words 'n wags

Elmore Leonard and Peter on Raylan, Justified and Voices of the Dead

2012-01-28T08:48:00.000-05:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

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! )

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.
"It's kind of nice," Peter said. "You know the guy now."
"And," Elmore said. "I can get him to talk without much trouble. That's so important."
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.

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.

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.

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.
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.

You can hear this entire program on our library's website: http://vimeo.com/35425452

Michael Palmer's Oath of Office

2012-01-24T14:14:00.001-05:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, "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."

I have no doubt persons who read this novel will be encouraged to read Palmer's other works as well.

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.

OATH OF OFFICE will be available in hardcover as well as on audiobook. For a clip from the audiobook, click on the image below.

Jane Eyre, Scarlett O'Hara and Edna Pontellier

2012-01-13T10:12:00.000-05:00

My 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 The Awakening, Jane Eyre and Gone With the Wind alternatively the rest of my life and never be bored.

Two Journeys: David Guterson and Charles Frazier

2012-01-04T17:00:00.001-05:00

Over the past couple weeks I finished two excellent novels,Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier (also wrote Cold Mountain) and East of theMountains by David Guterson (also wrote Snow Falling on Cedars).

The stories these authors tell are soft and lonesome. Notsad, really, but meditative. Frazier writes of a man, Col. William Cooper, wholoses his parents at a young age and is handed over to an aunt and uncle. Theysubsequently bind him over to the owner of a western trading post. It is astory of a boy who never stops longing for his parents; who is taken in byBear, an Indian chief; who falls in love with a woman married to a despicableIndian; who befriends a horse named Waverly; and who winds up as the legalspokesperson for an entire Indian nation. Though Will (his shortened name) doesa fine job as lawyer, real estate investor and Washington lobbyist, his successbecomes his undoing. Worse, he is never able to entice the elusive Claire tomarry him, even after her husband dies. In the end, Will loses all but the home he built.

Guterson’s story is told by a heart surgeon in his seventieswho is dying from colon cancer. Dr. Ben Givens lost Rachel, his dear wife, sixmonths 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 willtake his two hunting dogs into the Washington plateaus to hunt chukkas. Hechooses a place east of the mountains where he now lives. It is where he wasraised…full of apple orchards carved out of the desert and nourished by giantirrigation machines. His plan isto feign an accident that takes his life.

Constantly, Ben is fighting his illness…his pain oftenunbearable. In one of his hallucinatory states brought on by marijuana he remembersThe War. It was his experiences there, in the trenches, that convinced him tobecome a heart surgeon.

Ben does have an accident but not the one he planned. Hethen spends several days attempting to return to his original plan. During thattime he loses one dog to a pack of wolfhounds and his other is criticallyinjured. Ben encounters several strangers who become instrumental in helpinghim not only get over Rachel’s death but to find answers to life’s mysteriesthat he didn’t know he was seeking.

Both authors have a very lyrical command of language. Wordsthat flow like silken water over smooth river rocks. Their stories arepassionate. They are loaded with characters you will not forget. And theyportray personal journeys laced with a morality that is both moving andinspirational.

Here are some quotes that I loved.

From East of theMountains:

“The drifts (driftwood) burned white and smokeless enoughthat they could sit close behind them in a bright womb of heat. The world beyond disappeared. Darknesslay behond the firelight. The stars appeared awasy in pale ether.” 101

“His mind raced, his thoughts were rich, his memories vivid,graphic. He felt he could touch the past.” 60

“He had manipulated the hearts of human beings, and hethought he understood that when we speak of love, we speak of somethingtransitory, something gone when we go. The heart, for Ben, was tangible--andnothing tangible remains.” 203

“He recalled reading once that the Hindus saw life in fourprogressive stages: twenty years a youth, twenty years a fighter--one needednothing martial to pursue this phase--twenty years as head of a household andtwenty in the cultivation of the spirit.” 138

“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 surfaceof everything.” 254

“It was not life of the spirit at all, in which mortalityinspires a course of right action and humility. It had been instead a willfulturning from the true conditions of existence. But now he found--he’d known itsince 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, therewas only knowledge, and he wasn’t ready for it.” 255

In the next chapter Ben saves the life of a migrant girl andthe baby she cannot deliver. It is stuck in her birth canal. Soon after hemeets up with an old neighbor who tells him a dying father is not a burden tohis children, that suicide is unimaginable. “It is good,” Bea insisted.“’Seeing you die, it’ll make them compassionate. It’ll help them be morecompassionate.’” 273

From Thirteen Moons:

“I asked him one time how he knew to suse the law in hisfavor. He said that the law is an axe. It cuts whatever it falls on. The manthat wins knows how to aim the sharp edge away from himself.” 14

“Bear believed writing dulled the spirit, stilled some holybreath. Smothered it. Words, when they’ve been captured and imprisoned onpaper, become a barrier against the world, one best left unerected. Everythingthat happens is fluid, changeable. After they’ve passed, events are only asyour memory makes them, and they shift shapes over time.” 20

“There are many who can make new selves at a moment’snotice. Slough a skin, dismiss memory, move on. But that is not a skill I everacquired.” 202

“It was my Lancelot moment. Hesitate to get in the cart, andyou are lost. Maybe every life has one moment where everything could have beendifferent if you’d climbed on the cart.” 218

“There was no justice in the world anymore. All you could dowas try to go on living as a form of vengeance, to keep your memory alive aslong as possible.” 258

“He (Bear) talked a great deal about several new opinions hehad developed in my absence, one of which was that we come to value the fall ofthe year more and more as we age and decline. It is easy in youth to becomeemotional at the overwhelming symbolic autumnalness of withered peaches andreddened honey-locust pods. Later in life, though, the season becomes moreactual to us, not sentimental, just sadly true.” 320

“Alarming, really, how all the wheels of the world--the daysand nights, the thirteen moons, the four seasons, and the great singular roundof the year itself--begin spinning faster and faster the closer we get to theNightland. We’re called to it and it pulls us. And the weaker we become, theharder and faster it pulls” 321

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 beensystematically eliminated by gun toting fur traders and persons like him whoneeded to survive. He said he once came upon a buck badly wounded by threebullets and was too weak to move. Bear looked into the buck’s eye as it watchedhim coming to cut its throat and sell its skin for a dollar. --“There’s not aprayer for that, he would say.”

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.

Seeing Through the Mist

2011-11-12T13:30:00.001-05:00

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.

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.

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?"

What if the river has dried up?
What if the bluegills that swim there have shrunk to skeletons on its banks?
What if the heron has gone to a different pond
--he has to eat, after all?
What if nothing is as I want it to be?
What if the world I I desire no longer exists? What then?
My heart begins to flutter and my mind swirls.

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.

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.

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.

The Wind

2011-11-10T11:36:00.001-05:00

There 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!

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.

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.

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.

Springing Into Fall

2011-11-09T10:27:00.003-05:00

       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.

       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.

        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.

     I don't particularly like Fall. I'm trying to get passed that.

      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.

      I'm trying to convince myself that every season has so much unappreciated bounty; that they all present opportunities.

          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.

          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.

What I Love

2011-09-02T07:02:00.001-04:00

What do I love?

I love my family first, of course!

I love my dogs second.

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.

I love walking in the woods, capturing magical moments on film, writing moving passages.

I love a book I cannot put down, a poem I cannot forget.

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.

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?

I love explosive proud moments.

I love a smile that is not expected.

Donald Maass -- The Dean of Powerful Writing

2011-05-30T12:07:00.001-04:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

2011-04-25T09:07:00.005-04:00

Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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.

Some of my favorite passages:

"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."

"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."

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?

Just can't say enough good things about Lord of Misrule except read it!

View my other Goodreads reviews

"Signs of Life" --A Book Review

2011-04-25T08:54:00.001-04:00

Many things drew me to Natalie Taylor's debut novel, "Signs of Life." First of all Taylor grew up in a Detroit suburb next to where I have lived and raised my family. I know the places she talks about. But more than that, her voice is honest, spunky and heart-wrenching. Her story is real and speaks to some of our deepest human fears--losing a loved one and surviving alone. My only complaint, if you can call it that, is that her loss is so large her sadness takes up a huge portion of the story.

It is a memoir about the sixteen months after her 27 year old husband dies in a skate boarding accident. She was 8 months pregnant at the time of the tragedy and her world comes to a devastating halt. I soon learned that everything Taylor does she does with her entire being. She loves her husband, her job as a high school English teacher, her family and her baby with so much passion that of course her loss is overwhelming. She goes into wonderful detail about special times in her life with Josh, her husband. She sections each chapter with passages from books she is teaching her students. Macbeth, Metamorphosis, No Exit and Catcher in The Rye are just a few of the challenging titles that her students delight in because Taylor's sincere love for literature is so contagious. That they are very lucky children to have Taylor as their teacher is constantly evident.

It takes a very long time but Taylor does get through those sixteen months, though. Her tenacity and her passion saves her as she pours what is left of it into a triathlon...something she is not prepared to do but trains for at the urging of her sister. I got the sense that this achievement--finishing the grueling race--is a beacon that will shine on the rest of Taylor's life. That she will survive and perhaps even love again.

Signs of Life is an easy read and one that is difficult to put away. I would recommend it not just to new mothers but to anyone who has lost a loved one and is having trouble recovering. I would also recommend it to anyone who wants to know how to love with passion. Just be forewarned...this kind of love is beautifully rewarding but can also be terribly devastating.

Out Damned Snow! Out I say!

2011-04-18T11:04:00.000-04:00

Enough already with this Winter...its oppressive grey skies and miserable temperatures and teasing promises of spring.

The dogs love it--I hate it. Even if it melts by afternoon
I want nothing of it when a week ago the 82 degree day
encouraged the quince and forsythia blossoms
that now shiver under caps of snow--caps that do nothing to preserve warmth.

Ach! The only good from it is I am motivated to write...but the view. Ach!

Even my orchids are shivering!

Symphonies On the Sand

2011-04-05T13:49:00.001-04:00

One Blade's Delicate Touch

Windy Waves

When I was very young--probably four and a half--my mother went to the hospital to deliver my sister. It was early July and, as my parents already had three children, I and my siblings were dispersed among the relatives. I stayed with my father's sister's family about twenty minutes from home. They had a girl two years older than me which seemed then like a decade instead of a couple dozen months. Suffice it to say I was never comfortable in that household. Even less so when a tornado was predicted during my stay. My mother, I was certain, would perish in these winds. Would be taken from me not for just a few days but forever. I envisioned her being swept up into the roiling black sky like Dorothy's house and all her belongings. My mother did not and she and my new sister arrived home safely and I should have recovered from this trauma.
I did not.

Stipples and Grooves

My next encounter with high winds was during a family camping trip. They tore through the state park as we were trying to set up the huge tent that would house us all--now numbering nine. It was an impossible task and after enduring my father's rantings, curses and fits of rage we gathered back into the station wagon and spent the night in a hotel room. Another trauma indelibly etched into my soul.

Feather Strokes

Early into our marriage my husband and I opened our flower business. Two years later, when success seemed ensured, we took the plunge and a large loan to move to a larger space. We hired an architect (big money for us) to design the style of the exterior. He didn't change much except the colors and beautiful new awnings with our business name proudly displayed on them. Two months later a storm blew through town. Tornadoes touched down in several places but spared the downtown. The winds however were not so kind. They ripped our beautiful new awnings to strips of pathetic canvas; wrenched the metal frames as though they were the bones of bird wings.

Contemporary Improv

Southwest Florida is often besieged by high winds off the Gulf of Mexico and this morning was one of those times. Walking the beach brought to the surface all these events that still simmer at the bottom of my soul and cause my heart to pound. I want to fight back. I want to fight back in a way as huge as the waves that roiled into shore but I have no idea what it is that raises my hackles. The wind and the waves get more intense and I get more uptight.

Then I get to the turn in my walk and look down. There on the sand are tiny patterns made by the wispy blades of saw grass that protect the beaches from the winds. You wouldn't think flora so delicate could protect an entire dune but they do because there are so many of them. Some blades stand erect, others are broken and bent and then there are the ones that have lost their utility but even in their withering are gracefully curled. All of them make these patterns in different ways...feathers, staccato pecks and sweeping swirls.

Mixed Media

All of this to remind me that it is the details, the small notes that dance to the spirit of the wind, that really matter.

On Being Free

2011-04-04T07:34:00.000-04:00

Shells on trees

There is something energizing about unencumbered places. Not just wide open plains but cozy rooms and tropical havens. To be free enough to explore my mind and my soul for explanations about why things are what they are. To be free enough to not care. To be free enough to create joy from the moment. To be free enough to leave that moment. To not be hung up there like shells on a tree.
It is where I am this morning.

How did they get there?

Ghost Crabs Made Me Laugh

2011-04-01T09:52:00.000-04:00

These guys, which I had not seen in person until early this morning, are a hoot. They are the color of sand so, unless you get very close, they are difficult to see. Not small--the size of my hand maybe--they scurry along the sand at jet-propelled speeds--sideways never losing sight of me with their periscopic eyes.

Now I know that the little holes in the beach are not from children digging with sticks. They are the homes of these silly crustaceans. A strong storm blew across Florida last night and must have swamped the burrows because at 7 this morning they were all digging their ways out. Many of them could not resist the temptation to munch on whatever food blew up on shore along with starfish, seashells, seaweed and stones. They are very wary and most of them had returned to their freshly refurbished burrows by the time I retraced my steps back to the road. Many more beach walkers by then. What had puzzled me was how these guys ever made it in and out of their burrows. They weren't more than 2" across and the crabs are at least 4".

They go sideways! I love it.

Sand Castles

2011-03-08T10:23:00.000-05:00

What I love about walking on a beach is that surprises greet you every morning. Today I passed an intricate sandcastle complete with a moat, sailed boats, gabled turrets, winding staircases, toothed parapets and pine trees all fashioned from sand.

Sandcastles are magical. The elicit a time when princesses and kings, noblemen and knights, chivalry and splendor ruled the world. They are the stuff of fairy tales and we never give up on believing that fairy tales can come true.

