The New Year; or, In the Days of Our Griffinage

 I see what went wrong . . . I was going to "reboot" my life at the beginning of the second quarter of the 21st Century, so last January I wrote a fancy "2025" on my notebooks and letterheads and plunged into the New Era.  Well, turns out 2025 wasn't quite as good a year as I'd hoped for.  Now, however, I realize that the first quarter of a century runs from year 1 to year 25.  The second quarter starts with 26.  So 2026 is obviously going to be my year!

Maybe I can revive my long-defunct blog at last.  I have often written of how exposure to the Edmond Low Library at Oklahoma State University inspired my fantasy and science fiction stories, and over a period of decades I have acquired hundreds of titles I remember from my years there.  I've toyed with the idea of scribbling out little essays about some of the most prominent volumes, why I thought they were important, and why others might check them out online or at a library.  There's certainly enough material.

And why not start the new year off with a recent but monumental purchase, a score of huge volumes that would form the cornerstone of any library, however large:

Oxford English Dictionary       OSU Book No. 1.01 - 1.20

J. A. Simpson, E. S. C. Weiner and a cast of thousands

Oxford University Press, Second Edition, 1989

What can I say?  The ultimate guide to the English language, defining approximately 290,500 words and illustrating their usage with over a million quotes.  However obscure, however old and forgotten, you'll find it and its linguistic pedigree in the OED.  As a reviewer on Amazon.com wrote, it is not so much a book purchase as a family heirloom.

Look how much info the OED contains on just the name of my favorite mythical critter, the Griffin:

It is commonly accepted that the word "griffin" or "gryphon" comes from the Greek word gryps or grypos, "to seize or grip." Those of you who have studied the lion-eagles elsewhere are probably aware of the myriad spellings of the word, some of which are:

Griffun, gryffoune, gryffown, greffon, gryffon, griffen, girphinne, grephoun, grephyne, griffion

To say nothing of the Old French gripon, the Italian grifone, and the Latin gryphus. What you may not know is that the name "griffin", "gryphon", etc., has been subsumed and altered in many ways over the centuries, often forming the roots of words that have no conceivable connection with the furred and feathered beasties.

For instance, the term "griff", in the dialect of northern England (specifically Yorkshire), means "a deep narrow valley or chasm." Like most entries in the OED, the definition is accompanied by quotes. One from a book called Moorland Par. reads "One of the small tributary becks . . . comes into the open air again in a wild little griff." Beck, in turn, means a swiftly running stream, usually with steep banks.

This version of the word is also spelled "grift", from the Dutch, meaning "a channel shaped out by water for itself," which sounds like erosion to me. Fortunately, the gryphons' name has nothing to do with "griff", "grift" or "grifter" as used in U.S. slang, that having come from "graft" and "grafters" -- people who make money by dishonest means, usually through political or business influence. Gryphons may like gold and treasures, but they are quite straightforward about gaining it -- by fighting the one-eyed Arimaspi!

"Griff" can simply mean "a claw", which gryphons certainly have. I don't know how much mental suffering or pain they go through, but "griff" once also meant "grief". In nineteenth century Louisiana, "griff", "griffo", or "griffon" referred to a person of mixed race in a surprisingly specific ratio: one-quarter white and three-quarters black. In weaving, a griff is "a frame composed of horizontal bars employed in pattern weaving." The origins of these terms are unknown.

"Griffe" in architecture is a claw-shaped carving at the base of a column, no doubt related to the paw- and claw-shaped terminations of fancy table legs (there's a word for those, too, but I don't remember it offhand).

"Griffin" in English slang can mean a signal or tip. In Cassell's Saturday Journal for January 1889, we find the line "Plank yourself at the corner to give the griffin if you hear or see owt." Nearly a century later, in F. Shaw's Lern Yerself Scouse (1966), there is the line "Let's give de fellers de griffin."

I wonder if "giving the griffin" is like "flipping the bird?" Better not to inquire too closely.

Anyway, this version of "griffin" is related to "get the straight griff," which means to receive reliable news or a trustworthy tip. This term may still be in use, for it appears in a book published as late as 1968, J. Wainwright's The Edge of Extinction: "It's griff, guv. The real thing." On the other hand, among the English of old-time India, according to an 1829 Bengalese dictionary, "to griff" means to fool someone: "He deem'd it no sin/To griff a heedless friend, -- plain English, -- take him in."

"Griffade" is a term used in falconry. It means "a sudden seizure with the claws." Oh, I'd hate to get a sharp griffade to the head!

In 18th century Ireland "griffaun" referred to a large hoe used to cut up turf. It can be used as a verb, "to griffaun". The OED quotes the Evening News of July 25, 1885: "William struck Tom Sheehan on the head with the griffaun." An odd image, if you were only familiar with the traditional griffin.

Getting closer to the traditional beast, "griffin" can mean "a grim-looking or extremely vigilant guardian," like a dragon. I didn't see it in the OED, but I'm sure I've seen old quotes which indicated that "griffin" sometimes meant any creature with attributes taken from two or more different animals -- what would more correctly be called a chimera.

You may know of the Brussels griffon, a breed of coarse-haired terrier-like dog, but in the fifteenth century the greyhound was known as the "grifhound" or "grefhound". Say -- wolfhounds were bred to fight wolves. Imagine a dog bred to fight gryphons! It'd have to be a mighty big dog, though . . .

"Obsolete" and "rare" is the use of the name "Griffon" to mean "A Greek," according to the OED, but that weighty tome gives several quotes on the matter, the most recent being from 1844: "Greeks . . . who are called Griffons wherever Romance is spoken," writes Sir F. Palgrave.

"Griffonage" comes from the French griffonner, "to write badly, scrawl." Well, it's hard to write well when holding a pen with those long talons!

"Griffin" and its derivatives can have suffixes, like more mundane words. "Griffinesque" means "of the style of a griffin." See? I knew the bird-beasts had style. The OED quotes Lord Lytton: "Blanche had just one of those faces that . . . might become gryphonesque." Lucky woman!

