Richard Russo’s Empire Falls

Richard Russo won a Pulitzer for his novel, Empire Falls and well he should have. He deserved it and then some. When I first read the book it was one of those I didn’t want to put down. I make that distinction because a book that is really good deserves to be put down and contemplated. The times I have read a book straight through I think I missed a lot.

Empire Falls, set in a depressed Maine mill town, is one of those complex novels with multiple layers of lives intertwined. Of course, I also liked it because much of it is set in a diner — Empire Diner. I have a fondness for books with a lot of scenes in diners because, well, I wrote one. Diners are interesting places.

The reason I am writing about this now is that I recently saw the HBO version of Empire Falls on DVD. Netflix has it (or will when I send it back) and I recommend you rent it. It is one of those very rare instances of a movie being every bit as good as the book. Of course Russo also wrote the script so that helped and it has one of the most delicious casts on video. Ed Harris, one of the most watchable actors I’ve ever seen, as Miles Roby, Aidan Quinn as his brother David, and Paul Newman as their crabby, irresponsible, stinky, curmudgeonly old father, look so much alike — all with their bright blue eyes — that their interactions as sons and father reminds you of home.

One of the things that writers either anticipate or dread when they have created a work of fiction is seeing it interpreted on the screen. Some writers admit to having an actor in mind when they write a part, others can’t imagine anyone in that role (I admit to being in the latter category). But one of the things that makes a movie from a great book work is finding the right performers to play the parts. I watched the interviews included on the DVD (I swear I like them better than the movies most times) and Russo said that when Paul Newman read the novel, he called him up (imagine picking up the phone and hearing “hi, this is Paul Newman, I just read your book” — awk! thunk!) and said, “Nobody could play Max Roby like I could.” And, of course, he was right. Well, with one teeny exception. In the brief scene in which we see Max as a young man, he is played by Josh Lucas, who, along with Adrian Brody, gets my bid for the new generation of Most Watchables. Young Max (Lucas) and old Max (Newman) are seamless. Amazing.

Helen Hunt as Miles estranged wife Janine, Estelle Parsons as her bartending mother, and Dennis Farina as her pompous, obnoxious fiancé are wonderful and perfect. Theresa Russell is just fabulous as David’s sultry, wise, waitress girlfriend. If all that isn’t enough to tempt you into running right out and renting the DVD there are two more stunners: the vicious, scheming grand dame, Mrs. Whiting, is deliciously played by Joanne Woodward and the entirely touching and surprisingly sexy Charlie Mayne is Philip Seymour Hoffman.

I guess my point in writing this, other than to say, you should see it, is that it is gratifying to a writer to see such an example of a darn-near-perfect bunch of characters from a novel become a darn-near-perfect bunch of characters in a movie. It makes you appreciate how one art form can enhance a different art form. Books-to-movies is probably the most common form of one art interpreting another. I’ve seen it done very badly (why, oh, why did Pat Conroy let them make a movie of Prince of Tides?) so it’s great to see it done so well.

For once the movies came up with something better than my imagination. How great is that?

Thanks for reading.

The Black Madonna

Okay, I’m a little annoyed with Louisa Ermelino. I bought her novel, The Black Madonna and, now that it is finished, have two observations. 1.) it is a charming, well-written book that captures the lives of Italian-Americans in New York’s Little Italy, and 2.) her use of the title was a cheap trick. It is true I might never have purchased the book had it not been for the title so she accomplished her purpose — she sold a book — but the book had virtually nothing to do with its title.

The story is about three Italian American mothers of three lively sons. The first half of the book is about the three women and how they got into the situations they were in. There we are introduced to the beautiful and alluring Magdalena who brought her statue of a Black Madonna to America when she came here as a fourteen year old child bride. The story of how her entire village in Italy conspired to get her recently widowed American husband to marry her is pretty interesting but all we know is that she has the statue and she prays to it. Supposedly we are to conclude that the Madonna worked this miracle by making a grief-stricken but very wealthy American marry a beautiful, clever, intelligent 14 year old girl that an entire village is plotting to get him interested in. Some miracle.

In the second half of the book the three sons — Nicolo, Sal, and Jumbo — are now grown. Nicolo is a divorced policeman (we know virtually nothing about that), Sal is a lawyer and married to a woman who hates New York so all we know is on his rare trips into New York she stays in Connecticut riding her horses, and Jumbo is a good-for-nothing with a gambling problem. Jumbo manages to fall for a nice, thirty-something Jewish girl and get her pregnant. The rest of the book is how he and Nicolo conspire to get him to marry her and get the baby baptized without his mother going postal in their neighborhood. Supposedly the Black Madonna accomplishes this by coming up with a scheme to fool the neighborhood into buying the baptism by having it secretly at night with a fake priest. End of story.

Now, here’s the thing — it’s not a bad book. The characters are mostly charming — I loved Nicolo’s mother Theresa. Ermelino does a good job of capturing the lifestyle and the speech of her characters but the Black Madonna, the title character of the story is a big disappointment and that made me feel like it was a gimmick.

There is a lot of interest in the Black Madonna, which is represented in churches throughout Europe much like any other Madonna except with a black face. There are a lot of theories about this. Was she a holdover from an earlier black-faced goddess, like the Hindu Kali, that got translated into Christianity? We all know that much of Christian traditions and iconography is just reinterpretations from earlier religions. Or is she in actuality another cult figure Sara-la-Kali, one of those apocryphal saints that has its place within a certain people and a certain place but has never been authenticated by the Church?

