Erika Mailman's Blog, page 3

Angels Camp

Mural in town, showing Twain holding a frog

This small Gold Rush town in northern California is also known as Frogtown, because Mark Twain based his short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," on a story heard here in 1865. The hotel where he heard it still stands. PETA members, please don't read this story.

Each May, Angels Camp hosts a jumping frog contest, and a plaque gets laid in the sidewalk for each year's winner.

I think this is the biggest jump I saw, at 19'11"


This one is a wink-wink, based on the story

The town is sweet to wander through and straddles a beautiful creek.






It has an arts center.


And of course it has to have a saloon.


And not too far away, a Barrel of Monkeys, described as "If you were given $5,000 and told to open your own version of John's Incredible Pizza":



Built on a hill, Angels Camp has many staircases that link parallel streets:



And statues throughout town celebrate the froglike history.




It's worth a visit! The jumping frog jubilee is always the third weekend in May; here's a link. The Mark Twain story is also reprinted in its entirety at that site.

Fun fact: the town isn't angelic; it's named for early founder Henry Angell (no one could spell in the 1800s).
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Writerly community: showcasing recent books

Part of being a writer is finding community. What we do is so solitary that we need to talk to others, realize afresh that we're not as wierd as we think (or at least we have a splinter group of friends who are also wierd), and support each other through all the ups and downs of writing and publishing.
Today's blog post is going to showcase books recently released (in the last six months) those I call friends. Crazily enough, as I started to compile the photos, I realized they all have a J or G name. Guess it's a good time to be publishing if you start with a "Jeh" sound!

Jo Chandler's Y.A. book, start of a series

Jen Laam's latest Russian historical



Gina Mulligan's book of letters written to women with breast cancer;
I sent this to my mom for Christmas




My whale loves Joe Quirk's latest



Jordan's wonderful craft of writing book, in a new edition


At an event for Jim L'Etoile's newest, Bury the Past (I also bought it besides the
At What Cost I'm holding). All of us in this photo are Writers Coffeehouse people.

 So there you have it: Jo, Joe, Jen, Gina, Jim, Jordan. 
(Don't worry, Kathy: yours hasn't released yet so I'll get you next time along with any K or C friends we know...)
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Dav Pilkey as Captain Early Start & Anna Riphahn

We were sent this beautiful book The Timekeeper by grandparents. Believe it or not, it was written and illustrated by a 13 year old. It's part of a series that used to exist called the National Written and Illustrated By awards for kids. It used to exist 1985-1998, releasing three books a year based one age category, and occasionally one or two "gold awards." It went defunct for about a decade. It rebranded in 2006 and released a few books, and then went silent again. Too bad, because it looks such a great program.
The back of The Timekeeper has a tiled display of all the book covers and all the authors. I had a jolt when I realized I actually recognized one of the names: Dav Pilkey, the author of the fabulous Captain Underpants series.


He won in 1986 when he was 19 for his book World War One.
I just looked at his website and he has 62 books in print. We should all have such a prolific career, launched at such an early age!


Fun fact: He was born Dave but his nametag from when he worked at Pizza Hut omitted the final E, so he kept it that way for his author name.
Returning to The Timekeeper, author Anna Riphahn tragically died only three years after her book was published. She died in a highway accident. When you read through the book, you see what expressive paintings she created, and you take a big inhale thinking of everything she might've been capable of.

Look at the laborious pottery border--each page has a gorgeous border a la Jan Brett

From this History Guy video in the Topeka Capital-Journal, we learn that she tried first in 1991 with a book and won Third Place. The next year, she tried with a different book and won Second Place. Her third book was the charm, winning first place and publication.
Perseverance. I love it.

Anna's photo from the back of the book
Thank you so much for tracking down and sending us this book, Earl!

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Last post about the Klimt exhibit

(although it has nothing to do with Klimt)
In the permanent collection, my husband pointed out a plaque that made us laugh. I had assumed "The Candelight Master" was the name of the painting. But it was the name of the artist.