Speaking of women, "griffiness" means a female griffin. I used this word in some stories, but it began to sound sexist, like "aviatrix" instead of just "aviator". I still like the sound of the word, though. Griffiness.

"Griffinish" means "characteristic of a griffin." "Griffinism" means "griffinish nature or characteristics." Ruskin's Modern Painters says: "The honest imagination gains everything: it has griffinism, and grace, and usefulness, all at once." Why, I thought griffins were already graceful and useful!

The British in India, however, got the most mileage out of new versions of "griffin". "Griffin" in 18th and 19th century India meant a European, usually a young English soldier, newly arrived in India. If you're totally new to something, you're "a perfect griffin," "an unfledged griffin," "an utter griffin." But nobody's perfect . . .

This leads to some marvelous definitions. "Griffinage" means "the state of being a 'griffin'," as does "griffinhood" and "griffinship". "Griffish" or "griffinish" means to be like a griffin, that is, inexperienced. And this leads to a nice long word, "griffinishness": "We were afraid of eliciting some remark on our griffinishness, if we gave utterance to such a reflection," it says in Benares Magazine for 1850. (G. P. Sanderson's 1878 book Wild Beasts of India has a chapter entitled "In the Days of our Griffinage," just in case you were wondering where I got the title for this article from.)

I have written several stories and novels (mostly unpublished) about gryphons and werewolves. I once started a tale of a were-gryphon, but it petered out years ago. I may have to give it another shot, though, reading all these quotes about people's griffinhoods, griffinages, and griffinships. "What fun!" as Alice's Gryphon says.

Simpson, J. A., et al.. Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition (Oxford University Press, 1989 [1924]), Volume VI, pp. 838-839.

 Seems like I should not write too enthusiastically about the future, because my best laid plans oft go agley.  I expected to be adding to my blog more often that I had been -- in 2022, and I haven't written a word here since.  Well, here I am again, and at least I have news!

THEY'RE COMING!

MOTHMAN! WEREWOLVES! THE BUNNY-MAN! LIVING DINOSAURS! THE CHESHIRE BEASTS! THE LEOPARD-MEN!

And don't forget Flabbit - the Flying Rabbit of Tulsa, Oklahoma!

They are the

BEASTS BEYOND BELIEF!

You've heard of the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot, but what about interdimensional hamsters? Flying rabbits? The Brentford Griffin? Michael D. Winkle (author of The Eyrie: A Book of Gryphons ) has published works on such topics as ancient creatures that are known to science, including the amazing coelocanth fish that has been around for over 400 million years, and new sightings of saber-toothed cats, Colorado raptors, and ground sloths of immense size; animals of myth and folklore (the Mamlambo, the Texas Dragon, Watusimba, and the Orouborus); creatures with apparent connections to UFOs (werewolves, dogmen, and batsquatch); and creatures of a supernatural nature or exhibiting strange behaviors (ghost dogs, the football beast, rat kings). Join Winkle as he uncovers the strange, the bizarre, the paranormal, and the mythical worlds of creepy critters inhabiting the worlds of science, myth, and horror!

Coming September 1, 2025, from Uncle Bear Publishing.

https://www.unclebearpublishing.com/#/

Post-Christmas Gifts (To Me)

 The day after Christmas, and already I'm in Gardner's Used Books to spend that Christmas money!

First -- The 1897 Sears, Roebuck & Co. Catalogue.  Now I'll know what sort of shoes, clothing, carriages, appliances, books, cutlery, etc. are proper for the late Victorian Era, in case I write a story about Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Jack the Ripper, Jekyll & Hyde, H. G. Wells, Lizzie Borden, et al.  I actually have similar books for 1895 and 1909, but they are so small I can't read the print, while this is the size of a good old-fashioned big city phone book.  Now hand me that Tincture of Arnica.  I cut myself whilst pedaling my Velocipede.

Second -- Hawaiian Legends of Old Honolulu, by William Westervelt -- a tiny hardback, smaller than the usual paperback book, first published in 1915.  Westervelt wrote several volumes about Hawaiian myths and legends; this is the only one I didn't have.

Third -- In the Midst of Life and Other Stories by Ambrose Bierce -- I've been wanting a paperback-size collection by Bierce for a long while.  This volume includes "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "The Damned Thing," "The Eyes of the Panther," and many other tales.

Fourth -- More Soviet Science Fiction, edited by Isaac Asimov -- I have the plain-old Soviet Science Fiction; it's an interesting look at how the Cold-War Russians envisioned the future, but a particular story I recall from my youth is in this second volume.  It was about a scientist trying to prove Darwinism by creating artificial life-forms -- that refuse to work the way evolution says they should.  Daring, for Communist Russia.

Missing in Action -- only a week ago I saw The Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes, a nice Penguin Books paperback, in the Classics section.  "I'll wait 'til after Christmas," I said to myself.  "No one's going to a) go to 'Classics' and b) take this ancient Greek saga."  I was wrong, apparently.  It wasn't here, or misplaced on any nearby shelves.  Well, 4 out of 5 ain't bad.

The Library continues!

 

 

Here is a bit more on how I would assemble a genuine library:

Crystal, David.  Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, Third Ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010).  After something as basic as the dictionary and the thesaurus should come the ability to use all those words.  This encyclopedia covers all aspects of language and linguistics, from morphemes and glottal stops to dialects to the possibility that thought itself requires words.  I’ve been looking for a book like this for 20 years!

Guirand , Felix, et al.  New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology (Feltham, Middlesex: Hamlyn House, 1972).  John Kieran suggested a good book of myths after the Bible, so one would understand the alliterations in other works.  His choice was Bulfinch, but I think Larousse is incomparable in its scope and in its range of pantheons, from the ancient (cave dwellers!) to the obscure (Slavonic).

Morse, John M., et al.  Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 2000).  Okay, a library needs an encyclopedia, the most basic of reference materials.  Since I’ll have so many volumes on so many subjects, I decided I didn’t need a many-volume set.  A good single-volume edition would at least point one in the direction one needs to go for any subject.  The Merriam-Webster book looked to be the best, having been assembled from that queen of references, the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Tolstoy, Leo (trans. Constance Garnett).  War and Peace (NY, NY: Modern Library, 1994).  Time to get some classics into the library.  I haven’t actually read Tolstoy yet, but War and Peace is often called the greatest novel ever written.  It’s also the definitive “monstrous book you’ve got to read for a class.”  I’ll read it sometime, because I have one of my goofy ideas for a story that involves the place and time (Napoleonic Wars).

