Lea Wait's Blog, page 156

The Defining Season

John Clark here. I’ve had 70 chances to experience each of our four seasons. Granted, early ones were blurred by infancy and the passage of time, but I can say without hesitation that fall is my favorite. Winter is long, dark and dreary, spring is messy, and summer has gotten hotter as time has passed, not to mention that is seems to speed up the older I get.

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How’s this for food storage?

Fall has a crispness and definition that sets it apart. When I was a kid, hunting played a big part of the attraction. Creeping along the stone wall stretching to the back of our orchard, 16 gauge double barrel in hand until a partridge flushed, spiking my pulse, was always something to look forward to. So, too, were the treks around the twin beaver bogs and up a woods road the what we still call the Teal Place in hopes of finding ripe fox grapes, their outer sweetness contrasting so sharply with the acid tartness inside, followed by the crunch of seeds as I devoured them by the handful.

Later, when November arrived, so did deer season. Way back before the residents only Saturday opening went into effect, it was an unspoken rule that older boys attending Union High School (and most other rural Maine high schools) took the first day of the season off without penalty. Sometimes when I have trouble falling asleep, I replay the more vivid November encounters I’ve had in the woods. Most involve bucks, but perhaps the most memorable of all came when I was a sophomore or junior and two mountain lions walked across the woods road leading from the back of the orchard to the lower beaver pond. DIFW biologists can dismiss the existence of mountain lions in Maine all they want, but I know what I saw that morning.

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The kind of treat you see on an impulsive fall drive

Another highlight of fall is the opportunity to discover amazingly tasty apples. It’s easy to forget that there was a time when much of Maine was farmland and apple trees were important to the survival of families. While much of that land was quickly reclaimed by trees and brush, the apple trees remained, beautifully grotesque shapes against sunset skies. There are so many varieties and iterations of varieties to be savored that almost any trek through the woods in fall is likely to offer an opportunity to bite into something that stops your taste buds in their tracks. I often carry a plastic bag in case I find ones that are really good so I can bring enough home to make a small batch of sauce or cider. It helps to be tolerant of a few worms, though. For the truly adept, noting the exact location of treasure trees will allow you to return in the spring so you can get a twig or two for grafting purposes.

Fall is a perfect time for a drive to nowhere, preferably with no timetable. Just grab your camera and DeLorme Atlas. The crispness of a clear fall day lends itself to picking roads that climb up so you can see for miles. The Height of Lands, the road from Bingham to Jackman, Rt. 27 to Coburn Gore, Rt. 11 up through the County and the road from Athens up to the wind towers are all good choices.

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Another reason why leisurely is the way to go when exploring fall.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of fall is the way you can wake up to frost diamonding your lawn, but be in a t-shirt by late morning. That chill, followed by warmth does something extremely positive to my attitude. On mornings like that, I love to sit in solitude, usually in a field, or by running water. In the field, it’s almost addictive to watch the silky parachutes from ripened milkweed be caught by a soft breeze and follow their ascent until they’re too faint to be seen any more. There’s a corresponding joy in watching leaves flutter down from trees to land in a stream, perching above the mirror-like surface until caught by a current that swings them off to a distant landing. Mornings like these also let you trace the course of waterways as the warmer water creates aerial mist trails replicating the water underneath.

Sounds and smells also add to my enjoyment of fall. Burning leaves and the first tang of wood smoke cement the reality that life has changed once again and the sound from huge chevrons of geese, heading toward Merrymeeting Bay, evoke images from those days 40 years ago when October mornings began at 3:30 in a Randolph parking lot, followed by a day of chasing waterfowl first in the bay and then through a series of ponds and bogs all the way to Appleton.

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What seasonal memories stay with you?

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Darcy Scott here. Seeing as we’re fast heading toward autumn and this being my initial post as a member of Maine Crime Writers, I thought I’d introduce myself by offering my version of “What I Did On My Summer Vacation.” Well, sort of. 

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There’s the boating, of course. My husband and I are what’s often referred to as “balls-to-the-wall sailors,” having sailed to Grenada and back on a whim, island-hopped through the Caribbean for a year, and been struck by lightning in the middle of the Gulf Stream during an especially wild-ass cruise to Bermuda. Most of our adventuring is far more local and tame, however, living as we do from May through October on a workhorse of a sailboat plying the waters of coastal Maine. Think of it as a floating seasonal cottage, a kind of broad-ranging summer real estate that includes moorings in both Kittery and Rockland and lots of far-flung, remote harbors where we sit at anchor while occasionally tending to business. For me, this means writing, and it’s from this floating platform that I conduct almost all my research for the Maine-based “Island Mysteries” (Matinicus, Reese’s Leap and the recently released Ragged Island) that have come to define my writing career. 

