Nothing to Fear Day

Posted on May 27, 2025 by arwenbicknell

I was confused when I first saw this listed as being celebrated today, because I knew it came from Roosevelt’s inaugural speech in 1933, and he wasn’t inaugurated in May. (I looked it up for specifics, and it was March 4.) He was talking about the economy and taking decisive steps to fix it.

Either the internet is perpetuating a lie, or he liked the line so much that he used it again almost 10 years later. The American Presidency Project has a transcript of his “Radio Address Announcing an Unlimited National Emergency” on May 27, 1941, and this line is in there.

I have no idea if that’s correct. I do know I like the sentiment. I wouldn’t call it a motto or a mantra, but it has been an encouraging phrase for me in a variety of situations, from algebra final exams to bungee jumping.

My son would heartily disagree. The last time I shouted that line at him, he fell out of a tree. I’m not sure he ever forgave me. He grew up to be more of a Dune guy and prefers “Fear is the mind-killer.” Same premise, different delivery. He has hollered that whole passage on roller coasters, and muttered it before loping up to take a turn at karaoke.

I’m glad he found an alternative. I think it’s an important outlook. What fear have you conquered?

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Dracula Day

Posted on May 26, 2025 by arwenbicknell

By a lot of measures, I was a pretty average parent. To date, the kid has not turned out as a start athlete or prodigy, but he’s also not a deadbeat or a convict. Much like his mother, he seems to be pretty happy hanging out around the top of the bell curve.

But one thing I did do right is instill a love of stories in him. He tends more to movies and audio dramas, but a few classes in college apparently convinced him he is not the group project type and he prefers to work alone. This means he has evolved into a rather adept writer. I am continually surprised by what he turns out (especially since most of the time when I look at him I see a kid who is maybe 10 years old tops and doesn’t know words like “epistolary”). As you will see, he is also far more modern-minded than I am.

All of which is to say that his love of stories, especially horror, and skill at writing mean that I am taking a break today and handing this spot over to him for some musings on Dracula.

My exposure to the story of Dracula was spread out over several years. Like anyone, I was familiar with Bela Lugosi’s theatrical take on the Count, and as the years went on, I saw more and more adaptations of Bram Stoker’s story (from the 1979 John Badham–directed, Frank Langella–starring romantic take to the 1992 “horror epic” from Francis Ford Coppola)  without ever having engaged with the classic text.

It wasn’t until COVID hit that I first took an interest in the novel, thanks to the newsletter Dracula Daily, where the epistolary structure of the novel is brought into the 21st century as a series of emails you can sign up to receive from May 3 to November 7, essentially reading the story in real time.

What struck me most about reading the story this way was the temptation to “read ahead.” This tale has been around for almost 130 years, and I already knew the ending, of course, thanks to countless films. Yet, it still managed to thrill me and keep me hooked for almost eight months, and I know I was not alone in this fascination. In 2023, the newsletter had more than 240,000 subscribers near the end of its run in October, and I’m so glad to be among that number.

What Bram Stoker would say about this new audience is anyone’s guess, but I like to think he’d be fascinated, maybe even a little amused, by the way his work has been given new life through modern technology. What began as a Victorian novel of diary entries, letters, and newspaper clippings now thrives in the digital age as e-mails that arrive in your inbox just as the characters might have written them. The immediacy of this format deepened my appreciation of the suspense and pacing that Stoker so carefully crafted.

Instead of reading Dracula in one long sitting or rushing through to the climax, I was made to sit with each moment—to feel Jonathan Harker’s dread grow day by day and to watch the slow unraveling of Lucy’s fate. That daily rhythm made the horror feel more personal, more intimate, and somehow more real. It was the best learning experience: It taught me a lot without feeling like a lesson.

