Sleeping with Anne Lamott

Several months ago, my brother John and I got into a conversation about writing process and Anne Lamott’s work on the subject of writing process. John happens to be writing a novel and is actually the writer-friend referred to in this earlier post.





Out of that conversation came the post I just linked to and also a review of Lamott’s Bird by Bird, in the category Revisiting a Classic, at Readworthy Books.





Below, the conversation continues, as I find good reason to recommend Lamott’s Hard Laughter.





Janet to John





I did not suggest the Anne Lamott chapter on plot treatment [in Bird by Bird] with the intention to send you off in any particular direction. Just thought a pause to plan might help -- an outline, a treatment, whatever.





With the caveat that I've never prepared a novel-length narrative, I do think Lamott gives a pretty complete description of what a 'treatment' is, as she uses the concept. (That is, a chapter by chapter paragraph-style outline, noting 'where' the characters are at the beginning, what happens in the chapter, and where they are at the end.) But that is not to promote that particular concept.





In advertising, we used to talk about ‘a treatment.’ And sometimes what we saw resembled -- this worried me in earlier conversations -- a writer trying to talk the story into existence, ala your Joplin-writer-friend’s praise for what you had NOT done. So...





I have known writers -- listened to narrative writers talk about their process -- who say they start with 'just a feeling, a sense, a character and no idea where the story will go' and others who always know the end as they begin. I've never had the privilege to hear any of my personal heroes talk about this and I admit, the 'I know the end' types I've heard have tended to be category fiction writers. Dilemma. I don't much care about category fiction beyond the genius who created the category! But you are working on mainstream fiction with some aspirations to literature...





On the other hand, having 'listened' to people like Lamott and Cameron, who --notwithstanding Lamott's Plot Treatment chapter -- clearly advocate starting anywhere and following your characters' lead, I decided to look at their fiction results.





The first Lamott novel I could get my hands on was Rosie, which I found highly forgettable except for a couple of violations of my personal pet peeves: using a novelist as an important character and verbal cliques. I've just started to read a second Lamott novel, which happens to actually be her first novel, Hard Laughter. I am only a few pages in but already am much more impressed, even though there are writers who are important characters. (The key writer is dying. I guess that is a good thing – from the point of view of creating a story. Yikes!!)





In between the two Lamott pieces, I read Cameron's Mozart's Ghost. (I do not know where this piece fits in her body of work.) This piece is very imaginative. If I were asked to rank Lamott's Rosie against Cameron's Ghost, the latter wins. But in the absence of a personal interest, I probably would not recommend either of them to anyone.





Then again, I wouldn't likely recommend any Mary Higgins Clark, who I heard say she always knows the end point when she starts.





So, who knows what all that means!





I am impressed and excited by the developments you have described in your own novel. Whether you decided to outline or 'plot-treat' the story arc -- or just wade on -- I am sure you are going to get there. Maybe it doesn't matter whether the route is more or less direct.






Janet to John





Since I placed Lamont's Rosie behind Cameron's Mozart's Ghost, I feel it is only fair to mention -- I did find a quote in Rosie worth holding onto and perhaps sharing and there was nothing like that in Ghost. Specifically:

“You’ve just got to remember sometime you’ll be on an upswing, everything’s coming up roses, and sometimes you’ll be on a downswing, a broken heart or depression, but although you never believe it at the time, you’ll start an upswing again.” From Rosie, by Anne Lamont

While hardly a unique observation, it's a good idea to revisit often.





John to Janet





I've never read Rosie and after your remarks I probably won't. I think I've
read four books by Lamott: Bird By Bird, Hard Laughter, Operating Instructions, and Crooked Little Heart. (She produces great titles, certainly.)





The main character in Crooked Little Heart is named Rosie. I wonder if this is a younger or older version of the main character in Rosie? Crooked Little Heart is, by far, my favorite Lamott book, but I really like coming of age novels and excellent portrayals of coming of age kids.



I'm particularly fond of coming of age books about girls. Elizabeth Berg's
Durable Goods is a girl's coming of age book; it's probably nowhere near great literature, but I just love it. I've given it as a gift several times.





That was really all to say, I would recommend Crooked Little Heart, and I'd be VERY INTERESTED in knowing your reactions to it.






Janet to John





The last time we talked about Anne Lamott's work, I had just read a few pages of Hard Laughter and you were recommending Crooked Little Heart.





I have finished Hard Laughter and would recommend it without reservation. Here are my journal notes from the morning after I finished it.

Recently I’ve a spat of wee-hour sleep disruptions. Again last night, a physical frisson, a body buzz like a small electric shock, woke me. A momentary distress is made more distressful by the growing knowledge that the sensation augers a bout of late-night wakefulness.