Forgive me if this is a big thing I missed out on. I never took Art History.
So then of course, anyone who loves Prince as much as he does has to joke, that when his town got electricity, he was "the artist formerly known as the candlelight master and now known as the fluorescent blurb master."
Of course because I feel an obligation to the paltry few of you who actually read this blog (and because it's so miserably short today), I took a moment to google this artist. 
Proving you really do have to have money to have a gallery named after you

He had the very worrisome name of Trophime Bigot (but don't worry, he was French so you'd pronounce it Bee-joe...or wait, maybe a hard G? Bee-go? I'll have to consult on this one and return)
He lived 1579-1650, was born in Arles (bullfight place I've visited and sobbed about, poor bulls), and was actively painting in Rome and Provence. He's buried in Avignon, where the popes used to live (I visited but didn't cry).
There's some controversy that he was thought to be a father and son, but historians determined that he was the same guy painting in two very different styles, depending on what his patrons wanted.
And, and, and...he did one of the Judith & Holofernes beheading paintings that I was just sharing with a class a month ago. Wow. Small world.
A lot can happen by candlelight.

Hm...murder assisted by a maid...where I have heard that before?



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Klimt & Rodin exhibit, Legion of Honor

Man with Portrait of Johanna Staude, unfinished thanks to the fluAKA Klimt, part 2, far more cheerful!
Klimt is amazing. This exhibit is incredible.  The colors and depth were so spectacular that when we moved from the Klimt exhibit into the older paintings in the permanent collection, I literally felt a let-down. The paintings there seemed flat. I still love them...but damn, Klimt does everything I want an artist to do!
(and Rodin's pretty cool too. But I have a grudge against him because it was at his museum in Paris that I hemorrhaged and had to go to the ER—my little French/English dictionary had the word for "miscarriage"—and thought I'd lost a baby yet again. But! she's here, thank God).
I like to say Legion of Honor. It sounds like you're not just looking at art, but doing something noble.
It's a glorious museum with a Rodin "The Thinker" out front and even a miniature pyramide de verre like the Louvre.
Anyway, I love Klimt and we drove six hours round-trip to see this exhibit (actually shouldn't have taken that long, but see previous post). Plus, wanted a date day in the big city.
It's a small exhibit with five rooms, but there is a wealth there that could take up hours if you weren't being jostled for space by lots of other viewers. Hint to Legion of Honor: please make description plaques twice as large (and maybe even duplicate them to place on either side of wider pieces)—sometimes you'd have to move through a sea of 20 people to read the plaque and then you don't get to look at the painting again with the newfound information. I heard several other people complain about the small print. 


This exhibit space is gorgeous: look at the ceilings! The black and white photograph you see on the back wall is a reproduction of Klimt's "Medicine." See a few paragraphs below for an explanation.
This is Klimt himself, coolest of the cool. Sadly he died of pneumonia complicating his 1918 flu (which I blogged about here) or we'd have so much more art to delight our eyes.
Loving the vibe

One of the many things that makes him great:He tried three times to get into the prestigious Ecole des Beaux Arts, failed and then went on to be one of the most well-known artists of all time.
Another thing that makes him great: he fathered 14 kids. And you can tell by this picture why and how:
Section of a much larger frieze


Another thing: there is an early painting of his (a seashore landscape that I'm mad at myself for not photographing so I could show you) that is fully representational to the degree it's nearly photographic. He was so damn talented, but decided that was boring, and so moved on to create his own style. Here's a few details of his explosive use of color and built-up texture:
detail of painting I failed to write down the name of
Detail of Klimt's other painting I didn't write down the name of
Hey, this isn't investigative journalism!

Another bit of admirable coolness: He was commissioned by the University of Vienna to create three huge paintings, allegorical representations of Medicine, Philosophy and Jurisprudence. He created the first, Philosophy, and it was thought to be pornographic and there was public outcry. He withdrew it and entered it in the 1900 World's Fair competition and won the Grand Prix! Eff you, establishment! All three were destroyed by a fire in the Austrian castle where they were stored during WWII, and all that exists are black and white photographs of these lost pieces.
If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, this exhibit closes Jan. 28 so get thyself hence post-hastily!

