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The first draft of Hey Diddle Diddle was written in 1996/1997.  At that time I used fake names for everyone, hence in the rewrite a bit of confusion ensued.  Though many names are still other names and a few “alter egos”, many corrections are being made for the final manuscript with the help of notes and publications that were given to us for reference, but this is still a novelfor what it’s worth.

The man who was said to have recently committed suicide and then blamed for mailing anthrax love notes because he worked at Fort Dietrich, Maryland suffered from depression for which he was being treated.  And then there was the man arrested for saying he was going to do harm to future president Obama and never present President Bush.  Our human rights abuses of maintaining a facility that creates WMD chemicals and viruses while advertising the thought police are on patrol while we criticize other regimes for doing the same things is typical of the climate of hypocricy that reigns in America the Beautiful.

The recent revisions on Diddle have taken up most of my time.  It comes in at 101,669 words according to word-count.  I’m working on the last 14 pages and then reformatting begins.   My first unfinished book was written on a typewriter and my first completed and published novel DUST RAINBOWS and DIRTY SOX was written on typewriters. The computer does make a difference.  I picked up an application for Yellow Taxi yesterday–We hope to get a neighborhood newsletter out this week–Milburn is working on a cover design for diddle–and the city is still looking at papers for the park, of course.

We traveled to China in December 2001 to take photographs and video because of the 2008 Beijing, China Olympics. China by Rail at http://www.mayopia.asia is a sampling of video that we have had time to edit and 2001 China Impressions are digital photos. Art is everywhere in China and at the time there were more soldiers with guns in the USA that were visible than we saw over there.

Someday Duda and Rupert will tell that story but for now they still work on Hey Diddle Diddle…

The new version of Hey Diddle Diddle will not be posted at this time.  We also have a new tittle that will be kepy under wraps for a time.  Milburn Mehlhop is working on the design for the cover and we’re looking for a Fall release when I’ll probably be doing direct marketing in the seat of a Taxi.  Such is life.

This blogging thing is fun.  Since we write the neighborhood newsletter and we’re still waiting for the transfer of the Pocket Park to the Unit South Durham Homestead Houses Inc, a 501(c)4 non-profit formed over a year ago for the purpose of purchasing and taking care of the park and preserving block parking which was initiated in the mid seventies.

There is an entire sub-site dedicated to the project at

http://www.mayopia.com/UNITSOUTHD/UNITSOUTHD.html

We have been working with Baltimore City Council Person Jim Kraft’s office for two years and four months and have received numerous guarantees and encouragement that everything is moving along.

The parking situation has, however, become manageable and peaceful thanks to Charlie Parrish at Greenwood Towing.

In the meantime my wife’s property tax bill jumped 33% all of a sudden–something we are looking into.

Baltimore City is growing by bricks and mortar and steel–but many things remain the same old politics as usual.

Back to diddling with Diddle.

It was back to B’More, Hon. I escaped Wilmington, North Carolina in the dead of night leaving a clean house with a big tree down in the back yard and a stack of unpaid bills that could choke a mule. I gave Chanter and her boyfriend most of my books and everything I knew I wouldn’t have a place for at my new destination. I was EMPTY, living right there in the seat of my old, uninsured water truck, Iris, expired tags and all. I did still have a bicycle. The 60 dollars from Kay Eager came in handy since most of the two thousand dollars from Baxter-Hyland Pharmaceuticals went towards the final VHS copies, mailings and film festival entries. We had gotten one invitation from Yamagata, Japan for the film, but there was no money to do anything about it. I arrived three weeks before Christmas at the home of a still living brother, Yabba Duda, and I parked the truck off the street in back of his small combination farm/junkyard. I had been totally out of the drug culture for a dozen years until trying to get money from the pharmaceutical companies that got away with killing a lot of people. I didn’t know anyone in Baltimore with hemophilia. I was officially out of the BLOOD and flat broke. Everything was normal. I crashed on the couch.