An alternate version of “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” might be “What I Read On…” etc., etc.—which is how we sailing types fill our days when we’re not moving the boat hither and yon, sourcing the latest missing/broken/worn out boat part, or, in my case, searching out islands with particularly interesting histories that might lend themselves to the murder mystery genre.

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Being a writer of that genre myself, it’s hardly surprising that I lean heavily that way when choosing my reading material. I tend to shy from what I call the “big box” writers like Grisham, this year gravitating toward local fiction, including Paul Doiron’s excellent Almost Midnight and the delicious darkness of Kate Flora’s A Child Shall Lead Them. This time out, I discovered a few new not-so-local authors, as well; the excellent thrillers of Alafair Burke and Rachel Caine come to mind, and the Wyoming-based Joe Pickett novels by C.J. Box.

Then there’s Kate Atkinson’s Big Sky and Mark Wisniewski’s Show Up, Look Good—a long, belly laugh of a story about a flighty twenty-something woman from the Midwest who relocates to Manhattan on a whim, this after breaking up with a fiancé who prefers sex with power tools. Chapter One opens with “I know of a secret murder and I’ve loved a speechless man…,” and, boy, if that doesn’t grab your attention, I don’t know what will. And just for fun, I packed a couple nautical books into the bulging bookshelves that line the cabin where we bunk: Three Sheets to the Wind: The Nautical Origins of Everyday Expressions, and Murder Aboard: The Herbert Fuller Tragedy and the Ordeal of Thomas Bram.

I guess I got carried away, because I received a rather terse email from my daughter asking me to stop having books shipped to her until I could once again retrieve my own mail, as it seems the things are piling up in her hallway. Ouch.

Okay, said I grudgingly as I wracked my brain for how many more of the things were still heading her way—this as she told me that Robert Crais’s latest, A Dangerous Man, had turned up in yesterday’s mail. 

Hot damn. I’ve been waiting for that one.

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Darcy Scott (Best Mystery, 2013 Indie Book Awards; Silver Award, 2013 Readers Favorite Book Awards; Bronze Award, 2013 IPPY Awards; Winner, 2019 National Indie Excellence Award) is a live-aboard sailor and experienced ocean cruiser with more than 20,000 blue water miles under her belt. For all her wandering, her summer home and favorite cruising grounds remain along the coast of Maine—the history and rugged beauty of its sparsely populated out-islands serving as inspiration for much of her fiction, including her popular Maine-based Island Mystery Series. Her debut novel, Hunter Huntress, was published in 2010 by Snowbooks, Ltd., UK.

Five + Five

Labor Day is behind us.  My neighbor’s tree (admittedly, always the first to turn) is shedding its leaves. It’s time to start wearing socks again. There is no denying it–fall is here.

Before turning the page on summer, I’d like to do a 5 + 5 exercise: Five things that made me happy this past summer, five things I’m anticipating this fall. In the comments, I’d love to hear about what you treasured about the season just past and what you’re looking forward to as we edge toward winter.

SUMMER’S JOYS

1. Ocean Swimming.  I love the bite of frigid water on my toes, the briny water, clear and mysterious at the same time, the ritual swish of my hands in the cold ocean to get my heart ready for the immersive plunge. Swimming in the ocean makes me feel like a kid again, blue-lipped and still eager to ride one more wave. We swam a lot this summer and every single dip brought me joy.

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A favorite beach, where the sun is warm, the water is clear and all of the dips are invigorating.

2. Blueberries. Pies. Tarts. Crumbles. Smoothies. In morning cereal. In nightly salads. A handful for a snack. We made sure to tuck some away in the freezer for Sunday morning pancakes when the snow is falling.

3. Hearing Live Music. We heard wonderful Bach programs at Etz Chaim Synagogue in Portland and the Congregational Church in Blue Hill (the Bach Virtuosi Festival and Blue Hill Bach, respectively) and superb Cape Breton fiddling by Andrea Beaton and Troy MacGillivray at the TEIA clubhouse on Peaks Island. Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous.

