Barbara Ross's Blog, page 7

Covingenuity, Christmas Cheer, and a #giveaway

by Barb, in Portland, Maine with snow on the ground

Hi All. Advance Reader copies for Shucked Apart, the ninth Maine Clambake Mystery, are here and I’m giving one away to a lucky commenter below.

Last Thursday the bug guy came and Bill and I had to be out of the house for four hours. Ordinarily, this would be no problem on a December afternoon. We probably would have strolled to the Old Port, had a nice lunch and poked in and out of the shops for Christmas presents and stocking stuffers.

We’re not doing any of that stuff now. So we planned a different sort of day. We drove up the coast to Boothbay Harbor. We checked in on our former house, which is undergoing a massive renovation. It’s so nice to see someone spending money and care that it needed and knowing it will be a family home for a while to come.

[image error]House soon after it was built in 1879



[image error]House when my mother-in-law owned it.



[image error]House now

Then we picked up food curbside at the pizza place outpost of our favorite restaurant in Boothbay Harbor, Ports of Italy. We drove out to the end of Spruce Point and ate in the car as we watched the sun set.

From there we killed a little time while Bill took some pictures.

Then we drove off for our scheduled time at Gardens Aglow, the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens annual holiday light show. Normally it is a lovely stroll around the gardens in the crisp winter air accompanied by the smells of pine and kettle corn. This year, it’s a drive through display, highly organized with timed tickets.

This is an example of what I have been calling “covingenuity”–people and organizations that respond to the current situation with creativity and gusto.

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A dramatic scene in my Maine Clambake novella in the collection Yule Log Murder takes place at Gardens Aglow.

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The light show really helped get me in the mood for the holidays and I’m so glad we did it.

(Note: All photos taken by Bill Carito in challenging circumstances from a slowly moving car. If you would like to see more of Bill’s photos follow him on Instagram @billcarito and @bill.carito.colorphotos )

Readers: Do you have an example of “covingenuity” in your family, friend groups or community? Tell us about them or just say “hi” to be entered to win an Advance Reader Copy of Shucked Apart.

My Bookshelves

by Barbara Ross, working away on Maine Clambake #10

I’ve always been a collector of books, but when we moved to our current house in Portland, Maine, I gave myself a stern talking to. As a function of age and economics, it’s unlikely my husband and I will ever live in a home bigger than the one we are in now. (Which is already smaller than the largest one we have lived in, though we shared that one with our children.) Therefore, I declared, in this new house there would be finite space for books. Tough decisions would have to be made. Once the purge was done, if a new book came into the house, another would have to leave.

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But what to keep? I’m not a big re-reader, so that wasn’t a factor. (Though I’m thinking I have reached an age where I should start. There are a lot of books I remember loving more than I remember the actual story.) I’m not sure how it evolved, but for the most part what I’ve done has been to keep the work of treasured authors and singularly treasured books. Together this collection now tells the story of my evolution as a writer, as a reader, and as a human.

I’ve gotten pretty good at reading most of the books I consume on my Kindle, which has the added benefit of allowing me to read in bed without turning the light on and disturbing my husband. Because I love bookstores and books, I’ve switched most of my print buying to hardcovers from favored authors.

There are a lot of mystery series on my shelves, of course. For the most part, they sit behind me at eye level, so it’s very handy when I’m doing a Zoom visit with a library and someone asks me about my favorite authors. I simply turn and read off the spines.

[image error]Ruth Rendell, Tana French, Julia Spencer-Fleming



[image error]Elizabeth George, Minette Walters, Kate Atkinson



[image error]P.D. James, Sharyn McCrumb, Louise Penny

Then there are the books I think of as encompassing big-hearted humor, a style very important to me as a reader, and something I wish I was better at as a writer.

[image error]Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, Alexander McCall’s Smith’s Scotland Street series and Professor Dr. Von Igelfeld series



[image error]Fannie Flagg, Sue Townsend, and a glimpse of some other favorites, Julia Glass, Jack Finney, Alice Munro

When you have a lot of friends who are writers, you go to a lot of book signings and afterwards you have signed books. I find it hard to part with them after I’ve finished reading. It’s even harder for books where I am included in the dedication or in the acknowledgments.

