Nancy Martin's Blog, page 26

Hats!

by Margaret Maron

As the royal wedding approaches, we've been barraged with pictures of the upper British class cavorting around the countryside.  I will be in DC for Malice Domestic Friday morning and if someone turns on the television at five a.m., I shall definitely adjust my pillows and watch.  While I wish the young couple all the happiness in the world, I will not be focusing on them so much as on the headgear worn by their guests.

                  

 

 

Honestly now:  have you ever seen such? Some of these feathery "fascinators" would be dangerous to wear during bird-hunting season.

I love the idea of hats—real hats, not baseball caps, knit ski helmets, or sun visors—but I never wear them except when working outside in the summer.  My garden hat is not a pastel vision adorned with ribbons and flowers such as Larry Block wore at Malice several years ago, but rather a plain, wide-brimmed straw designed to keep the sun off my face, neck and ears.  The last time I wore a hat in public was two years ago when someone clapped a squishy velvet tam on my head shortly before they gave me an honorary degree.  They asked for it back immediately after the ceremony, too.  My last Sunday-go-to-meeting hat was probably back in the Eisenhower era.  Indeed, Eisenhower was our last president to regularly wear a hat.

Men and boys alike used to wear felt fedoras and trilbies or straw boaters every time they stepped outside.  Roosevelt wore them, Truman wore them, Ike wore them; but John F. Kennedy went mostly bare-headed after his inauguration and a nation of men, seeing how young and handsome he looked, immediately threw their fedoras in the trash.  Jackie's iconic pillbox kept dressy hats on female heads for another four or five years, but after that,the women's hat industry would have died a quick death had it not been for black women who still won't go to church without a beautiful hat on their heads. 

Aretha Franklin's hat was not an anomaly.  Not here in the south, anyhow.

 

My New York mother-in-law loved hats and had a nice selection of seasonal pastel and floral concoctions similar to those worn by Queen Elizabeth and Lady Camilla.  She never went to mass bareheaded or with only a head scarf, and her hat boxes took up two full shelves in her closet.

 

 

Country and western singers started wearing Stetsons on stage about the time other men were giving them up, and Wyoming mystery writer C.J. Box wears his cowboy hat everywhere even though I don't think he sings.  He may be part of a resurgence though, because after a long hiatus, men's hats seem to be coming back.  Is it the Indiana Jones influence or that TV show Mad Men?

 

 

 

 

 

What about you?  Are hats part of your normal wardrobe or will you be joining me Friday morning to  snicker at (yet half envy) the hats we'll be seeing?

 

Meow Much?

By Sarah

Contrary to frequent lies I told my daughter throughout grade school, the playground never really disappears. There will always be the cool kids and their innately exclusive four-square game, the superior athletes zipping across the monkey bars and the outcasts doing their own thing, mostly trying not to get hit with one of those red rubber balls.

Never was the female literary playground more active than last week when recent Pulitzer winner Jennifer Egan, in trying to needlessly impress a Wall Street Journal reporter, noted:

My focus is less on the need for women to trumpet their own achievements than to shoot high and achieve a lot. What I want to see is young, ambitious writers. And there are tons of them. ....There was that scandal with the Harvard student who was found to have plagiarized. But she had plagiarized very derivative, banal stuff. This is your big first move? These are your models?…My advice for young female writers would be to shoot high and not cower.

The blogs went wild in indignation. Jennifer Weiner, for whom I have both high respect and curious bewilderment, ran with it on Twitter, trouncing Egan for being so quick to draw the line between Her and Us, lest there be any confusion. Egan was on the monkey bars, flying high. We chicklit writers were rubbing our heads and wondering how come the rubber ball. What did WE do?

Finally, after a year of Franzenfroid (led, in part, by Weiner), a female author whose novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad, blew me away wins the Pulitzer and immediately  trashes my personal heroes,  women who write, ahem, "very derivative, banal stuff." (Note that Egan did not get on the case of Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan for plagiarizing - just for plagiarizing Sophie Kinsella, Meg Cabot and, especially, Megan McCafferty. Nice.) 

But what I found so interesting was not merely Egan's comment - a grasping quip one might overhear during orientation at the MacDowell Colony -  but the reaction among women writers like Weiner and, okay, like me. After all, I was once dubbed (way erroneously) by People magazine as The Chick Lit Queen so I get to claim a hooker spot on the corner of Banal and Derivative, too.

Our reaction was not simply a "how dare she" moment. Our reaction - and maybe yours - goes to an essential primitive question about female relationships:

Why must women consistently divide themselves from other women?

Because we do. Even when we don't want to.

If we were honest with ourselves, we'd own up to the fact that we mentally, even subconsciously, search for ways in which we are like or not like others in our gender. Right away, we go to appearance. There are those of us who are "overweight" and those of us who "aren't." Big divider. After that, it's those of us who work vs. those of us who don't.  Those who spend money on their hair/nails/bodies and those of us who channel our precious financial resources toward other endeavors. Those who read. Those who watch. Married. Single. Educated. Not. In rapid fire analysis, we can define how a woman is alike/not like us within five minutes of waiting for a dressing room door to open.

I'm sure the underlying reason is somehow biological.

