Weekend Assignment # 346: Holiday Procrastinator

Continuing with the seasonal theme:

Weekend Assignment # 346: Holiday Shopper

Ack! The holiday shopping season is upon us! What is your shopping strategy for this time of year? Do you spread out your shopping over weeks and months, or try to get it all done at once? Do you mostly shop online or in person? How heavily, if at all, do you rely on gift cards, gift certificates or plain old fashioned cash and checks?

Extra Credit: Do you enjoy shopping the Black Friday and after-Christmas sales?

Um, I haven't started yet.

This is not unusual for me. It's not that I hate to shop, but I have limited patience with lines, and even more limited funds to spend. I'm not likely to get in line to buy anyone a new tv or computer at a deep discount. The only person I can afford to spend significant money on these days is my husband, and frankly we have a history of returning his "big present" to Best Buy (or wherever) immediately after Christmas or his birthday. We do this almost every year, it seems.

Even more limited in supply is my fund of ideas for what to get anyone. As you can tell from the above, shopping for John is a perennial problem. He tends to just buy what he wants. If he doesn't buy it, it means he doesn't think we should spend the money.

For many years, my dad organized Christmas lists, so that we all knew what other family members wanted and could share out gift ideas for each family member to buy; but even he has pretty much given up on this now. He sends a check, and I send Amazon gift certificates, to just about everybody. Or Borders or Barnes and Noble gift cards. Same thing, really, just in person.

A gift from me to me: sandals that fit!

So, no standing in line at Best Buy at 4:45 AM, as an old classmate of mine documented on Facebook Friday morning with a photo of a Best Buy line in Binghamton, NY. No turning in at Park Place Mall. I did want to participate in a push to buy local on Saturday, but I forgot. Nevertheless I managed it, by accident. Michael of Michael's Shoes, who is also the deacon at St. Michael's, coincidentally enough, is having a sale at his store. Since his store was the source of the only decent shoes I've bought in the past decade for my large, flat, pain-prone feet, I decided it was a good idea to get another pair while I could get them, especially at a substantial discount. So I walked in yesterday and said, "Show me anything you have in stock that's likely to fit and not hurt my feet!" Most of what they brought out was either too masculine or not right for the shape of my feet; but I got a nice and non-pain-inducing pair of sandals, probably the first pair I've had since college, if not high school. Okay, so it's a present from me to me, but I did buy local, on the big shopping weekend!

Still, I'm working up my plans and ideas. I have established that John doesn't want me to buy him an iPad, except possibly after I get the job I applied for last week. (More on this if anything comes of it.) On the other hand, he has mentioned a few things in passing, mostly housewares. I'll have to look into those possibilities.

Given that my unemployment benefits are currently under threat by Republicans in Congress, I'm going to have to wait to see whether I can send friends and family the usual Amazon gifts, and how much. There is one exception to this calculation, though. A friend of mine Back East, with whom I've been exchanging birthday and holiday gifts for three decades, was burned out of his home a few weeks ago when his landlord's apartment, which was below his, caught fire. Because it rained the following night, his apartment was so structurally unsound that he couldn't even go back in for the few possessions that survived. He's hoping to use Amazon to replace a few favorite books, and I'll be supplementing that with a few mathoms. I wish I could do more, but he's the sort of person who is embarrassed if anyone does anything in a situation like this!

Here are the guidelines if you'd like to participate in this week's Weekend Assignment.

1. Please post your response no later than than 12:01 AM on Thursday morning, December 2nd, your local time. You can do this either in a blog entry of your own or in the comments section of the assignment entry. No submissions will be accepted after that time unless I really want to.

2. Please mention the Weekend Assignment in your blog post, and include a link back to the original entry. Using one of the logos shown here is encouraged but not mandatory.

3. Please come back here after you've posted, and leave a link to your entry in the comments to the assignment. Please post the URL itself rather than a live link.

4. Visiting other participants' entries is strongly encouraged!

5. I'm always looking for topic ideas. Please see the "Teacher's Lounge" page for details. If I use your idea, you will be credited as that week's "guest professor." Help me out, folks, because sometimes I run dry when doing this week after week!