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Tap Dance Day

Posted on May 25, 2025 by arwenbicknell

When I was in grade school, I took dance and gymnastics lessons. I don’t remember how the lessons broke down; I think it was 10 minutes of warmup, then 15 minutes each of tap, ballet, and tumbling, with shoe changes in between. I never got very good at any of these activities, but my favorite far and away was tap dancing. I loved the shoes, I loved the noise, I loved the energy, and I loved that I could actually do it. I never managed to channel a gazelle and jete gracefully, and I never pulled off a back flip without help. But step-heel-turn? I did that that move to get across the kitchen even before I took lessons.

I got into these lessons because my best friend at the time, Kristin, was also taking them. She was like-minded, we both hammered away at shuffle-ball-change and then sort of phoned in the floating like a butterfly portion of the evening. I am sure there were other girls in the class, but I don’t remember a thing about them. Lessons were Monday nights on the second floor of a drafty old building in downtown Moline, with wooden floors and high ceilings and a big thick tumbling matt down the center of the room that you were supposed to run and do handsprings on. I assume someone in my class could pull those off, but it wasn’t me or Kristin. We would show up in our leotards and tights (under parkas, in winter), do 50 situps, 50 pushups, and 100 jumping jacks, and then get to work.

I lasted two years in those lessons. I know this because I was in two recitals. For the first one, I wore a green-and-white striped satin costume with green sequins and a green half-tutu that was reminiscent of an 1800s Old West saloon keeper. For the second one, I got a much girlier pink number with a full tutu, silver sequins, and these detached chiffon decorative sleeves with elastic at both ends. I cannot for the life of me remember the ballet numbers, but I remember very clearly that the tap numbers were Johnny Desmond’s Straw Hat and a Cane and some girl singer’s rendition of April Showers. (I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Judy Garland, but … maybe?) I no longer remember the steps, however.

In the middle of these lessons, Xanadu came out. Nerd that I was (even at 9), I was more excited to see Gene Kelly than Olivia Newton-John (and was way more familiar with Singing in the Rain than I was with Grease). We didn’t have a TV (that’s a whole ‘nother blog post), so I didn’t realize it was a roller skating movie and was incredibly disappointed at how little tap-dancing was involved—but I was gratified to watch the duet scene and think “Hey, I could do that number with a bit of practice.” Not so much at 54 (much less 68, like Kelly was at the time).

Eventually I ditched dancing for flute playing, but I still love to watch it. I was delighted when White Nights came out when I was in high school, and I drove my family nuts when Chicago was finally made into a movie. I still don’t have Apple TV, so I missed Spirited, although it’s on my list. Any other recommendations?

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Scavenger Hunt Day

Posted on May 24, 2025 by arwenbicknell

Does anyone remember the book Masquerade? It came out in 1979, and it was a gorgeous book of pictures telling the story of Jack Hare carrying a treasure from the moon to the sun, but the gimmick was that if you could identify all the clues, you’d find the treasure. I remember being completely confused by this at age 8—I sort of understood that the way the rabbit was pointing in each picture indicated you should go that direction, but the rest of it was like when you visit another family that has a lot of in-jokes and shorthand; you speak the language, and you follow along just enough to know that 90 percent of what is going on is flying over your head.

I was astute enough to assume that since the author was British, this treasure was not hidden in Moline, Illinois, but that did not stop my friend Kristin and me from going on a few expeditions through ravines and parking lots to look for it of an afternoon. (It was Kristin’s book. It was probably my idea to poke around in the bushes.)

Within a few months, we both forgot about it entirely.

And it wasn’t until 2010 that I remembered this story and Googled it, to learn that someone actually found the treasure in 1982. It was a a golden hare, crafted from 18-carat gold and jewels, first valued at £5,000, later deemed worth £31,900.

Two physics teachers figured it out generally speaking, but didn’t know quite where to dig because it was the wrong time of year for the sun to hit some key point. By the time the sun came around, someone else had found it—through dicey means, as it turned out. There was a bit of scandal because it was leaked that the guy got key info from the author’s ex-girlfriend. When his company went belly up, he had to sell the bauble. It sold at auction for the second amount listed above, and sank into obscurity. When the 40th anniversary rolled around, the owner popped up and agreed to put the item on display at an anniversary event with the author.