4. Produce from our garden. We did battle with a voracious groundhog early in the summer. One night he or she wiped out an entire raised bed of salad greens and chard and ate the zinnias for dessert.

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Groundhog got ’em

We armored up the garden fence and eventually fought our nemesis to a draw.

Now the chard is back,  the basil has been turned into pesto, the cukes are abundant and we’re loving the gorgeous tomatoes now that it’s September and they’re ripening to beat the band.

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Finally, lusciousness on the vine.

5.  Focused writing.  My current work-in-progress demanded a long period of uninterrupted time to immerse myself in my characters’ world and bring their current adventure to a satisfying end. I wrote and wrote and wrote some more when we were away for a couple of weeks. The first draft of the book is now finished and the initial revision is under way. I cannot predict what will happen with this one. None of us ever know. All a writer can control is the writing, and I was happy to have time this summer to dive in and stay in, until my lips were blue.

AUTUMN’S PLEASURES

1. More Swimming.  The ocean does not cool down just because the calendar says September. There will be warm afternoons yet and the beaches will be uncrowded. Fresh water swimming isn’t my first choice, but we’ve swum at our favorite Sebago Lake spot on Columbus Day in the past, so nope, the bathing suit is not even close to being packed away.

2. Foliage.  I have lived in New England my entire life and the changing colors do not get old. This year we’re headed to Bar Harbor the weekend of October 18 and 19 for the Murder By The Book conference at the amazing Jesup Memorial Library. FMI: https://jesuplibrary.org/mbtb/

I’m sure we’ll see some lovely foliage on that jaunt, and hope we also get over to Western Maine to Height of Land and some of the other scenic vistas in Kathy Lynn Emerson’s neck of the woods.

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Soon it will be showtime.

3. Reading the New Releases.  In addition to our own Dick Cass, whose fourth Elder Darrow mystery LAST CALL AT THE ESPOSITO launches on September 15, I’m looking forward to a slew of fabulous fall releases.

Edwin Hill was in Maine last week talking about his new Hester Thursby novel, THE MISSING ONES. I’m also eager to devour Laura Lippman’s LADY IN THE LAKE, Adrian McKinty’s THE CHAIN, Louise Penny’s A BETTER MAN and THE LONG CALL, the first in a new series by the brilliant Ann Cleeves.

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Eager to read the new titles much?

4. Writing Conferences and Events. In addition to Murder By The Book in Bar Harbor, the calendar is filled with other opportunities to hang out and hobnob with Maine crime writers.

This coming Friday, Julia Spencer-Fleming (who will have a new book out this spring, people!) Dick Cass (who has a new book out this month, people!) and I (who, as noted above, has finished the first draft of a new book recently!) will be reading at Quiet City Books in Lewiston, a crime writer trifecta that starts at 6 p.m. Here’s the link for more info:https://www.facebook.com/events/439607460098165/

At 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, October 29, Dick Cass, Kate Flora and I will be at Cape Elizabeth’s Thomas Memorial Library, building a mystery with the help of the audience.

On Thursday, November 14 Bruce Coffin and Jen Blood will be reading at Books in the ‘Brook at Walker Memorial Library in Westbrook at 6 p.m.

The weekend of November 8 – 10, I’ll be with most of the Maine crime writers at New England Crime Bake in Woburn, Massachusetts, where none other than Ann Cleeves will be Guest of Honor.

5. Revising, revising and revising some more. My beloved Red Sox are likely not going deep into the post-season, if they get there at all, so my evenings and weekends will be free from distraction for the most part. I’ve got my head down and my pencils sharpened. Revisions, here I come.

Readers: What were the highlights of your summer? What are you excited about now that fall is here? What books are you looking forward to reading?

Brenda Buchanan is the author of the Joe Gale Mystery Series, featuring a diehard Maine newspaper reporter who covers the crime and courts beat. Three books—QUICK PIVOT, COVER STORY and TRUTH BEAT—are available everywhere e-books are sold. These days she’s hard at work on new projects. FMI: http://brendabuchananwrites.co

Weekend Update: September 7-8, 2019

[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be posts by Brenda Buchanan (Monday), Darcy Scott (Tuesday), John Clark (Thursday) and Joe Souza (Friday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

On Tuesday, September 10th, Dick Cass will join two other crime writers for a Making a Mystery Program at the Curtis Library in Brunswick. Program starts at 7.

