2016 October : Camille Minichino

Archive for October, 2016

Xtreme Halloween

Filed Under : Personal,Writing by Camille

Oct.27,2016

The Real Me is always happy to welcome author and educator, JO MELE. This time she’s sharing a great Halloween story. The piece first appeared in Reminisce Magazine.

Halloween Trick or Treating

by Jo Mele

The Real Joey

My little brother Joey is the most determined; some call it stubborn, person I know. Joey loved Halloween and couldn’t wait to get home, sort his candy into piles, and eat all his favorites first.

When he was eight he had to miss trick or treating because he had a high fever. My mother’s decision to keep him in nearly drove Joey crazy. The pleading went on for hours until he gave my mother a headache and was sent to his room in tears.

I went around the neighborhood with two bags asking for a treat for my brother who was home sick. The neighbors were sorry to hear he was missing his favorite Holiday and were very generous to his sack. He didn’t even feel well enough to do his sorting and eating routine until the following weekend.

The next year Joey had two costumes ready, the pirate from last year and the new cowboy costume complete with boots and pearl handled Lone Ranger six-shooters he got for his birthday. He was counting the days to trick or treating. Unfortunately, he came down with the flu and couldn’t even stand. My mother did not allow him to go out into the frigid New York air.

I went around the neighborhood with his sack and mine and everyone said “Not again.” They poured goodies and change into his bag, and said he could buy what he liked when he felt better. He made two dollars but wasn’t happy.

When October came around again Joey was ready. He was ten years old, full of energy, had three unused costumes waiting to be worn. He was determined and on a mission. My parents had already decided they’d let him go trick or treating – no matter what. Halloween fell on a Saturday that year so Joey could rest before his long-awaited adventure and stay out late since it wasn’t a school night. It was a beautiful warm fall day and after whining “Can’t I start yet,” for the hundredth time, my mother gave in.

He was the first kid out and the last one home. When his trick-or-treat bag got heavy he came home, changed his costume and got another bag. He started over again, and again, determined to make up for lost time. He had the Halloween of his life.

When Joey finally dragged in saw his three bags full of goodies waiting for the sorting, he hugged them and burst into tears of joy. He’d won his battle with Halloween.

I admired his determination. He never gave up and wouldn’t settle for one round of trick-or-treating when he deserved three. I’m sure I would’ve quit after the first. Joey was no quitter, he needed to even the score, two traits he would carry with him for the rest of his life.

HALLOWEEN Preview

Filed Under : crime,Personal Favorites by Camille

Oct.20,2016

Cornelia Parker’s PsychoBarn, rooftop installation at the Met

Few words say “scary” like “Psycho,” the hallmark of suspenseful movies. And few American artists have been as inspirational as Edward Hopper.

Last summer, the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue paid tribute to the movie and the artist with its rooftop installation.

Here’s another view, that’s more revealing of the structure of the “barn”:

I sat on a bench on the rooftop for the better part of an hour. The weather was perfect for a non-sun-worshipper like me: overcast, chilly. In all that time, as crowds came and went, I saw few people approach the structure closer than about 10 feet. No one ran her hand along the railing, or closely examined the shingles, or checked the flaking paint, though the only written warning was not to climb the steps. It’s hard to tell in the photo, but at one point, when a little girl approached the steps, her (presumably) mother pulled her back in a protective gesture, covering the girl’s eyes.

And no one peered in the windows. I wonder why?

Tags : art, met, psycho

A Noisy Room of Her Own

Filed Under : Writing by Camille

Oct.13,2016

I’ve learned to be very flexible in terms of where and when I write. Deadlines can do that to a writer.

Finding time, the “when,” is pretty easy. All I have to do is cut back on sleep and housecleaning, put a few multitasking techniques into play, and I’m all set.

The ideal place to write.

The “where” is more challenging. Living in a suburb as I do, it’s sometimes hard to find a noisy spot. We’re at the end of long driveway, at least 300 feet from the main street. In the evening, there are no sounds—no buses, no honking horns, no crowds of people.

Once in a while, I get a little relief. Our neighbors on the adjoining street are great partiers, periodically turning their backyard into a venue for celebrations. I get very excited when I see a HAPPY ANNIVERSARY or CONGRATULATIONS banner going up across the fence. We don’t know the family, so, of course we’re not invited. The best of all cases—I get to write to a cheering crowd, music included, without needing to show up. A perfect background for creative writing.

I grew up in a relentlessly noisy environment. My childhood bedroom window was no more than five feet from the juke box of a pizza parlor. [For those with a fact checker bent, look up DeMaino’s Pizza in Revere, Massachusetts, still doing a thriving business.]