[image error]Julianne Holmes, Liz Mugavero, Sherry Harris



[image error]Barbara Shapiro, Leslie Wheeler, Jessica Ellicott, Kaitlyn Dunnett, Cornelia Kidd (Lea Wait) Dick Cass, Edith Maxwell (among many)

I have three shelves devoted to research for my Maine Clambake novels and writing topics.

[image error]My desk is a glass table without drawers so all my desk stuff is on the shelves in easy reach behind me. The notebooks on the left contain the (ever decreasing number of ) paper notes associated with each of my books.



[image error]Another shelf (not shown) is almost entirely devoted to those kinds of cookbooks published by churches from around Maine

And then there’s the flotsam and jetsam of life. Here’s an example. I have some smaller bookshelves that also contain this kind of stuff.

[image error]Photo albums brought home from my parents’ house after my mom died, more notebooks, books from my old work life

As you can see in the top photo, there are also shelves devoted to my own books. Traditionally published authors get a box of books for each edition that’s published. This used to be pretty great, but now that I’m not doing any in-person events, all four of these bookcases are double-shelved. As of Shucked Apart in February 2021 I’ll be completely out of room.

So that’s it. A treasure trove for some future archeologist trying to understand the formation of the early twenty-first century mid-list writer.

Readers: What about you? What is your book saving, purging, shelving strategy? Let us know!

Gaslight the Movie and a #giveaway

by Barb, who is spending October in Virginia in a house on a lake

Do we all vividly remember the last social things we did before we went underground like the mole people? I keep replaying that last week in my mind. On Sunday, we went to a birthday party. It was outdoors, but we didn’t know then what we know now and were already weighing whether we should go. On Tuesday, we out to dinner with friends and then to the theater to see a fabulous production of Priscilla Queen of the Desert. On Wednesday, the very last thing we did, before we stopped doing public events altogether, was attend a screening of the movie Gaslight.

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I’d had the showing of this classic movie at the Tropic Cinema in Key West on my calendar for a while. I was especially interested because at the time I was writing Jane Darrowfield and the Madwoman Next Door, a mystery involving digital gaslighting.

Gaslighting is a term that’s used a lot right now. It comes from the 1938 play Gas Light, and subsequent 1940 and 1944 movies. The plot in each varies slightly but the theme is the same: a husband socially isolates his wife and works to convince her that what she is seeing, hearing and experiencing isn’t real, causing her to question her sanity. The story is set in 1880s London and a key feature is the dimming of the gaslights in the couple’s home.

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The 1944 movie, directed by George Cukor, is marvelous. Boyer and an 18-year-old Angela Lansbury, making her screen debut, were nominated for Academy Awards, and Ingrid Bergman won for Best Actress. I especially loved Joseph Cotten, who plays an Inspector from Scotland Yard with a full-on American accent–no explanation ever given.

The Art Directors also won an Oscar, as well they should have. Because the creepiest thing about the movie is that the wife’s own home is literally used against her. The physical place where we are supposed to feel the safest is used as a weapon of psychological warfare.

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Gaslights were the technology of 1880. In 2020, someone can use an app to access to a home security system from the other side of town to dim the lights. Or raise the heat, open and close the garage door, even change the code to get inside. Imagine coming home everyday and being unable to enter your house. Then imagine someone you love telling you, “You’ve forgotten again. Your mind is going.” Creepy, right?

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So you can see why that trip to the movies has stayed with me. There’s the film itself, the subject matter, and the fact that it was my last time in a movie theater for seven months and counting. Who knows when I’ll go back again.

Readers: Do you remember the last social things you managed before you began staying at home? Or if you’re an essential worker, before your life was confined to work and home? Tell us about it below to be entered to win one of two Advanced Reader Copies of Jane Darrowfield and the Madwoman Next Door.

