended up in my cart.

On the healthy side, I treated myself to a package of blueberries. I was thinking berries would be a sop to my healthy inclinations, but a small voice in the back of my head is chanting, “blueberry pancakes!”

Of course, considering how lazy I’m getting and how much work it takes to prepare anything, I might not get around to making any of those things. Maybe it will be enough to know that I could.

One thing I bought that I’m not sure I will use right away is yeast. It wasn’t on my list, but there has been a shortage of yeast on the grocery story shelves for so long that it seemed almost a sacrilege not to get it when it was offered. Depending on how disciplined I am and in which direction (ie: disciplined enough to stick to healthy foods or disciplined enough to cook what I bought) I might get ground beef and cabbage next week to make hamburger rolls (aka bierocks, runzas, or berokes).

Meantime, I still have leftovers to use up.

And thus ends this particular episode of my quarantine chronicles.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in culture, life. Tags: Bierocks, bying ice cream, dietary restrictions, pierogi, quarantine, wearing a mask, weekly errands, yeast. 4 Comments »

Missing Jeff

May 6, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been missing Jeff — my deceased life mate/soul mate — not in a grief-stricken, yearning, lonely sort of way, more like a missing puzzle piece sort of way.

Health, geography and various other circumstances isolated us. During the last decade or so of his life, we seldom saw other people. We only did our errands once a week and if we forgot something, we didn’t run out and get it, but did without until errand day came around again. We didn’t eat out — there were no nearby restaurants, and besides, we tried to stick to a healthy diet with lots of salads and stir fries and home-cooked meals of our own devising. Even the occasional baked goods or desserts we ate were our own creations. We tried to be as self-sufficient at possible, doing many things ourselves that people have others do for them, even to the point of my cutting our hair. We didn’t do car repairs or major things like that, but for the most part, we were on our own.

Sound familiar? Like sheltering at home? Like quarantine?

It’s as if he and I spent our lives together preparing for a crisis.

The crisis is now here.

But he is not.

During the first nine years after his death, although I was on my own and felt alone, I didn’t actually live alone. The first years lived with my nonagenarian father so I could take care of him. After he was gone and the house sold, I visited friends, traveled, house sat, and rented rooms.

When I moved here, I was out and about a lot — getting to know the town, meeting people, joining groups, volunteering, going to the library, walking to do errands. Now all that is temporarily suspended, and I am back to living the way Jeff and I had always lived. It feels wrong. As if he should be here with me. After all, he is part of the puzzle of my life, and we did prepare for these times together.

At the beginning of the stay-at-home order, I tweaked my knee to such a degree that I couldn’t walk. I spent the night on the daybed in my office/media room because the metal framework gave me something to grip to turn over or to sit up. I don’t need the bars so much now, but I’m still there. I don’t really know why I am hesitant to go back to sleeping in the bedroom, but perhaps with his photo there, I’d feel his absence more than I do where I am. Or maybe it’s that subconsciously I now think of it as his room and don’t want to have to confront that ever-present reality of his being gone.

It doesn’t really matter though. No matter where I spend nights — and days — I am aware he is gone. And I am missing him.

***

Posted in grief, life. Tags: deceased soul mate, Grief for a deceased soul mate, isolation, loss of a life partner, loss of a lifemate, missing the dead, preparing for a crisis, preparing for isolation. 10 Comments »

Online Housecleaning

May 5, 2020 — Pat Bertram

When Facebook blocked my blog URL from their site, it made me rethink a lot of what I’ve been doing online. Not writing this blog, of course — that is a given. But other things, such as keeping friends on Facebook that I don’t know simply because we are authors or because it wouldn’t be politic to remove them. I figure my current boycott of the site — if FB doesn’t want my blog, they don’t get any part of me — would be a good time to quietly unfriend those folks I don’t know or don’t want to know.

When I first came online, all the marketing hints for authors mentioned how important FB was, so I did my best to work the site. At one time, I had the maximum number of friends allowable, but as the years passed, and I realized none of these people had any interest in me, I started removing those who annoyed me. From 5,000 to 200. That’s a lot of annoyance! A few of those 200 I keep only because . . . well, I don’t really know why except that I know them. When . . . if . . . I ever return, I might remove some of them too.

After cleaning up FB, I turned my attention to Twitter. Twitter has never been a favorite of mine, so mostly all I do there is have my blog URL posted automatically to the site. Although a writer friend once walked me through all the ways Twitter can help an author, none of those ideas ever worked for me. Twitter seems to work only if you have more that 10,000 followers, and I fall vastly short of that number. I did go through and do some housekeeping, though, such as unfollowing people that I follow but who no longer follow me.