Personally I appreciate local saints. I think they are an important part of traditional people’s lives — like St. Senara, the mermaid saint of the Celts. But Ermelino tells us nothing other than that the statue lives mysteriously in Magdalena’s attic amid many candles and has done wonderful things for Magdalena.

I like the Sara-la-Kali story myself. Sara-la-Kali has a black face because she was an Egyptian. She is said to have come to France with Mary Magdalene and Joseph of Arimathea. Some say she was the child of MM and Jesus, a theory that The DaVinci Code has popularized. But never mind all that. She is the patron saint of the Gypsy people and once a year they gather in southern France where her church is. The black-faced statue is not in the church proper but rather in a crypt under the ground. During the festivities she is carried up into the light of the world where she is praised and honored (not unlike St. Peter during Fiesta) and then thrown into the sea where she washes back ashore, is redressed in her finery and reverently carried back down into her crypt for another year. Oh yeah, and she has a miraculous power around fertility. Men whose powers are — um — lessening, touch her to restore their virility. Sara-la-Kali — beter than Viagara.

Now there’s a story.

Thanks for reading.

Viva San Pietro!

Living in Gloucester in June is one long preparation for Fiesta, a celebration that dates back hundreds of years in many communities where livings are culled from the sea, honoring St. Peter. In recent years there has been a lot of controversy around Gloucester’s Fiesta because, though its origin is as a religious celebration, it has turned into something of a circus-cum-drunken-brawl. The origins of these Fiestas is beautiful and they exist in many cultures and in many sea-faring towns. There is a chapter in The Old Mermaid’s Tale in which Baptiste talks about the Fiesta to St. John the Baptist, who is the patron saint of the mariners of Brittany, in St. Malo when he was a boy.

I try not to miss the Friday night opening ceremony when St. Peter (his statue) is carried on the shoulders of local fishermen through the streets of Gloucester’s West End, our Italian neighborhood where I am lucky enough to live. The statue is covered in flowers and money is taped to it and the men carry it in procession down to the gigantic altar constructed in St. Peter’s Park where Mass will be said on Sunday morning. Yes, there is a carnival and, yes, there are the usual loud-mouthed drunks spilling out of the bars along Rogers Street — but they are not what Fiesta is about.

I count myself lucky that I am a person of Faith. When I was young I thought religion was, as Marx said, the opiate of the masses. But as I have come along in life there was one undeniable thing that always haunted me — all my anti-religious sentiments felt a lot like denial. In my heart I believed. I finally gave up trying to fight that and I’m glad that I was able to do that. I don’t know what makes saints, or gods and goddesses, or the ultimate Divine. But I know there is something there and, though most religions per se are not very effective at representing that to their followers, when I am a part of celebrations like Fiesta I know beyond knowing that there is something there – something everlasting and powerful and we are blessed to be able to acknowledge that.

Fiesta has many faces — the carnival, the games (you have to love the boat races and the greasy pole), the Blessing of the Fleet by the archbishop. But it is the processions that I love the most. On Sunday afternoon I was working here when I heard the drums and bugles and bagpipes that signal the procession/parade is approaching. It marches up Washington St. and circles around somewhere in back of me and back down. Actually, I don’t know where it goes but I hear it for hours. And along with the music is the constant cry, in masculine voices, of “Viva St. Peter!” Hooray for St. Peter! In fact, all weekend long there are outbursts of Viva St. Peter all over town. I love it. I love hearing people thanking St. Peter for returning their men from the sea.

I’ve heard so, so many stories since I’ve lived here. Stories told quietly as though fear of ridicule if overheard. Stories of terrible storms or damaged boats or some other catastrophe at sea, and then prayers — they say there are no atheists in foxholes, the same may be said of troubled ships at sea — and then the unaccountable thing happens and St. Peter or Our Lady (Our Lady of Good Voyage is the Portuguese patron of the sea here) is there and all is made well. It happens and these people are grateful.

I love this tradition. I love the procession in which St. Peter is carried back to his place in the St. Peter’s Club and, along the way, the statue is halted before the families of those who have lost loved ones and, yet, still show up to give thanks and pay homage.

Monday all was quiet. The carnival was gone and the statue of St. Peter is home. I was walking across the street to my car when my neighbor, Ignazio, a fisherman and owner of that wonderful tree, called to me. “Did you have a good Fiesta?” I walked over and said I did and that it sounded like they had fun at his house, I heard the laughter and the Vivas. “You should have come over,” he said. “We had a good time.” I told him thank you, I thought about it but I was writing. “It was a good Fiesta,” he said. “Even with the rain.” What’s a little rain to a fisherman?

Viva San Pietro!
Thanks for reading.

F/V Black Sheep: The Book

A little over two years ago I got a phone call from a guy who said he needed to talk to me. He had been given my number by a mutual friend and he wanted to know if he could come by and drop something off — a manuscript.”Where are you?” I asked. “On the state fish pier,” he answered, “in my truck. Where are you?” “Do you know where the statue of Joan of Arc is?I’m near that.” Later he told me when I said that he knew we would work well together.

The manuscript was waiting for me when I went downstairs later that afternoon. It was titled, “Ted Williams: Football Player” and I read it immediately.