Return of the Library

 After some months in my new apartment I built a veritable mountain of shelves by stacking them, level by level, in the middle of the living room (that being about the only place to put them).  Individually, the plastic shelves often collapse under my weight demands, but these have been tied together at strategic points so that they mutually support one another.  If their structural integrity finally fails, they fall together.

 I also started writing up little accession cards for my many books, on 3"x5" cards, one per volume.  Come on, who hasn't always dreamed of doing that?  Let's see a show of hands!

 . . . I don't see anything.  Well, I'm doing it, and slipping each book onto the shelves when its card is finished.  There are over 300 arrayed on the Mountain already, with more to come!

 I wonder:  Suppose I had to create an actual, real public library, volume by volume?  What would I acquire, and in what order?  Could I balance my personal desires with a more legitimate collection (what an actual library might order)?  Every day new books take their places on my tower of shelves.  Perhaps I might even read them, someday, but I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let’s see:

 ***

Nichols, Wendalyn R., et al.  Random House Webster’s College Dictionary (New York: Random House, 2001).  First book out into the light of day.  As Hawkeye Pierce said on M*A*S*H, it has all the other books in it.  I wanted an update of the same dictionary I bought for college, but that’s out of print.  This comes close, however, and it lists interesting etymological details for most of its 207,000 words.

Roget, Peter Mark, et al.  Roget’s International Thesaurus, Fourth Edition (Revised by Robert L. Chapman).  (New York: Harper & Rowe, 1984).  In some ways the thesaurus is more useful than the dictionary.  It’s more fun to peruse, too.  I recall an old Peanuts comic where Sally Brown writes a story about cavemen being attacked by a bloodthirsty thesaurus.  I redrew that comic myself as a kid – and I had no idea what a thesaurus was at the time.  (I think one actually appears in Harvard Lampoon's Bored of the Rings.)  Well, okay, this is getting silly, frivolous, ridiculous, goofy . . .

Holy Bible: Authorized King James Version.  (New York: Harper & Row, 1969).  Any glance over the works waiting their turn to pop out reveals that the Bible is the most important influence on Western civilization:  Dante, Milton, St. Augustine, any philosophy, poetry, history, legend.  As John Kieran writes in his treatise Books I Love, "It is not only a great book but a begetter of countless other books.  It has been published in various versions and many languages.  It has inspired authors down the ages and quotations from it have furnished titles for thousands of completely unrelated books in the different realms of literature.  It is part of our background in history and a cornerstone of our common culture."  This copy was presented to me in Sunday school back in 1969; it still has my scribbled notes in the front.

Shakespeare, William (edited by David Bevington).  Complete Works of Shakespeare, Third Edition (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1980).  What can you say about the Bard?  This is my college textbook, containing not only all the plays and sonnets but also full of biographical notes, glosses, criticisms and even political and cosmological ideas of Shakespeare’s time.  There are even some mimeographed handouts in it, left therein before hence by some rustic clown, by my troth!

Cleaning Up One's Act

 

About a week ago an important question arose on FaceBook.  Well, maybe not that important.  Someone wanted to know if something mentioned in a Godzilla movie was actually from Japanese legend or just made up for the film.  I happened to have run across a similar legend years ago, and I knew exactly which book it was in in my huge book collection.  Unfortunately, I didn't know where it might lie in my piles and piles of books, magazines, DVDs and papers.  I looked in closets and in boxes and under the sink and in cabinets, and it took me three days to find the right volume.  By then the world had moved on to other pressing questions.

"I've been in this apartment for four months," I said to myself, "and it still looks like I've just stepped in and dumped everything on the floor!"  So I spent a long hard weekend stacking books into columns by subject (so I will at least know to look in the Science pile, the Myth and Legend pile, etc.), boxed up magazines and comics, crammed DVDs into unused cabinet space, and put bill stubs, Xerox copies, and various important papers into manila folders.  I slowed down during the work-week, but by Friday night I was amazed -- my apartment looked rather neat (as near as my tiny one-bedroom place can, with so much stuff packed in it).

Then -- around 10:30 PM I picked up a magazine at random and actually started reading.  Even including more than eight hours of sleep, I was halfway through the magazine by 9:00 AM.  Then I started reading one of my intimidatingly long volumes . . . and opened a few of my collectible comic books and actually read them . . . and pulled out a random manila folder and read the clippings within . . . and I even took out some stories of my own and reviewed them.  This reading (and writing) thing might just get to be a habit, at least I hope so!

How I Spent My Summer Vacation -- Or At Least Last Week

 

There is a light switch in my new apartment which logically should have turned on the hall light but which instead shut off all the electricity in the living room.  I've flipped it accidentally several times (it is now taped down).  When flipped back on, the electricity returned, my computer came back on -- but my modem could not connect with the Internet.  The first couple of times I called Cox, and they were able to reboot my modem from their end, but Saturday it remained resolutely inert.  The person at Cox said maybe it was "fried".  From flipping a light switch?

Anyway, I had to take off part of Wednesday to wait for the Cox repairman to come.  He examined the modem, replaced some wires/cables he said had been spliced in badly, and, Lo!  The Internet!!

He left -- and two hours later the first of a series of thunderstorms marched through the Tulsa area and knocked out the power.  Only for a few minutes, but afterwards -- you guessed it, no Internet.

"Now, come on!" I told myself.  "There was a time you had no Internet.  There was a time you had no CD player, DVD player.  You were about the last person to buy a PC or cell phone.  So why the panic over a temporary Internet outage?"  True, but these days I pay most bills via the Internet (and billing time was almost here); I can't send out stories to magazines without it, and I tossed my last phone book long ago so I can't look up many important phone numbers without traveling elsewhere.  So I called for a repairman again; he'd be there Friday.

