Womblin’s World

Wear red tomorrow, the 28th of September 2007. Show support for the peaceful protesters in Burma.

People ARE dying. Running reports can be found at the Guardian’s NewsBlog, and HERE, at Ko-Htike’s blog spot — one very brave person who continues, despite incredible personal danger, to tell the world what is happening.

Quote taken from the live chat box on Ko-htiks’s site a couple of minutes ago: komg: I see all from south okkalapa with my eye.They really killed so many.A student and a man near my home die.i feel so sorry now.I want to kill all.

In Burma, a group of the most peaceful, compassionate and unassuming human beings are being shot at for demonstrating against the violent regime running their country on bribes and hypocrisy. They have no weapons. The people supporting them have no weapons. Today and yesterday, there were shots fired at them, and still another news report tells of insecticides being stockpiled to use against them. INSECTICIDES. I’ve heard at least one report of a monk being killed. Last night, they were dragged from their beds and beaten, and now I sit here each day desperate to do something to stop it, but not knowing what.

News reports from the BBC, comments from the Guardian, all suggest that the US and UN will be unable to stop these atrocities from happening. They all point to China and India, saying the onus lies with these two countries flanking tiny Burma. But at the moment China is unmoved, as is Russia — another behemoth of a country all too ready to turn a blind eye. So what, if anything, can the EU and the US do?

It’s simple, force China’s hand.

We must do this. Someone has to make a stand to help these people. America, Britain, Europe, I implore you — your sanctions don’t mean a thing here, but your lack of presence will. Do the only thing that will make China sit up and listen: Pull out of the Olympic Games. Pull out now.

If democracy really DOES mean anything to you (yes, President Bush, I’m speaking to you) then you will pull out, and do it now.

Meanwhile, what can we do as individuals? Email the regime is one, search around the web for sites that petition world leaders to act against the Burmese junta. Have a look around HERE for information and to make a difference. You can email the asking for the release of the countries true leader: Aung San Suu Kyi.

Don’t fill up at Total petrol/gas stations. Yep, Total is one of the largest investors in the Burmese military junta. The regime have used money gained by Total investments to buy military hardware, including fighter planes. Drive right on by and get your car fuel elsewhere. It’s not that hard.

Don’t sit back and watch these people die. Find out what you can do, then do it. Please.

An anthology of stories as recalled by Edward Perkins who was a child during The Great Depression in Texas. Eddie Perkins’ childhood memories come alive in this book and are recounted by Marva, his daughter. She calls the tales true but “tall”, as fact is embroidered with a little well-founded fiction to bring us a tapestry of history and humour. The reader can walk another era, hear the sounds, the dialects, smell the smells and picture a world rich, yet sometimes cruel in its make-up. Not only the adult reader, of course, for Eddie sees the world through the eyes of a child — a harsh world that had simple pleasures: a ride to auction, the local fair…even getting to school could be the most dangerous of journeys undertaken.

I found the majority of the stories endearing and the anthology itself to be a useful historical tool that gives us first-hand insight into one of the hardest times in twentieth-century America. Marva has an easy style of writing, her father’s voice coming over loud and strong to ground us firmly in the era. I loved reading about the community, how everyone helped everyone else when they needed something doing. The animal stories were lovely, and showed compassion for creatures, wild and farm-reared, despite the hard times.

Low points? Well there weren’t any low enough that I stopped reading, just a couple of niggles. I didn’t particularly like Eddie’s mother’s story. I didn’t think I needed to know it, to be truthful. And I got a little tired of some things being repeated, like Eddie telling us how Dorothy is called “Sister” each time she appears in a new story. On an technical front, the text centering was different on each page, which was distracting — one page right, the next page left, etc. But that was all and, as I say, nothing to stop me reading.

Indeed, these tales are addictive. I challenge anyone to only read one without wanting to continue to the next. Overall, a lovely and valuable collection, I highly recommend it.

Find it here:

• Amazon.com
• Amazon.com Large Print
• Amazon.co.uk
• Amazon.co.uk Large Print

This weekend, I did this for the first time and was gobsmacked by the amount of CRAP produced along only a small stretch of Wales’ coastline. Wow, our species is sooooo messy and uncaring. Yes uncaring, and here’s why:

A couple of weeks ago I was out and about at a hot-air balloon festival where there were people selling small, helium filled balloons for charity. There was to be a mass release of hundreds, each balloon bearing a ticket with the name of the person who bought said favour. The first to be found and reported to the charity would be the winner of this strange ‘race’. Except that many people don’t realise that most of these good cause balloons end up as rubbish on land or, more distressingly, at sea where some types of marine wildlife mistake them for food. They get eaten, they get stuck, and the animal starves to death.

Anyway, the balloon race charity man steps into my path and rattles a collection box at me. “Buy a balloon for the balloon race?”

I shake my head and smile politely. Then, as he shakes the box again I say, “Okay, I will give you some money, but won’t buy a balloon because of what they do to marine wildlife. You d0 know what I mean, don’t you?” He nods and looks guilty as I deposit some coins into his box.

He nods and looks guilty.

This man knows, and yet he is still promoting this bit of ‘fun’ that kills creatures of the sea slowly and painfully. Again, humanity places itself over all other Earthly species in order of importance.