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Klimt, collapses and car crashes

  See how the tire is revealed by the entire bumper being demolished?
It almost took off his axle.
The other day I was hanging out with a friend and describing how someone had rung our doorbell around midnight and I looked out from the balcony and saw how one person had hidden himself behind our Spanish arch while the other was at the door and called out frantically to my husband, "Don't open the door! It's bad guys! One's hiding" ...
and how my husband called 911 before we understood they were the law (it was two sheriffs on a very strange mission that I still don't fully understand, and I guess one had hidden himself in case my husband opened the door and shot his colleague), ...
and in the same conversation we talked about how I'd forgotten my purse at a teachers' meeting and how the (very nice!) person who took it for me since campus was closing happened to live an hour away, and just a few other things, and she said, "You have the most drama in your life of anyone I know."
I had to laugh, but it kind of hurt. In fact, after the sheriffs departed, I had asked myself, "Why does all the weird stuff happen to us?"
So that was Jan. 11.
On Jan. 23, we were part of two more 911 calls in the space of 40 minutes. We went to San Francisco for the Klimt and Rodin exhibit which closes Jan. 28–if you live in the area, you have four more days to see an absolutely incredible exhibit. It was fabulous. We loved touring the exhibit and then the permanent galleries of the Legion of Honor.
We looked at the time and realized our hope of getting a fun lunch in San Francisco had evaporated time-wise. So we headed down to the basement cafe of the Legion to grab something quick and head home. At the bottom of the stairs was a woman on the floor surrounded by a small group of people, having CPR administered.
My husband works in the ER, so he went over to check in. Things were already underway, but we were part of that drama for about 20 minutes. I stood there, tears prickling in my eyes, thinking, "Is this how this woman dies? On the floor of the museum?" and thankfully, she opened her eyes eventually and was able to speak to the caregivers.
Someone had called 911, and soon enough the paramedics were there to take over.
Kind of a sacred moment as a life was saved.
So incredible.
And then, as one does, we resumed the concerns of the living: food. But there was a long line to get into the cafe. We resolved we would get on the road and see how traffic treated us; maybe we could get something fast on the way.
This is how quickly that long line of cars forms after an accident.
I wonder how long traffic was affected.
There was a ton of debris in the road, glass and metal, so cars had to slow
to get past the accident site. To make things better, that meadow on the left was filled with cows.

About 20 minutes into our drive, something happened in front of us. I can't even say what it was (I'd make a terrible eyewitness), but there were cars in front of us colliding, and it was only due to my husband's excellent defensive driving that we were not involved. He braked hard and swerved, and we missed the car in front of us by mere feet.
It was a three-car crash and we were almost the fourth. 
We pulled over to be witnesses (my husband had paid attention and knew who was at fault) and give our number to the other drivers. Both our phones had died (despite being charged all night the previous night and my not running any draining program: more drama) but luckily his had been charged just long enough in our 20 minute drive for me to call 911.
After a long time, the police officer arrived and we took off. We knew we were never going to get home in time, so we changed to charging my phone just enough to call the wonderful person we were going to be late for.
Traffic sucked and because we were on the road an extra hour because of it, we had to stop for gas. More drama.
So, we were part of three 911 calls in a week.
Let's hope things slow down for a little.
I guess the one thing I can say is, the Klimt exhibit was still worth it. And tomorrow I'll post photos. Undramatic photos.
Best defensive driver and CPR overseer ever.
Me, art lover. Our parking spot just happened to have a spectacular view of that
Golden Gate Bridge (I'm so used to typing Bridget, my character in The Murderer's Maid
that I literally just wrote, Golden Gate Bridget)
(And that's what I love about San Francisco. You just, you know, pull over on your way to the museum and there's a world-class view people get in an airplane for.)
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Sacramento's historic cemetery

This post is for Loren, in my heart today. I took these pictures in February 2017, and can't wait to return to do an official tour with you someday soon.

Loren's the author of 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die. 




Grave of Mark Hopkins, one of the "Big Four" who brought the transcontinental
railroad to California
pockmarked cherub
Blog visitors, let me know in the comments if you have a favorite cemetery (photos uploads would be great too!)



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Did Lizzie Borden commit murder naked?