MEANWHILE -- My monthly rent is on automatic payment.  So is water and sewer and Cox itself.  I could have sworn the Public Service Company of Oklahoma was, too, until I idly opened an envelope from PSO late Wednesday night and found a Final Notice and a date for cutting off my electricity.  The date: a week earlier.

MEANWHILE MEANWHILE -- the storms marched through Tulsa.  Because of them my power went off twice a day anyway, judging by the number of times I had to re-set my clocks.

Thursday I fretted all day about PSO.  At lunch I spent half an hour on the phone trying to talk to someone.  Eventually someone answered.  I explained my non-auto-payment mixup, and I was assured PSO wouldn't actually cut off the power until August 9.  I hung up in relief -- 

But it was too late.  You see, the air conditioning where I work is always cranked up to subarctic conditions, especially so during the recent heatwave.  Thursday it was only about 80 degrees F. outside, but the A/C roared on as cryogenically as ever.  It was insanely cold.  Being on edge the previous few days didn't help.  I guess I lowered my bodily defenses, and by the time I went to bed that night I had the first raging head-cold I've had in years.

On the way home Thursday however, I stopped at the library to use their Internet and try to pay PSO's bills/late fees/reinstallment fee/whatever.  But I couldn't create an account unless I got their activation code from an email -- and I didn't know my passwords for AOL or OUTLOOK.COM (come on!  I signed on once 15 to 20 years ago, and they've stayed on since!  I forgot 'em!)  Replace the passwords?  Sure -- but you had to answer an email each company sent to the other email address . . .

Friday I stuck a check to PSO in the mailbox on the way to work; it would get there long before August 9.  I felt so ill at work I went home early.  I tried to call PSO to tell them the check was on its way, but a recording flat-out told you not to call for the present because all operators were tied up answering lines down and power out calls.

Yes, the storms were still around.  I got home about 3:00 PM, and the power was out.  The Cox repairman called and said he was amazingly ahead on his calls and could come at once.  I said the electricity was out; well, he couldn't do much without that.  He told me to call him if the power came back on.

So I sat there on my little bed, head pounding, snot dribbling, in my dark little apartment, and a horrible little thought came to me:  What if, despite all the assurances of the PSO operator, I had only reminded them of my tardy payments?  And they had finally gotten around to cutting me off?

I stumbled outside.  Other apartments had lights on.

"It's Friday, 3:30.  I have a 90 minute window before the libraries close," I muttered.

This time I took credit cards, bill stubs, the file of papers I signed when I first rented my apartment, my thick three-ring binder full of IDs and Passwords, everything.  I got online about 3:50, created a PSO account, gave PSO $180 in fees, late or otherwise (there's another $180 check headed their way in the mail even now, I hope that holds them for a while), and got home about 4:45.  I'll give 'em this, my power was already back on.  The Cox guy came, found out my modem was way too powerful for the apartment's wiring capacity (didn't follow it all -- he said something about needing a "four-way splitter"), and finally I was back in business.

I flopped into bed for thirteen hours.  I still have some hacking and coughing, but I feel like I've hit the bottom of some sort of abyss and am now bouncing up.

It's hard to explain, but most of the events of the past several years seem to fit a pattern -- learning experiences of a sort.  Problems and catastrophes, yes, but ones that settled themselves in an orderly fashion, and would have been utterly devastating had they occurred in any other order.  I'm not quite sure what I was supposed to learn from this week's events, though.

Oh, well -- writers are supposed to produce material for blogs, websites, FaceBook, Patreon, Twitter and more if they want to keep in the public eye, and my flow has atrophied over the past year.  Maybe now I can start churning out interesting essays and anecdotes again -- starting with this one.

The Continent of Cronos

 

                            Well, one of the above is Francisco Goya's Kronos Devouring His Son.

In trying to recapture the magic of my college days, I've been writing notes on index cards and in notebooks as I did in the days of yore.  One of my (admittedly malleable) categories is "Mythical Lands", fantasy places which might be real in some Otherworld.

Having mentioned it in a story, I decided to scribble notes on "The Continent of Cronos."  Briefly, according to Greek mythology, after Zeus overthrew his father Cronos [or Cronus, Kronos, etc.], he exiled the tyrannical Titan to a place far to the west, beyond the limits of the Greeks' known world, an extensive land known only as the "Continent of Cronos."

I decided to find an authentic reference to this fragment, just as I found similar tid-bits in old texts and journals at college.  It ought to be easy, I thought, since it appears early in the Grecian timeline -- probably in Chapter One of any book on Greek Myth.

I flipped through Apollodorus' Library of Greek Mythology but did not find the anecdote.  I looked well into the night through Gertrude Jobes' Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore, and Symbols, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Hesiod's Theogony, Graves' The Greek Myths, to no avail.  I finally found the reference I wanted in Plutarch's Moralia, in an essay called "Concerning the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon."

Cripes, I'm putting as much effort into writing up a couple of 4" x 6" cards as I would writing an actual article, I thought.  And my articles are often long in appearing because I want them to be the most thoroughly researched essays ever!  Oh, well -- when I churn out enough articles, sketches, anecdotes and essays, maybe I can divide them into categories and publish them as a series of books.

The Children's Crusade

 

I've mentioned several times how my writing was inspired in my college years by wandering through the Oklahoma State University's Edmond Lowe Library and delving into its hundreds of volumes on mythology, folklore, ancient and medieval history, cryptozoology, biography, and everything else under the sun.  A large part of the "mythos" that evolved sprang from the idea of a parallel world touching occasionally upon our own, into which earth people -- Amelia Earhart and the Roanoke colonists, among others -- have occasionally stumbled.

The Children's Crusade of the Thirteenth Century was to have a major influence on the Other World -- the hundreds of misplaced earth children were to found several countries therein.  Naturally, George Zabriskie Gray's 1870 book The Children's Crusade -- the first major work on the subject -- was of immeasurable help here.

After college (and after being laid off from my first major job), thoughts of writing stories and novels set in a fantasy world began to fade.  The nasty ol' real world kept impinging on my life and creativity.  I just sort of puttered along, not really trying to further my writing career.

