Friday’s Odds and Ends

Before heading into serious content, I wanted to start the day with this cute meme.

Thank goodness the only bodies I have to hide are in fiction. LOL

IN THE NEWS

The names of people that the president-elect is choosing to fill cabinet posts is most distressing. Steve Bannon, whom The Trumster has tapped as chief White House strategist, is a white-supremacist to the nth degree, and I shudder at the thought of him having a position of power in Washington. You can read a story about his views on genetic superiority in this article in The Boston Globe.

Some of the other people being considered for cabinet posts are more moderate in their bigotry, such as Mitt Romney, but the list is weighted heavily with white, rich, powerful men. That does not bode well for all the people of color in our country.

And there are a lot of them.

Last week when I went to a Dallas shopping mall, I saw many more people of color than people with white faces. Didn’t bother me. In, fact, I thought it was wonderful to see such a rainbow of colors. But I know it bothers way too many people here in the United States.

Too bad, on many levels.

Another bothersome cabinet possibility is Steven Mnuchin. I read about him in an article at Daily Kos by Laura Clawson:

If the fact that Donald Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary is a former Goldman Sachs partner who went on to found his own hedge fund and name it after the view from his house in the Hampton’s isn’t “screw the little guy” enough for you, don’t worry—there’s more. Steven Mnuchin was also a predatory player in the housing collapse, co-founding OneWest Bank:

In Florida, the company foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman after a 27-cent payment error. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo singled out the lender for squeezing Super Storm Sandy victims. This month, the company’s successor, CIT Bank, was accused of discriminating against minority borrowers.

OneWest bought a mortgage lender that had been shut down by the FDIC and ended up foreclosing on 36,000 of its customers, but Mnuchin walked away with a $10.9 million payout, so mission accomplished.

What happened to set up that foreclosure on the elderly lady is a horrible illustration of the abuse of power and dedication to greed.

FRIDAY FUNNIES

GROWING OLD

1) Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.
2) Forget the health food. I need all the preservatives I can get.
3) When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you’re down there.
4) You’re getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster.
5) It’s frustrating when you know all the answers but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.
6) Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.
7) Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.

THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE:

1) You believe in Santa Claus.
2) You don’t believe in Santa Claus.
3) You are Santa Claus.
4) You look like Santa Claus.

WRITING WISDOM

Anne Greenwood Brown had a helpful post at Writer Unboxed this week with tips on pacing. She mentioned the basics of having the inciding incident that propels the protaganist into the story, the “all is lost moment” that is sometimes called the first plot point, and then the final crisis. Then she wrote about “a pinch” that something little that ups the ante in some way. Here are some of her suggestions:

For example, a pinch point may come as:

• a foreshadowing of an upcoming major event;
• a symbol (for example, the Deathly Hollows symbol that keeps showing up throughout Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows);
• a newspaper headline the protagonist sees as he/she is walking down the street;
• a missing person poster hung on a lamp post;
• a scene where Dr. Evil plots the protagonist’s messy demise;
• a dream that wakes the protagonist up from a sweat-drenched sleep.

I’m not sure about using a dream or nightmare as a plot point, or pinch. I’m getting a bit tired of that technique. What do you think?

Do you share my concerns about the proposed White House appointees?

Hope you will have a great weekend. What are your plans? I am spending the weekend with one of my daughters at an art fair.