6. I reserve the right to remove rude or unpleasant comments (not to mention comment spam), and to leave entries off the linking list if the person has been rude or unpleasant, or fails to mention the Weekend Assignment in the entry.

That's it for now. I realize it's a busy time of year, but please jump in with an entry if you can. Have a great week! I'll be back Friday night with my Round Robin entry.

Karen

Weekend Assignment #245: Thanks Be to All

It's the night before Thanksgiving, and the last day to answer this Thanksgiving-related question:

Weekend Assignment # 245: Give Thanks

Thanksgiving is upon us, the time of year when we're asked what we're thankful for. Let's take the opportunity to interpret this literally, and actually thank someone! Tell us about someone in your life, past or present, whom you would like to thank for what they did, and why.

Extra Credit: Suggest a Weekend Assignment topic, because I'm running dry! Also: would you prefer that the topics be mostly literary, or is a variety better?

I've been thinking all week about who I'd like to thank. John? One or both of my parents? My brother, who used to cheer me up when my parents argued across the hall from my room? Some teacher? A writer? An actor? A politician?

Well, of course I'm thankful to John, my husband and beat friend for the last 31 1/2 years; but an entry in tribute to him would be tricky for me to write, and embarrassing to him rather than gratifying.I've written entries about each of my parents, my brother and at least one writer. As for politicians, well, even the best of them can be a disappointment.

No, I think I'd better go with thanking the people of the Episcopal Parish of St. Michael and All Angels. Don't worry; I'm not here to convert you or anything.

From St. Michael's Slideshow

My first visit to St. Michael's was sometime around 1997. I hadn't been to a church in years, on the theory that until I knew what I believed it didn't make sense to go to church and mouth words with which I disagreed. I was a lapsed Catholic, sort of raised to be a lapsed Catholic because my mom had been deeply ambivalent about the Church since long before I was born. But I was reading religious nonfiction by Madeleine L'Engle, and coming to realize that I'd never come to any decisions about religion without making the slightest effort in that direction. L'Engle was an Episcopalian, as was a friend of mine from my high school and college years. It seemed like a pretty benign denomination, most of the good stuff about the Roman Catholic Church without any of that pesky conservatism about birth control which drove my mom away in the 1940s. The first female Episcopal priest (I think) was at Syracuse University, an innovation that counted in its favor. And conveniently, there was an Episcopal Church just a few miles up Wilmot from me. It had a sign out front, "Jesus was a refugee." I liked that. So I worked up the nerve and went to church there one Sunday.

Father John Smith

Two things happened that first day. One, I found that the Mass, albeit tricky to follow because it involved switching back and forth between two books and a leaflet, was close enough to the ritual I'd grown up with to be comfortingly familiar. Two, and more important, two different people from the parish took it upon themselves to greet me and introduce themselves. One was a parishioner about my own age, Suzanne. The other was the rector, Father John Smith. He'd been at St. Michael's for about a year. Buoyed by this welcome, I returned the next week, and the week after, and on and on.

Not that I'm just a parishioner. One year, Father Smith called for volunteers to help with Mass, as acolytes (what I used to call "altar boys" growing up) and as lectors (readers of the Bible lesson for each week). I signed up for both. Through that, I made the acquaintance of Proscovia King, the Master of Ceremonies who trains and directs the acolytes and helps out at very nearly all the masses. Born in Africa, Proscovia grew up in England, where her mother was chief acolyte at Canterbury, I believe. I also became friendly with other acolytes, from high school students to University professors and staff.

In 2004, Father Smith started taking about the parish being on BlogSpot. I didn't quite know what that was yet, and when I asked about it, he put me in charge of the thing. From there it was a short step to becoming the parish webmaster. At the same time, I started to get into digital photography, and was soon taking pictures of major church functions to post online. This brought me in contact with other parishioners as well. Somewhere in there, my friend Kevin started riding to church with me, and we started to develop a small circle of friends who usually sat together at Coffee Hour after mass. For somebody like me who doesn't socialize much, this was a big deal!

