tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82374541968902428072024-02-06T22:45:25.229-05:00Words 'n WagsThoughts, conversations, insights and discoveries found in Nature and in books--from both human and canine points of view.Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.comBlogger81125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-68989963902515123132013-09-09T18:00:00.001-04:002013-09-09T18:00:08.476-04:00Softness<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvtnmsISeaeCq165sALjD_mwbsmLMX86yk9qVP6G3r8A6VuBW8Sb69JHuxIHqPiwoh2ws-IjOjkmi0x-LnvrTP9kjofvkiYrjkews9D_1veBhiTNw0sXhCKKDSh1EKEPB4eiB6RR8xIelK/s1600/coleus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvtnmsISeaeCq165sALjD_mwbsmLMX86yk9qVP6G3r8A6VuBW8Sb69JHuxIHqPiwoh2ws-IjOjkmi0x-LnvrTP9kjofvkiYrjkews9D_1veBhiTNw0sXhCKKDSh1EKEPB4eiB6RR8xIelK/s320/coleus.jpg" width="320" /></a>There is a certain softness in slow living. It is as if grains of sand have worn down the edges of the day. I look out into my yard from my recuperation sofa and I see the white pine I planted a few years back...its needles sweeping the breeze, so soft you could use them for bedding. Just imagine the dreams that would come your way, wrapped in that piney fragrance.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjpIqSZMbPgj-V109OdvtLBd-c96EGTHnqc8ySe_TXnz_dBlEMzcbd4bnMtXVzVHBg6J_ISdo0KTG9ggoQalbDts4JvXXYZhRsVLlnjpH59gDRwLmW0XPhXE8rrz7manfVpGo9JaNWvVlj/s1600/pinecones.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjpIqSZMbPgj-V109OdvtLBd-c96EGTHnqc8ySe_TXnz_dBlEMzcbd4bnMtXVzVHBg6J_ISdo0KTG9ggoQalbDts4JvXXYZhRsVLlnjpH59gDRwLmW0XPhXE8rrz7manfVpGo9JaNWvVlj/s320/pinecones.jpg" width="310" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Even these spruce cones have a softness to them.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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The sedum and the Queen Anne's lace are in full bloom with cottony clouds of pink and white offering good things to the bees. Even the raindrops, which have appeared just as I begin to write, have no urgency.<br />
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And who is enjoying these softened days most of all? My dogs! Curled at my feet and on the sofa next to me, they remind me of a favorite poem Mary Oliver wrote in honor of her pet, Percy. She's written many. This one ends,<br />
<br />
"And next to me,<br />
tucked down his curly head<br />
and, sweet as a flower, slept." <br />
<br />
Softness is about yielding to whatever harshness or sharpness there might be. It is about giving way so that better things may happen. It is about turning the other cheek. About whispers that speak louder than shouts.<br />
<br />
During these days of recovery, I have to constantly remind myself that I chose this. That I knew going in that I'd experience a down time...a period of inactivity and softness so that I may soon be able again walk down to Quarton pond, to ride my bicycle into town. Remember?<br />
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<br />Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-37726253275877508822013-09-06T13:15:00.002-04:002013-09-06T13:15:56.660-04:00Tempo and the Honey Bee<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd9Ec75AiK4K4DaYAyGkPYz3O8xlqo3cBKnLmfPJ2e70AvgdTRYZBuZ3nE_KJ2AoAhaBwGt4qskl_D_ea4xdm5koa7KUuFwj-aqsx4GznPsTpVeRDN_JS3k-_vW0-sInLBmkQFfe62ax3F/s1600/bee1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd9Ec75AiK4K4DaYAyGkPYz3O8xlqo3cBKnLmfPJ2e70AvgdTRYZBuZ3nE_KJ2AoAhaBwGt4qskl_D_ea4xdm5koa7KUuFwj-aqsx4GznPsTpVeRDN_JS3k-_vW0-sInLBmkQFfe62ax3F/s320/bee1.jpg" width="301" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A bumblebee visits the anemones in my front yard. </td></tr>
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If there is one thing <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="Nature (journal)">Nature</a> excels at, it is keeping tempo. Maintaining a rhythm. A steady and predictable beat. The tides, the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_phase" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Lunar phase">phases of the moon</a>, the whispers of wind, the cycles of night into day all maintain an ebb and flow that we can count on.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, the tempo is sustainable. Nature knows when to exert energy and when to hold off, so that its efforts are efficient. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-K41ZrKhDea7-JYzuIZ2L98zgN_Ll91VxmW3K2HD9OOf_PJ8as0DrXL9F3PS06zlO4W11WcGr42hhrjuMBoMR0UUMSO4phY07-80B0974Yi2xRUzepcn8M_mYeQh89MNlJvbXaWIOzQJ7/s1600/bee4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-K41ZrKhDea7-JYzuIZ2L98zgN_Ll91VxmW3K2HD9OOf_PJ8as0DrXL9F3PS06zlO4W11WcGr42hhrjuMBoMR0UUMSO4phY07-80B0974Yi2xRUzepcn8M_mYeQh89MNlJvbXaWIOzQJ7/s320/bee4.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumblebee" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Bumblebee">bumble bee</a> is beginning the afternoon's forage so his <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollen" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Pollen">pollen</a> buckets are still empty</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />
Another example so evident in late summer are the bumblebees. This time of year they are almost manic in their search for nectar. "Busy as <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Bee">bees</a>," you might say. Their <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Hip">hips</a> are so laden with pollen I don't know how they can stay airborne and yet they continue darting from bloom to bloom, as if they will never find another one. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1k-GEyBGnkzcILTjZUuQfV7xGdaWgDx4EWY-CriVNsO7jbhPmRTWmkUZKweQU8AhxrfZ-svW1L7eLqECl3GuMfHf_hssFqxFy0xlAqLySIkNteIO4MmF05tomjVGEVvU5C_AZ8-w300an/s1600/bee2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1k-GEyBGnkzcILTjZUuQfV7xGdaWgDx4EWY-CriVNsO7jbhPmRTWmkUZKweQU8AhxrfZ-svW1L7eLqECl3GuMfHf_hssFqxFy0xlAqLySIkNteIO4MmF05tomjVGEVvU5C_AZ8-w300an/s320/bee2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
Until the temperature drops. Then they are paralyzed in time, as if some invisible force has pressed them in place. I find them on these cool, late summer mornings still perched on a flower petal, but motionless.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPBGib0JZ-Ggbr7YUIEi_p_r30qRYzj-kQ3zP2nUhnLbbOrFPxYjUFRp-9QnmNrizYoa38CjzA-pI2_z8ZybNAPQ8rQXLFvzcGBdixcMs7bqwcS8f_oZeS6cRcQDpq6wZAKbNyCCkLBu2E/s320/bee3.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This anemone bud has opened just enough to allow room for a bee to poke inside.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPBGib0JZ-Ggbr7YUIEi_p_r30qRYzj-kQ3zP2nUhnLbbOrFPxYjUFRp-9QnmNrizYoa38CjzA-pI2_z8ZybNAPQ8rQXLFvzcGBdixcMs7bqwcS8f_oZeS6cRcQDpq6wZAKbNyCCkLBu2E/s1600/bee3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>It is difficult for me to stay still, too. Having just had my right hip replaced, I am even more aware of the manic pace I usually keep during the summer months when the long days entice me to add multiple activities to my calendar. <br />
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Now it is as if a giant hand has landed on my shoulder and forced me to the sofa where I lay while my hip heals. With my shadow, Maxi, constantly at my side, I try to avoid thinking of what I should be doing.<br />
<br />
Because I can't.<br />
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Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-2897806402621091092013-07-19T08:33:00.000-04:002013-07-19T08:33:22.479-04:00Sometimes You Just Have to WaitDreams are a strange phenomenon. The sub-conscious. The mind, released of the substance of daily living, roams freely...deeply...and conjures; unafraid to explore depths we'd never even approach in full consciousness.<br />
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So what do they mean? Oh, I won't even go there. Too many volumes have been written already by much more capable authors.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3i_AYENVMAYStm_LO2VBIsWE4ecD1PHVMbv6o0UiPFG8-kUjnyTXGP7gI-6OrDJLlpm-yDexWhpvFmJb_k2AJlY7obMmu7fMgs1ANF-Udd2yPM_L6UmzBQqYVEkhGUWx01J6O_yRrTs5V/s1600/Mantis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3i_AYENVMAYStm_LO2VBIsWE4ecD1PHVMbv6o0UiPFG8-kUjnyTXGP7gI-6OrDJLlpm-yDexWhpvFmJb_k2AJlY7obMmu7fMgs1ANF-Udd2yPM_L6UmzBQqYVEkhGUWx01J6O_yRrTs5V/s320/Mantis.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A praying mantis on the side of our house. A baby, I think, that hatched from an egg sac my daughter gave me.</td></tr>
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My point here is, do we pursue those thoughts actively when we do awaken? Do we face the fears that found their way to the surface? To that, I say yes. At least to the extent that we are sanely able. So, should a dream release anxieties, we owe it to ourselves to try to soothe those fears. To investigate. Who knows what good might come of it? What distance a relationship might travel, spurred forward by the sub-conscious?<br />
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And, what about daytime dreams? A hope that a tidbit from my subconscious might somehow find its way into print? My way of spurring it forward?<br />
<br />
It has been a long time since I've done that. Put some thoughts down on cyber-paper. But, for some reason, it is time. Who knows what good might come of it?Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-8485309451247136532012-10-20T09:25:00.002-04:002012-10-20T09:26:32.838-04:00About Squirrels and Napping<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I walk on a bright, crackling Fall afternoon with two of my little dogs
because the sun is so alive its rays virtually bounce off the vivid
leaves of sugar maples, linden and box elder trees. Even the Oaks, so often dressed in drab taupes and greys this time of year, are decked in crimson and gold for this year-end party. The purple and white
asters, too, are dancing with life as though summer were just beginning
to make its appearance. This is a visual score that gifts my eyes with a
most melodic symphony. Playing right along are the bumblebees, with their yellow and black shrugs, and the
squirrels whose tails flick frantically as they gather and bury while Nature inMichigan
still permits such activiy.<br />
<br />
It won't be long now before Nature takes its well-deserved nap. It
knows far better than most of us that all work and no rest is bad for
the spirit, not to mention the body.<br />
<br />
My own tendencies
are to let this time of year weigh too heavily on me. I don't like winter. I don't like the restrictions it puts on my walks and bike rides. But, as I age, I have
come to appreciate the luxury of rest. Nights of uninterrupted rest are
hard to come by. I think part of my problem is that, in looking ahead to Winter --the season of white death and silence--I get impatient. Spring, the time of joyous rebirth, is way too far away to offer me any comfort. <br />
<br />
When my
daughters were young, bedtime always presented a series of challenges.