Jackal had rotten teeth and lived in a back room of the house. Jackal was an ex-con with a big heart and was Yabba’s right arm since Yabba had such horrible health. Yabba had a stroke a couple of years earlier and something called Reiter’s Syndrome which he said had caused him to have a heart valve replaced several years earlier; he wanted me to make a movie about his Reiter’s Syndrome. “What’s with this homophelia?” he asked. “It’s hemophilia, Yabba. You really should read once in awhile.”

“I do stuff—I don’t need to read,” Yabba told me on my arrival. “Look at you. You read books and you’re on my couch. I haven’t read a book since high school. I own a bar.”

Despite his ill health and constant pain and handfuls of medication and beer every day, he managed to function as a father to kids that weren’t his blood and operate a redneck bar. The problem was that his wife was still around. Yabba and Courtney had a son in the marriage that was actually Yabba’s best friend Jackal’s son though it was not something discussed openly since Yabba had this thing about collecting things and ownership for the prestige of ownership–the obvious didn’t seem to bother him outwardly—the kid looked exactly like Jackal. Yabba’s wife, Courtney, lived in an upstairs apartment with her boyfriend Bobo, a part time crack dealer who didn’t like kids. Yabba took care of Jackal and Courtney’s son Gorp who suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and Courtney’s daughter Madonna from a former boyfriend, and held on to a confused set of morals and responsibilities. Besides a drug problem, Courtney also had a severe drinking problem. “I love my children,” was her Mantra—“I really love my beer,” was her activity.

The “Redneck Bar” in Essex was directly across the alley from an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting room and employed some of the foxiest deranged fillies that ever bit the cap off of a bottle of beer. It was good to be home for the holidays. FaLaLaLaLa LaLa LaLAAA.

The Ricky Ray Relief Act had virtually died with the upcoming election. I got to perform my second reason for moving to North Carolina, the first being escaping from Florida, voting against Jesse Helms. On the morning of the election I hopped on my bicycle bright and early and peddled over to the armory and voted for the other guy with confidence that no one I had met the previous year and a half had admitted to voting for Jesse Helms. In fact, many had expressed opposition to his narrow, vindictive, negative style. Jesse Helms won the election easily.

Lindsay Wagner did a Book Signing in Wilmington for her vegetarian Cookbook. I bought a book and spoke with her since there was no one else in line at the time. “Sarah Lewis worked for you, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” Ms. Wagner said.

“She had my screen play TRAPEZOID and said she set up a meeting with you in 1987 and I drove out and stayed in shelters and the meeting never happened. I wrote it under the name Norman Iland. What happened? ”

“Sarah never said anything to me,” Ms. Wagner said, “sorry. I’ve never seen or heard of TRAPEZOID or Norman Iland” I ran down a list of my other alter egos to no avail and left as she looked around for security.

Anyway, I picked up a car from Triangle the day of the conference and hoped to drive to Research Triangle Park with Brent who was to be one of the featured speakers at the conference, but his need to remain independent and not be stuck in a car with me over-rode any economic considerations. In my state of teetering on the edge of financial disaster and homelessness this all seemed rather silly to me but it really made sense to him to avoid me. I grabbed the smallest car I could get and counted on great gas mileage. When I arrived at the conference the first thing I noticed was the Boss’s Race Car parked out front of the hotel. It was an honest to god NASCAR car, all painted with his logo and named Factor VIII. The Boss had done well in the home care business. In the Hotel I found BG, Linda Robertson smoking in the hallway and saw many familiar faces. Laureen Kelley was in one of the conference rooms with parents conducting a morning session. BG took me around to a few of the hotel rooms where the kids of different age groups were being entertained by able volunteers. The Wet bars were stocked with fresh fruit and snacks for the kids. Many of the kids had hemophilia, but only one wore a crash helmet. Most of the parents had grown to accept the dangers of head injuries and the responsibility of aware people as opposed to being over protective of their babies. I found some old kid friends in the groups and bounced between rooms, chowing down on food that had been lacking in my diet. The blood products were much safer now, but I couldn’t help think of the number of children that were infused with blood products that contained a destructive virus, by their mothers in the past. Room service began to replace the snack trays with kid type hot lunch trays, so I made my way back up to the main conference room to catch the end of Laureen’s morning session and find out where the adults were eating.

