Nancy Martin's Blog, page 19

Girlz, Girlz, Girlz

Girlz, Girlz, Girlz

by Nancy Martin     

Before heading to New Orleans for the American Library Association's huuuuuge national convention, I had to go shopping for some clothes to wear in the hot pea soup that is Louisiana.  At the mall (argh!) I eventually wandered into a deserted store with a bored clerk who wasn't very helpful.

Not at first.

Then she let it slip that she "had a game" that evening.

I perked up.  What kind of game? And the conversational floodgate burst open!

Turns out, this lovely young lady with long, dark ringlets of hair and beautifully made-up eyes and a stylish outfit with super cute shoes . . . IS A PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL PLAYER. 

                                 

No kidding.  She plays tackle and guard plus she's also on the special teams. She also holds down two parttime jobs and goes to college fulltime, where she is studying accounting. She works out every day and attends team practices and travels all over the nation to play games in other cities that have professional women's football. No surprise, she gave up her cable TV because she never has time to watch television.  She has a bright smile and an even brighter gleam in her eyes.  Let me tell you, this girl is GOING PLACES.

Did you play sports as a kid? When I was a teenager, there was a lot of talk about learning to play "lifetime sports"--that is, physical activities you could play long into your life like golf and tennis, not field hockey that required actual equipment and coaches and travel buses.  My theory was that women were encouraged to play stuff like tennis because all the college funding was going to finance the men's football and basketball programs, and there wasn't any dough left over for women's sports.  Fortunately, Title IX came along, and now schools are forced to have sports programming for women.  I don't think most schools would do so, unless they were coerced, but maybe I'm just cynical. It took me three weeks of lobbying to get myself on the men's swimming team in college, and even then, the coach was Not Happy.

Sports not only make us more physically fit.  They help us learn to get along with others in a socially acceptable way.  You learn to be a leader.  And if you want to get better, you learn self-discipline. Sports teach us those 3 Ps--practice, patience and persistence, which are lifetime skills if ever I heard them. (Even though I'm still not big on patience.  So sue me.)  And team sports help kids learn to manage their own egos, because unless you're LeBron James or Tiger Woods, there's always going to be somebody who can whip your butt.  (Wait--forget I mentioned Tiger Woods.  His ego's getting a real beating these days.)  

Team sports also give kids a chance to experience adults--coaches--in a way that's different from the experience they get from parents or even teachers.  Coaches are mentors in ways that every kid should experience. Hell, even adults need mentors. But maybe if you had a great mentor as a kid, you're willing to be a mentor yourself now

In my view? Here's the main thing: Sports give kids a chance to be good at something.  I mean really good.  Being talented--and understanding that you're talented--gives a person the kind of confidence it takes to seek out challenges and be successful in life.  And maybe your sport isn't football or swimming.  My aunt Nancy--who is the least coordinated, most physically unfit adult I ever knew--became a college champion in ping pong! And she went on to become a world-renowned psychoanalyst.  She figured out a way to be successful in a unique way.

Maybe your sport isn't even a sport. Maybe it's knitting.  Or playing the trombone. Or writing. Or something nobody else even recognizes as an accomplishment, but you know in your heart that you have it.  It gives you a foundation. My daughter Sarah played all kinds of sports and was pretty good.  She acted in plays, and she was pretty good.  But she was really, really adept at fixing things. I came home from the grocery store one day to find her on the living room floor with a gigantic theater light spread out around her--she was taking it apart and putting it back together so it would work again. For her graduation gift, my aunt bought her a power drill. She is now a postive, can-do kind of person who doesn't flinch when asked to try doing something she's never done before. She was an accomplished kind of kid who felt she could do things other kids were hesitant to try. If you find yourself stuck in a lifeboat and need company? Choose Sarah.  She'll get you home.

Anyway, I chatted with that professional football player, and decided she's going far in life.  I could see it in her face. I've been thinking a lot about her since.  What kind of courage does it take to become a professional football player? What kind of skills--mental and physical? She's another one I'd like to have in my lifeboat, please.

                                  

Tell me about your formative experiences. Were you a sports kid? Or did you learn to be accomplished at something else? Tell all!

Middle-Aged Friendship Takes Guts

By Sarah

My mother used to spout a Pennsylvania Dutch expression that, loosely translated, meant if you got to adulthood and could count your true friends on one hand you were lucky.

To me, then a gregarious teenager, this was another one of those PA Dutch downer phrases like "Cooking Lasts. Kissing Don't." It made no sense. I had tons of friends, enough in our neighborhood for one hand alone! What was my mother talking about?