None of them ever wanted to end the day. It was as if morning was so far
away it could never be counted on arriving at all. To ask them to put a
book down or a game away of to turn off the television was a request
cloaked in meanness. Like many mothers I would bargain to bring the
night on more gently with a bedtime story. <br />
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Many aspects of life can be improved with just a little rest. Relationships, careers, mealtime to name a few. Even exercise is more effective, I've heard, if we let our muscles rest between vigorous workouts.<br />
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So, instead of looking into the future and becoming depressed because it is too far off, I need to remind myself to enjoy the present for the good things it offers. I need to be more like a squirrel. Pack up some nourishment to carry my soul through the dark months...I have shelves loaded with good stuff I've yet to read; and, when Spring does finally arrive, know that enjoying it will be that much more refreshing and wonderful. <br />
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<br />Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-49336485453378742962012-10-02T10:22:00.000-04:002012-10-17T07:49:32.151-04:00A Fitting Finish to Summer <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Yes, four months since my last post. A very long span of time in some
respects but really just a flash. Time comes and goes in flashes now and if I've learned anything over the years it is that the period between the flashes is what is important. So I meandered around the pond on a stellar Fall afternoon and allowed what I could see, smell and hear to take over the moment. To comfort me as my thoughts could not.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinNOMpsjj-zENHBMmyV9CkEuL8N2Icpr25Jh5G8meDeqNeQXsOISzRrEcrVP13PTZ-1bq787Ab0PcezVHaI8eH6EI-j07pGeBy-UrbzuwVQNU-LXN9gsHZ31Vu-xlqEemI0PTkdURTxkfP/s320/Fall+1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A maple tree as majestic as any at its most glorious moment. A gilded robe that it would soon let go. The flash at sunset. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFoUijZ2Opxc8uj3qRC6IHXY4VlFCRdFS9OTmGbbhUaT9E817_eaLYLBxzCAFeTvpRAh5HFVHLVt-jK_orA7OF0c-in4rDHkpxZbCG0MpqOg09sRJ0t8BOhr3ASdZCnAA8JA52N4Z0KAKC/s1600/Fall+12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFoUijZ2Opxc8uj3qRC6IHXY4VlFCRdFS9OTmGbbhUaT9E817_eaLYLBxzCAFeTvpRAh5HFVHLVt-jK_orA7OF0c-in4rDHkpxZbCG0MpqOg09sRJ0t8BOhr3ASdZCnAA8JA52N4Z0KAKC/s320/Fall+12.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Red Squrrek and an Eastern Fox Squirrel are more worried about us than each other.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYeViTaYog4HfeP4BVxKhIz-8vqp0YJ-gHeLkhR3zfvyJuDwWzfwvr7Pi8pjxi_yEFRXO_ZRg-Nvrdylyh_MiU-ybh1jH7galEpUX5N1bUiUMIVxTwUGQ9iyxljCwSSt67qUzmIc4Z_CB4/s1600/Fall+13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYeViTaYog4HfeP4BVxKhIz-8vqp0YJ-gHeLkhR3zfvyJuDwWzfwvr7Pi8pjxi_yEFRXO_ZRg-Nvrdylyh_MiU-ybh1jH7galEpUX5N1bUiUMIVxTwUGQ9iyxljCwSSt67qUzmIc4Z_CB4/s320/Fall+13.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ah! The beauty of a long camera lens. Neither the painted turtles nor the Wood Duck had any concerns about our presence.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGzdYMxFzCCxibC8ozdY8Zx2CU5CuIKZpRbHf3oKjDcgWiKs8J3KVKfdcD_lCdY95uGIc0qO5MLpMc3wQVqpeSSvR1CbjVEpzxGbvPkB3cOH3HPsUx99hWV-CmkuaOBhqG7keiFKeGZDJU/s1600/Fall+14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGzdYMxFzCCxibC8ozdY8Zx2CU5CuIKZpRbHf3oKjDcgWiKs8J3KVKfdcD_lCdY95uGIc0qO5MLpMc3wQVqpeSSvR1CbjVEpzxGbvPkB3cOH3HPsUx99hWV-CmkuaOBhqG7keiFKeGZDJU/s320/Fall+14.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I love these ducks!</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhL8IY48JMFLwhyf4YBaQ8MmIImaaHNKkqAOu5fVX7gkCUKVzaa74mstBzQxJ-gT5PjEvhNKfEZ02XgRF7kWZLTn3kszNJTpY2b6-nKRCTJtR0b4ovQ7fVTTYnn2irXXOP63VvLtoF0Gr8/s1600/Fall10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhL8IY48JMFLwhyf4YBaQ8MmIImaaHNKkqAOu5fVX7gkCUKVzaa74mstBzQxJ-gT5PjEvhNKfEZ02XgRF7kWZLTn3kszNJTpY2b6-nKRCTJtR0b4ovQ7fVTTYnn2irXXOP63VvLtoF0Gr8/s320/Fall10.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">How could this setting not bring comfort to a soul?</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho_PcuVCDrvHZlfF1gkGElJuRs6Lw3gPU7u0YSKmXSM2_w9wN5x7sQYyfUq1TB5eghyphenhyphenGcY0OLsFcVebrXEhZ9aHi4q2JGcur4YyrIK7EbYATQnBgkDONI51wUMqzjGLp6Lh4RZN4Ew6zdA/s1600/Fall11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho_PcuVCDrvHZlfF1gkGElJuRs6Lw3gPU7u0YSKmXSM2_w9wN5x7sQYyfUq1TB5eghyphenhyphenGcY0OLsFcVebrXEhZ9aHi4q2JGcur4YyrIK7EbYATQnBgkDONI51wUMqzjGLp6Lh4RZN4Ew6zdA/s320/Fall11.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A box elder (I believe) on fire!</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv91ZPIyT9XEfIJkVrGNUEmjKBEfzJg6apq1ExkqqXrFo2o8wQ239vKPcqKNuAWrOmy-oPIKBMnw88qXygb9vqnNYnA3xM-NOYDqvWpAGtbcREr4TjTyoqD05RWtwunmjmNaoKuuPnXWU7/s1600/Fall12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv91ZPIyT9XEfIJkVrGNUEmjKBEfzJg6apq1ExkqqXrFo2o8wQ239vKPcqKNuAWrOmy-oPIKBMnw88qXygb9vqnNYnA3xM-NOYDqvWpAGtbcREr4TjTyoqD05RWtwunmjmNaoKuuPnXWU7/s320/Fall12.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Can you spot the pair of female wood ducks in this lily pad flotsam?</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizXuuWyGriyp0eoZuqI5xSHaEicvOhJfxFcyS_LuZFEVBN0sNCRn3lUsfyPcbTjJgPqX3y8pHBUOfRbvX4QTUqpfKUEpl2vQOarD5EjVK28y6vEQLwzJ2a7Qa3Kqb7VGBHAhoLHtm4JlXu/s1600/Fall14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizXuuWyGriyp0eoZuqI5xSHaEicvOhJfxFcyS_LuZFEVBN0sNCRn3lUsfyPcbTjJgPqX3y8pHBUOfRbvX4QTUqpfKUEpl2vQOarD5EjVK28y6vEQLwzJ2a7Qa3Kqb7VGBHAhoLHtm4JlXu/s320/Fall14.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">So majestic.</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4m2hPFpTMSPjxJcNxWVADbsSbnEbAGyAA5R2jT0mxkWtk62x3c_Co0i5-xDZWGy07rCLX22QsyO0p_dceLRaTSNpMVgav50J1w2rCBkA-RylF6-gGWFNN7AhswZCsdz1Tf3RQ74X-H61u/s1600/Fall17.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4m2hPFpTMSPjxJcNxWVADbsSbnEbAGyAA5R2jT0mxkWtk62x3c_Co0i5-xDZWGy07rCLX22QsyO0p_dceLRaTSNpMVgav50J1w2rCBkA-RylF6-gGWFNN7AhswZCsdz1Tf3RQ74X-H61u/s320/Fall17.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And so proud...he's literally beating his chest! I don't think the turtles give a hoot.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYoNg4GI5gXR5jNhdVM1QVWdzZfObXQVo7q6znjNYmxRMItVJHCIy1aQ6FOHJ0bkfEUgZIhG6x9aCVlCdFE6_A3MOcLbQDU6wm7JofURDobHQZT_XhusJ2zKyf64jnsM4f9KPl8v-Oofm6/s1600/Fall18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYoNg4GI5gXR5jNhdVM1QVWdzZfObXQVo7q6znjNYmxRMItVJHCIy1aQ6FOHJ0bkfEUgZIhG6x9aCVlCdFE6_A3MOcLbQDU6wm7JofURDobHQZT_XhusJ2zKyf64jnsM4f9KPl8v-Oofm6/s320/Fall18.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Taking a regal bath.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG8AQbavSALP1Z2s-bAmk_WTBEc4NDqGX-eQ0GqFgEsSO-T1cEWb6lhi4gsvz5_egoPZpWlFa6C3K0o-oQkmwyxosQiPLjXyuwsmZbzT-N57CxvuF-RmoDzR3LFPdMyI-BS1pKAmm1ADlW/s1600/Fall2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG8AQbavSALP1Z2s-bAmk_WTBEc4NDqGX-eQ0GqFgEsSO-T1cEWb6lhi4gsvz5_egoPZpWlFa6C3K0o-oQkmwyxosQiPLjXyuwsmZbzT-N57CxvuF-RmoDzR3LFPdMyI-BS1pKAmm1ADlW/s320/Fall2.jpg" width="183" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These guys really do blend in with their backgrounds.</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFDFVcXkvbbFh4iXNHbHLJvodEgg_3kmhau1a1mp8PaVE9uFxTN-HJDHTYQnCGVyfZ_wB7xTGFUrQwQ0w9409r1PkINRhAGz8zOxqofthQxXdFh8zQhxcKGSWYwTblnXh7fqcA8crUOaSe/s1600/Fall3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFDFVcXkvbbFh4iXNHbHLJvodEgg_3kmhau1a1mp8PaVE9uFxTN-HJDHTYQnCGVyfZ_wB7xTGFUrQwQ0w9409r1PkINRhAGz8zOxqofthQxXdFh8zQhxcKGSWYwTblnXh7fqcA8crUOaSe/s320/Fall3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9kI5yTYZkK6lX1nqWCLAaMYVAhNw2eMzaYHGWFT_wgj_K7gkf2AsBgpZcViw4R-u0_w7rx2cEUd0baNU7LZ3FXp3dh-oO0mpOcnTrCsjeIrGjPVg1Q_QkpNKKJurkxmXAl5gU2V_FkCKG/s1600/Fall4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9kI5yTYZkK6lX1nqWCLAaMYVAhNw2eMzaYHGWFT_wgj_K7gkf2AsBgpZcViw4R-u0_w7rx2cEUd0baNU7LZ3FXp3dh-oO0mpOcnTrCsjeIrGjPVg1Q_QkpNKKJurkxmXAl5gU2V_FkCKG/s320/Fall4.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our resident Blue Heron on the lookout from his favorite perch</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix-h_wFxn64hYoPjmOR7SJ3QcGUJR0Na9xMW6TI3LWFCK0_xzJ1FE2SYyvrfaAF7vAyxMs8tgPrfSwN9j9u7HraN1mK1UhXEQzlO54ZHK99j75Un-eIDr209Tk4IUPmLK3dOZo2QbVgBNM/s1600/Fall5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix-h_wFxn64hYoPjmOR7SJ3QcGUJR0Na9xMW6TI3LWFCK0_xzJ1FE2SYyvrfaAF7vAyxMs8tgPrfSwN9j9u7HraN1mK1UhXEQzlO54ZHK99j75Un-eIDr209Tk4IUPmLK3dOZo2QbVgBNM/s320/Fall5.jpg" width="202" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Grey Squirrel...yes <i>grey</i>...the result of melanistic genes. He's certain my dogs and I are going to steal his nut.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYQLm3rr2A3xLUEHvGkz_6Khm_tr6zDGhStdA5KdAbxa0uWRmGa5Tj16cw-zq9FlJcBLBEqKC54X_XLQxc63MyvO6UYUGmrp3enGbD5BW8_KnkdmEu9ib3FB8pyf33Bzan_XA1rL1X0shF/s1600/Fall6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYQLm3rr2A3xLUEHvGkz_6Khm_tr6zDGhStdA5KdAbxa0uWRmGa5Tj16cw-zq9FlJcBLBEqKC54X_XLQxc63MyvO6UYUGmrp3enGbD5BW8_KnkdmEu9ib3FB8pyf33Bzan_XA1rL1X0shF/s320/Fall6.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Female Wood Duck with her pretty white eyes.</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmtEYkDdiTlmh39bd-qKUVRQ-I5u2ThyfQys9dSwtrH477ktLjAZeKUEfGuCPo2BOUm_L4SK7RXkAPeZE3mwFM0JvZfSzvXU_pK4oVdF_h5mXkzGXorjfQsP3G6Y_ELxo126ekMn7s753Q/s1600/Fall7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmtEYkDdiTlmh39bd-qKUVRQ-I5u2ThyfQys9dSwtrH477ktLjAZeKUEfGuCPo2BOUm_L4SK7RXkAPeZE3mwFM0JvZfSzvXU_pK4oVdF_h5mXkzGXorjfQsP3G6Y_ELxo126ekMn7s753Q/s320/Fall7.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJe72X_45pmY533Dftq33BIrlvXX0iy_YD6gzMaMLRNNH9dLC5dZORbA1ck4yDHmP2Qky52eC00Hh5BIiEUMyJ9QcSUKPbk07Wyrcz82fyVH408qoz2xS7LR174HzAaU6sGaaQcgtyp2zk/s1600/Fall8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJe72X_45pmY533Dftq33BIrlvXX0iy_YD6gzMaMLRNNH9dLC5dZORbA1ck4yDHmP2Qky52eC00Hh5BIiEUMyJ9QcSUKPbk07Wyrcz82fyVH408qoz2xS7LR174HzAaU6sGaaQcgtyp2zk/s320/Fall8.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lily pads in the clouds.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhec-tsmjS3d6CnzoAPnrpDFeDveoRGbHdEJrFU5ZrqTWd9AFxz2dwk8w0CYrxduXan4RkVhJdw5IL7bu1-oDo2mfsmkVfZhqIu-Usu5skHz_dQ6sA4P0_E2f07HSbSXMmzdTI1TZqm0-it/s1600/Fall15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhec-tsmjS3d6CnzoAPnrpDFeDveoRGbHdEJrFU5ZrqTWd9AFxz2dwk8w0CYrxduXan4RkVhJdw5IL7bu1-oDo2mfsmkVfZhqIu-Usu5skHz_dQ6sA4P0_E2f07HSbSXMmzdTI1TZqm0-it/s320/Fall15.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And he's still bathing!</td></tr>