Sandcastles are mystical. Here one day, gone the next. Fortresses built of silica, probably the second most available element on earth next to water; yet, subject to the whim of the sea.

Sandcastles are fragile. Not just the sea but beach wanderers can be their foe.

This is what was left of the sandcastle the next morning. I knew it was not going to last forever. Sandcastles never do. But there was something in the manner of its destruction that got to me. Not even childrens' footprints but those of adults. I listened to the waves washing up on shore and gradually recovered from my despair. It is the nature of things.

I had forgotten that like friends, sandcastles are also resilient. They re-surface unannounced. They make your day. They brighten your sky. They offer you a port in your storm.

So, imagine my surprise this morning when I passed that sorry trodden mound to find not one but two sandcastles!

Maybe tomorrow I'll walk a different beach so these sandcastles will live on forever in my memory.

Calico Crabs

2011-03-06T10:32:00.000-05:00

They weren't very large and they weren't very threatening but these Calico crabs that I found on the beach today were definitely entertaining. They walk sideways on the sand. Lots of crabs do that. Supposedly these crabs are very efficient swimmers as well. They have paddle like claws for this.

I saw the larger one first and hoping it was still alive, which it was, I picked it up and set it down closer to the shore's edge. There I found the smaller one. He was playing possum too. When I picked them up they came to life, spreading their eight legs and front claws and maliciously waving them like swords. Then as soon as I set them down they gathered themselves like turtles. So I found a large clam shell and set it over both of them to protect them from other beach walkers. Maybe they'll become friends.

Who Cares--We sure don't

2011-01-10T22:26:00.001-05:00

The papers are full of the madman who assassinated a federal judge, a 9 year old girl and four others, nearly assassinated a congresswoman and wounded a bunch of people in Arizona--the state Sara Palin distinguished with her campaign crosshairs…like that wouldn’t incite persons living on the edge of society. Now everyone is pointing fingers back and forth and Hillary Clinton says this is not the real us. "The extremists and their voices, the crazy voices that sometimes get on the TV, that's not who we are, that's not who you are, and what we have to do is get through that and make it clear that that doesn't represent either American or Arab ideas or opinions," she said.

I guess that means that we are a compassionate and peace-loving nation that despises such actions.

I’m sorry Hillary but we are not a peace-loving nation. We are extremists…a bunch of greedy, power-hungry, wife-beating, war-loving, cross-hair pointing people who would not know peace or moderation if it curled up inside our laps.

That is why the war in the Middle East has gone on for over a decade. That is why the war in Vietnam went on for twice that long. Why South Korea still hates the North and vise versa. Why Jews still kick the Palestinians out of their homes--their landmark hotels for Christ sake. Why Muslims massacre Christians. Why we massacre Muslims. This is the culture we have dripped into the Petri dish of the world. This is the disease we have nourished there. It has been so long since peace has ever even been given a nod that it might as well pack up its bags. We don’t want it, we don’t need it, shit we don’t even care to shelter it.

Peace. Hah! Hillary who did she think she was kidding? Certainly not the citizens of the United Arab Emirates where she was speaking.

Now our country will wring its hands like it did after the V-Tech shootings, the Oaklahoma bombing, the anthrax scare and everything else. But it won’t change anything because we don’t care, deep down, about the individual. We only care about the masses--about impressing them with bulked up sympathy. About giant banks and corporations and holding companies. When we get down to really caring about tortured people like Jared Loughner things might change. But that will never happen.

Have I Outgrown Charlotte and Wilbur?

2010-12-03T09:23:00.000-05:00

My new perspective on Charlotte's Web.

        The world is a much different place than it was in 1952 when E. B. White’s children’s story, Charlotte’s Web, was first published.
         I am different too.
         I am a lot older, sixty-one-years old instead of three. I don’t worry about monsters in my closet. I am married and have raised three children of my own. My parents, who read Charlotte’s Web to me many times in the Fifties, are both long gone. Many of my contemporaries have passed on as well.
Does this mean I have outgrown one of my favorite bedtime stories as well? Are Charlotte the spider and Wilbur the pig no longer relevant to my world or me?
           I should answer yes. Charlotte’s Web, E. B. White’s novel, is after all, a children’s story. But denying the two famous friends a current place in my heart or at the 21st Century’s table makes my stomach turn and my head cringe. I have opened this book many times since growing up. Not to read it to my children, mind you. Our youngest left home a decade ago. Not to read to my grandchildren either--I might when the time comes but I don’t have any yet. No, I still read Charlotte’s Web because I love the story. It draws me in as an adult even more than it did when my children or I were young…for almost as many reasons as there are strands on a spider’s web.

            First off, I love farms. Growing up I was quite familiar with them. I never lived on one but there was a farm next door to my parents’ home. Even though we lived in the suburbs our neighbors raised unusual cattle and beautiful horses. More than anything else in the world I wanted a farm of my own so I could ride horses. I also visited relatives at their farms in Iowa. The small family ones, like the Arable’s and the Zuckerman’s, were especially magical. I love the fact that farmers never left Mother Earth for more complicated pursuits. I love a farm’s simplicity, its honesty and its unadorned necessity. Our culture longer needs horses and buggies or wood-burning stoves or LP records…but it does need farms. I love the animals and the crops--that farmers can fix a dinner merely by walking outdoors and picking it from the garden; the self-sustaining independence of this. Farms and their barns are a part of our heritage that is as important now as it has always been. Barns “often had a sort of peaceful smell--as thought nothing bad could happen ever again in the world.”

            I also like Charlotte’s Web because I am a sucker for friendship and friendship is a very important element in this story. Wilbur “realized that friendship is one of the most satisfying things in the world.” Like Wilbur, I only had a couple friends growing up. Unlike Wilbur, when my friends moved on to other interests like Fern Arable does, I didn’t really have anyone in the rafters…no egg sacks in my future…to fill the void.
           For a while it didn’t really matter--I was busy with college, then marriage and then with raising my family. But when my children left home it occurred to me there was a void in my life. My husband’s habit had long been to bury himself neck deep in his career so I tried to bury myself in mine. I took courses to advance in my field with all sorts of framed certificates to show for them. I got involved in community service--won all kinds of leadership awards. Then I gave classes in my field and was very much in demand. I traveled and I visited my children. My calendar was packed! But at the end of the day--in the dark of my bedroom--I was miserable.

           Finally, I realized the way to fill this void was with people--not awards to put on a bookcase, not meetings to attend and not places to visit. Even though my head said this was a crazy idea--that most folks I knew already had plenty of friends--my heart said otherwise. Not that anyone needed me but that I needed them. “After all,” Charlotte says, “What’s a life anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. By helping …perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.’”
           Unsure of my own value as a friend, it was still my goal to approach potential friends indiscriminately--with no regard for what they might offer me in return. I had a simpler calling--to seek out potential soul mates, as unnerving as that was because I was like Wilbur, a lowly pig that meant “less than nothing” to a barnyard goose.
            A funny thing happened with all this. I learned I was not the only person who needed friends. My efforts were almost instantly rewarded--the people I befriended came back at me by leaps and bounds--because they, too,were lonely! I haven’t wound up with five hundred and fourteen friends like Wilbur did when Charlotte’s babies arrived but the friends I made bring smiles to my face at the end of each day.

             And this is important because friendship is one of the few things that survive death. Death is everywhere in Charlotte’s Web. That life is temporary dominates from the very first sentence. “Where’s Papa going with that ax?” Fern asks her father.
             I am not impressed with children’s stories that speak so blatantly about death. Bambi comes to mind as well as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. But unlike many other children’s stories, White offers alternatives and hope. There is Fern who saves Wilbur from the ax. There is, of all characters, a rat named Templeton who helps save Charlotte from Avery’s capture. There is, of course, Charlotte who saves Wilbur with her brilliant writing and there is Wilbur who saves Charlotte’s babies. All this is done in the name of friendship.

Life on a farm is not for the weak. Not for runts like Wilbur who “will never amount to anything.” Poor Wilbur is perhaps more preoccupied with death than any other character in the story. Repeatedly he says things like “Do you really think Zuckerman will let me live and not kill me when the cold weather comes? Do you really think so?” And yet Wilbur, the runt, not only lives but succeeds in accepting that we all die sometime.
             Charlotte also sensed her clock ticking…“knew she didn’t have much time” though she deals with it in a more mature manner than Wilbur. Her hours were limited not just for convincing the Zuckerman’s of Wilbur’s value before they butchered him but for creating her “magnum opus” before she died. She says to Wilbur, “‘I guess I feel sad because I won’t ever see my children.’” White tells us that it is okay to be sad but not to dwell on it. “‘You’re carrying on in a childish way,’ Charlotte says to Wilbur. ‘Stop your crying! I can’t stand hysterics.’”
              No one can avoid the end of life. Even “the crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever…the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.” Like the stalwart spider, we cannot wallow in self-pity but should pick ourselves up and carry on. And, Wilbur does. He goes from being a whiny and insecure piglet to a confident and caring pig that worries more about others (such as Charlotte’s babies) than himself. He has grown up and, as a result, “he was never without friends…and life in the barn was very good--night and day, winter and summer, spring and fall. ”

               Finally, it is the large themes in White’s story--the universal truths he relates--that lead me to keep it on my bookshelf.
               On the precariousness of friendship Wilbur says, “‘What a gamble friendship is! Charlotte is fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty--everything I don’t like.’ Wilbur was merely suffering the doubts and fears that often go with finding a new friend.”
              On growing up, Mrs. Arable says, after “the children…danced off…toward the wonderful music and the wonderful adventure and the wonderful excitement, into the wonderful midway where there would be no parents to guard them and guide them. ‘Well, they’ve got to grow up some time.’”
               And, on miracles Dr. Dorian tells Mrs. Arable, “Oh, no, I don’t understand it. But for that matter I don’t understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place. When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle. But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle.”
Just like life itself, a miracle is to be celebrated, to be danced about, to be wondered over and appreciated for everything it offers. Especially friends.

               Charlotte’s Web is not just a classic children's story, it is a literary classic. What defines this is, of course, debatable and subjective but, for me, it is a work that holds a great appeal for adults as well as children. Like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Red Pony, Charlotte’s Web holds this appeal because it is written from the heart--simply and honestly. White presents the emotions of fear, love, joy and loneliness in a way the whole world can embrace. He presents the struggles of growing up, of accepting mortality and of remaining loyal to our friends even in our darkest hours in a way that is not frightening but beautiful. He shows me that miraculous changes take place when we overcome these struggles. Most importantly Charlotte’s Web has held this appeal for generations, which brings me once more to my opening question.
Have I outgrown Charlotte’s Web?
                  Certainly I am much different than I was in 1952 and so is my world. Instead of the spreading influence of television we have the Internet; instead of rampant posterity spoiling us we have home foreclosures breaking our hearts and our bank accounts; instead of snuggling in a chair with a printed newspaper or magazine we hold e-readers while we ride a subway or stand in line; instead of watching ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ as a family we put the kids to bed and watch ‘Cougar Town.’
Yet, in spite of all this change, we still marry and raise children. Our children grow up and look forward to the day when they can venture out on their own. We still have farms and pigs and spiders. We have not devised a potion that allows us to live forever. We still face meanness and greed around every other corner. But, like Wilbur, we also see miracles taking place every day. Hopefully we have learned to recognize them.
               That is why the message of Charlotte’s Web will never get old. It is a message that holds meaning for young and old. I have not outgrown Charlotte and Wilbur and I hope I never do. To the contrary I would urge every adult to read this story to every little one in their life as many times as that child will listen.
               Let that child bond with Charlotte and Wilbur and Fern and even with Templeton; let him hear White’s words of wisdom; let him feel the rhythm of those words and appreciate the depth of metaphor and let him embrace the truisms our entire world. Let him learn about the simplicity of farm life, sense the urgency of mortality, but know the miracle of a spider’s web. It is the only way, I fear, that this world of ours will redeem itself.
               Lastly, let that child come to love a good book and the way it takes us out of the moment in order that we can better appreciate that moment. Our world is moving much too fast--some would say it is spinning out of control. Charlotte tells Wilbur, “They just keep trotting back and forth across the bridge thinking there is something better on the other side. If they’d…wait quietly, maybe something good would come along. But no--with men it’s rush, rush, rush, every minute.” If Charlotte thought her world was rushing past, what would she think of ours?
              As his elder Charlotte taught Wilbur the value of love, loyalty and friendship. Wilbur passed that torch to her 514 babies. It’s been our turn ever since.

Removing Chaff--Not So Easy

2010-10-15T12:38:00.006-04:00

I had a bumper crop of anise this year.

The lacy-leafed bush that I grow as much for the monarchs it attracted one season as for its seeds. Sadly, the pudgy, iridescent green caterpillars have never returned to frolic amongst the sea-green gossamer that looks as though it would be equally happy submerged in some land-locked lake.

Monarchs or no monarchs, my anise bush has flourished. No matter, the birds like the seeds.

This year I harvested some seeds taking care to leave a fair amount for the goldfinches. I dried the seeds on a tray in my kitchen for a week, along with their fibrous leaves and delicate stems. Then it was time to get biblical-- to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Oh what fragrance filled my kitchen! Reward enough for my efforts thus far.

The next task was not difficult but it was time consuming. I gently crunched the dry heads between my fingers and, with tiny tinkles, the seeds fell to the tray. So did many of the broken stems. As I have great plans to include the anise seeds in a Christmas cookie recipe, the stems had to go. This was when the clock seemed to stop ticking.

Finally I had removed enough of the stems to sift the remaining pile through a strainer. Of course some stubborn stems determined to offer up extra crunch to my cookies wound up amongst the seeds and these I removed as well.

*****

I find myself removing lots of sticks and stems from my days as well. I am increasingly aware of the limit to my days. The pressure to make them as fruitful as possible overwhelms me at times. I should relax--should enjoy the extra time I have post retirement. But I cannot. I have so many miles to travel before I sleep.