There was no denying the talent of the person who wrote it. He had an easy, accessible narrative style, he knew how to pace a story and build drama. His use of dialog was good. After years and years of helping people with their writing the one thing I’ve learned is that if they can’t do dialog, they aren’t going to be good writers. If they can do dialog, there is potential. The reason for this is simple. The one thing writers must do is listen to people, listen to how they talk and how they use words — observe their curiosities of speech and note the way a person’s character and nature is conveyed through their speech. This guy needed help with organizing his story, with grammar basics, and punctuation. Especially punctuation — his sentences went on forever. But those are all easy fixes.

I called the guy and made plans to meet. He showed up at the appointed time and I liked him immediately — a big guy, with the clothes, body and attitude of a working man who wouldn’t know a pretense if it bit him. He had a soft, quiet way of speaking and mice eyes. I said I’d work with him.

It has taken two years and the way has not always been smooth but through everything I never stopped believing that he was talented — very talented.

He was possessive of his manuscript, only letting me have a chapter at a time. We would work on that one until he was satisfied with it then he would give me the next one. We didn’t always agree on how some parts should be edited. Sometimes he let me change things, other times he refused. He wanted it the way it was. He definitely knew what he wanted and, I had to remind myself, it’s his book. Lots of times I said, “It’s his DAMN book.” But I always knew it had lots of potential.

When I read the chapter called “Little League” I knew the book would have appeal. He wrote with both humor and compassion for the fears a boy goes through when he’s facing a tough challenge. When I read “Little Feet” I knew I was working with a writer who knew how to please his readers. It was both funny, mysterious and touching. When I read “Garand Afternoon”, a chapter of remarkable intensity, I knew I was working with a writer who knew how to write out of his gut and was fearless in self-revelation. That chapter took my breath away the first time I read it and it still does.

Two years have passed and this week that book, F/V Black Sheep by Mark S. Williams, is being released. It will shortly be available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble but the best way to get it is to go to Mark’s web site, download an order form and mail it to him with a check. He will autograph the book and send it to you.

Over these two years I have grown to love both Mark and his book. There are parts I would have done differently, there are a couple sections I wish he would have let me cut, but there is so much that is excellent all that seems minor. It IS his book, afterall. I just got to be a part of its production.

I hope you will buy it. I know you will love it.

Thanks for reading.

Political Correctness, Cultural Illiteracy, & Other Annoyances

Some years back I was working in an engineering firm and had a number of fine art posters hanging on the wall. One, from the Medici Chapel, showed Michelangelo’s Evening (left) from the tomb of Lorenzo de Medici. One day a young, well-educated, and ostensibly intelligent engineer was in my office and he looked at the poster and said, “Why would you have a picture of a naked man hanging in your office?”

I nearly fainted. A naked man? What naked man??? That’s a Micheangelo! I don’t know why I was surprised. They don’t teach art, let alone art appreciation, in school anymore. Why would this kid know about the classical nude? Poor Kenneth Clark, he must have rolled over in his grave.

I thought about that because I have been working on the cover of the short story collection I am about to publish through Parlez-Moi Press. As tough as it is to get a novel published these days (don’t get me started) it is twice as hard to sell a short story collection. So, since I’ve learned so much with Lila’s book and Mark’s book (which is now available but more on that next week), I decided to give this a whirl. Even if I never sell a book, it’s better than having them languish in my desk.

The title of the book will be My Last Romance and other passions and, for the cover (right), I chose a detail from Peter Paul Ruben’s magnificent painting The Union of Earth and Water that hangs in The Hermitage. It is one of my favorite paintings because it shows enduring love, love that lasts throughout time. The looks on the faces of Poseidon and Demeter are so tender and so beautiful, it seemed like a perfect choice. So, when I got the cover designed, I sent it to a few friends to get opinions. What a shock!

“It will be interesting to see how people react to a picture of an old man and a younger woman,” one friend said. Excuse me? They are a god and a goddess, they don’t have ages. “Why would you want to put old people on the cover?” another said. Old people? Well, first of all, the title of the book is My LAST Romance. Besides, who should I put? Brangelina??? “I don’t know,” another said, “old, naked people might not be a good choice. I mean, he’s got to be sixty anyway. Put some clothes on.”

This is very discouraging. I don’t know what annoys me more, the obvious lack of awareness that this is a piece of classical art or the politically correct contempt for nudity and age differences. Even if you don’t know the painting, isn’t it obvious that this is classical art? Didn’t the laurel leaves in his hair give you hint? Fortunately, I’ve received a lot more positive comments than negative ones but it does make me despair for the survival of the classical arts. Imagine if I told the woman worried about that their age difference that they are also brother and sister. The horrors!

We are living in a very superficial age. I haven’t a doubt that if I did put Brangelina on the cover it would sell a lot more copies (not to mention how it would go through the roof once the lawsuits started!) But I don’t want to give in to that. I have been told by two literary agents that my novel is beautiful but “a little too literary”. People want gut-wrenching, abuse-laden memoirs and slutty, addicted, dysfunctional knuckleheads in their reading — I guess. In my heart I know that there are people who know the difference between a god and a goddess and a pop star couple. In my heart I know that love is rarely politically correct. But those concepts don’t get a lot of attention these days.

I had an exasperating discussion not long ago with a young woman who said she refused to read Gone With the Wind because she disapproved of the way it portrayed African-Americans. She also is boycotting Hemingway and Fitzgerald because they were “immoral” and Eugene O’Neill because of his “glorification of substance abuse”. Sigh.

Thanks for reading.