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<br />Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-23289911194566792912012-06-04T08:58:00.002-04:002012-06-04T09:01:01.515-04:00Bird Nests and other Spring MusingsSpring arrived here in March. Then, with a vengeance, Winter came back as if admonishing Spring for daring to tread on its sacred ground. My apple tree never blossomed this spring. It's quite probable my cherry never will again. My plum, it appears, is just patiently waiting for next year. And, my wisteria nearly gave up but is nosing its way through the tangle of my arbor with fragile, grey-green leaves. On the other hand, my peach tree blessed me with so many baby peaches it couldn't hold on to them all. Go figure.<br />
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But, beyond these discoveries of new life thwarted are two that have warmed my heart for the past month. A pair of cardinals built a nest in the vine that shades my dog run--before the vine even sprouted leaves which meant their little home was in full view of anyone with even minimal vision. I chuckled as I watched the mother sit on her eggs, face into the corner of our chimney, and wondered whether she felt safe because she couldn't see me even though I could see her.<br />
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Two weeks ago a fledgling appeared at the top of the trellis that supports this vine. All afternoon both parents would stop by with food for the baby and in between visits he (or her) would sit patiently waiting. Trusting that they were not far away.<br />
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We have cats in our neighborhood. Lots of cats. And a hawk. I wanted to move the fledgeling to a safer place. One not quite so visible. But had to trust that nature has its own way of doing these things. Then, for a week I did not see the fledgeling again. Ach! I forced myself not to consider what might have happened. Then, sitting at my writing desk which faces the dog run I saw a brown bird perched on its picket fence. It was the baby, again taking food from its parents. Happy day for me! He's big enough now and strong enough to dodge those pesky cats and possibly even the hawk.<br />
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The other discovery came yesterday. I noticed a robin pecking away at the debris in our gutter. I thought maybe it was foraging for a tasty tidbit but actually it was finding just the perfect twig or two for a nest. The nest, I soon discovered, is wedged in the revitalized tendrils of my wisteria. <br />
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Spring and Winter can fight amongst themselves for supremacy of the seasons but guess what? The cycle of life is stronger then them both.<br />
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<br />Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-2071163212464885082012-05-17T10:10:00.002-04:002012-06-04T08:59:55.361-04:00Unfinished Desires by Gail GodwinThere is a lot to absorb, even in the first few pages, of Unfinished Desires by Gail Godwin. Set ultimately in 2007, it tells the story of several women whose lives first connect at Mount St. Gabriel's, a Catholic boarding school for Girls in the mountains of South Carolina. <br />
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The novel opens with some women who graduated from the school in the 1960's as they surround their beloved (and now nearly blind) headmistress, Mother Suzanne Ravenal The women have convinced Mother to write her memoir about the school which closed in 1972 and which was Mother's home for over sixty years. This is the last we hear of those women, which confused me, as the story then twists around a series of unfortunate memories of 1952 that preclude Mother Ravenal's one-year leave of absence from the school. Memories which creep towards, then retreat from, this year of the so-called disaster. <br />
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When Mother Ravenal is finally able to bring herself to face the pain of that year, she comes to a kind of peace with herself and with a much earlier pain that, like some festering thorn under her skin, she'd never fully understood.<br />
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I grew up in the Catholic "school system." I attended a private Catholic high school for girls run by nuns, so I get that part of the story. Of course I was a teenager as well so I get that. And I get a passionate attraction to a best friend. I just don't think these elements were put together in the most efficient manner. Too many side trips and side characters to step over along the way. <br />
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The story is well-written and does a sensitive and insightful treatment of adolescence--its clumsiness, its passions and its cruelties--as well as the origins of these frailities. But it requires so much focus to keep tabs of the dozens of characters, the multiple points of views and the revolving time frames. It ends, not with Mother Ravenal but with the three ninth grade students who were at the eye of the storm that led to Mother's abrupt leave from the school. I can't say the ending totally satisfied me. Not that I think a novel necessarily must adhere to a single character's story but that it needs to leave me with a sense that the characters have all reached a point of closure with each other. Too many of them did not.Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-69203141620733733742012-05-09T20:54:00.000-04:002012-05-09T20:54:55.235-04:00Defending Jacob :A Review<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAZN7FiUBXd4R_lAv-Y0b6gnf3b32O2Yei0wQQmBomdMEgIwAP2c9AdqK0uvGQGfurDSq4EJB2Dq5bk9Rkz1rMZ07PyTgjtdphDcyeWGucgtc5wRCQRUBuHU9pZDeECcC5-6BN6j4iRjEh/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAZN7FiUBXd4R_lAv-Y0b6gnf3b32O2Yei0wQQmBomdMEgIwAP2c9AdqK0uvGQGfurDSq4EJB2Dq5bk9Rkz1rMZ07PyTgjtdphDcyeWGucgtc5wRCQRUBuHU9pZDeECcC5-6BN6j4iRjEh/s1600/images.jpg" /></a>Defending Jacob by William Landay is a real page turner! Faced with one of the worst possible scenarios...that their only child, Jacob, has been accused of murdering his bullying classmate...Andy and Laurie Barber struggle with losing not just all their friends but his career as district prosecuting attorney and hers as the ultimate suburban mom. <br />
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While Jacob is the titled character it is Andy whose story Landay tells. A man who, on the surface is a brilliant and successful prosecutor, is revealed to be quite vulnerable underneath. He struggles, not only with his son's guilt but also his own guilt over having possibly passed on to his son the "murder gene." The incident forces to the forefront a not-so-wonderful past that Andy has managed to conceal; a past which, in combination with Jacob's trial, threatens Andy's storybook marriage.<br />
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Defending Jacob is a crime thriller written with lyrical language not normally found in such fast-paced novels. It gives sensitive treatment to a close family not accustomed to being looked at under the microscopes of their upscale neighbors and friends. It gives a wrenching look inside a man who has lived a lie and been tortured by it. And, it gives an almost unbelievable and certainly horrific solution to the problem. <br />
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What Defending Jacob does not give us is much of a view inside the minds and hearts of Jacob or Laurie. It's a difficult task given the first person point of view which makes me think third person might have been more effective. My only other nit is that much of the narrative is repeated at one time or another throughout the story because of the frequent interjection of transcripts from the actual trial. <br />
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On the whole, however, it was a well-written, gripping story. I look forward to reading Landay's next work.Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-1317111960917951392012-04-26T17:49:00.002-04:002012-04-26T17:52:01.227-04:00Learning To Swim by Sara J. Henry : A Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk69trGHhyZ6s2Y18FY-Flza6GsUpEy7bRP24Z0momWpLhoiJoxwglMoMYQj15ghgke1wF2vawzi4T5iNjnH5miASvxiCqCENJZz6ry6ME2CPWYwtwYKSRNYdzk-z1X-udE3I7ooYkEEz5/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk69trGHhyZ6s2Y18FY-Flza6GsUpEy7bRP24Z0momWpLhoiJoxwglMoMYQj15ghgke1wF2vawzi4T5iNjnH5miASvxiCqCENJZz6ry6ME2CPWYwtwYKSRNYdzk-z1X-udE3I7ooYkEEz5/s200/images.jpg" width="130" /></a></div>
Since Sara J. Henry just won this years Mary Higgins Clark award at the Edgars for her debut novel, Learning To Swim, I thought I better turn in my review. This story plunges you into the icy waters of Lake Champlain right along with its heroine, Troy Chance, who is quite certain she sees a young child being tossed overboard from a ferry and jumps from the boat she's in to rescue this victim. <br />
Not only did she see a child but the child was tied so tightly into a sweatshirt that he had no chance of survival had Troy not made the daring leap. <br />
I liked the character, Troy Chance; the way Henry portrays her. Troy is more comfortable with guys (good since all the tenants in her boarding house are guys), loves a good meal and is skeptical of authority...all traits I can relate to! She is brave but also naive, she is physically strong but weak when it comes to abandoned children. <br />