Unlike my effort with the anise seeds, this task is difficult. It requires that I give equal attention to my passions and to the significant people in my life---not necessarily an inclusive equation. To balance them fairly means to eliminate some of the chaff that has accumulated. I can see that there might be pain associated with this elimination process. I encountered none with my little anise seed project.

I haven’t resolved it yet but my sanity will soon demand that I get started. There are only twenty-four hours in each day. I need to simplify my life so as to have quality time to pursue my favorites. Sounds like an internet thing…my favorites.

Meanwhile the leaves are tumbling outside my bay window--delicate reminders that the seasons are changing. That summer will soon be a memory.

I gathered an entire spice jar of seeds today and now I’m thinking I won’t ever get to baking those cookies. That would be only adding chaff to the wheat of my life.

I’m glad I left some seeds for the birds. They may be the only ones who benefit from my fragrant anise bush.

Harding's Tinkers and My Mortality

2010-10-05T09:43:00.002-04:00

I cannot imagine anything more unsettling than contemplating that day when I will no longer be a physical part of this world. Worse than that, though, has to be George Washington Crosby’s plight in Paul Harding’s novel, Tinkers. It opens with him in his living room on a rented hospital bed, eight days away from death. And yet both George, and his poet father Howard, has given me reason and strength to open and re-read the pages of my own mortality.

George is desperate to “look at his life, to take the stock he always imagined a man would at his end”. He has always been a responsible, analytical and organized man. Sadly, not only is he helpless to control the order of his memories but all of them have shifted in so many different ways that what he sees is a “different self every time he tried to make an assessment.” And since control and precision were huge priorities for George the novel opens with him hallucinating about a “torrent of (window) panes (that) would drive everyone from the room…(leaving him) marooned on his bed in a moat of shattered glass.”

Safe, yes, but also alone.

I would guess that those last hours of life are unsettling for as many reasons as there are persons experiencing them. I think of the differences between a priest, a burglar, a mother and a child. Their thoughts on their deathbeds, if they recognize them as such, have to be vastly different. But certainly our need to comprehend what happens next is a universal concern. Does death mean we have forever lost our connections to the only life we’ve ever known? The people we love? Do we merely become “a ghost, almost made of nothing”? Or, is there a way …a promise, a hope…that we will still remain connected but perhaps not in a way we recognize?

For Kathleen, George’s mother, the “nearly martial ordering of her household is, in fact, the love she is so terrified that she does not have.” Likewise for George, a builder of solid homes and a repairer of fine clocks, abandoning his family in death--exposing them to the whims of nature and “intrepid squirrels” just as his father and grandfather had abandoned their families--is tantamount to forsaking their love. It is a loss that both George and his quixotic father, Howard, dread. And it is their coping with that dread, trying to make sense of its pain that not only permeates this beautiful story but also draws me to want to read it over and over.

My own father, an alcoholic, left my mother, my siblings and me when I was the same age as George. He did not leave us physically but like Howard, “The world fell away from my father the way he fell away from us. We became his dream.” It is heart wrenching to read how George and Howard deal with their loss but, at the same time, it is comforting. It connects me to them.

Throughout his work, Harding juxtaposes dreams and reality and light and shadows in ways that create tension to the point of frustration. I found the tension not only within the story but also within myself as I read. Harding very effectively nurtures this with his narrative mode. I might say it is simply stream of consciousness except that that implies a narration of primarily the characters’ interior monologues. Harding goes several steps further by throwing in a dizzying combination of dream sequences, epileptic seizures and lyrical soliloquies like a Summer evening of fireworks that are both stunning and enlightening but, at the same time, awesome in their frightful power. This tension pitted my chances of understanding Harding at the same desperate level as the characters’ attempts to make sense of their lives. I felt their pain because Harding nearly drowns us with it-- like the silt and water of Tagg Pond that encompasses Howard as he sits in it for a day and a night while searching for his father and for himself. By the end of the novel I, like George and Howard, craved a resolution that gives us all a sense of being re-connected with those we lost and those we love.

There are other juxtapositions throughout the story. There is Howard who basks in the unpredictable but beautiful wonders of nature and its demand that we endure its hardships. “…winter already sealing the country people in behind him.” In contrast there is George, who venerates the precise and predictable mechanical world of clocks despite their demands that we maintain them and live within the boundaries of their minutes. “Eighty four hours before he died.”

Howard received his poetic leanings from his minister father whereas George’s tendencies reflect his mother’s “stern manner and humorless regime.” I loved them both because Harding makes them real--vulnerable yet capable of tremendous love. As I read, more than anything, I cheered for them. I waited for them to connect once more with each other, probably because I never really connected with my own father.

In the end both George who is “lamenting the loss of this world of light and hope” (23) and Howard whose “despair came from the fact that his wife saw him as a fool, as a useless tinker” (125) do find each other and this gives comfort to their final hours. Howard sees his shadow separate from himself and “his shadow dreamed just as he did for the reason that he could imagine himself to be a shadow of something--someone--else.” I believe that someone is George, the son for whom Howard longed.

As George’s last breaths escape, his face becomes almost like a clock, a sundial, and the shadows of time passing across it… (his body) “merely maintaining a pantomime of human life.” The real George, the ‘it’ which I took to also be his ‘shadow’, his soul, is plumbing “depths far, far from that living room” and far from his family’s “own, human terrors about their own wases to the it, which is so nearly was that it will not or simply cannot any longer accept their human grief.” He connects with his family and his ancestors on a level wholly different than a tinker might.

What happens is that George senses “finally, the foolishness of attributing the unknown to secret cabals” He accepts that “Everything was almost always obscure”…that understanding shines “for no discernable reason.” For him it was okay, upon death, to lie down and get picked over and be “used to fix broken clocks,” to become a part of the solution. “This is how, finally, we were joined.”

Because, in the end, Tinkers is not just about finding fathers or about trying to understand either their precise, organized natures or their poetic ones. It is not about trying to accommodate the natural world to the mechanical one. It is not about trying to justify the forces that bring progress or those that hinder it. In the end, what Harding’s Tinkers is about individuals finding their connections with all those other worlds and, finally, with the ones they love.

I am not alone, I am certain, in wanting my family, my peers and, yes, even my ancestors, to appreciate me. It is important--it is the nature of being human. Like Howard and George, I’d like to die knowing that the reflection of my life, my shadow, lives on after me and attaches itself to my loved ones so that as this process of shadows coming and going, extends itself through generations and “this alternating, interdependent series of lives (forms) a sort of intaglio” that lives on well after me.

It is uncanny how much Howard is like my father. He liked to tinker in his workshop, he was a salesman, he was a father and he was a poet. I often thought he would have been happier without the burden of his family. Unlike Howard and like George, my father stuck it out--but only in a physical sense. His sense of responsibility won out but it also frustrated him. There has always been a part of me that would like him to come back to this world, to re-connect with me on a spiritual level. To assure me that, with his drinking, he left my family not because of it, but because of him. Having read Tinkers, I am comforted to know his shadow already has.

Time To Get Back

2010-06-22T07:16:00.004-04:00

It has been raining for about seven hours--pouring really. Good day for writing except that this kind of weather definitely puts a different light on what ends up on the page--more like layers of shadow. Last night when I was unable to sleep I told myself I have to look for the positives. Not just the ones in the rain but in everything that is contributing to my unsettled mood.

So here goes:

**Rain is challenging when you have seven puppies to potty outdoors but it is good for the earth, the gardens and the rivers.

**Take pleasure in a clean floor instead of dreading how dirty it is and hard it will be to clean it.

**Focus on how far I've come in my writing instead of how far I have to go to come up with something decent.

**Remember that your true friends will take you for face value, not for an increase in their investment. If I return the favor to them what more is needed?

**It hurts to consider that my mother likely didn't care for me. I was in good company, she didn't like herself much either.

I'm reading a good book, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout.

Olive is not very likeable. She is not handsome, is large, is

opinionated and is domineering. A seventh grade math teacher,

she moves about a small Maine town with authority and aplomb.

I had a nun in high school like that. Sister Veronita. She taught 'Current Events' and warned us all that the Middle East would be the end of us all. Almost every student in the school disliked her (my mother said never to use the word 'hate.' I liked her ...she was not afraid of anyone or what they thought. Sr. Veronita was, in 1967, one of the original feminists. Difficult for a nun, especially.

I like Olive and what she tells Julie towards the end of the book. "Go for what you hunger." (I'm paraphrasing, but it is close.) Julie does and it changes her life--or so we are led to believe.
I have a friend critiquing my current novel as I write it. I am doing the same for hers. One of the thinks she keeps saying is that she doesn't like my main character.

I think that might be a problem, unless I can make her more like Olive.

2010-04-18T17:21:00.003-04:00

Bel Canto is a rewarding read on so many levels I can't begin to cover them all. I think what stayed with me the longest is that it is about boundaries and barriers and about how people cross them (or ignore them) is what defines them.

The book opens at the end of a private performance by Roxanne Coss, a renowned opera soprano's, for a host of dignitaries at the lavish mansion of a South American vice-president in celebration of the birthday of Mr. Hosokawa. He was an opera fanatic and the founder and chairman of Japan's largest electronics corporation and the hope was that he would build a factory in the host company.

The first boundary is crossed when the lights go out and the accompanist leans over and sneaks a 'strong and passionate' kiss onto Roxanne's lips and thereby crosses over, doing what 'all the men and women in the room...collectively' desire.

We soon learn the lights were extinguished by a band of marauding revolutionaries who look to kidnap the president who is not even in attendance at the event. A stalemate ensues that allows both the terrorists and the hostages opportunity to enjoy the music that Roxanne and others provide--a music that seems to cross the boundaries of the dangers present and unite everyone in a beautiful, harmonious existence.

Ann Patchett’s liquid language and unique tale about a likely but unlikely scenario as both the bad guys and the good guys become hostage to the rapture of music; hostages fall in love with their captors and untouchable opera divas fall in love with their admirers. It is as deceiving in its simplicity as it is simple in its message.

Bel Canto is a story about what constitutes barriers, what nourishes them and what happens on either side. There are many. First, there is the kiss. Then there is the wall that divides the mansion from the town--the dignitaries from the working class. There are the guns that separate the hostages from the renegades. There is the barrier of language among the 38 hostages and their captors. There are the barriers that the large corporations and governments put on their employees and citizens. There are the cultural barriers that forbid young female revolutionaries to fall in love with corporate interpreters; or, American opera stars to fall in love with Japanese CEOs; or, militant generals to teach chess to their teenage foot soldiers; or, entrepreneurs to play piano for militants. All of these are lyrically crossed.

Through it all we read about the beautiful music, which brings everyone together in appreciation and we come to love Gen, Mr. Hosokawa’s interpreter, who brings everyone together in language.

But all this happens in a most unlikely world, a Camelot given temporary sustenance by circumstance--a dream that can never come true.

Cormac McCarthy

2010-02-18T17:17:00.000-05:00

      I am on a Cormac McCarthy kick lately. Have read The Road which I wanted to do before seeing the movie. He is a master with words--terse, unadorned style that even scorns the use of quotation marks. The Road is not even adorned with names for its characters--simply The Boy and The Father. Still, McCarthy is extremely readable. In this work the world, or at least our country, has been decimated--assumedly by a terrible war. There are loving references to The Mother as The Father muses about the past. She was the first to succumb to the 'Bad Guys.' Now father and son are on the road struggling for survival, a warmer climate and a safe haven from just about every creature they encounter. It is a tender portrayal of love, an uplifting tale of fierce determination and a horrifying window into what could be.

        I've also finished McCarthy's first novel in his Border Trilogy--All The Pretty Horses. Same voice as well. A coming of age story about two boys who grow up in Texas on neighboring ranches in the forty's. Soon after they leave home seeking something greater than themselves they pick up a much younger boy--a mirror of themselves. Their journey brings them to the doorsteps of resentment, cruelty, greed and love and not all of them return home to talk about it.

       Cormac McCarthy was born in 1933, the third of six children, in Rhode Island. When he was four his parents moved to Knoxville TN where they continued to raise their children as Catholics. He was named Charles after his father but changed his name to Cormac ("Son of Charles") after the Irish King. Some say his parents actually changed his name. Not sure which is the case. He attended the University of Tennessee for two years then entered the Air Force for four. He returned to the University, published two stories in its literary magazine. In 1960 he moved to Chicago and worked as an auto mechanic while he wrote his first novel, "The Orchard Keeper," published in 1965 by Random House.

Tears At The Counter

2010-02-12T11:36:00.005-05:00

She was older than I and taller. Her hair was perfect and cropped short and stroked with silver as if from an ancient Chinaman's ink brush. She wore sweats--nicer ones. Her carriage was confident and edgy, as if she were set for a fight.

I was in Florida on vacation. At the supermarket the day before, a similarly confident woman dressed down the seafood counter clerk for the way he cut their swordfish. I was next in line.

“I’m from Connecticut,” she said to me. “They know how to cut their fish.”

I’m from Michigan, I thought. This is the only way I’ve seen swordfish cut.

“And I can’t believe you charge for your lemons,” she said to him and looked at me for approval.

“They’re free at Rhodes,” she said to me.

I snuck a wink to the clerk. “But the prices are higher there.”

The humble man simply thanked her for the observation and wrapped her purchase.

Now this woman at the vet threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin.

"What kind of dog is that?” she asked the clerk, pointing to the fluff of fur on my lap.

“Havanese,” the young girl said. “Isn’t she sweet?”

“She’s quite large for a Havanese,” the woman said and my eyes narrowed because the tone she used was sharp--just like the seafood customer’s--and I hoped I wasn’t going to witness another dressing down of a helpless sales clerk.

Because my Phoebe was actually small for her breed I looked at the woman a second time hoping for more reasons to dislike her. Her pants were the kind yoga students wear to the Y, not nice health clubs. And she was heavier than me. Huh, I thought.

The vet appeared from behind the counter and the phrases, “parvo,” “eleven weeks,” “kennel,” and “I’m so sorry,” pricked my ears. Huh, I thought.

