Love Limericks

Here’s what I have written so far this week. It ain’t much, but as detailed in Robin’s post below, life intrudes.

Every year, for Valentine’s Day, my friends Rosemary and Alf invite three or four couples for a gorgeous dinner at their house. The people around the table are pretty much the same ones every year: husbands and wives who have been together for decades. There were four couples this year, and if we added up the years of our marriages, I’m sure the total would be over 150. It’s my favorite party of the year.

One of the things that make it so is that Rosemary asks us to bring things to read. This year, my assignment was to write two limericks: one about young love and one about old. She knows I love writing limericks. Harkening back to Kate’s remark last week about sonnets not stifling creativity, I find the limerick form inspiring. It’s not easy at all for me to be humorous in prose, but the limerick unleashes my inner imp.

True to the scatological heritage of the form, I chose to focus on physical love. But in contrast to the usual stereotyping of women found in many classic limericks, I tried to the shed my satiric light on young and old male love. Viz:

The sex drive makes a young man just silly.

One glance at a nubile young filly,

Watch his reason depart;

Not his brain, not his heart,

All thought takes place in his willy.

Young men see a beauty and pant.

They want her the more if they shan’t.

But when grappling with sin,

Old men merely grin.

The brain thinks, but the organ just can’t.

--Annamaria Alfieri 

The Three S’s

School children are required to learn their 3 R’s: Readin’, Ritin,’ and ‘Rithmetic. Why shouldn’t writers be required to learn their 3 S’s: Stillness, Silence and Solitude.

During the holidays, I ran around like crazy from one noisy place to another filled with crowds of people — shopping malls, supermarkets, the post office, parties. And when the New Year had come and gone, I was still running around like crazy, exchanging gifts, going to doctor’s appointments, mailing thank you notes, catching up on everything I had let slide during the Christmas rush. Somehow all the clamor, activities and social life had followed me through January, into February. And I wanted to get back to writing!

Why wasn’t I writing? What was stopping me?

Answer: All of the above.

One day this week, by sheer chance, I found myself sitting still, in my silent apartment — alone. I began to think about my book. I got up and went in search of my manuscript. No easy job, as I had stashed it somewhere to make room for the wrapping paper, greeting cards, presents, etc. Finally I found it tucked in the back of a desk drawer. I took it out and began to read. Miraculously the phone didn’t ring, the doorbell didn’t buzz, no one even slipped a menu under my door. If I listened, I could hear the refrigerator humming, the clock ticking, and the resident mouse pitter-patting from the cupboard to the stove.

Slowly the ideas began to flow. Gradually I stepped into that other world, the world that my characters inhabit, the setting that I had created out of whole cloth, the story I had imagined with no basis in fact. When I finished reading, I began to write…

When my husband called, many hours later, he said, “You’ve been writing.”

“How can you tell?”

“Your voice sounds far away, as if you were in another world.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I was.”

— Robin Hathaway

Moving to Albany

“Albany!!! You’re kidding, right???”

That’s what friends would say to me (and, if I’m to be a reliable narrator, even strangers) when I’d casually remark that I was moving to Albany. This was then followed by the perceptive, incredulous: “ You mean you’re leaving New York???” Having been born in New York City—and never having resided anywhere else during the past sixty-plus years (except for two years in Puerto Rico, courtesy of the Draft)—I had not realized that such a move might be fraught with peril, like being excommunicated by The Church or Shunned within the community. This was brought home to me on a more intimate level on a sweltering August afternoon three years ago as I sat with a writer- friend on a pier in Greenpoint, Brooklyn-- our feet dangling over the East River, the Isle of Manhattan just across the water, shimmering in the heated air like a chimera: the Holy Grail, the Temple Mount, the Fountain of Youth. My friend—let’s call him ‘S’—who was then living in Stuyvesant Town, a complex of 12-story apartment buildings lining the shore on the Manhattan side, turned a furrowed brow to me at his side, and said: “”Why??. You can’t be serious? Albany??”

In response, I muttered the usual clichés: the streets, the trains too crowded (although I drove everywhere); everything’s too expensive (although I had a decent pension as a retiree from the NYPD, and made good money as a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society); and old people (except the rich) are prey on the streets of the City. Some truth to that last one (although the only time I was mugged was in Night Court while standing in front of a Criminal Court Judge when my client clocked me). And I must admit that residing in the co-op apartment Rose and I owned in a nice pre-War Art-Deco building in toney Jackson Heights, Queens, had some drawbacks. It wasn’t like being a renter, which is what me and mine had been all our lives. There were eighty other apartments in that building, all occupied, most by owners with whom my financial future was entangled—that is, if any defaulted on their mortgage or stopped paying their ‘maintenance’ assessment (as high as $1,100 monthly in desirable Jackson Heights), we would all be up shit’s creek, on the hook for the shortfall in the form of ‘special assessments’. Noisy, party-giving, musical instrument-playing neighbors could be a curse, but we were fortunate. A young couple with a baby and a big, gentle Siamese pussycat lived to our right (more about Sammy the Cat later); to our left, an elderly Chinese couple who spoke no English but whose undying gratitude we earned when I climbed agilely out my window onto their fire-escape and through their window to let them in when they’d locked themselves out. They periodically visited China, and always brought back a box of special pastries for us (execrable stuff, but I consumed them, as I remember).