I walk away shaking my head. What can one do with people like that? These people know yet they ignore. The same type who will in all probability read the first few lines of this blog post then move on to something a little less conscience-biting.

Please, dear readers, support marine wildlife by refusing to buy balloons for these ‘races’. Support the human charity promoting the race by donating at the same time. Explain why you’re doing what you’re doing. It doesn’t take much. Really.

Two in a week.

I liked Colin. He was a people’s hero type of bloke. Yeah, he drove cars very quickly, lived a fast and dangerous life many can only dream of, but he seemed to be an okay guy.

The sadness in this case is that his five-year-old son also died with him. Too young to attain any heights at all, build any dreams — let alone find the stars like his father — this little guy can’t even be a comfort to his mother in her time of mourning.

A terrible time.

I am truly saddened to hear of the death of Anita Roddick. She died yesterday of a massive brain haemorrhage aged only 64 years old.

This woman pioneered fair-trade, human rights, beauty without cruelty… All this and still she made a fortune. She worked for feminism by getting her hands dirty, by challenging the male-dominated world of business with her fair-minded ethics and humanitarian integrity. She was the best role-model a girl could have when I was younger.

I mourn her loss, yet celebrate her achievements. There’s a new and very bright star in the skies tonight.

I read this on a BBC website today and wonder if any editors speed read whilst working. I know I don’t. Indeed, I don’t think it possible for me to read anything between 1000 and 1400 words per minute anyway, let alone edit them. And I have to admit that I’m hard pushed to believe anyone else can…enjoyably.

I found it difficult to decide where to put this post as reading is both work and a pleasure to me — both taken at a natural working trot, not a great, gullumping gallop. I don’t know. I’m sceptical here — how can speed reading possibly be enjoyable? Isn’t idling through a novel just that: abandoning the Rat Race for a while?

I know it’s not technically reading, but I discovered this today. Good, eh? It gives me a chance to indulge my weakness for the well-endowed voice — and especially the rough-velvet timbres of Sir Richard Burton — performing auditory massage on my poor, abused ears. Nothing like a Thomas classic while packing ready for a beach-cleaning excursion on the Llyn Penisula* next week. Heavenly.

And while listening is not really reading, (yet can be in some ways better) I do also have a novel near-finished that I started about a week ago. Sounds like I’m a slow reader, eh? Well no. I’m quite fast actually, I just don’t have much time in which to do it. I read in five or ten, sometimes only one or two, minute sections, grabbing a few words in between other Real Life goings on. Having food in the vicinity, such as dinner or lunch, is always a boon though. It means I might actually squeeze a whole quarter of an hour extra out of the day for this little pleasure if no one talks to me.

Evenings, of course, are dedicated to writing fiction, blogging and catching up with whatever editing jobs need doing. I also read and critique for a few fellow writers and, whilst this could be construed as reading for pleasure, there’s always an element of nit-picking and opinion needed from me. As of course is the case when the writerly tables are turned and the critiquer’s hat is on the other foot.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand: what I’m reading. Though my small digression was warranted here, as you will see. The novel is by a British author who shall remain nameless because I once loved what he did. The last time I read anything by him was in the eighties/early to mid nineties when horror was the buzzword all around the Western world and everyone was writing it. Indeed everyone wanted to be Stephen King**. In a word or three: I was young.

I read this book initially when I was 21 and thought it okay, but you know I really do think it might have been the very last thing I read by this particular author. And the reason why became agonisingly clear at around twenty pages in this past week — the writing annoys me.

There are adverbs tripping over themselves to slow the prose down — too many. There is head-hopping galore without a sniff of a transition — two, sometimes three characters in a scene. And the women are blatantly dainty and meek — all the better to strengthen the wimpy male lead, methinks. Erg. All in all, I’ve struggled against my youthful self loving this author, and am using experience and age to ask WTF?

Mostly, I am gutted.

Now, I do not hold with the majority of writers on the Internet who say that all ‘ly’ adverbs should be banished from one’s prose, because one which is well-placed has as much right to be there as any other well-chosen word.

And I’m not opposing a well-placed and suitably transitioned POV swap once, perhaps twice, in a novel should the plot warrant it.

But the thing is this, the reason I am gutted, is that my youth deceived me: I seriously thought that because this guy was a best-selling author (like SK) that he was good. Ah well.

What of the weak female character, I hear you cry? Well, weak female characters will always annoy me, no matter who writes them, male or female.

Anyway, that’s my week’s reading for pleasure — more listening that aught, but hey.

Next week, I’m reading something that has won prizes, just to be on the safe side — Chocolat, by Joanne Harris. Can’t go wrong there. Surely?

And I promise to make this section more reading than writing too, next week. I’ve a fellow writer’s book to review as well as reading Chocolat – a pleasure long ago promised, but yet to emerge from these busy fingers, so this category should be busy.

~Womblin~

*A bit of Wales that sticks out into the Irish Sea. Lovely.

**Everyone still does, I hear you cry? Well, not this writer, though I can appreciate what and how he writes.

How many books a year do you read, and has this amount anything to do with how much sex you’re having? Take part in a small, cozied-up survey over on Bryan D Catherman’s blog.