Of course, now that I'm in my late forties, I know EXACTLY what she's talking about. I have friends, sure, people I know from work or from my husband's work, girls around town. But true friends....ahh, that's a different story. A true friend is your loyal ally, no questions asked. That's not to say she's not going to grill you later or tell you that you're crazy - because that's also what true friends do. But in the moment when you need her to come over/take you to the hospital/let you spend the night, the true friend is your go-to person. Explanation not required.

KINDRED SPIRITS, my latest novel which hit the shelves last week, explores this phenomenon. (Yes, this is BSP - but I haven't BSP'd in over a year! Please stick with me!)

In the story, three women who became friends when they were young mothers and couldn't take the one upsmanship of the PTA clique, reunite after their children have grown and after their mutual friend has died. She leaves for them an assignment based on a secret too disruptive to have shared with her husband and own sons, that they must fulfill. And, so, they go on a road trip to find the answer - and to find themselves.

Okay, so it's not the most original premise in the world. Road trip books and movies (calling THELMA & LOUISE) are old hat. That's not to say, however, that just because the structure is the same so is the story. I learned more from writing KINDRED SPIRITS than I have from any other book and, not to get too woowoo on you, it was almost as if my purpose for writing it was not the book itself, but the process of doing so.

Two crises socked me broadside while I was writing KINDRED SPIRITS. The first was that my father fell ill and died. The second was that my next door neighbor and friend, the muse for KINDRED SPIRITS, rapidly lost her struggle against cancer.

Because KINDRED SPIRITS begins with a woman dying, I never told Trish it was about her, but she knew. And she would crack jokes like "you can use this in your book," during surreal interruptions from writing when I would have to drop everything to rush her to the doctors.

Once, while I was at a particularly good part of the book, my concentration was interrupted by the blast of the phone. Caller ID showed it was Trish. Again. Gritting my teeth, I put on my cheerful voice as I quickly took notes trying to remember what it was I'd been trying to write.

"I can't work the fax and I've been over and over and I called Philadelphia and they said I've got to get it in by four Boston can't but maybe L.A. can. Can you believe not Boston? Can I borrow your fax?"

I checked the date. Three days after her last chemo session. Those were always the worst.

"How long have you been throwing up?" I said.

"Since midnight yesterday. I'm okay. I'm not going back to that hospital. That's not why I'm calling. Can I use your fax?"

"Sure. I'll fax it for you."  Trish's husband was in California on a case and if my calculations were correct, she hadn't managed to keep down any fluid in over 24 hours. The way she was talking, it was clear. Trish was seriously dehydrated. "Then I'm going to pick you up and take to CVH."

"No."

"Okay," I lied.

A half hour later, Trish was in my car, not joking, barely conscious. Her daughter was in the backseat, reading to get away from it all, as I dropped her off for some sort of after-school lesson. Then I drove Trish to the hospital where I talked the nurses into finding a room for her and hooking her up with IV fluids. They insisted on taking her blood first. 

"I don't have any blood to take," Trish said, collapsing on a bed. "You'll see."

She was right. They couldn't even find a vein.

We waited unnecessarily. An hour or so went by as I frequently badgered the nurses station. Finally, someone on the ball got with it and hooked her up. Watching her return to life reminded me of the monarch butterfly I'd once captured coming out if its cocoon and inflating its wings. 

"I'm dying you know," she said after they hooked up IV bag #2. This was big for Trish, a fiesty Irish fighter, a clinical child psychologist who took on the toughest kids at the toughest school. "Never surrender" had been her motto for six years.

I studied the linoleum floor, tears springing to my eyes. "Don't say that."

"I have to say that because this is what death looks like and you have to see. We all die, you know. You'll die, too. We just have to face facts."

Being Trish, though, she denied this the next morning. It was all a blip. A mere bump in the road. She was going to kick this thing. That fax I sent? It went to a radical program where this new drug would cure her cancer. She was in! (LA, requiring her to fly out once a month.) That was it. Cured!

On December 23rd, months later, Trish had the book group over to her house. That night, she hooked herself up to her first dose of intraveneous morphine and never fully regained consciousness. She died on the morning of December 24th.

One more finger free on my aging hand.

 

Sarah

 

 

We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident

HANK: Happy Fourth of July! We all have our traditions--ours, happily, includes lobster and fireworks.

But I have another tradition.  Every July 4th, I read the Declaration of Independence.