One Saturday I visited the Tulsa Fairgrounds, which used to house the state's biggest flea market in the enormous IPE Building (now called the SageNet Center).  I wandered down aisle after aisle of tables full of pottery, toy cars, oil paintings, old tools and the usual flea market detritus.  I took little interest in anything, because money was tight at the time (when isn't it?).

One table featured books, so many some had to be pinned in plastic baggies to a huge vertical pegboard.  I glanced up at the pegboard and spotted, hanging over the rest like a Christmas angel, a small, reddish-brown hardback with gilded gold highlights on the front cover.  The Children's Crusade:  An Episode of the Thirteenth Century, proclaimed the title.

I asked to examine it.  Yes, it was the book by George Zabriskie Gray, an original edition published in 1870.  Someone named E. G. Patterson purchased it in 1886, as his ancient pencilings informed me.  It was in amazing shape for a century-plus-old book, and the bookseller wanted a measly ten dollars for it.  Of course it became mine!

Since that day The Children's Crusade has been one of my favorite possessions, and along with Curious Myths of the Middle Ages by Sabine Baring-Gould, No Longer on the Map by Raymond H. Ramsey, and Aristeas of Proconnesus by J.D.P. Bolton, it has been one of the major foundations of my story-universe.

Well.  Having written that after a very creatively-dry six months, I guess I'd better dig out my Children's Crusade novel and finish it!

My Work History: Ending as It Began?

 The letters, applications, birth certificates, Degree of Indian Blood cards, Tribal Roll lists, etc., pile up every day at work.  I've got to log and scan them all!  I learned a week or so ago that I was the only person doing that job; maybe I was hearing wrong.  But Friday someone mentioned that two temps had been hired to help with the mail-ins -- and that they stopped showing up almost immediately.  I guess I'm the only one stupid -- er, man enough to handle the job.

My latest position reminds me of my very first job as dishwasher at the Bixby Cafe in Bixby, Oklahoma.  This was washing by hand -- none of those fancy dishwashin' contraptions around here.  Only occasionally did I get help from a part-time fellow who was more janitor and line cook.

I needed help, and my boss Louise Gordon kept hiring help -- that vanished quickly.  I left my day shift one Saturday, pausing long enough on my way out to say hello to the new evening-shift guys -- two big and burly Good Ol' Boys.  I fell exhausted into bed about 10:00 PM . . . and about 10:15 my father dragged me out of the sack, because the cafe had called.  Both new dishwashers had ducked out the back door about 9:30 and never came back.  So I was scraping baked-on crud from the pots and pans until about 2:00 AM.

[These guys had the gall to come back for their paychecks for their brief time at the restaurant.  Louise asked them what happened.  They said they'd never seen anything like that pile of dishes and pans and silverware, and it frightened them off.]

Another assistant was Jim Ramsey, a fellow Bixby High student who didn't know his own strength, and he was the most easy-going guy I ever met.  I hung out with him because basically, if you told him to do something, he'd do it.  "He won't be intimidated by the pile of detritus," I told myself.

He had the day shift while I had the evening, this time.  I arrived at work in time to see him yank off his damp, dirty apron, yell "THIS IS THE WORST #$@% JOB I EVER #$%! HAD!", throw the crumpled apron into Ms. Gordon's face, then storm out.  So I was alone again.

One Mark Allen Winkle, my younger brother, told me he wanted some of the "easy money" I was making, so he went to the Cafe as well.  I actually had a day off.  He shambled in that afternoon.  His legs and hips seemed to work, but his upper body sort of deflated like a balloon, and his hands hung down around his ankles.  "AAAAAUGH!  I CAN'T STAND IT!  AAAAUGH!  I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!", he said, or something to that effect, and, needless to say, he did not return.

Well, there were other fun incidents, but after nine months at the Bixby Cafe even I ran screaming into the night.  Still, I toughed out while everyone else fled.  Was that being steadfast and true, or being an idiot, though?

Inspirational Reading

 Well, with multiple books to edit, re-read, and polish up for agents, not to mention coming up with material for Patreon, the ol' blog gets neglected.  Since there come long periods when I have nothing else to do but read, I thought I'd give space to some inspirational pieces of literature.

Golden Apples of the Sun, Ray Bradbury

What can you say about Bradbury?  His prose holds more imagery and metaphor than most poetry.  It's almost too good to start off with; an aspiring writer could get a complex!  "Golden" contains famous SF like "A Sound of Thunder" and "The Fog-Horn," but only a few stories are fantasy or SF.  Don't try to hem Bradbury in with labels and genres!

 

"Empire of the Ants," H. G. Wells

Had to look at a bit of Wells as a change from Bradbury.  There's a stretch of Bradbury-like prose in the description of the Amazon and the smallness of humanity compared to it.  The new species of intelligent ant is pretty formidable.  They should have taken over by the 1960s, according to H. G.

 

"The Snow-Women," Fritz Leiber

Leiber's back story for Fafhrd, the first tale of the first Nehwon book, Swords Against Deviltry.  A long, long story, over one hundred pages, with no chapter breaks, it's rather slow going until the last quarter.  The second volume, Swords Against Death, would probably be a better introduction to Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

 

"Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Thought I'd try a little classic poetry.  Creepy imagery of the Flying Dutchman-like curse of the sailor who didn't like albatrosses.  Some bits have become a little too familiar due to overexposure ("Water, water, everywhere . . .").  I didn't quite understand the need for the glosses (apparently by Coleridge himself), although I liked the references to Josephus and others to explain the type of "nature spirit" it was that the Mariner offended.

_______________

And one full-fledged book review:

The Intruders

 

Pat Montandon

 

(New York, NY:  Coward, McCann, & Geoghegan, 1975)

 

Pat Montandon was a local TV talk show hostess in San Francisco in the late sixties.  She became a professional “party thrower” to S.F.’s rich and famous (everyone from the Great Gildersleeve to Ted Kennedy), as typified by the title of her first book, How to Be a Party Girl.  Unfortunately, her life and career went into a spin after she threw an “astrology” party, and the reader is pulled along for the ride.