Mystery Making Workshop with Three Maine Authors

Curtis Library’s Mystery Author series kicks off with an exciting event:  In this interactive workshop, three mystery authors representing different sub-genres, including cozy/traditional and thriller/suspense, will brainstorm on their feet to create a brand new mystery using suggestions provided by the audience. Fun, fast-paced, and fascinating, this improv game offers important insights into mystery writers’ minds and the conventions of the genre. Authors participating:  Dick Cass, Connie Hambley and Edith Maxwell.

Join us for a fun-filled evening!

A reminder about our Where Would You Put The Body contest:

It’s Maine Crime Writers “Where Would You Put the Body?” contest – late summer/early fall edition. How do you enter? Send a photograph of your chosen spot to: WritingAboutCrime@gmail.com with Where Would You Put the Body in the subject line. There will be prizes for First, Second, and Third place–books of course and other Maine goodies. You may enter no more than three photographs, each one entered separately. They must be of Maine places and you must identify the place in your submission. Photos must be the submitter’s original work. Contest will run through the end of September. 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora

Summer Visitors

            When we
moved to Maine, the only reluctance we felt came from leaving so many friends
behind.  But one of them reassured us on
that front.  “Don’t worry,” she said.  “Anyone you want to see will be happy to visit
you in Maine, and those who don’t want to come to Maine are not friends you
want anyway.”  How right she was.  We’ve never tried to calculate the number of
visits from old friends that we’ve enjoyed over the 32 years we’ve lived in
Maine, but it’s not inconsiderable.  And,
not surprisingly, most come in the summer. 
A few–skiers or otherwise snow-tropic like us–make the trip in winter,
but the bulk of our visitors come in July and August.  While the “summer” visiting season now extends
to Columbus Day, the Labor Day weekend remains an important fixed point, a time
to reflect on the seasonal visit experience.

            The last of this summer’s visitors just left.   We enjoyed our times with people who came from California, Delaware, and Washington, D.C.  It’s great to catch up on the lives they’ve lived since we last saw them and to report our own recent experiences.  It’s satisfying to be with people with whom you share a past that makes it possible to resume conversations that took place last year—or decades ago–without needing to establish a context.  And it’s particularly engaging to see Maine fresh through other eyes:  no matter how many times we’ve rounded the Portland Head Light in our boat, to experience the delight visitors express makes us see it for the first time and doubles our pleasure.

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            But now that our visitors are gone we also feel a slightly guilty sense of relief.  Making up the bed in the guestroom, cooking three meals a day, planning activities and excursions—all fun in their way but at the same time intrusions into our own routines.  If you live in Vacation Land you have to expect to be good hosts, especially since you really do value long-term friendships.  But you reach a point when you tire of running a B&B and a tour agency.

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            The cycle
of summer visits reflects so many of the cycles of human life.  You know your friends are coming, and you
anticipate the pleasure of renewing friendships that may be four or five
decades old.  They arrive, and the first
drinks on the deck remind you how much you’ve missed them.  Then the days repeat themselves, and by the
end of the visit you’re thinking with pleasure of what you’ll do when you’ve
washed the last sheets and put the final breakfast dishes in the machine.  Then they’re gone, and you feel regret—regret
that you won’t see them for another year, but also regret that you’re rather
glad they’re gone and you have the house to yourselves again.  You review the visit, remember the good
times, gradually forget the awkward or boring moments—and begin to anticipate
next year’s visit.  And so, like life, it
goes.           

What the Heck is Fiction Any More?

First, in the Shameless Commerce Department: 

Please join me for the launch of the fourth Elder Darrow mystery, Last Call at the Esposito, on Tuesday, September 24 at 7 PM at Longfellow Books. [image error]There will be cake, maybe pie, a little reading and a chance to pelt the author. Mark your calendars—would love to see you there!

There’s nothing much dumber than a turkey up an apple tree trying to pluck apples off the branches while its brethren and sisteren mill around the bottom, feeding on drops. Or so I thought, until I came across a review of one of my books recently, which I will not quote in its entirety so as to save the face of the ignoramus (though it is practically a truism that no one whom a character is based ever recognizes him or herself).

. . . Well written with realistic characters and dialog, and intriguing storylines. I made it to 16 percent (Kindle location 845) when I came across a derogatory political opinion that has nothing to do with the story.