The Moment of Inspiration and a #giveaway

by Barb in Portland, Maine on a beautiful fall day

There are big inspirations for books–the stories you want to tell, the characters and themes you want to explore. But there are also inspirations for the little moments–things that have happened to you, stories you’ve been told by friends and family.

There is one such little inspiration in the second Jane Darrowfield book, Jane Darrowfield and the Madwoman Next Door, coming October 27, 2021, exclusively from Barnes & Noble. I’m giving away one Advance Reader Copy of the book to a lucky commenter on this blog. (If you want to up your odds, you can also enter the Goodreads Giveaway for one of these ARCs here.)

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There’s a moment in the book when Jane gets a call from her friend, Detective Tony Alvarez of the Cambridge, Massachusetts Police Department. He’s next door at Jane’s neighbor’s house. A work colleague is with the detective and is insisting something is very wrong. The neighbor, Megan Larsen, an attorney on the partner track at a big Boston law firm, has failed to show up for an important client meeting. She’s not at her house, though her phone and laptop are there. The colleague swears something terrible has happened to Megan.

Alvarez calls Jane not because she lives next door (which she does) or because they have worked together on two previous cases (which they have). He calls because Jane’s name and phone number are written on the blackboard above the built-in desk in Megan’s shiny, white kitchen.

This is the moment that has echoes in my own experience. One day, probably twenty-five years ago, I was sitting at my desk when our landline rang. I answered and a man’s voice said. “This is Detective So-and-So with the Brookline Police Department. Do you know xxxx?”

I searched my memory. The woman’s name he mentioned sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “I don’t think so,” I answered.

“She’s a hypnotherapist in Brookline,” he continued. “She’s been missing for three days. No one has seen her and she hasn’t been in contact with her family or friends. I’m in her office now and your name is written on a pad of paper. It’s the only thing on her desk.”

My heart skipped a beat. When he said hypnotherapist, the penny dropped. In those olden days before the internet, professionals advertised services in the classified section of the weekly local papers. I had seen the woman’s ad–the usual hypnotherapy thing for quitting smoking, weight loss, help with sleep problems. I had read the ad many times, weekly probably, as I skimmed the classifieds, and had been intrigued by it. But I had never, ever called her.

I assured the detective I wasn’t the Barbara Ross he was looking for. As I’ve written on this blog before, it’s a common name. I pointed him in the direction of a few other Barbara Rosses. He thanked me and hung up.

Of course I was curious. I scoured The Boston Globe for weeks looking for some followup about the hypnotherapist who had disappeared. Nothing ever appeared. I had to assume she turned up or, in any case, there was no evidence of foul play.

But I’ll never forget the feeling of picking up the phone. Of hearing the detective introduce himself and ask if I knew anything about this woman who was missing. Many times, I have pictured that pad of paper, the only thing on her desk, my name scrawled across it.

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In Jane Darrowfield and the Madwoman Next Door, Jane knows exactly why her name is on Megan Larsen’s blackboard. Jane runs a small business as a professional busybody. Megan has hired Jane to figure out if she’s paranoid or if someone really is out to get her. “I want you to figure out if I’m crazy,” Megan said.

I had to imagine how Jane felt when, awakened from sleep, only two days after she took the case, Detective Alvarez says her client is missing. Jane knows Alvarez and knows Megan–feels responsible for her, even. But I didn’t have to imagine how it would feel to pick up the phone and have a detective tell you the one piece of evidence a missing person left pointed him in your direction. That bit of the story I’ve lived.

Readers: Have you ever received a mysterious phone call? Tell us about it! Or simply say, “hi,” to be entered to win an Advance Reader Copy of Jane Darrowfield and the Madwoman Next Door.