I reached for my tiny reading light and the novel on top of my Chinese herb cabinet turned bedside table. It’s an Anne Lamott novel I’ve discovered helps me ease back to sleep. Not, however, what that sounds like.




It is not boring. Rather, it engages me at exactly the right distance: familiar but not personal. Reading it is pleasantly effortless. The vocabulary, period and culture are known. The experiences are familiar enough, yet comfortably distant from my own particular present difficulties.

Having completed Hard Laughter, I quickly located a copy of Crooked Little Heart. After all, this waking up at 3 a.m. thing could continue!





Read a few pages and can tell you now that the Rosie character in CLH is the same girl, a few years later, who lends her name to the title of the earlier novel.





Reactions will be forthcoming.

Who do you Follow? Who do you 'Friend'? -- II

The mysteries of who follows you on Twitter cannot necessarily be solved by simply observing your own behavior.

Take my behavior.

I joined Twitter because I heard second or third hand I could use it to stalk my son. Oh, no, wait ... I could follow some of my kids and a handful of their friends and keep some sense of what was going on in their lives. Some sense.

Once on, I found a few other people I knew who I thought would be interesting to follow. Friends, colleagues, from my RL. And a couple of public, newsfeed-type Twitter users.

At one early point, I was notified that Barack Obama was following me. With a 'yay, sure', I reciprocated and followed him and then a bunch of other candidates for various offices. (With those particular elections long over, I've removed all of them, although -- pausing to check here -- Obama still appears to be following me. (hahaha))

In the ancient days when I joined Twitter, about 12 or 13 months ago, your user's "Home" page included a button called "Everyone" which took you to the public timeline and let you watch the entire Twitter universe float along. That button is gone and now if you want to watch that amazing tide, you have to really care and know what you are looking for. But back then, watching the public timeline would occasionally reveal someone worth following. I have a couple of people I still follow because I noticed the quality of their tweets while watching the random roll. (Janet L, Scott K -- that would be you.)

There's more, but I'm way off point.

Nothing about what I've done begins to explain the particular people who show up following me from time to time. It tooks me several months -- and a kind fellow user who deigned to answer my question -- before I figured this out. When I asked Carla (name changed to honor privacy) how she happened to start following me, she repsonded: "Auto (I've lost background Mr Tweet?) key words (philanthropy, strategic planning, etc). Not work well unfollowing often." Then I understood; I'd made some comment about poverty or charity and her bot had automatically picked me out as someone with interests in common.

In Carla's case, I don't know if we've been able to share anything useful, but at least we really do share some interests. She is not hoping to sell me something.

This week's new crop of followers are much more typical. A friend and I shared some tweetie observations that included words like 'exercise' 'weight loss' -- stuff like that. So now I have some new followers who I bet hope I'll give a follow back and buy their exercise or weight loss programs or products. Not happenin'. Not even ...

But they do make my follower numbers look better, so I guess that's something.

Who Do You Follow? Who Do You 'Friend'?

and other mysteries ...

Yesterday my Facebook page offered a Friend suggestion that startled me. The name was familiar -- the husband of someone I know fairly well who is about a half-generation older than me. And, BTW, I am old!! Particularly around Facebook and Twitter.

So some ol' guy had joined Facebook.

But how the hell did Facebook have a clue we might know each other? If you have mutual FB Friends, they tell you that right away -- and we didn't. If you went to the same high school or college, particular about the same time (and your profile says so), FB knows. And they tell you THAT.

But -- I'll call him Chet -- Chet and I didn't.

In fact, I couldn't think of anything we had in common that would be captured in a FB profile.

I am fast to accept FB Friend requests from people whose names I recognize -- a little slower to accept from names I don't know but sometimes I even accept those. But I am really slow to REQUEST a Friend unless I do actually know the person in real life at least well enough to think the person will remember how we know each other, that we know each other.

I don't, for example, ask my cousins' kids to be my Facebook friends if the last time I saw the cousin was 42 years ago and I've never met the kid!

I wasn't so sure that Chet would recognize me. Or wish to be my FB Friend.

But I had to know how FB made the connection. Was it simply that we were both in the Chicago network? That's a stretch. Of course, sometimes I think that is enough of a connection for Facebook to take a stab at it.

So, I requested Chet's FB Friendship, reminding him of how we know each other. He accepted. And I got to look at his Facebook page and profile.

Bingo!

The email address he listed for Facebook is shared with his wife and appears in my email contact list.

But there is something spooky about that. A long time ago when I joined Facebook, I did allow Facebook to search my email contact list for matches.

But it only now occurs to me FB retained that info and is using it. Yikes!