Now, take that process and apply it to women competing in a field still dominated by men and watch out.  The competition can be vicious.

Recently, a mega successful author confided to me that she had no author friends. "It's as if," she said, "they think readers will only read one book a year." When she said this, I went blank because this has not been my experience at all.

Partly, that's because I forced myself early on never to check my work against that of the kid next to me. Also, this is my second career. I didn't really start writing fiction until my late thirties. By that time, I was so grateful to be free from cantankerous newspaper editors, to have found a way to earn money from home while my kids were small, that such things as not rising as fast up the bestseller list as my contemporaries didn't bug me. Much.

(Though I will admit that while in weakness I might look to Weiner, whose career started when mine did and who immediately jumped to the top of the NYT list, I shamefully never, ever compare myself to men. Never.)

I also owe a lot of my sisterly feeling to this blog and to Nancy Martin's attitude that we ALL benefit when we promote each other. For one thing, it's fun. Writing is so solitary that it feels good to connect with other writers and you really do find yourself cheering for their successes almost as much as your own. For another, it's simply good for the soul. Karma and all that.

And maybe this is the advantage of getting older. You begin to learn that those words you slaved over ten years ago are selling for $.50 on the used book table at the PTA fundraiser. It's all dust in the wind, folks. Best not to take it seriously.

That goes for Egan, too. And Thomas Berger, N. Scott Momaday, Adam Haslett and other Pulitzer winners whose names, alas, have not exactly won the traditionally female honor of being called "household." Also, for Weiner, Kinsella, Cabot, McCafferty and Strohmeyer.

Pulitzer or not, chicklit or post modern post modernism, let us never forget John Updike's last days, struggling to remember what he'd written, who he was. 

Wait. He said it better himself - of course - in his last poem: Requiem.

It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say, 
"Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise — depths unplumbable!"

Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know, 
"I thought he died a while ago."

For life's a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.

Kind of deflates the red rubber ball, huh?

 

Sarah

 

 

 

 

 

Groupon

by Harley

Remember how last month I blogged about doing a 9-day detox, because I had a coupon? Completely inaccurate. That was no coupon. That was a groupon.

Groupon. Before I knew the word, I thought of it as "the addiction that dares not speak its name." But now that I know it for what it is, I must share my cautionary tale, and perhaps start a support group.

Groupon, for the uninitiated, is a company that began in Chicago in 2008, offering customers a half-price pizza. Last November, Google offered to buy it for 6 billion dollars. How could such growth happen?

I'm afraid I'm responsible.

Here's how it works. Every day I check my e-mail and there, in my in-box, are 2 or 3 deal-a-day offers. I call them all Groupons, but I'm using the term generically. Mine are from local competitors, faux Groupons, all using the same principle. A business—say, a hairdresser, or piano tuner or Mongolian barbecue offers me a product or service at a spectacular discount. 75, 80, 90%—serious savings, the kind that turns a casual shopper into an obsessed nutjob. The catch is, I have 24 hours to click on the link and pay for it. The next day, that deal's gone.

If I and a minimum number of fellow shoppers buy it, a certificate appears in my in-box. I print it out, and take it to the drycleaners, the yoga studio, the sushi bar, and hand it over. No money changes hands.

Plus which, my local "groupon" site gives a portion of the proceeds to my kids' elementary school. I can get my air conditioner filter changed, and educate our young.

But here's the rub. I was listening to NPR  last week and learned that the merchants offering these huge discounts—let's say 80%—split their measly take with Groupon. Now, I'm no Warren Buffett, but if a merchant's getting 10% of her usual fee, I'm guessing she's losing money on the deal. Still, it's worth it to her if I become a lifelong customer and pay full price from now until the end of time.

Ah, but will I?

If it's the piano tuner, yes. The drycleaner, no, because it's not geographically convenient. Yoga studio, yes. Detox, no. (I regained the weight I lost within 7 minutes.) Laser hair removal, no, because there's a finite amount of body hair I want to part with. It's for this reason that you're unlikely to find a Groupon for funeral services, wedding cakes, or vasectomies.

So now I feel morally obligated to skip any groupon service I can't really commit to.

And that "one-night-stand" mentality is only one of the risks the merchant takes. Another is that Groupon clients forget to tip. Another is that too many customers sign up, and swamp a small business. On the buyer's side, there are, tragically, expiration dates. I know because I was late by one week for a manicure/pedicure. The horror. The horror.

I am genetically predisposed to be a Groupon junkie. My Aunt Olga was a champion coupon clipper, hitting 3-4 stores a day to save 7 cents on a case of ketchup, whether or not she liked ketchup. I feel her spirit egging me on. True, I don't really need a dog trainer that makes housecalls, but at least I have dogs. And what, you may ask, does a Man Friday do? I don't know, but I'll keep you posted, because I bought $120 worth of his services for $30. And four hypnotherapy sessions so cheap they were practically free. I can use them to cure me of my Groupon habit.

But not yet. Because I'm waiting for the big score, one of my Groupon dreams, at 90% off:

            Summer in the Italian Alps for one adult and 3 children

            A week at Canyon Ranch, for everyone at TLC

            A new boyfriend (or even an old one, in good condition)

            World Peace

Got a Groupon fantasy of your own?