It started, oh, twenty years ago. I was invited to participate in a ceremony at the old Boston City Hall, the place, right near where the Boston Massacre took place, where the founders, standing on a balcony,  read the just-written declaration to the colonists on the street below.

We each were assigned a section--I got the "he has erected a multitude of new offices" part. And then, in turn, we stepped out on the balcony and read it out loud to the people below. Tarts, you can imagine I hardly got through it without crying. And still, when I read it, it makes me emotional.

At the time I said to my husband (not the current one, but that's a different blog) "Can you imagine? Back then, in 1776, hearing this for the first time? Wouldn't you have been filled with patriotism and power and intensity and the zeal for independence?" And he said: "Heck no. I'd be thinkn'--this is treason! Get me out of here."

So there's that. Which, of course, makes it all the more powerful.

So happy Fourth of July, all.  Take a moment, before the fireworks and singing and barbeques and strawberry shortcake...to read the eloquent words that helped make it possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

— That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

 But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

 — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

 To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

 He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

 He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

 He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

 He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

 He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

 For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

 For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

 For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

 For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

 For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

 He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

 In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren.

We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.

We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare,

That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. —

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. —

John Hancock

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

 Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

 New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

 Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

 Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

 Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton 

HANK: Can you imagine, hearing this for the first time? What would you have done? Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

What Gets You Over the Hurdles?

Sasscer Hill 

[Margaret Maron:    Sasscer Hill's first novel, Full Mortality, was published last year and was nominated first for an Agatha and just this past week for a Macavity.  When I read the first page, I was immediately reminded of opening Virgina Lanier's first bloodhound novel.  A fresh new voice rose up off the page and immediately drew me into a fascinating and unfamiliar world.  I was not one of those little girls who loved horses, so it was the writing that hooked me, not the subject.  Although she writes authoritatively about steeplechasing and racing, you never feel as if you're reading an information dump, i.e., "I learned this, this, and this about my subject and now I'm going to pad a few pages with my research."  She'll have a second book in the series out this summer, but do read this one first.  You'll be the richer for it.]

 

 

 

 

Riding in a steeplechase race can be terrifying. So can writing a novel.

In 1986, when I decided to ride a timber race over solid, four-foot jumps, I was afraid I wouldn't make it to the finish. Afraid my skills, talent, and courage would fail me. Afraid that my pacing between those big hurdles might be off – that these obstacles might prove insurmountable. Sound familiar? If you've ever attempted something that frightens you, it probably does.

When I sit down to write, I worry. Will that strange internal energy kick in again and help me create imagery, plot improvements, and new and fitting character traits for the people in my story? Author Sue Grafton calls the unconscious – the more instinctual and irrational side of her psyche – "Shadow." Sue  believes both she and Shadow write her books. I call mine, "Wild Spirit" and believe it makes perfect sense that it takes two to write a book.

In the 1986 race there were three of us. My normal conscious self, my horse, and my wild spirit.  Was it rational to be both terrified and joyous with a solid wood-fence rocketing toward me at thirty miles an hour? I'm not sure, but I've never been so focused. I communicated with the horse on a level I have never experienced before or since. It was like he was reading my thoughts. He took every jump exactly the way I wanted him to, lifting off where I wanted him to. My conscious self couldn't believe it was happening.                       

When my writing is going well, it's the same way. I come up with a memorable image, an intriguing scene, or good dialog and wonder, "Where did that come from?"  

I have to plot my novels first. If I don't, I'll go off course and slog into weeds and rocks. The story will spread out and flounder.

When I start the first draft, it's like a practice run. Prior to riding the race, I envisioned winning it many times. A week before, I spent a day driving my horse, Rascal, to and from Potomac, Maryland so we could take a test gallop over the eleven fences. Schooling Rascal over this course was like a first draft. Not the real thing, but a start.

The actual race was grueling. Two-and-one-half miles, uphill and down, over timber. There were naysayers hanging around before the race. People who said I didn't know what I was doing, that I didn't know how to train a horse for a race. Just like the people who said I'd never finish the first novel, that it would never be published, that I was wasting my time.

But I won that race at Potomac (that's me on Rascal sailing over the fence). I wrote the novel and it got published. The book was even nominated for a Best First Agatha.

Still, I worry. Can I do it again? Can I ride the wild spirit that carries me to the end?

What are you afraid of? Do you have a shadow or wild spirit that helps you face that fear? What do you call it?

 

Goofin' Off

 Margaret Maron

 

Summertime and so hard to answer that alarm clock and do the mature responsible thing.  

Do you ever just roll over in bed and say "To heck with it!  Today is a  ME day!"

