Bo-Bo Knows Barack Obama

On September 11, 2001, the world stood by our side in recognition of our nation's great pain. Today, I hope, the world stands beside us to celebrate the promise of great change. Just 16 minutes before he would shed forever the word elect in his title, Barack Obama stepped onto the platform where he would take his oath of office.

The crowd waved flags. They chanted, "Oh-bah-mah. Oh-bah-ma."

A lesser person might have grinned and waved, but Obama maintained a gravitas that demonstrated how deeply he understands the enormity of the work at hand. Today he takes on the mantel of crisis, the mantel of a nation's hope, the mantal of great expectations.

By order of the constitution, the president-elect is officially the president at noon on January 20th. When noon came to Washington D.C., Yo Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Anthony McGill, and Gabriela Montero were playing a John Williams arrangement of "Air and Simple Gifts":

'Tis the gift to be simple,
'Tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
It will be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained,
to bow and to bend, we will not be ashamed
To turn, turn, will be our delight,
'Til by turning, turning, we come round right.

My greatest thanks to Obama for kindling a national hope I thought had burned to ash. I ask only this: lead the country with an integrity that never makes me doubt the hope I feel today:

"With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back, nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."

-President Barack Obama, Januray 20, 2009

Bo-Bo Knows Archaeology

Although it may look like the work of a writer is nothing more than a glorified romp with a cast of imaginary friends, the writing process is more like sorting your clutter into two piles before a cross-country move. In the first pile is the junk you're embarrassed that you ever paid good money to buy. In the second pile is the stuff you actually like. When you realize you have to whittle that second pile to a volume that will actually fit into your dinky little car, things get really hairy. Suddenly every dress and knickknack you ever owned is on trial defending its continued relevance, and the judge is a notorious hardass: your inner archaeologist.

In "On Writing; A Memoir of the Craft," Stephen King put the writer-as-archaeologist issue this way:

"Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer's job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as much as possible...No matter how good you are, no matter how much experience you have, it's probably impossible to get the entire fossil out of the ground without a few breaks and losses. To get even most of it, the shovel must give way to more delicate tools: airhose, palm-pick, perhaps even a toothbrush..."

I like the idea of writer as fossil-loving archaeologist, but King makes it sound like it's mostly a process of patience. Like all he has to do is find the dig site in his imagination and chip away.

When I spy an idea in the writerly corner of my brain, I become excessive. If a story idea is the flint arrowhead little Jack finds while digging for nightcrawlers in his own back yard, then the responsible writer/archaeologist ropes off a biggish square of that yard and digs oh so neatly.

Not me.

I'd evict the family. Or maybe the whole street. Nope, the neighborhood. Better yet, let's just oust the entire town. In my zest for ensuring I don't miss anything, I write everything. And I do mean every blessed thing. This is how the first draft of my novel clocked in at 922 pages.* My first go at my prologue? Forty-two pages.

Fortunately, my paunchy prologue was the perfect place to practice cutting and combining and condensing. All those C-words that get batted around when your novel needs to lose half (and maybe two-thirds) of its pages.**

I pasted my prologue into a new document with every intention of getting to work. I knew two things: the first was the point I would like the prologue to make, and the second was my desire to get that message across in eight to 10 pages. Watching me during my first revision session, you'd have thought I'd developed an allergy to my wordprocessing software. I googled, facebooked, texted, and surfed. I flossed. I cooked. I cleaned. I called friends. What I didn't do was write for any more than five minutes at a time.

I was looking forward to a more manageable prologue. I knew that cutting was in order. I was jonesing for the slashing. And on the first pass, I did cut more than 10 pages. The trouble was the fossil still wasn't really showing itself. On the second pass, I pared the prologue to 20 pages and was still jumping away from the job. I just wasn't seeing it.

I reminded myself of my narrative goal and went through a third time, cutting even more deeply. I walked away with 12 pages and the arc of the prologue--my fossil had a skull, a tail, and ribs between the two. I knew what I had to condense, I knew which scenes to combine, and I knew what needed to be added. Only when I saw the fossil taking shape was it at all comfortable to get in there and dig.