I love how this still is so close you see the texture of their skin. Courtesy, Sundance Review
The reviews for the new Lizzie movie reveal a few interesting things about the plot and its interpretation of the historical events of 1892. For one thing, it utilizes the interesting thought that Lizzie might've murdered her father and stepmother in the nude. Much easier to clean blood off skin than off fabric.
The Elizabeth Montgomery made-for-TV movie of the 1970s used this idea, and seeing the camera dwell on her beautiful calves as she walks towards murder adds a little verve to an already fantastically-rendered movie. Other notable movie moments: Lizzie sneaking down to the dining room where the victims were kept overnight, and lifting the sheet on her father's corpse to...can barely type this....kiss him. And I love it that this movie shows a dispassionate Lizzie, as she was in real life. The only moment where she ever shows horror is for herself, when the attorney forces her to grasp that she may hang for this crime.



But the new movie takes this idea a step further. Not only does Chloe Sevigny disrobe, but Kristen Stewart does too. Lizzie and her Irish maid together strip naked to perform the murders.
Hmmmm.
I have to say, my first thought is a pragmatic one. And kind of a disturbing one.
There just isn't room for two people to commit these murders. Not in the cramped quarters of the Borden home (Mrs. Borden was slain in a narrow alley between bed and dresser) and more definitively, not in the small real estate of where the hatchet blows landed.
The heads, to be exact.
Mrs. Borden had one blow on her upper back, but other that, only the heads bore wounds.
19 blows for Mrs. Borden, and 11 for Mr. Borden a few hours later.
Plaster casts of the Bordens' skulls used as evidence in the trial, now on
display at the Lizzie Borden B&B

If you think about the average head size...and now the average hatchet head size...it would just be awkward for two people to try to murder together. Maybe they each had a hatchet and took turns? I shudder.
I'm not sure how the movie will handle this, but I'm sure fans of both actresses will be happy to see skin. Sevigny told Indiewire, "It’s just a really carnal moment, and I just thought it would be really arresting. I trusted in [director] Craig’s restraint and [cinematographer] Noah’s beautiful photography that they would make me look good. Now I feel extremely vulnerable!" The murder scene was shot on Sevigny's 42nd birthday, and I applaud her bravery in letting loose with what is likely a far more toned body than the average middle-aged woman has!
By the way, Lizzie was 32 at the time of the murders.
And if you want to know about Kristen Stewart (who plays the maid Bridget Sullivan), she is now 27 years old, much closer to the age of the character she plays: 27.
If you want to read my piece about spending the night in the Lizzie Borden B&B, click here. I stayed in Bridget's attic bedroom.



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What connects Harry Potter with Lizzie Borden?

Abby Borden and Fiona Shaw Why, Fiona Shaw, of course!

This talented actress played Aunt Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter series, and in the new movie Lizzie (that premiered last night at Sundance) she plays Abby Borden, an elderly woman killed by multiple hatchet blows to the head.

Along with her husband, Andrew Borden.

But they were murdered hours apart (she earlier) and in different rooms of their family home.

Despite a lot of conjecture that a business associate of Andrew's had killed them, suspicion soon arose for Andrew's daughter (Abby's stepdaughter), Lizzie.

Lizzie hated Abby. She and her sister Emma always dined separately from Andrew and Abby, making the poor maid serve and clear every meal twice.

There may be another connection with Harry Potter if you find empathy for Lizzie. Harry was mistreated by his aunt and uncle, slept in a cupboard under the stairs and was always shunted to the background in favor of his cousin Dudley. But Harry had an opportunity to escape all that once he turned 11 and was sent his letter of acceptance from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

hellogiggles.com

Lizzie Borden had no such escape route. She begged for a trip to Europe with friends and was granted that. For five months she toured the continent and England and tasted a life of freedom. But soon she was back where she started, in a repressive home in a culture/era that didn't permit women many freedoms. She was able to drive the horse and buggy—but her father sold the horse. Someone broke into the Borden home and, oddly enough, stole trolley tickets. It is said Andrew prevented the police from investigating because he knew the thief was his own daughter.

Lizzie had passed the age of marriage and had her elder sister, still trapped in the house with her, as a cautionary tale of what she might expect in life.

