Internet Chapter

Holiday Special
1999 Honored Guests return



Continuing the tradition begun last year, this year-end Spotlight Profile features the members we've met here this past year and, in addition, our Founder, Barbara Paul. What's a Special without the Founder? Not all 1999's guests were able to make the party, but you'll be well entertained by those who did: Marthe Arends, Sheila Barrett, Pat Browning, Barbara (Babs) Lakey, Sand Magnuson, Kathy Phillips, and Lynn Turner. This year, I put five questions to our inventive crew. Let's see how our guests did.
IC
The doorbell rings. You open the door. Instead of holiday carolers, you find the proverbial little old lady, toting a cloth bag, who requests a donation for the Fair Haven Home for the Elderly. You've never heard of it. What do you do?
Marthe Arends
Frisk her! Around here, The Fair Haven Home for the Elderly is a well known house of ill repute whose employees like to shake down donations dressed as homeless aged folk (the ones to really watch out for are a particularly nasty gang who call themselves "Santa's Little Elves"). We old-time residents know better though--a quick peek through the blinds at the Fair Haven recreation room on Christmas Eve makes it pretty clear that the Elderly at the Fair Haven Home for the Elderly and Lush Bordello sure know how to shake their groove thing. It's enough to make your eggnog curdle!
Sheila Barrett
Get the address, then grab the bag.
Pat Browning
I bring her in, ply her with eggnog and get the lowdown on the Fair Haven Home for the Elderly. I may want to move in after I hobble across the bridge to the 21st century.
Barbara Lakey
Invite her in, give her wine until she nods off and steal her bag. Hahaha. Just kidding. I’d donate money and food and drive her home! But first I'd make her sit and listen to me read my latest story, and I'd ask her to sell copies of my magazine FUTURES (or better yet, subscriptions) to all at the Fair Haven Home for the Elderly!
Sand Magnuson
Hey, I live in the French Quarter. I never open the door to little old ladies.

I am one, and I know.

Barbara Paul
I give her one dollar. Then if she cusses me out for being a cheapskate, I take it back. But if she thanks me and turns to leave, I hand her a twenty.
Kathy Phillips
I'd invite her in for a toddy and ask about her Home--and try to find out what she's carrying in her bag (A cloth bag in the winter? Odd).
Lynn Turner
I wonder what’s in the bag. A gun? Even if I’m alone in the house, I say, "Excuse me a moment," then I step back and yell up the stairs. "Honey, there’s a lady here collecting for Fair Haven Home for the Elderly. Are they on our charity list?" If the little lady is a would-be robber, this will make her think twice.
IC
What's your favorite holiday memory?
Barbara Paul
Figuring out that the Santa who appeared in our living room when I was six and our next-door neighbor were the same person. It made me feel good about the neighbor and I already had my suspicions about the guy in the red suit anyway.
Sand Magnuson
The holidays I ignored.
Kathy Phillips
I was about ten or so--fourth grade--and I had mono when it was still called "glandular fever," so I had to stay put, more or less. In an attempt to make me stay put, I got a zillion books for Christmas, including the first four books in the Judy Bolton series. I had already read several Nancy Drew because my mother had them, but Judy was new to all of us. I remember sitting on the floor in the living room, reading, while the family got dinner ready and cleaned up package wrappings. And I don't remember what I was doing last Tuesday.
Sheila Barrett
Archaeological dig on Achill Island, off Co Mayo, Ireland.
Pat Browning
My favorite holiday memory will be the one taking shape right now. For better or worse, I'm finishing my first mystery novel. A friend kindly recommended it to her agent, who agreed to take a look at it. That unexpected news arrived the second week in November, at a time when my writing output consisted of notes scribbled on backs of envelopes in a form of shorthand that self-destructs in 24 hours. Now I have a self-imposed deadline of Dec.1 for getting the manuscript toned and tanned and in the mail, and I'm approaching meltdown.
Barbara Lakey
I got a favorite gift when I was a pre-teen, from a ‘stud’ that I had a crush on. It was a small cedar box (jewelry box sized) with a lock and key and it was stuffed full of my fave, Juicy Fruit Gum!
Marthe Arends
Oh, my. There are so many, it's difficult to pick one favorite...well, there was the time that Little Ricky wanted a new conga drum for Christmas, but Ricky said it was too 'spensive, so Ethel and I took a job as a department store Santa...no, wait, that was an episode of I Love Lucy, wasn't it?

