Judi Hendricks's Blog, page 2

Of Mice and Men

photo by Martha Sexton

The counter by the back door was covered with what looked like blue cupcake sprinkles. Of course, at 7 AM and Geoff and I weren’t really processing information yet.

He got it before I did.

“We’ve got a mouse,” he said.

The counter is where we keep all things dog related, including a jar of peanut butter that we use to persuade our dog Blue to take her vitamins. The  sprinkles were actually the result of tiny sharp mouse teeth, trying their darndest to chomp though the blue plastic lid on the jar.

My lovely husband cleaned up the mess and set up the no-kill mouse trap we’ve used with mixed success in the past. Yes, I have friends who laugh at me for refusing to use a plain old snap trap, but I have my reasons…

 

The name of my first love was Ronnie. He lived across the street from me when I was nine years old. Oh, there were others before him—Steven, the tall, blonde tetherball champion of third grade. Timmy, the crewcut geek with glasses who stood behind me in the second grade class picture with his hand protectively —or was it possessively?—on my shoulder.

But those were childish infatuations compared to my secret crush on Ronnie. He had matinee idol potential. Dark, sleepy eyes with long lashes. When he smiled, his straight white teeth flashed against his olive skin. He wore his blue jeans cuffed, shirttail out, collar up, and he had taps on the heels of his shoes so they made that really cool sound when he walked down the hall at school.

But I think the real reason I loved him was, he had attitude. In 1955, it was called a bad attitude, or rudeness. But he wasn’t really rude. It was just that he wasn’t intimidated by authority. At ten years old, he seemed to regard adults as equals, showing none of the obsequiousness demonstrated by all the other kids I knew.

The day he asked if he could walk home with me was the high water mark of my life to date. I don’t recall the conversation we had, if there even was one. Ronnie was a man of few words. I only remember the way I felt, as if I walked in some shining golden light. At my house we sat at the Formica table in the kitchen, drinking cokes.

And then at some point I felt moved to share with him my greatest treasure, Beezley. My mouse. I told him to close his eyes, and I retrieved Beezley from his cage in my room. Placing him gently on Ronnie’s shoulder, I told him to open his eyes. Just then Beezley’s little whiskers tickled Ronnie’s cheek and he looked down.

I’d never heard a boy scream before.

Before I could apologize or explain, my would-be love was out the back door, dumping the poor mouse upside down on the table and spilling the coke. The golden glow was gone. I sat motionless for a long time, watching Beezley lap delicately at the brown puddle of coke.

Finally I picked him up, tenderly stroking him, reassuring him with gentle words. It would be all right, I said.

Fortunately he recovered from the incident.

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A Few of My Favorite Things

My only real criteria for an enjoyable read is that a book must take me somewhere interesting—another country, another reality, another heart—and hold me there. Possibly even against my will.

Such was the case when I read In a Dark Wood Wandering, by Hella S. Haasse, which arrived unannounced in my mailbox one day, sent by a friend with no note or explanation. The story is set during the Hundred Years War, the main character is Charles, Duke of Orleans, and the story is history, so there are no real surprises. All the uncharted territory lies within the characters and the Dark Woods of life through which they stumble. And the story of how it came to be translated into English is hardly less compelling.

Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace—different setting, different time—held me in the same kind of thrall. Brilliantly illuminated characters surrounded by encroaching clouds of motive and meaning, the story’s movement amazingly swift for all its bulk, like a line of advancing thunderheads.

At Play in the Fields of the Lord, by Peter Matthiessen—part adventure, part psychological study, part polemic. The story of missionaries, mercenaries, and Indians takes place in a South American rainforest, but the sheer humanity of the characters makes it universal. Also a wonderful movie with a stellar cast that includes John Lithgow, Kathy Bates and TomWaits among others.

The Manticore, by Robertson Davies. I was struggling through a class in Jungian theory, when a therapist suggested this book. I can’t say I aced the final because of it, but I learned more about Jungian analysis from Davies than I did from the class. And Davies is a consummate storyteller, dissecting his world of privilege and dysfunction in the spellbinding prose of mythology.

These days, I read mostly fiction, but when I take the time to search for a good non-fiction book, I’m often rewarded with a find like Kabloona, by Gontran de Poncins. De Poncins was a wealthy Frenchman who, in 1938, was possessed by a restlessness so profound that he was driven to spend fifteen months living among Esquimaux in the far north, pondering their “invincible serenity in the face of the hardest physical existence known to man.”