A Heath Emergency in the Time of Covid-19

by Barb, writing from a family vacation in Stone Harbor, New Jersey

[image error]Bill and me and our granddaughters

When we owned our house in Boothbay Harbor, our family–my husband, Bill, our two kids, their spouses, and their kids–used to get together there over the Fourth of July long weekend. When we sold the house, we said, “No worries, we can rent.” Renting a house for a week seemed like a much better idea than paying for a house over the course of a year, especially given the maintenance required by a Victorian by the sea. The first year we rented the house right next to our Boothbay house. But this year, with a baby and a toddler coming with us, we had decided a place by a lake would be better. We made reservations at the campground where we had camped when our kids were little.

[image error]The house

By the end of April it was obvious no one was going to be comfortable going to a campground. But we hadn’t all been together since Thanksgiving and longed to see one another. My son and his wife hadn’t met their newest niece, and their seven year-old daughter missed us all. We decided to rent a house in the country that everyone could drive to in one day. We found a place on the Massachusetts/Connecticut border with enough bedrooms and a pool and a pond. The Fourth of July wasn’t available, (a downsized wedding had snapped it up), but the last week in June was. Plans were made. We had all been pretty isolated up to that point. It was our first social venture in months.

The place was great. We were thrilled to be together. My granddaughters were so excited to have another kid to play with that the more than five year difference in their ages wasn’t an obstacle.

[image error]Cooking

I started feeling sick around day three. Nothing serious, but lethargy and no appetite, which was annoying because every night a different person cooked and the results were delicious. I finally confessed to Bill. He took me through the covid checklist. The lethargy was my only matching symptom. But I started taking my temperature.

By the fourth night I had a fever of 100.3. We waited until the grandchildren were in bed and called the adults into the living room. I told them I had a fever. I felt terrible. I had been hugging and kissing their kids and preparing food.

They were enormously relieved. “We thought you were going to say you were dying!”

“I wouldn’t tell you I was dying in the middle of a vacation,” I insisted.

Everyone started looking up where to get covid tests, but every place we found required proof of Massachusetts residency, something I couldn’t supply. I felt worse as the night went on and in the morning called a friend with connections to the healthcare industry in Massachusetts. She forwarded an email I wrote describing my symptoms to a friend who is a hospital administrator and a former emergency room doctor. He got right back and said I certainly should have a covid test, since I was staying with so many people, but given my symptoms, the low community transmission rate in Maine and how careful I had been, he thought something else serious was going on with me and I should go to an emergency room right away.

[image error]A boatride

My husband dropped me at UMass Memorial Hospital’s emergency room and I walked in on my own. They put me in a covid room with negative airflow since I had a fever and my status was unknown. On that last day in June, the emergency room seemed perfectly normal. There was someone who’d had a heart attack in the next room. There was a kid who’d broken his arm.

My rapid response test came back two hours later as negative. I was happy to be able to call my family and report that. The hospital continued to treat my status as unknown, awaiting the results of the longer test. Aside from the fact that the medical personnel put on fresh PPE every time they entered my room and discarded it when they left, the biggest difference I noticed was I was cared for by a very small team. Two nurses, the attending physician and a resident did all the work, whether it was starting my IV or wheeling me down to have a CAT scan. I assumed this was so the smallest number of personnel had contact with me.

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The results of the CAT scan showed a large kidney stone, dangerously infected and going nowhere. At six at night the urologist called to say I needed a procedure to put a stent around the stone. By that point I was starving and lonely and my phone was dying. I thought he meant a procedure while I was awake and I didn’t think I could handle it. I was panicky and weepy until he assured me I would be unconscious for the surgery, at which point I said, “Oh, then do whatever you want.”

Now I’m embarrassed for falling apart. When I think about what must have gone on in that emergency room all spring, and I’m there crying because I’m hungry. I am deeply grateful to have been in a Massachusetts hospital on June 30th, and not on March 30th, or April 30th, or even May 30th.

By the time I woke up in recovery my second covid test had come back negative. They moved me to a non-covid floor in the hospital and the next day I was back at the rental place in time for dinner, with no restrictions except not to lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk.

[image error]All recovered

After a couple of courses of antibiotics, I had a second day surgery to remove the original stent, blast the stone, and put in a new stent. The day surgery place at the hospital was pretty normal, except fewer people than usual and everyone wearing masks. The second stent was removed a week ago.