Yes, there are parts of the story that are a bit far-fetched but they are definitely not impossible; and yes the ending is a bit contrived but it is a mystery written in an era where both belief and skepticism are routinely suspended. <br />
Most importantly this was a well-written novel with a great plot and a boatload of interesting characters. And, judging from how the story ended I would suspect there might be a few more mysteries for Troy Chance to solve before she is finished. I hope so, anyway!Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-2019794177167591302012-04-24T10:52:00.001-04:002012-04-25T08:15:46.964-04:00The Truth About Delilah Blue : A Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The truth about Delilah Blue is that it changes. It changes because even Delilah doesn’t know who she is. Her divorced and estranged parents have used Delilah to create their own identities because even these adults in Tish Cohen’s latest novel have no clue who they are.<br />
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A story loaded with identity issues, The Truth About Delilah Blue, weaves back and forth between the points of view of Delilah (renamed Lila Mack for most of the novel), and her father, Victor, who is Lila's caretaker and who is slipping into early onset Alzheimer's.<br />
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Lila believes Elizabeth, Victor's ex-wife and Lila's mother, abandoned her. Midway through the novel Lila learns the truth. That Victor actually kidnapped her to save Lila from an irresponsible mother. That he took her from Toronto to Los Angeles and changed their names to hide Lila from the authorities. So Lila's father isn't who she thought he was either.<br />
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I liked this story because of the issues it presents. Neither parent is portrayed as perfect. Far from it. But neither is portrayed as evil either. Instead Lila learns that both parents loved her very much and did what they thought was best. In the end Lila learns that she is not the unwanted daughter of her artist mother nor the victim of her law-breaking and eccentric father but Delilah Blue, a young girl struggling to grow beyond the hurts of her past to find who she really is.<br />
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I also liked the easy going style of Tish Cohen's writing as well as her descriptions of the settings and the characters. Only two things actually bothered me. The ending, which I thought was confusing and abrupt. And the art professor of the class where Lila worked as a model who I thought was a bit inconsistent. Or maybe it was just that he was the one character I didn't like!<br />
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Finally, I liked Slash, the ever present, urbanized coyote that seemed to relate to Lila better than any human. As a passionate lover of animals I found this thread weaving through Cohen's novel a warm and significant element.<br />
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<br />Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-34690140741138657062012-04-20T08:11:00.000-04:002012-04-25T08:16:23.417-04:00Night Swim by Jessica Keener: a Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAfP-jFMKnOApHIMMHvEBdY-4n3OdBUlW9nGH215m5Gs5D0XyTKeafK_7Rv5QWuigaxBzRhlJTZSreygeXFtm1SEqlLokXjZDn_tn3vIdnE21SYge4zELP0O2CAN5lWmYqBMjnW-jZlxyc/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAfP-jFMKnOApHIMMHvEBdY-4n3OdBUlW9nGH215m5Gs5D0XyTKeafK_7Rv5QWuigaxBzRhlJTZSreygeXFtm1SEqlLokXjZDn_tn3vIdnE21SYge4zELP0O2CAN5lWmYqBMjnW-jZlxyc/s1600/images.jpg" /></a></div>
Scanning the shelves of a library or a bookstore one might think coming
of age is only a male experience. Of course it is not and in Night Swim
Jessica Keener sensitively tells the story of a young girl unable to
live with or without her mother. It is a beautiful story that I plan to
recommend to my new book club.<br />
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Born into a wealthy Jewish family in the suburbs of Boston, Sarah Kunitz struggles in high school with a mother who solves most of her troubles with alcohol and pills and a father who is more obsessed with his students at a local university than his daughter and three sons.<br />
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Set in the 1970s, the novel uses music as the force that ties Sarah with her older brother, Peter. When her beautiful voice is discovered by her music teacher, music also becomes a force that gives Sarah a much needed sense of worth. <br />
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It is not enough, however, to bring her closer to her mother, something Sarah wants desperately; something she continues to attempt even after her mother is gone by caring for her precious rose garden.<br />
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I have a friend who has suffered chronic bouts of depression for decades and I know, first hand, how debilitating it is for both the adult and their children. Keener does a masterful job of portraying this terrible condition in all its sadness and ugliness.<br />
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It is long after her mother's death in a car accident and long after several broken relationships, one resulting in an abortion, that Sarah comes to a place where she can stand on her own.<br />
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A poignant portrayal of a time and place that focuses, not on the notorious issues of the day--the Vietnam War, drugs, hippies and peace marches--, but on the more mundane issues within the walls of suburban households that is forced to move forward despite their personal problems. Keener's portrayal of how Sarah, as well as her three brothers, each deal with their pain is both beautiful and sensitive.<br />
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<br />Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-910863401855909232012-04-11T15:05:00.002-04:002012-04-11T15:05:39.133-04:00The Daffodils WaitedAch! It's spring. Goldfinches are the color of the forsythia...a sure sign. The bumble bees are making me guilty. They don't like 50 degree weather any more than I but they are out there buzzing through the quince blossoms, soaking in the glorious nectar. The sun shines. That is the draw and, though the season arrived early this year--nearly two weeks early--the blooms have remained hearty due to the cool nights.<br />
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Already I am planning ahead to the picket fence I'll put up for the puppies, the landscape additions to the side yard where our privacy has been compromised. Not a hedge of arborvitae as is so often the case in this suburban neighborhood, but a medley of pines and berry bushes for the birds to nibble all winter.<br />
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The cardinals are seeking their nesting places, the chickadees and goldfinch are scratching at the feeders which are in desperate need of re-filling and the robins are busy listening at the earth for signs of plump earthworms to pluck out.<br />
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I love it!Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-78844828760842237962012-03-27T15:06:00.000-04:002012-04-11T15:20:29.029-04:00Pelicans in the Fast Food Line<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-4IquYEBvbuq5CN_tL5VRq1QfxLSt2stiVjfhFlGyQdLFx790ew0np6f0LLiJJWNdZPVKJyryh-bEcfU9eR8oGZ18NGRImr6w97HAveEuFXJPciRCAlTNtzuilItUL6tV5gKsoSK0L0bL/s1600/IMG_0625.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-4IquYEBvbuq5CN_tL5VRq1QfxLSt2stiVjfhFlGyQdLFx790ew0np6f0LLiJJWNdZPVKJyryh-bEcfU9eR8oGZ18NGRImr6w97HAveEuFXJPciRCAlTNtzuilItUL6tV5gKsoSK0L0bL/s200/IMG_0625.JPG" width="200" /></a>There must have been several large schools of fish off the Florida Gulf Coast at the Delnor-Wiggins State Park this morning because there were several dozen brown pelicans getting breakfast there. I also saw two snowy egrets tiptoeing through the shallows seeking smaller fish and high above an osprey was on the lookout for her mate who had evidently promised her a prized morsel or two.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP44iHZEFq1lb0HTH8xO7_ozjhpkTMnIUxQzSxKri-hrADmbLTStflTfgB677sTGhlugngfVFlJfD_cYZk5YffVCqAhI3w29FZ4oIK6Iq46cmGlC6UPJ3QDADFOT1T-9prDZ6h0Ui08tQr/s1600/IMG_0665.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP44iHZEFq1lb0HTH8xO7_ozjhpkTMnIUxQzSxKri-hrADmbLTStflTfgB677sTGhlugngfVFlJfD_cYZk5YffVCqAhI3w29FZ4oIK6Iq46cmGlC6UPJ3QDADFOT1T-9prDZ6h0Ui08tQr/s200/IMG_0665.JPG" width="200" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJAiwV9hRG2BpCNL_WbBo8FLkdSPcCSS1fAh9b3kwYUYSsBcwBL6ULGttR4W5JSUDFpmyeBq5pny-ElyX__BM_JuNil9iORSWrnE1ZOReJ1DzLriqLiSDY9vAOHcQqCbHNunVS6nhdCb-i/s1600/IMG_0626.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJAiwV9hRG2BpCNL_WbBo8FLkdSPcCSS1fAh9b3kwYUYSsBcwBL6ULGttR4W5JSUDFpmyeBq5pny-ElyX__BM_JuNil9iORSWrnE1ZOReJ1DzLriqLiSDY9vAOHcQqCbHNunVS6nhdCb-i/s200/IMG_0626.JPG" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgshXWJDnUB2yo66JsN5j2zNGDQGZqVgQau2cL4K3VfifbC5e39LEgqrkYG-V5gHnQQyD6pxbHSQiJdEBuOWnmpIkynIFIUAwW7uRawcDo7fzblGem5_KbPM4KtIqannNCrhHFR69BoyM3/s1600/IMG_0634.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgshXWJDnUB2yo66JsN5j2zNGDQGZqVgQau2cL4K3VfifbC5e39LEgqrkYG-V5gHnQQyD6pxbHSQiJdEBuOWnmpIkynIFIUAwW7uRawcDo7fzblGem5_KbPM4KtIqannNCrhHFR69BoyM3/s200/IMG_0634.JPG" width="200" /></a>It occurred to me how much time animals and fowl spend each day just seeking nourishment. How far we have come from the need to put most of our energy into hunting, farming, fishing or milking cows.What a mistake that has been. Such healthy entertainment we have denied ourselves.<br />
