THE LINE PAINTER by Claire Cameron

Carrie, the protagonist of Claire Cameron's debut novel The Line Painter, is consumed by grief after the sudden death of her boyfriend Bill. She takes off in Bill's car, headed, she decides, for the western reaches of Canada. Friends and family, worried--both about her state-of-mind and for her safety--call repeatedly on her cell phone, leaving messages that give us, as readers, insight into Carrie's plight and hint at a darker reason for Carrie's sudden departure.

In a remote area, north of Lake Superior, Carrie's car breaks down in the middle of the night. She hasn't passed another car for hours, her friends and family have no idea where she is, her cell phone can't find service, and most immediately pressing of all, she has an overfull bladder. Universal law dictates that as soon as she squats, headlights appear. But--no ordinary headlights--these belong to the truck of a line painter. In the remotest regions of Canada, Frank works the night shift, alone, tranforming dingy grey road lines into bright white reflective ones, with the help of millions of tiny glass beads suspended in the paint. He offers Carrie a (very slow) ride into the nearest town.

Carrie, we soon realize, is an enigmatic character: she takes up smoking again, because it seems like the thing to do; she tells us she tried, earnestly, to make herself "grow up" by moving in with her boyfriend, wearing suits, and playing house; and she alternates between extreme naivete and a heavy world-weariness. At times, Carrie's inability to distinguish real danger from imagined, her impulsive attempts to establish control over the situation, and her refusal to face her problems are a source of readerly frustration. But as the story unfolds, her doubts and anxieties begin to make perfect sense. By the end of the book, I was captivated by Carrie's experiences and by her heart, which was larger than I ever expected. The layers of guilt, regret, grief and loss that emerge in the last third of the book expose the beating heart of this unusual story.

At it's core, I believe that The Line Painter is a high concept novel. Like Life of Pi, or The Alchemist, Cameron's novel covers a physical journey--a journey with strange, fantastical elements--that leads the protagonist to a life-changing epiphany. If Life of Pi's high-concept hook is, "Boy crosses the ocean in a lifeboat with a tiger," The Line Painter's hook could be, "Stranded woman gets picked up by a line painter, embarking on a road trip of terror--and ultimately of forgiveness."

COMES THE PEACE: My Journey to Forgiveness by Daja Wangchuk Meston

Daja Wangchuk Meston begins his memoir dramatically with a desperate leap from a third story hotel window in a remote area of Tibet. It's a quick glimpse at a man pushed beyond his limits, unsure of his place in the world, and desperate beyond sense. When he jumped, he fully expected to die.

That was in 1999, and the author had been in the custody of Chinese authorities, suffering long days of interrogation with no sleep, accused of crimes against the People's Republic of China for his work on behalf of Tibetan rights.

The memoir then leaves behind that awful, desperate step--a step that shattered his heels and his life (both of which would take years to mend)--and takes us back in time to his first steps as a toddler on the Greek island of Corfu. Daja was born to hippie parents (Feather and Larry Greeneye) who hoped to leave behind the commercialism of their own American upbringing. When he was one, his parents travelled to India on a whim, and then on to Nepal to attend a Buddhist retreat. It was there, in the mountains of Nepal, that the author's father suffered a debilitating attack of paranoid schizophrenia and disappeared, only to emerge from the woods a week later, disheveled and incoherent. He was sent back to the states (alone) and did not see his son again until decades later.

When Daja was three years old, his mother inexplicably delivered him to a local family (Tibetan nobles, living in Nepal) to raise. For three years he believed they were his real family--until they sent him, alone, at the ripe old age of six, to a Buddhist monastery to take the vows of a monk.

A number of privileged Americans have gone (by choice) to monastic retreats, seeking solitude, respite, and peace. This might lead the innocent reader to assume that Daja's upbringing took place in a peaceful, idyllic setting. The truth is, his childhood was far from idyllic. Thanks in part to his pale skin and blond hair, Daja was treated as an outcast both by his peers and adult monks alike. And the indignities he suffered over the next ten years were Dickensian in scope: sleep deprivation, forced labor, lice infestations, constant hunger, humiliation, beatings, dysentery, alienation and isolation.

He was further emotionally orphaned by a mother who chose, herself, to join the (different) monastic life of a Buddhist nun, shaving her head, wearing robes, and leaving the secular world behind (to include the responsibilities of parenthood).

At its core, this is the heartbreaking story of a lost childhood. It is the tale of one man's lifelong search for identity, belonging, and the welcoming arms of family. And it is difficult to read this book and fathom what the young author endured without feeling angry on his behalf. But the adult Meston refuses to stay in a place of anger and self-pity, searching instead for a path toward understanding and forgiveness. Fortunately for all of us, the redemptive ending brings us full-circle, and--as the title implies--comes back around to peace.

Petroglyphs

While in Arizona, we visited the site of an ancient pueblo that was a thriving community about 1,000 years ago. One of the most amazing sights at the pueblo was the ancient petroglyphs. They moved me--inexplicably--the way the sight of a breaching whale moves me. They expanded my consciousness and the sense of my place in the world.

I can relate to the human desire to leave a mark. Isn't that why I write, after all? To leave something behind that another human might see and relate to? 1,000 years ago I'd have been right there scratching my heart out in the dark rock. Today I scratch my heart out onto my keyboard, but the basic urge is the same.

Of course, as we were leaving, Len and I had to conjure up an alternate scenario, as we often do. We recreated an adoloscent indian coming home with rock dust on his arms and his mother asking suspiciously, "Where have you been, young man? Defacing public property again?? What have I told you about that? What will the neighbors think...you and those crazy scratching of yours. We have to live here, you know..."

Hiking Kendricks Mountain

The day after hiking Bill Williams Mountain, the weatherman promised it would be sunny and clear, 50 degrees and warm with no wind. It was the perfect day to tackle the second highest peak in the area: Kendricks Mountain.

In 2000, lightning ignited a devastating fire on the mountain that burned over the course of several months. The blackened, armless poles all over the ground and reaching into the sky were a tragic reminder of the violence of nature, but in an ironic twist, the lack of trees made for spectacular views. At the base of the mountain, there was almost no snow, but the higher we hiked, the more snow we encountered. At the open area just below the summit, the snow reached its deepest point--about five feet--as could be confirmed by the sign for the trailhead barely peeking out above the snow.

Hiking Kendricks Mountain, Part II

The cabin at the lower summit was used for years by a Ranger who lived there in the summer and kept a horse in a nearby cleared pasture. Every day he rode to the upper summit to spot for forest fires. How's that for an unusual job? The cabin was very small inside--not much bigger than my bathroom at home--and I opted to leave my pack there for the final assault to the upper summit which meant a half-a-mile climb up a 60 degree grade, through five+ feet of snow.

We were so tired by this time, having already hiked for five hours through treacherous, ever changing conditions, but we could see the summit and wanted it in the worst way, so we made the decision to go for it. (The last person to make the hike hadn't. We could tell because his tracks ended at the cabin. But clearly, he hadn't had snow shoes, and what had we lugged them all this way for, if not to make that ultimate peak? So we set out. And we made it.

The day was so clear and warm and beautiful! Such a change from the previous day at Bill Williams Mountain (which we could see in the distance)!Shoot, we could see all the way to the Grand Canyon from up there. It was amazing and gorgeous and breathtaking (and at 10,000 feet, breathtaking has a literal meaning, too). But since it was already 2PM, and we had a long trek down still ahead of us--and the promise of even more slippery slopes as the giant, diagonal drifts across the trail began to melt and give way--we took our pictures, savored our accomplish- ment, and began the long trek down. Just to give you a bit of perspective, that long snowy open area you see in the picture is just the trail to the cabin...there were still five hours down the mountainside to go before we reached the trailhead and our vehicle.

Interview!

Kelly Spitzer kicked off her Writer Profile Project with Yours Truly. And you can read the interview here. Thanks Kelly!