I wonder if a stunt like this could gain traction today. I’d love to read about THAT in the news instead of what I’ve been reading lately!

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Road Trip Day

Posted on May 23, 2025 by arwenbicknell

I adore traveling. I think I have mentioned before that I grew up in a family that drove pretty much everywhere all the time, and that the hubs refuses to fly to this day if we can get there by auto. Part of this stems from self-confessed control issues; part of it stems from disliking security theater and having to shed his shoes; part of it stems from just wanting to see what’s out there.

I am less enamored of “seeing what’s out there,” but I do like not sharing an armrest with a stranger and having to pack for 2 weeks of snow in less than 10 lbs. I also adore driving, although I rarely do it on road trips (see my earlier reference to those self-confessed control issues).

So with all that history, I don’t know if I have a favorite road trip. But I do have one that stands out because I was married but it did not involve the hubs, and I drove the entire time. It was 2017, and the kid and I drove from Virginia to Tennessee in back in one day to see the eclipse.

It was fantastic. We left at 5 a.m. with a general idea of where the interstate crossed the path of totality and headed that direction. We discussed the possibility that we would be watching the eclipse from a gas station if worse came to worst. The kid was all in.  Then he slept, I listened to music; he woke up, we talked about Doctor Who. We drove west and southish until there was about an hour before the eclipse was supposed to happen (which IIRC was around 1 p.m., so about eight hours), and then I set him the task of using my phone to find a local park. He found a doozy in Louisville Point Park. It had a playground and a lake with swimming and boats, and a bunch of other party people. The kid stripped down to his shorts and swam. Then we threw down a blanket and sat in the grass and watched it get dark, listened to the birds stop singing, shivered as the temperature dropped 10 degrees, and then watched it all reverse itself. Then we got back in the car and sat in traffic for an hour along with all the other after-eclipsers, and drove the eight hours back home, mostly listening to the Ramones. We got home at 10:30 with nary an argument or snit.

That was a great trip.

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Goth Day

Posted on May 22, 2025 by arwenbicknell

I’m pretty sure that when my husband sees that it is Goth Day, he will assume it’s a celebration of the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe. But that’s not why we’re here.

I was the right age for this particular subculture, but I never embraced the lifestyle; I hung out on the fringes. I never dyed my hair or painted my fingernails black, I never dressed like Lydia Deetz, I was much too Germanically ruddy to rock that makeup. I liked most of the bands, but I also didn’t really go for the whole “black is how I feel on the inside” thing. My mom kept me too busy pulling weeds and chasing dogs for that to take hold.

I did, however, have a good friend who was deeply into the Whole Megillah. Andrea and I had been best friends in fifth and sixth grade, but then I moved to Florida. So when I was 15, I was back in Illinois for a family event, and Andrea’s dad drove her the three hours down to where I was for a visit. There I am in small-town Illinois in my T-shirt and jean shorts and sandals, hair probably in a pony tail because I was supposed to be helping clean the house, polish silver, watch my cousins, etc. Andrea arrives in half-regalia: Doc Martens, a black flannel shirt, spiky black hair shaved up the sides, and eyeliner to make Cleopatra jealous.

We were banished from the house and the kitchen, so we walked four blocks to the town square and had pizza for lunch (back when the town square had a pizza parlor). We got a few looks, but nobody said anything to us except the waitress, who simply asked what we wanted to drink and handed us a bill. So we ate, drank a few sodas, laughed at stories about people we both knew, talked about bands, just the usual friends catching up thing. Then we walked home, hung out another hour or so, and her dad came and got her. End of story, or so I thought.

