By Sally Carpenter

To a writer, computers are a necessity, our instrument if you will, just as a saxophone is to a blues musician, a brush to a painter or a costume to an actor.

But do we love our computers? In museums one can see the typewriters of famous authors, but has any author put her computer on display? We seldom have a chance to get “attached” to a computer, as we must purchase a new one every few years to keep up with technology.

Few of us want to return to the days of carbon paper and Liquid Paper (except Woody Allen who still writes his screenplays with literal cut and paste) but has all those electronics really us smarter?

Here’s a brief history of my experience with computers.

 In high school I was trained as a touch typist, learning not to look at the keys or the paper in the roller as I typed. So I can’t look at a computer screen when I compose. It slows me down and stops my thoughts.

I earned my bachelor’s degree with a portable manual Smith-Corona. Later I moved up to an electronic typewriter with a memory so I could backspace and make corrections without erasing. Now that was cool.

The first computer I ever saw was in 1976. It was a small grey box that operated by inserting five-inch floppy discs. At the time I didn’t think it was an improvement over the typewriter.

The computer lab in the basement of the college library had big, bulky computers that ran on FORTRAN or some such program. One had to type long, complex commands to make it work. Printouts were barely readable dot matrix on long rolls of green-and-white striped paper with sprocket holes along the sides. One had to tear the pages apart and remove the holes. How cumbersome.

For a while I did temp work in various offices. Computers had not yet been standardized, so every business had its own unique word processing program. I hated having to learn a new system with every assignment. I remember the Wang software. To run spell check, one had to first completely exit out of a document.

On one assignment I became proficient in WordPerfect. I liked it so much that when I bought my first computer–a Brother DOS–I set it up with WP. The commands were made by holding down two keys at once–the alt, shift or control key along with a number or letter key. For a fast touch typist (I can do 75 wpm) I could keep my fingers on the keyboard and not slow down to reach for a mouse. I loved the clickety-clack of the keys. I wrote a slew of fiction as well as graduate school papers on this machine.

I’d still be using that workhorse except for one thing–the Internet. DOS cannot support the web. For a while I used a second computer a laptop with Windows for web surfing and email but I continued writing on the Brother. However, the laptop constantly broke down and when the motherboard gave out after only 2.5 years, I was through with it.

I finally had to give up the Brother about the time I started writing mysteries because many publishers (and now, all) were only taking electronic submissions. A friend gave me his old antiquated iMac when he upgraded. Now I could write, send emails, and use the web on one computer-sort of. The machine is limited in its web capabilities and can be ghastly slow with emails, but it works.

And when I can upgrade to a modern computer, I’ll be going for retro. The QwerkyWriter is a keyboard that hooks up to any tablet or monitor but looks like a manual typewriter keyboard with “clickety clack” and a “return” lever that’s the “enter” key. Everything old is new again.

 

 

By Sally Carpenter

How did Halloween change from a day of fun for kids to a time of terror?

Many mystery writers like Halloween because of its spooky nature and ghosts of the dead (murdered?). The day itself is on the eve of All Saints Day, when Christians honor the giants of the faith who have gone on to their eternal reward. Today, Nov. 2, is All Souls Day to remember all of the dearly departed, especially loved ones.

But to most people, Halloween is a time of dressing in costumes, parties, special decorations, watching scary movies and that greatest tradition of all, trick-or-treating.

Growing up in the country outside a rural Midwest town, Halloween didn’t make an impact on me. Mother brought costumes from the five and dime store and drove my brother and me to the three or four nearby neighbor houses for trick-or-treating. My haul was only a few pieces of candy. The next day on the bus to school, I saw a couple of schoolteachers’ homes that had been TP’d (the trees covered in the toilet paper) during the night. My church youth group had a Halloween party. Halloween was just a time of fun and harmless pranks

Some years later, Halloween took a dark turn. The news media reported kids finding laxatives and razor blades in apples in their t-or-t bags. Kids were urged to only stop at the homes of people they knew, trick-or-treat in groups and go out in daylight.