Climbing Bill Williams Mountain

On the second day of our trip, we set out to hike Bill Williams Mountain. We were rested, well fed, happy to be away from cell phones and laptops, and generally psyched to get physical. In our pre-trip Internet research, this hike was billed as a moderate 2.75 mile hike. Cool, we thought. A few hours, we thought. Take it easy on the first day, we thought.

Well, we've hiked many trails and many mountains over the years, and this hike was not 2.75 miles. It was closer to four, which meant eight, round trip. Not so big of a deal if we had known, but there's a psychological element to hiking that is very important. I tell myself, "I'm almost there," based on the knowledge given, and I speed up and muscle to the top, exhilarated. I love that feeling of getting to the summit, sweaty and conquering. But if that last half-a-mile turns into two additional miles at a steep grade, well, let's just say I get a little cranky. The deep snow didn't help. As we neared the summit, the drifts were three feet deep in some places. And in Arizona (go figure!) they don't blaze the trails. So here's the thing: You pour a buttload of snow all over a mountaintop, and any trail pretty much vanishes.

Thankfully, some intrepid soul had been on this trail perhaps a week before and there were remnants of tracks to follow. Without those, we'd still be wandering around looking for the trail. Unfortunately, when we reached the 9,000 foot summit, we were in the midst of a snow squall. It made for cool conditions, to say the least, and almost zero visibility. But we took some lovely shots of trees against the sky. (Yes, it's blue above the trees--the snow clouds were around and below us, but not above.)

At the top, we broke out the stove we had rented from a Flagstaff outdoor store, hoping to make some hot drinks to fortify us for the trip down. (We have our own trusty equipment but you really can't fly with fuel canisters in your bag.) Unfortunately, we discovered that the store had sold us the wrong canister. It didn't fit the stove! (Yes, we should have checked.) More utter crankiness, especially from Len who really enjoys cooking in the cold. (And good thing we'd packed water instead of relying on melting snow!) So, we put away the stove and chewed our half-frozen Cliff bars...my very dark chocolate was like dusty pebbles, it was so cold. It didn't even melt in my mouth! I finally just swallowed the pebbles.

Then we left the summit, which wasn't all that fabulous, given that the view was clouds--oh, and six million dollars worth of communications equipment--towers, dishes, buildings--marring the summit. For the first part of the descent, I donned my snowshoes. I should have had them on before--my feet were wet and cold from slogging through the snow--but again, I kept thinking we were almost there...Anyway, at the bottom, it was like a different day. The sun was out, the snow was melted, and it was almost 50 degrees, and I was happy. I love mountains. And I love being done.

The Petrified Forest

I've wanted to visit the petrified forest for as long as I can remember. My grandfather kept a chunk of petrified wood on his desk until he died, and my grandmother kept it there afterwards. To give that some context, these were people who travelled all over the world, lived in India, Ethiopia, climbed the pyramids, rowed their VW bug across the Nile on a raft of sticks. They had seen many, many corners of the world, but the petrified forest always fascinated them, and so it fascinated me.

I always pictured the petrified forest as something that stood tall, perhaps like the great redwoods, frozen for eternity, but it's not that way at all. The trees date back to the triassic era, the time of Pangea, when all the continents were one large landmass. At that time, Arizona was actually a tropical swamp with 200 foot trees and alligator-like creatures. Those mammoth trees fell to the ground and were carried downstream until they reached a large open area where they came to rest and, instead of rotting, began to absorb mineral-rich water, flavored with volcanic ash. .
The trees were trapped under layers of sediment and hidden for millions of years. As North America shifted away from the other continents, her climate began to change and Arizona dried up. Over millennia, torrential desert rains eroded the sediments and the layers of volcanic ash, revealing the now-petrified trunks. As the ground beneath them washed away, the trees rolled down the sides of the crumbling mountains.

The area is both beautiful to look at and awe inspiring to contemplate. That such amazing and varied natural forces combined over millions of years to make a common thing, whose properties we have always taken for granted (i.e. wood is a relatively soft, saw-down-able thing), and turn that knowledge on its head...that wood could bejewel itself into stunning blues, oranges, purples, silvers and yellows...that these treasures could wait patiently for millions of years to make their debut...

Well, I find it all very mind-numbing. But I do have this illogical tendency toward mysticism where nature is concerned. And I am very much a "green" advocate...but something about seeing the grand scale of climate change that has always affected our planet was reassuring. The earth is a closed system--a giant organism, if you will, and I do believe that if we give her just a bit more help in terms of greenhouse gasses, pollution, etc, she will adapt. And humans will survive--or not--but Mother Earth will survive and continue her mysterious ways, regardless.

STORIES IN THE OLD STYLE by Al Sim

It took me several weeks to finish Al Sim's most recent collection--Stories in the Old Style--but before you conclude that I didn't enjoy it, let me explain.

I, too, wondered why I had taken so long to finish reading these stories that--if asked casually, "Did you like them?"--I would have unequivocally said were wonderful. And so I sat down, post-read, to critically examine both the individual stories and the collection as a whole, both of which I concluded "worked" in the mysterious and illogical way of good fiction. In revisiting them, though, I realized how deliciously self-contained each story is--so complete within itself, that I needed to sit with the just-finished story a while, before moving on to another. I wanted to enjoy the resonance of the last word, and so had trouble immediately opening my reader's heart to the next story in line. "Better to set the book down and think on those perfect final words for a bit"--or so my reader's heart might have said.

But, now...if the brain could just make a logical interjection...

I think that this need-to-stop-reading is actually a testament to the strength of Sim's collection. In fact, during a class on ordering and assembling a story collection, Peter Ho Davies said that a collection should be read in just such a way. He suggested that each story be savored and granted a full stop at the end so that the reader might fully enjoy the final enduring image and keep thinking about the story long after the last words are read.

And now, another country heard from: the stomach.

For some (entirely strange and personal) reason, I often equate a good read to good food. I consume them both, relish them both, and leave both feeling satisfied when the chef or author has done his job well. And in the case of Al Sim's collection, his 18 stories were like a box of fine chocolates. (Yes, I'm aware that Forrest Gump has forever ruined that analogy...) But consider for a moment the fact that one really well made chocolate can be enough to satisfy even the most stubborn sweet tooth. Two-at-a-time can be eaten, yes--with somewhat diminished enjoyment--but three? Well, that definitely feels like overindulgence.

And since you are too polite to ask but nonetheless curious, my very favorite bon-bons were: Two Head Gone, a story of human helplessness in the face of ordinary but devastating loss; The Freedom Pig, in which a runaway slave and his master's pig conspire to reach the promised land; Get the Can, a lovely, lyrical short-short that uses a childhood game of one-up to show that all things are possible; and especially Fetch, an emotionally packed short-short that ripped my heart out and left it bleeding in the snow at the edge of the frozen lake.

No stranger to publication, Sim's stories have previously appeared in such vaunted journals as Glimmer Train, Antietam Review, Crab Creek Review, North Atlantic Review, Fourteen Hills, The Literary Review, Red Cedar Review, and New Millennium Writings. And his choice of title? Well, Sim titled his collection spot-on, in my view, because his stories truly are written in the "old style." They hearken back to such various influences as the surprise endings of O. Henry, the grit and realism of John Steinbeck and the barely contained wildness of Jack London.

As a group, or stand alone, Sim's stories are spare and brutally beautiful.

Sisyphus and the Snow

I've just spent an hour-and-a-half shoveling snow. Now, in general, I like to shovel snow. But today, a few things conspired to make the experience slightly less than wonderful. For starters, I miss my Old Faithful shovel. Its replacement is a mere shadow of the shovel that Old Faithful was before his demise. Also, my neighbor's dog was let out halfway through the job and forgotten by his owner. Said dog quickly determined that I was not a natural part of the snowy landscape and in order to alert everyone in a five-mile radius of that fact, he proceeded to serenade anyone listening (read: me) with a repeating refrain of sonorous Beagle (read: bugle) songs (Arrrr-rooo!!! Arrrr-rooo!!!).

