How I wrote Tim the Porcupine meets Dr. Cluck

How I wrote Tim the Porcupine meets Dr. Cluck
Mel Rosenberg
© 2008–12-20

Tim the Porcupine was the first story in my trilogy of Dr. Cluck stories. Tim wakes up one morning to find that his quills are on backwards (reminiscent of Kafka's marvelous "Metamorphosis", which begins
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect).

Tim tries everything but is unable to set his quills right. His parents hear of the famous Dr. Cluck, and off they go to see the doctor.

Dr. Cluck is a medical rooster who is, on the one hand, very full of himself, and on the other hand, able to help solve his patients problems with sage advice. Dr. Cluck actually started out as a duck, Dr. Quack (Dr. William Quack III, actually). However, we found that a character with a similar name appeared in a Donald Duck cartoon way back when. Since, we did not want to incur the ire of a major cartoon company, Dr. Quack the duck became Dr. Cluck the rooster.

I can trace this story back to several incidents in my past. When I was at Camp Massad, at the age of nine or so, my bunk mates used to taunt me. One morning, when I awoke, they informed me that I had become "Chinese". At first I did not take the exhortations seriously, but finally decided to look in the mirror. They were right. My face around my eyes had become distorted, and I indeed looked quite oriental. As it turned out, I had contracted some kind of eye infection, which eventually went away.

Secondly, there are some people whose quills are indeed on backwards (I was thinking of a particular person in particular, I admit). Such people take care to ward off others who might otherwise want to be close to them. They put up a kind of "quill barrier" if you will. Perhaps everyone does this once in a while, but some persist with this kind of behavior.

The moral of this, and the other Dr. Cluck stories, of course, is that we can set many things right ourselves, given a little encouragement and direction. Of course, others may interpret the story differently, and this possibility makes me happy indeed. Roniet, my administrative assistant thinks that the message of the story is "that though certain obstacles may arise in life, you can still achieve what you truly desire and want to accomplish, if you set your mind to it ."

Tim was the first story in the trilogy, followed by Kenya and Gloomeris.


How I wrote Kenya the Can't Garoo meets Dr. Cluck
Mel Rosenberg
© 2008–12-20

Kenya was the second in the Dr. Cluck series. Rotem, my marvelous current illustrator, asked for a story about a kangaroo. What problem, I pondered, could lead a kangaroo to seek the advice of the busy rooster- doctor? Then I came up with the idea of having a pouch so full of junk, that you were no longer able to hop around.
In the early drafts of the story, the kangaroo was a young fellow named Ken the Kangaroo. However, someone pointed out (quite correctly) that it is only the female marsupians who have pouches. Oops! I am a professor of microbiology and should have realized that from the start. So Ken the Kangaroo became Kenya the Can't Garoo.
Kenya's pouch has many items from my own past, and even the mouthwash which I invented many years ago. The rhyme of "please" and "cheese" is a recurrent one in my stories, and one of the personal jokes in the text.
When we left Canada following my sabbatical at the University of Toronto in 1990, we had a lot of belongings which we had accumulated that year to get rid of, and had a garage sale to remember. To this day, of course, I remain someone with lots of excess baggage. I know people with even more.


How I wrote Gloomeris the Serious Laughing Hyena meets Dr. Cluck
Mel Rosenberg
© 2008–12-20

I know too many people who have little sense of humour. Sometimes everyone (myself included) take themselves too seriously. And sometimes that, in itself, is pretty hilarious. What could illustrate this better than a laughing hyena with no sense of humour. With the help of Dr. Cluck, Gloomeris learns to laugh at himself, and then laughing at everything else becomes a cinch.
Gloomeris is my favorite character in the series, thus far. His tale makes me wonder whether Dr. Cluck can have a good laugh at his own shenanigans.
I'd like to probe that further in a future story, if I can find another animal or two with problems worthy of the busy schedule of the famous rooster.