Another non-fiction favorite of mine is Disappearance: A Map, by Sheila Nickerson, formerly poet laureate of Alaska. A strange and intriguing little book, its subject—at least on the surface—is disappearances, mostly in Alaska and the far north. But it becomes a lyrical exploration of death and love, maps and mysteries. Nickerson weaves together her own experiences and stories of vanished travelers with a haunting and melancholy wisdom.

With some books, one read just isn’t enough. That’s how I’ve always felt about Slow Days, Fast Company, by Eve Babitz, which I discovered in (I think) 1975. Every year or so I pull this slim volume off my shelf and read it again–sometimes cover-to-cover, sometimes just chapters that I’m especially in the mood for. First, it’s a beautiful book. The cover is an amusing and arresting drawing of an Afghan Hound in a turtleneck sweater, sitting in a café. The thick, cream colored paper is deckle edged and the author’s initials are stamped on the front cover. The stories inside are enthralling. Yes, I know it’s not PC to love L.A., but having gone to high school in the Valley (before the invention of Valley Girls) I can’t help it. L.A. is and always will be a part of me. And Eve Babitz is L.A. The book consists of ten jewel-like memoirs/stories. She is a fabulous writer and a fascinating woman. Read it. I can say no more.

 

If the spirit moves you, post a comment here about some your favorite books.

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Finally…

Baker’s Blues is coming out this summer!

I’m so ready to get this one out the door. It’s been percolating since…well, since the twentieth century, when I was writing Bread Alone. Hard to believe it’s been that long, and harder still to think that I actually had in my head the entire arc of this story.

I’m a bit sad that my longtime publisher will not be bringing it out, but I’m going Indie this time, and it’s kind of an adventure. I have the final say on the title, the cover.  No one will suggest I change the ending or cut a chapter or add a scene. But no publisher also means no art department, no copy editor, no publicist, no accounting department…and of course, no advance.

So much has changed since Bread Alone was published in 2001. Vanity presses had been around for years, but digital self-publishing was in its infancy. Resources were scarce and results were pretty primitive. Now high quality publishing is relatively easy and inexpensive. Promotion…not so much. When Bread Alone came out I didn’t even have a website. Now, in addition to a website and blog, there are book trailers and virtual book tours. There’s Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Goodreads, LinkedIn, and I’m sure lots more that I’ve never heard of. This is not my area of expertise or—if the truth be told—interest, but we do what we must.

Good thing I’m not embarking on this adventure alone. In addition to about a gazillion books and websites covering every aspect of indie publishing, I’ve got my husband Geoff—trusted reader, marketing consultant and head cheerleader. I’ve got my steadfast writer friends, especially Jo-Ann Mapson—for editing, manuscript consultation, and encouragement. Her multi-talented husband Stewart Allison is responsible for the beautiful cover art, and he’s also designing the book’s page layout. Last but not least, my new author photo is courtesy of my favorite ex-husband Jerry Ryan.

So I’ve buckled my seat belt in anticipation of a bumpy but interesting ride. Fingers and toes are crossed.

May the Force be with me.

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The Horse

photo by Simon Howden

Harry’s Roadhouse out on the Old Las Vegas Highway is a local hangout.  The customers are an intriguing mix of artsy types, musicians, actors, cowpersons, politicos, and normal people. They’re open seven days a week and they happen to be about two minutes and thirty-five seconds from our house, so we end up there often enough to know a lot of the servers at least by sight if not by name, and some of them even remember that I like the house margarita on the rocks with salt while Geoff prefers a black-and-tan.

We usually eat at the bar, especially on Sunday mornings when most everyone else wants a table. We are there this Sunday at 9:00AM, which is usually when they open the bar for breakfast seating. I go for my favorite seat at the far end, so I have the wall on my left and Geoff on my right to buffer any unwanted conversation. I’ll say right here, I’m not a morning person. It’s one of my problems with the bed-and-breakfast experience. I have absolutely no desire to converse with strangers before a quad espresso and the Sunday NY Times.

So there I am, cradling my warm cup and perusing all the interesting films that will never show in Santa Fe and all the books I’d like to read, but probably never will. Geoff is engrossed in the sports section and the rest of the bar is empty. Until a woman comes in. The bartender greets her by name. Pat. And she sits down, not at the other end, as I would have, but right next to Geoff.

She has her own newspaper which she lays on the bar. She hangs her jacket on the back of the chair, then turns to us.