We Tangoed after Laureen finished speaking. It was a continuation of the Dance from Philadelphia and then San Diego. For a few brief seconds, that’s all that mattered was the Dance. A lunch of cold cuts and salads was served informally in the banquet room and Brent’s quick wit provided the snappy appetizer. After lunch Dale Brisson and Brent Runyon both spoke of their childhood with hemophilia and told some blood jokes before Laureen Kelley completed her afternoon session. I asked the Boss for money so copies of the film could be sent to Richard at the treatment center for distribution. A thousand dollars would have saved me, but he agreed to five hundred. That made his total contribution to the project 2500 dollars which was less than the cost of the one day conference for thirty families. The Boss was gathering possible lifetime customers with the conference. The film would only help the community as a whole. There wasn’t enough self-interest involved even though many of the participants in the film and the credits were either his employees or North Carolina customers. Whether the film would help me personally or not was unknown to me. I had been financially trashed already with no way out so my self-interest was clouded and somewhat irresponsible.

When the conference ended I drove Laureen to the airport after she changed clothes in her room. She filled out a great pair of jeans and bought the beer at the airport while waiting for her departing flight. I returned to the hotel and ate and drank on the Boss before playing car tag with the slightly intoxicated Brent on the two and a half hour drive back to Wilmington. The five hundred dollars came and went to keep everything plugged in before I could get copies made. I was willing to renege on the deal if no other money came through. Continued pestering of Moses and Baxter-Hyland International, a weekend FedEx of my last VHS copy of the film, and a receptive blue suit got me a commitment of two thousand more dollars for copies, phone and escape. I knew I had to get out of town. Thanksgiving was upon us and I knew that there would be no new commitments in the winter. I began cleaning house and packing. Kay’s daughter never posted for the sofa-bed, so I threw it out with the trash. The bank covered a thousand dollar check to the phone company while I waited for the money from Baxter International. The FedEx check had been somewhat misdirected and was late. When I did finally get the check I noticed that it had been written on another North Carolina Bank and the option presented itself of stiffing my bank for the thousand and cashing the check at the other and using the money for the escape I was preparing for. Instead I thanked the banker woman for having faith in me–the thousand was covered plus overdraft penalties. I had the VHS copies for the treatment center made, sent Baxter 15 copies for internal use and had a few repairs done on the truck but she still smoked. Kay Eager called before the phones were unplugged and agreed to deposit the last 60 dollars directly into my account. Wayne Ward who worked for the boss came by the night before I left town to pick up the copies of the film for the treatment center and he took me out for a steak dinner and a couple of shots of Jack Daniels.

I loaned the truck to local in the film business. He told me he had hired a few fellows from a half-way house to help him move stuff and one of them had been unhappy with the pay. I asked him why he didn’t hire me and he said I wouldn’t have been happy with the pay. He gave me fifty dollars for the use of the truck. When I got the truck back Iris was a bit smoky out her rear. I believe I was as burnt out as Iris or I would have volunteered to drive the truck. My judgment was shot.