Of course, if there are kids to be fed, dogs to be walked, tomatoes to be canned, or unexpected house guests, then of course we'll sigh and get on with it.

But imagine you had twenty-four hours at your disposal. I'm not talking getting on a plane and flying somewhere, but the simple pleasures to be found within your own home or within a 15-minute drive.

Would you jump out of bed and head for the lake?

Would you take your coffee out to your patio or garden and just enjoy the beauty of what you've created?

Would you find a cool quiet spot with the most appealing book in your TBR stack?

 
Would you finally make one of those yummy-sounding recipes you've clipped out of the magazine?

Pedicure?  Sort pictures?  Long soak in the tub?  What's your vision of goofing off?

From Nancy Martin:

So.........it's the long holiday weekend!  And most of us will attend picnics, right? Watch some fireworks, too? Catch a few sets of Wimbledon, maybe?

No, we're willing to bet that most of us are going to spend at least one hour of the long, relaxing weekend reading a book!

What are you reading? Anything good? 

  I am reading CLEOPATRA for my book club.  We're planning a toga party (!!) for our meeting, so it should be a hoot. Depending on what I eat at our various picnics, I may have to break out the queen-sized sheets.)  For my plane trip this week, I read the new Evanovich--SMOKIN SEVENTEEN, which is just as fast, but a lot steamier than usual.  Big fun.

And if you haven't found a book to read this weekend?  Check out Sarah's new release, KINDRED SPIRITS!  Here's a video Sarah made with her best friend Lisa.  Aren't they cute??

  

From Nancy Pickard: I just started reading Sarah's new book, KINDRED SPIRITS, and I'm in awe of how she started it. (Don't worry, there are no spoilers ahead.) For a variety of reasons, the way it starts takes writer-guts, in my opinion, and she has done it so well.  I want time today to keep reading!

I recently read two Harlan Cobens in a row, and enjoyed both of them a lot, but man, they brought home to me that cozy mysteries and romances get such an unfair rap for being "unrealistic"!  I have to laugh. As if the tough guy novels aren't "unrealistic"! 

My friend Randy Russell has his first YA book out, and I think it's fabulous.  It's called DEAD RULES, and it's kind of shocking and "out there"--about a girl who dies and misses her boyfriend so much in the afterlife that she's determined to kill him so he will join her.  It's funny, sensitive, very bold-- just like a lot of wonderful teenagers are.

I've also started a handful of books that I haven't finished yet--probably not a good sign.

 

From Joshilyn:  Joshilyn is heading for the Beach! On the long drive, she'll be listening to the second half the AWESOME audio of THE SCENT OF RAIN AND LIGHTENING, and once there, she plans to flop in the sun and drink frosty concoctions full of nutritious fruit (and possibly some liquor...) while reading a ton of ARCS for blurbs and, of course, KINDRED SPIRITS.

 

From Holly: I happen to be reading BOTH Kindred Spirits and Sticky Fingers this weekend AND I get to meet our own Kerry in the flesh as she is visiting from all the way across the country. I'm so excited. I might get to see some of her ink.

 

From Sarah: Nothing like post-deadline reading. Finished THE PARIS WIFE, which I thoroughly enjoyed especially now that I know Midnight in Paris is a great movie about the same time period. Even though you knew where Hemingway's first marriage was headed (to the rocks and ON the rocks), it was fascinating to witness all these Midwesterners (so MANY Midwesterners) flock to Paris and try to recreate themselves as sophisticates. And, of course, there's Scott + Zelda. Your liver will hurt by the end, tho.

Also, STATE OF WONDER by Ann Patchett. You know, I never did care for HEART OF DARKNESS. Too male. Too boring. But STATE OF WONDER has taken this theme and infused it with women, a questionable drug manufacturer, greed, insanity, snakes, rare tropical diseases and quite possibly murder. Or not. And the writing could not be better.

In addition, I've been socking away a bunch of YA literature. BUMPED by Megan McCafferty takes the HANDMAID'S TALE (a favorite!) and sets it in NJ in the not-too-distant future when fertility becomes so rare that the rich are willing to pay teenagers to "bump." A really worthwhile read.

There's so much more I want to read.....cannot wait!

 

From Harley: I'm reading Ken Wilber's A BRIEF HISTORY OF EVERYTHING, which I love so much, starting with the cover, which is just a photo of Ken Wilber, bald-headed, with big glasses. Okay, I have not actually begun the book, but I've read all the flap copy, the Foreword, the Preface to the Second Edition, A Note to the Reader, Introduction, and a couple of scary-looking charts. When I actually get to the book itself, I'm hoping to understand . . . well, everything. I'll report back.