Happy Monday!

~Harley

 

Luanne Rice Guest Blogs

I'm not sure Luanne Rice needs an introduction; she is, after all, an internationally beloved author whose magical, witty, and deeply emotional stories of love and family connections have won the hearts of millions of readers.

Never-the-less, they asked me to do these honors for a very odd reason. While I might not be the tart who knows her best, I think I can safely claim I am the only tart who has ever felt her up...

I somehow scammed my way into some swanky publishing party in NYC, and she was there, too, only more legitimately. She had done me a great kindness when I was first starting out, so when we were introduced, I got excited. I began spazzily thanking her, saying. "OH GOSH, YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW MUCH IT MEANT TO ME WHEN YOU BLURBED MY FIRST NOVEL!" I put my hands out, like JAZZ HANDS, all frantic and grateful...

She is not a tall person. I am klutzy. So. I somehow managed to grab her boob. *sigh*

Now I am here to say, and say with authority: Please welcome Luanne. She's a wonderful writer, a lovely human being, and, yeah, she has a nice rack. You're welcome! Joshilyn

Dancing by the Edge of the Sea

by Luanne Rice              

               I'm the oldest of three sisters.  When we were young we shared a bedroom and on warm spring nights (or any night) we would climb out the window to watch night birds and wish on stars.   We shared a lot: secret language, fair-isle sweaters, and, on rare and terrible occasions, boyfriends.   The sister's creed: No sister shall ever date a sister's boyfriend, even an ex. 

               We spent every summer in our grandmother's beach cottage on Long Island Sound.  We'd arrive in June the same afternoon school let out, and stay barefoot through Labor Day. 

               Every summer day was an age-appropriate adventure.  Swimming, crabbing, fishing, building sandcastles.  Walking the tide line, searching for moonstones and sea glass.  Visiting old graves in the small, shady cemetery.  Taking the secret path to a hidden beach for picnics.  Spreading a blanket on the sand on August nights, watching the Perseid meteor shower.  First kisses, first beers, bye-bye virginity. 

               The parents of some of our friends used to point to us, say to their daughters, "I wish you were as close as the Rice girls."  To us that was like hearing, "I wish you had freckles like the Rice girls."  We took our closeness for granted, like having freckles or being right-handed, or at least I did. 

               We'd drive the Shore Road, windows open and our hair blowing back, all three of us in the front seat, singing to WABC-AM.  This was the era of great beach girl music: the Beach Boys, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Golden Earring.  Yes, Brandy: you are a fine girl.  Hearing those songs now brings back the smell of Bain de Soleil. 

               Carly and James lived and loved on Martha's Vineyard.  On clear nights we could see the loom of the island from our roof.  It glowed beyond the eastern horizon, a drive and a ferry ride away.  Carly, one of three sisters, sang as if she'd had her own heart broken while also breaking a few along the way. 

               During those bright years, my sisters and I would go to Sound View for lemon ice; we'd play tennis till after dark, then go swimming to cool off, daring and brave as we swam in the gentle, black waves.  One midsummer night we went to Essex with a young man; parked down by Steamboat Dock, jumped out of the car with headlights on and music blasting, and we danced in the high beams, the three of them jitterbugging like mad and I trying to keep up.

               Our mother used to say, "You'll have many friends, but only two sisters."   She was right, and nothing can alter that fact.  The words seemed so obvious, I used to wonder why she'd say them.  Maybe she foresaw the troubles that would arise among us, but if she did, what were the signs?

               When I was in second grade and my middle sister was in kindergarten, our school held a Halloween costume contest.  She and I both wore the exact same white fairy princess outfits, and she won.  I hugged her, but did my mother read envy?   

Sometimes, as in all triangular relationships, it would be two-against-one; in junior high that same sister and I would go to New York to see plays, have adventures in the city without the Little One (our name for the youngest.)   Later the two of them moved to Newport and didn't ask me to rent the apartment with them.  

               In Carly Simon's Two Little Sisters, there are two lines:

I didn't choose you and you didn't choose me.

I didn't choose you, who would guess we're from the same family?

               It's true: sisters don't get to choose each other, the way they do friends.  But being sisters is like being wisteria vines: you shoot off on your own, trail off in different directions, get tangled up together, good and twisted but still separate as you grow thick and old, nearly grafting onto each other, and then you grace each other with purple flowers.

               In the forward to Freud's Blind Spot, a collection of 23 essays by writers about their siblings, the editor, Elisa Albert, writes of the psychological vertical model, "You are who you are because your parents made you that way."  Then, "But what about the horizontal mode…what about lateral influence?"  In other words, what about the importance of siblings?

               Freud negated the power siblings have on other's development—the way we share early memories and a singular connection, know each other's primary truths, first loves, deep pain, quirky humor, vulnerabilities—thus his "blind spot." 

               Freud didn't know dick.

               The last lines of Carly Simon's Two Little Sisters:

But, what will you do when the nights get cold?

When the stars grow dim and your dreams seem old.

Watcha gonna do when winter calls,

And your flowers fall from the garden walls?

 

I'll come home to you, you'll come home to me.

My love will be your remedy.

I'll choose you and you'll choose me.