 

It seems a self-important Tarot reader was displeased with Pat’s supposed rudeness (she was busy greeting her important guests and forgot to bring him a drink).  Whereupon he grandiosely put a curse upon her and her house – a rather cold, old, empty place to begin with -- in front of dozens of San Francisco VIPs.  Her problems seemed to begin after this.

 

Montandon makes her case for something supernatural haunting her – she does list strange noises, music from nowhere, cold spots, and a sense of “presence”; her dog becomes so frightened of the house she has to give him away – but much of her book seems to be a record of simple bad luck.  Someone breaks in and steals jewelry, her car is hit on the bizarrely-curved street on which she parks, fires break out in odd places, and drug addicts and pushers move in upstairs.  Those seemed to me like normal big-city risks.  In these cynical times some of her other disasters seem rather tame:  She is supposed to be on Merv Griffin but gets bumped because the British model Twiggy takes too much time.  (“I felt myself retreating into the nightmare that had surrounded me for so long.”  Get over it!)  TV Guide advertises a televised appearance as “From Party Girl to Call Girl” (implying she was a prostitute; at least she sued them for $150,000).  After this a pimply-faced teenager calls her a hooker at a book-signing party (“I continued autographing books, but everything was a blur.  I could hardly see to write my name”).

 

So what makes the book interesting?  Well, there’s the man given the pseudonym “Earl Raymond”, an uninvited guest at the astrology party who dates Pat once or twice.  He devolves into the craziest SOB on earth during one date; I remembered him thirty years after reading The Intruders in high school.  Then there is the strange death of Mary Lou Ward, Pat’s secretary and best friend.  Much of the book is devoted to this tragic event, and we are given police and coroner’s reports, yet the more details we see, the murkier, stranger, and creepier her death becomes.

 

Reading it again after thirty years, another factor set in:  The book is almost a companion piece to Robert Graysmith’s Zodiac, though the infamous serial killer is never mentioned.  Names familiar from the Zodiac case pop up here, including Herb Caen’s and David Toschi’s – Detective Toschi is almost a “guest star” in The Intruders.

 

. . . So I read Intruders yet again, pretending that Zodiac was the cause of Ms. Montandon's problems:  the mysterious fires, the threatening and obscene calls, the break-ins . . . and damn if Pat’s “disasters” didn’t mesh well with the Zodiac timeline!

 

And the crazy boyfriend “Earl Raymond” becomes even more noticeable:  a large, heavyset man, he crashed the astrology party to begin with – paralleling the Darlene Ferrin painting party.  His attempted abduction of Pat Montandon across the Bay Bridge to “Squaw Valley, where he had a cabin” is uncomfortably like the Kathleen Johns abduction.  Just who was “Earl Raymond”?

 

Why would Zodiac zero in on Pat Montandon and her cold, dark haunted house in the first place?  Remember the astrology party that seemed to spark the curse?  “I planned to have a huge round panel hanging by the entrance, with the signs of the Zodiac on it.” (p. 27)  So Z was wandering down the street and saw the big zodiac on her door . . . naturally he had to wander on in . . . practically an invite.

 

Not mentioned in the book is yet another tie to Zodiac:  Ms. Montandon was married, apparently, for two or three days, to Melvin Belli, the attorney who received at least one letter and phone call from the killer.  As I understand it, Montandon and Belli happened to be in Japan at the same time; they got a little tipsy; Belli took our heroine to a strange Japanese ceremony; the next day he announced that it was a Japanese wedding, and that he and Pat were now man and wife.  I suspect there was a major ass-whuppin’ after this, and Belli insisted it was all a joke.  Were they married or weren’t they?  Inquiring minds want to know.

 

So here it is.  The Intruders is mostly a rambling memoir of a really crappy period in Pat Montandon’s life.  Interesting in its details of a minor celebrity’s career, creepy in parts but unconvincing as a tale of the paranormal, and interesting in retrospect as a kind of sidebar to the Zodiac mythos.  Worth a read, especially if you know anything about the Zodiac case. ***

"Countdown" is Coming!

 I finally gathered together enough of my short stories to make a collection.  The provisional title is Countdown.  The theme is:  each story is as short as or shorter than the one before, for those with limited time (or attention spans).  We end up at the end with VERY short stories, so I needed well over 100 to make a full volume.  What kind of stories, you ask? Well, I reviewed them, and among other subjects in the book are:  anthropomorphic insects, a sperm whale, Sherlock Holmes (several times), the Mothman of West Virginia, cameos of Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry (unnamed, of course), Jack the Ripper (multiple times), the Pied Piper, invading aliens, werewolves, the Cthulhu Mythos, The Hook and other urban legends, the Invisible Man (a few times), a scruffy little mutt, the Giant Rat of Sumatra, the Last Man on Earth (more than once), a stag-headed Wendigo, a pre-teen dragon, and a Jabberwock.

In other words, something for everyone!

More Random Thoughts

 I've read a lot of books and stories from the early part of the 20th century. When I first read about the 1918 flu pandemic, however, it was like reading about some sort of alternate history, because none of the books or movies or old radio shows I'd seen or listened to ever mentioned this world-wide catastrophe. Did someone go back in time and prevent it?

I started revising an old story and wondered if I might update it with contemporary references, including COVID-19. I decided against it. Then I wondered if I would mention the virus in any upcoming stories I had planned -- frankly, I don't feel like it, unless I have to for a plot point. Maybe that's what happened in the media and fiction of a century ago -- after putting up with a pandemic for so long, no one wanted to remind themselves and others of it. Looks like no time travel or conspiracies are needed to dump something into the memory hole.

* * * *

I'm revising some older stuff to adapt for/upload to Amazon Kindle, so I'm re-reading books and stories for the first time in some years. "Hey! These are pretty good!" I exclaim occasionally to the empty room.

Earlier I dug up a story I wrote -- well, MANY years ago -- expecting it to be wretched, crude, dreary, overwritten, etc. It definitely needed a lot of work [on every page], but even it wasn't too bad.