The woman glanced over my head to a quietly distinguished man, maybe five years older, sitting in the corner holding a stack of printouts and an American Express card on his lap. She walked over to him and they passed these glances back and forth--glances of resignation and sadness. Then she handed him yet another printout.

“This is all about parvo,” she said. “In case we want to read it.”

Another series of silent glances.

“You need to go pay,” she said. “It's $800."

He walked to the counter and she turned to my dog.

“She’s very large for a Havanese.”

Still annoyed I said, “Actually she’s not.”

Discomfort passed between us. I didn't feel like being nice to her. Besides, I sensed asking about her dog would be even more awkward so I looked down at my Phoebe and scratched her ears.

“We had a cockapoo,” she said after a moment. “They just put her down.”

It was true.

That’s when I noticed that her fingers worked the handle of her purse clutched to her chest. Then I saw her eyes fill and suddenly this stranger and I were soul mates in the gentle cosmos of those who love our animals.

“How old?” I said.

“Eleven weeks.”

I thought about the puppy I'd lost a few years back. I'm a breeder and he was two days old. Cleft palate. Congenital, not contagious.

“I’m so very sorry,” I said.

Could she tell I was as sorry about my first impressions of her as I was about her loss?

“Thank you,” she said and I hugged Phoebe.

What did it matter if someone thought she was too big or too small?

Birth Day

2010-01-28T19:51:00.004-05:00

Started my birthday out with a light breakfast and then yoga class. I know you are not supposed to think about anything during yoga. Still I thought about birth because is my birthday--61 years and counting. I thought about my niece who learned yesterday she'll deliver a little girl in May. Then I thought about my three daughters and my six siblings. Then the concept of birth and rebirth climbed into my head like a restless toddler. I fixated on that instead of my breathing.

Optimistically I have 1/3 of my life remaining--thirty years. Thirty years is a shorter time period than it was thirty years ago. At that time my oldest daughter was four years old...and we were less than halfway through the pregnancy of my second one with one more yet to be created. It's interesting to tick off the events--look back and remember Jenny, for instance. Her bounce of golden curls, her precocious temperament, her stubborn refusals, her loving kisses. Skipping down the sidewalk with her, crossing 'Jennifer's Way' to our next door neighbor's for tea or an afternoon sherry (they were quite British, you know). It seems like a different era altogether but my point is that thirty years is still a very long time. So, why the panic? Lots of weeks, months and years to decide what I want to do when I grow up.

So, in yoga I decided to declare this Birth Day a day for re-birth. A scary proposition since I haven't thought much about it until now. But also an exciting one. Expounding for a moment on the word 'birth' I came up with the following:

Tiny fingers and toes

Tiny green leaves

Hope

Life

Promise

Birth: the completion of creation. A communion between a father and a mother, a grain of pollen and a stigma, a teacher and a student's mind, an artist and a palette of paint, a musician and a handful of notes--a heart and a soul--each giving part of themselves so that what they are can live on.

Birth: the beginning of creation.

Opportunity
Wonder

Happy Birth Day to me!

Crossing Bridges

2009-11-16T08:52:00.004-05:00

There are almost as many ways to get somewhere as there are roads, rivers and walls in the way. I grew up on a hill that overlooked Detroit's Rouge River and the bridge I used to cross it consisted of a willow tree--a very old one judging by the girth of its trunk.

I was about ten years old and had become accustomed to spending afternoons in the woods that flanked this creek behind my parents' home. The woods were remote and quiet and offered reprieve at a time when I needed it desperately. I was the oldest of seven and lived with our parents though my father, a travelling salesman, was rarely home. The river and its wildlife provided a sanctuary from the uncomfortable days I spent at school. Fifth grade was the beginning of my awareness that I was not a very social young lady and, as much as recess and lunch periods, I dreaded afternoons at home when my mother suggested I should be involved in more social activities.

I took comfort knowing the mallards, chipmunks and raccoons became so accustomed to my presence that they carried on with their business as if I belonged there. I would sit on this bridge to observe the choreography of the mallards' descent-- and the grace of their aquatic meanderings. How they dropped their tail feathers and spread their wings upright to steady their descent and to soften its impact. How they never missed their target, never sank and never showed concern that the mallards already swimming the river would shun them for who they were or weren't.

I don't know where I thought I was going after I crossed this river but I was determined to overcome the challenge. The trunk fell so that its span stretched five feet above the water level once it left the banks. Its trunk had peeled away to a smooth, blond veneer. It would have been simple enough to straddle but a number of intact limbs jutted up and out and down from it so that walking the bridge--what at first glance seemed the most difficult--was actually the only sure way of getting across. The thought of slipping off made my heart pound. Not only was the river-bottom thick with muck but the river was polluted by residential practices that still make my skin crawl.

For the first few weeks I could only muster the courage to crawl across on hands and knees, thankful that no one was watching. Then I was able to stand and take tiny steps while steadying myself on a very long walking stick poked into the muck below. By the end of the summer I could cross upright. I learned it was easier to cross that river if I didn't look back or look down--if I focused on the bank of lush, green ferns on the other side. And while the ferns offered a fine place to sit and contemplate what I had done--they were the end of it and after a month or so they succumbed to winter's frost and shriveled away and I had no place to sit anymore without getting covered in the same mud I'd just crossed over.

A more contemporary bridge spanned that same Rouge River and we crossed on the way to and from my elementary school. It was too narrow for more than one car at a time but I remember it more because of two separate conversations that took place while crossing it--conversations about two significant deaths...my parakeet’s and my Grandfather’s.

“We think it was old age,” my mother said about my parakeet as we headed home from school.

I had spent that week with my cousin's family while my parents were away on one of their many overseas vacations. And, I knew my sweet spring-green feathered friend had actually died at three months from neglect. The woman my parents hired to care for my siblings had more important things on her agenda.

“We can get another bird if you want,” she added in an effort to quench my sobs.

But I didn’t want another bird. I wanted the one I'd just taught so say 'thank you.'

Three months later on that same bridge my mother announced that my ailing Grandfather Miller had passed on. He loved his granddaughters especially myself and my two cousins. I often walked to his house for lunch because he lived with my Grandmother less than two blocks from school. He had a round bald head and much larger round belly and rarely left his family room chair. He spent so much time in it watching George Pierrot that his butt left an imprint in the leather. He drank a lot of whiskey in that chair and it smelled of urine.

Grandfather didn’t talk much but I knew he liked me being there. He’d wave me to his side and rest his large hand on top of mine. It was smooth and rainy-day gray. We'd watch television together, though I had little use for travelogues. Sometimes he would forget I was there and after a while, he’d fall asleep. I'd wonder what it was like to be him--to spend so much of each day asleep.

My Grandfather was very wealthy. His business was selling cotton and wool fabric to the automakers for car seats. When my father took it over, Grandfather spent his afternoons in Palmer Park at a long picnic table where he and other old men played cards. Grandmother didn't care for these men--they didn't own businesses. She convinced him to move to the suburbs when Detroit went through the change. They bought that house near my school. Every afternoon Grandfather would drive across that narrow stone bridge, back to Palmer Park, and play cards with his buddies. When he was too old to drive and had no one to take him, he stopped going. He didn't like to talk about it much and his eyes misted over when did. I felt sorry for my Grandfather. He was lonely and I knew what lonely was.

Every summer for as long as I can remember my mother would pile her gaggle of chicks into her station wagon and drive to her home in Dubuque, Iowa where we visited my other grandparents. About every five years my father joined us. The trip was two full days of air mattress battles, Dramamine, sour pillows, silly car games like 'My Grandmother's Cupboard' and heat...lots and lots of insufferable heat. My mother’s psyche usually burned out by Benton Harbor, about a five hours into the trip and we’d drag our sweaty and sugar coated little bodies into a hotel room for the night. Barring disasters like leaving a kid behind at a service station, it was another five hours of tangled torsos and tested tempers before our car reached the bluff and the majestic suspension bridge that took us across the Mississippi to Iowa. Grandma and Grandpa Hilvers were not rich. They shared their two story bungalow with my Aunt, her alcoholic husband and their three children. Adding our eight into the mix led to interesting memories but still, this bridge was one I recall fondly.

Happiness waited on the other side--days spent at Grandpa's river cabin fishing for catfish and smoking them. Afternoons spent jumping into the creek from the rickety bridge that took us to the cabin. We'd plunge to the swimming hole clutching a tractor's giant tire tube. No theme park ride could match the feelings in our stomachs.

Beyond and above this bridge was another--an ominous wood train trestle. Its massive timbers painted black with tar, it was at least four stories tall with a very narrow walkway flanking one side for workers to access the rails. The very presence of this bridge sweat danger. We were forbidden to go near it which only meant that when we got caught Grandpa would take us to the smokehouse and throttle our behinds. A number of shirtless, shoeless trailer boys who lived at the edge of Grandpa's property took great amusement from daring us to walk this trestle. They'd lead us to it like sheep then sit in their rowboats and watch and for many summers we never made it to the other side, certain we'd heard a train's whistle in the distance. I'm not sure whether their dares or Grandpa's threats released more snakes into our stomachs the day we finally made it all the way across.

I’d all but forgotten about my childhood bridges until my three grown daughters set out to start their own lives. To visit I’ve had to cross the Chicago Lake Street Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge and Boston’s Longfellow Bridge. But I have no feelings of apprehension or loneliness when I cross these bridges. I know when I get to the other side there is always someone I love waiting for me.

I walk my three dogs along a river now--the same one that flowed behind the home where I grew up. With enough practice I could probably cross one of the many logs that have fallen across it. But I don’t need the challenge any more. I’ve married and raised three daughters and along the way learned to appreciate life’s simpler solutions, so I use the wooden footbridge.

Besides I am not as lonely now. Maybe it was knowing those bridges that helped.

Monday Musings--Designer Gowns and Journalists

2009-11-09T08:36:00.005-05:00

Two good things in the NYT today. Both are upstarts that have thumbed their noses at this economy. The first that caught my eye is a company that is Netflixing (is that a word?) designer gowns. Called 'Rent the Runway', it intrigued me because, first of all, I am inherently frugal (some would call it cheap) and, second of all, because I've always been a tad envious of women who can carry off wearing one--both the expense and the savvy of it. The rental prices range from $50 to $200 plus $5 for insurance. With the holidays coming into view, I just might try this. Maybe once I wore a designer gown to a party that would be enough--I would be disappointed enough in the results that I would shift my envy (seems like the grass is always greener somewhere). I guess my only concern is whether the thing ( you have 4 days to keep it) fits.

So the second upstart is in Texas--called the Texas Tribune. It is an online news organization that has set its sights on monitoring news and policy coming from Austin. The non-profit (what news organization makes one anymore?) has already won financial support to the tune of 3.7 million dollars and is well on its way to making a fresh sustainable mark in the decimated world of journalism.

“I began to see journalism as a public good, like national defense or clean air,” said John Thornton, an Austin venture capitalist who has invested $1 million of the $3.7 already put up for the project. The theory is to pay good journalists well for serving their readers with healthy, clean portions of news.

Not too shabby.

You Say Goodbye and I Say Hello

2009-11-03T07:33:00.006-05:00

Today Susan Dominus, in her BIG CITY column of the NYT, speaks to a topic never far from the lips of writers lately--the demise of the literary world as we knew it. She wraps her column in Joan Didion's famous essay, "Goodbye to All That," which as "an elegy to the passing of youth," talks to Didion's disenchantment with New York City and the literary culture that was her world. Written in 1967, Dominus writes that the essay still strikes many familiar chords.

Part of what has disappeared, Dominus says, is the "glittering, gluttonous self-indulgence" of the publishing business. It was a comment that struck home to me as I had been privy to the same self-indulgence by Detroit's corporate world back in the mid-eighties. As a florist, I was often hired to perform extravagant botanical feats for the conference and party tables of the executives--feats that often added up to $50 to the per-person tab picked up by stockholders and ordinary citizens. God only knows what the rest of the bill totaled.

It was, and is, the crux of our economic woes. The rampant wanton greed of the people in charge--often at the expense of the people at the opposite end.

Dominus comments that at least "The New York magazine and book-publishing scene is no Detroit." (How unfortunate that Detroit has become the metaphor for abject failure.) But, she goes on to mention the silver lining of all this. "People will keep making cars, only somewhere else; people will keep making literary culture, just not at the same scale, or in the same hallways, or for a living."

In part, I disagree. To the wanton greed I say, with relief, "Goodbye to All That." But unlike Dominus, who concludes that "even the most jaded among our ranks are not ready to say goodbye to all that," I say I am. and I am ready to welcome the era of the internet that will hopefully put more commercial endeavors on an even plane so that the executives and the foot soldiers are equally rewarded. The essence of cars--transportation--will not disappear; and the essence of literary culture will be just fine. People, by their very nature, crave to tell and read stories, to fantasize, to learn and to opine. So while the paper industry and the bookshelf industry might suffer, the new scene--the internet and the electronic media--will enable literature to thrive on an equal, if not larger, scale and it will be possible to make a living providing it. We just won't be able to gorge on the pocketbooks of the general public like we used to.

In November of the same year that Didion published her essay, the Beatles released their hit song, "You Say Goodbye and I Say Hello." Paul McCartney's summary of his lyrics was this: "The answer to everything is simple. It's a song about everything and nothing. If you have black you have to have white. That's the amazing thing about life."

That sums it up better for me. Life goes on and what we are passionate about will survive--might even get better!

Inspiration or Discipline?

2009-11-02T08:41:00.007-05:00

Is inspiration or discipline more important in creating art?

This is an ongoing discussion in two of the online writing/reading groups I've joined--Backspace and Goodreads.

In my first life, as mother to three daughters and florist for 34 years, I followed the discipline road and reached some level of success despite frequently being singed by both ends of the candle. I hadn't placed much emphasis on inspiration mainly because I didn't have the confidence that it would take me anywhere. Don't get me wrong, I placed an extremely high value on inspiration and the art it nourishes. I just didn't believe I had any seeds to begin with. And I was extremely frustrated.