 

From Diane: I'm reading THE PEACH KEEPER by Sarah Addison Allen. It reminds me of the sort of story I would write, so of course I'm loving it! But what really gets me is the cover and the title. This cover mesmerized me the first time I laid eyes on it. Great covers sell books!

 

 

 

Flan-Flan-Bo-Ban, Banana-Fanna Fo Flan

By Joshilyn Jackson

 

When I texted this picture to my fellow Southern scribe Susan Rebecca White, she immediately texted back, "!!!! YOU'RE VISITING THE MOTHER SHIP!"

Indeed I was.

We all have heroes, and (Mary) Flannery O'Connor is one of mine.

In my most recent novel, Backseat Saints,the narrator is a rural Southern Catholic girl, mostly in homage to O'Connor, and she references and even quotes O'Connor as she drives her hell bent, bullet-ridden way toward a bright red kind of redemption.

Rose Mae Lolley did not come by her Flannery love by accident; it's infectious, and she caught a bad case of it from me.

The curator at the O'Connor house is a guy who rents the topmost floor and who has spent several years now working on a book in which Jehovah gets into cosmic trouble and hires an atheist lawyer to rep him. How oddly, weirdly, wonderfully fitting.

The house actually belonged to a rawwwther well heeled relation of the O'Connor's. They could not have afforded it on their own.

That same relation also must have bought them this pram, as it is gilt-soaked, and was the Valco Baby Tri Mode of its day. (That particular Valco is called THE CADILLAC OF STROLLERS by...well, mostly the guys who produce it, but you get the point.)

O'onnor slept in this baby cage as an infant; not because she was JUST that savage, but to protect her from mosquitoes bearing deadly fever.

Later, she had pet chickens – always a bird girl, Flannery, even before her famous peacocks. She wanted to sleep with her pets. I get this; I have two to four animals draped all around us in the bed most nights. Alas, her mother refused to let her sleep with the un-potty-trained chickens roaming free.

So Flannery would drag a couple up the stairs and lock them in her former baby bed. They never did potty train, a very young child, she even taught one of them to walk backwards, her earliest claim to fame.

You can see the actual Newsreel footage of Mary Flannery O'Connor and her backwards walking chicken here, complete with that famously billious asshat narrator who seems to have done every possible newsreel---and who emphasizes SO many words he might as well be saying BLAH BLAH BLAHHHHH BLAH.

This is the best thing I saw there; a childhood book of Flannery's, with her nascent literary criticism skills being honed on the title page in pencil, signed M.F.O'C. I have to say, The Fairy Babies does NOT look like a very good book.

It was a Southern Gothic girl's version of a Pilgrimage.

What about you? Who are your heroes, and have you ever gone to stand in a place they once occupied, just to see if the air might taste richer there? Did it? Or was it just a place?

Til Two Years Do Us Part

By Nancy Pickard

"Newlyweds become oldyweds, and oldyweds are the reasons that families work."  ~Author Unknown

 My 14-year marriage notwithstanding, in romantic relationships I was only good for about two years, tops.   So I'm REELY interested in long-running ones.  I poke and prod them--ouch! tickle! Stop that!--to see how they tick, how two people keep themselves awake and paying attention to each other for all those years.  HONEY, ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?

Almost all of my closest friends have really really long and solid marriages.  I'm thinking of Karen & David, Sally & Don,  Margaret & Joe, Sue and Newell, Linda and Andy, Judy & Bob, Cathy & Rick, Mary & Phyllis, and John & Frank.  Which means that when I go out with them--and they are all incredibly nice about including me--I'm the only child in the back seat again.  We joke about it.  I call them Mom and Dad, and it's only my advanced age and extreme maturity (hahaha) that keeps me from kicking the backs of their seats and whining, "Are we there yet?"   I see them frequently--or at least the ones in town.  They're so generous, inviting me to dinner, including me in their family stuff.  I'm really grateful to them.  But, I confess, their marriages intrigue the heck out of me and make me wonder what is the matter with me that I could never do it. 