The final(ish) tally of the prologue is 10 pages. A coup by any stretch, I know, but I can't help but feel that it's still too long. That maybe the fossil I was after is actually in the belly of the one I uncovered. For now I'm on to paring back part one. I have to believe that belly fossil questions are really the stuff of third drafts. My future as a writerly archaeologist depends on it.

* I submit the following Freudian typo: the first time through this sentence, I wrote "pounds" instead of "pages." My novel clocked in at 922 pounds, indeed.

** While overwriting is a very viable first draft form, the jury is still out on OVERoverwriting. So far, I do NOT recommend it.

Bo-Bo Knows Road Rash

Not that any one's keeping score, but my care of Bo-Bo has resulted in his spilled blood on three separate occasions.

1) I slammed his freakishly long monkey tail in the door on his second day in the Elcik & Kelly household.

2) Instead of letting him find his own way up and over the craggy jetties on Winthrop Beach (as he had been doing successfully until this point), I pulled him along a path that was good for me. Bo pinballed through a particularly jagged crevice and our walk ended in the doggy ER with a vet stitching his leg back together again.

3)Yesterday, Bo-Bo went for a face plant on pavement and came away with a chin full of road rash.

Yep. Five minutes from the end of our treacherous, arctic morning walk, I let my mind wander from the task at hand: helping my stilt-for-legs dog navigate sidewalks so icy I'm pretty sure my neighbors are hosing them down. So there's me in la-la land when, bam! A colossal crack of the decidedly sickening variety, and Bo's standing with his his front legs set in an unusually wide stance, and he's staring down at the ground, licking, licking, licking. I'm thinking sprained legs, pulled ligaments, broken legs, broken teeth, broken jaw, or concussion. Blood poored on his pretty, little chin. It looked the way rabies might if the foam was red.

At home, I put Bo through the paces. A lesser dog might have snapped at me for putting my hand anywhere near his hurty bits, but Bo looked up at me with his why-oh-why eyes. He didn't so much as whimper while I cleaned his wounds. And though the tape recorder in my mind had the sound of the thwack, thwack, thwack on endless repeat, it was clear road rash was the extent of Bo's injuries. His teeth were neither broken nor missing, and the crinkle of his sack-o-treats still inspired him to race down the hall with his reallyreallyreally grin at the ready.

This morning, Bo went into his morning winky-licking routine only to recoil with a yelp and a reprisal of his why-oh-why eyes. I dug out the medicine they gave him the last time he had an open wound, put the slightest little bit on a cotton ball, then dabbed it on. He jumped when I touched his pizza patch and his eyes went deep into their why-oh-well well, but still he followed me into the next room and curled up at my feet.

If causing doggy bloodshed--not once, not twice, but three times--is cause to question devotion, someone ought to let Bo know. In the meantime, take it from me--trust in the face of every contraindication is one of the little miracles of life.

Bo-Bo Knows Elvis..."Hound Dog"

Today, in honor of what would have been Elvis's 74th birthday, I launch the official Bo-Bo Knows singalong feature. I submit the clip of Bo-Bo dancing to ambient "Hound Dog" as evidence that he approves of the move (kindly disregard Bo's yawn and the hand behind the camera wiggling his leash to keep him dancing).

So what exactly is a Bo-Bo Knows singalong? It's a space for talking about how we connect to music: song by song via the lyrics, riffs, and melodies that work their way beneath the skin, refusing to let go until we're sung at the top of our lungs or shaken what our mama's gave us (even if that's just tapping toes).

I launch with "Hound Dog" because it's Bo's favorite (clearly), but any song is fair game. Though I should warn you that I'm currently editing a novel about identity told through three unlikely Elvis impersonators, so the singalong is likely to head to the end of Elvis's lonely street quite often. And if you don't like that, you can just return to, oh, never mind.

So "Hound Dog." Hit play on the embedded copy of the song below to listen while you read:



OK, yes. This song may be one of the most overplayed Elvis songs of all time, but the raw gravel in Elvis's voice gets me with every listen. Elvis has my attention by the time he says "ain't." According to the handy counter provided by our friends at Youtube, that's about 1.5 seconds into the song.