Now I’m at the beach with my brother’s family and my son’s family. I feel fine and I’m so happy to be here.

Readers: Have you had an unusual experience in the time of Carona? Tell us about it.

[image error]The whole family together!

#quarancleaning

by Barb, in Portland, Maine, where it’s hot today. (Hot means 84 degrees in Maine in July.)

My husband and I moved to Portland in the summer of 2017. Though our house is plenty large enough for two people, it doesn’t have a basement or an attic, so the move involved a lot of sorting and dumping. The truth was, the problem went back a ways. In last decade we have helped clean out three houses of my parents’ and two houses of Bill’s mother’s. My dad and both my grandfathers were only children, so a lot of stuff has wended its way in our direction.

We did pretty well with the cleaning, if I do say so myself. But when we hosted Christmas for the extended family in 2018, every box that hadn’t been unpacked by then got shoved into a closet.

I had the best of intentions. I was going to dig into those boxes as soon as we got home from Key West in April 2019. But…I had two books due and three wonderful weddings to travel to, family gatherings in Boothbay Harbor, ME and Stone Harbor, NJ and lots of book stuff–Malice and Bouchercon, Barbara Vey’s conference in Milwaukee and a Kensington Cozy Con.

Somehow the whole year went by. But this year, 2020, I had no excuses. No house guests. No dinner parties. No book contract. If the job was ever going to be done, it was going to be done now.

I’ve set up a folding table in the living room and I’m bringing down the boxes two by two, going through them in the evening as Bill and I watch TV. I’m not being ruthless, though I should be. Do I really need the Malice program from the year Fogged Inn was nominated for an Agatha? I decided to save the cover, the Agatha page, the Wicked ad, and my bio. The rest is gone. Which means it will all need to be gone through again. Unless I make that scrapbook about my writing life I keep threatening.

It’s been a walk down memory lane. That’s for sure.

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I stared and stared at these notes trying to figure out what they were about. It’s the numbers of the photos from the photo shoot that resulted in the image on the cover page of this blog. I’m trying to figure out which photos are acceptable to all six Wickeds.






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My daughter’s Christmas list from 1987. Little did we know that first item, Phoebe’s brother, would become Derek, the Cabbage Patch doll who traveled to camp and college, France, Italy and Australia. Now he and his extensive wardrobe live at Kate’s house with her two little girls






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The case that should have contained my high school diploma but did not. I’m still a little bitter about it.






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A collection of my old business cards. I have more somewhere from later in my career.






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The recycle bag from this session. Paper maps from past travels, college papers (sadly not as brilliant as I remembered) and about fifty Playbills

Readers: Have you been #quarancleaning? Kondoing your condo? Shoveling your stuff? How do you decide what goes and what stays?

Maine Clambake #9 Cover Reveal

by Barb, writing from Portland, Maine

Hi all. I’m here today to reveal the cover for Maine Clambake Mystery #9, Shucked Apart. It’s due out February 23, 2021.

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As you can probably tell, this is the book about oyster farming–with a dead body, of course. Here’s the description.

The Snowden Family Clambake Company has a beloved reputation in Busman’s Harbor, Maine. Almost as famous is the sleuthing ability of proprietor Julia Snowden, which is why an oyster farmer seeks her out when she’s in trouble.

When Andie Greatorex is robbed of two buckets of oyster seed worth $35,000, she wonders if somebody’s trying to mussel her out of business. Could it be a rival oyster farmer, a steamed former employee, or a snooty summer resident who objects to her unsightly oyster cages floating on the beautiful Damariscotta River? There’s also a lobsterman who’s worried the farm’s expanding lease will encroach on his territory and Andie’s ex-partner, who may come to regret their split. Before Julia can make much headway in the investigation, Andie turns up dead, stabbed by a shucking knife. Now it’s up to Julia to set a trap for a cold and clammy killer . . .