     "A long marriage is two people trying to dance a duet and two solos at the same time."  ~Anne Taylor Fleming

 I think marriage is a talent I wasn't born with and never developed, you know?  It's not that I'm not a thoughtful roommate; I'm pretty sure I am.  I try to be.  And it's not that I'm not affectionate and supportive, and all that.  Why, I'm a regular cheerleader.  But at heart, I'm still an only child, I suspect; I don't get lonely; I'm maybe too self-sufficient; I'm happy on my own.  I'm also a binge kind of gal, not a steady-as-she-goes girl.  I binge on tv series, binge on my writing, binge on gardening, binge on Facebook, binge on Words With Friends. . .practically anything I do.  If I find a novel I love, I'll read three more of them by the same author, and do it over a weekend.  You can see how this might translate into a romantic problem over the long haul, because there could never *be* a long haul!  I'm a short-haul trucker, vroom, vroom.

 More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse.  ~Doug Larson

 Another word for my behavior is, of course, "addict," not that there's anything wrong with that.  Fortunately, all of my addictions, currently, are legal.  But compared to most sane people I know, I'm an anomaly, a single yellow jelly bean in a sea of mated orange ones.  I realize the demographics of this kind of thing have changed, but you'd never know it from my friends. 

My orange friends are, statistically, going to be healthier, live longer, and be happier than I. I think I'm pretty healthy and happy, but I can certainly see how the continuing love, trust, support of another person could boost a person's immune system, etc., etc.

            Me, I always wanted to murder them by two years and one month into it.

            "You chewed ice cubes one too many times, buddy!"

            Hey, it's me, I know.  But I'm willing to learn, even though I'll never apply it in this life.  But maybe I'll be primed for next time around.  ::wagging puppy tail::

            So, you guys. . .

            A lot of you have been married a long time, right? 

            How'd you do it?  I mean, seriously, how?

            What do you like about going on for so long with another human being?  You may think the answers are obvious, but they aren't for relationship sprinters like me.  You're the marathoners.  I'm merely on the sidelines holding out bottles of water--or champagne--as you come around again on your anniversaries.  "Oh, yay! Here come Margaret and Joe again!"

            I love you long-running types.  I could just hug and smoosh you, because  you're so cute together, and what would I do for a *good* home-cooked meal without you?!

            But, really, how do you DO it?

__________________________________

P.S. Garden update!

Remember this? 

Now, it's this. . .

 Because of you guys, I put in a rose bush and a LOT of lavendar, and I love them.

So thank you!  There will be more to come and more to bloom.

 

 

Love in the Hardware Aisle

You, poor things, were supposed to get a guest blogger today, a very very nice guest blogger whom you already like from a previous date you had with her, but she is in the worst kind of deadline hell (there are degrees, yes, there are) so you get me for two days in a row.  Hey, it could be worse, you could get shingles.

 So  we're going to talk about tools.

 No, not the Anthony Weiner kind of tools, or the fact that Anthony Wiener is a tool. 

 We're going to talk about real tools.  Tool tools.  Black and Decker and Dremmel and Sears type tools.

I love them!  Without actually owning any until very very recently.  Like, oh, Monday.

I don't know if you know this, but I'm a girl.  The name Nancy probably gives that away. Not only that, but I am girl of a certain age--AGAIN, the name Nancy gives it away--which means I had to take home ec when I'd a hell of a lot rather have been sawing boards with the boys in Shop.  But those were the days of Girls Shop; Boys DO Shop. This is a familiar story, right? You've heard it before, even here on this very blog.

 

My tool knowledge is severely, nay, tragically, limited.

But those days are over! This week, Monday to be exact, I bought my first DRILL!  It was a THRILL!

First, before doing such a daring thing, wildly breaking gender roles and such,  I begged for advice on Facebook.  I asked my Friends--if you were buying your first drill,if you were a drill virgin, as it were--which one would you buy? 

 Oh, the deluge of recommendations!  It was gratifying, but stupifying, kwim?

 My head swam. Dutifully,  I went to Lowe's, Home Depot, Sears, and saw all those really expensive drills, and all those millions of choices of drills, and I felt as helpless as if somebody had used one of them to give me a frontal lobotomy.  (Not meaning to make fun of frontal lobotomies!)  I saw that the fabulous drills that had been recommended to me were too much drill for me, and if I owned one I'd look like like somebody who has donned an inflated muscle suit. You'd just know I wasn't for real. Plus, expensive! So I gave up and went home, feeling advice-drowned and decision-impaired  Also, sadly tool-less.  Oh, I did buy a cheap portable power shrub trimmer as a consolation prize, but it's really hard to drive screws into a wall with one of those. 

 But then--hallelujia!--one piece of all of that advice kicked up to the surface and grabbed my chin and demanded, "Pay attention to  ME."  A Facebook friend who lives in this area had suggested  that I drive up to the city of Leavenworth and go to their old hardware store where, she promised me, they would kindly take charge of me. 