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<br />Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-44013685816174760732012-03-01T16:00:00.002-05:002012-03-01T16:00:40.302-05:00The Mighty Osprey<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIH2ZaHYbpBGaQ5I04ZhNFBU8eJCi4PHUL3YuscY6k9LTWrEhdk8e4wzogu1r5Ez_mgAZqIiIP4O4gOESNo0qAFCXMpUicnhjDciXTn3vpc6WaMrosXtsLEJiHiLas3r5h1w1soaUrZL-6/s1600/IMG_0675.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIH2ZaHYbpBGaQ5I04ZhNFBU8eJCi4PHUL3YuscY6k9LTWrEhdk8e4wzogu1r5Ez_mgAZqIiIP4O4gOESNo0qAFCXMpUicnhjDciXTn3vpc6WaMrosXtsLEJiHiLas3r5h1w1soaUrZL-6/s200/IMG_0675.JPG" width="200" /></a> The ospreys, still endangered but not nearly as rare as they once were, are coming back. They are majestic fisher birds with wingspans just 10 inches shorter than the bald eagle and bodies not quite as bulky. They build massive nests from sticks that they return to each year and put on additions so that they might comfortably cushion a child if that child so desired.<br />
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There is a pair that have nested at Delnor-Wiggins State Park in Naples, FL for several years. Three years ago their nest, complete with fledglings, was blown apart in a violent storm. Such are the <br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF8ZDoci1R2kgYMr1gevi2qyB12wBp3RImKbiEw-wc4dfcvNXV-QJsBP_jMbYeY-0zXxWwmdUeZ1NUdFnuJ3NUCW8sAmDy-KyfRyjPFCbY-LQ7b0hcb_miwFXfLPw6Xcf_dEnzmIzngInx/s1600/IMG_0748.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF8ZDoci1R2kgYMr1gevi2qyB12wBp3RImKbiEw-wc4dfcvNXV-QJsBP_jMbYeY-0zXxWwmdUeZ1NUdFnuJ3NUCW8sAmDy-KyfRyjPFCbY-LQ7b0hcb_miwFXfLPw6Xcf_dEnzmIzngInx/s200/IMG_0748.JPG" width="179" /></a>ways of nature. Everyone hoped they would rebuild but they did not. the next year a new nest appeared at the top of a tree whose canopy might have been destroyed in a similar storm leaving the perfect, almost flat, platform in a wide open space that these marvelous raptors prefer. Ospreys are amazing in their ability to soar, spot and dive for<br />
the fish they hunt. Because they are not as adept at turns as other raptors, they need these wide open areas. You won't normally find their nests deep within the limbs of trees as you might a hawk's or an eagle's. And, because their most common enemies (after man and the automobile) are scavengers such as raccoons who might climb and raid their nests, they like to be up high.<br /><br />
For the few weeks I've walked this part of the park the ospreys have taken turns sitting on the eggs and hunting for fish--the only food they eat. Today, one of them was sitting high on the edge of the nest. Of course I did not have my camera with me. But it appears the eggs have hatched which means mama and papa will be busier than ever keeping the fledgelings fed.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwfS34IGv3snIUHT5aHknrcXDl_yWXhvG5AwctZASQQxG6U_ToJMjMJ9YQV2YYrn6RygabVDc_yxl82Rz6MgvaZ-EsRry-7ZQw6Ilf9sE8LIPJPolL7yZMLTKQWsKNIeZTskUzyrNlce-Q/s1600/IMG_0732.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwfS34IGv3snIUHT5aHknrcXDl_yWXhvG5AwctZASQQxG6U_ToJMjMJ9YQV2YYrn6RygabVDc_yxl82Rz6MgvaZ-EsRry-7ZQw6Ilf9sE8LIPJPolL7yZMLTKQWsKNIeZTskUzyrNlce-Q/s320/IMG_0732.JPG" width="238" /></a><br />
Many ospreys are terrific travellers. During migration they can log up to 160,000 miles in a lifetime. One osprey strapped with a tracking transmitter traveled from Martha's Vineyards to French Guiana, South America, in less than two weeks! <br />
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As mighty as these birds appear, they are actually quite fragile. The DDT years nearly wiped them out. A conservation success story, the ospreys' numbers began to climb back as soon as the DDT ban was initiated. Now, unfortunately, because ospreys often pick up fishing line and soda-can straps as well as twigs to add to their nests, this beach trash has become a deadly hazard for fledglings that get caught up in them.<br />
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Like many raptors, osprey eggs do not hatch all at once but over a period of several days. That means the first born is much stronger than the last and, when food is scarce, have a much better chance of surviving.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmerZtloLFXl_oH8A5nMn6cAE9PpiTAA85SoZBnImDpxx1_hFC-HOQrTJrzeFtoOIcL6svzn5H0M5Bput9l8zH7GQlAl67NQReIeWP2PjRbSTfVnHXmmOkncNhGTUcatPs9sIkZPUY3F4X/s1600/IMG_0695.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmerZtloLFXl_oH8A5nMn6cAE9PpiTAA85SoZBnImDpxx1_hFC-HOQrTJrzeFtoOIcL6svzn5H0M5Bput9l8zH7GQlAl67NQReIeWP2PjRbSTfVnHXmmOkncNhGTUcatPs9sIkZPUY3F4X/s200/IMG_0695.JPG" width="200" /></a>When I think about all the other threats our natural world has been subjected to...our lust for an easier, faster, asphalt-laden and chemical-driven life...I wonder if we will learn in time which "improvements" might eradicate other species...and if we do, will we be as lucky as we were with the osprey to enjoy their rebound. <br />
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<br />Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-25949100910674886642012-01-28T08:48:00.000-05:002012-02-03T07:28:37.728-05:00Elmore Leonard and Peter on Raylan, Justified and Voices of the Dead<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMon79dpAlC7I7IKXEeTheXt-uVx9mfFuMvPMPDEmwM4q74gZqbMtaC-V_HPlKj2qfxeuF-SoNJ3Qi6gGu6dd5ml1ss3gDCDzIRusucoppkI-taUruHG0-hDpWCrvQOgEJcz7rcWpvSkCM/s1600/IMG_0582.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMon79dpAlC7I7IKXEeTheXt-uVx9mfFuMvPMPDEmwM4q74gZqbMtaC-V_HPlKj2qfxeuF-SoNJ3Qi6gGu6dd5ml1ss3gDCDzIRusucoppkI-taUruHG0-hDpWCrvQOgEJcz7rcWpvSkCM/s200/IMG_0582.jpg" width="200" /></a> I had the privilege of hearing a talk recently given by Peter and Elmore Leonard at our local library. Elmore is the best selling author of a gazillion western and thriller novels...many on the New York Times bestseller list. He is also a screenwriter and many of his works are box office hits with starring roles by actors like Paul Newman, George Clooney, Charles Bronson and Burt Reynolds to name just a few. Elmore's latest endeavor is as executive producer of the FX Network's latest hit series, JUSTIFIED.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghRmqhTs6Sua5pM2a14s-U30Ff3wpLFD3YFWXaee7NyWlYzEMAS9JrEvXS4C3ha0O8cTfso_IdFkrnYw8aRWB2FhYba9gmZ6WMHYsXIGyFUckhdU2goHW20jeL_xeUucZMVPMq-ClqkJEb/s1600/IMG_0575.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghRmqhTs6Sua5pM2a14s-U30Ff3wpLFD3YFWXaee7NyWlYzEMAS9JrEvXS4C3ha0O8cTfso_IdFkrnYw8aRWB2FhYba9gmZ6WMHYsXIGyFUckhdU2goHW20jeL_xeUucZMVPMq-ClqkJEb/s200/IMG_0575.jpg" width="139" /></a> Peter Leonard, Elmore's son, has now broken from a successful advertising career (like father, like son) to try his hand at writing. His fourth work, VOICES OF THE DEAD, is coming out this month and he says it is, finally, his own voice speaking as opposed to a "knock-off" of his father's. I am certain Elmore is a difficult act to follow but Peter seems quite capable of holding his own. </div>
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What I enjoyed about the evening was watching Elmore (even his son calls him Elmore). He is as interesting and demonstrative as many of his memorable characters. When Elmore speaks, he uses his hands to make his points...not unlike the cock of a dog's ears. I also liked the casual, conversational tone of the evening...as if we in the audience were all sitting around a large table in the Leonards' home. They had no script, no index cards and no platform. Peter had some questions jotted on a piece of paper and he referred to them when conversation slowed but , for the most part father and son discussed their craft. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1mWTt2IEtGVE6029Mm2qarEQWTx_ztNYiC0Df-RWbkjT3h1iH7d_TwH2vvTCR3H5ypHCtXWVGU4c6u_ByQYx1VDNXxWuY3MpTAPDxOO0htbmckWqASkA3iWzDPBlXRurARxGSK0qVsO-i/s1600/IMG_0572.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"> </span></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1WqE7s_V5Krnd1JYFC2yzjZ_fNoAwj0rka_H4XqwHh_O7hlv8-wGaVjMqusCZsQ_xhtV1E0HkJiJ0Rip1JM7fwOOclh020YIH6IrxK1NumgOzYGrY4WPv9ROdt9iTdOI68UMrCFMnHp2s/s1600/IMG_0573.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1WqE7s_V5Krnd1JYFC2yzjZ_fNoAwj0rka_H4XqwHh_O7hlv8-wGaVjMqusCZsQ_xhtV1E0HkJiJ0Rip1JM7fwOOclh020YIH6IrxK1NumgOzYGrY4WPv9ROdt9iTdOI68UMrCFMnHp2s/s200/IMG_0573.jpg" width="145" /></a>What I enjoyed about the evening was watching Elmore (even his son calls him Elmore). He is as interesting and demonstrative as many of his memorable characters. When Elmore speaks, he uses his hands to make his points...not unlike the cock of a dog's ears. I also liked the casual, conversational tone of the evening...as if we in the audience were all sitting around a large table in the Leonards' home. They had no script, no index cards and no platform. Peter had some questions jotted on a piece of paper and he referred to them when conversation slowed but , for the most part father and son discussed their craft. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAKDgIfw1tXd2l_wHt2402Hwn9idcF5tKe5gKe3R7G1apLoVeXm7SY1WZtNtWTGmeqz0PyPmxKnQxS5pG6ZWjJmmVEacFLTCHg-TI_xWw-Jye2hA_wZ5u8L9maPXoTvryJ5gmXIle2lwAX/s1600/IMG_0575.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAKDgIfw1tXd2l_wHt2402Hwn9idcF5tKe5gKe3R7G1apLoVeXm7SY1WZtNtWTGmeqz0PyPmxKnQxS5pG6ZWjJmmVEacFLTCHg-TI_xWw-Jye2hA_wZ5u8L9maPXoTvryJ5gmXIle2lwAX/s200/IMG_0575.jpg" width="139" /></a>Elmore was born in New Orleans but his father, who was a site locator for General motors, moved his family to Detroit in 1934. Elmore has been here ever since. Peter, of course, was born and raised in our fair city. Both men have been good to our beleaguered town. Not only casting Detroit as the setting for most of his stories but also giving their time to our little community just north of Detroit. This talk was one of just three Elmore is giving to promote his latest and 46th work, RAYLAN. He really does not need to promote his books--they are now grabbed up by his hungry fans as soon as they hit the shelves. And Peter is well on his way to being just as loved and admired.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGlEHw69KGtA08X74E2SgANbDwVKqvJXbhHotvMzdXGv_WlteONQERneRjwjIoOYYUM45znY9OPr4iuwjEAMQ0aMwEW0V7lUrHIHK8ONtNBrJeL0RtSVTe_-6vNRqgWoIOmfwSWN1YobES/s1600/IMG_0577.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGlEHw69KGtA08X74E2SgANbDwVKqvJXbhHotvMzdXGv_WlteONQERneRjwjIoOYYUM45znY9OPr4iuwjEAMQ0aMwEW0V7lUrHIHK8ONtNBrJeL0RtSVTe_-6vNRqgWoIOmfwSWN1YobES/s200/IMG_0577.jpg" width="200" /></a>So, they talked about writing. About how disciplined a writer must be. Both writers honed their crafts while working day jobs with advertising agencies. This meant they adopted a routine of waking at dawn and writing for two or three hours before leaving for work. Then they would come home and be the family men they both were. (Interesting side note: in my other life as a professional florist, I designed the bridal flowers for Elmore's daughter. So my first encounter with the famous author was at the front door to his home when I dropped off the bouquets. I doubt he remembers! ) </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj26sxfocTLH0gJ_gHjr0-8dQrH3VEukZ5Wbs8PWP4xpxMgwFibF6QUHzyf_ECe1VOJ7rseI5Uo99IvjqHqstVgQ-N5FUNq0llC79Lw4XdHLQwlKuFYgfVNZ3yiKWBzBIzuZuiwjHXIB-3l/s1600/IMG_0580.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj26sxfocTLH0gJ_gHjr0-8dQrH3VEukZ5Wbs8PWP4xpxMgwFibF6QUHzyf_ECe1VOJ7rseI5Uo99IvjqHqstVgQ-N5FUNq0llC79Lw4XdHLQwlKuFYgfVNZ3yiKWBzBIzuZuiwjHXIB-3l/s200/IMG_0580.jpg" width="200" /></a>Peter pointed out that Elmore said he was not a fan of recurring characters but, with Raylan, that has changed. This is Elmore's third title starring the lawman. <br />