“Good morning.”

She says it twice, smiling and making eye contact with each of us individually. Then she studies the specials menu while I study her discreetly. She’s what the French call a woman of a certain age. Beautifully styled white hair, set off by a robin’s egg blue sweater. Her scarf catches my attention right away because I love scarves. It seems fashioned from multicolored confetti held together by loose stitches, and one of the colors perfectly matches the sweater.

After she orders, she opens her paper. There’s a warmth about her, and something else…maybe intelligence…that draws your attention. I keep watching as she reads and eats her leisurely breakfast. Every time someone comes through the bar, she looks up with an expression not simply interested, but hopeful. As if she wishes someone will sit down next to her and she can say good morning. I feel a strange tug of melancholy. Here is this lovely woman, eating breakfast alone on Sunday morning. Where is her family? Her friends? As writers do, I start to spin tales about her in my mind.

She is lonely, her husband recently deceased. Children estranged. Her best friend has just moved back east to be near the grandchildren. She’s a retired teacher and she misses the bustle of students spilling into her classroom. She used to have a horse, but because of back problems she can no longer ride, so instead she put him out to pasture. She goes to visit him every Sunday after breakfast at Harry’s, just to hear his gentle nickering, feel the dry tickle of his whiskers as he takes pieces of apple from her hand. When she first put him out to pasture, he’d come running to the fence as soon as he spotted her, but as the weeks have passed, he seems to have forgotten that she was the one who’d fed him and brushed him, saddled him. He’d carried her on his back through the pinon and juniper studded hills. All the crisp fall mornings and windy spring afternoons. He’s becoming wilder again. He prefers the company of other horses to her. The trainer had warned her about this.

“Someday you’ll stand at the fence and he won’t come at all,” he’d said.

 

“Ready to go?” Geoff says, suddenly, and I give him a blank look.

“Um…sure.” I slide off the bar stool and pull on my jacket, leaving my story sitting there by the wall.

As I walk out, I pause by her side. “I love your scarf.”

A smile of pure pleasure lights her face. “Thank you,” she says. “My daughter-in-law gave it to me.”

“The colors are wonderful.”

She touches the scarf lightly at her throat and crosses one leg over the other. The movement makes me look down and I notice her feet in their soft blue leather ballet flats.

Not exactly the shoes you’d wear to stand in the dirt by a fence waiting for your horse.

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Adventures in Millinery

I’ve always loved hats.

I wasn’t a particularly feminine girl-child, but I played with dolls, and I made hats for them from handkerchiefs and buttons, ribbons and safety pins.  I had my own hats, too…bunny fur and dark green velvet in winter, straw Easter bonnets with fake flowers every spring.  That is, up until I hit seventh grade, when wearing a hat suddenly became uncool.  At that time the only acceptable head gear among my peer group was scarves.  Why we wanted to wear what my Polish grandmother would have called babushkas remains a mystery to me, but like pre-teens everywhere, we were driven by the need to look exactly alike.

Even in those days, I indulged my secret passion by playing with my mother’s hats, mostly small, stiff pancakes of fabric that sat on top of your head and had little wispy veils that didn’t really veil anything.  When my friends and I went to the shopping center (this was before malls were invented) they tried on bathing suits or skirt-and-sweater sets, while I gravitated to what was still called the millinery department.  Possibly because hats looked better on me than bathing suits.

Over the years I’ve amassed a small collection—I admit to a preponderance of baseball caps, but my friend Jo-Ann gave me a nifty Stetson last year.  My main problem has always been finding hats that fit me…they’re usually too big and they slip around on my head and make me crazy.  Every once in a while I’ll find one that works, but mostly I still just admire them in stores and on other women’s heads.

All that changed about a year ago on a trip to Portland, OR with my husband.  It was a wet, cold December day and we were walking back to our hotel with visions of hot spiced cider dancing in our heads.  I was tired of Christmas shopping, so I had actually already passed the entrance to Pinkham Millinery, when the window display belatedly registered in my brain—a flash of vibrant colors in a dark gray afternoon.

I dragged Geoff back and stood staring at a collection of hats like I’d never seen—sleek, witty, contemporary, colors like jewels.  Finally he nudged me towards the door and we went inside to meet Dayna Pinkham.

I had no intention of buying a hat that day, and that’s not the way Dayna works, anyway, but we struck up a conversation and I found the tale of her search for her “right livelihood” fascinating and vaguely familiar…maybe because she’s a Sagittarian like me.