Back to Bird -- Reading or Rereading

Not long ago, I was involved in a poetry event. The leader was demonstrating the way a particular poem evolved from good to better to outstanding. He finished up by quoting a writer friend of his: "It's all about the process."



A day or two later, a writer friend of my own said something about his process. When I whined -- just slightly -- that I didn't 'get' all this process talk, he asked if I'd read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird.



I thought I probably had, but, not certain and not finding it in my own considerable library, I headed over to the new Half Price Books in my neighborhood and picked up a copy. Indeed, as I read or re-read, some parts of the book were completely familiar while other parts seemed altogether new. I expect certain chapters were published as excerpts in some magazine I read or passed out in a class somewhere.



On the familiar hand, Lamott's advice about "shitty first drafts" has been shared widely, was and continues to be about the most useful advice a writer can encounter. Paraphrasing in brief: write without concern about the quality; it's a draft, you don't have to share it until you are happy with the result.



But parts that were new were recognizable the way your own experience is recognizable. She talks about how writing makes your own life feel bigger, richer. I remember discovering that for myself in my early teens when a treasured friend moved away. Writing letters to her, just telling her about the ordinary things her old friends were up to, helped me see the golden glow of all those wonderful, adolescent dramas. Keeping a diary had a similar effect on my perceptions.



Much later in the book, Lamott comments that writing takes you out of yourself, which just might be the defining requirement for achieving happiness. These two ideas almost seem to contradict each other. Writing can make your own life seem bigger, more dramatic or meaningful; yet writing can get you out of yourself. It’s interesting to think about that.



Although Lamott does not make a distinction between creative and expository writing, much of what she has to say is specific to fiction or narrative. When her topic is character, setting, dialogue or plot, the subject is storytelling. But writer’s block and all manner of insecurity and doubt can assail both the novelist and the journalist. And Lamott is comedic and masterful on these writerly universals.



I don't recall getting this from Anne Lamott, but she advocates ‘tiny assignments’ and giving myself very tiny 'assignments' works for me. "Write a possible opening paragraph." "Write a few sentences about intuition.” “Work out transitions between drafted paragraphs.” I mean, I can focus down to just getting one sentence the way I want it. It won't make you a fast or prolific writer, but it can keep you writing. This, at times, is enough.



So, yes, I’ve read and reread Anne Lamott’s 15-year-old classic, Bird by Bird and gone on to recommend it far and wide: Readworthy Books, Revisiting a Classic.

Photos from Kahekili

Last week when I posted my description of our exciting ride from Kapalua to Wailuka (Maui, Hawaii), some people urged me to post pictures. Here are the best of the few I took. Then, below, is a link to some professional shots.

Here's Ellie Crowe's take on the story, with photos by William Crowe, Ron Dahlquist and Nina Lee, http://www.nokaoimagazine.com/Features/Vol13%20No3/Kahakuloa_journey.html at Maui No Ka 'Oi, http://www.mauimagazine.net/

The Road from Kapalua to Waihe'e

Lee and I are exploring the Hawaiian island of Maui this week. Day before yesterday in the morning, we headed off from our amazing resort digs on the southern stretch of the west coast intending to explore two towns north and further west. We'd understood these places represented some history, but they were resort towns, mostly duplicating the features of any contemporary beach resort.

Continuing north and rounding the northern coast headed east, I thought I'd treat my mate to a scenic coastal drive. The Kahekili Highway follows the shoreline for about twenty-five miles. But we use the expression 'highway' very loosely here.

To the friends who advised us that Maui was touristy and commercial, we're making book you missed Route 340, also known as Kahekili.

As we continued north and east, the roadway narrowed and wound past spectacular views and glorious breakers. The sides of the road were parked solid and rock beaches below were full of families, couples and groups.

Then gradually the road twisted and narrowed. When a sign warned of winding, challenging passage for the next 17 miles, I noted my odometer: something-73; we should complete the demanding stretch at something-90. And nothing seemed too overwhelming yet – more primitive than we’ve seen in a long time, but do-able.

By something-79, however, my mate was beginning to ask how much longer this would be taking, in between ohhs and ahhs at the scenery.

Then about something-81, the roadway narrowed again, now barely as wide as my car, with a steep drop to my left. Meeting a car coming from the other way would mean driving backward in reverse on this path. I couldn’t see around the next curve but could clearly see the same narrow passage on the hillside across from me.

As I decided we’d come as far as we dared, my companion developed determination. So, at his prompting, I moved forward, slowly, carefully, hands in a death grip. For the next 45 minutes, we inched along, timing movements so we hit wider patches as we approached cars coming the other way. Luckily these switchbacks do allow drivers to spot one another well in advance of the meeting.

