Jennifer Wilson's Blog, page 4

Rick Steves is boss.

Last time I acted this giddy I was at a Prince concert.

When I talk to people about writing, a usual piece of advice is to read the crap out of writers whose work you admire. Study what they do. Emulate it, and add their chops to your own repertoire.

In addition to using his guides for my own travels, I admire Rick Steves for his work ethic. I heard him speak a few months ago, and he talked about being on the road constantly, updating his guidebooks and recommendations. He checks out everything he lists in his guides, keenly reviewing lodging, restaurants and attractions, and reporting on ways to travel better, cheaper, and more efficiently.

Not many travel journalists do this anymore (except for the food part … everybody’s a foodie now!). There are a number of reasons for this. The main one would be that magazines usually don’t pay trip expenses, newspapers never did, and freelance travel writers can’t go into the hole just to do their job, so many stories are just written from internet research.

Thus, travel journalism gets a bad rap, much of it deserved, but Rick Steves is one of the few and the proud carrying the torch. He does it, simply, because he believes the more we travel, the better the world will be. (In addition to relentless travel reporting, Steves has also built a shelter for homeless women and children with his retirement money, advocates for pot legalization, and is an active and outspoken member for the Lutheran ELCA church.)

When I got an email saying Steves wanted to interview me about Running Away to Home for his radio show, I was so excited I couldn’t breathe right. That excitement continued until the first few seconds in the radio booth. But soon I relaxed into his intelligent and thoughtful questions. He’s such a pro.

Then I marveled at Rick Steves for a new thing: His mad interviewing skills.

Here’s the link to the interview. Enjoy! I know I did.

CLICK HERE ** RICK STEVES IS AWESOME ** CLICK HERE.

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On Turning 42

I was born 42 years ago today. One of the many sweet perks of getting older is being able to talk about lessons you’ve learned over time without sounding like a moron. In that spirit … random advice gathered over four decades and some change.

• The unbridled joy a dog feels when taken on a walk is entirely transferrable to the walker.

• If you don’t have time or money for a good spring pedicure, pick up a tube of Heel Balm from Walgreens. It really works.

• There is no substitute for hustling your ass off in pursuit of that thing you dream of. If you want it, go get it. Complicate it all you want, but it’s as simple as that.

• Sometimes, it’s okay to feel terrible. Go ahead and sink. There are important things to be learned from the murk at the bottom of the pond, where stuff breaks down and turns into raw energy. Just remember to come back up for air.

• If you’re bored writing it, imagine how they’ll feel reading it.

• When you have no idea what to do when someone hurts your feelings, laugh. You can lash out, say equally hurtful things, punch them in the neck, or tear their name out of the phone book later. But handling a touchy situation with humor ain’t a bad default.

• After really studying the image taken by the winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography, think about a change you can make in your life so the world will be a little less like this.

• Read the news.

• Chickens aren’t dumb. They’re also no intellectual powerhouses. Either way, they like to be held and petted, like all of us do.

• Your fingernails are there for a reason. Use your hands for something that’ll get them dirty and busted up every now and then.

• Tiny things bring as much happiness as giant things.

• Contribute your gifts. Don’t keep them to yourself. The world needs you, or you wouldn’t be here.

• You will never regret the time you spend away from Pinterest.

• No matter what the magazines tell you, there are far more interesting things to think about than the quality of your abs, and how your house looks.

• Despite all the screens, physical and spiritual experiences matter the same amount they always did.

• If you walk away from a gathering of friends wondering what they will say about you when you leave, re-evaluate your friends.

• Nothing compares to a heartfelt, considerate, empathetic apology.

• Sammy was an oracle. Sometimes you really just can’t drive 55.

 

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Battling the Monkey Mind

For me, the biggest challenge of writing is the part where you’re making new things. It requires clearing off a place and a time (and unplugging the internet connection) to get into the zone and reach for the good stuff.

Now, I’m pretty good at the workaday labors—meeting deadlines, organizing interviews, research, editing. But creating is the hardest.

Even though I love my job, you should see how busy I get when it’s time to meet the maker in my brain. The plants need watering! I need another cup of tea! Am I hungry? Do the chickens need tending (especially the one who STILL ISN’T LAYING)? My nails need filing! (To be fair, my nails often need filing. Mostly due to the tending of chickens.)

I have no idea why I get so squirmy when it’s time to make the donuts. You’d think it would be the great release of every day, and I’d look forward to it with pleasure. This John Cleese video on the Brain Pickings website got me to thinking about it. It made me feel better to see that he seems so familiar with the struggle for creative discipline.

 Click here for the John Cleese video on creativity.