But just because "Hound Dog" never gets old doesn't mean it couldn't have been better. Though I respect what Elvis was doing with quartets, I could have done without the Jordanaires in the middle of this song. Unless of course Elvis was trying to sanitize the ripped--my-heart-out feel his raw vocals brought to the song. Maybe that's why Elvis is Elvis and I'm just plain Cathy--he knew that the clean harmonies of the Jordanaires would make his voice seem all the grittier. Well played, Elvis. Well played.

"HOUND DOG" AT A GLANCE

RELEASE DATE: July, 1956

SONGWRITERS: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller

TRIVIA: "Hound Dog" was Elvis's eighth single. Though I'd like to take credit for choosing to highlight the eighth single on the eighth day of January, I wanted to lead with a dog crossover. This is Bo-Bo knows, after all.

COVERS: Big Mama Thornton's version was likely Elvis's introduction to the song, but it's probably the version that Freddie Bell and the Bellboys performed at the Sands casino in Vegas that got Elvis excited about recording "Hound Dog" himself. The singers who have recorded this song read like a list of rock royalty. Here's a small sample:

• Eric Clapton (on Journeyman)
• The Everly Brothers (on Rock n Soul)
• Jimi Hendrix (on The Jimi Hendrix Experience)
• John Lennon (live--click here to have a listen)
  
• Robert Palmer (on Drive)
• James Taylor (on Covers)

Be warned. The James Taylor version sounds a bit like a love child between soul and jazz, but it still counts as a cover.

Bo-Bo Knows Flotsam and Jetsam...take 2

This morning, Bo paced the hallway, lingering at the bathroom threshold, his eyebrows dancing the way they do when he's stressed. He had beach on the brain and his human ticket to a trot in the sand was cataloging junk she wished had washed down the drain with all her sloughed off skin.

Today I dove into my travesty of a linen closet. It's really more of an orphanage for all the things in my life that don't have any place else to go. Nestled in among the sheets, towels, light bulbs, cleaning supplies, and a pharmacy-for-two that could medicate a small nation, I found my long-lost Charlie Card (aka subway pass), my business cards, the rosary made from rose-petal beads I bought in Rome (complete with a trashy plastic case adorned with Pope John Paul II's grimacing mug), and a palm-size Ghiradelli tin containing three high-school writing medals I thought I lost eons ago. Apparently in one of the twelve moves I've made since leaving for college, these medals mingled with all the hair stuff I don't use (can we say electric curling brush, people?) and decided they were good, thanks. Clearly the rosary scores the what-the-hell-is-this-doing-here honors.

Anyway, here's what I'm happy to say goodbye to today:

• Number 13: Oil of Olay face cloths.
• Numbers 14: Noxema pump cream
• Number 15: St. Ives pore cleanser
• Number 16: Industrial-sized generic "mouth rinse" that I remember having in my linen closet two moves ago.
• Number 17: Nail polish remover
• Numbers 18: Rusty shower caddy
  
• Number 19: Deconstructed wire hanger. I cringe to think about the company this may have once kept.
• Number 20: Greyhound magazine. Proof that I'm a pet-store, magazine-rack sucker.
• Number 21: Plastic brush with hard plastic bristles. The iron maiden has nothing on the torture inflicted by "the tangler."
  
• Number 22: Plastic purple pick. This was Mike's instrument of choice when his hair was longer than mine. I still don't get it how it was useful.
• Number 23: Random button.
  
• Number 24: Turquoise scalp brush. Runner-up to the tangler.
  
• Number 25: Single white napkin. A waiter at a restaurant wrapped bread in it and sent it home with us for no discernible reason.
• Numbers 26: Goopy pen.
  
• Number 27: Stridex pads circa 1987. Remember Stridex?
  
• Number 28: White knit scrunchie. Remember scrunchies?
  
• Number 29: Purple plastic hair elastic. Please.
• Number 30: Cheap, white plastic banana clip that never really got the hang of holding my thin hair in place.
• Number 31: Fitted sheet circa 1972. This was one of my parents' wedding gifts. The set would be serviceable if Bo hadn't thrown up on the flat sheet at the start of a four hour trip home. We left the sheet in northern New Hampshire, so the fitted sheet can go, too.
  