Finally, I did something I never thought I would do, I removed some problematic blog posts. As I explained in my post Repercussions, shortly after my first two novels were published, I had a text conversation with my sister, who had just finished reading the books. I asked her if it was strange reading a $&X scene written by her sister. (Just so you know, I am not averse to using the word, I’m just trying to hide it from google.) I posted the conversation on my blog because I was so tickled with her observations.

A couple of months later, on the list of search engine terms people use to find my blog, I noticed a lot of incestual queries. There was no mistaking the meaning of the terms. They were explicit.

Not one to sneer at a gift from the writing gods, even such a sleezy gift as this, I wrote a blog: “$&X With $ister Tips — Writing Tips, That Is.” (The more views a site gets, the higher it’s ranked by search engines, and so the more views it gets.) It was actually a good post, talking about how to make the scenes motivated and a part of the story rather than simply adding prurient interest.

As uncomfortable as the whole incest thing made me, it never occurred to me to remove the posts. Ever since the quarantine, though, the number of views on those posts have skyrocketed, and the comments increasingly frightening.

Since this is a time of reworking my online presence — what is left of it — I finally trashed those particular blogs.

It feels good, all this online housecleaning. Refreshing.

***

Posted in blogging, internet. Tags: authors on facebook, authors on twitter, blocked from Facebook, facebook friends, quarantine, removing blog posts, unfollowing on twitter, unfriending. 6 Comments »

The Wheel of Time

May 4, 2020 — Pat Bertram

Since I finished reading all my emergency books, I’m reduced to reading the books in my Nook, books I’ve already read. Although I don’t generally like rereading books, Robert Jordan’s massive Wheel of Time series seems to be the perfect place to go to hide from The Bob.

The books in the series are not stand alone books — you cannot understand one book without the previous books — which means that in effect the WOT series is single novel of over four million words broken up into fifteen parts. In fact, the series itself is not stand alone — there are all sorts of books, blogs, discussion forums comprising billions of words where readers try to figure out the truth of the story.

Not only is the scope of WOT almost impossible to fathom, but Jordan had a bad habit of putting in bits of deus ex machina that he refused to elucidate in the work itself, companion books, or even interviews. Perhaps he himself did not know what those bits meant or maybe he simply wanted to be mysterious for mysterious’s sake, to create a legacy of people debating worthless points. Which they do. Ad infinitum. Jordan also refused to explain what to him were obvious story points, such as who killed a certain bad-guy-turned-maybe-good-guy, but again, dozens of forums present various theories because that obvious point was obvious only to he who created it. At least in this particular case, the murderer was revealed in an appendix several books after the fact. Jordan also spent thousands upon thousands of words on red herrings and subplots that go nowhere, but sometimes used a single sentence buried in huge blocks of description to bring out a major point. Yikes.

And wow, is there description. Tons of description. Whenever food is mentioned, I find myself skipping a paragraph or two. When clothes are mentioned, I skip a couple of pages. And sometimes, when there is zero action or character development, such as in a few very clean bathing scenes, I skip the whole dang chapter.

I also tend to skip over some of the women’s parts. Although Jordan mostly develops his three main male characters into individual heroes, each with his own mythic journey, he turns his three main women characters into insufferable caricatures, indistinguishable from one another except for a few annoying character tics. At first I thought he had a problem with women, but his secondary and tertiary female characters are often well-defined or at least not brats and prigs who believe, without giving a single shred of thought to the forces the other characters face, that they know the best for everyone.

Even after investing so much time in reading and rereading the books, I’m still not sure I like the series — although the theme seems to be about the importance of having choices, most of the characters, both good and evil, go out of their way to force others to their will. Too much torture and punishment for my taste. It seems to me that in a world where everyone is free to choose (or at least what the pattern created by the wheel of time allows them to choose), it’s just as easy to find someone to willingly do your bidding as to waste the effort forcing someone to do it. (Oddly, the three main males do turn others to their will, but without wanting to or without even trying.)

But despite my ambivalence, I keep rereading. The scope of the story is utterly astounding. In the story, during the so-called age of legends, people wielding the power that turns the wheel of time, broke the world. Mountains grew where no mountains had been, waters flooded lands, green spaces became deserts. And humans started over. Again.