We'll be two daughters dancing by the edge of the sea.

               I change the last line to say "three daughters."  I would be so happy to dance by the edge of the sea with my two sisters, in the light of the high beams, on midsummer's night, in the dead of winter, any time at all.

Luanne's new book trailer:
 

And here's Luanne's tour:  https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=107346432678796 

Kontakion for the Departed

By Cornelia Read

There's a small piece of music at the very beginning of Doctor Zhivago that I've always really loved--a woman's voice in Russian, singing something really plaintive at Yuri's mother's funeral--with some other voices doing beautiful, spooky harmony. It fades pretty quickly into Maurice Jarre's overture, the whole Lara's Theme thing. I wanted that lone voice to keep going, though--no swelling string section, no balalaika stuff. Just that mournful sound of utter loss, captured in a single woman's throaty lamentation.

Maybe I first liked it because there's a little kid in the scene, and the focus is kind of on him. I always got drawn into film and TV with kid characters, when I was little. I also got suckered into watching Dark Shadows for a while that way. I was home sick from school on the day it debuted, and was fascinated by the two little kids it started out with--something about a telephone, if I remember. And then the little kids were kind of never seen again and it got supremely boring by the time I'd recovered from the mumps. Sigh.

Usually it kind of segued into the same characters as adults entirely too quickly for my taste--kind of the way the notes of that song vanished into orchestral hugeness at the beginning of Zhivago. (And hey, turns out this little kid playing the young Yuri is Omar Sharif's son, which I never knew before.)

I can't embed video of the scene straight from Youtube, but here's a link to it if you want to listen.

I tried to figure out what that song was for many years, to see if there was a longer version somewhere or if Jarre just wrote those few notes and left me hanging. It's only listed as "Kontakion" on the film soundtrack, and it turns out there are lots of different Kontakions in Orthodox sacral music. I bought a lot of cassette tapes of Russian stuff over the years, just looking for it. No luck, though. This, of course, was pre-Internet, and pre iTunes. I even have some Orthodox choirs on CD, because I'm obsessive like that. STILL no luck...

But now I have a really heartbreaking version of it as an MP3, performed by The Choir of Clare College, Cambridge (thank you, Google and iTunes.) I'll put that at the end of the post.

Anyway, this week I've been thinking a lot about my own departed. Probably because it's getting close to the first anniversary of my dad's suicide. And maybe Good Friday, I don't know.

I visited one of Dad's brothers a couple of weeks ago, when my stepmom and young half sister were east. Listening to Uncle Peter reminded me hugely of Grandmama Read, too... the way he speaks is somewhat like her, though his accent is old New York and hers was Brahmin Bostonian. And I thought, while listening, how strange it is to think about having the voices of the dead in my head... how my daughter won't ever know what these people sounded like.

My cousin Marshal was there, too, and he laughs a little like Dad did. Which I totally can't explain at all in words. Crap.

We were all sitting around the kitchen table having tea and cookies, and things were really lovely--the year's last snowstorm outside, catching up with people I hadn't seen in at least a decade. I remember Marshal and his wife once giving my ex-husband and I a Thermos full of coffee to take with us as we drove from Purchase, New York, up to Syracuse. I hadn't seen Marshal at that point since I was thirteen or so, and I was then about twenty-four.

There's something really comforting to me in hanging out with Reads. Like, they're my tribe, even though I don't know them very well, having grown up on the west coast. They're rather dry and droll, lovely storytellers. They're smart, and not too effervescent. I feel something open up in my chest whenever I'm around them, like being home in this weird way. And it's always kind of poignant, too.

So anyway, we're sitting around the table and telling stories and it's all really lovely and everything, but we didn't really mention Dad at all. We were talking about colleges, and where my sister and daughter were hoping to go in the fall, and catching up on other relatives. And there was some talk of slime molds, and a botanist they know who's at Princeton.

And then Aunt Pru walked us around the house to look at some beautiful old paintings from my grandparents' house, and some of her photography--which is astonishingly good. One especially beautiful shot of sheets blowing on a clothesline in Nova Scotia, black and white.

So she and I get to the living room, and there, on a desk, next to someone's computer, is a picture of my father. And I just... lost it.

He's just so goddamn young in the shot, and it was before all the bad shit happened, at least with us, and he has everything ahead of him. And still, there's already a lot of damage around the eyes, somehow. Like you can tell he'd been broken well before this moment, if you know him at all. Maybe he's toughing it out, but not at all perfectly.

Or maybe that's just my hindsight, it's hard to say.

I just stood there and tears started leaking down my face and everything, and Aunt Pru hugged me. I mean, we are not really huggy people, for the most part, but it was really a very nice thing that she did.

And then my stepmother came back into the room, and saw what I was looking at, and she started crying. And then my sister. And, well, fuck... we're all standing there weeping at this point, you know?

Here's the picture:

Cousin Marshal scanned it for me, which is deeply wonderful of him. He said his parents figure it was taken when Dad was in the fifth form at St. Paul's, here in New Hampshire--which translates to junior year of high school and would have made him about seventeen at the time.