"It's kind of nice," Peter said. "You know the guy now."<br />
"And," Elmore said. "I can get him to talk without much trouble. That's so important."<br />
He said he even likes his bad guys because he can get them to talk. One of Elmore's outstanding successes is the dialogue he interjects into his stories. With little else in the way of describing a character, Elmore's readers have a crystal clear image of every person in his stories...all because of the dialogue.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwWZsp7DmQwWzdCaA9TkWNP1qXHEPwwkci2ekrivpUJVnvRkxBUEOiQNwGnOR3fVctZYuqJ1ZOH5Q3aB5J9ivrWLme6wtXEmYjq9ZT5orYFBNJ-LEHS2EQDZdL53uQudAYOmxHDt6NFRV9/s1600/IMG_0581.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwWZsp7DmQwWzdCaA9TkWNP1qXHEPwwkci2ekrivpUJVnvRkxBUEOiQNwGnOR3fVctZYuqJ1ZOH5Q3aB5J9ivrWLme6wtXEmYjq9ZT5orYFBNJ-LEHS2EQDZdL53uQudAYOmxHDt6NFRV9/s200/IMG_0581.jpg" width="158" /></a>They also talked about the names they give their characters and how important that is to the success of the story. That they find their names in any number of unexpected places. Raylan, for instance, was the same name as a man introduced to Elmore at a luncheon in Arizona. Peter talked about what it was like to be an author whose father was a famous writer. The good part, he said, was that he could always get the best advice on writing issues at the dinner table. The hardest part was developing his own voice. <br />
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The pair touched briefly on Elmore's treatise, THE 10 RULES OF WRITING. I've read it. It's skinny and as sparsely written as Elmore's fiction but packs more heat than many larger texts on the topic. <br />
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Out of curiosity I watched Justified last night. I am actually recording the series. I'm not much of a TV viewer. Never seem to find shows that hold my attention for their duration but Justified is good.<br />
When it was over I went to bed and pulled out the book I'm currently reading. Reading, I have found, is a much better way to go to sleep.<br />
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You can hear this entire program on our library's website: http://vimeo.com/35425452<br />
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</div>Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-26223836482223258212012-01-24T14:14:00.001-05:002012-04-25T08:14:59.069-04:00Oath of Office : A Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It did not take me long to read Michael Palmer's latest medical thriller, OATH OF OFFICE, which will be released February 14, 2012. In this story that borders on the environmental thriller genre (read Karen Dionne's Freezing Point and Boiling Point), Dr. Lou Welcome is challenged with proving that the shooting spree his favorite patient, Dr. John Meacham, went on could not have been predicted. To the police and Lou's co-workers it appears he could have prevented the massacre if he were competent in his judgement of Meacham's shortcomings. These suspicions also cast a dark light on Welcome's recovery from alcoholism.<br />
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Like Meacham, Lou has had his own substance abuse issues that led to losing his medical license, a divorce he did not want and a separation from his 11-year-old daughter, Emily, that tears at his heart every day. Recovered for five years now, Lou works part-time at the PWO (Physicians Wellness Office). His client's rampage, however, puts that position in serious jeopardy.<br />
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Meanwhile the reader is quickly ushered from Lou's problems to those of the First Lady of the United States, Darlene Mallory. She is trying desperately to revive her marriage, which seems destined to collapse almost as quickly as her husband's re-election hopes. Darlene and President Mallory's secretary, Kim Hajjar, meet for cocktails after a particularly stressful day and run into the former Secretary of Agriculture, Russell Evans. He and Darlene grew up together but the friendship could not prevent Evan's resignation over a fabricated rendezvous with a teenage prostitute.<br />
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A series of other bizarre and often gruesome incidents lead Lou to question the practices of a local corporate farm that specializes in genetically modified corn while Darlene's attempt to restore Russell Evans' reputation leads her to the same enterprise which, she learns, contributed heavily to her husband's campaign.<br />
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While Lou's life is threatened and several of his cohorts are either murdered or beaten, Darlene becomes fairly certain her husband is involved in some serious ethics violations. When both these trails merge, Lou and Darlene find not only clues to the crimes they are investigating but also a friendship that seems to fill voids in both their personal lives.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvJ0tfZ70G4QEiBZx1IgyXug43NAV2w_IUikNGPe1vgq9bNgliYhdSO17QuwN1H712XKh-9JjlMe8lDHDOr6_hVFQn14mMS6GKLhWyvpBMqkTpdSBqerOrXRwF2dnJgI_cm_WkkJReGOo8/s1600/9pubshotnew_lgc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvJ0tfZ70G4QEiBZx1IgyXug43NAV2w_IUikNGPe1vgq9bNgliYhdSO17QuwN1H712XKh-9JjlMe8lDHDOr6_hVFQn14mMS6GKLhWyvpBMqkTpdSBqerOrXRwF2dnJgI_cm_WkkJReGOo8/s200/9pubshotnew_lgc.jpg" width="144" /></a><br />
OATH OF OFFICE is written primarily from two points of view--that of Dr. Lou Welcome and Dr. Darlene Mallory. It carries a crisp, fast-paced style by an author who clearly knows both the medical world and that of Washington DC. This is Michael Palmer's 17th thriller. Several have been on the New York Times bestseller list and have been translated into 35 languages. His website bio says, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif;">"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">He trained in internal medicine at Boston City and Massachusetts General Hospitals, spent twenty years as a full-time practitioner of internal and emergency medicine, and is now an associate director of the Massachusetts Medical Society’s physician health program."</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">I have no doubt persons who read this novel will be encouraged to read Palmer's other works as well.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">If you would like the opportunity to win an autographed copy of OATH OF OFFICE, simply leave a comment at the end of this post and you will be automatically entered in a drawing held February 14, 2012. This contest is only open to residents of the continental U.S.</span></span><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxWq7viFqeX1nvy8J5Ge_T1FYnU8bBAAocekDTPhGRp_Ssa17n_bA4z_qEU9exzE9HoA0WpeXUZQaHS48k2NA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">OATH OF OFFICE will be available in hardcover as well as on audiobook. For a clip from the audiobook, click on the image below.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-39153561203949658852012-01-13T10:12:00.000-05:002012-04-26T17:50:14.947-04:00Jane Eyre, Scarlett O'Hara and Edna PontellierMy three favorite heroines! Women who set their sites early on and stuck to them despite overwhelming physical, historical, cultural and political difficulties. Honestly, I think I could read <i>The Awakening</i>, <i>Jane Eyre</i> and <i>Gone With the Wind</i> alternatively the rest of my life and never be bored.Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-22626392475186617672012-01-04T17:00:00.001-05:002012-01-24T14:15:07.608-05:00Two Journeys: David Guterson and Charles Frazier<style>
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Over the past couple weeks I finished two excellent novels,
<i>Thirteen Moons</i> by Charles Frazier (also wrote Cold Mountain) and <i>East of the
Mountains</i> by David Guterson (also wrote Snow Falling on Cedars). </div>
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The stories these authors tell are soft and lonesome. Not
sad, really, but meditative. Frazier writes of a man, Col. William Cooper, who
loses his parents at a young age and is handed over to an aunt and uncle. They
subsequently bind him over to the owner of a western trading post. It is a
story of a boy who never stops longing for his parents; who is taken in by
Bear, an Indian chief; who falls in love with a woman married to a despicable
Indian; who befriends a horse named Waverly; and who winds up as the legal
spokesperson for an entire Indian nation. Though Will (his shortened name) does
a fine job as lawyer, real estate investor and Washington lobbyist, his success
becomes his undoing. Worse, he is never able to entice the elusive Claire to
marry him, even after her husband dies.