Interestingly, breaking the world is exactly what Robert Jordon did when he wrote his series — he smashed our world into bits, mixed it all up — legends and traditions; countries and races, clothes and customs; myths and mysteries, religions and philosophies — and put it all back together into his own creation.

I wonder what it would be like to create such a massive fiction world, a world that reflects our world but not. A world that reflects our values but not. A world that exists only in our minds but not. Or, rather, maybe not. If it exists in our minds, it’s possible Jordan’s world exists for real, sort of dream world we all created together, just as philosophers and physicists say we do with the real world.

Assuming there is a real world.

Maybe we’re all writing the story of our world as we live it, creating with our hive mind the very fact of our existence. If we all stopped believing in it, would it disappear as if we were closing the cover of a novel? Would we disappear if we stopped believing all the things we see and hear except with our own eyes or ears? Would we be different if we simply refused to accept the role that has been forced on us?

Maybe, as I study Jordan’s world, I’ll learn how to help build a better version of our own — how to write it or right it, either one.

Meanwhile, the wheels of time keeps turning . . .

***

Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: age of legends, breaking the world, fantasy fiction fan, Robert Jordan, the wheel of time, world building, writing the world. 6 Comments »

My Epic Adventure

May 3, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I’ve often been seduced by the hero’s journey, an archetypal storyline where a reluctant hero is called to an epic adventure. This quest is at heart a transcendental and transformative journey, where an ordinary person from the ordinary world goes through a series of test, ordeals, encounters, and finally returns to the ordinary world, no longer an ordinary person but extraordinary — a hero — who has the ability to transform the world into something extraordinary, too. You know this story — you’ve heard it, seen it, read it hundreds of times in the guise of tales such as The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings.

I used this same story for my novel Daughter Am I, my contemporary novel of a young woman — Mary Stuart — who goes on a dangerous journey to learn about her recently murdered grandparents. Her mentors and allies on her quest are six old rogues — gangsters and con men in their eighties — and one used-to-be nightclub dancer. By journey’s end, all their lives have been transformed.

I always wanted a taste of an epic adventure of my own, something that would change me — and perhaps my world — into something extraordinary. In a way, grief was such a journey. Grief is not so much a series of stages, at least not the ones we are familiar with. Instead, there are The Mythic Stages of Grief, a process of transformation, taking us from our ordinary shared life into a new life, one we couldn’t even imagine before that tragic “call.”

I thought my cross-country trip would be such a transformative adventure, and as wonderful as it was, I returned after five months and 12,500 miles, essentially the same as when I left.

For many years, I dreamed of an epic hike along the Pacific Crest Trail, thinking that such a journey — a real journey, not just a journey of the spirit — would be the quest I craved. It didn’t work out, and the death of that dream still haunts me.

Well, now here I am involved in a real-life epic adventure — a world-wide ordeal that is calling all of us to be heroic — and what is my duty? What is my quest? To stay home. That’s it. Stay home. Isolate myself. Where are the mentors and allies to help me along the way? Where are the great tests of courage? Without these essential elements of the story, it seems such a tepid — and sad — adventure, though there are enemies galore, whether it is The Bob itself, the conflicting tales we are being told, the fears that are beckoning us.

In the end, though, facing these enemies is no extraordinary challenge. Just ordinary life — or as ordinary as we can make it in our extraordinary isolation.

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Posted in culture, life. Tags: archetypal storyline, call to adventure, Daughter Am I, mythic journey, reluctant hero, searching for transcendence, the hero's journey, transcendental journey. 3 Comments »

No News Is Good News

May 2, 2020 — Pat Bertram

Where do you get your news? Television? Newspapers? Magazines? Online sources? It struck me the other day that since I don’t have television and don’t subscribe to newspapers, Facebook is the main source of news for me. I know that sounds horrible and frightening, but it isn’t, at least not in my case.

Facebook is one of those sites that everyone experiences differently. For some people, it’s a place to keep up with family and friends, to play games, to see cat or dog photos, to be inspired or amused by the ubiquitous memes, to promote.

When I first joined Facebook, the groups had discussion boards that were separate from links and photos and promos, and those discussion boards were my joy. Back then, authors were joining in huge numbers to make names for themselves but they didn’t know what to do once they got there. So every week, I’d sponsor a discussion, asking one or another author to post a brief article about a particular aspect of writing, and then lead a discussion. It worked. It was fun. Authors had a place to go where they could feel at home as they tried to figure out how they fit into the larger FB scheme.