Shucked Apart is available for pre-order in the new Kensington Mass Max and ebook editions at many fine retailers, including–

Amazon



Barnes & Noble



Kobo



IndieBound



Chapters Indigo

Readers: What do you think? Of the artwork? Of the description?

A Cover Reveal and a #giveaway

by Barb, out of book jail at last!

Here’s the cover for the second Jane Darrowfield Mystery due out October 27th. To celebrate the cover reveal, I’m giving away a copy of the first book in the series, Jane Darrowfield, Professional Busybody, to one lucky commenter on the blog.

The title of the new book is Jane Darrowfield and the Madwoman Next Door.

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Here’s the blurb.

Jane Darrowfield is using her retirement years to work as a professional busybody, with most of her business coming from her West Cambridge, Massachusetts, community. This time her client is right next door…

Megan, who’s purchased the house next to Jane’s, needs some help from her snooping neighbor. Megan’s been having blackouts, hearing voices—and feeling like someone’s following her. Are these symptoms of an illness—or signs that she’s in danger?

Considering the extensive security system in Megan’s house, it seems like she should be safe—yet she soon vanishes into thin air. Some think she’s run away, but would this ambitious young lawyer on the partner track really miss a meeting with an important client? And where’s Megan’s cat?

The mystery is about to deepen when the cat is finally located in a hidden panic room—and as Jane and the police look into Megan’s friends, family, and past, it may be time to sound the alarm…

***

My editor warned me that the title was a long one. At the time, he was worried about the design of the cover and fitting all those words on it. In one way, Darrowfield is a terrific surname for Jane, because apparently it isn’t really a name. Which makes it highly Googleable if someone is looking for the books. On the other hand, it is l-o-o-n-n-ng.

I really wanted the title and I prevailed. I didn’t think about how, by the end of this fall, I would be so tired of typing it and so tired of trying to remember if madwoman was one word and next door was two, or if it was the other way around.

Like Jane Darrowfield, Professional Busybody, JDMND (see how I did that) is a Barnes and Noble exclusive for one year. That means it is only in print, not electronic, and only available at barnesandnoble.com or if you go to an actual Barnes & Noble (assuming that is even possible in the end of October, 2020.)

[image error]Meanwhile, Jane Darrowfield, Professional Busybody goes into wide distribution on June 30th, in print, ebook, and audiobook formats in all English-language markets. The ebook is up on Netgalley right now for those of you who are reviewers and there is a 100 ebook giveaway running on Goodreads.

P.S. On Thursday evening, Edith and I will be reading at a Noir at the Bar New England online event. Here’s the link for more information and to register if you wish. We’d love to see you there!

Readers: What do you think of the cover, title and blurb for Jane Darrowfield and the Madwoman Next Door? Too long? Cozy/not cozy? Can’t wait/can wait? Don’t worry, you won’t hurt my feelings. It’s done and dusted. And one lucky commenter will receive a mass market paperback of Jane Darrowfield, Professional Busybody.

Buy links

Jane Darrowfield and the Madwoman Next Door

Barnes & Noble

Jane Darrowfield, Professional Busybody

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Kobo
Chapters Indigo
Your local, independent bookstore

A Long, Strange Trip

by Barb, posting for the first time in 2020 from Portland, Maine

Regular readers know that my husband, Bill, and I spend January through March every year in Key West. We live in a rental property there. It suits us fine. We’ve owned a lot of houses over the years and something always needs fixing. With the rental we simply call the office and help is on the way. They don’t even like us to change light bulbs.

As March marched on and the news got worse, we assessed our situation. I assumed that if the country or the whole east coast shut down, we’d be able to extend our lease. The people scheduled to move into our house in April were the owners. I reasoned if we couldn’t leave, they couldn’t arrive, so we could hold tight. The second week in March we called the rental agency to make sure this was true. They assured us that even if the owners did arrive they had plenty of (unexpectedly) empty property.