Growing up in Snohomish, WA, Dayna was surrounded by creativity and artistry.  Both her parents were interior designers and there was always some exciting project going on.  Her childhood included visiting the design center with her mother, accompanying her father to various warehouses to pick up carpeting and wallpaper.  She remembers her mother as the conceptualizer, but says her father could “build anything.”

From them she got not only her artistic sensibilities, but an understanding of “how to work with clients, how to design something they will love, while remaining true to my own vision.”

She studied biochemistry at the University of Washington, but after three years she realized that science wasn’t giving her what she craved.  She left school and embarked on a series of jobs, searching for that elusive something.  Her simultaneous discovery of her calling and her mentor was one of those cosmic occurrences that reminds me of the way I stumbled into the McGraw Street Bakery and found mine.

In her own words…

“One day in the early 1980’s I was in the hat department at Nordstrom in Seattle disappointedly trying on over-decorated, ill fitting hats, when a sales clerk told me about a milliner named John Eaton.  I went directly to a pay phone across the street and called Mr. Eaton who invited me to his workshop for a consultation.

“Upon entering that workshop I was completely mesmerized by the blocks, raw materials and all the equipment that goes into the making of hats.  When I discovered that he taught millinery courses, I immediately enrolled, and at the end of my introductory class, I was honored to be asked by Mr. Eaton to become his apprentice.”

For the past thirty years Dayna has worked at and studied the art of millinery, at first working also as a dental assistant, office manager, chauffeur and “way too many waitress gigs.”  Finally in 1998 she was able to open her own boutique and begin to do what she loves fulltime.

Dayna explained the way she works with clients, typically involving first a consultation and then a fitting before she makes a hat.  I didn’t have enough time on that trip to Portland, but the idea of having a Dayna Pinkham hat was lodged in my brain, so one year later, almost to the day, at 11 AM, I found myself in her shop having entirely too much fun trying on hats.  (It was snowing and unusually cold for Portland, and the heat in the building had gone off, so that explains why we’re all bundled up.)

As I tried on different styles, Dayna talked about her process, how she considers what will work for her clients, their overall look, the shape of the head, the face, the coloring.  She looks at the clothes you’re wearing, asks about where you live, the climate and lifestyle.  And of course any ideas or preferences you might have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I started out thinking I wanted a fedora, but as we talked and looked and I tried on various hats, I began to see so many other possibilities.  Then she said,

“Let’s try this one.  It’s called a sloper.”

I had never heard of a sloper, but as soon as she set it on my head, I wanted one.  A black one.  And so it came to pass.

 

There’s something so perfectly indulgent and magical about a hat that’s made just for you.  The way it feels on your head and the way it makes you feel.  I wore it for the first time at lunch with my BFF Marilyn.  I’ve worn it to dinner at Harry’s Roadhouse, and I’ve worn it grocery shopping.  I can see myself wearing it at a gallery opening or while lobbying the legislature against third grade retention.  I suppose there may be some occasions for which this particular hat might not be suitable.  Putting gas in the car comes to mind.  Spending several hours in a plane.  Walking the dog.  Picking up dry cleaning.  For those, I think I’d like something more casual.  Like that cute purple one.  Or the taupe.  Or maybe the green…or something in straw.

I sense another trip to Portland in my future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Bread Boot Camp, Part Two

The Classroom

Besides running the wood fired oven workshops, Pat runs Hains House as an AirB&B.  In case you haven’t been traveling much lately, this is a system like those home stays and farm stays that are so deservedly popular in other countries.  Three bedrooms and a bath upstairs, one bed and bath downstairs.  So in the four nights I spent in the Log Cabin room under the eaves, Vasu had another of the upstairs bedrooms and the downstairs room was occupied Friday night by Frank and Elaine from Victoria, B.C. and Saturday night by Emily and David from Northern Ireland.  And it must be said that in the case of Hains House, “bed & breakfast” doesn’t really cover the experience.

Breakfast seems intended to feed several high school football teams.  Beginning with coffee or tea, progressing through several kinds of breads, scones, cheeses and charcuterie, yogurt, oatmeal, eggs (from her flock of hens) and bacon, home fried potatoes…I may have left something out, but you get the idea.  Also, she’s not above turning to people who’ve just arrived to spend the night and saying, “Are you hungry?  Why don’t you just eat dinner with us?”