Jean Lafitte, My Invented Great-Great-(etc.)Grandfather

In order to appreciate how strange this story is, you would have to know my father. Failing that you will just have to trust me that, in addition to living most of his life as a colorful character, he was never above spinning a good yarn. The problem with that was that he didn’t realize how gullible his children (or at least one of them) could be.

This all started in about third grade when we were given the assignment to make a family tree for some dumb class in school. Who in their right mind would tell a third grader to make a family tree? I’d blame it on the nuns but I didn’t even have a nun that year. So anyway, I was sitting in the kitchen driving my mother nuts asking her about great grandparents and great-great grandparents. It was all very confusing. Finally, in that slippery weaseling-out maneuver that parent’s are famous for, she said, “Why don’t you go downstairs and ask your father?”

My father was working in his woodshop downstairs, as he was most nights. When I asked him who my ancestors were he — being the Tino that we all know and love but are dumb to trust — made me a really beautiful family tree. I still remember it. He drew it on a piece of plywood with one of those strange, flat carpenter’s pencils that he always carried around. As he drew it — making branches shooting off all over the place — he told me stories about all my ancestors. Fortunately for me I forgot most of them but one, Jean Lafitte. According to Tino, our family, or at least part of it, came up from New Orleans where our great-great (who knows how many “greats”) grandfather was none other than Jean Lafitte, the pirate. Boy, was I impressed! I couldn’t wait to tell the kids in my class! Boy, were they not impressed... Well, remember, this is the same father that regaled us for years with his Adventures-In-Darkest-Africa, all of which sounded, many years later, like the plot of Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies.

So, anyway, for years I thought I was descended from a famous pirate. I liked that. I’m not sure when reality set in but, well, I’ve always secretly believed that reality is over-rated anyway. Years later when I first saw the foundation of Maison Rouge in Galveston I really did feel a pang of regret along with a vestigial familiarity with the home of my invented great-great-(etc.)grandfather. Later, in New Orleans, I stopped by the ruin of the Blacksmith Shop Bar (left) with the same sense of invented familiarity and loss.

What got me thinking about this is a chapter in Herbert Asbury’s The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld. I read Asbury’s Gangs of New York a long time ago. I loved it because it gave early New York a sort of feudal romance that I’d never associated with that town before. The French Quarter is even better. The chapter on pirates is the first real account of my invented great-great-(etc.)grandfather I’ve ever read. I don’t know why I never read anything about him before — maybe I didn’t want to know how impossible our lineage really was.

So, after reading this chapter in Asbury’s book, I’ve decided that my father told me the truth and it was just the intrusion of something as dumb as reality that screwed me up. I had a very famous and rather admirable great-great-(etc.)grandfather and I am hereby announcing that I am reclaiming him.

I wish I still had that piece of plywood. I know I’m related to a lot of other interesting people but the only proof of it is that board Tino drew in his shop. I suppose it’s possible that it’s still in there somewhere but I’ll probably never know. Well, one infamous fore-father is enough - for now. Ahoy, maties! Shiver me timbers.... aurgh.

Thanks for reading.

Suddenly It’s Summer

Last night when I finished working I cut up the watermelon left from last weekend, put it in a Ziplock container, got my book, and drove out to Eastern Point Lighthouse. It had been a very warm day but the evening was clear and cool with a lovely wind blowing in off the water. A great night for sitting quietly with a book — I thought. I forgot that the warm weather brings out people, which is fine. But not all people share my appreciation of quiet, relaxing evenings. Very few do, in fact.

The lighthouse parking lot was full. Quite a few fishermen casting lines off the breakwater. They are usually relatively quiet and easy to get along with. But then there were the others.

One of the things that just baffles me is people who fight — and fight loudly — in public. They were a young couple, well dressed and driving an expensive looking car. Apparently he had decided to teach her how to fish. Clearly they had invested a substantial amount of money in their gear, as had she in her fishing outfit. But the experience wasn’t going well and she wasn’t happy about it. I was quietly reading my book. The binocular-toting bird watchers were more interested in the feathered critters in the marsh, and the fishermen were waiting for a bite but, before they left, all of us knew that this guy ALWAYS thought up the dumbest ideas and he didn’t know what he was doing and she didn’t know why she put up with his %$#@ and she was tired of him treating her like she didn’t know *&^% and this was the last ^%$#ing time she was going to.... blah, blah, blah. All of us breathed a collective sigh of relief when he peeled out of the parking lot in their shiny SUV and took her the &*][ somewhere else.

Then the Instant Tourists arrived. Instant Tourists are the folks who, for some incomprehensible reason, have taken it into their heads to go somewhere (why?) and see the sights. Except they don’t really have time to spend on any of the sights. They are Quantity Travelers — far more interested in acquiring a long list of things they have seen than in knowing anything about them or spending any time with them. I wonder if they have checklists in their car. See that lighthouse over there? Yup. Check it off. Got that one.

They roared up in a very loud car blaring music which they were generous enough to share with everyone in the parking lot, on the breakwater, and in all the houses along their route. Three of them, young, tattooed, wearing — well, not much — baseball caps, and neon, reflective sunglasses. And beer cans stuffed into I [Heart] Gloucester cozies.

“See, that’s the lighthouse the boat goes by in the Perfect Storm,” one announces. “You’re full of ^%$#!” “*&^% you, it is.” “I thought it was the other one.” “^%$#.” And they turn the car around and roar away. Somebody quick call The Crow’s Nest and warn them!