But the snow was lovely and light and as I shoveled--as I am wont to do--I considered the many blessings and curses associated with such a morning's work:

Blessing: I've been wanting to lose some weight, and I figure I burned about a thousand calories today.
Curse: The residual lactic acid buildup from the previous day's 100 crunches and free-weight training.

Blessing: The westerly wind when shoveling to the left.
Curse: The westerly wind when shoveling to the right.

Blessing: My new, short haircut tucked out of the way, safely under my hat.
Curse: My new short haircut after returning inside and removing the hat.

Blessing: The edges of the driveway.
Curse: The middle of the driveway.

Blessing: The snowplow drivers who keep the street cleared of snow.
Curse: The snowplow drivers who deposit a waist-high pile of sludge at the end of the driveway just as I am completing my task.

Blessing: Light, powdery snow when lifting shovelful after shovelful of the stuff.
Curse: Light, powdery snow when throwing it into a prevailing wind.

Blessing: The neighbor who approaches with his snow-thrower chugging away--headed right for my driveway.
Curse: The neighbor who cheerily waves as he chugs past on his way to some other neighbor's driveway.

Curse: Light, blowing snow down the back of my coat.
Blessing: Light, blowing snow down the back of my coat after I've been shoveling for 45 minutes.

Curse: That I will need to see my chiropractor after this.
Blessing: That my chiropractor always throws in a lovely bit of massage with the adjustment.

Curse: The 1,000 pounds of snow that I moved today.
Blessing: That my husband is coming home and the next 1,000 pounds will be his responsibility.

Blessing: We're going on vacation in three days.
Curse: Our main planned activity: snowshoeing.

Quote

"It seems in every interaction there is something to learn if we can only see ourselves as students. If we can humble ourselves, and allow ourselves to see the world without our own beliefs and dogmas, then we could see so much beauty awaiting us in each moment."

--Sukh Chugh

Bad Haircut

Okay, so I'm not Sampson or anything, nor am I especially vain (most days), but I have a new and hideous haircut and it's killing me.

It was on a whim, yesterday, that I pulled into the grocery store parking lot with my almost 17-year-old daughter who has been having a rough couple of weeks. Ahead of us we saw a sign for SuperCuts and she said, "I've been thinking of getting my hair cut."

"Me, too," I said, "Let's go in."

My hair has been long and boring for a while now, and I thought, what-the-hey, let's shake things up. And I found a great style--short but sexy--and I took it over to the stylist.

"Have you ever had short hair before?" she asked, with a quiver in her voice. That should have been my first sign of dangerous waters ahead, but once I commit to something, I commit all the way (even if the current has picked up to "ripping" and there's a mist hanging over the water ahead).

Gad, she took so long. More than an hour. You would think that taking your time would be a good thing for a haircut. But each section she picked up and measured so carefully, apologizing if one small piece eluded her scissors and then starting the whole laborious process over again. Finally I just wanted her to be done. Once we hit an hour, I didn't even care what it looked like, I just wanted out of the damned chair!

She was nice, but she was tentative, and my hair is all wrong. Nothing at all like the picture. I even kind of know what needs to be done (I'm a pretty good hair cutter myself) but I can't do it to my own hair. It's really a sad, sad sight though. And since my house used to belong to Kim Alexis ('80s supermodel) there's no shortage of mirros around to remind me of my folly.

Ah, at least there's time. Time heals all bad haircuts. In the meantime, it's winter, so hats are in.

Brrr

It is sooo cold in western New York. We are freezing our noonies off. (For those, that is--unlike my cats--who haven't already had them surgically removed.) We are fortunate to have a warm house, reliable vehicles, well-insulated pipes, and plenty of food.

When the wind whistles at my windows, and the edges of the door gather frost, and icicles hang from my eaves so long that they begin to evaporate into weird shapes like ice cubes left too long in the freezer, I think of the homeless with no safe haven to call home. I think of the poor who--even with plastic over their windows and lots of layers and dangerous space heaters--aren't warm enough because their homes are old and leaky and uninsulated, and they are paying through the nose to send a good portion of their heating dollars into the attic and out through the roof.

This morning I am compelled to put a fraction of my good fortune toward those less fortunate. There are many worthy organizations that need assistance, but today I choose The Buffalo City Mission.

elimae

The new issue of elimae is out, and Katrina Denza's short-short When Alone is gutwrenching.

3AM

3AM Magazine is back and Alicia Gifford is in it!

International Climate Change Conference

Visit the site of the International Climate Change Conference held in Martinique last month and learn more about the effects seen in the Caribbean, and ITME's contribution to the research. Click on "Les Contributions" and scroll down to the ITME link (Dr. Sascha C.C. Steiner). If you click on that, you can open a pdf of our slide show from the lecture, complete with photos of bleached and damaged corals in Dominica's waters.

Snow again!

And I still like it.

Shoveling snow is one of those things--like driving the car or showering--that allows me to focus my mind and compose words in my head. It also satisfies some Tetras-like need that I have to line things up and order the universe (preferably with an endless-loop techno-pop score playing through my head). (Of course, one look at the clothes piled on the chair beside my bed or my office desk and you'd be doubled over with laughter at my "order the universe" comment, but humor me here.) There is nothing quite like shoving and sweating for half an hour and then looking back to see a nice neat driveway with a rising pile of snow on either side. Granted it's a little like building a giant sandcastle on the beach or an inmate pounding large rocks into smaller rocks...or washing the dinner dishes...there's a built in Sisyphianness to it, but it's still satisfying to see a cleared driveway and feel I've done my job. And frankly? In these hectic, sandwich-generation days of mine, I'll celebrate that sense of A Job Well Done wherever I can find it.

It's also, conveniently, a fine cardio / pectoral workout. And--since I'm competitive by nature--when I heard my neighbor fire up his snowblower, I made like John Henry, Snow Piling Man, and attempted to prove the superiority of Man over Machine. Unlike Mr. Henry, I didn't collapse dead at the end, but I didn't really win either. (My neighbor loves his snowblower and so he did his driveway, the sidewalk up and down his side of the street, his other neighbor's driveway...you get the idea.) But I "won" in the small world of my own driveway and that's what matters most. (And, really, it's all about perspective, anyway, right? I mean, to an ant, my driveway is the universe...but that's a story for another time.)

Snow!

I was musing this morning, whilst shoveling my driveway, if the memory of snow is like the memory of pain.

For some reason, over breakfast with my kids, we were talking about the fact that as humans we have a short memory for pain. We may remember, "Oh, that hurt," but we don't really remember the intensity, the constancy, of pain itself. Not the specifics of pain. (Just like once we are well, we forget how truly awful it was to be sick--until we get sick again.) I think it's an evolutionary advantage for the species. I mean, who would ever have more than one child if the memory of pain was persistent?

We concluded that our brains are actually wired to forget the bad stuff in order to keep the organism alive, functioning, and reproducing (without eating the young). This is another reason I believe that people who suffer from certain types of depression really do have a chemical imbalance in the brain--they can't forget the shit--no matter what Tom Cruise thinks it is.

But, anyway, to cycle back to snow...How is it that every year I look forward to it? I live near Buffalo, NY. I see a heck of a lot of snow in an average year. It's not a scarce commodity. In fact, by April, it's the bane of my existence. So why have I been so looking forward to a snowfall (not counting that awful, destructive surprise thing we got in October--on Friday the 13th, no less)?

Is it that I have a short memory for snow? And another thing! By the end of each snow season, I am an expert at shoveling. I know just how to do it in the most efficient, neat, productive way that takes into account such variables as the type and quantity of snow, the surrounding temperature, the extended forecast, the amount already at the edges of the driveway...I am one efficient snow-shoveling machine, come April. And yet, at the start of each season, I am clumsy and awkward, relearning it all. Is there no physical memory stored in the muscles of my body--like riding a bike or roller skating--that I can access on demand?