Then about six years before I retired I gathered the courage to create inspired floral creations rather than pump out cookie cutter FTD designs. I had admired for over a quarter century designs by florists all over the world but never thought myself capable of attaining that level.

I guess I liken this to the difference between works by Stephanie Meyer or Nora Roberts and those by Jayne Anne Phillips or Andre Dubus III. All certainly very worthwhile reads but I have to think the two former authors are more focused on discipline and are probably more commercially successful whereas the two latter focus on inspiration (no doubt combined with discipline) and are more artistically successful.

I will grant that floral designs are in a different world than fiction. But I learned something during those last six years--I learned that if I had the courage to allow inspiration a seat on my wagon I could, indeed, create more artistically successful designs. I had the seeds all along! What a surprise when that art was validated by my clients who then inspired me to reach even higher.

So now here I am holding both ends of a new candle--the 'chronological one' that says I should retire, not rewire. The other--the one desperate to create. Does that mean I discipline my self to crank out fifty novels between now and the end of the rainbow (even assuming I find an audience!) or do I discipline myself to sit down every morning and listen to my muses and follow their inspiration?

Yep, you guessed it.

I'm an old friend to discipline--a newer one to inspiration. Who knows--maybe the three of us will be surprised with an audience. If not I have these two friends who've helped me enjoy the process of trying.

Be Curious, Not Furious

2009-11-01T11:54:00.003-05:00

I attended a new yoga class today--the class was new for me, yoga is not. Actually I attended it several years back and have recently returned to the Y where it is held for free three days a week. Anyway, the young woman who teaches it relayed a mantra early on that she'd borrowed from another teacher whose name I did not catch. The mantra is, "Be Curious, Not Furious."

For the class it applied to some of the more difficult moves she was planning to impose upon us. But, of course, it has a wider range of implications. I can start with what makes me furious, the least of which is having trouble with a yoga move. What does make me more furious is my dog not obeying my requests, as if I don't exist or she has temporarily lost her hearing. What also makes me furious is someone who steals a parking place in a crowded downtown location after I've been patiently waiting for the previous driver to exit it. And, being furious about the incessant rain that has plagued us lately here in Michigan.

Now for 'being curious.' Why does my dog not obey my requests? If I might refer for a moment to a book I recently read, ANIMALS MAKE US HUMAN, by Temple Grandin with Catherine Johnson, the premise is that dogs don't listen to us usually because they don't understand our request and not because they are being stubborn. We need to think like a dog and to frame our expectations within what comes natural for them. The ultimate joy for a dog, Grandin says, is to satisfy their basic emotion of Seeking. The other three dominant emotions for dogs are Rage, Fear and Panic so clearly Seeking is their favorite. It leads to such behaviours as sniffing at the bases of trees, running like banshees in the woods, exploring the orifices of other dogs and chasing after a Frisbee. So when training our dog if we can turn our expectations into a Seeking activity they will delightfully latch on to it. So why doesn't my dog come when I call her? Because I haven't made a game out of it. Or, because (this is my most common resort) I'm not holding out a bowl of food (another bonus of the Seeking emotion).

If my request were to escalate to the level of inciting Rage, Fear or Panic in my dog I may get a positive response simply as her way of eliminating the stress. But, who knows what response I might get the next time--maybe she'd run away and what good would that do?

As for the parking lot event--I have to admit I was furious. How much more positive would it have been for me to be curious about what drove that soul to be so wicked as to steal my space? I might even have been empathetic determining that perhaps they had some kind of emergency or were late for a critical appointment or were about to lose their job because they were late for work.

And finally, the weather. What would being curious instead of furious accomplish? Perhaps it would lead to introspection on my own mindset. Why do I waste my energy on something I cannot control?

Back to Grandin's book--I'll review it in a later post and I highly recommend it!

GRACE NOTES Moves Forward

2009-10-19T09:01:00.003-04:00

I am excited to report that I have reached a milestone of sorts with my first novel which I am entitling GRACE NOTES. After twelve drafts, I think it is decent enough to push it under the doors of some of my friends for critique. Meanwhile, I will work on my query letter to entice agents near and far to fight over representing it. This is what I have plan to send to them:

Dear Ms. Smith,

In reading your blog I see that you represent authors of works similar to my literary novel, Grace Notes. In it Billy Mann, despite a moonstruck mother and alcoholic father, is an attentive big brother, popular athlete and talented musician. He is also the heartthrob of his pretty next-door neighbor, Evvie.

When driving home in a snowstorm Billy’s car strikes and kills her little sister. His life goes into a skid that doesn’t stop until he’s lost everything--his promising band, his nurturing mother, his friends and Evvie, who’d become his bride.

Billy replaces them with drugs, crime and an eight-year prison term. Evvie’s decision to leave breaks her heart as much as his; but she is pregnant and fears that life with him mirrors the same abusive path that destroyed her childhood.

After thirty years, Billy discovers his daughter, a classical violinist, who teaches him what his mother could never convey. It isn’t drugs or a stage that will give him the strength to win back everyone he’d catapulted from his life--it is the huge heart he’s always had.

Grace Notes is set in Detroit where a dying auto heritage is shadowed by endless turbulence but also great music. It tells of heart-wrenching trials like those endured by Jodi Piccoult’s childhood sweethearts in The Pact. My theme of music as healing force takes its inspiration from Andre Dubus III’s Bluesman. And themes of undying love and forgiveness echo Kristin Hannah’s True Colors.

I have been an independent bookstore owner, reported for my university newspaper and edited a Detroit weekly. I have been published in Women’s Day and other national magazines.

At 106,000 words, Grace Notes is complete. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Jacqueline Carney

Book Review: Restitution by Eliza Graham

2009-09-29T14:17:00.003-04:00

An historical novel is not normally what I pick up in a bookstore but when Eliza Graham indicated she was looking for persons to review her book I could hardly object. She is a member of the same online writing group that I am and my goal is to read and review as many members’ books as I can. This may take a while as the group, Backspace, is growing by leaps and bounds.

The main thrust of the novel takes place in eastern Germany during the end of World War II. It takes a few chapters to get into the complex story as it weaves from 1920 to 2002 in a series of flashbacks to Alix’s parents’ childhood and courtship, Alix and Gregor’s pre-war years as childhood friends, the War itself in eastern Germany and London, 2002, where Alix lives as an elderly woman.

It is a love story about childhood friends who are separated by the war but are reunited briefly, at which point they realize their affection for each other is more than a childhood fantasy. Alix’s father, a Baron, is a German resistance fighter who Alix suspects has been arrested after participating in a plot to kill Hitler. In a blinding snowstorm she is fleeing her homeland during the Reds’ invasion when she happens upon her friend, Gregor, now a member of the Russian army. Their night together is their last but what came of it, a baby boy; and the welfare of the boy’s father, Gregor, haunts Alix the rest of her life. Though Gregor was a reluctant member of the dreaded Russian army he helps Alix escape capture the day after their tryst and does not learn they had a child together until sixty years later.

Alix had felt pressured by circumstance to give her baby up to the family that housed her during her pregnancy. It is not until sixty years later, the point where the novel begins, that Alix is oddly reunited with her son in London in 2002.

Eliza Graham’s writing is tight, her settings are detailed and her voice true, if a bit formal--which I took to reference Alix’s aristocratic background. Eliza Graham’s flashbacks are confusing at first as they jump back and forth. But the dates at the heading of each chapter and Eliza’s deft writing voice soon bring the different stories together into a cohesive and moving story of innocence, love and bravery. It is a story familiar to many who lived through the war. Reliving it through Alix’s eyes is enchanting, educational and endearing.

I want to thank Eliza Graham for the review copy of her novel. I enjoyed it thoroughly and look forward to reading her prior work, Playing With The Moon.

Book Review: Bel Canto

2009-09-24T19:59:00.002-04:00

Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett, is a rewarding read on so many levels I can't begin to cover them all. I think what stayed with me the longest is that it is about boundaries and barriers and about how people cross them (or ignore them) is what defines them.

The book opens at the end of a private performance by Roxanne Coss, a renowned opera soprano's, for a host of dignitaries at the lavish mansion of a South American vice-president in celebration of the birthday of Mr. Hosokawa. He was an opera fanatic and the founder and chairman of Japan's largest electronics corporation and the hope was that he would build a factory in the host company.

The first boundary is crossed when the lights go out and the accompanist leans over and sneaks a 'strong and passionate' kiss onto Roxanne's lips and thereby crosses over, doing what 'all the men and women in the room...collectively' desire.

We soon learn the lights were extinguished by a band of marauding revolutionaries who look to kidnap the president who is not even in attendance at the event. A stalemate ensues that allows both the terrorists and the hostages opportunity to enjoy the music that Roxanne and others provide--a music that seems to cross the boundaries of the dangers present and unite everyone in a beautiful, harmonious existence.

Ann Patchett’s liquid language and unique tale about a likely but unlikely scenario as both the bad guys and the good guys become hostage to the rapture of music; hostages fall in love with their captors and untouchable opera divas fall in love with their admirers. It is as deceiving in its simplicity as it is simple in its message.

Bel Canto is a story about what constitutes barriers, what nourishes them and what happens on either side. There are many. First, there is the kiss. Then there is the wall that divides the mansion from the town--the dignitaries from the working class. There are the guns that separate the hostages from the renegades. There is the barrier of language among the 38 hostages and their captors. There are the barriers that the large corporations and governments put on their employees and citizens. There are the cultural barriers that forbid young female revolutionaries to fall in love with corporate interpreters; or, American opera stars to fall in love with Japanese CEOs; or, militant generals to teach chess to their teenage foot soldiers; or, entrepreneurs to play piano for militants. All of these are lyrically crossed.

Through it all we read about the beautiful music, which brings everyone together in appreciation and we come to love Gen, Mr. Hosokawa’s interpreter, who brings everyone together in language.

But all this happens in a most unlikely world, a Camelot given temporary sustenance by circumstance--a dream that can never come true.

Jaws of Death

2009-09-18T15:15:00.008-04:00

This morning I sat at my writing desk determined to stay on schedule with my novel, the one I started two years ago about the love triangle between a young mandolin prodigy, his childhood sweetheart and his sister, who worships his childhood sweetheart. I want to finish my editing--have set the end of September as my goal and have to edit 15 pages a day to accomplish this. I am on track--was on track--until this morning.

I opened my laptop just I heard a massive iron beast pull into the driveway of the house two doors from ours. Rumbling and beeping its way to the back yard it appeared 100 feet from my bay window in its slicker yellow majesty. It stretched its sturdy neck, lifted its mighty head, dipped it, opened its jaws and ripped a sedan-size hole into the roof of my neighbor's house. After twenty minutes of tearing, pulling and shredding the dirty deed was done. I'm not kidding. That's how much time it took to reduce a two story, red brick, four bedroom structure to the size of a dumpster. Wow. Back to work.

I often have morning cramps--have self-diagnosed it as IBS. Enough information. Had it this morning--I thought. Not so lucky. Five hours later, here in bed under my comforter, I have awoken with the clear realization that the bug, which downed my husband this entire week, got me. Swine variety? I hope not.

Just as well. The house is gone but the 'Jaws of Death' have spent the last five hours ripping up the concrete driveway. I hope my own house survives the earth tremors and that tomorrow is a better day.

So much for keeping deadlines. The flu is just another reason to hate this time of year.

Did I mention I don't like September?

How Do They Do That?

2009-09-15T08:56:00.007-04:00

Two fighters for the underdogs died yesterday. Crystal Lee Sutton was the humble, but tenacious, textile worker who inspired Sally Field's movie, 'Norma Rae.' She was 33 when she took on the national textile company, J.P. Stevens, to question their treatment of workers.
She went on to be a tireless advocate for women's equality in the workforce and the unfair treatment of workers in general.

Most of us were very familiar with the other, Patrick Swayze, who said at one time his goal was “to do something that will affect the audience in a positive way, make them feel better about their lives and appreciate what they have.”

Another thing Patrick said really stuck with me as a writer. “People don’t identify with victims,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press, discussing his “North and South” character, originally written as a more passive man. “They identify with people who have the world come down on their heads and who fight to survive.”

But I am also awed by the ability of these two people to pick their battles and stick with them with an emotional intensity that indicates total devotion. Patrick ignored the Hollywood lifestyle for the world of Arabian horses on his San Gabriel Mountain ranch. He filmed an A & E series while undergoing cancer treatments. He took roles that portrayed him as a serious actor though he is truly eye candy for any baby boomer.

Both Crystal Lee and Patrick recognized the dangers of crystalline lifestyles. Lifestyles that are shiny on the surface but empty underneath. Better yet, they fought to bring attention to the meatier lifestyles, the ones that mattered to the folks whose worlds had come 'down on their heads.'

Damn.

Monday Musings--David Morrell

2009-06-08T08:34:00.012-04:00

More Than Rambo's Father

For those of you who read thrillers and suspense fiction David Morrell's name is a household word. If you do not read thrillers and suspense you will surely recognize what he calls himself --'Rambo's father.'

But he is so much more than that.

David received the prestigious Bob Kellogg Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Internet Writing Community at Backspace's annual conference in New York city a week ago. As a member of Backspace I attended for my second time and was one of the lucky ones in the audience both for David's acceptance speech and his keynote address the following afternoon.

Among his many titles are the aforementioned Rambo story, FIRST BLOOD, BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE and more recently SCAVENGER and soon to be released SHIMMER. The last two are biotech thrillers. Haven't read SCAVENGER yet but my girlfriend who has read all his novels said it is really creeeeepy.

What David Morrell should have said is that he is the 'father' of all contemporary writers.

I am an avid reader and an occassional reader of thrillers. I love Marcus Sakey's books...as much because he is an awesome writer as because he is a dear friend of my daughter, Jennifer. I also enjoy Sean Chercover and have hosted an authors' party for both these men. I enjoy Karen Dionne, who writes environmental thrillers and have hosted her at my local Rotary Club. I also enjoyed books by Elmore Leonard, who lives nearby, as well as his son, Peter's, book, QUIVER.
Peter has a new one, TRUST ME, that I can't wait to read.