Kay Eager, the Doctor Brinkhaus connection, called and asked me to move her furniture to Charleston, South Carolina. Her furniture included a piano. Need I say more. The truck had no brakes. I had the brakes repaired at a garage on the corner while a cop from the Motor Vehicles office up the road watched. I figured I would make the run on Sunday morning when they were closed. The deal with Kay was for a hundred sixty dollars but only a hundred when I got to Charleston and the balance at a later date. Her next month’s storage would have cost her another ninety dollars. I loaded the truck on Saturday myself, including the piano. The truck was blowing blue smoke to fill a block, but Iris kept me on the road and I felt I owed Kay Eager big time for the introduction to Doctor Brinkhaus. With keeping everything plugged in, that money from the homecare company was dissipating rapidly. My blood plasma donation income of thirty a week was my main cash flow. We continued to send out proposals and film festival entries. Nothing had changed. Everything was exactly the same as it had been for 18 months. And we didn’t even have a perfect print. The settlement offer for the hemophilia community was still in limbo with no hope for any money for anyone in the near future. I drove the smoking truck with a load of furniture, leaving before dawn, to Charleston, passing through Myrtle Beach and arriving at Kay’s house by 10:00 a.m. She had a doctoral student living with her. He was large enough to help unload the truck and the piano. The truck had eaten more gas than it should have due to the blue smoke and whatever was wrong with Iris. My paranoia helped me recall Rooster’s death tangled up in blooms in front of the house I was living in and enough people knew I had been working with people with AIDS. The film guy I had allowed the use of Iris mentioned a disgruntled halfway house inhabitant and I thought maybe someone put something in one of the two gas tanks. I didn’t know.

Kay was still doing bio-feedback with a few people for pain and stress relief and preaching as a minister. The doctors at the Chapel Hill screening had asked about Kay. I told them that she was preaching. They looked disappointed as Doctors will do when someone leaves their profession even though they drove her out of it. Kay had worked for Doctor Brinkhaus in the early 70s and besides washing dishes had written some very famous papers and the doctors acknowledged this to me and I told Kay. She said they never told her and had taken the credit. While the puffy student and I finished unloading the truck, Kay drove to Macdonald’s for coffees. The student that was renting a room from her was involved in research for diabetes as Kay had been in research for blood. Kay’s house had been nailed by Hugo the Hurricane, but it was all repaired, with fallen trees and debris removed because the house had been hit and damaged by debris. I had no idea what was going to happen to the tree in Saint’s yard. I had no power, no money and my honor had been thrown out with the dishwater.

I returned to Wilmington in a puff of blue smoke, using most of the 100 dollars for gasoline. I made one more trip to the storage facility to pick up a sofa bed that originally didn’t fit on the truck with the piano, hoping that Kay’s daughter would find the way and time to pick it up at a later date. I left it in the back of my truck, good OLE Iris the water truck. The trip was a net loss but the brakes were fixed and I was looking at the possibility of escape.

The relentless pursuit of funding continued along with the gratification of writing this story as a novel while sitting at the kitchen table, looking at the fallen tree in the yard which generated its own life and energy and escape from reality of failure. The last thing I wanted in the story was a lot of anger that I attempted to shake off in my fingers while performing tai-chi in the mornings.

In speaking to Dominic Bono about the new prints for the film, he suggested that we go for a new optical track and two good prints. This seemed to be a good direction to head since the prints that were intended for other markets were not only unfit for viewing, but unused since several avenues and possible contacts had not panned out. I called the lab and ordered the prints being certain to add that I didn’t expect to pay for them since they obviously screwed up. My main contact at the lab had become Howdy Doody, a kindly kid who was the main colorist at the lab. He was in jail the first time the prints were run and the owner, who only saw the bottom line, ran the prints. Color Lab billed me for the prints so I called Dominic and reminded him about his leaking roof after it was repaired by professionals and his feelings about professional responsibility, and he said he would take care of it.

The conference, which was to feature Laureen Kelley and hosted by the Boss’s homecare company, gave me the opportunity to see the queen in action and touch base with many of my friends from the hemophilia community. The possibility of hitting the boss up for some additional money for distribution was also high on my list. I had spoken to Richard Atwood from the treatment center in Winston-Salem about distributing the video through the treatment centers to schools and other avenues. Richard was the South-East regional administrator for treatment centers. There had been a major conflict between the hemophilia Community and the hemophilia treatment centers in the early 80s and a lot of bad blood still flowed. Many members of the community felt that the treatment centers could have prevented the contaminated blood products from being distributed because they were the ones who actually did a lot of the work and saw the proliferation of AIDS but simply followed orders in most cases and continued to distribute the tainted blood products. The treatment centers had come a long way, however, and frequent blood product recall notices were now the order of the day.