If it's in there, it doesn't kick in. It's like I have to relearn snow removal each year as the temperature drops and the white stuff falls.

But, I shoveled this morning, enjoying every bit of my clumsy which-shovel-to-use-for-what attempts. I was even happy to see the pile covering the end of my driveway, where the plow passed and dumped a street's worth of salted, chunky stuff.

I know this happiness--this I'm-a-snow-shoveling-beast elation--won't last. But I intend to enjoy every minute of it for as long as it does.

Quote

"I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us."

-Konrad Lorenz, ethologist, Nobel laureate (1903-1989)

A second opinion

My middle daughter was diagnosed with scoliosis three years ago. For two years we simply monitored it every six months because the doctor believed she was nearing the end of her skeletal growth.

Then she shot up five inches (overnight?) and the minor curve grew alarming. A Boston brace was ordered. I cringed in sympathetic embarrassment when the man making a cast of her body stroked the plaster-of-Paris strips tight against her nearly naked adolescent curves. Two weeks later, at the final fitting, the same man walked in holding her brand new torture device. 23 hours a day, seven days a week. He chalked and adjusted, chalked and adjusted, and finally satisfied, pronounced it done. She could get dressed and we could leave.

But odd mother and daughter that we are, we laughed hysterically behind the curtain, instead. When she tried to dress, nothing fit and we hadn't thought to bring clothes a size larger. For five minutes, the absurdity of that awful brace poking out from unzippable pants and a suddenly too-tight shirt superceded the pain of having to start high school being "different" and wretchedly encumbered and so we laughed--laughed until the tears streamed down our faces. I sometimes wonder what the receptionist in the waiting room thought. Do other families laugh at times like this? Or are we the only ones with such absurd coping mechanisms?

But we used it as an excuse to buy new clothes and borrowed a few of her older sister's things, and for six long, hot, summer months she endured that brace, taking it off only to shower and for swim practice and meets (and a few hours in December for a formal dance). She was more faithful to that brace than I can imagine any other teenager being. She cried herself to sleep some nights, but she didn't take it off. She dealt with it. She bounced tennis balls off her stomach to entertain her friends. She urged, "go ahead, punch me in the abs." She made humorous sounds by scrunching her stomach under the brace and creating a vacuum of air. She called it her eight-hundred dollar push-up bra. And if a brace was ever going to work, it was going to work this time because my brave young daughter had been so faithful even though she didn't want to be.

Except it didn't. And her spinal curve progressed six more degrees in six months (from 41 to 48) while wearing that brace that was supposed to correct it. Her orthopedist grimly informed us that she would need spinal fusion surgery to stop it. The x-rays were truly alarming; my stomach dropped when he pulled them up onto the screen. It was clear that something needed to be done. Since the surgery he was suggesting is major and would take her out of school for up to a month, I asked, "Can we wait until summer?" With a grave look, the doctor shook his head and said, "I wouldn't." That look conveyed volumes and so we began preparing for the worst, gathering information, speaking to others who had gone through this drastic surgical correction, and generally girding ourselves for the inevitable.

Part of the process of gathering information involved seeking a second opinion. I liked and trusted her first doctor, but you just do that for something this big. You just do. I had seen those alarming x-rays and I didn't believe that the diagnosis would be different in terms of recommending surgery, but I thought the methods might vary and that any and all information was valuable. So we researched the Shriner's Children's Hospitals and found that they do some of the most cutting edge work in children's orthopedics, with scoliosis at the top of the list. And, they only take you on as a patient if they believe that surgery will help you--plus there is never any charge for procedures that Shriner's doctors do to help children. It's a charitable institution. It's what they do.

Our appointment yesterday was with the Erie, Pennsylvania Shriner's Hospital chief-of-staff (Doctor #2) and he did all new x-rays and measurements. He also asked her a bunch of questions about her scoliosis (not us, although we were in the room--she's 14, so this was a good move on his part). He asked her if she had pain, numbness, bladder problems, etc. Her answers were all nos. Then he asked her why she had come for a second opinion. She faltered and turned to me but I encouraged her to answer. She said, "Because surgery is kind of a big deal and we wanted to be sure."

Then, God bless the doctor, he asked, "How about the appearance? Does that bother you?" (A funny aside: I thought he had asked her if her "parents" bothered her, and I was all ready for her to say, "Duh!") She seemed confused by the question, though; she looked at him for a moment and double-checked. "The appearance?" she asked.

(Let me just say here that this young woman is tall and gorgeous and very self-assured, and frankly couldn't care less if one of her shoulder blades sticks out more than the other, or if her back rises up higher on one side than on the other when she bends forward. From the front you can't even tell--her body has fully "compensated.")

The doctor nodded and said, "Yes, the appearance. Does it bother you?"

She gave him a withering look and said, "No." (Her teenaged disdain for the vanity of the question made me so proud of her at that moment.)

Then the intern brought the x-ray in and put it on the screen and I thought there had been some mistake. I looked at my daughter to see if she was as confused as I was, but she was staring at the x-ray. I would swear that the curve on the screen was much milder than the one we had seen in the other doctor's office. And doctor #2 proceeded to tell her that he didn't think she needed surgery. He said she's almost at the end of her growth (thank goodness, she already looks me in the eye) and she is functioning fine. He said he would only recommend surgery if she was very self-conscious about the appearance, and even if we eventually decided to do surgery for that reason, there was no rush. She's only 14 and if we waited a year it wouldn't make any difference. He said get another x-ray in six months, but he doubts it will have changed. Oh, and he measured her thoracic curve as 46, not 48, and the lumbar (compensating) curve was almost gone.

So...(choirs of angels sing)...no surgery! We are still going to go back to doctor #1 with the results and the new films, but I doubt we'll do anything before the six month recheck no matter what he says....I keep trying to figure out how this could have happened...Her braces (on her teeth) were clearly visible on this recent x-ray, and neither she nor I remember seeing them on the older x-ray. Could we have been looking at someone else's x-rays in December when we got that bad news...? Or had wearing the brace actually made it worse and now that she's not wearing it it has gotten better? Did all the prayers work a miracle cure? It's really a puzzle, but a happy, happy puzzle. I can't tell you the weight that has been lifted! Doctor #2 basically told her, "Go have a normal life, honey. No restrictions."

And when she asked him what she should do about the brace--keep wearing it or what?--he said, "You're too old for that brace. Take it out behind the house and shoot it."

Since she's recently been taking a gun safety course and learning to shoot skeet, I think we just might do that.

THE KILLING SEA by Richard Lewis

I finished Richard Lewis's most recent YA novel The Killing Sea in two days. Really one and a half. I purchased it for my son but couldn't wait for him to get through a trilogy he is currently reading and so I picked up The Killing Sea and read it myself. Am I glad I did! It's a wonderful read and a real page turner.

Two protagonists move through the story: Ruslan, a local Indonesian boy who works at a small beachside cafe in the town of Meulaboh; and Sarah, a teenager sailing with her family through the Indonesian islands over the Christmas holiday. The two meet briefly when Sarah's family anchors their sailboat near the cafe, looking for a mechanic to fix their engine. Ruslan (whose mechanic father ultimately fixes the engine) is captivated by Sarah's blue eyes. A budding artist, he returns home later that night and draws her in his sketchbook (against the teachings of a local cleric who deems any image-making to be a form of idolatry). Sarah barely registers Ruslan's existence before stalking off to the sailboat when her mother insists she don a headscarf out of respect for the local culture.

Lewis sensitively and deftly explores the notion of the spoiled American as we see Sarah undergo her own sea change after the tsunami rips her world apart. Both Ruslan and Sarah are left parentless: Ruslan, motherless since birth, cannot find his father after the tsunami; Sarah's parents both disappear beneath the rising waters as they flee their stranded sailboat. She learns the fate of one shortly after the waters recede, the other she cannot find before she must leave to search for a hospital for her younger brother who inhaled seawater and is having difficulty breathing.