Then comes The Family — mom, dad, medium-sized kid, and little kid. They arrive in a mini-van and, before they even park, I know two things — they have spent the day at the beach, and the kids are past ready to be in bed. Big, noisy door is slid aside, kids fight, kids are unbuckled and unstrapped, kids whine, mom passes out juice boxes, kids throw them on the ground, dad yells, mom tells dad not to yell, kids yell.......... well, you get the picture.

So, finally, I packed it in. I’d finished my watermelon and my book could be read just as well on my couch with the salty sea breezes fluttering the curtains and the fragrance of fresh mown grass and the harbor on the night air. A glass of wine.

It’s only June..........sigh.

Thanks for reading.

The World Made New

Anyone can tell you that the best way to see the world all fresh and sparkling and bright and new — the way God made it — is to see it through the eyes of a child. No matter how much in love with out world we may be, and I think I love Gloucester a great deal— sharing that world with a beloved child shifts everything and wonderfully so.

Last week my sister Lisa, her friend from kindergarten, Kim, and Lisa’s two boys, Cal and Patrick, were here in Gloucester and it was a wonderful time for me as well as for them. Because I work at home and because I needed to get a few hours work in each day, we decided they would stay in a little cottage at Mark’s house that overlooks the tidal marsh and is within a few yards of the bridge over the tidal creek to Good Harbor Beach. Mark and his mother were generous beyond generosity in letting them have that cottage and it was a delicious treat for them as well as a great convenience for me.

When I first lived here I was at the beach every day that weather permitted. I still spend a considerable amount of time there but listening to Cal and Patrick recount their adventures on the beach at the end of every day was a pure joy. In the late afternoons, when they were straggling back from the beach or whatever adventure they had embarked on, I would join them to cook dinner for them or go out to dinner, and listen to the stories about their days. It was always joyful and exciting and amazing to hear. Tales of seashells found and starfish wrapping around a finger and hermit crabs and their ongoing astonishment at the ebb and flow of tides. Living in a land-locked part of Pennsylvania, their only experience of beaches was at area lakes and a few vacations on the Presque Isle beaches of Lake Erie. Tides were a new and astonishing experience to them.

They certainly sucked the life out of every minute of their rime here. In between beach time they went on a whale watch, wandered Bearskin Neck and Rocky Neck, explored the wonderful Maritime Heritage Center on Harbor Loop (their favorite thing other than the beach), spent one day in Boston at the Aquarium, spent an evening exploring the quarries and ledges around Walker Hancock’s old studio in Lanesville while my friends prepared a fabulous dinner for us and met Lisa and Kim. Everything through the eyes of those boys was incredible. Even staying at the cottage while Lisa and Kim and I visited was great with those two boys. They brought their binoculars and bird books and sat out on the seawall watching birds. I hope I never forget the excitement when eight year old Patrick came bursting through the door calling to his brother, “Cal, I saw three Snowy Egrets! Hurry up before they fly!”

I have to add that Cal and Patrick are wonderful kids who are benefitting from being raised by parents who want their kids to be kids. They have chosen to remain in a small rural town, Coudersport, PA, where values are somewhat old-fashioned and life is pleasant. Neighbors visit, families do things together, kids play outside for hours and hours, and there is far less pressure to fill up time with sports and activities that involve running here and running there to get to every practice session and meeting. There are no malls. Kids catch fireflies and go fishing and build snowmen and pick blueberries.

And turn into wonderful people. Both Cal and Patrick are avid readers. Cal can name every bird he sees and identifies most of them by their calls. Patrick loves to color, draw, and can play alone for hours. Right now he loves his plastic models of knights and he sings to himself quietly as he recreates battles with his knights and his imagination. Both boys are polite and respectful to grownups. Mark’s mother, Elizabeth, went to dinner with us one evening and was delighted when Cal told her the story of Joan of Arc when she mentioned the statue.

I had a great week. They are safely back in Pennsylvania now and I miss them but it was a joy to have them in my world for awhile. Everything seems different and I owe great thanks to Mark and his mother for the gift of their wonderful little cottage on the beach and to my sister Lisa for making two such spectacular boys and sharing them with me.

Thanks for reading.

Vacation

They have arrived --- my sister, Lisa, her friend, Kim, and the adorable Bretz Boys --- Cal and Patrick. So, for the next week I will be a sporadic blogger. The rain has stopped, the sun is glorious and it is time for fun. Enjoy everyone and talk to you soon.......

How Much Coincidence is Coincidental?

There is an interesting thing that happens to me every time I spend time working on my first novel — all these strange coincidences start happening. I don’t know what that is all about but sometimes is spooks me a little. I started the book years ago after a disappointing trip back to Erie, Pennsylvania where I went to college. The idea for the story began then but languished for a long time. But it grew inside me and when I got around to beginning the book it seemed like every time I was hard at it astonishing things began to happen.

The main character of the story, Clair, is a college girl whose early life is not unlike mine — write what you know. The largest part of the story is set in a waterfront diner where she takes a job as a waitress, this is a thing I did though that’s about where the similarity ends. At the time I was working in the diner I shared a little house with two other women whom I have not stayed in touch with over the years. One of them had a very unique name.