The next day, a neighbor came over asking me who my friend was that had caused all the fuss in town the day before. What fuss? The girl with the hair and makeup. She sure caught EVERYONE’S attention! She did? Of course she did! Nothing that interesting looking has come around here in a decade! Then, a week later, we went to dinner at another relative’s house. I was sitting there chatting with an older cousin of mine who was visiting while on summer break from Berkeley, and he goes, “Oh, that was you with the wild girl in town? Where’d you find her? What did you get up to?” The idea that Andrea was even remotely “wild” just tickled the hell out of me. Eating pizza and talking about James Bond movies—life on the edge! I think he was a little disappointed when he heard that the worst infraction we had committed was cutting across someone’s lawn to get out of the sun. That wasn’t nearly as scandalous as the co-ed bathrooms in his dorm at school!

Andrea and I kept in touch for several years after that; she even saw photos of my kid as a toddler. It’s only in the past decade or so that she went radio silent. I tried finding her when we moved back to Illinois, and it makes me sad that I haven’t been able to raise her. I’d love to put on a repeat pizza performance in the small town where I now live, although I still don’t own any Doc Martens.

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Red Cross Founders Day

Posted on May 21, 2025 by arwenbicknell

I really don’t know why they didn’t just call it Clara Barton Day, but here we are.

The Red Cross has its PR problems.  Clara Barton probably did too, but from this remove, she was a pretty impressive character. When we lived in Virginia, we visited the Missing Soldiers Office Museum in Washington, D.C., which will really fire your imagination if you are remotely into historical fiction.

In early1865, Barton was in DC caring for her nephew, who was a sickly government employee. He learned that the government needed help notifying the relatives of those who were missing or had died in captivity, mentioned this to Barton, and she was off to the races. She petitioned Lincoln for an official position to find those who had vanished during the conflict. He gave her the job of listing the names of those who died in captivity and notifying their families. She went to Annapolis, where freed Union soldiers were being processed after release from Confederate prisons. It was total chaos, and official record-keeping pretty much sucked. So she interviewed soldiers herself.

On the other end, she was getting literally thousands of letters from families looking for information. She hired a few assistants with her own money (expecting the government to reimburse her, which took only two years, ha ha—and refusing donations from families). Inquiries received a form letter response acknowledging receipt.

Barton’s first master list of soldiers who had disappeared during the Civil War came out in June 1865 and listed 1,533 names. When she wrapped things up 1868, the list was up to 6,650 names.

A side note on this was Barton’s trip to Andersonville, where Dorence Atwater, a prisoner who had been tasked with keeping an official list of those who died—no small task when up to 50 men a day were dying there. He also kept a secret copy for himself. How those 12,000 names were made public is too long to post here, but someone really needs to make a movie about that story and about Atwater because his life has all the great elements: drama, suspense, and a bonzer happy ending in Tahiti.

Anyway, Barton stuck with it until 1868; according to the museum’s website, the Missing Soldiers Office over the span of four years “had received 63,182 inquiries, written 41,855 letters, mailed 58,693 printed circulars, distributed 99,057 copies of her printed rolls, and identified 22,000 men.”

If there aren’t novels to be found in that fodder, there aren’t novels to be found.

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Be a Millionaire Day

Posted on May 20, 2025 by arwenbicknell

The spirit of the day is “to reflect on the idea of being a millionaire and potentially consider strategies to achieve financial independence. While it’s a fun day to imagine the possibilities of having a million dollars, it also serves as a reminder to focus on financial goals and build a strong financial foundation.”

The hubs has a big thing for Grace Kelly, which means he’s firmly in the High Society camp where I am firmly in the Philadelphia Story camp. This, in turn, means he croons “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” at least a few times a year at appropriate moments.

The song responds with “I don’t,” — and honestly, that’s true. Being a millionaire these days doesn’t mean what it meant when the song was written—the internet tells me it basically means a comfy retirement at age 60 and a wee bit left over if you die by 90. I think I’d rather be a gazillionaire.