Ruslan and Sarah's paths intersect again, post-tsunami, as they struggle to survive against violent rebels, wild animals, contaminated water, blocked roads and mounting hunger. The trials they endure give the two teenagers a strong bond of survivorship that transcends gender, race, and religion. In their journey they are helped by a savvy feline named Surf Cat, a motley group of rebels who are strangely familiar, an unlikely crew of fellow survivors, and a number of cast-off items that are put to inventive good use.

The Killing Sea is a story born of the 2004 tsunami, yes (Lewis volunteered as an aid relief worker in the aftermath, and a portion of the proceeds from his book will go to support local relief organizations), but it is not only about the tragedy. It is also about an unlikely friendship that transcends ethnic and religious boundaries. The Killing Sea is an enduring, timeless story--a story of hope and survival, of human triumph against enormous odds.

Help end the mass slaughter of dolphins

The Japanese fishing industry labels dolphins as "pests" and conducts a mass slaughter each year to keep down the dolphin numbers so that competition for fish such as bluefin tuna is reduced.

Dolphins are rounded up in underwater pens, deliberately disoriented by the excruciating noise of metal poles being struck beneath the water (especially painful and cofusing for echolocators like dolphins), then hoisted from the water by their tails--still living--and dropped onto truck beds or tied to bumpers and dragged to slaughter areas where they are mortally wounded by machete and allowed to flop and bleed on the concrete floor until dead.

The dolphins are then cut up, packaged, and sold to grocery stores in Japan. This needless, brutal slaughter happens by the tens of thousands every year. Please sign a petition to stop this practice here.

I would also encourage you to watch the accompanying YouTube video of the slaughter. It is terrible, but it is important that we fully grasp the scope and brutality of this slaughter.

Thank you.

Cooperation among fish

The Public Library of Science (PLoS) has released a fascinating article that details a new discovery: Groupers and Moray Eels coordinating to hunt for food in the Red Sea. Groupers can hunt quickly over a reef, but if prey goes into a crevice, it can't be reached. Enter Madame Moray, who quickly dives in and continues pursuit. Groupers and Morays have been seen hunting, swimming side by side, looking like two friends out for a stroll. Apparently the grouper solicits the moray with a special nod of the head at the entrance to the moray's hole. Fascinating! We so underestimate animals. You can read the entire article here.

Lessons from NaNoWriMo

For the second time (first was in 2004) I participated in National Novel Writing Month--or NaNoWriMo as those in the know refer to it. The goal is to write a novel in a month--50,000 words minimum. A lot of novices particpate in NaNoWriMo and many writers with higher literary aspirations look down their noses at NaNoWriMo, but just like anything, it is what you make of it.

I used it as a motivating tool and found it really helpful. I tend to write really slowly and sweat every word, and I recognize that it isn't always the best way to write. Certainly not the way to get to a deeper level in my writing. I'm not even sure why I write so slowly on a normal day. Fear? Perfectionist tendencies? Avoidance? All of the above?

For me, NaNoWriMo becomes like the exercises we did in art school to force us to loosen up: things like drawing from the shoulder and not the wrist, doing 30-second gesture drawings, and blind contour drawings (drawing without looking at the paper). Both of the last two exercises encourage really focusing on the object you want to portray, but not examining (or criticizing) your results until you are finished.

When I write FORWARD ONLY during NaNoWriMo--without looking back--it's like doing a blind contour drawing. I'll eventually take a look at it and go, "yikes!" but I will also recognize that I have learned something very valuable in the process--that "seeing" your subject is at least as important as portraying it--and I will find a surprising beauty in some aspects of what I have drawn.

So, 30 days and 50,000 words later, I have five new short stories (no, I didn't write a novel, but again, it's how you use NaNoWriMo that's most important--how you make it work for you) and a new recklessness to my writing that takes me to more surprising and exciting places. Yes, I have a lot to go back and edit and tinker with, but you can't make a finished sculpture without a whole mess of clay.

Protect your intellectual property

Read why, and find out how here. (With thanks to Neil Gaiman.)

Jim Ruland's BIG LONESOME

Not only do I love the way Jim Ruland thinks and views the world, I love the way he makes me think and view the world. Seriously, if you want to read a book of short stories that kicks ass and takes names, Jim Ruland's debut collection BIG LONESOME is it.

These stories are far from the usual fare--they're a breath of fresh air. Okay, wrong metaphor. They're a breath of smoke-filled, honky-tonking, tough-loving beer and animal sweat air. But trust me when I say you'll go there with him, and you'll like it.

I was captivated by Ruland's writing from the very first story, Night Soil Man, in which a group of World War II Belfast men--a zookeeper, a zoo curator, and the official shit-shoveler (through whose eyes the story unfolds)--are assigned the odious task of destroying all the zoo's animals ("specimens" as the higher-ups label them) before another German air attack sets them loose, wild, onto the city streets. The men don't relish this directive, and how they manage to carry out the orders will break your heart--in the most manly way, of course.

By the time I worked my way through The Previous Adventures of Popeye the Sailor (Bam!), Kessler Has No Lucky Pants (Pow!), A Terrible Thing in a Place Like This (Oof!), Pronto's Persistence (Unh!), Still Beautiful (Ouch!), and Dick Tracy on the Moon (Socko!), I was thoroughly hooked. I'm talking swallowed-the-lure, using-the-needlenose-pliers, guts-ripped-out-into-the-river hooked.

Then he gave me Red Cap. This one, wow. This one tore me up. Poor war-torn little skinny Ilse who gets mistaken for a boy in her favorite red cap...until she finally gets back to the one place she thought of as a refuge...finds it, too, invaded by the horrors of war...and then she isn't mistaken for a boy. And it's too bad. It might have saved her.

As for the final five stories? Well, I'll just whet your appetites with a few of my favorite lines:

From The Egg Man:

"The dancer winks at me and only an idiot would miss the message encrypted in the torpid descent of those lashes. She oozes closer, introducing a thousand possibilities in the curve of her lips, possibilities ten folded by the light grace of her hand on my shoulder."

From Big Lonesome:

"The bounty hunter stood at the trailhead and surveyed the expanse of desert before him. Nothing but crusty scrubland as far as he could see. To the west: a salty sink crawling with snakes and scorpions; the the east: a wasted plain stippled with sun-bleached bones. It was hotter than donkey piss and dry as beans. He had a fair piece to go and this was the way to get there."

and:

"Boticelli Moon, the harlot, pushed her way to the front of the crowd in a ridiculous dress that exposed a fair portion of her oft-handled charms. "What," she asked, "do you require in return for your services?""

The voice in these 13 stories commands your attention, much as a good prizefighting tournament would. Clearly Ruland-the-writer has the skills of both an inside-fighter and an outside-fighter, with the occasional brash moves of a brawler thrown in for good measure.

With all this talent and diversity, here's hoping he stays in the ring all the way to the final bell.

Help save the bluefin tuna

This is from the World Wildlife Fund:

The Atlantic bluefin tuna is an amazing creature. A warm-blooded fish, it accelerates faster than a Porsche and covers thousands of kilometres in its lifetime.

But the fish, which swims into the Mediterranean each year to reproduce, is facing a crisis. Prized for sushi in Japan and across the world, the high demand for this valuable fish has led to huge illegal industrial overfishing. This has been fuelled in turn by the massive expansion of tuna farms in the Mediterranean in the last ten years, where wild tuna are caught, put in cages and fattened up for export.

Please sign our petition asking the European Union (EU) to support urgent measures to save tuna – before it is too late. Clickity

If this unscrupulous fishing continues the species could be biologically and commercially extinct in a few years.

There is one last chance to save the bluefin tuna. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) is meeting this month in Croatia and will decide how to manage the fishery in the Mediterranean over the coming years.

Most of the illegal fishing of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean is by EU fleets – yet Europe's representative at ICCAT is still resisting a strict recovery plan.

Please sign the petition!

Birds of Providence

Read the first installment of an excellent new short story by Jim Tomlinson available at Velocity Weekly. (This will be a regular feature.)