• Number 32: No More Tangles spray detangler. I honestly think this might be the bottle I bought in middle school in response to the special brand of panic caused by the combination of spending the morning in a heavily chlorinated pool and the afternoon riding in a car with the windows rolled all the way down. This was the closest I ever came to dreads.
  
• Number 33: The "Easy Braid." A contraption designed to make French-braiding my hair a breeze. It did not.
  
• Number 34: Arbonne International Ginger Citrus sugar scrub. This was a part of a three-part gift I received from a client a couple of Christmases ago. According to the directions, I was supposed to use the scrub first, wash the oils away with the wash second, and follow the whole thing up with the body butter. The butter was love at first sniff--on the days I'm wearing it, I look for every excuse to get my hands near my nose. The body wash seemed pointless until I discovered it doubled as a bubble bath that smelled like heaven. But the sugar scrub was a big, sloppy mess. For those who have never had the pleasure, apparently a sugar scrub is equal parts oil and sugar so coarse it feels like you've traded your washcloth in for sandpaper. Even better, the oil coats you in a slime that makes water bead up on your skin. I reached for the body wash in a blind make-it-stop panic, but the slime layer was heartier than that! I'm pretty sure fancy scrubs are not supposed to be washed away with my favorite over-the-counter soap. This tub 'o fun can rest in peace.
  

Letting go of the sugar scrub has made me bold. Next I'll tackle the piles of make up I've accumulated despite my apparent allergy to making myself up. Like, ever.

Bo-Bo Knows Flotsam and Jetsam

Bo-Bo doesn't horde the flotsam and jetsam of life. No trinkets collecting dust, no clothes he hasn't worn in years, no crazy contraptions designed to help his hopeless fingers weave his hair into the French braid he never quite got the hang of. Maybe it's the whole being-a-dog thing.

I, on the other hand, collect more than I need of just about everything. Too many pages in the rough draft of my book, too many pounds on my bones, and too many products in my home. Talk about an embarrassment of riches. As someone prone to excesses, New Year's is always a dodgy time. Instead of resolutions I usually write manifestos (and if you know me personally at all, you know I'm not kidding). But 2009 will be different--one resolution instead of a dozen. I mean it! My 2009 manifesto clocks in at one, measly word: Reduce.*

Because I find that public humiliation is a good way to keep myself on the straight and narrow (in the inimitable words of Johnny Cash, "because you're mine, I walk the line"), I'm going to do an occasional post detailing the items I'm tossing, recycling, or bequeathing to the world in the form of charitable donations or gifts to people who will appreciate it more than me.

Now. Who wants a thing-a-ma-bob to help you French braid you hair?


FLOTSAM AND JETSAM...TAKE ONE!

• Number 1: 68 pages of other people's writing. Usually I file them away and keep them long after I've given them my two cents. No need given that I keep the electronic copies. Gone!
• Numbers 2-9: A veritable bonanza of expired medicines, creams, and prescription medicines. **
• Number 10: A 3-inch, thin metal rod with u-shaped pitchforks on either side. The best I can tell is it's from the center of a hair clip that's missing in action.
• Number 11: Stretched-out brown plastic hair tie.
• Number 12: Old plastic zippered pouch thing. No idea.
  

And that was just from the medicine cabinet. Oy! It's gonna be a long year...

* OK, yes. Reduce is shorthand for reducing pages during a second draft, pounds through healthier habits, and products in a room by room overhaul, but the way I figure it, even a three-for is progress. Baby steps, people. Baby steps!

** The expanded list:
2. Generic Ben Gay that expired in December...2006
3. expired tooth ache numbing "stuff"
4. expired canker cream (lovely)
5. sunblock that apparently stopped deflecting rays in 2006
6. expired cold and sinus medicine
7. expired decongestant (like that stuff doesn't make you feel loopy enough already)
8. expired prescription for penicillin from Mike's wisdom teeth extraction.
9. allergy itch cream my mother-in-law suggested I buy for the great mosquito attack of '05. The package was unopened...and expired.