I remember the old man vividly. He’d been stricken with ‘Lou Gehrig’s disease’ (ALS), which progressed rapidly. Day after day I’d see him walking around the block, and as the disease spread he would fall, topple like a felled tree to the sidewalk. He’d accept help getting to his feet, then shrug off the helping hands with a wordless, fixed smile, and continue his journey. After awhile, he did his laps on the vast, marble-floored lobby of our building on the arm of his wife, she nodding with equally fixed smile to the neighbors they encountered. Then one day they were gone, gone back to China we heard.

(Next, Inside the Mind of an Ex-Pat)...

—Robert Knightly

The Board (From SAVE THE CAT)

One of the things that happens to writers when they surf the 'net while putting off writing is that they come across helpful advice from other writers. In a comment on one of the blog posts I was reading a few weeks ago a writer mentioned a book called Save the Cat as being a great help in plotting.

Plotting! This is generally my weak point. Any help I can get, I will take, and you must admit that Save the Cat is an irresistible title. Besides, it has a cute cover. The book is available on Kindle, for which I have an application on my Ipad, so I downloaded it eagerly. It did not disappoint.

Save the Cat is actually a book on writing screenplays by a screenwriter named Blake Snyder. Clearly I'm coming pretty late to this party, since the Save the Cat movement is all over the 'net, and Blake Snyder himself has been dead since 2009. (What!? Nooo-) You want this book, by the way. It's breezy, charming, and extremely practical. Besides recommending that you have a killer title before you even start writing, Snyder says you must have a good log line.

I don't have a good title for the first book in my new series. Hush! No Screaming in the Library doesn't cut it. I do, however, have a log line that I like:

A small-town librarian discovers a crazy homeless woman living in her library, whose secrets soon bind them together and put both their lives in danger.

Snyder says there must be a save-the-cat scene early on, where the protagonist does some act of good will and courage that will cause the audience to root for this person. I'm having my protagonist, whose name I have not yet discovered, save an actual cat, a stray cat who was a member of our household until he succumbed to kidney disease, possibly brought on by eating Chinese melamine. But I digress.

Having a general idea what your book/screenplay is about, you then begin to make notes on cards of scenes you want in it. You then arrange the cards on a storyboard, divided in four segments, with certain plot turns occurring on certain pages of your script. Things take a 180 at the midpoint, for instance. This sounds to me like something Chris Grabenstein told us at a Mystery Writers of America meeting, how there are tent poles holding up the plot. You know, I've been doing this professionally for twenty years or so. Any day now I'm going to get a handle on it.

So I took Blake Snyder's screenplay page numbers, where he indicated that certain twists must happen, and using eighth grade algebra converted them to page numbers in a 300 page manuscript. Now, don't tell me the book will be worthless because it's built on a formula. You might just as well say a sonnet is worthless. Then I put a board together over my computer, stuck all sorts of cards up on it, and sat back to view the results.

Blake Snyder would not advise me to start writing at this point, because the storyboard clearly isn't finished. Yes, I have drama, and a beginning, and an end. Sort of. But it's chaotic, as you can see. I don't care, I have to get busy and write my story. The board as it stands is a good enough guide for me.

Or possibly it's the map of a deranged mind. At any rate I'm writing.

--Kate Gallison

Catholic School Kids

Responses to my blog about the rules at my convent school came, not in the form of comments posted here, but in emails from friends to whom I sent a link—dear people who were at college with me or who were in similar schools at the same time. I say of my contemporary graduates of other Catholic schools, that we went to different schools together. Robert Knightly, who also blogs here, is one of my school-mates of the soul, so to speak.


The responses to last week’s blog taught me that, contrary to my assumption, the rules were just as restrictive at the men’s colleges. Here are my friends’ experiences, in their own words:


From Tom, who went to Fordham:

These aren't laughable; they are simply the social and behavioral norms of that era. God, we sure had class then. And when I say "We" I really mean "we." The Catholic men's school I went to had rules at the time that were much like these in many respects --- except we didn't have to wear a hat and gloves to board the train (LOL)!