At about something-88, we greeting a companion headed the other way: “How long until we reach something resembling a regular roadway?” “Oh, just a couple more miles,” he laughingly confirmed my original calculations.

Unfortunately, in our family, the driver that morning is also the primary photographer and, at least on a first pass, I couldn’t manage much picture taking. I would be posting a couple of shots which don’t come close to doing justice to this very special trip, except I am posting from a public computer and find no slot for my media card -- oh, well, not a big loss.

And despite my deep sigh of relief when we were again on an ol’ ordinary street, I’d be off again for a slower, more photo-oriented pass – if I could convince one of you to come along.

Chain, chain, chain; chain of love

This morning I found two chain e-letters sitting in my email in-box.

Each was sent by someone dear to me and each asks me to send the item on to others. Both convey powerful, worthy messages. In one case, the piece indicates that, by sending it on, I will help maintain vigilance against radical human cruelty, certainly an appeal that gets my attention.

But each creates a dilemma for me.

Back in the earlier days of the internet, I used to get lots of chain e-mails claiming to convey good luck. These emails would come from some friend or acquaintance, often apologizing while explaining that he or she really needed the promised luck. The letter would either offer good luck in portion to your forwarding behavior or threat bad luck for failure to forward – or both! I hated these things and tried to resist the superstitious compulsion they inspired.

Then a young friend, wise beyond her years, sent me a ‘chain letter to end all chain letters.’ It purported to be a talisman again bad luck arising from chain letters. It stated that, from that day forward, I was categorical protected from chain-letter-bad-luck and free to do anything I chose with email chain letter without fear of consequences. The letter itself said to feel free to forward the ‘chain letter to end all chain letters’ – or not; totally up to me.

Incredibly liberating!

After that, I would occasionally get a chain letter that offered something worth sharing. If I wanted to share it, first I would copy and paste what I liked, deleting all nonsense about how the sender should send it on to 1 person for 1 day of luck, 2 people for 2 days of luck – or whatever the gambit was.

But I digress, for neither of today’s missives appeals to my good/bad luck superstitions. Yet, as I said, each creates a dilemma for me.

I know a lot of people and I have lots of email addresses. But I cannot name even a handful I am confident will welcome these letters. I am sort of a ‘permission marketing’ type; if my audience hasn’t volunteered to BE my audience, I hesitate to foist a message. I guess because I am not happy to be asked to forward these items, I cannot imagine my contacts will be any happier. So, what to do?

Well, I am not going to forward the emails.

I’m going to do this. One of them has a medium length quotation worth sharing and I will post it on my Facebook where FB Friends can read it if they like, at their leisure and under no duress to pass it on.

The other – the one with the ‘vigilance against man inhumanity to man’ message I will check carefully for copyright issues and, if there are none, I will share it here sooner or later.

And what do you do with e-chain-letters?

Coriander vs. Cilantro

The other day my son sent up a tweet indicating he'd just learned that coriander and cilantro are the same thing. To me: surprise (how'd I fail him!) and memory trigger.

The first time I wondered about the connection between coriander and cilantro, I was following a recipe from a cookbook with some regional slant. It called for one of them and offered a useless 'clarification'. So, say, it read like this: coriander (cilantro) -- or the other way around.

Unless you already know what the connection is, that parenthetical sends you off on a research jaunt. Even if you've used both coriander and cilantro before. No, sorry, particularly if you've used them both before.

Most cooks -- and I include here anyone required by circumstance to do more than boil an occasional egg or reheat something in the micro -- first encounter coriander as an ingredient in pumpkin pie or gingerbread; thus, it is associated with clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, stuff like that. Then again, the other common use for coriander is in curries, in which case it seems to go with cumin and chilies as well as several of the previously mentioned items. What we usually call coriander is purchased in jars, as a ground power; it comes from the seeds of the plant.

Cilantro, by contrast, often comes to our attention nowadays in salsas, although I first discovered it when I was served seviche. Though apparently not a defining ingredient, all the seviches I encountered in Central American in the 1960s carried the distinct and recognizable favor of cilantro. Sort of a cross between citrus and soap. As many people do, I found it took some getting used to, but once I'd acquired the taste, I was hooked. You might be amazed how much cilantro I go through in my kitchen. You buy it in the produce section, between the parsley and the watercress.

Never -- and we are talking decades here -- had I made any connection between the two items until that fateful cookbook and I crossed paths.

The next part of this story requires some -- excuse the expression -- back story. See, growing up I was pretty interested in food and, by extension, cooking. Similarly, I did such things as: learn to sew, dust and vacuum like a dynamo, change more than a few diapers, practice planting a garden and develop significant typing skills. I bet you can see where that’s going!