Then FB, in its infinite wisdom, did away with the discussion boards, and the promos that were once set off in a special area now flooded the group, and discussions became impossible. I finally reclaimed the discussion aspect by setting up a special event every Saturday for promos and sending a group message giving people the link. That, too was fun, with everyone getting together to promote each other’s work. Then FB banned me from ever sending another group message. So I set up a separate group for those once-a-week promos. I kept that going for a long time until I realized that everyone was promoting one another but ignoring my posts. In a snit, I disbanded the group, which was not at all fun — to delete a group, you have to first remove each member, which takes awhile if you have more than 1000 members. When that’s done, you remove yourself. And that’s the end.

I still have the discussion groups, though they mostly sit there with no activity. And I still have a lot of literary friends, most of whom are very smart and very well read. These people span the whole political and idealistic and artistic spectrums, and each person posts links to articles that interest them. Hence, my feed is like a news magazine, though like no magazine you’ve ever read since for every point of view espoused there is an equal and opposing view presented.

This really has nothing to do with FB except that it’s the platform this private news magazine is fed into. People complain about not being able to see everyone’s posts, but that is a simple fix for me — if I notice that I’m not seeing someone, I go to their profile. But mostly, the FB algorithms work in my favor in that the more you view and interact with someone, the more of their posts you will see.

During the past twelve years, I’ve found a way to work around every single one of FB’s ridiculous changes, but there is no way to work around a ban. They do not hear, do not respond, do not care. There’s also no way of knowing if the ban on my posting links is permanent, or if after three months in “Facebook jail,” my ability to post will reappear as silently and as inexplicably as it disappeared.

So far, they have not completely banned me — just my blog — so I can still check in occasionally, but without a need to see who, if anyone, commented and to respond if necessary, there’s really no compelling reason to spend much time looking through my feed.

It might be good for me, not knowing what is going on. I was always much happier living in my own little world and eschewing a broader outlook. Except for books, of course — during all the years of my boycotting the news, I read history. That’s all news is, anyway — history in the making, and for now, I’ve had enough of the making.

Makes me wonder (jokingly) — if I get no news from any source, will that mean all is well? Because as we know: no news is good news.

Speaking of good news: my lilacs are in bloom!

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Posted in blogging, internet, life. Tags: Facebook groups, getting news from Facebook, lilacs, news magazines, news sources, promoting on facebook, where to get news. 6 Comments »

And So Ends April

May 1, 2020 — Pat Bertram

And so ends April. May should be even more interesting for me (a hint of irony there) since I have read all my emergency books, have watched all the DVDs I once borrowed from a friend, and now I am more or less banned from Facebook. (Any links to my blog are blocked, and all previous posts have disappeared.) I can check in and make a few comments, but that’s about it. Oh, wait — I can also post links to my books on Amazon. So, I can’t post links to my blog, which is not spam, but I can post links to my books, which can be considered spam. What a bizarre situation!

For the past twelve years, Facebook was a safe place for me to hang out with people, to chat a bit, and make new friends, but now, not only am I isolated in real time, I am isolated in e-time too. I considered fighting the ban, but I think I’ll wait. It would probably do me more good to stay away from the inane and sometimes downright nasty remarks people make about those who don’t agree with them, and I have had my fill. I’ve also had my fill of following the progression of The Bob, and especially I have had my fill of trying to make sense of all the stories that don’t add up. But still, not checking in with Facebook and the friends I’ve made all over the world will be make a huge hole in my life.

Adding to the complication, my knee is acting up again. It had been mostly healed, but clambering up and down the very steep threshold to my backdoor (I had to see what the workers were doing!) has exacerbated the injury. I’ve been babying the knee again, going in and out the front door (where there’s a ramp) and it’s doing better, but still not well enough to go tramping around town.

When the garage is done, they will build a walkway from the back door of the house to the pedestrian door of the garage, and when they do so, they will eliminate that treacherously deep step. Until then, not being able to use the back door just adds to the complications of my life. (Though admittedly, by comparison, this is a very tiny complication.)

So, to recap what May is beginning to look like: no books. No movies. No connecting with friends off line. (Although the governor has removed some of the restrictions, seniors are still locked down.) No connecting with friends online. And no walking.

With any luck, the workers will be back on Monday or Tuesday, but for now, there’s just me. And me. And me. And not much else.

As I said, May should be interesting.

