PEGGY FIELDING'S NEWSLETTER
Vol. 6 Number 6 October 2006

NOT DEAD YET

No. I'm not sick nor dead as you suspected. You haven't received your newsletter because I am a slothful creature and also because of the HENS. We've been running around like chickens with our heads cut off... signing madly.

Please go now to the archives to read this so you can see what little geegaws Dan has inserted, if any. That is, go to peggyfielding.com I think the grass is greener on that side. Right Carolyn?

FLING, FLANG, FLUNG!

Within the last few months I have found myself back in Cuba, way too often. Not physically, of course, but three women who were important to me in those days, have suddenly contacted me.

Marty Baker was thirteen at the time she took this picture of my husband and me. Yep, That's Ray Fielding looking up at the camera because a pretty little blonde girl was shooting in our direction, and that is I, sitting across from the old boy, looking adoringly at him, as I did entirely too much in those days.

I had never seen this picture and when Marty, out of the blue, e-mailed it to me, my inner being flew, simply FLEW, back to that day and that place.

We had met at the club after work... he from his office and I from my classroom. It was quite a strange feeling to be instantly in another time, another country, another physical being. It took me days to get over the strangeness of it all. I'd forgotten how it felt to have luxuriant black hair, to be slim, and to be married.

AND THAT'S NOT ALL. In another earlier newsletter I wrote about hearing from Barbara Moore, a friend and a fellow teacher who was married to a Naval Officer. Barbara and I shared many important moments.

After Marty's surprise letter and photograph, I also heard from Frances Linder, another girl a bit older than Marty. Even though she was just out of high school, Fran was a pal. Fun to be with and probably, she, alone among most of my acquaintances, understood what life as a short, curvy, small waisted, (mine was 23 inches when Ray and I married) bosomy young woman was like. That is what we both were.

She became a nurse and is still wife to the man she met and married at Guantanamo.

Marty's mom was actually my friend and she asked me to take her daughter to the states for an orthodontist's appointment. Jeanne Baker has been dead a long time but then she had younger children to care for. I took Marty and she was a pretty good kid, all in all.

Her e-mail to me apologized for her behavior during our trip to Virginia Beach. She didn't need to do that because I'd had no inkling that she was being difficult. She was thirteen. I loved her and thought she was a good kid. And who isn't awful at thirteen? But she was never awful to me. Maybe her being thirteen was the reason her mom asked me to take her to the USA.

NEVER MET A WOMAN HE DIDN'T LIKE

Yeah, Ray liked all three of the aforementioned and he loved a ton of others, as well. Some, he liked better than others and in a different way, especially the Cuban ladies in Bocqueron and Guantanamo City.

Oh, well, since receiving the picture, I’ve been reliving the past more than was good for me but perhaps one is supposed to reminisce when one grows really old. Barbara's daughter was in my class at one time and Fran and Marty both had little brothers who passed through my hands for first grade, at other times.

THIS IS THE LAST MENTION OF "SOUL MATES" AND A GOOD ONE I THINK

Teresa Amboard said, "You find your soulmate after searching for hunks for years, then falling for an ordinary man because you've finally learned that looks don't matter."

A BOOK THAT MADE ME SCREAM

I’ve just finished A LADY'S GUIDE TO RAKES and was strongly reminded of the book I reviewed a few years ago where the heroine packed her whole wardrobe into her reticule. (Reticule is Regency speak for "purse.")

This particular book had the heroine keeping warm and warding off chill winds with her fichu. (Fichu is Regency talk for a flimsy scrap of lace, net, or silk which is tucked, pinned, or sewn into the neckline of a low cut dress as a nod toward modesty. Some were long enough to perhaps be called scarves in our time, four or five inches wide and 18 inches long, I'd suppose.)

Our girl repeatedly wore her fichu on her back and across her shoulders as a cover-up against the cold. That made me crazy every time it was mentioned, but the book was not too bad, otherwise.

IN LOVE AGAIN?

Oh, yes, I still try to see Craig Ferguson late at night when I can but I've fallen deeply in love with the sergeant who runs "The Unit" in the TV show of that name. He also wears a raincoat as he walks down the road sometimes, right between two cars which are going to crash into each other while he tries to sell us AllState Insurance. Don't know his name, but I want him!

Dusty hasn't sent me a Logan book in awhile as you may have gathered.

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WINDING DOWN

The State Fair is over, the signings for CHIK~LIT FOR FOXY HENS are almost all finished. We are on our way to Kansas to sign next, then we only have three more signing appointments to fulfill and I'm celebrating a birthday this month. You can check my schedule page for times and places of where we'll be. Life should slow down a bit now. For that reason I may be on time with meeting you here in November. Let us pray for that.

FEET FIRST

Oh, I forgot to tell you. My pal, Jackie King is taking me to plunge my tootsies into some kind of magic, curative footbath stew. I'll take notes and tell you all about it next time. Especially if it does something to me or for me, good or bad.

Love 'til next time.

Peggy