Fast forward to life in the city as a liberated woman: assuming the bank account will support it, I pay to have my skirts shortened, my house cleaned, all my vegetables trucked in from elsewhere. I prefer my parties catered. And god forbid anyone discover I can type!

So, while my family-of-origin believes I'm a crackerjack cook, it doesn't surprise me when my family-of-procreation sneers at my domestic and distaff skills. Hey, my bad -- or maybe not even.

Add to that a few ethnic issues (blog for another day) and some subtle problems involving blended families, and we find my cooking cred with the people I sometimes call 'my kids' was and remains low, low, very low.

So the next chapter makes perfect sense.

Having a female teen-ager in the household at the time, I must have shared my coriander-cilantro discovery with that likely candidate. A few days later, I was informed that I was ... misinformed. “Faye said coriander and cilantro are not related.” Faye -- another Mom in the neighborhood, but also model-beautiful Jewess possessed of the first and only Sub-zero frig I've ever seen in a residential kitchen. Well, what do you know.

I know I didn't crack open my Joy of Cooking, 1967 edition, to page 531, where the connection is actually explained. Nor did I attempt to persuade in anyway. And anyone who has had a teen-age step-daughter will understand my thinking there.

Faye and I, of course, talked about it a few days later and laughed when she realized the connection.

But I somehow forgot to tell the boys!

Spring has Sprung, Midden Arrives

It is spring clean-up week-end in my neighborhood. Excuse me! I mean it is our annual Spring Clean-Up Program weekend. Each year in April and May, our town schedules a series of special, free Saturday garbage collection days with different areas of town assigned to different Saturdays.

For about a week before your Saturday, your neighbors start setting junk out on their curbs. An amazing variety of debris bubbles up out of basements, rolls out of attics and floats out of garages. The sidewalks and parkways become littered with two-by-fours and broken trellises, porcelain toilet bowls and defunct Shop-Vacs. Mattresses and cushions and pads of all descriptions are piled about. Last night on the way to dinner, I spotted a garish green tarp appropriate for sheltering a Cormac McCarthy character. That, along with half a set of TV trays on their stand looking incomplete but solid. Recently acceptable furnishings mix with perfectly useless scree.

The result makes the entire area look at bit like a midden for a few days, distracting painfully from the seasonal glory of newly leafing trees and brushes and bursting blossoms in every direction.

My neighborhood usually gets assigned to Mothers’ Day Saturday. And in my family, two family birthdays also fall right around Mothers’ Day. So I am usually planning to entertain on Mothers’ Day Sunday. As the refuse and detritus accumulates, I send up silent fretful prayers to the village demigods not to fail the Saturday promise. I really don’t want my guests confronted by my neighbors’ mounts of trash.

The flotsam and jetsam attract an odd fleet of vehicles. As the day approaches, scavengers prowl in their dilapidated but business-like pick-ups, trucking off a good deal of the truck. I welcome these wily and perhaps wise operators, who seem to know how to salvage all that is useful in these piles of debris. The idea that someone can put the stuff to use pleases me quite a lot.

Mostly. But I had one melancholy moment in the midst of this annual event. Glancing out my window yesterday, I noticed an old, battered, dull-burgundy van parked at my curb; looking closer I could see a bent little old man and woman picking through the already picked-over heap on the parkway across my street. I wish I could believe they would find what they need.

25 Random Things

This sort of thing looks a little self-absorbed, but I did it at the prompting of someone I care about. [I was 'tagged.'] Now that it is done, I might as well post it here, for whatever it is worth.

[Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you.]

1. I have powerful mixed reactions to a task like this. I can anticipate all the tendencies that will slow me down, particularly the perfectionist part of me.

2. I analyze things to the n-th. In a task like this, I am likely to say one thing about myself and then note (at least mentally) all the supporting and contradicting evidence.

3. I am just about the world’s worst speller. Spellcheck has been my salvation. (Ah! My spellchecker doesn’t recognize the word ‘spellcheck’!)

4. As a toddler and pre-schooler, I lived in a tiny village and started school in a rural, two-room schoolhouse. (It would have been a one-room schoolhouse if I were just a year older.)

5. I always think of red as my favorite color … followed very closely by burnt orange. (Sorry, Sara.)

6. Truth is, I love interesting and unusual combinations of colors. I had a friend once who would get almost orgasmic when she saw pink combined with various shades of green. I completely understood what she was experiencing.

7. I am interested in and responsive to most human endeavors and activities, more so than I believe most people are.

8. Two exceptions to #7: spectator sports on TV (although I enjoy watching sporting events live) and TV sit. coms.

9. I love going to the movies. When the lights go down and the title comes up, every care and concern of my day-to-day life disappears.