Alicia Basemann and Nancy Vernon

But my integration into the life of the parish and its people took a big leap forward at the beginning of 2009. My job at First Magnus was long over, I'd been laid off at Beaudry and at that time lacked even a temp job, except for four disastrous days in January as a tax accountant inside a check cashing store in which nefarious things were taking place. An auditor had called for the parish to bring in a second bookkeeper to make the weekely deposit. Was I interested in the job? Well yes, of course! So bookkeeper Pat Strawn and Parish administrator Nancy Vernon showed me the ropes, and I put in a few hours a week at the church office. When Pat quit at the end of June, I took her place as parish bookkeeper.

On paper it was a step down from my various staff accountant jobs, but for me it was a godsend. I was making a little money to keep my unemployment from running out as quickly, it gave me nonprofit accounting experience for my resume and I had a place to go in the afternoons. Just as important, though, I was even more a part of this community. The two parish administrators, Alicia Basemann and Nancy Vernon, became my friends and confidantes, and I saw a bit more of Father Smith, whom I admire. Pat Miller replaced me on the weekly deposits, so I got to work with her as well. The parish has a number of volunteers, also, many of whom answer phones in the church office, prepare food bags for the poor and so on. Nearly all of them are twenty or thirty years my senior, but I've gotten to know each of them a bit as well.

Between carrying a candle or a cross in church, taking pictures, hanging out at coffee hour, doing the books and attending vestry meetings, I've become a rather well-known character at St. Michael's, and in turn have learned the names of many of the other parishioners and a little bit about some of their lives. I feel welcomed, appreciated. I'm part of something, a community with common purpose, not just worshipping God and drinking coffee together, but helping the poor, fighting for social justice and so on. It's not really within my character to go out on protests or travel to Guatemala with Ila Abernathy to help displaced Mayans, but I'm very proud to be at least tangentially associated with such activities.

So thank you, people of St. Michael's. Thank you, Father John and Father Ed, Nancy, Alicia and Pat, Ila, Les and Jim, another Les and another Jim, Jan and Mary and Kevin. Thank you, Proscovia, Jane and Toni Sue, Jo and Mike and the other Mike, Margaret and the other Margaret, and the lady whose name I can never remember but her son wrote a book about a Muslim boy who loves the Statue of Liberty. Thank you, Frances and another Mary, Robin and Al and Bob, and lots of other people I could name if this list weren't too long already. You've all enriched my life, and I'm very thankful for you all.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Karen

Round Robin: Untrue Colors

Ack! It's time to show my colors!

Although she doesn't remember it, this week's Round Robin topic, Colorblind, was suggested by Nancy of  Nancy Luvs Pix, three years ago this month. I've been wanting to do this Challenge (Basically, take a photo of something, change the color...make it interesting!) for a long time. This is something I really enjoy doing, taking a fairly ordinary picture and making it surreal (or at least more colorful) by playing with the color settings in my cheap photo editing program, PhotoStudio.

Let me show you what I mean. Here's a recent photo I haven't posted in any form until now:



This shot of Cayenne has had no color adjustment. I did, however, take the liberty of cloning out some of the boxes and stuff behind her - rather unconvincingly I might add!



Same photo, negative image. Is Cayenne a Blue Dog Democrat?


I got a dog and her fur is blue,
I betcha five dollars she's a good dog too!



Same image, solarization effect, I think on top of the negative one. The backgound has reverted, but Cayenne will never look the same again - not in this photo, anyway.

I also have a "dark marker" effect version if you're interested.

The psychedelia above took just a few clicks in the photo editing program I happen to have, but most photo editors have basic sliders to adjust saturation and hue, at the very least. Take a look at this:



I've increased the saturation on this Oro Valley sunset, and shifted the hue a bit. Result: the colors are brighter and just subtly "off."



Last one. This October sunrise, as seen through my bedroom window, has been saturated a little, but is not far off what my eyes saw that morning.



But I think the solarized version is more interesting!

Now let's see the other Robins' oddly colorful photos!