I've read in writers' memoirs how they looked at some story or article they published at the beginning of their careers and gasped at how bad it was -- unable to believe any editor wanted it in the first place. I keep telling myself I should be more critical of myself and see similar flaws in my old stuff -- but I rarely do. Actually, I usually end up crying "Hey! This is pretty good!" again.

Well, I scribble and type and delete and copy, and as the days and weeks pass I slow down to a trickle, wondering if what I'm working on is worth it. I need the occasional egoboo (as older fans called it) to keep going. Glad I can find it on my shelf of Mike Winkle publications! (Yes, I have a bookshelf with nothing but magazines and books with my efforts in them. Wanna make something of it?)

Getting to Work in 2021

Started February 2021 off and running with another Patreon entry, "Gazetteer of Aanuu Part 3." Reviewing my many old notes, some written in college, I really did feel the "secondary world" I was winnowing out of old myths, legends and Greco-Roman classics was more than just a backdrop for board games, stories and novels. Was it -- REAL?!!? Maybe not, but if Plato can give us Atlantis, Herodotus Hyperborea and the Rhipaean Mountains, Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, "Magonia, whence ships sail in the clouds," Sir John Mandeville Natumeran where "men and women . . . have heads like dogs, and they are called Cynocephales", and Pliny the Elder "the cavern which is called ‘the North Wind’s Cave’ -- the place named Ges clithron," the least I can do is put them in a gazetteer!

And as usual, I either have no urge to do anything or I try to do everything at once: for the anthology "Classic Monsters Unleashed" I'm trying for a Frankenstein and/or Phantom of the Opera story; I paused on "A Kingdom of Children" to work on a new novelette about the Gryphons of the Great Eyrie, and I finally wrote past the "hard part" of "Kingdom", which I've been leery of reaching for ten years now.

Moving my many books around out in the barn [where sadly most must remain for the foreseeable future], I'm reminded of my desire to write dictionaries/ encyclopedias/ guides to certain authors and series. I'd like to write a dictionary of the names, places, worlds and series of Andre Norton -- and for the fantasy tales of Manly Wade Wellman -- and of Lovecraft/the Cthulhu Mythos (though there are at least two of those already) and of the tales of H. G. Wells (though there's one of those out there, at least). Is that enough on my plate? I suppose. Now if I can just type everything into the computer!

"Strange Creatures" Fifty Years Later

 

I struggled through 2019 without celebrating the 100th anniversary of Charles Fort's Book of the Damned, and before this infinitely worse year of 2020 passes I want to make mention of the 50th anniversary of John A. Keel's Strange Creatures from Time and Space [SCFTAS for short]. To quote an old web-page I devoted to the subject:

"The present writer has always been fascinated by monsters, of the movies, the comics, literature, mythology, folklore and even (maybe) reality. By age eleven I thought I knew all there was to know about ghosts, monsters and bizarre creatures in general.

"Then one night my father took my brother and me to the bowling alley. We were expected to entertain ourselves while he bowled for the Warren Petroleum Company league. I slipped over to a nearby drugstore and scanned the bookracks. Nothing. For some unknown reason, I dug past the front layer of books on one rack and found a neat paperback with the compelling title Strange Creatures from Time and Space in canary yellow on a somber violet-blue background. A Fawcett Gold Medal book written by someone named John A. Keel, it featured a fantastic cover painting by Frank Frazetta. I plunked down my six bits and spent the evening reading.

I had never heard of the Mothman of West Virginia, or of the Beast of Bungay, or of the Men-in-Black who harassed UFO witnesses. I had never heard of the Burning Man of Germany, or of Thomas, the Winged Cat, or of the Bigfoot-type creatures reported from such unlikely places as New Jersey and Florida. Far from being knowledgeable about Strange Creatures, I was merely a novice."

****

In the years following I collected news clippings, magazines, books, articles and newsletters of cryptids, UFOs and other matters, mostly because I was a geeky Fortean, but with an agenda hidden in my subconscious.

I remember I dream I had in the late 1970s, in which I found a copy of "the expanded, updated, annotated Strange Creatures from Time and Space." I even remember the cover illustration of this dream-book: A nineteenth-century steam train is chugging over a canyon-spanning trestle in some desert area [probably the American West]. A Godzilla-sized Tyrannosaurus rex is menacing the train, a creature so tall its head is level with the cars even though it is standing in the canyon. (There is no story like that in SCFTAS, of course.) Since then I've worked on my own Expanded Edition (very occasionally, not constantly, or I'd have been finished long ago).

As I wrote, this much-maligned year of 2020 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of SCFTAS, and for years I hoped I'd have the Expanded and Updated Edition ready in time. Circumstances -- and the ever-increasing number of cases I wanted to include -- precluded that. Instead, I concentrated on a few key subjects, simply to get an idea of what the whole mess might look like. For instance, I took a page-long reference to what are now known as "phantom panthers" or "alien big cats" and blew that up into a forty-two page, twenty-three thousand word mini-book in itself. I'm not going to publish it anywhere, because that would entail up numerous copyright violations. An outline of the contents, however, runs:

-- A quote from Ambrose Bierce's story "Eyes of the Panther"

-- The original excerpt from SCFTAS (a mere 233 words)

-- The trilogy of articles from FATE Magazine that jelled the concept of phantom panthers, those being

-- "Mystery Animals Invade Illinois" by Loren Coleman (March 1971)

-- "On the Trail of Pumas, Panthers and ULAs (Unidentified Leaping Animals) Part I" by Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman (June 1972)

--"On the Trail of Pumas, Panthers and ULAs (Unidentified Leaping Animals) Part II" (July 1972)

-- "Mystery Animals" by Charles Bowen (Flying Saucer Review, Nov.-Dec. 1964)

-- "The Surrey Puma," an excerpt from Janet and Colin Bord's Alien Animals (1981)

-- "Ozark Country Panthers," from Vance Randolph's We Always Lie to Strangers (1951)

-- "The Wampus," from Ronald L. Baker's Hoosier Folk Legends (1982)

-- "The Manimal," from Creatures of the Outer Edge by Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman (1978) [COTOE for short]

-- "Another Upright Panther" from Herbert Ravenel Sass's “The Panther Prowls the East Again!”, Saturday Evening Post (Vol. 226, no. 37), March 13, 1954

-- "And Another Upright Panther" from Bruce S. Wright's The Eastern Panther (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin and Co., 1972)

-- "Invasion of the Lion People" also from COTOE

-- "At Last, the Final Secret of the Phantom Panthers!" an excerpt from Merrily Harpur's Mystery Big Cats (Loughborough, UK: Heart of Albion Press, 2006)

-- "Pennsylvania Panther" from Stan Gordon's Astonishing Encounters: Pennsylvania’s Unknown Creatures, Casebook Three (Greensburg, PA: Stan Gordon, 2016).