10. Same thing when I teach! I mean, as soon as I begin the lesson, everything else in my life disappears.

11. I spent much of my childhood playing in forests and fields and I am completely at home in rural settings.

12. I’ve lived all of my adult life (since age 21) in and around cities. I am completely at home in urban settings.

13. I am really pleased that I’ve drafted half of these in about an hour. But I know I’ll need to take a break, refresh my coffee, maybe work-out and shower. And even when I get to 25, I’ll still have to type these into Word and spellcheck and proof about three times, after which I’ll post them, spot a typo. I missed, copy, delete, correct and repost.

14. I am promising myself, despite #13, I will finish this.

15. I see and understand a lot of things through the lens of economic theory and economic analogies. Case in point: a friend and I have been exploring the need for solitude and if I weren’t working on this list, I’d be writing about the marginal trade-offs involved in the needs for solitude and companionship.

16. I expected to give birth to daughters. (If you know me, you know I did not.)

17. At various points in my childhood, I planned to be 1) a ballerina (like just about every other little girl), 2) an acrobat and 3) the wife of a farmer. The third persisted the longest.

18. Like someone else whose ’25 list’ I read recently, I have a love-hate relationship with exercise.

19. My personal experience bears out this idea: the thing that most draws you to your mate is inseparable from the thing about him/her that most annoys you.

20. I was born on Easter Sunday and, due to a calendar process I’ve never completely figured out, my birthday seems to fall on Easter Sunday whenever the 2 digits in my age are the same (i.e. 11, 22, 33, etc.)

21. I love techie stuff and gadgets. In that, I take after my Dad.

22. I am drawn to things like time-and-motion studies, ‘therligs’, systems and methods. Both my Mom and my Dad were, too.

23. I do not have the normal complement of facial sinuses. I am missing a couple of them. (Can’t remember exactly which ones just now.)

24. Oh! I am left-handed.

25. I am amazed at how many more of these items are floating through my head. I don’t think I’ve even touched the ‘goal’ part. I guess those ‘100 random things’ lists aren’t as impossible as I’d imagined.

Environmental Damage, Gym-Style

In 'my' gym, you could walk on a treadmill while watching activity on the bayside of South Beach. The view consisted of palm trees wafting in the breeze, aqua and purple rippling water, docked pleasure boats and plowing work vessels, ivory and eggshell toned buildings in the distance backed by an endless baby blue sky.

Working out there was a lot like meditating.

But recently the gym got an upgrade. Now my view consists of a TV screen up close and personal. I can’t see around it, but I can set it to any channel I choose. I've picked the option of my face in a soft focus mirror; that is to say, I've turned the damn thing off.

Who said, "Take paradise, put up parking lot"?

Mustang Sally

Doing the annual Deco Walk on Saturday, I enjoyed the antique cars most. As usual. Something that might surprise my adult-acquired, urban-oriented friends: I grew up loving cars. Still do.

Someone Asked Me ...

Dianne, you originally asked something like how Lee (my husband) and I happen to travel around so much. We are largely retired and travel is Lee's big hobby. Lee was a sales representative for a NC textile mill for over 30 years. When he was working, traveling abroad was the only way he could really get a break. When we'd vacation in the states, he'd end up on the phone with partners and clients about half the day every day. He developed the skills to plan and organize international trips. I just get to go along for the ride.

Miami, on the other hand, has been our break from Chicago winters for a number of years now.

I'll get into the family and offspring stuff soon.

_____________



Ok, life story stuff -- After college, I moved to the Chicago area, where I've lived ever since. I married and divorced in my 20s without having any children.

I met Lee on my 31st birthday (although it was a few months before we started dating) and married him on my 33rd. He had a daughter, Jennifer, and a son, William, from a previous marriage. Together we have a son, John, now 28-years-old.

Lee's daughter lives in San Antonio, TX; she is married with two children.

Bill lives in Madison, WI and John in Washington, DC. Bill is a tennis pro and sports club manager. John is a political free lance writer. Bill has not married, at least not yet. John is currently separated. Neither one has children.

That's a sketch of the offspring part of my life story.

__________


Dianne, you mentioned a brother and a sister. I also have one brother and one sister. Are you, like me, the oldest of three?

Both my brother and my sister returned to Joplin and settled there after living elsewhere for a few years. My brother John is a successful executive in human resources, now with Leggett and Platt. My sister, who is named Diane, has had a lot of struggles, although I assume that is not how she would tell her life story. Both of them and their children are significant in my life. Two of my brother's kids actually settled in Chicago, so I get to see them regularly.

My Dad passed away at the very end of 1994. Mom and Dad lived in Joplin until then. A few years later, my Mom re-connected with a Joplin high school classmate, was blessed with a new love, married and moved to a suburb of St. Louis with her new husband.