We did have to wear a coat and tie on campus on all class days. If you showed up at class without a coat and tie you were recorded absent! Seniors wore a "short" (about thigh length) academic robe to class, believe it or not.

BTW, we did NOT have the privilege of unlimited lights. We had a definite lights-out time!

I notice your dress rules do NOT say anything about hemline length. Very interesting omission.

One interesting thing we had rules on was alcohol. Since we were located in a state with age 18 drinking at the time, some controls were necessary. Yes, you were allowed to have alcohol on campus and expected to handle it responsibly.


From Kate, who went to St. E’s with me:

It was like being in prison or an orphanage in Victorian England.

I don't remember having worn a hat when leaving the campus. I too got a weekend in prison there. I was chatting with Rosemary Rush and didn't realize that the lights had gone out. When I left her room, the halls were in darkness and I ran into that (expletive deleted) Sister ________. That did it.



From Abigail, another classmate:

I think I had 21 meals twice. Can't remember the first infraction but the second was watching TV alone 2nd semester senior year. Making absolutely no attempt to hide, I was caught, and punishment was meted out. At age 21 I was infuriated and told Sr.______ so and said I was leaving the school. After much drama including a visit from my very reluctant mother!!!! the punishment was lifted and I stayed to finish. This was probably April of 1963. Can you imagine!

What’s interesting here, referring to Tom’s comment about alcohol, is that in New Jersey, we could drink at age 21. Our rule book reminded us of the law but did not further restrict drinking. So, presumably, at 21 Abigail was old enough to order a Singapore sling at Rod’s Ranch House but not to watch television after 8PM!

From Mike, who went to St. Bonaventure:

Having somewhat similar experiences at St. Bonaventure, I could readily identify with your situation. We too had a handbook of "Rules" (the ONLY thing on the desks in our rooms when we checked in). They also spelled out the "demerits" for each violation as well as other disciplinary actions that would apply at the various thresholds (e.g., simple disciplinary probation, strict disciplinary probation, appearance before the disciplinary board, potential expulsion, immediate expulsion, etc.). When I first read it I was almost afraid to leave my room lest I unwittingly violate some unspecified tenet covered by the "summary clause" (i.e., "or any other action considered detrimental to the orderly functioning of this institution").

Assigned study hours, chow hall discipline, lights out, signing in and out for the library, etc., like St. E's, were all there. At Bona's, being then an all male campus, they were not as big on dress codes, they were very BIG on 6th and 9th commandment violations!! I ended up being put on simple disciplinary probation for having a picture of the Purdue University "Golden Girl", from Sports Illustrated magazine no less (head band majorette with a gold lame one piece bathing suit), posted on the outside of my closet door (I should have been smarter and put it on the inside!). The prefect on the floor (every floor had a live-in Franciscan monk) came in for late bed check and saw it and woke me up and told me to take it down because it was "scurrilous literature.” When I said, "It's what"? He replied, "Look it up." When I did so I saw it meant, "Given to the use of vulgar or low abusive language". There was no language, only the picture. But since they say a picture is worth a 1000 words, I knew I wasn't going to get too far arguing the point.

In any event, I had to meet with the Dean of Discipline (which is another whole story) and was campused for a month. What I didn't know was that a letter had been sent to my parents informing them I'd been placed on simple disciplinary probation (this little tidbit was NOT mentioned in the "Rules"!). The letter opened with the sentence, "This is to inform you that your son has been placed on simple disciplinary probation and that, without corrective action, his tenure at this institution is in jeopardy". I found out about the letter when my father called ME, the first and only time he did so. My frail attempt to point out that it was "simple" disciplinary probation only served, as you might guess, to raise his level of ire. I felt fortunate to be 400 miles away rather than within arm’s reach!

So as Bob Hope says, "Thanks for the memories"!

From Ann Marie, a classmate at St. John’s High School:

What an evolution!

Jimmy Breslin

In 1976-77, a serial killer who called himself Son of Sam terrorized New York City. (This is the “Crime” part of this post!) The murderer took to writing to the journalist Jimmy Breslin. Based on the style of those letters, Breslin, himself a Catholic School Old Boy, theorized that Son of Sam also went to Catholic school. “He understands the use of the semi-colon,” was, according to Breslin, evidence that he had been carefully taught grammar, not a subject similarly drilled into students in New York City public schools. Breslin turned out to be wrong about the Son of Sam’s early training. But he was right about the care with which the nuns and brothers taught us to express our thoughts in writing. As evidence of that, I give you the stories above, written casually in emails to an old friend, but lively, cogent, clear, and concise and spelled correctly. Silly rules about hats, high heels, and baton twirlers in gold lame to the contrary notwithstanding, our teachers gave us skills that have stayed with us and helped us in our careers. In my case, they became the tools of my trade.

—Annamaria Alfieri