For years of undergraduate study, I had a commute of about an hour and 40 minutes each way, on a good day. So, I did the bulk of my homework with my arm wrapped around a pole on Boston’s MTA, the same one from which Charlie never returned.

My last apartment before migrating from Boston to California was above a bar in East Boston. It was the pre-recycling era and the law required all empty liquor bottles to be smashed. The idea was to prevent unhygienic refilling. Every night, for about an hour after the 2 a.m. closing, employees gathered around a metal barrel directly under our windows, in the back yard, and tossed the bottles into the barrel. With zero hope of sleeping, the surrounding tenants had no choice but to make good use of the time.

Those experiences shaped me forever. Once I know that the world is being taken care of, that life is going on, I can focus on my thoughts, my reading or writing. When it’s silent around me, every creaking floorboard startles me, the ice maker in my refrigerator door sounds like thunder, an air conditioner kicking in shakes me out of whatever thoughts I’m trying to put on paper.

Other than from Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny, I’ve felt little support in this attitude. Imagine how excited I was recently to find myself in the excellent company of Helen Keller:

“Cut off as I am, it is inevitable that I should sometimes feel like a shadow walking in a shadowy world. When this happens I ask to be taken to New York City. Always I return home weary but I have the comforting certainty that mankind is real flesh and I myself am not a dream.” — Mainstream

What great company I’ve discovered! Never again will I apologize for my need for assurance that the world outside my head is present and accounted for and doesn’t need me at the moment.

Gloria Speaks

Filed Under : Books by Camille

Oct.6,2016

Now and then, a character will speak out, sometimes willingly, other times under duress. This time, it’s the latter: the fictional Gloria Lamerino of the Periodic Table Mysteries is not wordy like her creator. Here she obliges the author who gave her life and tells us what that life is like.

From Gloria Lamerino

Ask me to put together a system to measure the spectral lines of hydrogen. I’ll be happy to oblige. I know where I can get the right laser and detection system.

But please don’t ask me to write an essay. Nothing makes me more nervous than that. I’m feeling that old classroom anxiety all over again. My college liberal arts teachers were always telling me my answers to questions were too short, not full enough, whatever that meant. In my major, mathematics, with a physics minor, an answer was an answer, no matter how few words or numbers it took.

But, to please my mentor, Camille Minichino, I’ve agreed to write about my life as a scientist and then, unexpectedly, as the partner of a homicide detective.

It all started when I decided to retire from my laboratory career in California and return home to Revere, Massachusetts. To ease the transition, Rose Galigani, my best friend from grade school, offered me an apartment above the funeral home she runs with her husband, Frank. It seemed like a good idea until I realized the challenge it would be to do my laundry—it so happens that the washer/dryer set shares the basement with the embalming room. I found a Laundromat downtown pretty quickly. I still had to master the trick of walking past their “clients” laid out in the first floor parlors, and the chemical smells that are only partially masked by elaborate floral arrangements.

Rose and I couldn’t be more close, or more different. I look more like the average woman from a chunky Italian-American family. Rose, with her auburn hair and petite figure looks like the Hollywood version. We even managed to stay close during my three decades in California, with frequent meetings on one coast or the other.

It was during one of those Christmas getaway weekends in Boston that I met Detective Matt Gennaro, a friend of the Galiganis, who is now my husband. Between then and now, we’ve had many adventures as I’ve been able to help him solve cases where science or scientists were involved.

There was the time one of my colleagues doing hydrogen research was murdered at his lab desk; and another when a congresswoman dealing with legislation on the United States helium reserves was the victim of a hit-and-run; and I recall helping solve the murder of a poor janitor working in a lithium battery facility; and then beryllium . . . well, you get the picture. Selected covers are shown here.

As I’m writing this, I’m working on a case of magnesium poisoning at a spa, my 12^th case with Police Department the Revere. Matt just briefed me on the crime scene and the victim, a maid of honor in a bridal party.

How does one go from a physics researcher to an amateur detective? You might be surprised to learn that the training is not that different. Not that I’m skilled with weapons or forensics, but a physicist has to be a problem solver, look for clues, and find the culprit when an experiment is going wrong—a stray electromagnetic pulse? An unexpected thermal gradient?

Not so different from sifting through theories of a homicide, looking both inside and outside the box to solve the problem and capture a killer.

Look at me! I’ve come up with more than 500 words, not as painful as I thought.

Maybe my next career will be essay writing.