Nancy Pinard's BUTTERFLY SOUP

I finished Nancy Pinard's BUTTERFLY SOUP the same day that Buffalo was hit by what is being called the "October Surprise Storm" as if it were a game show prize. Fortunately, where I live, we were only out of power for 12 hours, while some in the heart of Buffalo were out for 12 days. But that time spent powerless gave me extra time to consider Nancy Pinard's second book (Shadow Dancing being her first). And consider it I did. The characters have yet to leave me.

Butterfly Soup is peopled by a very engaging cast. Although there are many aspects of the book to love--like the fine writing, the study of our human obsessiveness, the unflinching examination of the frailty of the body, the damage that secrets can do, and the many lyrical descriptive passages--it was the characters I most adored.

Rose Forrester opens the book for us, and even though we "intimately visit" with her husband Everett and her teenaged daughter Valley in successive close-third-person chapters, it is Rose and her big secret that drives the story. Fortunately, it isn't a secret from us, the readers. We learn right off that Rose's daughter Valley is actually the product of a brief fling with a high school heartthrob who has just returned to the same small town where Rose lives with her husband and daughter-that-isn't-his.

There are a number of flashbacks that give us backstory, but the bulk of the story takes place in the present tense on a crazy weekend that for Rose begins with a Saturday morning phone call from the town gossip who tells her that Rob McIntyre (Valley's real father) is back in town. Rose dresses, jumps in her car, and drives into town to see for herself. From there, her disparate emotions gradually merge into an all-consuming religious-inspired exile. When Rose makes an impulse purchase of a used nun's bed (auctioned off in the grocery store parking lot of her home town), the bed (placed in her downstairs office) becomes a makeshift sanctuary that shelters her from what she knows will be the inevitable repurcussions from her sixteen-year-old sins.

Everett's secret is a recently diagnosed medical condition that threatens to render him physically helpless in a few years. Already his legs are going numb and disobeying what his brain commands. To avoid acknowledging his body's impending self-destruction, Everett takes off on a Saturday adventure: an attempt at parasailing that has disastrous (although somewhat humorous--and familiar--for those of us who have ever thought we were still young enough to try something rash) results. Along the way he finds a beagle dog that helps to keep the whole story turning in her own right (and has her own secret, too, as it turns out) and a woman who first makes him question his marriage and then helps to reassure him of the value of said marriage.

Valley is a wonderfully rendered teenaged daughter. As a mother of two of my own, and a former teenaged daughter myself, I can tell you that Valley's depiction and deceptions are spot-on. She sneaks out that same crazy Saturday that her family seems to be self-destructing and winds up on a deserted road with a juvenile delinquent (appropriately named Snake) who happens to be a charge of Rob-the-heartthrob--MacIntyre.

All of these twists combine to create a dizzying plot of secrets-kept and secrets-revealed while life and limb hang in the balance for more than one of the protagonists. The ending? You'll have to read the book yourself to get that--I'm no spoiler--but I can tell you that the final chapter of the book seamlessly weaves together a puppy, a quilt, a belly tattoo, a box of chocolates, and Sister Mary Theresa's bed.

Quote

"Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man
will not himself find peace."

-Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, and musician (Nobel 1952)

Ellen Meister's SECRET CONFESSIONS OF THE APPLEWOOD PTA

The cover of Ellen Meister's debut novel has a Lichtenstein-inspired tongue-in-cheek rendering of four women standing before a backdrop of Suburbia, USA. The woman in the foreground has a thought-bubble that reads, "A MOVIE STAR IS COMING TO TOWN AND MY FRIENDS WANT TO DATE HIM!"

But the thought-bubble should read, "A MOVIE STAR IS COMING TO TOWN AND MY FRIENDS WANT TO SHTUP HIM!" Because--let me just tell you now--in Applewood? There's a whole lotta shtuppin' goin on.

Not that there's anything wrong with shtupping...I'm just saying.

Seriously, I had so much fun reading this book. The main characters are likeable and quirky, with real lives and families, real faults and longings, that make you see them as full, complete people and not the cardboard cutouts so many authors working in similar genres have produced. (And, actually, I'm not even sure what I mean by "similar genres," since I have to say that even though a hot pink cover has become synonymous lately with a "chick lit" label, this novel is not your traditional chick-litty book. It's full and rich and generously sprinkled with emotional, humorous, sexy surprises.)

And the minor characters delight as well: the husband, who, following a drug-induced stroke (more or less of his own making) is left impotent and yet perversely sexually uninhibited; the private investigator who is an emotionally sensitive wreck; the alcoholic blues-singing mother who keeps trying to upstage a talented daughter who could care less about being upstaged; the womanizing best-male-friend-cum-almost-lover; the evangelical-pure-on-the-surface, animal-in-bed widower who is also Applewood's most eligible bachelor; the smooth-veneered catty PTA maven who has her own dirty little secrets; and, of course, the infamous roving rock that has spawned so much trouble. (Do rocks spawn??....if they do anywhere, it would be in hyper-fertile Applewood.)

What? You've never heard of Applewood Rock? Why, it's right up there with Plymouth Rock, people. Wars have been started over lesser objects. But don't believe me: get the book, slip between the covers, and have the time of your life. This is a seriously funny, engaging, endearing read.

Roy Kesey's NOTHING IN THE WORLD

What I feel most compelled to say in awe of Roy Kesey's talent, is that I read his entire book in one sitting. One! Honestly, I couldn't put it down. Maybe that just illuminates my own obessive tendences, but I gluttinously devoured NOTHING IN THE WORLD, cramming it all in as fast as I could and then licking my fingers when I was done.

NOTHING IN THE WORLD lures you in innocently--and lyrically--enough. The first paragraph is lovely, placing the reader solidly in Josko' world, which manages (like so much of Kesey's work) to feel both familiar and exotic, no small feat:

"The white stone walls of Josko's house were tinged with gold in the growing light, and the only sound was the sharp ring of his father's pick glancing off the rocks in the vineyard. Josko ran to join him as the sun slipped into the sky, and they worked together without speaking, his father freeing the rocks from the soil, Josko heaving them to his shoulder and staggering to the wall they were building to mark their property line to the east."

This attention to detail and to the sensory experience of the reader is consistent throughout Roy's book and as I read I was drawn along, unwilling to leave that world that felt so very real to me. Even when the world became darker and more violent, or perhaps especially when the world became darker and more violent, for that is when Kesey's matter-of-fact, detailed style really grabs you by the throat:

"Josko opened his eyes, and the sky was a thin whitish blue. There was the warm salty sweetness of blood in his mouth, and behind his eyes he felt a strange dense presence. He raised one hand to his head. Above his left ear, a shard of metal protruded from his skull. He wrapped his hand around it and ripped it out. Pain deafened him, and strips of sky floated down to enfold him."

Okay, from that point on, I was entirely hooked. My own brain began to throb with a "strange dense presence" and I realized it was Josko in there, Josko in my brain, becoming part of my grey matter creating new peaks and grooves as he becomes a legend in his own country (unknown to him)--a celebrated war hero, first for shooting down two enemy planes with his unit, and then for singlehandedly killing the infamous sniper Hadzihafizbegovic and setting his severed head on a table in a cafe. The trouble is, as Josko moves through the countryside alone, becoming more and more dirty and disheveled (also crazed by the haunting female voice that sings in his head, pulling him along siren-like) he looks less and less like a war hero and he is repeatedly shot at, beaten, even arrested and imprisoned. In prison, in an utterly painful and ironic scene, the soldiers beat Josko most brutally of all because when they demand to know his name, he tells them he is Josko Banovic. Of course you are, says the soldier, and I am Marshall Tito. They kick him for claiming to be a man they have made into legend, a famous hero. We know he is Josko, he knows he is, and yet the soldiers may just kill him for telling the truth which they are certain is a lie.