In the end, Will loses all but the home he built. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaNnEmDQu4If0ChCdjDgsrxZo0YHI8ydrcnYWYloCTeLSiaHYySZEZuB16upz85Fs3RFm-zsKZ8ijvvMcu8zUwmMCXH0XRQRPtE2I62LYxnlpLCqPtSzL6bAPYSr1WWjxK_FOMSs1MiJNw/s1600/b704c060ada0b6a0615b9110.L._AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaNnEmDQu4If0ChCdjDgsrxZo0YHI8ydrcnYWYloCTeLSiaHYySZEZuB16upz85Fs3RFm-zsKZ8ijvvMcu8zUwmMCXH0XRQRPtE2I62LYxnlpLCqPtSzL6bAPYSr1WWjxK_FOMSs1MiJNw/s1600/b704c060ada0b6a0615b9110.L._AA300_.jpg" /></a> </div>
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Guterson’s story is told by a heart surgeon in his seventies
who is dying from colon cancer. Dr. Ben Givens lost Rachel, his dear wife, six
months before the story opens and cannot get past it. He determines that,
rather than burden his two children with the care of a dying old man, he will
take his two hunting dogs into the Washington plateaus to hunt chukkas. He
chooses a place east of the mountains where he now lives. It is where he was
raised…full of apple orchards carved out of the desert and nourished by giant
irrigation machines. His plan is
to feign an accident that takes his life. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-4Ry9DZ5EaG0ZFqUGpJ-oBv2SYly-FlqNA0FlZKryAm3gsMF6YYXH6zzBJpOe3L6vtvM7AKUCyqkf0NN4OlvhW9nrQ7rp4VZo5kCEMueO74J7dNGZtT9ONvuayOz2Q-H2CH5pQ64dgcen/s1600/Thirteen+moons.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWApqiIYh0hbSbfeGlr3Rzmf0KNtljzl8S2SgLyZ12RFQrP9uFSeCYZyvF6JdnBLfUInz7ORUdYtGYbb1U46Yz4jdWOeFNAtpwnJIkO0WOVuBoLallvYOav2wMJJGFCvyciqriHjfsAUj7/s1600/513rrim628L._SL160_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-dp%252CTopRight%252C12%252C-18_SH30_OU01_AA160_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a> <br />
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Constantly, Ben is fighting his illness…his pain often
unbearable. In one of his hallucinatory states brought on by marijuana he remembers
The War. It was his experiences there, in the trenches, that convinced him to
become a heart surgeon.</div>
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Ben does have an accident but not the one he planned. He
then spends several days attempting to return to his original plan. During that
time he loses one dog to a pack of wolfhounds and his other is critically
injured. Ben encounters several strangers who become instrumental in helping
him not only get over Rachel’s death but to find answers to life’s mysteries
that he didn’t know he was seeking.</div>
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Both authors have a very lyrical command of language. Words
that flow like silken water over smooth river rocks. Their stories are
passionate. They are loaded with characters you will not forget. And they
portray personal journeys laced with a morality that is both moving and
inspirational.</div>
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Here are some quotes that I loved. </div>
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From <i>East of the
Mountains</i>:</div>
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“The drifts (driftwood) burned white and smokeless enough
that they could sit close behind them in a bright womb of heat. The world beyond disappeared. Darkness
lay behond the firelight. The stars appeared awasy in pale ether.” 101</div>
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“His mind raced, his thoughts were rich, his memories vivid,
graphic. He felt he could touch the past.” 60</div>
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“He had manipulated the hearts of human beings, and he
thought he understood that when we speak of love, we speak of something
transitory, something gone when we go. The heart, for Ben, was tangible--and
nothing tangible remains.” 203</div>
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“He recalled reading once that the Hindus saw life in four
progressive stages: twenty years a youth, twenty years a fighter--one needed
nothing martial to pursue this phase--twenty years as head of a household and
twenty in the cultivation of the spirit.” 138</div>
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“How long (had he been) afraid of its (death) coming?
Outwardly he’d been stalwart and stoic, but privately he’d quaked like a child,
trembled in apprehension, lived with a constant, quiet fear below the surface
of everything.” 254</div>
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“It was not life of the spirit at all, in which mortality
inspires a course of right action and humility. It had been instead a willful
turning from the true conditions of existence. But now he found--he’d known it
since Rachel’s death--that this forgetting couldn’t sustain him to the grave.
The interludes of ignorance had grown shorter. And now there were none, there
was only knowledge, and he wasn’t ready for it.” 255</div>
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In the next chapter Ben saves the life of a migrant girl and
the baby she cannot deliver. It is stuck in her birth canal. Soon after he
meets up with an old neighbor who tells him a dying father is not a burden to
his children, that suicide is unimaginable. “It is good,” Bea insisted.
“’Seeing you die, it’ll make them compassionate. It’ll help them be more
compassionate.’” 273</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh8v0Olh_seSprpaoY1pMBKUHOYdbVXcY_wmcAZuvI8r1soS4d30mKfIZXEI2XO2V0zAGS_KLfXjvDLTFK_O7tZUiLE54nAA6jULhfy7R-8L9DiDZk5wLP09iaPtw9aQeUJnZxoQsxQNf4/s1600/books.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh8v0Olh_seSprpaoY1pMBKUHOYdbVXcY_wmcAZuvI8r1soS4d30mKfIZXEI2XO2V0zAGS_KLfXjvDLTFK_O7tZUiLE54nAA6jULhfy7R-8L9DiDZk5wLP09iaPtw9aQeUJnZxoQsxQNf4/s320/books.jpg" width="206" /></a>From <i>Thirteen Moons</i>:</div>
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“I asked him one time how he knew to suse the law in his
favor. He said that the law is an axe. It cuts whatever it falls on. The man
that wins knows how to aim the sharp edge away from himself.” 14</div>
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“Bear believed writing dulled the spirit, stilled some holy
breath. Smothered it. Words, when they’ve been captured and imprisoned on
paper, become a barrier against the world, one best left unerected. Everything
that happens is fluid, changeable. After they’ve passed, events are only as
your memory makes them, and they shift shapes over time.” 20</div>
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“There are many who can make new selves at a moment’s
notice. Slough a skin, dismiss memory, move on. But that is not a skill I ever
acquired.” 202</div>
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“It was my Lancelot moment. Hesitate to get in the cart, and
you are lost. Maybe every life has one moment where everything could have been
different if you’d climbed on the cart.” 218</div>
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“There was no justice in the world anymore. All you could do
was try to go on living as a form of vengeance, to keep your memory alive as
long as possible.” 258</div>
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“He (Bear) talked a great deal about several new opinions he
had developed in my absence, one of which was that we come to value the fall of
the year more and more as we age and decline. It is easy in youth to become
emotional at the overwhelming symbolic autumnalness of withered peaches and
reddened honey-locust pods. Later in life, though, the season becomes more
actual to us, not sentimental, just sadly true.” 320</div>
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“Alarming, really, how all the wheels of the world--the days
and nights, the thirteen moons, the four seasons, and the great singular round
of the year itself--begin spinning faster and faster the closer we get to the
Nightland. We’re called to it and it pulls us. And the weaker we become, the
harder and faster it pulls” 321</div>
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Towards the end of the novel Bear relates a hunting story.
He had regretted, in his old age, how the animals of the forest had been
systematically eliminated by gun toting fur traders and persons like him who
needed to survive. He said he once came upon a buck badly wounded by three
bullets and was too weak to move. Bear looked into the buck’s eye as it watched
him coming to cut its throat and sell its skin for a dollar. --“There’s not a
prayer for that, he would say.”</div>
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Turns out Random House lost a huge amount of money on their publication of Thirteen Moons, recovering a fraction of the $8 million they advanced to Charles Frazier. I cannot say why the book did not sell better. I thought it was fantastic. </div>
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<br /></div>Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-59830723297241741992011-11-24T06:23:00.001-05:002012-11-27T18:09:05.479-05:00Flittering Clouds On WingsWe went to the Detroit Zoo to see, among other things, the butterfly garden. The sun shone on to the blossoming vines that meandered to the domed glass ceiling--vines that were alive with flittering from butterflies the size of postage stamps to those as large as a greeting card envelope. The magical effect these creatures created in every person lifted me. There were toddlers, octogenarians and mentally disabled all looking up in wonder...a crescendo of smiles.<br />
<br />
I wondered what it was about butterflies that drew these smiles. Was it the freedom with which they soared? Or was it their natural beauty... effervescent colors and patterns? They're terribly fragile. Is that what endeared them to us all? Or was it their spontaneity...the way they landed for a moment, perhaps opened their wings, then floated away as if seeking some mysterious nectar?<br />
<br />
I think, actually, it might have been their willingness to land on an open palm or a soft shoulder as if we were their very best friend. After all, we all need friends and sometimes friendship doesn't come so easily.<br />
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Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-91240262677487770062011-11-12T13:30:00.001-05:002011-11-15T15:50:23.802-05:00Seeing Through the Mist<span id="goog_1686301745"></span><span id="goog_1686301746"></span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5n6ZeWgC1XpFZK7hNwWIoBNwdDuOAPPzdMJHeUKbdacCGtEwa_-RwZprDodsoDMJoskbZ-l6RA-L6f1DSjiTMPV52Ssrj2O_sUIz00N3GklOr24ww7-C5fINNMM9fKZjUI77kiK7ZVOpi/s1600/IMG_0186.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5n6ZeWgC1XpFZK7hNwWIoBNwdDuOAPPzdMJHeUKbdacCGtEwa_-RwZprDodsoDMJoskbZ-l6RA-L6f1DSjiTMPV52Ssrj2O_sUIz00N3GklOr24ww7-C5fINNMM9fKZjUI77kiK7ZVOpi/s320/IMG_0186.JPG" width="320" /></a> Some mornings are so perfect I find myself in a trance. When a mist lays in the lowland where the river runs to and from the
pond, it seems as if I have entered a different world. <br />
<br />
On this particular recent morning the mist, a fog really, had mingled with the lifting darkness and it was difficult to see what I'd grown accustomed to on these daily wanderings...the river just beyond the path that is beyond the sidewalk that edges the main street into our town; the woods beyond the river that hush my rushing mind even as they protect the river from all but the most persistent. There would be a footbridge leading to the meandering chip trail. Sometimes the heron would be there stalking bluegills in the shallows. East of the footbridge the river would bend and the water would ripple over the pebble bar on the riverbank. But none of this was there that morning. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPRZgCVW5it5fxBFY_e0zM4G1LzD8UiRFPSNWro1qvfIpfDbWZXhxy5ejPHVjyJ-q7jEhX4uTGVZwNmBHpMKSLvwC56BRycjUhTeA_p2WIBCAtK2rdzczV9RHjlhiZO2jA7T14_DKrniN3/s1600/IMG_0184.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPRZgCVW5it5fxBFY_e0zM4G1LzD8UiRFPSNWro1qvfIpfDbWZXhxy5ejPHVjyJ-q7jEhX4uTGVZwNmBHpMKSLvwC56BRycjUhTeA_p2WIBCAtK2rdzczV9RHjlhiZO2jA7T14_DKrniN3/s320/IMG_0184.JPG" width="320" /></a>When the mist falls, when the cumulus fog rolls down from above, I am, for a moment, disconcerted.I want to see what I am accustomed to seeing. I want the world to be as it should be. I want all the answers, all the symmetry and all the order to be just as it always has been. But the mist prevents all this. It forces from me, "What if?"<br />
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What if the river has dried up?<br />
What if the bluegills that swim there have shrunk to skeletons on its banks?<br />
What if the heron has gone to a different pond<br />
--he has to eat, after all?<br />
What if nothing is as I want it to be?<br />
What if the world I I desire no longer exists? What then?<br />
My heart begins to flutter and my mind swirls. <br />
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I jump to conclusions and, in a panic, begin to consider all kinds of possibilities. I will move away. I will find a new pond like the heron has surely done. I will leave my home, uproot my canine family and set out like Thoreau did so many decades ago. Now I am angry that Nature has sparked my wide-awake nightmare. <br />
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Just as my panic unsettles me to the point where I must find a place to sit down I decide that surely the same mist could just as easily settle over a different pond.<br />