Dr. Cluck is somewhat of an enigma. I have known, in my career, several physicians with keen intuition on solving medical problems that their peers have misdiagnosed or overlooked. I was thinking of them when I created his character. On the internet (http://www.meltells.com/), Dr. Cluck takes an upside-down sip of gin and tonic between patients (no one is perfect), but my editors have turned it into ginger ale in the real books we plan to publish.


How I wrote Mel the Smell Dragon
Mel Rosenberg
© 2008–12-20

Mel the Smell Dragon is one of those stories that just wrote itself. You sit yourself at a typewriter, the fingers fly, the story develops and you just have to capture it in words.
Croach Hill was originally a typo. It was meant to be "Crouch Hill" in honour of my great physics teacher and mentor Ken Crouch of Ottawa, Canada. The typo persisted, however, so the new name stuck. Alon Amit later told me that Croach Hill is actually a suburb in London, England.
Mel is one smelly dragon. I spent a great part of my professional career trying to cure people of their bad breath (sometimes called dragon breath, perhaps the original idea behind the story). Mel is a dragon who loves fiery breath, so can you imagine a better namesake? Ashkenazi Jews do not call children after them while they are alive (which I apparently still am), but giving a dragon your name while you're still alive should be okay. I do love ice cream (not garlic flavor, though, and, yes, I have tasted garlic flavored ice cream at the Stinking Rose restaurant in LA).
Originally, the story was credited to "George", but I wonder how many people would appreciate the irony (St. George the dragon slayer). Besides, it was I who wrote it.
I would like to develop Mel's character further in a future prequel/sequel. The idea of the other dragons going south is of course a play on Canadians, Jews and others who shun the cold winters and who migrate to Florida.

I like it when kids in my stories have personality. Mike has it.

One of the parts of the story I like in particular is:
"Hello", I said. "It's a pleasure to meet you". I was very polite (a good idea, I think, when you are meeting a dragon for the first time)."

Actually, I think the idea is borrowed from the following riddle.
What do you call a 300 kilogram gorilla?
Answer: "Sir".
Another segment which I enjoyed writing was the following: "And then, one bright Monday afternoon, just as I was on my way home from the ice cream palace, it happened. Mel the Dragon appeared right in the middle of Main Street. Everyone fled. Everyone that is, except me. I had wanted to meet him for quite some time. My parents had warned me to stay away from strangers. But Mel was not a stranger. Everyone in town knew who he was."

I got the idea from a previous story of my own (Witch Wizelda) but I think that the idea goes back as far as Lewis Carroll, if not further.

A Tooth for a Tooth!

A tooth for a tooth

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein is a famous orthodox rabbi who has made a philanthropic allegiance with famous evangelist Christian leaders, who are also orthodox in their own way (the way of the church, that is). He is founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. With their support, Rabbi Eckstein has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for worthy causes here in the holy land, and has become a celebrated figure. Have a look at this excerpt from the New York Times Magazine:

… Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein has traveled to China to liberate persecuted pastors, hiked through Ethiopia and Siberia in search of vulnerable Jews, advised prime ministers in Jerusalem and met with evangelical Republicans at the White House. His immediate plans include transporting an entire biblical lost tribe from northeastern India to the Holy Land and starting a Spanish-language ministry for the Pentecostals of Latin America. He has even talked about recording some sacred hymns with Debby Boone. And, as Eckstein himself might say, God only knows what he'll do after that…

But when I see pictures of the illustrious Rabbi Eckstein, my mind wanders back to first grade at the Hebrew School (Hillel Academy) in Ottawa, Canada, in 1957, where Yechiel and I were great friends.

Grade one was a frightening experience: one half day learning English subjects with the battleship Mrs. Martin who wandered around class, rapping our knuckles collectively for any single annoyance. The other half day was spent studying our demanding Jewish religion by the benevolent Mr. Werner Bauer (who was kind enough to let this hyperactive kid wander around his classroom all year). I still remember Mr. Bauer's description of the Garden of Eden, as a place where one might dream of fried chicken, and a plate (kosher of course) would suddenly appear. But I didn't like chicken. And I was always afraid the Lord was going to get me for some transgression or other. As an impressionable and neurotic six year-old, I once stood for hours on my bed late at night, with my hand on my head (instead of a kipa), because I couldn't help thinking about what I thought was a solemn prayer (it was actually the Israeli national anthem!).