Well, so it's another not-exactly-feel-good blog post from me, here, and I hope not to become the Sad Tart of the Weepingness or anything, but I'm just thinking a lot about the departed this week. Beloved people of mine who aren't here anymore. Which sucks. And, to be honest, sometimes it wasn't exactly easy when they were here, because people tend to be complicated like that. Especially people I'm related to (and God knows they could say the same of me, most days.)

I've got a character in the book I'm working on right now who's based on another lost friend. His name was Rick Dage, and he and my ex worked together when my girls were little and we were all living in Boulder, Colorado. He was an amazing friend to me--saw me through a really rough time in my life, the year after we'd moved from Boulder to Cambridge. He was a big bear of a guy, with a wonderful laugh.

He left Boulder too, moved home to Ohio. He lost his job there, and couldn't find work. He'd gotten married by then, and had a little son. He used to call me up sometimes, just to check in. We lived in Berkeley by then. My marriage was falling apart. I'd hear from him maybe every three months or so, and do my best to cheer him up.

One day the phone rang as I was running out the door, late for a pediatrician's appointment. I saw it was Rick and picked up, a little breathless. "Listen," I said, "I'm running out the door. I'm late. Can we talk tomorrow? What's a good time to reach you?"

He said to try him around noon, and I admit I was a little pissed off when I did call the next day, and only got his voicemail.

And then his wife, whom I'd never met, called me back about five minutes later.

"Rick died last night," she said. And I realized he'd been calling to say goodbye. And she and I both started to cry.

Jesus.

And finally we hung up, and I just wept in my strange little kitchen in California, thinking about his son, and how I wished I could have had that final conversation with my friend.

And then the phone rang again, and it was my agent, telling me we had the very first offer from an editor for my manuscript, and I started sobbing into the phone all over again. Which freaked him out quite a bit.

"I don't think I've ever had an author react that way to good news," he said.

So I explained, and then he got all teary too. I didn't know at that point that his father had been murdered, when he was a kid. Man... we've all got sadness, you know? Everyone. Which is why it matters so much to be kind, I think.

Anyway, I'm spending time with Rick as I work on this book. Trying to describe him, his voice, what it was like to hang out with him in Boulder, all those years ago. The character's name is Cary, right now. If I ever finish this damn novel, I hope you'll give him a tip of your hat should you read it.

I've been thinking of him this week, and of David Thompson--whom we lost way too soon too, last year.

And of my favorite "stepfather," Bill Fassett, who founded a little hamburger joint in Big Sur known as Nepenthe, and was kind to me when I really needed it, a long time ago.

Here's Bill in the middle, much younger than when I knew him. His wife Lolly is on the left, and Henry Miller's on the right.

Okay, so the good part about all of this? I've also been thinking of a really wonderful program that's on Oprah Winfrey's new network, called Master Class, I think. I've only watched an hour of it, but it was about Maya Angelou.

She spoke about all the people she's lost in her life, and about sadness, and some pretty heavy stuff. But she also said at one point--in that rich, marvelous voice of hers--that every time she has to get on stage, and is a little frightened, she remembers that all the people who've ever been kind to her over the course of her entire life are there with her, cheering her on.

And I have all these people with me, too. As much as I miss them.

So here's the Kontakion for the Departed, sung by the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge:

 

The lyrics in English show up at the beginning, along with some bells and stuff. I think I like the Russian better--because I don't speak Russian and it feels a lot more non-denominational when you don't know what the people are actually singing--but it's pretty beautiful all around. Especially the stained glass window inscribed with "Be Not Afraid." I totally dig that.

(On a more cheerful note: since it's both Passover and Holy Week, here's an alleluiah to my Easter peeps:

And חַג כָשֵׁר וְשָׂמֵחַ to my Pesach peeps:

. )

So whose voices do you guys carry with you? Whose words still give you comfort, even though they may be departed?

Kitchen Catastrophes

 

I love to cook. Love it. When my husband was in business school we would regularly invite over six or eight or 12 people, or as many as 20, for dinner parties. I almost always made something I'd never made before, because where was the fun in that? I roasted lamb, stuffed peppers, rolled fresh pasta, simmered molé, churned ice cream, and braised everything I could get my hands on, with or without a recipe. When people asked what the secret of my far-ranging cookery was, I answered cheerfully, "Don't be afraid to fail!"

But here's the thing: sometimes, I totally failed.

During a birthday party I ran so far behind schedule that I was still frosting the cake while everyone else was eating dinner. Two batches of ice cream froze so solid we had to chip, not scoop, them out of their containers. The Guinness pork with sweet potatoes was too sweet, the macaroni and cheese too rich, the carrot-ribbon salad too citrusy. And when I overreduced a balsamic vinegar reduction to drizzle over some strawberry-and-feta skewers, it was so black and sticky we couldn't get the skewers off the plate.

We all have kitchen catastrophes. On my food blog, http://simmerblog.typepad.com , I try to write about the failures in the same detail as the successes, because doing something wrong can teach you how to do it right. I never would have suspected that failing to seal a pan sufficiently would turn my sweet, syrupy homemade dulce de leche into an inedible rock-hard sugar-and-milk mess, burned nearly black in parts. On another occasion, I tried making mussels at home for the first time—they stuck to their shells so badly that I started to worry I'd undercooked them, and pitched half the batch directly into the trash and monitored myself for signs of food poisoning the rest of the night. I might never do it again, but I'm not sorry I did it the first time – cooking is about experimentation.