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And so I wait until the sun begins to rise in the east and shines its rays through the trees and the mist is no longer an evil, dark forteller of gloom but a magical
place wrapped in a gilded softness that, if I were to believe in a heaven,
would be heavenly.<br />
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<span id="goog_818127406"></span><span id="goog_818127407"></span>Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-83231120973113947082011-11-10T11:36:00.001-05:002011-11-10T11:49:13.874-05:00The WindThere will be no photo to accompany this post. How can I capture the wind on film? Short of showing a tornado in the background, the inverted umbrella of a pedestrian or a rack of waves assaulting the shore it is impossible. The wind is invisible and yet its effects on those subjected to its whims can be devastating. What power!<br />
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Yesterday, after our balmy morning, the winds reached 30 miles an hour at dusk. If anything can convince the leaves to fall, it is such a wind and yet, many still stubbornly cling. Not just the oak, which can always be counted on as holding a tight fist on its own, but the Norway Maples, the burning bush, the lindens and some beech have yet to give up on summer.<br />
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I feel that way too and yet I know, as do these sylvan companions, that the seasons must change. That time must march forward. That schedules and responsibilities must be kept.<br />
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Still, like the sparrows that chirp outside my window--invisible for the leaves still clinging, I am happy to have just one more day here. One more moment to fortify myself for what I cannot see but what must eventually come.<br />
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<br />Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-63076425884774115322011-11-09T10:27:00.003-05:002011-11-09T14:48:53.730-05:00Springing Into Fall<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It is a balmy 64 and while the leaves on the ground...their scents of decay wafting up from the earth...tell the true story, the birds tell a different one. Robins warbling, Red-wings whistling and juncos trilling their celebrations of life...as if the warm weather tricks them about what season we are in.<br />
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Some say one ability that distinguishes us from animals is our sense of the future. Coupled with that, of course, is our awareness of time passed. So it is unlikely these birds are anticipating a new spring.<br />
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That these leaves that cling to my dog's damp fur, just as they cling to the earth, will nourish new growth. The cycle of life.<br />
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I don't particularly like Fall. I'm trying to get passed that.<br />
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I'm trying to tell myself to live in the beautiful present that this season offers...the explosions of earth's colors, the lacy patterns of bare branches, the time it affords to slow that manic summer pace.<br />
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I'm trying to convince myself that every season has so much unappreciated bounty; that they all present opportunities. <br />
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I'm trying to take these opportunities inwardly...to inhale the peace and the wonder they offer and to make myself a better person for it.<br />
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I see the reflections of the trees on the pond--reflections dappled with bronze and copper leaves. I want my soul to reflect this same beauty, this glorious harmony between it and nature. Reflect it outward in hopes it will trick other birds into thinking Spring has arrived.Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-20307440808337732702011-09-02T07:02:00.001-04:002011-09-02T07:03:52.870-04:00What I Love<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">What do I love?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I love my family first, of course!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I love my dogs second.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I love crisp, clear, sunny Fall days, the sound of a violin concerto, the smell of apple pie baking in the oven, the warmth of a hug.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I love walking in the woods, capturing magical moments on film, writing moving passages.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I love a book I cannot put down, a poem I cannot forget.</span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXBDkLmN1bDwycYVo0ZMbQptptqS3Q1QhRL-luQztF4Af2QIy30_HORM9ymsnc2o7QiLx9Viy8M4hnZgNOeZi23kUQOaiAB1mZQLfvqKGJMtO9IHxFJuXm7XtUSz3pkf7U-NhjYzU3E6Eq/s1600/Michael+and+the+sunfish.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXBDkLmN1bDwycYVo0ZMbQptptqS3Q1QhRL-luQztF4Af2QIy30_HORM9ymsnc2o7QiLx9Viy8M4hnZgNOeZi23kUQOaiAB1mZQLfvqKGJMtO9IHxFJuXm7XtUSz3pkf7U-NhjYzU3E6Eq/s200/Michael+and+the+sunfish.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I love watching puppies play, I love a good golf shot, I love the phone calls my daughters place for no particular reason at all. I love good friends. I love forgiveness.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I love quiet mornings--the way the sun forms familiar silhouettes as it begins to rise. Did I worry the Norway spruce would not return? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I love explosive proud moments. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I love a smile that is not expected.</span></div>Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-32062822846526396202011-05-30T12:07:00.001-04:002011-05-30T19:57:33.954-04:00Donald Maass -- The Dean of Powerful Writing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl_oWhViO4T8Cvl9lFUZ1zf37DbImofJgCE1TRWEt6u72asDKyQMUAuEDvSuympgRGQRtLOQxm8by67bYdEsIe-mRXZ-y1fG3OxXgkVM80DLH0M9wPXzw8NH4TZpKY_PnIPOQ-54ypORl0/s1600/images-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl_oWhViO4T8Cvl9lFUZ1zf37DbImofJgCE1TRWEt6u72asDKyQMUAuEDvSuympgRGQRtLOQxm8by67bYdEsIe-mRXZ-y1fG3OxXgkVM80DLH0M9wPXzw8NH4TZpKY_PnIPOQ-54ypORl0/s200/images-1.jpg" width="136" /></a></div>I am a member of Backspace (BKSP.org) It is a forum for writers who want to not only create meaningful fiction and non-fiction but who want to sell it. Backspace holds bi-annual conferences in May and November. I attended my third last week and will, for the next several weeks, be trying to deal with the overwhelming amount of information dished out there.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqmib4WVip567ptaGyLPoTx6Vo4c6YcCOxw-mMOSX2adhrbtQM1oE0b70vhyphenhyphen3W8KGrDtrLaXLIFv7U6Ud7oz55dc_vBlKS7flPOmLAVZdes_zvmo7xm6ix_OvLat3k-QuXPMfPZ2V_1CFF/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqmib4WVip567ptaGyLPoTx6Vo4c6YcCOxw-mMOSX2adhrbtQM1oE0b70vhyphenhyphen3W8KGrDtrLaXLIFv7U6Ud7oz55dc_vBlKS7flPOmLAVZdes_zvmo7xm6ix_OvLat3k-QuXPMfPZ2V_1CFF/s200/images.jpg" width="134" /></a>Donald Maass presented a day-long workshop on the third day of the conference. Based on his incredibly successful textbook, "Writing the Breakout Novel," the workshop covered such important topics as adding dimensions to your protagonist, exceeding their personal boundaries to create larger than life moments and going through the same process with your antagonist. To say this workshop was huge is like saying the Brooklyn Bridge is a way to cross the East River. <br />
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Of course it is possible to read Maass's textbook or the workbook based on it or his latest work, THE FIRE IN FICTION. But hearing him speak on these topics, enjoying his wit and asking him pertinent questions while an issue is fresh in your mind adds so much more to the learning arc. And that doesn't even touch on the breaks where I was able to share my awe with fellow writers--not feel like I am the only one in the world who has miles to go.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0fnjE_JrkQIY_HBkGwHh1ZuT7aDGkaUyhrhdpTt0cg-8BBqU6KKk_iYmahK31uzpoq0FyoPD5bhehomvTNhZQrHZ9TkeWqIXdP2BSkSNtDJdDFMm9dHfgmtRaSugvOHJpYldeQEdrcEmB/s1600/images-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="114" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0fnjE_JrkQIY_HBkGwHh1ZuT7aDGkaUyhrhdpTt0cg-8BBqU6KKk_iYmahK31uzpoq0FyoPD5bhehomvTNhZQrHZ9TkeWqIXdP2BSkSNtDJdDFMm9dHfgmtRaSugvOHJpYldeQEdrcEmB/s200/images-2.jpg" width="200" /></a></div> I certainly would never pretend to be qualified to advise writers on ways to improve their craft. However, I would hope some of the insights I took away from this conference might prove interesting to other fledgling writers. So, from time to time, I will post some of these insights here in no particular order.<br />
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Today I will finish with what I learned from Donald Maass about creating sympathetic characters. As we all have been told, readers do not spend much time with characters they do not like. In fact, more often than not, readers flat out abandon stories with despicable protagonists. This isn't to say all characters have to be like Mary Poppins. In fact, the most memorable protagonist of all--Scarlet O'Hara, was far from perfect. But she was both admirable and human. That, Maass says, is critical. Like all of us she had a bad side but she also had a good side. She was determined, strong and one of the first feminists. She was shrewd. She was everything we often admire in a man...but she was a beautiful, raven-haired female. In fact it is the tension created between the good and the bad in a character that makes her most appealing. That makes for a page-turner. Long after a novel is finished and returned to its shelf, the reader will remember the conflicts of a well-crafted character and that is what every writer wants. Right?Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237454196890242807.post-16533336120011675462011-04-25T09:07:00.005-04:002011-04-27T08:37:33.439-04:00<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9505561-lord-of-misrule" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Lord of Misrule" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1290561320m/9505561.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9505561-lord-of-misrule">Lord of Misrule</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/246730.Jaimy_Gordon">Jaimy Gordon</a><br />
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My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/158693860">5 of 5 stars</a><br />
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Jaimy Gordon is right up there on my list of incredible living authors--and a Michigan one at that--John Irving, Jon Clinch, Arthur Phillips and Alice Hoffman to name a few others who put words together in such moving ways that I feel as though I am in the same room with them...am breathing their air, smelling, hearing and tasting their world. On top of that they are all master storytellers.<br />
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Some of my favorite passages:<br />
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"The Mahdi even pranced, in all his big red cheer, wearing his burnished chest like a Torah breastplate. Mr. Boll Weevil went more stylishly, his mane braided and knotted and his feet prettily oiled, for he had a groom of the old school. The others? They were shufflers with their heads hanging down like plough animals, or tremblers, or rearers, their scared penises battened out of sight in purses of loose gray skin, underbellies awash in yellow foam."<br />
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"He tried not to hold it against the frizzly girl that his friend Two-Tie had used her to help him out this life. After all, when Two-Tie disappeared for good, he had Medicine Ed's markers in his pocket. Now she showed up at the Mound sometimes on a Sadday night and looked down on him and Pelter in the walking ring. He could recognize Two-Tie in them fuzzy tilted-up eyebrows, and all he can see is Mr. Two Tie lying on his face in a railroad culvert somewhere or under a heap of stones in the deep woods, or sliding down a mountainside with the tin cans and old stoves and deer parts that people dump over the side of the road. Might could be they never find him, and all Medicine Ed can think is, she don't even know he died for her sake or who he was. It's a tie in the blood, and yet still its no remembrance, no one to mourn or either grieve for him."<br />
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It's about family. What family is traditional any more? It's about passion. Is life worth living without it? It's about the downtrodden. Aren't we all downtrodden in some way?<br />
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Just can't say enough good things about <i>Lord of Misrule</i> except <i>read it!</i><br />
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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1860009-jacqueline-carney">View my other Goodreads reviews</a>Jacqueline Carneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12226146435702695416noreply@blogger.com0