Wait, that picture was supposed to illustrate "take charge, " not "CHARGE," but that'll work. . .

All I want to accomplish, really, is to drill holes for bird feeders, planters, and pictures, so we're not talking about building a tri-level house here.  Still, if you've never had the thrillah of the drillah, you need help.

 So. . .yesterday, because I've been driving miles and miles lately, in random directions,  to get my plot lines rolling in my brain, I just happened to point the car north.  I rolled up Highway 7.  It meandered through Lansing.  It reached Leavenworth.  I saw--and gasped at--the Missouri River which is scarily high and downright terrifyingly fast right now.  I toured old Victorian-house neighborhoods, and then I pulled out my iPad and typed into the search window:  "hardware store, Leavenworth, Ks."

When "Gronis Hardware" popped up, I had a feeling it was the one.

 It was.  It is!  I found it, and went inside, as timid as a mouse, hopeful as a hungry mouse.  It had (has) wooden floors!  They creak!  There are rooms of STUFF, kitchen gizmos, shop thingamajigs, it's hardware heaven.

The nice woman who showed me to the drills, pointed to the exact right one--a B&D reversible, portable, with drill bits included and a re-charger--and then, bless her, she called over another woman who opened the box and showed me exactly how to work it.  A man who works there came over and helped, too, and by the time I left, I felt ready for that tri-level house.  In fact, I thought about stopping and offering my freelance drill expertise to some construction workers I saw on the highway, but hey, I don't work for just anybody.

 What's your relationship with tools?

 Did your daddy teach you how to saw a board?  Or maybe your mom taught you how to hang a planter? Or did you teach yourself like I'm about to do?  And if you've already answered those questions here, before today, how about this one: is there anyone who does not love a hardware store? Or this one: why is nobody named Nancy any more?

And here, TA DA, is my baby drill, at rest. . .

 

 

Sounds of Summer

Sounds of Summer

By Kathy Reschini Sweeney

Is there anything better than a summer concert?  Okay, that was more of a rhetorical question.  Let me re-phrase.

We just saw Straight No Chaser at their summer home at Harrah's in Atlantic City, NJ.  We had fantastic seats (3rd row center) because I bought them in January.  If you have never seen Straight No Chaser, you need to make it your business to get there.  They tour at the holidays and it seems like they will be in Atlantic City for at least a month this summer and next summer.  Go check out their website; I am on vacation and I can't do everything, people.

Since I am on vacation (to the extent those of us with our own businesses actually go on vacation) I have some extra time to enjoy one of my favorite things - other than cracking wise with my family - listening to music.  It has been a long time since I've done a music blog so here we go.

There are songs that simply scream: "SUMMER TIME"!  Jimmy Buffet music for example.  Okay, that music also screams "I am SO WASTED".  The Beach Boys - duh.  Earth, Wind and Fire.  Carlos Santana's "Smooth". Seals and Croft "Summer Breeze".  Katy Perry's "California Gurls" and "Fireworks".  

So let's build the ultimate summer song playlist.  My family is helping, and then we're counting on you to add your own.

"Hot Fun in the Summertime" by Sly and the Family Stone

"Hot, Hot, Hot" by Buster Poindexter

"Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves

"Electric Avenue" by Eddy Grant

"Summer Wind" by Frank Sinatra

"Summer in the City" by The Lovin' Spoonful

"Summertime" by Will Smith

"Me and Julio Down By the School Yard" by Paul Simon

"Reelin' in the Years" by Steely Dan

"All I Wanna Do" by Sheryl Crow

"Banana Boat Song" by Harry Belafonte

"Centerfield" by John Fogerty

"Mas Que Nada" by Sergio Mendes

and the show stopper: "Dancing in the Street" by Martha and the Vandellas

Okay, I almost forgot - have to give a shout-out to the fabulous boys of "Straight No Chaser" who do a cover of "Africa" that is simply wonderful.  Here is link to it on YouTube: 






 

 Your turn, TLC - what song means summer to you?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, Virginia, We WERE Actually Working. Mostly.

 

 

As we type this, we being Karen Abbott, Sara Gruen and Joshilyn Jackson, we are way high up alone in a mountain cabin in North Carolina, waiting for the registered sex offender named Stan who brought our pizza to come back and murder us in our beds. We didn't think we would need him to; we were fully expecting to be mauled to death by bears days ago.