But here’s my question: Why do creative people have a hard time committing to the act of creation? It’s just sort of mysterious to me. We’re put on this earth to contribute our mojo, and then when it’s time to mojo our hearts out, the monkey mind takes over and suddenly it becomes crucial to surf online for a supper recipe. Next thing you know, it’s time to pick up the kids.

Have you ever felt that way? What do you think it’s about?

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The long way up.

I'm fairly certain that if Sam and Zadie hadn't come along, I'd still be gazing at my navel wondering what to do with my life. Something about their demands on my time and attention made me realize how much (or how little) of it there was. I've been doing things I wouldn't have done on my own ever since.

Last week, that meant a visit to the state capitol building. Iowa has a particularly beautiful one, so much majesty and gold leaf and deep rich blues and golds and greens in the painted murals. Representative Sharon Steckman, the ranking member of the house education committee (and lifelong friend of Jim, who grew up with her son, Matt), organized the tour for me and the kids, plus our pals Craig and Carter Jensen. She then escorted us to the very top of the dome after it was over.

It wasn't til we'd climbed the 200th of the narrow and steep steps that felt like something out of an H.G. Wells story that I remembered how I occasionally experience claustrophobia and fear of heights. And then I forgot this altogether when the kids began getting a little worried about the climb themselves.

Out of some obscure lobe of my brain came this quote, remembered from who knows what book, announced to the kids:

"Courage is being afraid of something, and doing it anyway."

That final step out of the capitol's inner dome and into the fresh air of this unusually warm spring literally took my breath away, as we looked out over our fine city.

I wasn't scared a bit.

Capitol Building Photo Credit: © Walter Bibikow/JAI/Corbis)

 

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The memory of language

So, the other night I was at the party of dear friends who helped us get ready for our journey to Croatia. In 2009, Alma and Dino fed us traditional Slavic food and schooled us on the common customs of eastern Europe. (I am so down with the "bring your slippers to the party" tradition … you just leave your shoes at the door then slip on the fluffies.)

I was happy to go to their house again, post-trip, for a visit. At the party, Alma and Dino had invited guests from Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia, along with our friends Mark and Kelly, who brought us all together to begin with. All around me, mixing with the English, were the languages that I'd come to know so well. At one point, I just drifted over to the bookshelf, where Alma's favorite books were lined up in a row.

Joseph Conrad's "Tales of Land and Sea"

I just stood there, outside of any group, but listening to all of them, covering up my eavesdropping by browsing her titles. It felt in so many ways like a neighborhood gathering in Mrkopalj.

Alma is a quiet woman, thoughtful, dark-haired, slender. She has one of those glowing beauties that comes from way down deep somewhere. She pulled a few of her favorite titles and showed them to me. "I love books," she said. "But I especially love these."

I don't know what it was that made me choke up when I saw the translated language of books I'd known myself, but I did.

I guess I miss Croatia in more ways than I know; like it's lurking in my subconsciousness all the time and I don't even know the depth of it. I miss that intimate time together between Jim and the kids and me. I miss the beauty of the village. I miss the language, that bucking beast I never could get a handle on. I miss our travels.

No idea. None at all.

During readings or book clubs, people often ask me: Will you go back? I know I will, we're just not sure when. It takes time and money, and having those two things simultaneously is somewhat of a rarity.

But deep down, when I think of it, there are parts of us that never really left Mrkopalj. I mention the name of the village, and Zadie still lights up thinking of the Starcevic girls, who were like sisters to her. Jeem talks about Robert and the guys every day. Sam, well, Sam just wants to get out of school for a long time.

I'll leave you with the poem that Alma says has been a favorite since she was very young. She didn't know then that the poet, Sara Teasdale, was from St. Louis, just a few hours away from what would become Alma's new home in the 1990s.

Enjoy the language.

Let It Be Forgotten

BY SARA TEASDALE

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,
   Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,
Let it be forgotten for ever and ever,
   Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.
If anyone asks, say it was forgotten
   Long and long ago,
As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall
   In a long forgotten snow.


Sara Teasdale, "Let It Be Forgotten" from Flame and Shadow (New York: Macmillan, 1924). Copyright 1924 by Sara Teasdale. Reprinted with the permission of the Office for Resources, Wellesley College. Taken from the Poetry Foundation website.

Sara Teasdale, "Let It Be Forgotten"

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Meet Beverly: A Tribute Chicken

What is this space machine you point in my general direction?

Well hello! How's this lukewarm winter treating everyone? Here, it's a chance to do a little more tinkering with the chicken set-up and rake up those leaves we didn't get to this fall, when Running Away to Home first came out and I was internally FREAKING OUT instead of raking leaves. All better now!