Baker’s Peels

When Frank and Elaine were there we dined on seafood lasagna that Pat threw together during the day in between checking people in and teaching the bread class.  Oh yes, and this was during a power failure that lasted several hours.  We ate by candle glow and firelight.  With Emily and David we all made our own pizzas in the wood fired oven with the dough that Pat and I had put together and refrigerated Thursday morning.

As if all that weren’t enough there were other comings and goings.  Friends.  Children Grandchildren.  Pat had a smile and time for a chat and a cup of tea and plate of food for everyone.  And she kept Vasu and me busy kneading our fingers to the bone.  Every night I stumbled up the stairs with no wish to blog or read or watch a movie or even to wash my face and put on jammies before falling into my wonderful rustic bed and sleeping the sleep of the hardworking righteous.

German Pumpkin Seed Rolls

With only two of us, the class was structured but flexible enough to accommodate different interests.  Having already baked a lot of bread, I was mainly interested in fire management.  I got that in spades on a rainy, blow-y Sunday when Vasu and I were responsible for firing the oven.  We built the fire, and after it was going well we pushed it to the back in order to heat the whole chamber.  We tended it, adding more wood.  When it burned down we spread the coals and shut the door to let the heat equalize.  We scraped out the coals when the temperature was right, and cleaned the hearth with a metal bristled brush and then mopped it with wet towels wrapped around the end of a banjo peel.  We loaded the oven, timed the bread and unloaded it.   But in addition to all that, I found that my baking skills were honed by the kind of one-on-one instruction I’d never had.  And two techniques (for shaping and docking loaves) were worth the price of the class all by themselves.

Vasu on Bagel Duty

Vasu was a bread virgin.  He loves to cook, but he was interested in going beyond the Indian flatbreads he grew up with.  He especially wanted to learn to make focaccia for a woman who introduced him to it in Portland.  It was fun working with him because he was so open to everything and asked great questions and was fearless about trying things.  Beginner’s mind…

 

The whole purpose of my trip was to learn about making the fire, how it burns, how the oven heats and cools and how things bake in a wood fired oven.  On Day 2 I learned to stop worrying about all the carbs I was consuming and to just taste everything and enjoy it.  On Day 3 I learned that you can do everything right and still have minor (and major) disasters.  If bread teaches you patience, a wood-fired oven teaches you humility.

And by the time I left, I’d re-learned that there actually is enough time to do whatever you want, if you just use and enjoy every moment.

That’s the part I want most to remember.

Best in Show

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A Weekend Warrior at Bread Boot Camp (Part One)

The first of two posts about my wood fired baking workshop in Olympia, WA…

I’ve learned over the course of many years and many trips that travel is like dominoes.  If a day starts off ugly things generally get worse.  Thursday (Sept. 19th) is a travel day that begins with a thunderstorm at 1:15 AM.  After checking the time, making sure the roof isn’t leaking and getting a drink of water, I start mentally calculating how many hours I have left to sleep, which of course means zero.  We leave the house at 4 AM (don’t ask.)

My flight to Phoenix is delayed due to the plane’s altercation with a bird.  I keep thinking Just get out the Windex and clean it off…but apparently it actually cracked the windshield.  By the time they get another plane, load us all on it and fly to Phoenix, I’ve missed my connection to Seattle by about 5 minutes.  The next one is at 3:25 PM.  So instead of landing in Seattle at 2:45, I landed at 6:15.  Sprinting, I manage to make it to the 6:30 shuttle.  The nice man at the desk smiles at me and says the van is full but not to worry, I’m  automatically booked on the 7:30 departure.  We actually leave at 7 PM, me and two very quiet young ladies who, unlike me, are too shy to tell the driver we’re freezing and that we do not care to listen to wacko talk radio for the ninety-minute drive to Olympia.

It’s dark when we arrive at The Hains House B & B, so I can’t see much, but that big white farmhouse with a red front door and welcoming lights signals the end of a very long

day.  It’s 8:45 PM but Pat Hains feeds me muffins and scones, cheese and yogurt and hot chamomile tea, after which I fall into bed content and sleep like the dead.

 

FRIDAY

There’s only one other person taking the class–a  guy from Portland named Vasu Upadhya, who will arrive this afternoon.  After a breakfast of oatmeal and hot tea, Pat and I knead garlic and rosemary into some bread dough that she’s already got rising and we weigh out the ingredients for pizza dough.  Her workhorse Hobart mixer has just been cleaned and the gizmo that raises and lowers the bowl is stuck so I run around taking photos of everything while she applies WD40 and we mix the pizza dough in her Plan B mixer, a Bosch, which is pretty impressive, but lacks the romance of the Hobart.