Since I’m thisclose to retirement, my strategies for financial independence are closer to paying off than being put in place. So let’s go with the “fun” part of the concept here. This brings to mind another song, “If I Had a Million Dollars,” by Barenaked Ladies, with ideas like “I’d buy you a fur coat (but not a real fur coat, that’s cruel),” and “I’d buy you a green dress (but not a real green dress, that’s cruel).”

So if I had a million extra dollars to burn, I would, in no particular order, fix up my house, travel a LOT, subsidize some library projects, and spread the rest around to people who tell me good stories about why they need a windfall.

I don’t have a million dollars, but if you have a good story about what you’d do with a million dollars, I will send you a Million Dollar Pound Cake. Let’s hear it!

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Roadie Day

Posted on May 19, 2025 by arwenbicknell

Most of the bands I was involved with personally were not yet high-profile enough to have roadies. Fellas carried their own guitars, stashed drum kits in their own vans, etc. (Unless you count the USC marching band, which did have equipment handlers and student wranglers and I don’t know what all. But I think that does not count, plus I still had to suffer the weight of carrying my piccolo everywhere in my coat pocket. (This explains why I switched from flute to piccolo.)

So, I have only one good personal anecdote about a roadie, but it’s in my novel. I won’t go into specifics because I’m hoping someday the novel will be published and then I’ll want y’all to buy it, but it involves Huey Lewis, a 1966 Cadillac, and a loose distributor cable.  Kinda sounds like a riddle or a joke, doesn’t it?

After that encounter, in a later previous life, I got free books to review. Hands down, the most entertaining free book I ever got was Road Mangler Deluxe by Phil Kaufman. I suspect a lot of those stories fell into the category of Too Good to Check, but man, what a guy. I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy.

My only other experience with roadies is via Jackson Brown.

I have a good friend who spent a lot more time around the music scene, but none of her stories about roadies were particularly funny—or savory. She took a pretty dim view of them overall. 

Anyone got any stories to redeem that population?

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Rural Day

Posted on May 18, 2025 by arwenbicknell

Apparently this is a Methodist thing? I’m not sure why they appropriated the idea. Rural doesn’t need a denomination, and I’ve known plenty of townie Methodists.

I wouldn’t actually say that I have lived a rural life—more so small-town, suburban, or exurban. The closest I got was a stint in my teens, when I lived next door to a strawberry field and down the road from an egg ranch.

I always thought I was cut from a different cloth. I wanted to live in a city where I could walk anywhere I needed to get. I wanted to live where there were shops and theaters and bars and takeout. I wanted to live in a hotel with 24-hour room service. I wanted to be entertained at any hour of any day.

And yet, every time I had a choice to Start Over, Do Something Different, Relocate—I opted for big dogs. Back yards. Distant neighbors. Turned out that a convenience store that I could drive to in under five minutes was quite sufficient, thank you. Friends would come to stay and flee after a few nights because it was “creepy dark and too quiet.”

But everything is relative, right? My mother would be positively claustrophobic whenever she visited me in my various homes and tended to leave in less than a week because the view from her bedroom window of a neighbor’s house an acre away freaked her out.

My mom has spent her happiest years living surrounded by corn and bean fields, and there is a bit to recommend it. She doesn’t have much neighborly guilt if her dogs go bananas at all hours because her nearest neighbor is a quarter-mile away. She has no idea what her neighbors are cooking for dinner because the smells don’t permeate her living room. If she was of a mind, she could toddle around her entire property stark naked with very little risk of being seen by anyone, with the remote exception of a freight train engineer who might happen by unexpectedly on the track across the street from her house—and trust me, trains are never entirely unexpected; you get plenty of advance notice to get out of sight.

My husband has often informed me that if I did not exist, he would be living in a cabin somewhere in Wyoming, a la the TV version of Longmire. I reckon he is lucky that I do exist, because given his patience with customer service types and companies’ willingness to cater to such markets, he would never see another baseball or hockey game in his life the first time his internet service glitched out. I still like visiting cities. I like waking up and only having to walk a block for a fresh cinnamon roll. But day in, day out? I’m trending rural.

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