Linking List
as of Sunday, November 21st at 9:58 PM MST

Nancy - Posted!
Nancy Luvs Pics
http://nancyluvspix.blogspot.com/

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Kat - Posted!
In My Dreams I can Fly...
http://inmydreamssfk.blogspot.com

Linda - Posted!
Mommy's Treasures
http://mommystreasures.blogspot.com

Freda
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.com

Sandy - Posted!
From the Heart of Texas
http://sandyfromtheheartoftexas.com

Monica - Posted!
Shutterly Happy
http://monica-frameofmind.blogspot.com/

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Chris **Welcome!**
illilian
http://www.flickr.com/photos/illilian/

flashbulb100w
mga gihuna-huna
http://mgagihunahuna.wordpress.com

Jeanette - Posted!
Net On The Net
http://netonthenet.blogspot.com/

Jessica (new blog name/url)
Waters Edge Photography
http://watersedge.photoposts.org/

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

Peg - Posted!
Who Can Discover It?
http://whocandiscoverit.blogspot.com/
Karen

Weekend Assignment: I Love Tucson in the Fall

Time to answer my own question!

Weekend Assignment # 343: Fall Favorites

Some people like autumn leaves. Others like foods associated with this time of year, particular holidays, sports, weather, or even the run up to Christmas and Hanukkah. What is your favorite thing about Fall? (Note: if you're in the Southern Hemisphere, tell us about Spring instead!)

Extra Credit: What do you like least about this time of year?

For me it's sort of all of the above. Except for the autumn leaves part. Tucson trees do very little color-changing. It just isn't cold enough for that, and we have the wrong kinds of trees.

First off, autumn is my annual chance to pursue my "pumpkin anything" obsession. Pumpkin bread, ice cream, yogurt (frozen and otherwise), butter, pies, tarts, cookies, and variations on most of the above have all passed my lips at some point in recent years. Last weekend I combined the remains of my pumpkin steamer from the Starbucks counter at Safeway with a small vanilla shake from Whataburger, and made myself a pumpkin shake. It was good, too. Overall, though, I haven't indulged in much Pumpkin Anything this year.

Second, and probably more important to me, the weather from October to April is half the reason John and I moved to Tucson nearly a quarter century ago. This year, October was still quite warm, with an average high of 86 degrees and two days breaking the 100 degree mark. Still, that was a big improvement over September! It's also a big improvement over the Octobers I grew up with in Manlius NY, and later in Syracuse. It nearly always snowed before October was over, but the real misery of autumn in Central New York was all the dark, rainy days and nights, especially if the windchill kicked in as the cold weather roared across the Great Lakes Ontario and Erie. Yuck. It was well worth giving up autumn leaves to leave behind all that rain and snow. What little rain we get in Tucson mostly happens at predictable times, like 5 PM on a summer afternoon when it is mostly a relief!

Here in Tucson, November has been very pleasant. It's cool enough that we were finally able to stop running the air conditioning, but not so chilly as to require us to turn on the heat. There have been a few mornings when I probably would have benefited from wearing a light sweater, but some days I've still been in my short sleeved tops, and quite comfortable. It's great sleeping weather, with a blanket and a few dogs to stave off the chill.

The dogs and Kevin, 2009

The third cool thing about autumn in Tucson, for me, is a handful of holiday and holy day celebrations, and I don't just mean Halloween. As the church year winds down, St. Michael's celebrates the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, otherwise known as Michaelmas. This year that included the English Faire to which John and I donated so much stuff, but there was also a special mass with extra musicians to accompany the choir. A week later was the Feast of St. Francis, featuring the Blessing of the Animals. Someday I'll get a decent picture of Cayenne and Pepper getting blessed, but it's touch to lead them up to the priest, get them to stand still, and take their picture at the same time!

And yes, there is Halloween, and the Días de los Muertos celebration, Mexico's Day of the Dead, which is enthusiastically celebrated in Tucson. There's a very unusual parade downtown, and candy skulls and really amazing folk art skeletons. I've never gotten out to see any of this, but one of these years I will. Mostly I've seen it as decor in a few shops, but St. Michael's had a Días de los Muertos table in the back of the church this year, part of the Anglican Feast of All Souls. Same thing, just celebrated differently.