When I finished the first draft I was living here in Gloucester. I was so happy with having finished it that, though it was a cold, rainy day, I walked down to the boulevard to the statue of the Man at the Wheel just to watch the waves in the harbor. On the way back I stopped to buy a newspaper. They were out of Gloucester Daily Times so I bought a Salem Evening News instead. I was walking back up the hill looking through the paper when I noticed the words “Erie,PA” in column. It was a poem that had been submitted by a woman in Erie, PA — my former roommate with the unique name. I don’t think I had seen her name anywhere since I moved out of that house. And that fact that I would find this poem on the day I finished a novel based on experiences while we were roommates knocked my socks off.

There have been a lot of stories like that — going into a bookstore in a small town I had never been to and finding a mis-shelved book about the maritime folklore of Brittany (an important part of my story) and then the store owner gave it to me because he didn’t recognize it and there was no price tag on it. When I was doing a re-write I was almost at the end and needed a powerful simile. I was fixing dinner and using a cookbook I rarely used — one of those kind that are a combined travelogue and cookbook — and there was a story about Sir Galahad that was exactly what I needed. I remember crying when I read it I was so astonished at finding it.

This week I have been back at ruthless editing. In the book Clair lives in a little carriage house (much like one a friend had when we were in school) and falls in love with a Breton mariner-turned-musician who plays the guitar in taverns. I was online looking for the latest album by my favorite French musician, Francis Cabrel, and went to his web site. There was a photograph of him standing with his guitar in a wooden room that was straight out of my book. It is now my wallpaper on my computer.

I wonder what is going on when stuff like this starts happening. Is it just that your mind is more open to certain ideas and so you notice them more? Carl Jung called it synchronicity and he believed that it was the universes way of prodding you in a certain direction. It is as though the collective unconscious we are all a part of gets together and gives you support for your endeavor.

I don’t know but it amazes me and makes me think I am doing a right thing. Well, I’ve always believed that God moves in sneaky ways. Who knows? But it makes me want to keep moving forward, despite all the frustrations and disappointments. And that’s good.

Thanks for reading.

Rain, Rain Go Away....

Yesterday, during one of the brief respites from the deluge, I went out to do a few errands. I passed four little girls dressed in brightly colored slickers and boots sitting on the curb and singing in their sweet little voices, “Rain, rain go away, come again some other day...” I hadn’t heard that song in years and, sung by four little girls, it was especially sweet. I find it lovely that there are still children in this world who know such songs.

But, I’m telling you, I’m sick of rain. It’s a funny thing because I do actually like dark, cool days. I get more done because the temptation to go out and play is so much less. But enough is enough. Normally our springs here are filled with flowers but this year the lilacs, wisteria and tree peonies — my favorite of all flowers — lasted half the time that they normally do. The rhododendron seem to be flourishing but everything else is waterlogged and brown and collapsing under the rain before their time.

Yesterday I called Rebecca and she said that she hadn’t left the house in a couple days. Of course, if I lived where she does, in Walker Hancock’s old studio deep in the woods surrounded by tall trees and quarries, I’d probably never leave. She is leaving next week for South Carolina to see an exhibition of work by Anna Hyatt Huntington. Huntington, known locally as the sculptor of Gloucester’s statue of Joan of Arc, is the subject of Rebecca’s doctoral dissertation. Somehow the idea of writing a dissertation on Huntington, while living in Hancock’s studio, seem s just too wonderful to me.

Then Leslie called. She had just come back from an Essex County Needleworker’s Guild meeting and was bubbling with ideas. She has been designing shawl pins like crazy and each one is more beautiful than the last. Take a look at them here. Leslie keeps encouraging me to attend one of these needlework meetings. I am at that point in my life where I am trying to protect my time. Now that Mark’s book is 98% done (please God, make him stop changing things!) And I am back at work on my novel, I have become very selfish with my time. Leslie’s roommate Maureen took the phone and asked how my darling-killing was coming.

So, it is raining and my friends are busy and so am I. Yesterday I spent most of the day working on the art associations web site, did a few errands, cooked a good, nourishing supper, worked on my new shawl for awhile and then spent the rest of the evening on the novel. Edit, edit, edit. I’m flabbergasted at how many mistakes I am finding in a manuscript that I thought was finished.

The really delicious thing about working on this book is that most of it grew out of the years I spent in Erie, Pennsylvania when I was attending Behrend College there. I worked for a year at a diner in a tough part of town, though I didn’t know that then. Now, when I think back to that time, as I work on the book, I am filled with amazement that I even did that. I was only 19 then and knew so little about men and about life and about the dangers there are in this world. I was lucky to live in the time I did — today a nineteen year old girl wouldn’t dare.

So I think about these things as it continues to rain. Francis Cabrel is on the stereo. I just made another pot of the steamed coffee that I love. I have a busy work day ahead of me.

You are a lucky person if you have people you love, good work, memories that interest you, a Muse or two and an appreciation of loveliness — whether it is the voices of little girls singing for the rain to go away or Francis Cabrel’s smoky, French ballads — those are blessings. But I still wouldn’t mind if the rain went away.

Thanks for reading.

Killing My Darlings

Anyone who writes has to learn to do two things — write with passion and edit with a vengeance. Writing with passion isn’t that hard to do if you love your subject but editing — that’s tough, that’s really tough. We all want to think that every word we write is exquisite and a gift to the world. Trust me on this, it isn’t. Years ago in a creative writing class a teacher had us do a terrible exercise. We did a themed, free writing exercise as usual and then, instead of reading aloud as usual, we were instructed to tear them up. Oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth! But it was a good lesson to learn.