Pat attended the International Baking Academy in Weinheim, Germany because she had fallen in love with German bread while visiting her former in-laws in Germany.  She already had a wood fired oven because on a trip to Italy she’d fallen in love with the pizza, foccacia and bread and had taken a course there on wood fired baking.  Hmmm…a possible pattern emerging here.   Her Italian made oven presides over her back patio and is the focus of these workshops.  We’re due to fire it up at high noon, and I can’t wait.  So more later…

Much later, as it turns out.  My original brilliant idea was to blog every night after class with photos of the product we turned out that day.  File that one under Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.  Pat has quite an ambitious schedule of breads for our two and a half-day class.  In fact when Vasu arrives and she hands us our information packets, I mistakenly think the idea is to choose a few kinds of bread from the list.   Which includes:

Killer Whole Wheat Bread, White bread with Cranberries and Walnuts, Focaccia, Bagels, German Pretzels, German Pumpkin Seed Rolls, French Batards and Boules, Pizza and Cinnamon Rolls.

Choose among them?  No.  It seems I have unwittingly enrolled in Bread Boot Camp.

Details in Part Two…

Hains House B & B

 

 

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Cutting It Short

A few weeks ago I cut my hair.

No, that’s not exactly right.  I didn’t cut it.  I had Dolores cut it, because she is my hair person.  I never know what to call her.  Stylist?  Dresser?  Cutter?  I usually just call her Dolores.  She’s been cutting my hair for…four years?  Maybe more than that.

I tend to be very loyal to my hair person.  In some cases it’s been more like inertia than loyalty.  Or a bad marriage.  Something you want to escape but can’t figure out how.

In L.A. I went to the same person for ten years because at some point we became friends.  After that it felt like betrayal to go elsewhere, even though I would come home after nearly every appointment and avoid looking in the mirror.

With Dolores I have found that rare thing, something like true love.  She has a small shop in a suburban office/medical park, out of the way and a little hard to find.  She does it all—hair color, perms, wigs…I think she even does manicures.  But IMHO, Dolores was born to cut hair.  She understands hair.  Even my hair, which is wavy (not curly) too fine to have any body, and now is beginning to thin.

When I first came to her my hair was short and looked like someone had put a bowl on my head and cut around it.  I’d been going to a charming and very expensive Frenchman who fortunately retired before I could summon up the courage to break off the relationship.  A friend whose do I admired steered me to Dolores.

She offered me a free consultation, so I went in to see her and consult.  I told her that I wanted long hair, like 99 percent of the women in Santa Fe.  I wanted a long gray braid hanging down my back. I told her I knew the transition would be painful and frustrating and there would be times when it would look like I’d styled it with an egg beater.  And I said if I came in asking her to shave my head, to please try talking me down.  That had always been my prior experience of letting my hair grow out.

Dolores just nodded and smiled.  So we began to work on my project.

One morning some time later I woke up with long hair.

There was no “in between time” when I hated my hair.  There were no days when it would refuse to accommodate my simplest and most polite request.  I simply went through about a year and a half of gradually lengthening hairstyles.  Each one was different, but each one was attractive in its own way, and the only thing required was a visit to Dolores every eight to ten weeks or so with a couple of (free!) bangs trims in between.

So for the past three or four years I’ve had long hair.  Not in a braid down my back, however, since I never got the hang of braiding it myself.  But it was good to wear long and straight or long and wavy or pulled back in a twist or in a ponytail with one of my baseball hats when I’d take the dog for a walk.

Then something happened.  A bunch of somethings, actually, beginning in January.

My parents totaled their car.  My mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer and needed surgery.  Meanwhile, my father grows more fragile and forgetful.  Starting in February I was either in Atlanta, where they’ve lived since 1964, on a plane going to Atlanta, or on a plane coming home from Atlanta.  Starting in May I spent six weeks moving them out of their home and into a retirement community closer to my brother and me.  It was wrenching.

Then the septic system in our 60-year-old house died of old age and we had to fork out 9 grand for a new one.  For two weeks I watched a backhoe and men with shovels demolish our front yard.  At the same time, I lost my literary agent, my editor and my publisher in the space of two days.  The manuscript I thought was sold, is not.

I began to lie in bed in the mornings and cry.  Sit at my computer in the afternoons and stare at the blank screen.  I felt as if I was running a marathon through warm jello.  I felt unable to make a decision, to accomplish anything at all.