The Church year is kind of an odd thing anyway. It begins and ends in late November, when Ordinary Time gives way to Advent, the four weeks leading up to Christmas. In other words, it starts about two thirds of the way through Autumn! This year I have a selfish reason to look forward to Advent. As fat as I am, I have had an ongoing problem every Advent and every Lent when serving at Mass. When everyone else switched to different vestments appropriate to those liturgical seasons, I struggled. None of the red cassocks the parish has for Advent fit me at all, and largest of the black ones for Lent I can only get into if I get pinned in instead of buttoning, and try to hid the fact that it's not shut under a white garment called a surplice. Unsurprisingly, I find this extremely frustrating and embarrassing. Most of the time I just end up in my usual white alb, which does fit, but in those seasons fails to match what anyone else is wearing.

Expert tailor Sister Joy Ann in the meeting room at the Benedictine monastery

But the new church year, which starts in a couple of weeks, will mark a major change in my difficult relationship with liturgical garments. Having ordered red and black cassocks from two catalogs, only to return them when they didn't fit, we decided, with the rector's permission, to have red and black cassocks made to measure for me. This is being done at the Benedictine Sanctuary of Perpetual Adoration, the distinctive monastery on Country Club Road that I have photographed before. Sister Joy Ann and a few of her colleagues comprise the Liturgical Garments Department, which makes ritual clothing for priests, nuns, deacons and acolytes all over the country, but especially Arizona. After extensive measurements were taken, I went off to Hancock Fabrics and bought the yards of red and black cloth, for which I was reimbursed, and brought them to Sister Joy Ann. She then worked out how many buttons I needed to get, 14 for each cassock. I got them 5 to a card, half off of $1 a card, so that was a great deal.

Sanctuary proper, Benedictine Sanctuary of Perpetual Adoration

Last week I got a call to go over for a fitting. Rather than risk messing up the red cloth with guesswork for this patternless project, Sister had cut a partial garment from an old sheet, pinned together so she could made adjustments. Afterward she gave me a brief tour of the beautiful old building.

The monastery portion of the building. More photos at My Tucson.

Like a number of major Tucson landmarks, the monastery was designed by architect Roy Place, whose classics-inspired buildings are a big part of Tucson's distinctiveness. This is probably one of his very best works. November 2010 marks 75 years since the Benedictine Sisters arrived in Tucson, and 71 years since the groundbreaking on the current building. I just missed the open house, but there's a big anniversary celebration a week from Sunday. So you see, that's another cool thing Tucson has in the fall!

Karen

Weekend Assignment #243: Easy Rereader

Let's see; what have I been rereading lately?

Weekend Assignment # 342: Read It Again

Some people like to read a book once, and then they're done. The plot is resolved and they know whodunnit, so it's time to move on to the next book. Other people reread a favorite book every few years, and still others keep it on their shelves in case they may want to read it again someday. Are you a frequent re-reader, an occasional one, or are you "one and done"? How do you decide what to reread, and when?

Extra Credit: What was the book you reread most recently?

I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I'm a lifelong re-reader. On the one hand, that means that the books I buy are not a waste. Once I buy a book, I am almost certain to read it more than once, probably three or more times over a period of decades. In fact, aside from a basic collector's mania, that's why I buy all the books I read, and have borrowed a total of one book (I think) from a library in the past two decades. I figure, if it's worth reading, it's worth owning, so that I can read it again at a moment's notice. I mean, really! If I'm thinking about the Harper Hall Trilogy at three in the morning, I can go right to the shelf my Pern books are on, and start reading it again. Well, actually, I think the Pern books are in a box at the moment because I pulled them from my closet to put in the library. But the point stands.

But with a world full of books, a large subset of which are fantasy and sf and other stuff I might enjoy, why do I read a few hundred books over and over instead of sampling the whole range of what's available? This is where the embarrassment comes in, because the truth is, I'm not all that well read. A friend asks me what I think of Neal Stephenson or China Miéville, or recommends Charles de Lint or whoever, and I have to admit I haven't read anything by them. Heck, on our first date on New Year's Eve 1985-6, my last boyfriend before I met John bought me Dune and ordered me to read it. Later he also told me to read some Zelazny. I never did it, just as I never read David Copperfield, more because my mom kept saying that I should than because of any distaste for Dickens. When it comes to trying new authors, I am debilitatingly resk-averse.