I was NOT bored by your story. Hope I am not boring you! If/when I write more, I should probably tell you a little about my own career.

Peace

"It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work.

It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. "

(source unknown)

I like this a lot and it speaks to me right now. I hope I am not violating anyone's ownership rights by reproducing it here.

A Short One Worth Sharing

A very young (think 19) friend of mine was walking out of a mall last week as a lady (think 32) walked in. Young spots great footwear and calls to lady, "I love your boots! Where did you get them?"

Lady smiles, grabs her chest and trills, "Thanks so much! Dr. Lehman. Most people wouldn't ask."

Second Favorite Holiday Has Come ... and Gone

Table set and ready -- food nowhere in sight.

Ah, the food arrives.

That's our favorite foodie, handling the craving knife.

Everyone had plenty to eat.

The Red Silk Dress

Memories!

The bride’s dress featured a very large crème-with-a-touch-of-tea satin bow and long-to-the-floor sashes. It reminded me of one of my high school ball gowns. I leaned close to my mother to speak over the pounding music.

“Her dress reminds me of the one with the huge lavender bow you made me. Do you remember it?”

“Yes. Do you remember we got the idea from a picture in a Kotex ad?”

“Not at all,” I laughed. “Did that bother you?”

“Not much. The one that bothered me was the red silk. Do you remember that dress?”

“Of course. Vividly. I’ve written something about that dress.”

“I thought you looked so cute. Then one of your boyfriends said you looked pregnant in it. I felt awful.”

I watched her face for several distinct seconds and then I knew. “You don’t remember the rest of the story, do you, Mom?”

“Was there a ‘rest of the story’?”

“You took care of that.”

“I’m so glad to hear I did something right. What did I do?”

The noise was way too loud to continue what was going to be a long-ish story.

“Too noisy. I’ll write it for you.”

Here’s the story.

Back story first? Ok. Dresses and outfits, designs, sewing, tailoring. Around such matters my Mom and I bonded without reservation. Most garments started with an occasion – lead in a junior high play, balls and proms, drama and speech contests.

It had to be spring, 1962. Me, 15, turning 16. The dress was more justified than initiated. I always needed an Easter outfit, but that was not the central thrust. It was a bolt of silk that set the thing in motion. Small bouquets of blue and yellow daises on a ground of fire engine red. Maybe a touch intense for a spring Sunday dress, but irresistible.

Yard for yard, the price was high – but she agreed to it.

Then we looked at dress patterns. That year something high waisted was in fashion. Not the Empire line that creates a sleek front panel, but a dirndl-like skirt gathered just below the bust.

Between checking the fit and taking the length for the hem, I didn’t see the finished dress again until Easter morning. Mom brought it to my room and we checked it with the shoes. Standing in front of the mirror, I winced. “Mom, do you think the dress makes me look … fat?”

I didn’t really mean ‘fat’ but I couldn’t say what was on my mind.

“Oh, no. You look adorable!”

Although I left the mirror uneasy, when I couldn’t see the design of the dress, the shimmer and slip of the fabric reassured me. Completely.

Coming out of church a few hours later, David DeTar walked me to my parents’ car. David was more of a friend boy than a boyfriend, but I think that morning we were entertaining the idea of a date. When the conversation flagged, I grabbed the next thought that popped into my head.

“So, how do you like my new dress?”

“It’s cute, nice color,” he offered. Then the zinger. “Makes you look like you’re going to have a baby.”

I swiveled around to see if Mom could hear. Sliding in the car, I asked, “Did you hear what David said? He said I look pregnant in this dress.”

“Mom, can we alter it?” I asked even though I already knew at 15, going on 16, how unforgiving silk is.

“I doubt it,” my mother looked perturbed. I figured she was thinking about how much money we’d spent on this dress I was not going to want to wear. So, in the five block drive from the church to our home, I worked on getting my mind around the situation.

By the time we were home, I could calmly say, “Oh, well, I’m not pregnant and everyone will know that when I don’t get any bigger.”

I hung the dress up and went on with the day and then the week. But late that week, Mom said she wanted to check the fit on something she was sewing. Out came a dress – red silk, shirtwaist bodice, slim skirt, distinct waistline with a self-belt.

I couldn’t see how this dress could have been made from the earlier one, but just to check, I asked, “So, what did you do with the other dress?”

“Oh, I gave it to a young married friend of mine who’s pregnant. She was delighted.”

What is This Thing Called Marriage?

Well over one thousand legal issues change when you change your marital status – just within the realm of the U.S. government. Who knew!

For that matter, why would I know?

Shortly after our early November election, affiliation logos started popping up on Facebook friends’ pages for something called “Overturn Prop 8.”