Posted in culture, internet, life. Tags: beginning of May, blocked from Facebook, end of April, isolation, no books, spam, what can be considered spam. 12 Comments »

Flummoxed

April 30, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I’m truly flummoxed. Facebook has completely blocked my blog from their site, saying it goes against community standards because it’s spam. Huh? Spam? It’s absolutely acceptable for me to post Amazon links to my books on my Facebook page, but I can no longer post links to this blog, even though I almost never promote my books here. Well, there that short bio at then end of every blog, but that’s more for self-protection than anything else. Certain sites pirate blogs without attrition, so having that bio there at least lets people know who wrote it.

Another thing that’s confusing about this situation is that a few months ago I was boosting posts to see if I could garner interest in Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One, and they very greedily took my money. Now those posts, too have disappeared along with all the rest of my articles. If they weren’t spam then, why are they spam now? If they met community standards then, why not now?

There’s really no recourse. I’ve appealed, but they admit they don’t give any real explanation, seldom reverse their decisions, and won’t respond individually to any request for reinstatement. Which means, except for a brief message saying that my blog goes against community standards for being spam, there’s no way of knowing why. Did someone report me? If so, why? If someone I angered with one of my “Bob” posts complained, why do they say this blog is spam? And even more confusing, if one person who complains can get another one blocked without any explanation or recourse, why would I — or anyone — want to participate?

One friend who got blocked fought them for four months before finally giving up and starting a new blog, which I’m not going to do. Just because FB is now blocking all links to this blog doesn’t mean that anything has changed here. I weathered Google blocking me (that turned out to be a matter of a misplaced piece of code in one post) and I’ll weather this, too. After all, I’m not writing for FB, I write for me and those who want to read what I have to say.

Admittedly, not being able to posts links on FB will make it harder for my FB friends to find me. If you are one of those friends and are able to see this, I would suggest you follow my blog directly rather than waiting for a link on FB that might never appear. To follow, scroll down a bit and on the left-hand side you will find a section labeled, “Follow Bertram’s blog via email.” Click on the link that says “follow.”

I’ve been on Facebook for twelve years. I joined as a place to promote myself as an author and blogger, and stayed because of all the friends I have made. It seems foolish now, but I’ve always been a supporter. Even when people complained about FB, I stayed. Even when FB changed their policies and algorithms, making my posts invisible to most people, I stayed. Even when they changed the groups all out of recognition, turning them into promo sites rather than discussion boards, I stayed.

Well, no more. If they don’t reverse their ban on this blog, I’m done.

Posted in blogging, internet, life. Tags: banned by Facebook, Facebook ban, Facebook blocked my blog, Facebook won't let me post links to my blog. 12 Comments »

Topping It All

April 29, 2020 — Pat Bertram

Today’s building show wasn’t quite as dramatic as it was the first couple of days, though the work seemed even more intense. When the framing was being done, the walls going up, the rafters set, every hour saw a huge difference — from a concrete slab to an actual building in progress.

Even though it was just as exciting to watch the building going on today, the changes came more slowly since the various steps seemed a lot more intricate. Trimming the overhang to make way for eventual gutters. Creating the fascia. Applying the tarpaper for the roof.

Shingling.

Even starting in on the siding.

Tomorrow, a couple of the workers will be back to finish the roof and the siding, and then, oh, woe is me. No more excitement until next Monday or Tuesday when the next phase begins, though I’m not sure what that will be. Doors and window maybe? Electricity?

Too bad about The Bob, otherwise I’d want a huge garage christening party when it’s all done. Maybe I’ll do it anyway, even if it’s just with the folks who have been doing the work. After all, by this time, they’re family, right?

***

Posted in house, life. Tags: building a garage, fascia, shingling, siding, tarpapering a roof, trimming the overhang. 3 Comments »

Moving Right Along!

April 28, 2020 — Pat Bertram

Last night when I happened to glance out the window to the backyard, I was taken aback to see a huge wall looming in the middle of the yard. It kind of scared me, though I don’t know why except that it seemed so massive. Today, after they cut the door and window out of that wall, it seems to have shrunk to a more manageable size, and now that the walls are finished and the roof is going up, it’s beginning to look like a building.

It’s amazing to me how much they’ve gotten done in just a couple of days.

It also amazes me how agile and strong they are, with such a great sense of balance. I wonder what it would be like to be able to build a garage or fix leaky pipes, or concrete a foundation or put up a fence — all things they have done for me while I could only watch in awe.

Judging by how much lumber and such is still piled up out there, I sense that even though they are moving right along, there is still a long way to go.