So when I do find a writer whose work I enjoy, I tend to go overboard. I have over six feet of Madeleine L'Engle books, collected over the past 35 years. I have all of her novels, a reasonable chunk of her memoirs and religious essays, and some of her poetry. I have all of the McCaffrey Pern books except for one or two of the recent ones by her son. With a favorite author I know I will probably like the work, so I buy the books. Most of the time that works out, so I read it again.

Am I missing out on a lot of good books I would probably enjoy? Almost certainly. On the other hand, I really enjoy nearly everything I buy with my limited funds, and get good value by rereading them, usually when another book in the series comes out, but sometimes just for the heck of it. And I do occasionally try something new, that long-discarded copy of Dune notwithstanding. I think there were three Harry Potter books out the night I encountered them for the first time. I read the first five pages or so of Sorcerer's Stone right there in the bookstore, and then bought it. Within a week I had all three titles. Since them I've discovered...um...well, John Scalzi, I suppose. He's one of the few "favorite" writers whose books I pick and choose from rather than buying them all. And I do at least look at books that might be the next big discovery for me personally.

So what have I reread lately? Most recently I've reread several books by Patricia C Wrede, who used to write lots of witty and helpful posts on the old AOL sf and fantasy writer's message boards. Some of my books by her date back to the 1970s and early 1980s. Many of them were in boxes, inaccessible for over a decade until we went through boxes this summer. Now I can reread those old titles, which seldom turn up in bookstores, even used.

Yeah. I think I'll reread The Harp of Imach Thyssel next.

Karen

Fairness to George, Part Three

George Maharis and me in a Denny's parking lot, 1986.

I received an email today from Rick Dailey of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, who is building an online location guide to the 1960-1964 television series Route 66. Recently he and another fan have been researching the circumstances of George Maharis's controversial departure from that show, looking into actual documentation from the time. Rick got in touch with me because I wrote a couple of posts on the subject several years ago, based on my 1986 interviews with Maharis and others. I still occasionally get feedback from people about the two "Fairness to George" posts, so apparently there is still interest in this 48-year-old controversy. I recently found a dot matrix printout of the Maharis transcript, from our 1986 interview at a Denny's in Las Vegas, so this seems like a good time to post a few excerpts.

First, here's the gist of the story. Route 66 was a television series about two guys (originally Martin Milner as Tod Stiles and George Maharis as Buz Murdock) driving around the country in the late-model Corvette Tod inherited from his father, taking odd jobs, meeting people and having adventures. Three things made it an amazing and groundbreaking series. First, it was filmed on location all over the country, from Oregon to Grand Isle, Louisiana. Second, it was primarilly written by one of the show's producers, Stirling Silliphant, who drove around the country ahead of the production crew, and wrote stories based in the places he visited. Silliphant had a unique, lyrical style that was unlike anything else on tv. Third, the two stars, aside from being young and hunky, were interesting and contrasting characters, well-played by Milner and Maharis. Tod was the largely soft-spoken, well-educated but now penniless son of a failed businessman, with a strong ethical sense. Buz was working class, a bit of a rebel, self-educated, passionate and articulate.

And then George Maharis got sick with hepatitis, and ended up leaving the show under a cloud. There were accusations that he was trying to break his contract to go make movies, just another big-headed star behaving badly. The unreported (at the time) undercurrent of the rift between the star and producer Herbert B Leonard was Leonard's belated discovery that Maharis was gay, with the potential scandal that such a fact might cause the show if it ever came out in the press. This was 1962 after all, decades before Ellen. He was replaced by Glenn Corbett as Linc Case in 1963, but ratings soon declined and the show was canceled in 1964.

Found! The Maharis transcript.

Now let's have a look at a few bits of the transcript, which I typed up tonight for Rick Dailey:

Maharis: Well, they made a mistake with Glenn. It was very funny, because I had never seen the shows that he was in. I was ill. And I don't know what they told you about that, but that was a lot of stupidity and miscommunication. Nobody talked to me about it. And I was the object of all this garbage.

We had been working in cold water. It was winter, and we were working out here in California. We went out to do a show at the Veteran's Hospital, and there was a shot with Steve Hill, and I had to go down to the bottom of a pool and get him. Well, the inside pool that they used there was ninety degrees. The pool that they actually shot was an outdoor pool, and it was forty degrees. And the stuntman, who was my double, couldn't get in the water. It was too cold. So I did it.

