Vicki Lane's Blog, page 531

Hailstorm

 The devil's behind the door, beating his wife with a frying pan -- that's what my grandmother used to say when there was sunshine and rain at the same time.  We got a bit of hail as well. . . And a low slung rainbow. . .
Everything wants to grow. . .

An Illustrated Quote

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More About Sodom

  The Church of the Little Flower sits catty-cornered across the road from a Baptist church. Jane, a Sodom-raised acquaintance of mine told me her memory of how the young people there at the Catholic church for mass would hear the Baptist congregation begin to sing and would squirm on the hard benches, eager for the Latin service to be over so they could dart across the road and join in the Baptist singing. Singing's important in Sodom. This little community is the home place of ballad singers who preserve the old songs their forebears brought over from England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Sheila Kay Adams is one of the seventh generation to sing  those stories of love and death.  She's a talented musician and storyteller and her "Come Go Home with Me" is a series of charming vignettes, from funny to heart breaking,  about growing up in Sodom back in the Sixties.
Sheila tells a delightful story about religion in Sodom.  First she and all the other kids would go to the Church of the Little Flower, where the service was all incomprehensible Latin. As soon as that was over, on to the Baptist Church where, though the service was in English, the pastor had no teeth, which made his words equally unintelligible.
"We all grew up, " says Sheila, " thinking that religion was one of the great mysteries of life that we mere mortals weren't supposed to understand."  

Silently Still Here...

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Sodom and the Church of the Little Flower

Yesterday I went with friends to Sodom -- a little community not far from our farm as the crow flies, but, as the car travels, about 45 minutes away -- high up and reached by a very winding road.

According to the story, Sodom got its name about a century ago when a visiting Methodist minister, appalled by the free and easy ways of the inhabitants, said that they were no better than a bunch of Sodomites.

Officially. the place is called Revere but the residents cling proudly to the old name.

This trip came under the heading of research -- in my chapter of the collaborative novel I'm currently working on, my characters pay a visit to Sodom. And since it's been about thirty years since I was there, I thought I ought to take a look again before I wrote about it.


The Church of the Little Flower is kind of unexpected. It was the home of a Roman Catholic mission that operated from 1931 into, I think, the seventies --  here in this mountain fastness where the majority of churches are some flavor of Baptist.
In fact, today the church is owned by a Baptist. But he was evidently so moved by the feeling the building invokes, that rather than turn it into a vacation home, as had been his original intent, he restored it. And today it's available for meetings or special events.

I have a lot more to tell you about Sodom -- but as I doubt I'll be among the elect raptured away tomorrow, I'll save it for another post.

Eddie and the Garden

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White Coral Bells Remind Me . . . (re-post)

"White coral bells, upon a slender stalk,
Lilies of the valley deck my garden walk.Oh, don't you wish that you could hear them ring?That will happen only when the fairies sing."
Every year, when the tiny fragrant lilies of the valley come into bloom, I'm reminded of this song from my time as a Girl Scout and I slip into a haze of reminiscence . . .
I adored being a Girl Scout. In those simpler times of the mid-Fifties, I even loved wearing that green uniform. Our troop met at St. John's Episcopal Church and we always concluded our meeting by going to Evening Prayer in the church's dim little chapel. Piously we knelt and stood and sat, singing the responses, knowing ourselves to be steeped in goodness. The beautiful words of the liturgy still lurk somewhere in the back of my mind.
One of the things I best remember about that troop was The Gold Key -- a much coveted award, given after a camping trip, to the Scout who had best lived up to the Scout ideal. And here's the really clever thing -- it was awarded secretly. At the end of the meeting after the camping trip, all the scouts would take off their green webbing belts (each marked inside with the owner's name) and one of the assistant scout leaders would disappear with the belts into a back room.
Finally we would form a circle for the closing ceremonies and while we were singing -- probably the white coral bells song -- we would close our eyes and the scout leaders would quietly put our belts back around our waists. A gold key would have been painted inside one of those belts but the recipient was never named. As I recall, no one even checked inside her belt till she got home -- it just wasn't done. And girls rarely spoke of receiving the award though, somehow, eventually it became common knowledge just whose belt held how many gold keys.
Our Scout leader, Polly Telford, who introduced me to the Narnia books and tried to teach me to swim, was the kindest, most selfless of women. We all adored her and she, in turn, worked very hard to provide us with all sorts of treats and outings. And here's the other side of the happy memories -- and my first experience with the frightening power of the mob.
Polly invited the troop for a spaghetti supper at her house. (Simpler times, as I said -- this really was a much anticipated treat.) Vats of sauce and pasta were prepared and we filled our plates and settled like a flock of pigeons all over the just-installed velvety gray living room rug.
I don't know who threw the first piece of spaghetti. I sincerely hope it wasn't me. But soon our well-mannered, church-going, Scout Pledge reciting group of ten and eleven year-olds were in the midst of a major food fight -- a veritable riot.
And I don't remember what finally stopped us; we were well and truly out of control -- a mindless, screaming mob of preteens. Maybe someone turned a fire hose on us -- it seems like it must have taken something drastic.
I do remember exactly what that new carpet looked like with curling noodles patterning its stained surface. And I remember the lot of us, the next day --penitent, stunned, weeping -- trying to clean up the terrible mess we had made of our beloved leader's house, wondering how we could have done such a thing.
That was over fifty years ago and I'm still baffled and saddened when I remember the unthinking chaos we slipped into as if it were an old familiar garment. Even the Gold Key girls threw spaghetti that long-ago night.

Wet Wordless World

 

FAQ - Pen Names

Q: Is Vicki Lane a pen name? How did you choose it if it is? And why did you decide to use one?
A: Vicki Lane is the name on my birth certificate. My married (and legal) name is  Vicki Lane Skemp.  When my first book  was nearing publication, I asked my editor what she thought I should use -- Vicki Skemp, Vicki Lane Skemp, V.L. Skemp, etc. -- and she said, "I think you should use Vicki Lane. It puts you in the middle of the bookshelf or book store... "

Actually, I suspect she just thought Skemp is a somewhat clunky name -- as do I.

People have various reasons for choosing a pen name -- some for privacy, to to evoke a certain feeling -- romance writers often have rather exciting names that I suspect are made up -- Yasmyne de la Fuente, Amber Flame, Smolder Trelawney . . .
And sometimes writers who are switching to a different type of  fiction will use a different name so as not to confuse their fans. Abigail Butterworth may write sweetly pretty cozies but when she's writing as Dominique Scarlett, expect the fiction to sizzle.
I'd suggest googling possible names to make sure there's not another someone writing and publishing under whatever name you choose to use. There's a Vicki Lane who writes romances (unpublished so far) and has a pretty active web presence. I don't know if I'd have gone with some other name because of her but had she been already publishing, I might have.

Mute-ish Monday

The pot of gold is on my friend Rob's land... should I tell him?Perhaps he already knows.
 Mearl's canning house ...
wood burning cookstove upstairs, root cellars, storage for her canned food down below...
Italian ArumandRhododendron  'Gomer Waterer' ...