Mmmm...well, there was the lovely family dinner we had a few years ago when all the kids came home with their families. Cindy was a little snotty at having to sit at the children's table, but Mike and I thought it was nice having the whole bunch together again, especially when Alice made her special Holiday Green Bean and Fruitcake casserole...blast, I think that was a TV show too.

My favorite holiday memory...ah, have one now, and it's not a TV show! One year I was feeling rather poorly, business was bad, the bank was threatening to foreclose, there was trouble with the family, and I was just about at my wit's end. One night--oh, just a few days before Christmas--I was standing on a bridge looking down at the river, and thinking how much better everyone's life would be without me, when this portly man named Clarence...hmmm. That seems to ring a bell, too. Perhaps an angel is getting her wings!

The only other memory I have of Christmas concerns a green man with pointy shoes and a voice like Boris Karloff who oozed down my chimney accompanied by a dog named Max, but that memory seems a bit one dimensional and hazy.

IC
What's the best gift to give a writer?
Lynn Turner
I don’t know any wealthy writers, so the best gift would be both useful and save her money: a stack of ream-sized manuscript boxes neatly folded; large mailing labels already printed with her return address; an IOU--the critique/edit of one manuscript; a ‘cushion’ that both heats and brings her feet up to the right height when she’s typing; if she’s Canadian, a bunch of first-class American stamps.
Kathy Phillips
A book by someone new.
Barbara Paul
An eraser.
Sand Magnuson
Energy.
Barbara Lakey
Time. Give your writer the time to create without guilt! That would be better than a non-caloric Turkey Dinner!
Pat Browning
Four hours of uninterrupted time every day.
Sheila Barrett
Time.
Marthe Arends
Now this is a very serious question. I take the selection of items to put on my Christmas list veeeery seriously indeed. One doesn't want to give a writer something that is too cheap--it might damage the frail and delicate psyche of the writer. Nor does one wish to give a frivolous gift, such as a platinum pen for signing those multi-million dollar contracts--it would only make the writer too self-aware, effectively killing all inspiration. No, I think something in between extravagent and stingy--something like (I hope Santa is reading this) the OED on CD-ROM, easily purchased on a secure server at fine shopping emporiums across the Internet.
IC
What's your favorite holiday movie?
Barbara Lakey
Without a doubt, A Christmas Story--the 50’s flick with Darren McGaven about the family and the redheaded kid who wants to get the BB gun and the mom says it’ll put your eye out! Great ‘feel-good’ story!
Sand Magnuson
Dicken's A Christmas Carol, but the ending sucked.
Kathy Phillips
White Christmas with Bing, Rosie, Vera, and Danny.
Lynn Turner
A Christmas Carol, the old one with Alaistir Sims. We watch it every Christmas Eve, and I always cry.
Barbara Paul
Without a doubt, the Alistair Sim version of A Christmas Carol. A peerless performance by Sim, the standard against which all other Scrooges are measured. And the joy in the season that concludes the movie isn't just something faked for the camera; it's both real and contagious.
Marthe Arends
Anything but An Affair to Remember. My favorite holiday movie, besides Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, has to be Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase.
Pat Browning
My all-time favorite is The Homecoming, a made-for-TV movie starring Patricia Neal. It was the forerunner of The Waltons, one of my all-time favorite TV series. The Waltons could have been my own family except for the mountain and the two-story house. Any episode gives me a good wallow in nostalgia. I mourned when John-Boy grew up and left home.
Sheila Barrett
Moonstruck.
IC
What's your wildest prediction for the Millenium?
Kathy Phillips
The internet will go the way of the telegram, Gates and Marconi will be covered within the same chapter in the history books, and we'll travel as quickly as we now send email. Not so wild: the automobile is the child of the twentieth century, and it will slowly die out during the twenty-first.
Barbara Paul
It won't get here until 2001.
Sand Magnuson
Better software.
Barbara Lakey
The entire FUTURES staff, artists, writers will all become published, rich and famous! Yes! We can make it happen when we work together!
Pat Browning
Every computer in the world turns over to the Year 2000 and life as we know it goes on.
Sheila Barrett
Peace!
Marthe Arends
There will be some sort of massive glitch with Internet and NASA, allowing people to launch the space shuttle every time they visit Amazon.com.
This interview was conducted during the month of November for SinC-IC by Louise Guardino.

Some of our guests have web pages. Go visit! Marthe Arends | Babs Lakey | Barbara Paul | Kathy Phillip's Spenser's Mystery Bookshop



Marthe Arends | Sheila Barrett | Pat Browning | Babs Lakey |
Sand Magnuson | Barbara Paul | Kathy Phillips | Lynn Turner

spot@sinc-ic.org




Read an earlier Spotlight Profile

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