Concerns grew over store-bought costumes catching fire or ill-fitting plastic masks that blocked a kids’ vision. Costumes grew gorier. Motorists were hitting trick-or-treaters crossing streets. Pranks had degraded into vandalism and destruction of property.

Halloween had become a deadly holiday.

Where I live now, many cities, schools and houses of worship host their own Halloween family  events, described as “safe and fun trick or treating.” These events offer supervised games, mildly scary haunted houses, costume parades and “trunk or treat,” where adults hand out candy from the trunks of their parked vehicles. Everyone stays in one area and nobody roams through the city streets.

Police issue annual warnings, telling kids to use caution when crossing streets, to carry flashlights and wear costumes that allow one to see clearly. Adults are encouraged to hand out healthy snacks to kids at their doors. The local dentists host “buy backs,” paying kids to turn in their Halloween candy for money instead of eating all of those sugary snacks. State law forbids registered sex offenders from participating trick or treating and even from putting out Halloween decorations.

While some order has been restored to an unruly tradition, it seems to say that the world at large is a scary place. People can no longer trust their neighbors-in large cities and apartment/townhouse complexes, many residents don’t even know their neighbors. What was once a kids’ holiday has become a time of fear.

Have we degraded into such a violent society that kids can no longer trust their neighbors to give them a treat and not a trick?

What are your thoughts? Is Halloween fun for you and your family or not?

By Sally Carpenter

One of the common images seen in crime and mystery stories as well as Halloween decorations is that of a black cat prowling in the night, a sinister and evil figure. Yet most black cats are just as friendly and playful as other cats. In the words of Curly Howard, they’re “a victim of circumstance!” How did black cats get such a bum rap?

A black cat is not a specific breed. The Cat Fanciers Association allows solid black coloring in 22 of its recognized breeds. The only breed with all-black felines is the Bombay, produced by mating a Burmese with a black American Shorthair. Male cats are more likely to be black than females.

A common variation on the color is the “tuxedo cat,” a black cat with a white chest and sometimes white paws, as illustrated by my dumpling, Boots.

Pop culture has produced such black cat heroes as Felix, who debuted in 1920s silent cartoons, and Snowball II of “The Simpsons.” In the 1970s John Lennon had a black cat named Salt and a white one dubbed Pepper.

Famous fictional tuxedo cats are: Sylvester of Warner Bros. cartoons, Figaro of Disney’s 1940 animated “Pinocchio,” and Mr. Mistofflelees of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “Cats,” based on T.S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.”

Black cats were not always stigmatized. In Egypt around 3,000 B.C., cats were worshiped. The goddess Bast (also spelled Baast or Bastet) was often depicted as a black cat or a woman with the head of a cat. Killing a cat was a capital offense, and dead cats were often mummified. As early as 1,000 B.C. cats were domesticated as pets.

In Asia and Scotland, black cats are considered lucky.

But in Europe during the Middle Ages, cats were seen as the familiars of witches. The sight of poor, single women feeding feral cats gave rise to this idea. The belief was that cats could change into human form and spy on persons. Early settlers to America brought their superstitions with them.

In the 1300s, communities killed hundreds of cats, resulting in a rise in the number of rats that then spreaded bubonic plague, the “Black Death” that killed millions of Europeans.

In modern times, blacks still have bad luck. In animal shelters, black cats are often the last color of animal adopted and the first that is put to sleep. Shelters often have more black cats than any other cat color. One local shelter stated that guests often see the more brightly colored animals before they notice the black cats, so the darker pets are often missed. This is Felix, a stray that some people found and turned over to my vet for treatment and who ended up in my house.

Pet owners in England are ditching their black cats because they claim the animals don’t photography well in selfies, according to www.mirror.co.uk. The RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) reports that 70 percent of the unwanted cats housed in its national animal centres in England are black or black and white.

But according to my experience, black cats make wonderful pets. I don’t know why but all of my cats have been gray or black. I didn’t set out as a “black-only” owner; in one case the cat chose me. Maybe these felines know I’m a sucker for an outcast or a hard-luck story.

So next time you’re writing that detective story, pause before putting that black cat in a dark alleyway. Why not make it white dog?

This post is based on an article previously published in the Acorn Newsapers.