I hate to admit I had never picked up any of David Morrell's books but I bought three at the conference, have read two and loved them both. His characters are complex, his pacing is awesome and his plots are both exciting and believable. And I love his voice...like it's Halloween and you're sitting on his lap and he's telling you this scary story. I love this guy!

David shared his life story with us and it isn't pretty. It is a story he often shares so I won't repeat it all except to say that the man he is today is proof of his tenacity, internal strength and compassion. Born in Ontario Canada his father died in World War I before David was born. When he was three his mother drove him in a borrowed car to an orphanage in the country, dropped him off at the playground to join the other children, turned around and left. She did return for him after marrying a man who hated children and was abusive to both David and his mother. He attended school in Canada up until his PhD which he received at Penn State University and has lived in the USA ever since.

David has an obvious love for writing and for writers, and more than that he cares about both--so much so that he spends a large portion of his time helping young sprouts like me stay focused and inspired.

I'd like to summarize some of the inspiration he imparted at his Backspace Keynote Address.

First you have to love writing because if you are in it for the fame or the money you will likely be disappointed. He told about the disparaging comments one of his early mentor made about David's early stories.

Second you have to read a lot and write a lot because that is the only way you will improve.

Third (and this was the one that struck me hardest) you have to find your voice. Where? It's hiding out with your demons in the unpleasant basement of your subconscious. David suggested we explore our deepest emotions and then listen to our daydreams. Listen to the good ones but, more importantly, listen to the ugly ones; and never, ever, stop them until they have played out to the end.

More than one author has suggested that an unahppy childhood makes for a writer's gold and this is what they meant. And if you say your childhood was perfect so you have no inspiration--most likely you are lying!

Finally David said to keep your integrity and write the book you are intended to write. Write for the moment you are in. Don't let the market, or what others say is the market, influence you. All of that is, after all, out of your control.

Thank you David Morrell for your inspiring words and support.

Ashes to Ashes to ????

2009-06-05T14:39:00.005-04:00

I had dinner with some sisters-in-law a month ago and a topic came up in the conversation that has come up many times before. What should we do with our parents' ashes? Dad died in 1996 and Mom in 1999. It took the past four weeks to even find Mom's ashes...they were still at the funeral home.

Now I know many of you will be horrified and I can understand that. But you have to understand my family. No, we are not dysfunctional in the literal sense of the word. We actually have two family reunions every year...summer and Christmas and most of us attend most of the time.

So, what is the problem and what are we going to do about it?

Stay tuned.

The whole thing got started because after that dinner I e-mailed my brothers and sister to determine, for certain, what had happened to the ashes. I wasn't pushing for closure...I was actually planning to write an essay and wanted to get the story straight.

I still plan to write the essay but will have to wait a while. Plans are brewing for this summer's reunion to bring closure after all.

10 Things I Learned This Week at Backspace

2009-06-02T10:10:00.004-04:00

This past weekend I attended a conference in New York City sponsored by the online writers group I belong to called Backspace. This is the second year I have attended. Last year, having only been a member for two months and being the shy person I am, was wonderful; but this year I was able to put faces to the names of persons I have met online and that made a huge difference.

I thought I'd parody David Letterman by listing the ten best things I learned in hopes of:

A. Being able to remember them six months from now and
B. Passing them on to people who did not attend.

Ten Things I Learned at the Backspace Writer's Conference:

1. Love, Love, Love What You're Doing.

2. Write Well. Sounds obvious, which it is, but so is 'eat well' but most of us don't. David Morrell (Rambo's father, as he calls himself) spoke about finding your voice (he says it probably lies within your deepest fears) and letting your daydreams play out to their ugliest conclusions...they are clues to your essence.

3. A Golden Rule: Create an engaging character who actively overcomes tremendous obstacles to reach a desirable goal.

4. Query well...which implies you must understand your story and be able to pitch it in about 100 words.

5. Build a Platform. Even fiction writers can benefit tremendously from being experts in their field...not necessarily just writing but whatever they are writing about. If your story is about a blues musician, your platform could be blues musicians. If your story is about dysfunctional families, it could be about alcoholism. Then reach out to the persons (there are a million of 'em tied into online forums, etc.) to broaden your readership.

6. Be Nice to People. Another obvious one, right? Expand this to the persons you hope will buy into your book...agents, publishers and readers. Start by querying agents you have researched...learn their likes and dislikes...who they've represented and which of these books sold well and then personalize each query with what you learned.

7. Have an Online Presence. Agents universally said a website, blog or Twitter presence is extremely important because the print media is shrinking and with it the opportunities to have a presence with book reviews.

8. Be Wary About Self-Publishing. We heard it both ways. That agents and publishers shy away from self-published authors because they carry the stigma of being unprofessional. Then there is the case of THE LACE READER by Brunonia Barry which she initially self-published sold to William Morrow with an initial print of some astronomical number for huge money. HUGE money. But, we were warned, this was a one in a million shot. Most agents and publicists suggested that if your book has regional appeal you might look to self publish; otherwise look to the bigger houses.

9. Writing Your Book (to paraphrase Hemingway) is just the tip of the iceberg. The other 85% of the process is selling it.

Be active in the writing community...network (read: Backspace!).

Hire a publicist if you have any extra money as some publishing houses never had marketing budgets and other have put all their marketing dollars into the big sellers.

10. Be Passionate About What You're Doing.

Reflections on Motherhood, Perfection and Forgiveness

2009-05-09T07:22:00.004-04:00

As some of you know I took an emotional plunge this spring and entered my novel, now in its 8th revision and NOT really ready for pitching to an editor, in Amazon's Amazing Breakthrough Novel Contest. Theoretically they accept 10,000 entries though they don't say how many actually enter.

The first phase eliminates all but 2,000 entries. The second phase eliminates all but 500. This is where my novel landed and I was pleasantly surprised. True confessions---I wanted to get some feedback from total strangers, specifically to the plot's potential and generally to my writing...which I know is amateurish at best. My writing is, however, improving and I do see light at the end of the endless tunnel.

Anyway, one thing this little exercise taught me was the power of the written word to reach people in ways I never expected. My novel contains a fair amount of pretty uncomfortable issues--alcoholism, child abandonment, homosexuality and incest. I did not set out to address these issues --my characters took me there and I did not think it fair to deny them their soap box. You might think this is strange but if you are a writer you will have a better understanding of this phenomenon.

The biggest reaction came to the alcohol and incest issues--mainly because the excerpt printed on Amazon contained such scenes. I was taken aback by how many persons have had experience with both of these human problems.

So, what is motherhood? And more importantly, how does it fail those it is supposed to nurture? There are as many answers to these two questions as there are mothers and children.

The bottom line is that even mothers, human ones that is, are human--yes, children, I hate to be the one to reveal such an overwhelming truth, but we are. This is not to say I am excusing what horrific or less than horrific failings most of us have as mothers--it is to say we need you to forgive us.

We need our children (and this can be extended to the most generic relationships) to accept us for what we are, make peace with us, and move on.

I think this is the essence of Mother's Day.

As a florist, which I was for 35 years, Mother's Day is by far the biggest holiday. Everyone has a mother. Children may only sneak out from under the woodwork on the second Sunday of every May--but they do sneak out. Let's be honest, some are driven by social pressure more than anything else. And, these were the customers who, I can admit now being retired, as a florist I looked upon with no small amount of skepticism.

But much of the country, in a collective quest for inner calm, recognizes their mothers and Mother's Day regularly and with a sense of compassion and affection and perhaps only a pinch of resentment over the eighteen or so years of putting up with our shortcomings.

I am not saying go out and buy your mother flowers, although that would help out the few remaining shop owners I knew. What I am saying is, if you feel that pinch (or more) of resentment, take a good hard look at it. You'll have to look inside to find its source and when you do, toss a rock at it. Surely, as your mother's child, you're perfect and will not miss your mark.

Then, when you feel a little better take another look inside. You might just find something about yourself that isn't so perfect either--you have no idea how it got there, but it did.

Then tell yourself that's okay. "If it's okay for Mom to be imperfect maybe its okay for me too."

And before you move on with the rest of your day, pick up one more rock, maybe a little larger this time, and kill two birds with it...the ones named 'Mom's Mistakes' and 'My Mistakes.'

Happy Mother's Day!

Book Review: Story of Edgar Sawtelle

2009-04-05T16:19:00.003-04:00

I recently finished reading a fantastic novel, "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" by David Wroblewski.

Books about dogs and their humans have abounded at the top of the best seller lists for the past decade and have warmed the hearts of readers for centuries. My earliest memory of a heart wrenching dog story is of Disney’s “Old Yeller.” Another favorite is “Shaggy Muses, the Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton and Emily Bronte.” More recently “Marley and Me” by John Grogan is a delightful read. And Garth Stein’s “The Art of Racing in the Rain,” promises to be another.

But I think far and away, “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” has them all beat on language, story, craft and depth. It is a work that will remain in the minds and hearts of readers everywhere for decades to come.

The novel’s forboding prologue tells of an American soldier who, while stationed in the Korean War, trades medicine to an herbalist for his dying grandson in exchange for a deadly poison in an antique cruet. It was 1952 and the soldier declines to reveal his reason for wanting the potion.

Edgar is the long-awaited child of Gar and Trudy Sawtelle who married in 1951. Trudy had brought to the marriage an uncanny ability to train and understand Gar’s dogs like none other while he focused on the heredity of their lines and the details of breeding. His goal was to create dogs like no other that was a cross of all the best dogs he could find and call them simply ‘Sawtelle dogs.’

Edgar is preceeded in birth by two miscarried siblings and a brother who is stillborn and tenderly buried by Gar at the base of a birch grove on his property. Edgar is born a mute but his condition never comes between him and either the animals nor the people with whom he communicates except for his nemesis, his Uncle Claude who is unwilling to learn to read or use sign language.

Edgar becomes an integral part of his family’s dog breeding business and one of his tasks early on is selecting names for the pups, a challenge that becomes another form of communication for him.

From the time he was conceived Almondine, one of the Sawtelle dogs, is Edgar’s mentor, his protector and his muse. The idyllic setting and peaceful routines are, however, shattered with the arrival of Gar’s brother, Claude. Claude is a ne’er do well, a dog fighter and the discontented sibling and the thorn is Gar’s side. But Gar’s sense of familial obligation makes room in his heart and on his farm for the prodigal brother.

For the emotionless imposer, a take on Hamlet’s Claudius, “It was never a question of whether Claude could learn to do something, just a question of whether it would be worthwhile and how long it would take.” So eventually he finds a way to get rid of Gar, marry his wife and take over the kennel.

“The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” seeks to reveal the answers to several mysteries besides who caused Gar’s death. Edgar obsesses over learning the true story of how his parents met. But when Trudy finally tells him had has lost interest. And on several occasions Trudy asks her son if he knows yet what is so unique about a Sawtelle dog which, until the end, he cannot answer.

After his murder Gar comes to his son as an apparition during a driving rain storm to warn him about Claude. And Ida Paine, the ancient proprietor of Popcorn Corners’ grocery, to whom God told a secret when she was born, gives Edgar a psychic vision about his uncle, the old man in Korea and the antique cruet. “’And if you go,” she whispered, “don’t you come back, not for nothing. Don’t let the wind change your mind.’”

In the end I was left with the sense that it would be the Sawtelle dogs, Gar Sawtelle’s vision, the mutts he bred for their awesome individual qualities they’d bring to the future, that would eventually inherit the earth.

Essay, Edgar’s alpha, was the one who understood the meaning of the devastating fire, who then led the other dogs “through fence after fence...They would follow or they would not, she had only made the possibility clear.”

That was the secret of the Sawtelle dogs, their ability to choose. And, in the west, Forte the ghostly forefather of them all, stood on the treeline beyond the field. Essay “looked behind her one last time...along the way they’d come...turned and made her choice and began to cross.”

Beyond the suspense, compassion and insight of the story itself is the skill with which David Wrobelwski spins it. His imagery, dialogues and interplay of characters and scenes is deft and delicious.

“The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” is the debut novel of a 48 year old software designer but I have a suspicion the literary world has, fortunately, not read the last of David Wroblewski.

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards (ABNA) Simplified

2009-03-21T16:34:00.007-04:00

As you may know, my novel has made it to the semi finals in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards Contest. Now it is up to my readers to vote and give their comments.

So many of my readers have had some trouble with the Amazon website to read the excerpt, vote and write their reviews that I have tried to simplify it here.

To read the excerpt itself click on this linkhttp://tiny.cc/Q2SvV
Or, send me a comment in the area below this post and I will send you a word document with the excerpt.

Once you have read the excerpt you can return to this link http://tiny.cc/POrF4 and RATE MY EXCERPT and write your review.

Thanks a million!

Lastly, if you want to read other other wonderful reviews I have already received, click this link:
http://tiny.cc/Q2SvV

Exciting News about Amazon's Novel Awards--And a plea for your help!

2009-03-18T08:01:00.006-04:00

I am very excited to announce that my novel, BREAK SONG, has made it to the quarter finals in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards!!!!

This is the writing world's equivalent of American Idol so now that I have made it past the original 10,000 entries to 2,000 and down to 500, I need your reviews to make it to the next level.

So, please, click on the link below and download the excerpt to my story and rate it. You can review it as well. My success depends on the number of good ratings. Hopefully there will be something in it that you find worth while!

My story is about a musician whose life takes a tailspin when his mother, Maria, abandons her family, but two things keep him on track--his childhood sweetheart, Evvie, and Maria's mandolin, which she'd taught him to play better than anyone in the Midwest. The band Adam forms has a promising future until his father destroys their recording contract.

The story follows Adam and Evvie in Detroit from the sixties to the present. Distraught after his band's breakup Adam turns to cocaine to soothe his soul and not even Evvie's affection can bring him back. He loses her to Michigan's north woods where she raises their child, and his addiction lands Adam in prison.