Then one day in the checkout line at the grocery story I was flipping through a magazine when I saw a photo of Jane Lynch.  With her cute short hair that looked like all she had to do in the morning was give her head a little shake.  Which may or may not be true, but at that moment I realized that I needed to be in control of one thing in my life, and my hair was pretty much the only option.  I took the picture to Dolores.

She looked at it.  She smiled.  She nodded.

“Time for a change?” she said.

I wish I could say that I now look like Jane Lynch.  I wish I could say that all the other problems have been resolved.  But of course, if they had, there would be new ones to replace them, for such is life.

This much I can say.  I’m in control of my hair.

When I get up in the morning I just run a comb through it (or my fingers if I can’t find my comb) and I’m ready to face the world.

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There’s a Lesson Here

Canyon Road Tea House in a different season

“Did you know Cindy Bellinger?” my husband asks.

We’re sitting at a table at Dulce having coffee and reading the paper, our Friday morning routine.  I’m reading Pasatiempo and I look up, surprised.

“Yes, we met her at Larry’s signing.  Why?”

“She died yesterday.”

“What?”  I’m sure that in the noise of a bakery morning I misheard him.

“She passed away Thursday morning.”  He holds up a page of the New Mexican, and I grab it.

The headline: “Writer lived life without regrets.”  I race through the story and then read it twice more, lingering over the details, still not quite believing.  Her photo smiles happily from the page.

Yes, I knew Cindy.  I only met her twice, but she made an indelible impression.

I met her at a book signing at Collected Works Bookstore.  The author was a mutual friend and part of Blue Mesa, a writers’ co-op that Cindy helped found.  We chatted briefly about writing and publishing and I was impressed by all her experience…writer, editor, poet, publisher, book designer.  Little did I know that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Then in an email from WordHarvest, I saw a notice that Cindy Bellinger was teaching a one-day seminar on self-publishing.  Since my agent had sent back my latest manuscript with the comment “This is a bit too dark,” I had been seriously considering publishing it myself.  I registered for the class and was disappointed a week or so after that when it was cancelled for too few participants.  I figured there’d be another class eventually and promptly forgot about it.  Several days later I received the following email:

Judi,

I learned you were signed up to take my WordHarvest class. I was so sorry it had to cancel. If you’d like, we could meet for tea or lunch one of these days and I can give you one of the handouts.

NMBA is starting up the satellite group again, a small group that meets once a month to talk in depth about any self-publishing steps people need info about. I and three others are facilitating. If you’re interested, I can put you in touch with the woman who is compiling the list.

Also, it was good meeting you at Larry’s reading last month.

Best,

Cindy

Cindy Bellinger

Author, Publisher, Walker

We met at the Tea House on Canyon Road.  Cindy was instantly recognizable by her long fall of hair.  According to my calendar it was 1 PM on Friday, August 17th.  I just remember it was a beautiful day.  We sat outside and had a late lunch and talked for nearly two hours.  She gave me a folder of information she had put together for the seminar and we talked about books and reading and writing.  She gave me signed copies of two of her books, Into the Heat: My Love Affair with Trees, Fire, Saws & Men (my favorite) and Walking on Burnt Mountain.

The conversation turned personal.  In addition to her multiple literary endeavors, she’d been a ballet teacher, a dog musher, a baker, and several other occupations.  She told me about her garden and her life in the cabin she built herself.  I listened, rapt, since that had always been a fantasy of mine.  The difference between us was that she had actually done so many things that I had only fantasized about.  She struck me as a “renaissance frontier woman” as one friend so aptly called her, and also a woman in love with life.

We parted company that afternoon, agreeing that it had been a great conversation, to be resumed soon.  That was not to be.  We exchanged a couple of emails and I thought of her from time to time in the intervening months, that way you so often think of some people…I really need to call Cindy, see if she can have coffee some afternoon.  Apparently she was diagnosed with a rare type of sarcoma on her arm in September, just weeks after our lunch.

I love the excerpt from her blog that Staci Matlock quoted in The New Mexican…

“A lot of people are asleep, thinking their little corner of the universe will go on forever.  Dreams get swept under the rug.  Trying new things gets pooh-poohed (too old, too poor, too whatever.)  It’s the knowledge that you haven’t really lived that looms with the death call.”

There’s a lesson here.  I just wonder how many times you have to learn it.