I recently regained control of my first novel, The Old Mermaid’s Tale, which was in the hands of an agent who claimed she loved and thought it was absolutely beautiful but who just never got around to really pitching it. Alas. This is the third time I have been through this. The agents say wonderful things — beautifully written, compelling characters, unique storyline, high literary merit. Well, it’s the last one that always hangs them up. Literary merit is nice in theory but a hard sell these days.

So, once again, I am going through it and editing. It’s hard at times. Hemingway said, “Kill your darlings” and that is truthful but hard advice. If you love anything too much, chances are you aren’t seeing it with clear eyes. You have to be ruthless. One of the things I am realizing as I work on the book this time is that I have now gained enough distance from my love of the characters and the plot (such as it is) to step back and see the problem areas.

I know one of my problems both as a writer and as a person is a tendency to try over-hard to explain things. If I think I am not being understood in a particular area, I will try approaching it from different perspectives until I feel my audience has gotten what I am trying to say. This can be tiresome — both for me and those who have to deal with it. I am seeing a lot of that in this read-through of the book.

One of the wonderful things about fiction writing is that you get to create a world. I realize now that in creating the world in which this book is set, I described to the point of tedium the settings. I can remember sitting at my desk drawing maps of the streets and of the buildings on the streets to make sure the reader would understand that if you turned right off of Front Street onto Canal you would pass....blah, blah, blah. Readers don’t care. They’re not sitting in their chairs thinking “wait a minute, this doesn’t make sense, before she said the laundromat was on the left not on the right.” The reader just wants to get past the laundromat to the next action.

This has been interesting. I’ve crossed out paragraphs of description and I’m betting no one will ever know, or care, how meticulously I created this world. And that doesn’t matter. Also, since the book is written in the first person from the perspective of Clair, an intelligent but highly romantic young woman, there is a great deal of introspection — as there always is with highly romantic young women. This is not a bad thing but the reader doesn’t need to hear it twice. Lines like That didn’t seem possible to me. “Are you sure that’s possible,” I asked need to be slashed. Either think it or say it but don’t make the reader read the thought twice.

So I am editing with a vengeance and actually rather enjoying it. For one thing, since I have been working on this book for years now, it is gratifying to see that it still holds up. The story still rings true without that where-was-I-at-in-my-life-when-I-wrote-this-drivel horror.

Maybe this novel is just an attempt in futility but, even if it never goes farther than my desk drawer, I want it as good as it can be. My darlings need to be sacrificed for the greater good of the whole. Oh well.

Thanks for reading.

Knitting with Interesting Fibers, Part 2

Prepare for some starry-eyed raving. My goodies box from Lynn Noble at the eBay Store Fab Fibers arrived yesterday and I LOVE this stuff! I don't know where these eBay vendors get their fibers but I don't care. This stuff is just gorgeous and I know I'll want more eventually. I discovered the store by accident when I was doing a random eBay troll for silk yarn. As anyone who reads her knows, I LOVE silk. I love the look of it, the feel of it, it's drape, the way it takes color and the way it wears. I have always loved silk fabric and have, in recent years fallen in love with silk yarn as well. I'm also fond of rayon. It has many of the qualitites of silk though it is generally heavier and less pliant but when you combine the two you get a fabric that is both drapey, sensuous to the touch and wears well.

The first fiber out of the box is 100% rayon. Lynn called it Fuschia Thick-Thin Rayon and it is beautiful, worsted weight "slubby" yarn. The base yarn is a shiny fuschia color but it has slubs in a deep, almost purple color. I scanned the images on my scanner so the colors are pretty acurate. I knitted up the swatch at left on size 10.5 needles and it is lovely to work with. It is a little stiffer than silk but it reminded me of the Himalayan Recycled Silk I just used for my Gypsy Shawl as I worked with it. I don't know how it will wash but rayon usually seems stiff at first but then softens over time. I think it would make an excellent jacket. On her site Lynn suggests using it along with Himalayan Silk and, since I have five skeins left from my Gypsy Shawl, that might be worth experimenting with. But for shimmer, drape and sturdiness this fiber is just beautiful. I bought a 2 lb. 10 oz. cone which measures out to approx. 1200 yards for $11.99. That's 100 yards for a dollar! Quite a bargain.

The other cones in the box are a beautiful rayon-silk blend that is very "slubby". Lynn described them as Haitian look. I'm not sure what that means but I love it. I bought two cones in the color called Monet and 1 in the color called Gemstone. They are beautiful --- soft, lusterous with a lovely hand and drape to them.
As you can see in the photo at left the colors are just lovely. My first thought was that I would use them together, alternating bands but I tried that and thought it didn't show off the unique colorways of the two different yarns so I am planning something else. Somewhere in my stash I have a large cone of 100% Tussah Silk in a blush rose that I might combine with the Money for another shawl --- a third variation on my Mermaid/Gypsy shawl pattern. As for the soft pastel shades of the Gemstone --- well, who knows. I have some beautiful sky blue 100% cotton Shine from Knit Picks that might be ideal with it. The cones are large, averaging over 1000 yards per cone, and they sell for $15.95 on Buy It Now. Once again, that is one fabulous price for yarn of this quality and unique style.

We all know that I am a fiber junkie and this yarn sure has my creative juices flowing so I'll keep you posted on what comes of it. But in the mean time, check out Lynn's yarns. And save a few cones for me!

Thanks for reading!