25 years later Adam is assaulted by his nemesis after a high school reunion and Evvie's lost letters surface. Now recovered from drugs, Adam reconciles with Evvie and his daughter he knew nothing about and he goes back to playing his music until his past has its final revenge.

So, here are the steps:

Click the following link to Review BREAK SONG
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001UG3CF8
If the link doesn't work copy and paste it into your browser.
The download is free and is accessible by clicking the button on the upper right corner. Sign up for free to become an Amazon member if you are not already.
Write your review.
After scrolling down to the bottom of the customer review section, click to create your own review.
Return to the above link to give me a review...hopefully five stars!
If you have any suggestions about my writing or the story line, I would love to hear your comments... write me at jacquelinecarney@sbcglobal.net.

Book Review: Water for Elephants

2009-02-26T08:05:00.012-05:00

I have a thing about fog. While grey skies in Michigan take me into a hole that is difficult to deal with, fog intrigues me. Maybe it is its ethereal nature, as if by poking my finger into it the greyness disappears like air in a balloon. Maybe it is the calmness that it invokes.

Southwest Florida had a rare dose of extended fog early this month...it crawled in off the Gulf late one afternoon while I was driving home from the north and thought maybe a gigantic fire was raging in a palmetto forest but I could not smell smoke. It was like an opaque cocoon that both comforted and unnerved me and it didn't roll back out to sea for five more days.

About that time I finished reading Sara Gruen's WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, released in 2006,
which I would recommend to anyone. It is a delightfully romantic story set in the last depression
(to separate it from our current one!) told from the memory of 93 year old Jacob Jankowski whose parents are killed when he is finishing Veterinary School in New York. Though he had planned to join his father's thriving veterinary practice, Jacob learned not only that his parents had mortgaged everything they owned to send him to school but that even his father's practice was dissembled to pay their debts.

Penniless and unable to concentrate on his final exams Jacob runs off to seek solace and winds up on the train of a disfunctional circus at a time when any job at all, no matter how horrific, was worth keeping.

For seven years Jacob found his love of all creatures, his high moral standards and his passion for Marlena at life-threatening odds with his superiors whose personality issues ranged from
wanton narcissism to murderous greed.

Jacob is now a spunky old man whose mind is stronger than his body and who rails against the inane rules of the nursing home he calls home. He rarely recognizes his infrequent family visitors but remembers in finite detail his days in the circus. Sara Gruen deftly carries the story from Jacob's current frustrations back to his luscious recollections of what once was. His longing for his beloved Marlena, a beautiful equestrian and star of the show whom he eventually marries but who passes before him, sugar coats his memories that are not always so pleasant.

The third dominant character is Rosie, an elephant purchased for her promise to redeem the circus's failing revenues and who placidly endures her terrible abuse until her own sense compassion is uncontrollably violated.

What endeared me to this story was Sara's wonderful understanding of people and what motivates them to make bad choices. She juxtaposes horrendous cruelty against unbounded compassion but the last page left me with confidence that goodness is master and that all creatures, animal and human, deserve and benefit from it. Her research into a world of human and animal oddities that is foreign to most of us is thorough and her sense of humor softens the sharp edges of an often wicked world.

The circus world is a microcosm from our past but its 'rubes' and its stars teach lessons in WATER FOR ELEPHANTS that are universal and current with a pace that grabbed me within the first few pages and held me captive until the end.

Getting back to the fog...by the fifth day it began to unnerve me. The sun would peek out midday and then recede to let the greyness return. Maybe it was just to remind me of what I 'd escaped for two months of winter. Or, maybe it was to reassure me that fog is like a good read or the healing time spent writing--a lacuna that both embraces and tries to understand the sharp edges of the present.

Monday Musings #2--Light Fantastic

2009-01-12T15:46:00.011-05:00

Saturday, I took a walk with my dogs (of course)...total of five,
including me. It was midway through our biggest snowfall yet this year--twelve inches over 24 hours--and it was after sunset, so I could feel the big, fluffy flakes tickle my nose but I couldn't see them. Not, that is, until I photographed a few scenes along the Rouge which rivers through our neighborhood. Then, magically, the flakes appeared like tiny Tinkerbells of light, floating across the front of my camera lens. At first I thought the flakes were on my lens and tried to wipe them away. When I realized they were actually drifting from above, I let my excitement carry me away and began snapping wildly to see how many I could 'catch' digitally.

And then I began to think about this phenomenom, new to me, but probably not to most photographers.

What other aspects of our lives do we know exist, can sometimes feel, but cannot see, until they reflect the light?

Emotion--love, regret, fear, joy--and the range between all these; the essence of our heart.

Spirit--the food of our soul, the invisible connection between ourselves and our world as it is now, as it has been experienced by those before us and as it will exist tomorrow.

Knowledge--the stuff of brains which sets us apart from animals and plants because it enables us, for better or worse, to remember our past, anticipate our future and contemplate our demise.

And from where does the light shine that illuminates these three, renders them visible?

It shines from us, from the way we live and the way we treat every living creature we encounter.

If these encounters are not brilliant, emotion, spirit and knowledge will still exist, but we will lose out--we will not enjoy the childish joy that they inspire.

Monday Musing--#2; Self Control and Religion

2009-01-06T10:17:00.006-05:00

I know this is actually Tuesday but what are a few hours in the overall scheme of things? It will still be my Monday Musing.

In the New York Times today there is an article about a Dec. 29 post on John Tierney's blog, nytimes.com/tierneylab. His question was "Does religion promote self-control?"

I think his definition of religion is pretty open ended...ranging from Roman Catholic catechismic regulations to free-base meditation.

Anyway, the post they quoted in the paper that stuck with me was written by Guanshi Edyo. He says that "psychologists are only now starting to understand how a disciplined regimen of positive thinking can engender physical changes in the brain that increase health and well-being.'

Guanshi writes that religious practices such as yoga, pray, music and meditation are similar to techniques of cognitive-behavioral therapy. I'm guessing Buddha knew that intuitively as did Jesus and Mohammed and agree with this writer that our scientists and doctors are just now catching up to them.

I was with some friends last night and we were discussing the fact that a new archbishop, a local guy, has been appointed to replace Cardinal Maida; which led to a brief discussion of religion and fell on the final note that it doesn't matter where our children go to church as long as they go.

I would take that one step beyond to say it doesn't matter if we 'go' someplace physical as long as we take time each day, yes--each day--to stop and smell the roses. It's not only for our own benefit but to improve our connections with those around us.

Hence my photo with this post...not a rose but a beautiful passion flower that graces the left side of my writing desk.

So I'm adding this to my goals for 2009...daily positive meditation coupled with daily brisk walks.

Think I can do it?

Jacqui

Blog Improvement Challenge, Week 1

2009-01-06T10:11:00.005-05:00

I have linked into a blog called 'Out of the Blue', http://alessandrasplace.blogspot.com/2009/01/blog-improvement-project-week-1-setting.html,

Alessandra is going to walk her visitors through a year of blog improvement. I have high hopes!

The first assignment is to look back on 2008 and set goals for 2009.

2008 was the first year for my blog as a writer. It has lots of room for improvement.

I set up my other blog two years ago to write about my other love, dogs. It is http://gone2thdogs.blogspot.com.

My congent goal for Words 'n Wags is to post at least three times a week about what is happening in the literary world. One will be a book review, one my Monday Musings and one a sporadic commentary on whatever comes to my feeble mind.

My mechanical goal for Words 'n Wags is to increase my readership and meet people from around the world who share my love for books (and dogs...hard to separate the two).

Good Morning 2009

2009-01-03T21:23:00.004-05:00

Well, it's here--2009. I have the same old New Year's resolutions I've had since bread was sliced mechanically but this year I also have some anticipations--some things I hope will happen.

So, in no particular order, here they are:
--that my novel, currently titled BREAK SONG, will be good enough to send to some patient friends to read...ideally soon enough to polish it and find an agent. WHEW...that's a big one.
--that Barack Obama will have a smooth transition into the White House.
--that my daughter, Jennifer, will pass the Massachusetts bar.
--that my daughter, Julie, will get a dozen new private violin students.
--that my daughter, Rebecca, will sell a dozen paintings.
--that my husband, Don, will perform a dozen times with his re-created rock band.
--that our country will begin to withdraw from Iraq.
--that my 60th birthday, and those of my peers, slide by in the company of good health, warm friends, fine wine, inspiring music and great conversation.
--that the world will return to an upward economic trend.

Tall order but nothing impossible.

I'd enjoy reading about what the rest of you are anticipating. Please share in the comment section of this post.

Review of 'Story of Edgar Sawtelle'

2008-12-27T17:50:00.000-05:00

A Photo Says it All

2008-12-15T19:10:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Elif for finding this photo!

Monday Musings--Favorite Shoes

2008-12-15T06:59:00.007-05:00

Since today is Monday, and not everyone is ready to jump right in to the work week on Mondays, I thought I would pose an exercise that might humor us, divert us from the news of the day, or perhaps give pause for reflection.

My question is: What is your favorite pair of shoes?

It is a fairly open ended question. They can be any pair you have owned but, as in my case, not necessarily have worn. They can be your ballet shoes when you were five years old, your Wellingtons, your saddle shoes (some might be dating ourselves here), your riding boots or whatever else you choose.

Then, tell us the story. If they are your favorite shoes, surely there is one.
Here is mine:

Grandma's Booties

I had two grandma's. Some people have none, some have half a dozen. I had two and my favorite one was Grandma Hilvers, my mother's mother. She lived in the same clapboard house on the first rise west of the Mississippi, where my mother grew up, in Dubuque Iowa.

Allow me to divert a minute. Two weeks ago, one of my brothers queried the rest of the family as to whether they remembered where that house was. Seems he recently met someone at work who hailed from Dubuque and the question arose. No one could come up with the answer despite spending at least a dozen summers there growing up. Two hours later the answer just popped into my head. Go figure. Hadn't written that address on an envelope in probably thirty years.

1460 Dodge Street, now cemented over by Highway 20 which runs east to Chicago and west through cities I recognized like Sioux City, Casper, Cody, Boise and stops at the Pacific Ocean in Yaquina Bay, Oregon...not far from Portland. I have a dear friend in Portland, have never been there, might follow Highway 20 in its entirety some day.

Anyway, the Hilvers family was basically impoverished. They didn't see it as a bad thing, but compared to my father's childhood with country clubs and fancy parties, the Hilvers' humble lifestyle with two entire families, grandparents, parents, and three kids, crammed into three bedrooms was substantially lower key. Every gift we received from Grandma and Grandpa Hilvers was endearingly hand-made including the booties I received when I was pregnant with my first daughter, Jennifer. They were so incredibly tiny I couldn't imagine they would ever fit a human, but they did.

And, as often happens with me, I lost track of them after our third daughter's first few months of life when I could no longer squeeze her tiny feet into the soft, cozy footware. I was sure I had packed them away but probably not as carefully as I should have, given their significance. My excuse was that I was a working mom, running my own flower business and raising three daughters, tending a husband, cooking, walking dogs, driving to soccer games and violin lessons, the whole nine yards.

When Jenny was a sophomore in college my husband and I decided expand our house, something we should have done years earlier but couldn't afford. To make a long story shorter many disasters befell us during this project including the wholesale deluge of our basement over our storage shelves in late September. I mean, we needed Noah's Ark just to navigate the waters that went straight from the grey, rain laden skies into our house with a force like Niagra Falls.

The clean-up process was a nightmare and, unfortunately, some of it was put off until after Christmas. The time frame for a florist from October through December 25 is hellacious.
So, in the calm of a dreary January Saturday I began to pull down the boxes of memories that still lay on the storage shelves. With trepidation I opened one, now slightly dusted with mold, to find layer upon layer of baby clothes, laundered, neatly folded and layered with tissue. Most of them were ruined, which broke my heart. But for some strange reason both Grandma Hilvers' baby booties and the christening gown she had hand sewn and embroidered, survived relatively unscathed.

You would have thought, for all the happy tears I shed, that I'd discovered a million dollars tucked away for a rainy day and then forgotten, when in fact it was a rainy day that had spared something that is worth a whole lot more.

If you have a pair of favorite shoes, tell us about them in the comment area of my blog.
I'd love to read about them!

Yes, Virginia, There Is An Internet

2008-12-12T11:11:00.003-05:00

I can't believe it's been almost two weeks since I posted here. Maybe the cold, grey days...maybe the overwhelming sense I get at the holidays. Deadlines and more deadlines. Oh, and puppies too.

Anyway, I read a post on author, Laura Benedict's blog that quotes Mark Tavani, a Random House editor, on the state of the industry which, no surprise, is as dark as the state of the rest of the economic world. He speaks to how publishing, and I must add every other business, has been adjusting to corporate takeovers. How, by becoming larger, many businesses are finding survival more difficult.

Which certainly is bad news, but it is also good news because with trauma comes change and that kind of change is rarely a bad thing.

A futurist came to our city a few weeks ago and this 72 year old man's main thrust was that the internet is going to impact our lives in ways we are unable to comprehend. And we thought we were just getting a fix on the internet...at least I thought that!

Then this morning the Detroit Free Press has an article on its front page, which has been nothing but bad news for the last eighteen months, which spoke to how retailing on the internet for the beginning of December is up 9%.

So for persons whose lives have been jolted or surely will be jolted by the economic events of the day the internet remains our best friend.

So getting back to Mr. Tavani, he too sees the internet as promising great things for the publishing industry. He writes that the most wonderful thing about books are the stories they convey and the medium will never change that.

It could be worse. We could have no friends at all.

NaNoWriMo 2008 - I Did It!

2008-11-30T11:02:00.004-05:00

With approximately thirteen hours to spare I have met the NaNoWriMo 2008 challenge and written 50,083 words of my second novel, a crime thriller based at a private golf club in the suburbs of Detroit.