That sense of tragic unfairness permeates NOTHING IN THE WORLD, absolutely aptly, given that it is a novella that has the fighting between Serbs and Croats as its backdrop. The writing is intelligent, the story is gripping and dark but also funny and redemptive in places, and the ending is perfect. NOTHING IN THE WORLD is a great read--and like nothing in the world I have read before.

Jim Tomlinson's THINGS KEPT, THINGS LEFT BEHIND

I loved so much about Jim Tomlinson's short story collection, Things Kept, Things Left Behind. It was one of those reads that I felt compelled to carefully portion out so as to not have it be over too quickly. I wanted to savor it. I hated for it to end.

The book has a beautiful, poignantly apt cover design with a number of excellent blurbs on the back, but one blurb in particular expressed what I found most to love about the collection. George Saunders wrote, "Jim Tomlinson uses the traditional gifts of the writer--love of place, a keen eye for the telling detail, unflagging interest in the human heart--to bring to life a very specific and eye-opening version of America, particularly working-class, rural America...his care for these people and his generosity toward them are evident on every page."

I have actually put off writing this review for over a week, because what I most wanted to do was point to Saunders' words and shout, "What he said!" But that would do a disservice to all of Jim's hard work and I truly was transported by the very real characters and their situations, so who better to discuss the book than me? I am a product of that "working-class rural America" that Saunders mentions and when Cass (in the the half-title story "Things Kept") says, "When he comes to see Ma, don't matter if it's a hundred degrees, Dale here is wearing long sleeves so she don't see them tattoos he's got drawed on his arms," I KNOW her. She is utterly, absolutely real to me.

And in particular, I was impressed by how the women in Things Kept, Things Left Behind are portrayed. In the reading, I had the sense that, while writing, Jim allowed them to live and breathe. They have flaws and desires and idiosyncracies that allowed me to see and appreciate them, warts and all--like real people. I think that can be difficult enough when we are creating characters; doubly so when we are creating characters across a gender divide. But there is no gender divide in this collection. Men cheat, women cheat, men love obsessively, women love obsessively, both succeed, both fail. It is such an even-handed look at what makes us human.

I am also so grateful that Jim resisted the urge that so many (particularly southern) writers of late have embraced: the urge to gently mock their characters. A fascinating article by Jonathan Dee (in Esquire?) opened my eyes to this, and ever since I have been sensitive to the notion that we, as writers, should respect our characters. As storytellers, you could even say we have a duty to let the characters show us their character, without a wink-wink, nudge-nudge by the author, over the character's head. I have been guilty of this in my own writing, but I have to say it was such a pleasure to read a book of stories in which the characters are allowed to blunder and fumble and generally be human, without commentary (spoken or unspoken) from the author. "They are who they are," Tomlinson seems to say. "I just write about 'em, I don't judge 'em."

And thank goodness for that.

Sustainable Seafood Matters

This is taken from a WWF email:

Whether it is sushi, swordfish steak, paella or fish and chips, many of us love seafood.

The trouble is, our oceans are being seriously over fished. So much so, that unless action is taken some of our favourite fish may disappear from the seafood counter and restaurant table altogether.

But it is not just our supper that's at stake. Unsustainable fishing - caused by poor fisheries management and wasteful, destructive fishing practices - is decimating the world's fisheries, as well as destroying marine habitats and incidentally killing billions of fish and other marine animals each year.

Consumer demand for sustainable seafood can act as an extremely powerful incentive for better fisheries management. If you buy, or ask for, seafood that comes from sustainable sources you are helping to protect our marine environment and, at the same time, ensuring that seafood can be enjoyed for many years to come.

So look out for products carrying the distinctive blue Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) label. This gives you a simple way to identify and buy fish from well-managed sources.

Take a stand against unsustainable fishing and pledge to buy MSC certified seafood here.

Thank you,

WWF International

P.S. Find out more about the unacceptable face of seafood with our
interactive menu (flash required): Clicky

Edwidge Danticat

On torture.

ERASURE by Percival Everett

I'll be writing a few reviews over the next week, to share thoughts about and excerpts from some of the great books I've been reading recently.

I confess that I'm new to Percival Everett's work. Some of my good friends are great fans of his, and he was at Bread Loaf this year and gave a great reading, and well, I just decided it was about time I read something of his. Since I write a lot about race issues myself, I decided on ERASURE which on its front cover (paperback version) has the following quote from the New York Times Book Review:

"With equal measures of sympathy and satire, Erasure craftily addresses the highly charged issue of being 'black enough' in America."

"Craftily" is a good word to use because Everett gives us a book within a book to illustrate his (and his character's) point. The protagonist, a novelist, Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, is having trouble getting his most recent work published when he comes across the work of an "authentic" black novelist whose book "We's Lives in Da Ghetto" is a runaway bestseller. Horrified by the stereotypes and the dialect in it, he sets out (angrily) to write a book just as horrible and titles it "My Pafology" (later changing the name to something that the publisher suggests he spells 'Phuck' so as not to alienate more sensitive readers--he refuses). Of course, he submits it to his agent and the book gets attention, raves and an obscenely large advance.

The problem is, Monk didn't submit it as himself. He submitted it under the pen name of Stagg R. Leigh, and endowed his doppelganger with a rap sheet and prison time in his past. Of course, everyone wants to meet the infamous Stagg, further complicating Monk's plan and forcing him into an even greater charade. Ever more humorous complications arise and the book is finally nominated for a prestigious award for which Monk is made a member of the jury. To recuse, or not to recuse??

That delightful romp aside, the book is also about relationships and love and filial duty...and about the damage a father inflicts when he dubs one child "the golden child" and emotionally excludes the others. (Damage, by the way, that is done not only to the siblings, but also to the golden child.)

Outside of his publishing woes, Monk loses a sister who is a successful OBGyn for underpriveleged women (at the hands of a radical right-to-lifer who guns her down), a brother who has come out of the closet and can't reconcile his relationship with Monk, and a half-white, racist half-sister he didn't even know he had until he found an old stack of his father's letters.

Monk is also slowly losing his mother to Altzheimer's disease, played out in tragic / comic scenes that were utterly devastating to read. Here's an excerpt from a scene on the day he decides to finally put her in a home:

I watched as she poured the water into the pot and dropped in the ball that I had already filled with tea. She put the cups and saucers on the table and set the pot between us.

"Isn't this nice?" she said.

"Yes, Mother."

"My favorite time is always waiting for the tea to steep." She looked past me to the screened porch. "Where is Lorraine?"

"Lorraine was married last night."

"Oh, yes." She seemed to catch herself. Then she appeared very sad.

"Will you miss her?" I asked.

She looked at me as if she'd missed the question.

"You were just thinking about Lorraine, weren't you?" I asked.

"Of course. I hope she will be very happy." Mother poured the tea.

"I'd like you to pack a bag this morning," I said.

"Why?" She held the cup in her hands, warming them.

"I have to take you someplace. It's kind of a hospital."

"I feel fine."

"I know, Mother. But I want to make sure. I want to be certain that you're all right."

"I'm perfectly fine."

"Your father can give me a pill or something." She sipped her tea, then stared at it.

"Father's dead, Mother."

"Yes, I know. There was a cardinal outside my window this morning. A female. She was very beautiful. The female cardinal's color is so sweetly understated."

"I agree."

Mother looked at my eyes. "I must have spilled something in bed last night."

"I'll take care of it."

"Shall I pack a small bag?"

I nodded. "A small bag will be fine."

On Striving

"The best advice I ever got was from an elephant trainer in the jungle outside Bangalore. I was doing a hike through the jungle as a tourist. I saw these large elephants tethered to a small stake. I asked him, 'How can you keep such a large elephant tied to such a small stake?' He said, 'When the elephants are small, they try to pull out the stake, and they fail. When they grow large, they never try to pull out the stake again.' That parable reminds me that we have to go for what we think we're fully capable of, not limit ourselves by what we've been in the past."

--Paul Vivek, "The Best Advice I Ever Got," Fortune, March 21, 2005, p. 100.