Alas, I digress. Very often on Saturday, after synagogue, I would head over to Yechiel's house for lunch. His father, Rabbi Simon L. Eckstein, our Rabbi, who was quite stern during Sabbath services, was more lightheaded at home. He would ask me to greet the man under the table before partaking the Sabbath meal. I never saw anyone under the table, but why argue with the Rabbi? I would obediently wish the man who wasn't there "Shabbat shalom", and the Kiddush and meal would commence.

After the Sabbath dinner, the Rabbi and Rebbitzen went upstairs, leaving us juniors in control of the ground floor. Two hyperactive kids on Saturday afternoon. Yechiel and I liked to play soccer in the long hall, where he would invariably win (he was tall, athletic, and imposing, even at the age of six). But the hall was too dark to see the ball, and it was the Sabbath.

No problem. We had our own interpretation of the laws prohibiting manual labor on the Sabbath. We understood the teaching in its most literal sense. Thus, while turning on the lights with one's hands was strictly prohibited (and probably punishable by death), nothing in the Bible said anything about turning on the lights using one's teeth. So we perfected the art of balancing on a chair and turning lights off and on with our fledgling dentition.

After trouncing me soundly (actually quietly, so as not to wake the adults) in the hall, it was time to retire to the den, where we could watch the Ottawa Roughriders (they would go on to win the Grey Cup in 1960) play Canadian football. Turning on and off the tv with our teeth was a cinch. The problem was changing the channels. In those days channels were controlled by a large mechanical knob, one click at a time, and in Ottawa the only two television stations were channels 4 and 13. Changing all these channels with his teeth was an art which Yechiel perfected. I seem to recall that the Rabbi did eventually catch us red-handed (or toothed, in this case).

Over the years, we continued to worship football, alongside religion. After all, Dave Thelen, subsequently became our sports teacher, and I would later shake the hand of the greatest CFL quarterback of them all, Russ Jackson. But that's another story.

Yechiel as a pupil, was good at everything. He was handsome, charming, smart and a great voice (I understood he has five CDs of hassidic music to his credit). During the winter, we would play football during recess. On one occasion, Yechiel had caught the ball and was on his way to a decisive touchdown. I was the lone defender. I lunged at his feet has he confidently ran around me and managed to trip him up in the snow. Tackling Yechiel was such a rare and exceptional incident, that I remember this brief moment of childhood glory to this day.

After elementary school we parted ways for several decades. About ten years ago, early Sunday morning, I was watching tv (again), this time in a hotel in the US while attending a scientific meeting (dental research, as it so happened). Pat Robertson (I am always mesmerized by evangelical shows every Sunday morning in the States) said "Now I bring you live our dear friend at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein." There he was, Yechiel, tv videoconferencing with his buddy the Reverend in front of millions of American viewers.

More recently, I was playing jazz at a local reception of some 500 people honoring the orthodox volunteers ("Zaka") who identify bodies (sometimes body parts) following terrorist attacks. It was a surrealistic experience. Most of the people there were ultraorthodox, and here we were playing jazz standards (including "All of Me", which I joked, might be an appropriate anthem for what they do).

Suddenly I heard a voice from the distant past talking in anglicized Hebrew. Stupefied, I left the band and entered the gigantic adjacent hall. There, addressing the reception, was none other than Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein (his organization is one of their major donors). After Yechiel's introduction, I managed to say hello briefly, and then he went back to his table, where he rejoined Shimon Peres and Bibi Netanyahu.

What can I tell you? I'm looking at this famous international figure, who raises hundreds of millions of dollars and chums it up with famous evangelists and heads of state, and all I can think of is how well his teeth are still functioning fifty years on. Shame on me!