 The bears apparently wanted Stan to have a nice night before his eventual consecutive life terms, so they let us be. You can tell a registered sex offender has brought your pizza when he marches in into the house and then stands there for a good ten minutes, flipping casually through an enormous wad of five dollar bills, giving each individual breast in the room the rolling crazy-eye in leering turn, all the while telling in great detail about the time he was a Navy Seal and killed really, no really, just big old boat-loads of people.

Note to Stan: REAL Seals don't explicate their super-secret missions in gory detail. Further note to Stan: Our pizza was dead cold by the time we gently shepherded Your Craziness out of the house. Last note to Stan: We tipped the crap out of you ANYWAY, in the hopes that you would not kill us, so maybe the whole Seal thing IS kinda working for you, on one level.

After Stan left, we kept looking at each other and repeating his bloodiest lines and saying, "That's not scary," in high pitched, terrified voices. Finally we sat down to write this blog entry in the hopes of not thinking about the shining gloss of loon-spittle on his flappitty lips.

Since this is the last thing the three of us can reasonably be expected to write, (Although, in 2/3rds of a brightsiding digression, we should mention Karen has the bed on the main floor. Sara in her basement hidey-hole and Joshilyn, tucked up safe in the loft bed, may well be fine!) we wanted to go ahead and put down for posterity the words that have made it into the lexicon over the course of this writing retreat.

You remember the Lexicon, right? Joshilyn wrote a post about the Lexicon right here on Lipstick Chronicles. It is a list of terms that are shorthand for larger situations/ideas/concepts that come out of your posse's communal history. The backbloggers shared many of their own posse's terms ---worth a click for the comments ALONE if you missed that one! Here are our new Lexicon words:

PORN MOOSE --- (Proper Noun) Pictured here from behind and at the top, perched on some of our books. Porn Moose indicates the Holy Grail of tchotchke. Double Porn Moose-osity if it has a practical function. Our Porn Moose, for example, cradled Sara's usually oft missing glasses against his hopefully uplifted buttocks. She never lost them once. In more general terms, a Porn Moose is a thing YOU WANT SO BADLY AND CAN SEE, but can never have. In some ways, Johnny Depp is a Porn Moose. *ahem* In the specific, he was the thing we most want to steal from our rent-a-cabin.

PROCRASTERBATION ---(noun, verb: to Procrasterbate) The act avoiding writing via any self indulgent activity, including but not limited to: googling high school boyfriends, playing online Mahjong, Trying to decide if that's actually naked Blake Lively on The Superficial, doing 15 versions of everyone's natal charts with speculated birth-times after ones parents have helpfully said things like "As I recall, you were born in the evening. Well, evening-ish."

Noga –(Interjection) The non-affirmative answer to an offer to work out. Here it is being used correctly in a sample dialog. Karen and Joshilyn, in hopeful voices: Yoga? Sara: Noga. Noga can also be used to refuse walks, runs, lunges, push-ups, showers, putting on real pants, or any physical exertion greater than that required by reaching for a crisp glass of pinot gris. (Sara: IN MY DEFENCE I DID DO THE DAMN YOGA. Karen and Joshilyn: Once.) Downward Facing Porn Moose – (Noun) Any advanced yoga position that people who might be doing yoga for the first time attempt, not that we're judging, and then they say very very bad words.

Gamus Interruptus: (noun) The inability of the three of us to finish any kind of competitive game, ever, including, but not limited to: pool, Texas hold em, trivia, online mahjong. Because the second Karen Abbot or Joshilyn Jackson begin to suspect they might lose, they call the game invalid for some dumbass reason (usually spurious accusations of cheating or chip mixing or card dropping or ball moving or bad winds or hurt feelings or cruel fates or lapses of attention leading to game error or rule adding), and demand that the whole shebang restart while Sara backs away slowly from the table saying in a tiny hopeful, voice, "But games are FUN. Can't you two set down the knives so maybe we can finish just one game? Of anything? Once?"

Answer: No.

That's actually a lot of lexicon entrees for a single week, so you know the retreat was fruitful. Sara is arguing for Porn Moosing as a verb/adverb and possibly gerund by shoe horning into every other thing she says, i.e., "Pass the porn moosing salt, please!" but Karen and Joshilyn are not quite convinced it has enough real world practical applications. Right now it mostly seems to mean to search the internet for an exact Porn Moose replica that WOULD be the trophy for the winner if we ever finished a single damn game.

Addendum: The cabin's owner KINDLY GIFTED US with Porn Moose; he was awarded first to Sara for coming closest to winning a game. Not that we finished one. But she had the most poker chips when we gave up in despair. Karen and Joshilyn will re-challenge and try to get him back on our next retreat, in August.