So we've tried to avoid naming the chickens, because there is still an outside chance we will eat them someday. I know, I know. I've wavered on this one. But if we're going for the full farming experience, I can't skip the hard part of the circle of life, right? Maybe. The jury is still out. Sam gets pale every time I mention that one of the Ameraucanas still isn't laying, and she should eventually be useful in some way. Sam points out that Willa, our schnoodle, is also not very useful, but we don't eat her.

We all know Muffy has a name, because she has shared her coop experience here on this blog. But recently, we've named another chicken, in honor of a powerhouse of a woman. The kind of woman who will change how you see things. Do you know someone like that?

Meet Beverly.

I first met this whirling dervish of activity (also known as my best friend Amy's mom) on a small farm just outside of Colfax. I was a fourth grader.

Beverly had waist-length white hair, and she was a lawyer, a farmer, and a former social worker. Her idea of casualwear was (and is) Carhartt work pants. She was also a screamin' feminist in a small town where such things weren't so much appreciated. She pinned an ERA button onto my jean jacket, and away we went.

Beverly and I have been friends ever since. She's always shown by example that a woman can do whatever she wants to do, as long as she doesn't much care what others think. Bev also taught me that you can gain momentum as you age, also as long as you don't much care what people think. Thus, I bought my first flock of chickens just as I've begun to sprout a few gray hairs. (Only a few. Like maybe ten so far.)

Bev went to law school in the 1970s when she was raising twin babies, largely alone. She ran her farm, which had goats that she occasionally kept indoors because she liked them very much. She also kept bees, harvested her own grapes to make preserves, and did not prohibit me from swearing in her presence, which was one of my favorite pastimes as a fourth-grader. She laughed at my Mr. Bill jokes, called me a writer from the time that we met, and, like the women in Mrkopalj, Bev taught me that herbal remedies and eating your own food (grown in your presence) are the first line of defense in living a healthy life.

And so, this fiesty and gorgeous Rhode Island Red, a layer so prolific and so efficient that she's in and out of the laying box before most of the chickens have even gotten off the roost, is Beverly.

A poultry powerhouse. May she live up to her honorable name. Do you know someone who changed your perceptions of how things should be? Yes? You should tell them. You really should.

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Dreaming of this Day

Girl, schnoodle, mom. Ahhhhh, bring it.

Yesterday, Zadie and I snuggled up on the couch, foot to foot, and read books together.

At one point, I squeezed her little foot, and said: "Girl, I've been dreaming of this day forever."

She had no idea what I meant. Little did she know, the last time I snuggled up on a couch, reading books foot-to-foot, was with my Grandma Kate.

I always hoped that my own family would count this as a fine way to spend time. Considering my little snookie read an entire Junie B. Jones, I think we're on our way.

P.S. I was reading Lucky Girl by Mei-Ling Hopgood. Really liking this story about a Chinese girl adopted by an American family … then her happy life is disrupted when her Chinese family desperately wants to get back in touch with her. Enjoy!

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Chickens Make Me Dirty

Because I'm a mother, and because I've worked on farms, I know that caring for creatures makes a mess. All that input, all that output, not to mention the emotional blow-outs along the way … You work with the end goal in mind: life, well-being, sustenance.

When Jim finally agreed to chickens, I knew it would be a mess. Taking care of living beings, as we've established, is not a tidy process. On that first day in August when the chickens moved in, I gazed in wonder at the perfectly tidy little coop in my yard. Teeny chickens who hadn't even made teeny poops yet, in a nice cedar box on a green grassy zone in my yard. I knew it would not last.

Here it is:

Look how neat and clean that thing is. I think the chickens were mitten-sized, tops.

Ahh, isn't that nice? It looked that way for maybe a few weeks.

The chickens are now giant beasts. I tacked a haphazard chicken run onto that nice little coop, because they gack up the yard so bad that the kids had to wear muck boots just to play on the swing. Because I suck at building things, it looks terrible and the chickens get out all the time. I think it's the writing gods' way of making me get up from my desk and stretch, all the chicken escapes I have to tend to. I haven't clipped their wings, and they're probably bored, so there are maybe 4 jailbreaks a day. They've even untied garden wire to get out of the coop. God knows how that happened. Sometimes all I can do is drag a spare window or piece of fencing out of the garage to block an escape hatch until I can figure out something better.

A few months ago, Jim moved the coop, because it made our yard look like a refugee camp (he said behind the garden was a better place for it, but I know the truth).

Due to all these mutations, plus insulating for winter, here is the coop now:

I think I've seen this same design under a bridge downtown.