Just in case this slipped passed you, dear reader, the recent election included a ballot initiative for Californians, calling for the addition of these words to that state’s constitution: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognize in California.” Surprising to many including yours truly, the initiative, referred to as ‘Prop 8,’ was successful.

I have long been a casual supporter of same sex marriage or at least the equivalent. So my inclination was to sign on and add that logo to my Facebook page. But first, I said to myself, perhaps I should think about my position more carefully and try to understand the opposition. That’s just good editorial behavior, right?

I myself regard a marriage as a rather complex contractual relationship between two people, quite apart from any rights and obligations a government attaches to the deal. I know a marriage is a personal, emotional, social and legal relationship; for many, it also involves a religious sacrament.

Two adults marry to create a home, insure companionship, probably establish exclusivity in sexual relations and, likely, make a nest for nurturing offspring. Nowadays, partners may actually discuss how they will divvy up tasks like making a living and making the beds.

And the state recognizes these contracts, giving them a lot of legal support. The state doesn’t require that the two people have children. The state doesn’t even require evidence that the two people wish to or can have children. So, on the face of it, it doesn’t appear that the existence or potential existence of offspring accounts for the state smiling on marrying couples. (Note I said, ‘doesn’t appear.’)

So if we can hold aside the sex and kid issues for a moment, we are talking about two people partnering up to share the adult tasks of making a living and making a home.

Frankly, that’s a pretty good arrangement. It improves the social and financial stability of the partners. Good for both partners, good for the society as a whole.

On the other hand, it would seem that two people could partner up pretty successfully without the legal bonds of marriage.

So, we actually face two questions: Why do same sex couples feel the desire to have their relationships defined legally as marriages? What’s the big deal?

And, then again, why does anyone object?

It’s all about that whole host of legal rights, privileges, responsibilities and obligations that accrue when two people marry. Many of those rights have to do with what the two partners owe each other; many could plausibly be established by a private contract between the partners. Many others, however, involve rights and benefits provided by governments or enforced on third parties for the benefit of the marital partners.

In the second category, for example: a spouse surviving the death of his or her partner has numerous survivorship rights which the spouse who earned the benefit cannot assign to a non-spouse. In the absence of a surviving spouse, the benefit simply disappears. Most pension survivorship benefits operate this way. Similarly, an employer who provides health insurance for employee and spouse must, by law, provide for continuation of coverage for a surviving spouse if the employee passes away.

That’s not the whole story, but it is plenty to explain why any pair-bond, any couple, would want the advantages of legal marriage.

And why does anyone object?

This is trickier to explain and often gets reduced to things that sound like nonsense to many of us: protecting marriage, protecting the concept of marriage. Huh? Occasionally the arguments slip-slide into pronouncements that “Heather has Two Mommies” will become required reading in public school second grade classes everywhere. Oh, please; easily addressed!

Here’s what I think is really going on: many of those rights and privileges were enacted into law to support not marriage per se but to support the bearing and rearing of children. At any one point in time, most adults are married but most are not in the active phase of bearing and rearing children. Politically, you can enact legislation supporting people who bear and rear children a lot easier if you simply attach the support to marriage. (I could even make the argument that, given the opportunity costs associated with raising children, it is fair and reasonable to create rights for potential and actual parents that span a lifetime – but I’d rather finish this post than write a book.)

So, the fact is, as our society works its way through the haystack of legalities associated with marriage, we’ll be forced to do a lot of work! We’ll have to revisit and clarify what responsibilities and benefits correctly arise from the fact that two adults have supported and cared for one another for years and what ones more correctly arise from the fact that a person parented children.

I’m good with that. Let’s go.

[A few of dings I’d like to head off: I do know that marriages are made by states, Federal law currently will not recognize same sex marriages even if a state endorses them, only two states currently allow for same sex marriage and Illinois (my state, where I hear some of my neighbors saying very disparaging things about Californians for supporting Prop 8) cannot even get a bill out of committee if it concerns the legal status of same sex pair bonds.]

Help Your Local School -- SO Easy!

The other day, a neighbor on my Freecycle listserv told me her kid was collecting these:






She asked everyone to help him collect them. I didn't think I'd find any, but what the hey. Couldn't hurt to check. Pulled the old Cheerios box out of the recycling bin and, whatdaya know, there it was. So I flipped over the Kleenex box on my desk. Bingo again!

Into the kitchen drawers, the pantry -- more and more!

These coupons are worth cash to your local school. Check it out if you have a doubt: Box Tops 4 Education. Then check your cabinets.

Surfing the Blogs Just to See ...

This is amazing. I wish I'd thought to do something like it. Hard to go back and recreate.

Diego Golberg's Arrows of Time