He goes on to say that he also worked in a river with Barbara Barrie, at night in 17 degree weather, and she had a wetsuit and he didn't. He got a cold, and they gave him a B12 shot, and he got hepatitis from the needle. Then he worked in the water off Catalina Island, and felt very ill. At that point he ended up in the hospital for a month. After that he says he returned to work too soon, working long hours for the next four months.

Maharis: ...and I was in really bad shape in St. Louis. And the doctor in St. Louis , who they had sent me to, said, "Get home. Now." And for some reason or other, they thought it was something to do with contracts. And the doctor said to me, in St. Louis--and it was their doctor--he said, "If you don't leave now, you're in serious trouble." And I left.

And by that time, it was ugliness. It didn't have to occur. It didn't have to happen. But for some reason or other, the people who were next to the people who were next to the people, talk to each other, and they don't know what the hell is going on. And nobody ever called me about it, and said, "Are you ill?" All of a sudden I started reading this shit in the paper [which said] I was trying to get out of my contract. Trying to get out of my contract? I was in New York; I thought I was dying.

And here is the last page of the 53-page transcript.

Karen: He [Milner] said that he felt that Tod was not anything like himself.

Maharis: He's wrong. From my perspective, he's wrong. Very much of Tod in him.

Marty's not as gregarious as [I am]. He's not as trusting. He's more suspicious. I'm suspicious, but I'm more vocal about it. He's suspicious, but he's hesitant about it. I don't know why. He's been successful in his career, and he...you would think that he'd say what he wanted. See, I don't give a damn. I say what I want anyway. I figure, if they don't like it, too bad. Money doesn't make the difference of whether you can say it or not say it. I think everybody's got that right. The only thing is, you have to stand by it.

That's the best of it. here's also a rather good 2007 interview I found online tonight. Check it out here.

Update: I've had another email on the subject, and without going into specifics, I should state here that Maharis seems to have been more at fault in the circumstances of his departure than I ever suspected. The evidence would appear to indicate that (as usual) the truth is somewhere in between the claims made on each side, and possibly closer to the producer's side of the story than George's. For example, as producer Herbert B Leonard pointed out to us all those years ago, during the "three years" Maharis says it took him to recover from the hepatitis, he made at least three films, as well as recording sessions and singing appearances on tv. My guess, such as it is, is that Maharis felt he was well enough for these activities, but not for the more physically demanding work of an action-adventure tv series shot entirely on the road. What a shame; regardless of who was right and wrong and to what degree, the falling out between George Maharis and the makers of Route 66 cut short an astonishing run of literate, groundbreaking television, and left Maharis with a somewhat tarnished legacy.

Karen

See also:
Fairness to George, Part One

Fairness to George, Part Two

Round Robin: Through a Window

I've been so distracted this week what the date for the Round Robin Challenge: In the Window is upon me and I haven't taken any usable pictures for it. Well, not recently, anyway. I did take a few tonight, but they're worthless. It doesn't matter, though, because I've taken lots of pictures over the course of this year that do qualify as looking in a window. Some of them are previously unpublished, at least on this blog. Here are some of my favorites:



From March: here is a peek in a window of St. Michael and All Angels. It was around Palm Sunday, and if you look carefully you can see the crossed palms inside the window.



From May: I rushed into the Mission San Xavier del Bac late one afternoon, just before they locked up for the evening. In the museum and gift shop area there was a large display case full of old statuary. I managed to photograph the icons through both the front and side windows of the display.

From Tucson Botanical Gardens

In June I visited the Tucson Botanical Gardens. Here's a view in through a window of a greenhouse there.

From Summer at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum

In July a friend was in town for the day, so I met her out at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, essentially a desert-themed zoo west of Tucson. It was a hot, muggy monsoon day, so the animals weren't very active, including this ocelot, seen through a viewing window into its den.



This mountain lion was also sacked out in its windowed den.



These bobcats are seen here looking through a viewing window into their habitat.

That's enough. Now let's peek inside everone else's windows!

Linking List
as of Saturday, November 6th at 8:00 AM

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Karen