And that's the thing. A kitchen catastrophe is rarely a real catastrophe. Your dinner guests want you to succeed. They want to eat delicious things and have a good time.

When I served all those flawed experiments to all those students, nobody really cared. They ate what was edible and chuckled over what wasn't. They chipped away at that ice cream until every last bite was eaten. They tugged free the bits of strawberry and feta that hadn't been trapped in the reduction and licked their fingers afterward. And they said thank you, and poured me a glass of wine, and asked when we'd be doing this again.

Full disclosure: I did set the oven on fire once, which could have been an actual catastrophe, but I  learned from that too.

In my book, The Kitchen Daughter, a shy young woman who has always cooked just for the sake of cooking learns how to use food to connect with others. Ginny has Asperger's syndrome, which makes social situations hard for her, and her parents have always protected her, shielding her from any interactions that might turn uncomfortable or confrontational. Basically, they're afraid to let her fail. (And what parent wouldn't be?) But when they are both suddenly killed, Ginny has to find a new way to navigate her world, including her overbearing sister Amanda. Amanda wants to take over their mother's role of protecting Ginny. Ginny wants independence, and with it, the freedom to fail.

And what's the worst that can happen? To Ginny, or to any of us? That's a big part of what the book is about. What happens when we try. What happens when we fail. And how the word "catastrophe" is, like many other words, all relative.

 

 

Jael McHenry is the author of The Kitchen Daughter (Simon & Schuster, 2011), and a talented and enthusiastic amateur cook who blogs about food and cooking at the SIMMER blog, http://simmerblog.com. She is a regular contributor to Writer Unboxed, a member of Backspace, and a monthly pop culture columnist at Intrepid Media. Her work has appeared in publications such as the North American Review, Indiana Review, and the Graduate Review at American University, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing. Learn more about Jael's work at jaelmchenry.com or follow her on Twitter at @jaelmchenry. She lives in New York City.

Saving the Wild Horses

Saving the Wild Horses

By Nancy Pickard

We've had horse stories here before at The Lipstick Chronicles, but perhaps not quite like this.  I'd like to introduce you to an old friend of mine—Linda Gresham Hanick of Colorado who devotes much of her life to saving and protecting the wild horses of America. That's Linda, above, with her husband Vic, and "Cloud," who is the most famous wild horse in the world, the subject of a PBS documentary.

Here's Linda's story. . .

It was 1995, and Linda and her family were riding horses to the bottom of a canyon.  She saw her first wild mustang there, on a rocky ledge above her.

Then there came a close encounter with a wild horse on the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range.  "We drove up the highway next to the Big Horn Canyon in Wyoming on the first day," Linda told me, "praying that we would see just one horse.

"For a while we saw nothing but a lot of sagebrush and rocks, and then this beautiful, muscular black horse appeared, quietly standing near the road like a welcoming committee--nonplussed by our being there in our car, and behind him on the hill was his mare, calmly grazing.  I'll never forget Sam.  Sadly, I must say that Sam died this year, but his legacy son, Admiral, has taken his place as the welcoming committee on the Big Horn Canyon road."

 By that time, Linda and her husband Vic Hanick (another old college friend of mine) had taken care of and trained horses,  but it wasn't until 2009 that she was galvanized into action on behalf of the wild mustangs, and it changed her life forever.

 That's when the Bureau of Land Management  started rounding up the Pryor herd to cull them.  These particular horses are,  Linda explains, "primarily the Spanish barb horses, those that were brought to the New World by the Spanish conquistadores in the 16th century. They are thought to be the source of the Crow Indian 'TrueCrow Ponies,' the coveted steeds of our Great Plains Indians. This herd also holds a great deal of history that goes back to the horses of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, which lost many of their horses there on their trek across Montana. This herd is the only remaining wild herd left in Montana and its historic significance is great." 

 "Round-ups" and "herd management" can mean terrible things.  Just last year, Linda  attended a roundup in Colorado last fall to, as she said, "experience first-hand the terror of the helicopters and the resulting injuries and deaths."

At the largest Short Term Holding pens in Canon City, CO, 3000 wild horses--stallions, mares, babies, and burros--are incarcerated in pens.

 She and her fellow volunteers work to  advocate for the wild horses, to protect them and prevent their suffering.

 I asked her, What are the forces that are lined up against what you're trying to do?

 Linda's answer:   "Our public land was set aside for multiple use and there are several stakeholders in addition to the wild horses: Recreation use, fishing and hunting, cheap corporate livestock grazing leases(not family ranching), and mineral extraction industries (gas, oil, gold, uranium). However, the horses do not represent money, so they are left out in importance in the struggle for money and power, and their removal only enhances the other stakeholders. " 

 There isn't enough room here to give you the whole story, so I'll let some links---and the horses themselves—do that for me.  If you want to ask Linda any questions, she'll be here today to answer them, but first I want to share with you the beautiful thing she said to me:

 I've always believed that we are put on this earth to make it a better place, and this is one way I can make it a better place for the future. I want my grandchildren and future generations to be able to walk up a mountainside and experience the rush of seeing a band of wild horses running in the wind or a mare protecting her newborn foal. And I feel I have something to contribute to affirm Ghandi's quote: "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

For wonderful photos and for full information: 

http://www.wildhoofbeats.com/

http://thecloudfoundation.org

All images posted with permission of photographers.