This is a short synopsis of my novel: Christian Tyler, a famous Hollywood actor, is murdered at a Country Club where he is filming his first motion picture. A number of characters are instant suspects but the actual perpetrator is none of them. Brenda Taglioni, the locker room attendant of the Country Club and a first year student of a PI course, discovers his body in one of the showers. While she is concerned about the perpetrator of this dreadful event Brenda has her life wrapped around a threat more close to home...rampant cocaine use in her home town that she blames for her younger brother's overdose.

The story line of my novel is about 85% complete. In order to amass the 50,000 words for this national challenge I raced to the finish without stopping to smell the roses. I plan to finish the story then return to the beginning to nourish it so that its fragrance, texture and fruit can be enjoyed.

Might even have time to spend with this blog as well!

Buy Books this Holiday...From an Independant

2008-11-24T08:44:00.003-05:00

Looking for a holiday gift idea that keeps on giving and has a reasonable price tag?

How about a book?

If you are looking for some great book suggestions link on to the blog, http://buymorebooks.blogspot.com/.
Many of the members of Backspace, an interactive website for writers, publishers and agents, are making their recommendations, including some of my own.

Then seriously consider supporting the independant book dealer. We are all hurting this season, but they are all running the risk of losing their businesses entirely and they are just folk like the rest of us.

Then, when you buy any books for the holidays, enter the titles you purchased under the comment section to help us reach our goal of 1 million books!

NaNoWriMo 2008

2008-11-15T08:40:00.002-05:00

I am now 25,000 words into my NaNoWriMo 2008 challenge. NaNoWriMo is a national writer's personal challenge to write 50,000 words of a new novel during the month of November.

It was good timing for me because my current WIP (work in progress) needs a break from me and I need a break from it!

So for a change of pace I decided to write a Janet Evanovich style murder mystery for fun. About a week into it I realized I am not a Janet Evanovice style writer...but did like the story so continued in my Jacqui Carney style which might be slightly more meditative. I found myself upping the ante of my protagonist, a locker room attendant at a fancy country club who discovers a murder in one of her showers. She is at the onset of pursuing a new career in police work as a private detective to earn a better living and to investigate the sudden increase in heroin use in her home town.

I expect the two endeavors will come together at the end and may actually result in resolving the murder as well. It's fun and now that I have stuck my neck out I am learning a lot about the plague of heroin in Detroit.

Laura Kasischke

2008-11-11T09:20:00.004-05:00

I read today in the Detroit Free Press that Michigan author Laura Kasischke was one of 50 artists awarded a prestigious USA Fellowship grant yesterday. This is the third year of the USA Fellows program which awards funds directly to working artists in a wide range of media from architecture to visual arts. Laura has published seven books of poetry, four novels and two young adult novels. Her novel, "The Life Before Her Eyes" was made into a film starring Uma Thurman that released last April.

I met Laura at the Bear River Writer's Conference in northern Michigan last Spring. She is an inspiring mentor, gracious individual and bewitching lyricist. One more feather in a cap with many.

Congrats Laura!

Andre Dubus III

2008-11-09T09:18:00.006-05:00

I have really enjoyed discovering blogs by other people who enjoy reading and authors. There are about a million of 'em out there so this new found distractions should get me through what looks like a long, grueling Winter. Anyway, I am intrigued by one that encourages persons to write about the author they are currently reading...research facts about them and then present it in their own blog.

So, I am reading 'The Bluesman' by Andre Dubus III. I selected it for several reasons.
1. It is about music in the 60's and 70's which ties into the book I am writing.
2. It is by a highly regarded writer whose works are known for a skillful and sensitive use of language and subject matter.
3. Andre Dubus III also wrote 'House of Sand and Fog' a National Book Award finalist in 1999 and 2003 movie, which I have not read yet but surely will after finishing 'The Bluesman.' I LOVE this writer!

4. Andre Dubus III has a new work just released titled, 'Garden of Last Days,' which I will also read ASAP.

Looks like I am going to be into Andre for a while and loving every minute of it. His style reminds me somewhat of David Wroblewski whose debut novel, 'The Story of Edgar Sawtelle,' is also a great read.

Anyway, some facts from Random House's website and Wikipedia.

Andre Dubus III is the son of Andre Dubus (small wonders never cease!), an extremely talented man of words as well. He was born in 1959 in California. His other works include 'The Cage Keeper and Other Stories' (1959).

He attended Bradford College in Massachusetts where his father was a professor, University of Texas (for sociology) and University of Wisconsin-Madison. He abandoned his Ph.D. pursuit there to tend to a number of odd jobs before becoming a fiction writer. Those odd jobs find lots of places in his writing. He now lives in Newbury Massachusetts with his wife, a dancer, and their children. He also currently teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

There is a great interview of Andre at the following link written after the release of 'House of Sand and Fog.' It was published online in Random House's review blog 'Bold Type' which was evidently discontinued in 2003.

http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0300/dubus/interview.html

Excerpts quoting Mr. Dubus in that piece follow:

"As a matter of writing philosophy, if there is one, I try not to ever plot a story. I try to write it from the character's point of view and see where it goes."

"I try not to ever make a point with my writing, and if I do it kills the fiction. I try to just capture the texture, because I don't have the answers."

"I do believe that what's so exciting and terrifying about the writing process is that it really is an act of exploration and discovery. With all of us, not just writers, there is a sort of knowledge of the other. We have a lot more in common than we realize, and I think writing is really a sustained act of empathy."

"I try not to ever make a point with my writing, and if I do it kills the fiction. I try to just capture the texture, because I don't have the answers."

"There's that great line from Flannery O'Connor, where she said, 'Our beliefs are not what we see, but the light by which we see.'"

'Bluesman', written in 1993, is a story about 18 year old Leo Struther growing up in the '70's and his struggles with understanding and expressing his emerging virility and musical genius to his father, his girlfriend Allie or himself.

Which Is Mightier?

2008-11-06T11:18:00.002-05:00

As for our wonderful new president the Times had at least two articles about how good this will be for our international relations. So many people are talking about how his election speaks to the success of democracy and that this truly is a land of opportunity. What a better way to influence other governments than pouring dollars, soldiers and weapons into their wars. Wouldn't it be nice if we could start to show by example than by force?

The Journey

2008-11-04T05:35:00.003-05:00

Read a new poem the other day and it is short so I thought I'd post it here for anyone who needs encourgement in a new endeavor. It is called "The Journey" by a contemporary poet, Mary Oliver.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life that you could save.

I LOVE this poem! It speaks to me especially now as I begin what I think I've wanted to do when I grow up.
But it can be applied to anything we do that is a little bit outside our traditional confines. And, to know that it is okay to let those little voices (some from our outside world and some from our mind) fade into the background for awhile is so reassuring.

Big day today... Huge day for our country I think. Both candidates should be inspirations for us, surely their houses have trembled in the past two years.

And, while 'it is already late enough' for our country to be electing either a 'senior citizen' or a black man, it is not too late.

GO VOTE!

Age, Dogs and Pomagranates

2008-10-22T08:39:00.002-04:00

Three good things happened yesterday.

1. The New York Times reported that 60 is the new 40 (in terms of age, that is). Since I will turn 60 in a little over three months I am happy to know I am still 39! Better yet, I might actually accomplish what I now know I want to do when I grow up.

2. Ratchet, the mongrel befriended by Army Spc. Gwen Beberg, 28, of Minneapolis, was picked up Sunday by an animal rescue group and will be re-united with his human companion back in the states. The story underlines the special role dogs play in preserving the mental health of soldiers in combat. It also points attention at the military policy against keeping pets.

According to the AP story, "Baghdad Pups has brought 56 dogs and six cats to the U.S. to be with their owners since February. The group says it is both rescuing animals who face abuse in Iraq, as well as helping soldiers who benefit from the bond developed with the animals."
You can learn more about Baghdad Pups at: http://www.baghdadpups.com.

And, if you care to comment on the military's policy towards keeping pets in combat zones you can learn more about it at: http://info@mars-savehaven.net.

3. Pomagranates are in season...healthy, delicious additives for salads, yoghurt and muffins!

'The Story of Edgar Sawtelle'

2008-10-16T20:55:00.006-04:00

At midnight last night I finished this marvelous book by David Wroblewski. This debut novel has received lots of attention, Oprah pick, NYT #1 bestseller, etc. , etc. and having completed it I can understand why. It is a story that dog lovers will have trouble putting down and that readers and writers will also thoroughly enjoy. Edgar is the mute son of Gar and Trudy Sawtelle, dog breeders from a remote area in Wisconsin. Edgar's muse and protector, a Sawtelle dog named Almondine, is as strong a character as any in the book. Her insights into human nature are endearing and astute.

Edgar begins his 'coming of age' at the discovery that his Uncle Claude was responsible for Gar's murder but Edgar is hard pressed to accuse the man without proof. As in Hamlet the murder is reinacted by Edgar with the aid of three Sawtelle pups under his tutelage. He gets the reaction he expected out of Claude but when Trudy ignores the revelation Edgar runs away from home taking his three pups but leaving Almondine, who Edgar thought sided with Trudy.

Edgar becomes a man both figuratively and emotionally during his months away from home but returns homesick and determined to avenge his father's death. The heart wrenching story has an action packed and disturbing finish that will stay with me forever.

I give it five stars.

Memory vs Nostalgia

2008-10-14T08:09:00.001-04:00

Also gleaned from the 'Debutants Ball' blog: "We might call the use of the past, in conjunction with the present, memory; the rejection of the present for an imagined past, nostalgia."

There is a lot of truth in this and it rings particularly loudly with the protagonists in my novel-in-progress which deals with the 40th reunion of a Detroit rock band from the Sixties. So, while memory serves to remind us of both the mistakes and successes of our past and thereby enhance our present condition, nostalgia serves to pretend that life was always better in the 'good ole days' ...something we all know is not necessarily true and which can lead to emotional and intellectual paralysis.

Green Hydrangea

2008-10-13T19:50:00.005-04:00

I know when my Annabelle hydrangea turn from their cloud white to an uplifting shade of spring green that Fall is just around the corner. A cruel trick on their part. My heart sinks with dread as I realize daylight will be scant, sunshine rare and temperatures crisp. I don't mind the cooler temperature but I thrive on sun. Come mid-December my body will crave its warmth, my mind will seek inspiration in other places. Music, good books and my writing will provide sustinance for my soul.

It is a good thing, Fall. I keep telling myself that my schedules relaxes, gardens renew and thoughts turn inward. Fall is the perfect time to fire up those creative embers and get things cooking. What's not to welcome! Thank goodness for the season's songs of color that celebrate Summer's last chance to inspire.

The fourth draft of my novel is almost complete. By the end of October I hope to let it rest so that when I pick it up again in December I will have a fresh perspective with which to give it a polished finish. Exciting really!

I just finished a post that British author Eliza Graham wrote in 'Debutante Ball' where she says the turning point in a novel is "when the progatonists realize they can never, ever return to being the person they were at the start of their story." Something in that rang true with me.
Of course, every day we are a different person and therefore can't return to who we were the day before. And once Summer has passed it is fruitless to mourn for it.

So, Fall, I am here for you as I know you are here for me. I'll pick those spring green hydrangea before they brown, vase them on my writing desk and we'll both make the best of it.

Yin and Yang

2008-10-07T10:18:00.003-04:00

I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel on my novel. I am working on the fourth draft and while I have said this several times in the past six months, this time I mean it. It needs a few more revisions but I can finally get my arms around its generous girth.

I think I will plough through the next thirteen chapters to the end then give it a rest. November is NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth (NaNoWriMo) so I might use the time to attempt to write a short novel. An admirable goal and worthy experiment.

Maybe I'll write about the Yin and Yang of puppies.

Speaking of which, here is a photo of Yin and Yang puppies at six days old.
I wonder if this is how they were in Emily's womb. I watched these two for over ten minutes and while they both shuffled and squirmed they stayed together in a mutual hug apparently for warmth as well as comfort. Beautiful.

Puppy Update #1

2008-10-03T15:11:00.000-04:00

Emily's third litter was born Tuesday, September 30 starting at 5:30 am. By 9:30 she had delivered seven pups and then at 11:30 after I had already sent out the announcement she delivered a handsome young boy. He is the smallest, naturally, and I started supplementing with goat's milk today.

All the pups are larger than those in the last two litters, even my little straggler, quite vocal and active.

Emily is a very attentive mother and only today allowed Meora and Phoebe near the mud room off the kitchen where the whelping box is located.

We have six boys and two girls, quite a switch from the last two litters and four are already spoken for. I will wait for three or four weeks to determine which pup goes with which family as their personalities won't be evident until then.

Emily has a hearty appetite, eats four smaller meals a day as opposed to the usual two times a day. She is just this afternoon showing a desire to join the rest of her Carney 'pack' so usually parks herself halfway between the puppy room and our family room when the pups are sleeping.

Debate Impressions

2008-10-02T22:10:00.000-04:00

Anyone else get the impression Sara came from a cookie cutter and has enough sugar coating to choke a goat?

There is no mistake, she is cut from the same mold as George Bush and John McCain despite her claims to the contrary... with a little less substance.

As many misgivings as I have had about Joe Biden I think he behaved himself and not only gave good, sound answers to Gwen's questions but poked some pretty solid holes in Sarah's answers and showed his family side.

What business did Sarah run as an executive? Less than two years as governor and six years as mayor of a city of less than 10,000.

She's a hockey mom with one kid going to war and one with special needs. Not enough background to run a country. She has opinions about public policy and the good fortune to be a 'maverick' just like the vice-presidential candidate who selected her.

I have just returned from Europe and it is painfully clear Sara has no clue how little the rest of the world thinks of our policies and our politics. They are anxious to see a new direction come out of the White House. They are taking this election much more seriously than the 'hockey mom' quips that Sarah likes to utter. Yes, we are living in a country that values its hometowns but we cannot deny we are also living in a global society that deserves validity.

How in God's name is she going to win the war, punish Wall Street and cut taxes all at the same time and from a folksy hockey mom's rubber glove ethic?

Gosh Darn it and God bless her, I just don't see it happening. And her 'Me vs Washington' claims just don't ring true.