[image error]Sloppy Joe’s shuttered in Key West on St. Patrick’s Day 2020. Photo by Bill Carito

You’ve probably read a lot about Florida’s response to the pandemic. Our local governments, the City of Key West and Monroe County, were pretty on top of things. The Coast Guard controls the port and the last cruise ship left the city on March 14. The city closed down bars and restaurants at 5:00 pm on Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17, foregoing a lot of revenue. Those spring break photos you saw in the latter part of March weren’t from Key West. On March 20, the county closed the hotels, B&Bs and all short-term rentals. We were in a long-term rental, so I wasn’t worried. I neglected to read the fine print.

On Monday, March 23 we called our rental agency to see what our options would be. We’d already received one hotel cancellation for our originally planned trip home. I was antsy about finding food, restrooms, gas, and places to stay along the way. At that point we were informed that we couldn’t stay even if we wanted to. The county had also banned the extension of all long-term leases. We were going to have to leave.

That was my personal low point. Just knowing we didn’t have an alternative. But I also understood. Key West Hospital is small and the city didn’t need us overburdening their healthcare system. It was time to go.

We planned our trip, 1800 miles, for 3 days and 2 nights. We normally travel at a much more leisurely pace, visiting along the way with our son and his family in Virginia, my brother and his wife in Pennsylvania, and our daughter and her family in Massachusetts. All those visits would be skipped and we’d drive 600 miles a day in an effort to minimize the time on the road and the number of hotel stays.

We left Key West on April 1 at 8:00 am.

From the beginning of our trip, traffic was light. It wasn’t unexpected, but it was very strange. Our first stop was in Marathon at Mile Marker 59 on Route 1 (fifty-nine miles from Mile Marker 0 in Key West) for a Dunkin Donuts coffee and the public restrooms at a Winn Dixie supermarket. As we would every time we returned to the car for the next three days, we wiped down the inside and outside door handles, arm rests, seat belt buckles, steering wheel and gear shift and then hand sanitized.

[image error]Not much trafic on Seven Mile Bridge, April 1, 2020

At Mile Marker 112, there was then and still is now, a roadblock. Only full-time residents, property owners, trucks delivering essential supplies and people doing essential jobs are allowed to enter the Keys, creating, as some have said, the largest gated community in the world. From the other side of the road, the stop looked to be well-run and orderly and didn’t cause a significant jam of the much diminished traffic.

Florida rest stops were open and clean– for restrooms, the little market, and gas only, attended by people with masks and gloves.

[image error]Rest stop in Florida

We passed the stop at the Florida/Georgia line at around 5:00 at night. Like the one in the Keys, it appeared from the other side of the road to be well-run and orderly, but of course it was much bigger. All cars coming into Florida were diverted to a rest-stop. I know there are roadblocks for drunk driving and when dangerous criminals are at large, but to see something like this with all these state police cars at the border between one state and another, felt very odd and uncomfortable. Shortly after we left the state, Florida’s governor declared at statewide stay-at-home order to go into effect in two days time.

[image error]Roadblock at the Florida/Georgia line

We spent the first night at a Hilton Garden Inn at the Savannah airport just off 95. There were more people than I would have thought given the lack of traffic on the roads. Takeout options were available from local restaurants but we opted for sandwiches from the hotel store. While Bill wrangled the luggage, I clorox-wiped every surface in the room, including the light switches, phone and remote.

The next day in South Carolina and North Carolina there were very few personal vehicles on the road just giant trucks. At the rest stop on 95 where we ate our pb&j sandwiches in the car, every vehicle was a huge truck or car with a license plate from a northeast state with two tense-looking snowbirds inside.

Truck stops were orderly. Places to wait to pay were marked out. In a men’s room North Carolina Bill came upon two truckers spraying down the sinks and faucets, saying they ALWAYS sanitize everything when on the road so this is nothing new.

We spent the second night at a Hilton Garden Inn in Winchester, VA. We planned to take Route 81 to Route 84 through Pennsylvania to avoid New Jersey and New York City. The hotel was more like what I had expected. Very few people and long empty hallways. It felt like The Shining or an episode of The Prisoner. But there was room service available. The chef told Bill they served 3 meals that day total. I was amazed they were still able to offer it.