Hmmm. 233 words ended up expanding into 23k-plus words. A hundredfold increase. That implies that the fully-done expansion will weigh in at about ten million words. I'll check in again at the 60th anniversary . . .

Little Stapled-On Flag

 I've moved numerous times over the years.  As a writer, my biggest carbon footprint comes from the boxes, crates and plastic bags full of books, magazines, comics, manuscripts, notebooks, Xerox copies and scribbled notes I haul one carful at a time to my new digs.  Then comes the piles of shirts, pants, underwear, socks, towels, gloves and sweaters, half of which I don't wear anymore.  Number-wise, dishes, eating utensils, glasses, pots and pans come next in their clattering, banging masses.  And then there's furniture.

One item among my myriad possessions just does not behave.  It always pokes out and ends up by itself in some corner of the back seat or trunk.  It is a tiny little American flag, purchased at some forgotten flea market, held to a long dowel stick with only five or six staples.  Long enough that it will not fit into any of my boxes or crates, and it rips through plastic trash bags.  I have to roll it up and just set it somewhere loose.  I remember having to do this every time I've moved since well before 2000.

Even when I'm ensconced somewhere, it sits in the closet most of the time.  I dig it out on Independence Day and find some ledge or window sill in which to wedge it.  Ever since I was a kid, I loved the idea of there being "Flag Day," June 14, a lesser known holiday which was basically an excuse to put up the little flag again.  On 9/11/2001 it came out and waved for several days.

I just now got in my car, two weeks post-moving, and I realized the little stapled-on flag is still rolled up in the back seat.  Seeing as today is November 11 (Veteran's Day), looks like it should finally come out.

A Kingdom of Children

 "When are you going to send new novels in to agents and publishers?" asks a friend of mine.  I'm afraid I've used up all my viable pieces on Amazon.com Kindle.  Such efforts, though more-or-less self-published, count as published to the book industry (as does uploading stories onto your own blog or web-site).  Therefore the world must wait until I churn out more novel-length works.

A Kingdom of Children, a fantasy tale that starts with the Children's Crusade of the Thirteenth Century then flies off the map into my own world of "Aanuu", is the nearest to completion.  Just yesterday I found the last notebook containing my notes and scribbles for the last section of the book.  This also means, however, that I must bridge a few chapter-length gaps with brand new material before I can safely type "The End."  Then comes the reviewing and rewriting.

The last of my written works were hidden in a small (7" x 5") spiral notebook.  I'm a bit surprised, because I don't like writing in notebooks that small or smaller.  Just as I get up a head of steam, I have to stop and flip the page.  Also, the smaller the book, the easier it is to lose, or just become one of a pile of near-identical booklets.

On the other hand, I don't like college/school sized notebooks either.  It seemingly takes forever to write across a single line, and it feels like longer than forever to finish a page and turn to a fresh new sheet.  Ever since I started writing seriously, I've used mostly Mead 9-1/2" x 6" Spiral Notebooks (or the nearest equivalent), the more pages the better.  Originally they had 200 sheets, but I haven't seen more than 180 per notebook in quite some time, and many are a paltry 150 or even 100 sheets.

Some of you might ask, "Why not compose straight onto the computer?"  Well, I've tried doing that for over twenty years; it ain't happening.  I'll always be faster with pen and paper.  Also, I can pull out a notebook and pen almost anywhere, and I'm limited to my tower PC computer-wise.

This device they call a Tablet certainly looks interesting, however . . .

Monster Museum

 Between my web page, FaceBook, this blog, Patreon and just writing in general, I'm needing material to write, so here's something a bit random:

I remember it was the 1960s . . . kids at school passed around a rumor that there was a book in the school library about monsters -- not some silly "101 Monster Jokes" book, or a Scholastics paperback 40 pages long, but an actually heavy, hardback book about MONSTERS!  But adult books weren't ever about fun things like that!  I kept trying to check it out, but somebody always got it before  I did.  Finally I got this weird title:  Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum!  And the rest was history.

It was my introduction to Silver John with "Desrick on Yandro."  The next was "O Ugly Bird" in Red Skelton's Favorite Ghost Stories.  Finally, I went to college, and found Who Fears the Devil? -- the original Arkham House version -- in the library.

And -- why not? -- a link to one of my own Silver John stories:  "Away Down the Road a Piece"

Fantasy World Project -- Patreon Edition/Bradbury's 100th birthday

 For good or ill, I've created a Patreon page, The Fantasy World Project.  Between that, this blog, my website, and my stories and novels, I've got to start producing copy!

####

The 20th of August was Ray Bradbury's 100th Birthday, so I have to write something Bradburian!

I almost missed my only opportunity to see Ray in person when he gave a talk at the main public library in Tulsa, OK, about 1996. I was watching a goofy cartoon version of "Tales from the Crypt" ("Tales from the Crypt-Keeper"), and I wanted to see how the running feud between Crypty, the Vault-Keeper, and the Old Witch turned out. Sad, isn't it? But I finally zipped up to the library, where Ray greeted his audience with, "YOU PEOPLE DON'T KNOW WHAT DEATH IS!", which was not quite how I thought he'd start out. He talked about life during and after the flu epidemic, and how high child mortality rates were, and how families had multiple children to make sure there would be a new generation. Finally, however, he started on the more familiar Mr. Electrico and the like.

Anyway, he signed my copy of WONDER Magazine #8, the all-Bradbury issue.