Although not a Republican, I do not support the socialists, oops, democratic party. As a proud American, I will not support this or any author’s unasked for opinion about Trump or other politics. It’s a shame, I actually enjoyed this book and was wanting to read more of his work, which that won’t be happening now.

The particular idiocy to which I refer is, of course, the ascribing of a character’s words and thoughts to the author. In this case, clearly, something the character said triggered a reaction in the reader that amounted to the Kindle equivalent of tossing the book across the room. (Though I’m quite impressed by the specificity of the point at which he abandoned the book.)

I wouldn’t have thought much of it, except that I’m seeing more and more of that casual misunderstanding of what fiction is and does lately, and it disturbs me almost as much as certain people’s dismissal of anything they don’t agree with as “fake news.” Quotation marks sic. If I were the repository or every thought, attitude, and action of my characters, I would indeed contain multitudes. It’s fiction, people, made-up stories about made-up people.

I was reinforced in my sense that people are misunderstanding fiction when I was following up a review I posted of Laura Lippman’s magnificent Lady in the Lake on Goodreads and happened to scroll past some of the comments.[image error]

Sidebar: I implore you, you few readers left in the universe to support the books and authors you read by reviewing them, even in 10 words or less. You have no idea of the impact you can have.

Return to regular rant:

The comments were generally nice words about Lippman’s book and generally high ratings for it. Lippman has been very open about the fact that she used Herman Wouk’s Marjorie Morningstar as a jumping-off point for her own novel, imagining a woman like the Morningstar character in a different milieu and a different mindset and time. Which I thought a reasonable approach for a work of fiction, imagining a life for a character who may be superficially like another fictional character. Until I read a review excoriating Lippman for “stealing” the Wouk character, said reviewer advising Lippman she ought to write her own stories and not appropriate others’.

By this time, I’d despaired of the good sense of some readers: first, the misunderstanding of character, then the misunderstanding of motive. Then, farther down the Lady in the Lake comments, I came across a complaint about from a reader that the multiple points of view in the book (each clearly labeled at the head of a chapter and each with a unique voice) were too complicated and that three points of view was certainly plenty for a thriller.

At which point I threw up my hands and tried to ignore the composite reader I’d just built: someone who thinks a writer believes everything their characters say and do (a particular problem if one of them is a murderer); someone with a misapprehension of how one writer’s art builds on another’s, and someone who’s never written a novel feeling free to suggest how a particular book should have been written.

I trust this isn’t a general trend, but I’m feeling as if all the squishiness about truth, fake news, people in power lying in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, has somehow slipped into some readers’ views of what fiction is. Am I naïve to think that it still is only made-up stories about made-up people? Does everyone, even people who don’t write books, get a vote in what I write?

An Update on Shadow (Lea Wait’s cat)

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here. As most of you who read this group blog know, last month we lost one of our founding members, Lea Wait, to pancreatic cancer. Lea left behind four daughters, many wonderful books, and a cat named Shadow.

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Shadow helping Lea write in 2017

Shadow, who was more often called “Cat” by Lea and her late husband Bob, lives with me now. Lea and I agreed to that plan more than a year before her death. Some people, hearing that my husband and I took in this “orphaned” cat, have said how kind we were or how generous. That’s not it at all. Shadow is filling a void in our lives, just as we’re slowly beginning to compensate for the losses in hers. Over the last three years, all three of our elderly cats passed away. Since the cats we own tend to live to be eighteen or nineteen and we’re in our early seventies, looking for a new kitten or two at the local animal shelter struck us as a bad idea. What we had talked about doing was fostering older cats. Then Lea received her diagnosis. The decision to adopt Shadow when the time came was a no-brainer. A couple who’ve lost the last of their cats plus a cat who has lost both her humans equals the one bright spot in a sad situation. It’s win-win for Shadow and for us.

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Shadow in 2014

Some may remember the blog Lea wrote about adopting Shadow as a kitten. She’s five and a half years old now and weighs in at around twelve pounds.

Shadow spent most of the first twenty-four hours she was here alternating between hiding (behind the toilet, under the sofa, under the bed) and cautiously venturing forth to explore. She lived entirely on the second floor of Lea’s house, since Bob’s paints would have presented a danger to her if she’d been able to wander freely downstairs (not to mention what she might have done to some of his paintings!). As a result, it took her a while to figure out that it was okay to go up and down the stairs. The kitchen has been an entirely new experience for her. She still has doubts about the refrigerator and doesn’t much like the sound of the toaster popping.