Photo credit for Cloud overlooking the mountains:  The Cloud Foundation.

Pansy

Pansy

By Nancy Martin      

What book do you wish you could read for the first time all over again?  What book had the most magical impact on you? Remarkably, many people name a novel that was published 75 years ago this spring.

Margaret Mitchell's GONE WITH THE WIND won the Pulitzer Prize for literature despite Malcolm Cowley's* review in The New Republic that included the backhanded compliment, " I would never say that she has written a great novel, but in the midst of triteness and sentimentality, her book has a simpleminded courage that suggests the great novelists of the past."  

Gee, thanks, Mal.  

Most of us read GWTW back when we were young, impressionable, unformed readers.  I know I had just graduated from Walter Farley's Black Stallion books and was happily reading Nancy Drew when my mother tucked GWTW into my duffle bag for our annual vacation at our family's Canadian cottage.  My usual summer reading ran out halfway through our two weeks on the lake, so I finally opened the book with the red dye on the edges of the pages (why don't publishers do that anymore?) and was immediately sucked into Scarlet's world.  I spent the next few days in the attic of the cottage, tucked into a mildewed sofa, reading, reading, reading about a flawed, yet driven, powerful woman unlike any other I'd ever read.  For me, it was the book that made me feel like a grown-up.  The story gave me so much to think about, I felt dizzy. 

My aunt, who was an accomplished reader at a very early age (she became a renowned child psychologist) was given GWTW by her fourth grade teacher.  She read the book so fast the teacher gave her a free ticket to the movie, which had opened recently.  That little fourth grader went all alone to the theater and watched the movie all by herself!  The drama of the story made a big impression on her.

My husband says he read GWTW as a high school assignment.  Oddly enough, he says what he remembers most was that his grandmother was dying at the time—in the next room--and that was about it.  Since he's very big on reading about the Civil War now, I thought maybe the romantic nature of fighting for your way of life in the Confederate states appealed to him---especially since he read the book during the Vietnam era--but no.  He says another book had a bigger impact on his adolescent reading: FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS.  Also---are you there, William?—the James Bond novels. He kinda wishes he could experience those books again for the first time.

For plot, I remember the moment I read the big twist in Mary Stewart's THE IVY TREE.  The author had lulled me with her lovely writing, her lovely characters, her lovely story---and suddenly wham!  The story wasn't at all what I thought. The author had taken my breath away. It was as if my brain was pried open from the top and sunlight poured in.  I had been had!  What a wondrous moment for a teenage reader. 

So---what's the reading experience you wish you could have all over again?

Meanwhile, here's a GWTW Trivia test. (No cheating!) We'll see who's the real GWTW fanatic among us.

How old was Scarlett at the beginning of the book?

What did her waist measure after the birth of her first child?

What name did Margaret Mitchell first bestow on the book's protagonist?

What movie actor was not considered for the part of Rhett Butler? Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn or Laurence Olivier?

How did Margaret Mitchell die?

Just for fun, here's a movie clip that lifts some Rhett and Scarlett dialogue almost word for word from the book:

 

*  Oddly enough, Malcolm Cowley grew up not far from where I did, in Pennsylvania. I read his poetry in school, thanks to a local teacher who knew him and clearly adored him. Here's a poem of his that makes a mental picture of home in my head:  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/6574

Theology Mixology

Theology Mixology

By Kathy Reschini Sweeney

Everybody believes in something.  For example, I believe in the power of cake.  I don't even have to eat the cake.  Just knowing it's there is sometimes the only thing keeping me from prison.  I also believe that the older I get, the more attuned my body becomes to the lunar calendar.  I suggest you don't ask for details.  I also suggest you try hard not to make me angry around a new moon.  And by suggest, I mean, better get your affairs in order first.

This is a big week for believers of many things.  For those of us who live in the Judeo-Christian tradition, this week is huge.  Yesterday was the beginning of Passover and this Thursday begins the Triduum, which prepares us for Easter.  It is also Spring, and Mother Nature is in full bloom.  I have a lot of respect for Mother Nature - especially since I drove through precipitation from all four seasons in one car trip last weekend.  Felt a little like the Doctor Who of Pennsylvania weather.

I believe there is a God.  I don't think God can be contained in any one religion or tradition or ceremony or building.  I think God is too big for that, and I don't mean big in the way too much cake has made me.  I mean, so big that the human mind - even one that doesn't sleep much and has time to really try to figure it out- simply cannot comprehend it.  I have learned that trying to impose human concepts of reason and emotion upon God just does not work.  Those concepts do not apply to psychotics either, but that is another blog.

People call God by many different names.  Even people who don't believe in anything Holy or even in God will still use those words to express overwhelming feelings at special times.  I refer you to Coach Jimmy's locker room prayer in "A League of Their Own".