Does it help to know that August 1892, when the murders took place, was a desperately hot month, with multiple deaths from heat being reported to the health department? And that Lizzie and her sister had in the past fought bitterly with their father about property he had deeded to their stepmother's family, and that very recently their beloved seaside home in Swansea was undergoing questions about its dispensation?

Greed. Despair. Lingering pain from childhood when Lizzie and Emma''s biological mother had died. Which is another thing Harry Potter and Lizzie Borden had in common: early loss of one's mother, and how that bereavement can haunt one forever.

Magic saved Harry, but Lizzie had no such savior.

If you find this historical true-crime case interesting, my novel The Murderer's Maid tells the story from the point of view of that maid mentioned above, Bridget Sullivan. And yes, that is the real Lizzie Borden on the cover.



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And post in the comments below: what Hogwarts house should Lizzie be sorted into?
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Lizzie Borden's interconnected rooms

The floor plan: no central hallway

I’ve now read a few articles in Filmmaker Magazine that reference “interconnected rooms” on the set of the Borden house. That is so truly integral to the plot, both upstairs and downstairs.
In this piece, “Making a Film is Always a Chaotic Experience,” director Craig McNeill talks about the struggle to find an appropriate house, and concludes, “We found a house that, while different looking than the Borden home, did have several interconnected rooms which was a notable and unusual characteristic of the Borden residence.”
This article features cinematographer Noah Greenberg talking about wanting the film to be “visually elegant and ominous” with characters filmed at the edges of the shot, never centered. I found it to be a really fascinating article.  And Greenberg, too, mentioned the interconnecting rooms:

There were many scenes in Lizzie where we would move through, or see into, several interconnected rooms following a character. With a small lighting package and team and very limited time between setups it was challenge to balance/motivate the light consistently (at a useable stop) across these rooms while keying off practical sources such as a double wick candle held by an actor or an oil lamp on a side table.

All right. So why do those rooms need to flow into each other?
Downstairs: The sitting room where Mr. Borden was killed has doors leading into the front entry, the parlor, the dining room, and the kitchen. Four different ways to enter… and presumably its “fishbowl” type of layout means it would be difficult for a killer to murder him without someone in the house being aware. One of Lizzie’s alibis is that she was in the dining room ironing… well, that was mere feet away and it would simply impossible for such a noisy murder to take place so nearby without her being aware of it. I mean noisy in terms of what the hatchet did to his skull. Mr. Borden himself made no alarms because he was asleep when attacked.
Upstairs bedrooms and that famously winding staircase

Upstairs: the home upstairs is like a “shotgun shack”—you must walk into Lizzie’s bedroom to reach Emma’s and the parents. Although, famously, the door between Lizzie and the parents was nailed shut, and Andrew and Abby Borden used the servant’s stairs to access their chambers. The guest room where Abby was killed leads into Lizzie’s, although there was a desk blocking it.
The home was strange; there’s no doubt about it. It was originally intended as an apartment building, with full living quarters on the bottom and second floors. Andrew converted it to one unit when he took ownership. If you think about feng shui and the energy created by multiple doors flowing into a room and then being blocked, it creates a disturbing sense. Almost like Shirley’s Jackson’s Hill House, where the angles don’t exactly add up to 90 degrees.
It’s a disquieting house. Claustrophobic is the word that springs to my mind most often when I think about it. Small, cramped, enraging.
Chloe coyly sitting where Andrew was murdered (well, on a replica sofa)

I’m disappointed the movie wasn’t shot at the real house. When I visited there last year, there was a photo on display of Chloe Sevigny sitting on Andrew’s sofa and there was great excitement about the upcoming movie (which premiered LAST NIGHT at Sundance!). We were told Chloe had a Lizzie Borden fascination and wanted to film the movie in situ, but because there is a federal building nearby, it created too much of a security hazard for Fall River to agree.
I’m dying to see the movie. I’d love to see how they used the rooms in the house they did locate, and am glad there was awareness of the importance of the rooms flowing into each other.
The Borden House in the Lizzie movie

The real Borden home, today a B&B

I fervently hope this movie gets a distribution deal so I can see it someday soon.

If you want to know more about this story, my novel was written from the maid's point of view--Bridget Sullivan was the only other person in the house the day of the murders, besides Lizzie and the victims.

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