Open for the Season

And suddenly it is June and that time of year again when all the clam shacks and art galleries and guest houses that have been closed all winter are suddenly open with their blue and white flags flying in the breeze saying “Open”. One of the details of living in a vacation destination, as the travel brochures call it, is the distinctive difference between Tourist Season and the rest of the year. Suddenly, when I go downtown to run a few errands it takes twice as long because of the congested traffic. Suddenly those of us who live here have to think twice about where to go for a quick lunch or dinner because now there will be lines.

Now, when I stop by Mark’s house to visit, the parking lot is full of cars. Mark and his mother have a guest house right on the beach. During the winter it is quiet out there — only a couple of winter rentals. But now people are coming and going and the phone rings constantly. We won’t go to the Causeway for dinner again until November — the lines will be that long. Our Tuesday night dinner club at Valentino’s will continue to meet until they are finally so busy that there is no place to park and no tables are readily available. The locals stay home — the tourists own the town.

The art association is open for the year. That is a good thing. I went out yesterday to see all the changes that were made over the winter. Somehow, when I am in that building in the off-season, it never seems as grand as it does when the walls are covered in paintings, there are flowers everywhere inside and out, and people come in steady streams to wander the galleries and admire the work.

Exhibition One is hung and it is a beauty. I love seeing what the artists I know year round have done over the winter. Lennie Strohmeier, who startled me with a portrait she painted of me last year, has chosen a much better subject this time around, a beautiful young girl named “Olivia”. Darlene Robyn, whose works never fail to make me smile, has a prize winner — another in her line of Geisha paintings. Caleb Stone painted a main street in Newburyport. Arnold Knauth has a wonderful painting of a house in Lanesville. Betty Lou chose Flowers by the Sea. Two of my favorite artists, Veronica Morgan and Jeff Weaver, painted familiar scenes. Veronica lives across the cemetery from me and she did a painting from the top of her house. Jeff, who loves Gloucester more than I do if that is possible, did another of his still, silent paintings of the Paint Factory. It is a beautiful exhibition.

One of the things that always delights me at the art association is seeing how new artists interpret familiar scenes. Having lived here for 12 years now, there aren’t many spots I haven’t seen painted but somehow artists always find ways to present familiar themes with fresh eyes.

So Gloucester is once again Open for the Season. For me things will take more time and some things will have to wait until fall but that is okay because I get to live here all year round. When I see folks standing out along the back shore photographing the waves, or crowding the parking lot at Eastern Point Light to watch birds, or standing in line to have breakfast at LonstaLand I remind myself that they are paying big bucks to be here for a few days. I don’t have to leave and go home. I am home.

Thanks for reading.

Talking About Design

There are a lot of blogs on the internet that discuss design — web design, collateral design, etc. etc. and I’ve read a few of them lately and have to admit I find them confusing. It is true that you can pick up some interesting information — mostly in the form of links to useful sites where you can get cool fonts and interesting tools. But talking about design for its own sake is sort of strange to me. I’ve always thought of design as an intuitive process that you just turn yourself over to. Like art.

Learning the basics is important, of course. I had art training long before I started designing so maybe I am approaching this issue from a different direction. But I think the capacity to design — to arrange elements in a manner that is both pleasing and useful — is something we are born with. One time in a lecture painter David Curtis was talking about design and he said that if you want to see how intuitive design is watch a child playing with Lincoln logs or any toy that has many different pieces. Watch how the child will dump them all onto the floor and then begin to arrange them in different configurations, moving parts here and there following patterns that may make no sense to us but are part of the child’s instinct to create.

I thought this was an interesting observation and, a few months later, at my sister’s house I had the opportunity to watch Patrick, who was five at the time, playing with a farm set. The toy he had was composed of many small pieces --- chickens and cows and sheep, trees, parts of buildings, dogs, fences, etc. It was fascinating. He was, as children often are, completely absorbed in his game and oblivious to being watched. He talked softly to the animals as he moved them around. “Now you go over here, and the chickens go there.” What I kept thinking was, what, in his five big years on this planet, had provided him with a notion of an ariel view of a farm? Yet he moved surely following some internal rhythm putting trees there and the buildings placed in various positions. Finally, when everything was arranged in a design that his five-year-old instincts told him was workable for a farm, he began to play.

It reminded me of much of the playing my brothers, Jack and Wayne, and I did as kids. The boys had a massive collection of “little green army men” — I’m not kidding, boxes and boxes of them. And we would set up elaborate battle scenes in the upstairs hallway that took days to develop. We never worried about whether their uniforms were appropriate to the battles we designed — whether it was the Battle of Iwo Jima, the Battle of Gettysburg, or the sacking of Troy, our army guys did it all. It was designing the battlefield the right way that counted.

So when I begin a new design project I approach it by assembling the right pieces before I begin to move them around into the right design. What mood do I want to create? What impression do I want to give? What are the colors, fonts, design elements and photographic images that will best convey that? Once I have those pieces of the puzzle decided upon, the process of design begins.

I love that time. When I am working on the first few versions of a design I am at my happiest, totally absorbed and focused. I think that may be the reason I’m as drawn to collage as I am. I love finding the various elements that silently convey an impression and then arranging them to please.

I’m not sure any of this means anything to anyone else. People often tell me that my web design is so distinctive they know immediately when they click into one that it is mine. That is a lovely compliment but it also makes me worry that I am getting predictable. So I surf other sites to see what others are doing and I nearly always come away with a bounty of new ideas. And I get to work with all the fascination of Patrick creating his farm. Which leads to an interesting conclusion — Design: It’s Child’s Play.

Thanks for reading.