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Proud Member of NWA

A while back Jo-Ann Mapson and I were lamenting the lack of decent health insurance for starving writers like ourselves.  We decided to start an association in hopes of getting a great group rate on insurance for our millions of soon-to-be members, and Jo-Ann came up with the perfect name…one we felt sure writers everywhere would identify with and flock to…Neurotic Writers of America.

Well, I mean, you do have to be a bit…um…unusual to be a writer.

What kind of person sits alone in a small office all day everyday, missing dentist appointments, letting her mother leave messages on voice mail, forgetting to eat lunch, ignoring the dog until she’s completely devoured the Tibetan rug?  Answer:  A writer.

Does a normal person drag herself around the country to book signings where she ends up reading to the bookstore staff and a couple of transients who just came for the refreshments?  Does a normal person do this not once, but many times?  Anwer: A normal person doesn’t.  A writer does.

And writers worry.  About everything.  They obsess.  They second guess.  They lie awake at night ruminating over something wrong with the flashback that they can’t quite put their finger on.  They have arguments with themselves…

I am great.  I am shit.  I Am Great!  i am shit…

It’s all a function of what writers do and how they do it.  At a library program once, I was asked to explain all the steps between first draft and publication.  This is what I said:

I finish the first draft and I’m so happy I take my husband out to dinner to celebrate.  In the middle of dinner, I say…we’ve got to go home; I just thought of something I left out of chapter two that could change the entire outcome of the story.  A re-write ensues.

Next I give the manuscript to one of my good writer friends and she reads it and says.  I really love this.  I say, but what?  She says, But nothing.  I really love it.  I say, what should I change?  She says Nothing.  I really love it.

I go over the pages three more times trying to figure out what she’s not telling me.  Then I send it to my agent, who tells me what my writer friend would not.  Another rewrite.  I send it back to my agent.  She calls me and says, I think C— really likes it.  She’ll let us know when she gets back from the holidays.

I sweat out Christmas and New Year’s, going over the ms a few more times.  After the holidays the editor calls.  She says, I love this book.  I say, Thanks.  That’s great.  She says, I just need you to change the ending so that the boyfriend doesn’t die.  I let him live.  It goes to the copy editor.  I proof the galleys.  They send me cover art.  I hate it.  After several sleepless nights, I call my editor.  She makes them re-do the cover art so it doesn’t look like the character is a terminally depressed fifteen-year-old.

To maintain my sanity I start work on another project.  And suddenly one day a package arrives in the mail…my Advance Reader Copy!  I’m so happy I take my husband out to dinner to celebrate.  During dessert I say, oh, God, why did I make that change in chapter two?

 

The point to all this (yes, there is a point) is that writers frequently need advice, encouragement, validation, a hug and a large glass of wine.  And for my birthday, my friend Lois Gilbert gave me a book that meets all of the above needs except for the hug and glass of wine.  It’s called The Artful Edit by Susan Bell.

I just finished it and I’m going to set it aside for a week and then read it again.

This post is not a review, but I do want to say how much I admire the way the book is structured.  While there is a section on working with an editor, the main thrust is learning how to edit yourself, a difficult, yet potentially satisfying task.  The majority of her points are illustrated using The Great Gatsby, including plenty of examples from the manuscript in progress, quotes from Fitzgerald about the work, and from his editor, Maxwell Perkins.

Scattered throughout are mini-essays by various writers on how they approach self editing.  It’s a terrific read, but the best part is the last three pages—an interview with Michael Ondaatje, titled “One Doesn’t Just Write a Book, One Makes a Book.”  I read it three times.

It is so full of gems—wisdom, candor, clarity, wit—all qualities I love in his novels, only here he’s talking about his writing and self-editing.  At one point he admits that he writes his first draft over a period of two or three years, and then spends another two years shaping the story.  He says that is how he discovers what the story is actually about and what he wants to say.

I’ve always want to be one of those authors who sits down with a plan and types Chapter One at the top of the page.  Instead, I never know exactly what story I’m trying to tell until I write it and edit it and knead it, delete some sections and surgically enhance others.  Over the years I’ve given myself a fair amount of grief about it, too.

To read that Michael Ondaatje thinks that process is perfectly fine was an amazing relief…sort of like loosening your belt after Thanksgiving dinner.  It made me feel so good.  Like maybe I’m not crazy and insecure and weird…

Or maybe I am and he is, too…

Mr. Ondaatje, we are currently accepting applications for membership in the NWA.

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