So yeah, my coop is a mess. But those chickens are big, happy beastie girls and I like them. Though only one of them lays eggs (get on it, ladies!), they make me get dirty. I think getting dirty is a good thing.

I spend all day running words through my head. Not very tangible work, and a very clean pursuit. It can make a woman feel fairly batty. So when I get my hands nice and muddy with actual physical labor, it levels me out. I muck out the hay. I feed and water. I patch the chicken run (over and over and over). When the chickens waddle up to me, mooching for food, I pick them up and listen to their little harrumphs and clucks, and their chicken feet get my coat muddy. It can be a pain, but it's a good balance to that clean, quiet desk. And in the end, I get to eat eggs because of them, which is one of my favorite things to do.

Life. Well-being. Sustenance.

If I wanted a clean version of chickens, suppose I'd just make them out of paper, like these totally cute desktop free-range chickens from the blog How About Orange, that my friend Kelly just sent me. I might make them anyway, just to have auxiliary chickens. As far as I can tell, they don't get you dirty.

Then again, they don't lay eggs either (GET ON IT, LADIES!).

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I'm writing something new.

So I've been trying something new. I'm working on another book, and it's fiction.

I know, I know. People have been really loving Running Away to Home, and why couldn't I just shoot out another one just like it? In fact, I might some day. Returning to Croatia, or giving Jim more air time trying to track down where exactly he's from (we're not 100 percent sure), sounds like a lot of fun.

But I don't want to do that just yet. I write magazine stories by day, and that work is regular and ordinary. I love it even more, now that I've experienced the long and emotional trajectory of the writing and release of a book. But they're two radically different endeavors.

So because my day job is a steady and predictable thing, I feel like the book projects should stay sacred and fresh. I love sitting down before dawn and mapping out a storyline that literally appears from the mist. As the sun gets ready to rise, my characters come out, and they tell me what is going to happen next. I'm like a Ouiji board pointer! It's scary in some ways, because I have so little control over it, but for that very reason, I keep at it. It's pretty exciting stuff.

If there's anything I learned from living the experience of Running Away to Home, it's that diving into giant and intimidating acts might very well crush you. Probably it will crush you. But the you that emerges at the other side of the experience is better for the risk.

I can't tell you that this new book will be exactly like my last one. But I can tell you that you'll have the same guide on the journey. And I guarantee it'll be an interesting ride. Again.

In that spirit, here's a quote that I've kept at my desk for about 10 years now, by that one guy, Gustave Flaubert:

Be regular and ordinary in your daily life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. 

I'll be thinking of you at dawn, when I'm out there retrieving another story from the ether. (Kind of like a pack mule, but with a laptop.) Maybe this sounds weird, but knowing you'll be on the receiving end of my early-morning missions gets me out of bed when it's dark and cold and the quilt is just so warm.

So thank you for the daily inspiration. Can't wait to share my next story with you.

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I’m writing something new.

So I’ve been trying something new. I’m working on another book, and it’s fiction.

I know, I know. People have been really loving Running Away to Home, and why couldn’t I just shoot out another one just like it? In fact, I might some day. Returning to Croatia, or giving Jim more air time trying to track down where exactly he’s from (we’re not 100 percent sure), sounds like a lot of fun.

But I don’t want to do that just yet. I write magazine stories by day, and that work is regular and ordinary. I love it even more, now that I’ve experienced the long and emotional trajectory of the writing and release of a book. But they’re two radically different endeavors.

So because my day job is a steady and predictable thing, I feel like the book projects should stay sacred and fresh. I love sitting down before dawn and mapping out a storyline that literally appears from the mist. As the sun gets ready to rise, my characters come out, and they tell me what is going to happen next. I’m like a Ouiji board pointer! It’s scary in some ways, because I have so little control over it, but for that very reason, I keep at it. It’s pretty exciting stuff.

If there’s anything I learned from living the experience of Running Away to Home, it’s that diving into giant and intimidating acts might very well crush you. Probably it will crush you. But the you that emerges at the other side of the experience is better for the risk.

I can’t tell you that this new book will be exactly like my last one. But I can tell you that you’ll have the same guide on the journey. And I guarantee it’ll be an interesting ride. Again.

In that spirit, here’s a quote that I’ve kept at my desk for about 10 years now, by that one guy, Gustave Flaubert:

Be regular and ordinary in your daily life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. 

I’ll be thinking of you at dawn, when I’m out there retrieving another story from the ether. (Kind of like a pack mule, but with a laptop.) Maybe this sounds weird, but knowing you’ll be on the receiving end of my early-morning missions gets me out of bed when it’s dark and cold and the quilt is just so warm.

So thank you for the daily inspiration. Can’t wait to share my next story with you.

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