Laundry Fugue (featured in ELECTRIC GRACE: Still More Fiction by Washington Area Women)

edited by Richard Peabody, c 2007 by Paycock Press

"The high only worked as long as she didn't think, but it was an effective block to thought - she just floated out on the radio - somewhere people who wanted to be together were listening to this same song, getting off on it, and years down the road they'd be nostalgic for it the way Mom was for that Don Gibson song "Sea of Heartbreak" that she said reminded her of being newly wed. For Ginger, the memory of "Angie" would be forever tied to this attempt to escape Budge's trial..."

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FILM REVIEW

"Persepolis," an animated film by Marjane Satrapi, derives its power from several sources: the simplified imagery inherent in spare black & white drawings, the well-developed characters (voices of Danielle Darrieux as her grandmother, and Catherine Deneuve as her mother, don't hurt), the backdrop of political upheaval, displacement and tragedy, and amid all this, the compelling story of a rebellious young woman who both defies authoritarians and sabotages her own opportunities – in short, a real person.
    In the same way that an accurate drawing is more exact than a photograph... Satrapi's minimalist use of eyes, shadows, the blunt rectangles of cityscapes, and the postures of her characters, convey volumes.  There's no wasted motion in this film. Each detail contributes, whether it's the foreground image of an inchworm on a budding tree, or the way Marjane twitches her chador to cover her hairline.

Journal - Fishing Trapper's Lake

About 50 feet from the dock, Dad let out some line to trail along as he rowed.  We hadn't got far when he shipped the oars and picked up his rod, the arc and jiggle of the tip indicating a fish.  He reached expertly over as he drew it close, gripped the fly and wiggled it, and the fish was free.   
"He caught himself," Dad explained modestly.  "I didn't do anything."   But plainly we were in the presence of a master.  In the middle of the lake, typical of a high-country afternoon the wind came up, the sky transformed in moments from a few white puffs to a bank of dark low-flying clouds.  We continued to fish, of course: they don't care about surface weather.   I was fly-fishing.  The wind caught my line and it all came down in a mass beside the boat.  I took in some, lifted the rod, and whipped the line out of the water and across the boat, then reversed the cast.  The line came flying back, and
"Damn!" Dad exclaimed.  Buried in the end of his nose was my #18 black gnat.
"Oh no! Dad!" I cried.
"Just take it out," he requested, wonderfully calm.