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Shadow exploring my office

Initially, we closed off a few rooms—my office, my husband’s office, and the so-called guestroom we use for drying clothes, storing boxes of books, and as a catchall for assorted junk. We also saved the screen porch experience until she’d had a chance to get used to the rest of the house. All in all, it’s just a question of giving her time to adapt. Lea’s house was on a quiet street. We live right on U.S. Rt. 2. Shadow heads for cover every time a big truck goes by. As a result, while our other cats always loved the screen porch, she doesn’t much care for it. She prefers sitting beside the screen door to the back deck, where trees block the view of the road and some of the traffic noise.

 

Every cat is different. Lea and I discussed some of Shadow’s little quirks a few months ago, so I was forewarned that she doesn’t like to be picked up or have her tail touched. She’s quite forceful in reminding us if we forget. She also has an aversion to having her claws clipped. I’m an old hand at clipping, but we’re waiting a while yet before giving this a try. That means the one thing we’re being forceful about is the no scratching the furniture rule. She clearly understands the word “no” but, like most cats, she’s constantly testing the boundaries.

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All in all, the three of us are adapting. We’re making a few gradual changes from what she’s used to and she’s training us in the way she expects to be worshipped . . . I mean treated. Cats were, after all, once revered as gods. None of them have ever forgotten that.

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With the June 2019 publication of Clause & Effect, Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett will have had sixty books traditionally published. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. Currently she writes the contemporary Liss MacCrimmon Mysteries and the “Deadly Edits” series as Kaitlyn. As Kathy, her most recent book is a collection of short stories, Different Times, Different Crimes. Her websites are www.KaitlynDunnett.com and www.KathyLynnEmerson.com and she maintains a website about women who lived in England between 1485 and 1603 at A Who’s Who of Tudor Women.

 

Feeling Connected to the Seasons

Kate Flora: Does anyone else feel a wee bit of sadness as the days grow shorter and the [image error]nip in the air and the slant of the light signal that the long, lazy days of summer are coming to an end? I certainly do. Even though fall is my favorite season, it also reminds me that another year is passing and another winter is on the horizon.

As a gardener who comes from a farming family, I’m very aware of the cycle of the seasons. Springs in our country farmhouse saw flats of seedlings on every windowsill, getting ready to be planted in the garden. Summers were a progression from early crops like lettuce, spinach, peas, and radishes to the later beans, zucchini, and summer squash. Still later came the sprawling vines of cucumbers, pumpkins, winter squash, the adventure of digging potatoes and braiding onion stems to dry in the basement and the tall stalks of corn. One year I remember my father planting little round watermelons, and the back of the pickup filled with those melons and cantaloupes.

[image error]Summer evenings we would sit around the kitchen table after dinner, often with company from New York or New Jersey who had come to Maine to enjoy the cool breezes and swimming in the pond. While the conversation flowed, our hands would be busy with snapping beans or pitting cherries or slicing peaches or shelling the dried shell beans. Mom, always a botanist at heart, would have us pick out the red beans from the pods of mostly speckled beans, and those would be saved for next year’s planting. She wanted to know if this selection would eventually lead to pods of entirely red beans.

Later in the evening we would play card games with the windows open, hearing the exuberant lunatic cries of the loons floating up from the pond.

It may be no surprise that I’m so interested in food and cooking when so much of our lives revolved around the raising and preservation of food. When I go into houses with pristine kitchen counters and entries that hold only boots and shoes and coats, I am reminded that in our house, there would be wire egg baskets of potatoes and onions under the desk in the kitchen, and ripening tomatoes rescued from the frost laid out on newspapers on the counter. The floor of the shed would be covered with winter squash and acorn squash, as well as a few pumpkins. In the cellar, an alcove held shelves for the canned food, and baskets of potatoes, while onions hung from the ceiling.

I still find myself coming home from the farm stand or farmer’s market and putting my collection of many colored tomatoes and pickling cukes and zucchini and summer squash and perhaps little turnips and a cheery bunch of radishes into a basket on the counter so I can admire them.

There is much talk now about being locavores and eating what is grown close to home. Back then, it wasn’t a choice, it was just how life was. Sadness when the last fresh tomato was gone. A scramble to use up or freeze the squash as it threatened to go off. The force it took to split a giant blue hubbard squash. Even the surprise of going out in the spring to harvest parsnips.