Jimmy's Prayer

So we all believe in something.  Love.  Vengeance. Karma. The power of a good book.  The Return of the King. The purity of Josh Groban's voice.  The delight of a sunny day in March. The lady or the tiger. The Chicago Cubs. Marshmallow peeps.  Did I mention the chocolate sour cream cake at Prantl's Bakery and the Cannoli at Moio's?

Even more formal religions are evolving (not as fast as one would hope, but that is also a blog for another day) to be more inclusive and less self-absorbed.  Many people no longer feel constrained by one book about God.   It reminds me of the old joke where someone goes to heaven and asks what is behind the big wall.  The answer: "Oh, the [insert religious group] are back there.  They think they are the only ones here."  I call this Theology Mixology and I love it. 

In my world, we are lucky enough to have not only a biological family, but a Chevra, which, loosely translated, is a family of the heart.  This week, our Chevra has a lot to celebrate.  One of ours was ordained as a Presybeterian minister on Sunday.  On Monday, we all gathered for Passover Seder. This Friday, many of us will go to a neighborhood close in proximity but otherwise a world away, for a Peace Rally.  There will be members of all kinds of religious organizations there.  We will use different terms, in different languages,  but we will all be asking God for the same thing at the same time.

I believe that makes a difference.

So what do you believe?

Planet Nine

by Heather

          Life gets complicated when you have five children.

         Last week, the Romantic Times Convention took place in Los Angeles. I've done this convention from the onset--which is far more years than I care to mention! But, it's fun, sheer fun. I was so excited that the convention was going to be in Los Angeles because it meant that I was close to my youngest daughter, Chynna, who goes to school at CalArts. My kids are not fond of all my conventions, and they've all been to most--that's what happens when you attend a lot of events and have small children. Okay, they're not small anymore, but they were when I started, and they were hauled one place or another because when you have five, it's really hard to get anyone to watch them. [that's me as Marilyn Monroe in the photo, with my daughter Bryee, along with Kathryn and Jo Carol, who are RT] 

            But this convention, they all love. It's because I host a vampire party with Helen Rosburg, we put on a dinner theater, and what money we make from raffles, etc, goes to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation. If you're going to have five kids, you try to make use of them, so they all take part. 

            But go figure. Chynna is a theater major, and though the convention center was a half hour away, the rehearsals for her show conflicted with ours. I honestly think God loves me, so maybe He was just trying to put me in my place!

            Still, the show must go on, minus Chynna. We have a cast of thousands--okay, nineteen people, and this year the show was Zombie Dancers from Planet 9. The zombies on Planet 9 are running out of food, and therefore must find new worlds where they can dine. Preparing for domination of that planet called Earth, they studied earthlings and discovered that they liked entertainment, reality TV, soaps, movie, dancing . . . and so on Planet 9, the Starfleet Commander (F.Paul Wilson) and his crew of writers and directors hold a casting session, complete with casting couch. TLC's own Harley Jane Kozak came out to audition as a dramatically emoting Shakespearean actress; we also had writer Beth Ciotta as a magnificent mime, Alexandra Sokoloff as a pole dancer, with her own pole-- Zach Bolden who is a millimeter shy of 7 feet tall. He was wrapped in silver. My son Shayne made an appearance as Zim Zorrison for a rousing rendition of "Light My Fire," and son Jason made a fantastic Zobbie the Zobot. My friend Rich Devin was a Hollywood agent for a while, and Lance Taubold is still an entertainer in Vegas. Debbie Richardson and I fought it out with a cheery tune from The Toxic Avenger--"Bitch, Slut, Liar, Whore" and naturally, the entire cast--including Juan Roca, Kathy Pickering, Mary Stella, Scott Perry, Connie Perry, and Caitlin Richardson, Helen Rosburg and husband, James--finished with "Hooray for Hollywood." The show is always a disaster waiting to happen, and therefore, as they say in Shakespeare in Love, a mystery and miracle!

            Also at the conference. Harley was a red carpet escort for the Cover Model pageant and I was called upon to judge male flesh. There was a fairy ball, a "Bollywood" night, and Harlequin Publishing threw a Night of the Stars. Oh, and a Saucy Sirens from History party--very fun. I was asked by dozens of friends why I wasn't there, but I was at the first table fulfilling my dream of being Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara. 

            Party, party, party. But . . . I also spent time with the FBI, local police, and the ATF. There is something for everyone at RT.

            I'm still in California. We waited, of course, to see our baby go up as Georgette, Queen Bee, in "The Life of the Bee" presented at CalArts. I was the usual mom in the audience, tears stinging my eyes because my baby (okay, she's 21 and 6 feet tall) was so poised and talented on stage, belting out an aria from "Carmen" and saying her lines. 

            Hung out R Bar with Scott Perry and his friend, Eric Curtis, certainly one of the world's finest young photographers. I was able to see early shots of some of the picture books they are doing, and they are amazing. 

            If you're from Florida, they teach you that California is going to drop off the continent and fall into the Pacific Ocean. I guess it will happen one day, but I think Florida will be flooded by then anyway.

            It's my last day here; one more viewing of "The Life of the Bee" and we take off tomorrow. Easter is coming up, and it's a huge family affair for us. Except, once again, I'll be missing my Queen Bee. CalArts just will not accommodate my schedule!

            Ah, well. Life gets complicated when you have five children.