Our last day we sped through ten states, though three at only glancing blows. We crossed Connecticut on Route 84 in an hour and twenty minutes. For years we lived in Boston and my parents lived in northeast Pennsylvania and every time we crossed Connecticut I wondered how we could be stuck in a little, tiny state for so, so long. It turns out, when there’s no traffic, you aren’t.

We made it home safely, figured out how to get food and our mail, and have now quarantined for thirteen days. We both feel fine. It was an epic trip. We traveled through fourteen states, from summer to spring to winter, from one end of the country to the other. Every person we met was polite and respectful and doing their absolute best. I wouldn’t want to do the trip in that way again, but I am glad we did it.

Readers: What about you? Any epic journeys you can tell us about? We’d all like to be armchair travelers right about now.

Difficult Conversations

by Barb, last solo post from Key West and feeling a little sad about it

[image error]Jane Darrowfield, the sleuth in my new Jane Darrowfield, Professional Busybody series specializes in solving problems that while vexing aren’t appropriate for the police or other authorities. For the most part her caseload is pretty trivial. Helping a woman leave her hairdresser and move to the one at the next chair. Or asking someone to stop feeding their neighbor’s cat, in a case of alienation of feline affection.

“In Jane’s opinion, many people sadly lacked the skill to have difficult conversations with acquaintances and neighbors. Given a noisy house party or a car parked blocking a driveway, people stewed in silence–or worse called the police–when a simple knock on the door and a polite request would have done the job. It was into this breach Jane had leapt again and again.”

Of course, it turns out not everyone needs Jane’s services. When she names her hefty fee, some potential clients decide they’ll tackle the problem on their own. And that is Jane’s intent–to get people to find their own solutions whenever possible.

Jane Darrowfield is my Jane Marple. But she’s American, she lives in the indefinite now, she’s divorced, not single, and she charges for her services. She learned a lot of what she knows about human nature not just by observing her neighbors (though there is plenty of that) but by toiling in corporate America.

In some ways Jane’s skill at having difficult conversations is wish fulfillment on my part, because I hate confrontation. In situations where I had to, particularly when I worked in a day job, I could put on my big girl panties and have the dreaded conversations. I’ve fired or laid off countless people. I’ve confronted people about the kinds of behavior that often signal substance abuse. I’ve even had the dreaded BO conversation. More than once.

But the closer conversations hew to the bone, the more freighted they are with emotional truth–the interventions, the declarations of love or hate, the boundary-settings, the expressions of deep and close grief–the more difficult they are for me. I’ve gone into plenty of situations white-knuckled, hoping things will go better this time, when I should have overcome my cowardice and said something.

Not that Jane’s life is perfect. She is deeply estranged from her son and only child and has been for more that a decade, at his initiation. All three of her bridge playing friends have pointed out, not unkindly, the irony of her running around solving other people’s problems while this cavernous hole remains in her own life–and maybe she should do something about it. So she has trouble tackling the big stuff, too.

My ramblings here are about being on the initiating side of difficult conversations. Being on the receiving side is never pleasant, because the receiver hasn’t had time to work up the courage and rehearse the interaction.

But sometimes these conversations have to be had. Recently I was in a business situation where someone, or more than one someone, lacked the courage to tell me something difficult. Or they just didn’t care and figured that meant I wouldn’t care either, if they considered my perspective at all. Not hearing about it and finding out on my own made the situation much worse. I’m not sure what the plan was here. Did they think I wouldn’t notice? In our interconnected world that was never a possibility.

Lately I seem to be reading so many stories of business and personal situations where a direct conversation might have made a situation better, or would have stopped it from spiraling out of control with horrible financial, public relations, and emotional results.

Readers: What do you think? Have we lost the skill of having difficult conversations? Did we ever have it? Or are they going on all around us and only the failures attract all the attention?

Feel free to give examples of conversations that have gone well and created healthier situations and conversations that have gone awry. And also feel free to blur the edges to protect both the innocent and the guilty. In fact, we encourage it!