The rest of my family seem to have, or had, green thumbs, while I joke that I have a green credit card. But living so close to the land growing up has imbedded a deep sense of how our seasons are connected to the land, and to survival, and how dependent on nature we all are, whether we know it or not.

 

It’s Maine Crime Writers “Where Would You Put the Body?” contest – late summer/early fall edition. How do you enter? Send a photograph of your chosen spot to: WritingAboutCrime@gmail.com with Where Would You Put the Body in the subject line. There will be prizes for First, Second, and Third place–books of course and other Maine goodies. You may enter no more than three photographs, each one entered separately. They must be of Maine places and you must identify the place in your submission. Photos must be the submitter’s original work. Contest will run through the end of September.

Weekend Update: August 31-September 1, 2019

[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be posts by Kate Flora (Monday), Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Tuesday), Dick Cass (Thursday) and William Andrews (Friday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

It’s Maine Crime Writers “Where Would You Put the Body?” contest – late summer/early fall edition. How do you enter? Send a photograph of your chosen spot to: WritingAboutCrime@gmail.com with Where Would You Put the Body in the subject line. There will be prizes for First, Second, and Third place–books of course and other Maine goodies. You may enter no more than three photographs, each one entered separately. They must be of Maine places and you must identify the place in your submission. Photos must be the submitter’s original work. Contest will run through the end of September.

Starting in September, Darcy Scott will be joining Maine Crime Writers and Jen Blood  will be back after her summer hiatus.

For those you who can’t be in Maine this weekend (or any time soon), here are some lovely Maine sunsets for you.

 

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora

Chickenman was Right!

John Clark warning you not to read on if you’re squeamish. I wasn’t going to blog about my ongoing experience with rural terrorists, but so many I’ve encountered recently had no clue about them that I decided to go forth.

It started right after we moved into our new home. Beth and I would be sitting at our computers or reading in bed and if felt like swarms of invisible insects would start biting. I ruled out bed bugs and couldn’t see any minges, but dust mites seemed a possibility. A couple weeks later, the attacks ceased. Little did we know what was coming.

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My one doable project before fall was cutting back and pulling out vines and small trees so we could reclaim the back 20 or so feet of our property. I started by pruning the wild rose growing around a decaying stump. That went well, so I moved on to a general clearing of everything save for the trees we wanted to keep. There were plenty of small ash and maples, more of the wild rose and a mind boggling amount of the Japanese Bittersweet. There were a few plants that looked like poison ivy, but I was wearing gloves, so I figured I was safe.

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The Monday before Lea Wait’s memorial gathering, I started itching and my arms, stomach and left ear got decidedly unhappy. I applied calamine lotion in liberal doses and looked like a badly decorated doughnut by the time I arrived at the memorial. It proceeded to get worse. The itching and redness became a mass of leaking agony, so bad at times, that I found relief by scraping the affected areas with a letter opener in order to get the itch under control. Benadryl spray, hydrocortisone cream, witch hazel and more calamine seemed to make things worse. I’d hoped to gut it out, but a trip to the doctor’s on Monday (the soonest I could get in) was arranged.

Early on, I noticed something that seemed odd, but became the clue leading me to the true culprit. I noticed what looked like a couple tiny spiders under my skin. One was on my right arm, the other on my abdomen. I was able to dig them out and a couple days later while researching causes other than poison ivy, discovered they were the hairs from the browntail moth caterpillar. I learned through more research that those supposed insect attacks right after we moved in were likely more hail misery thanks to the caterpillars.

You’d think the itching couldn’t get any worse…WRONG. I take extended release niacin to help control elevated cholesterol. One of the side effects is an occasional semi-nuclear hot flash, accompanied by all-over-the-body itching. One hit me around 2 am and it made me thankful I sold my chainsaw before we moved, because I would have found a way to cut off both arms at the elbow.

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My nurse practitioner had never heard of the rash caused by these little devils, but she keeps her laptop handy and the first image of an affected person looked exactly like my arms. Prednisone and Vistaril over a 5 day period brought me back to sanity. However, the spines/hairs are shed and lurk in leaves, grass, etc., so I’m still wobbling on the edge of another outbreak.

Here’s a link to the Maine CDC info page on these devils. https://www.maine.gov/dhhs/mecdc/infectious-disease/epi/vector-borne/browntail-moth/index.shtml Supposedly, they aren’t this far north in Maine, but tell my skin that and see what a reaction you get.

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