Short Story Collection

I am so excited. I finally--FINALLY--feel like I've gotten my short story collection assembled and completed into a cohesive manuscript. I've written one last story to anchor the collection (six before it, six after), taken out ones that I was sort of including and looking the other way over, and I really feel good about it now. I am so excited. I'll be printing out and sending off this week. Yay!

Then it's off to work on the non-fiction book I am co-authoring. I've gotten some great edits back from the agent who is representing that (in a one-book deal) and I can't wait to start hammering those out. I've had a few days to think through the changes she suggested, and once I sit down I think they'll go quickly.

Just so I don't sound too Pollyanna-ish, my writing rarely goes this smoothly. I intend to make the most of it, though, and wring every bit of productivity out of this writing high that I can. I'm aware that the lows eventually make an appearance, but for now I'm focusing on how good this feels.

Boycott a stamp??

Why do this? Why? Why? Why?

Okay, sorry. A little background: I received an email today telling me that if I am a patriotic American, I will boycott the 2006 USPS Eid stamp that will be coming out in early October. It celebrates two of the holiest days of the Islamic calendar and a message of celebration (roughly translated as "May your religious holiday be blessed") is printed on the stamp in Arabic. It's a beautiful stamp. (Plus, the same design was originally released in 2001--it's been around a while.)

But the email I got was so hate filled, so ugly and narrow-minded...

I have to say, I don't find this stamp threatening at all. It's just a stamp, people. It doesn't hurt my own personal religious beliefs to allow someone of a different faith a postage stamp that celebrates what they believe. My faith is strong enough to survive a postage stamp. We need to be careful where we put our energies. There is enough hate in the world already. As Christians what we need to worry about is practicing love and compassion.

All of the Muslims I know are peace loving, intelligent, moderate, contributing citizens of America. They abhor what the radical fundamentalists have done to attack America just as much as the rest of us do. Some of them lost loved ones in the attacks, too (and no, they weren't hijackers--they were innocent victims).

Think about it: the fanatics who attacked America also damaged the image of moderate Muslims. To them, the fanatics are like our very own American-made ones: Jim Jones who orchestrated a massive group suicide in Guyana, or David Koresh and his bizarre Branch Davidians in Waco, or the Fundamentalist Mormons who practice polygamy (illegally) and marry their daughters at age 12 to 50 year-old "prophets." All of these radical sects profess(ed) to believe in the Christian God.

My point is that every religion has its extremists, but they do not define the majority (they are just the loudest, most attention-getting ones). We need to be careful how we lump people together because of how we perceive their religion based on a few vocal / violent extremists. I would never want someone to compare me to David Koresh because I, too, believe in Christ.

Please, let's remember what it really means to be compassionate; and focus our energies on making the world less hate-filled...not more.

Yellow jackets from hell

Yup, they're still here. Will they never die? Admittedly, they aren't as bad as they were. The ones that get in now are confused, twitchy, and not long for this world. But they still have enough oomph to make it to my bathroom, where they crawl around on the rug, or the covered toilet seat. Brrr. That's the scariest place they've been.

Pierce Tattoo did say to call him back if they were still coming in after a week, and it's been two, but I have a confession to make: I am more afraid of chemicals than of yellow jackets. Yup, just fifteen minutes south of Love Canal and I have a HUGE fear of man-made chemicals: insecticides, herbicides, defoliants...I'd rather swim with sharks. At least I can see the sharks coming. At least I can fight back against the shark, punch him in the eye, growl in my snorkel (that scares them away every time--add that tidbit to your "if I'm ever attacked by a shark" mental file). But chemicals? They are silent, deadly, insidious, and I hate them with the most irrational of fears. They poison the air we breathe, the soil in which we grow our food, the water supply on which we all depend. Did you know that delousing shampoo is one of the worst water polluters of all? One tiny bottle of it can utterly contaminate something like 20,000 gallons of water? (Okay, I'm not giving reliable facts now, just promoting my fear. I'll try to get actual stats and get back to you.)

ANYway, as bugs go, the yellow jackets squash with a really satisfying little "pop" under the shoe. They aren't messy, squishy diers at all. And I tell myself that my karma won't be damaged because they were dying anyway, and I'm just putting them out of their misery. But my dear husband is so frustrated he's ready to pull down the wall and see just what lies behind it.

Not me, though. No way, Jose.

Too many chemicals have been sprayed back there.

ITME

ITME's fall students are just starting their 12 week semester program and the first update can be read here. We have a great group and are anticipating a great semester!

Nearly good

I'm struggling with a novel that is nearly good. I have recently come to understand that it needs another draft, after I had told myself I was done. I can't get to it yet because I'm finishing my short story collection, which is almost, almost there. And the writing I'm doing for the last story is thrilling me, so that's good. But there's that novel hanging out there...I'll get to it, I'll get to it.

Here's a quote from Doris Lessing that I share for anyone who is having the same struggle:

"All writers...go through the stage when what we write is nearly good: the writing lacks some kind of inward clinching, the current has not run clear. We go on writing, reading, throwing away not-quite-good enough words, then one day something has happened, a process has been completed, a step forward has been taken...The process of writing and rewriting, and of reading the best, has at last succeeded. Professional writers all know this period of apprenticeship. Amateur writers cling to their early uneven drafts and won't let them go."

I will not cling...I will not cling...I will not cling...

Please Do Not Feed the Humans

Here's a great article in Slate about society and its relationship with food.

Dolphin intelligence

There has been a great debate raging in the community of dolphin researchers and animal ethicists about the intelligence of dolphins. Most of us have long believed that dolphins are intelligent, but a recent researcher is positing that they are not as intelligent as we have given them credit for. Personally, I think he's a quack--just so you know where I stand--and offer this link to another researcher's article as evidence.

Mark Doty's lecture

Hey, I found my notes! And it only took two weeks.

Anyway, Mark Doty's lecture was titled "Whitman in Tears" and was born of an essay he wrote for Virginia Quarterly Review on the anniversary of the publication of Leaves of Grass.

The first thing Doty discussed was the poetic tone in of Leaves of Grass. It was very much a voice of confidence and intimacy (an "I know you" voice) and it was a revolutionary way of speaking to readers. Who dares to speak in this way? was the reaction of many.

The first publication of Leaves of Grass was a volume that Whitman self-published (at age 36, although photos of him at that time show him looking quite grizzled). He didn't even put his name on it. When Mark said this, the audience laughed, as if it was a show of Whitman's ego. But I understood it as a lack of ego--like potters who choose not to sign the bottoms of their pots. Lots of famous Japanese potters did this and it was to show that they were part of the culture...that they were one with the world of art and the act of creation. It's actually a very complex concept to try to describe, but it was clear to me along the lines of "I, as creator, am nothing. I am merely the conduit for this greater force: creativity." And I understand this feeling all too well. it's like that third essence of writing that I mentioned before, the "Where the hell did that come from?" part.

Anyway, Whitman is the father of the wholly American vernacular and used words like "luckier" "stuck up" and "foo-foo" in his poems--unheard of before him. He wanted to speak like an everyman and wished for the widest possible scope of public intimacy. "You" is his most used word. Doty said Whitman communicates with his readers "lip-to-ear."

Also important to understanding Whitman, is to examine the culture of the times in which he lived. The 1850's was a really pivotal time in America. There was a whole industry of healing just coming into being: the TB sanitoriums in upstate NY that represented the healing powers of nature; the "science" of phrenology, wherein the bumps on your head could tell a phrenologist what ails you, and even change as you heal; the rise of the cereal empires of Post and Kellogg, who also opened their own vast health-spas that regulated all aspects of diet and exercise as a way to cleanse and cure the body of its many afflictions.

It was also the beginning of the self-actualization movement and Whitman represented the belief in a "Cosmic Consciousness" a term that psychologists use to explain the fusion between the self and the universe. What today we might call "being one with the world." I believe many artists understand this feeling...this being plugged in to something greater...it is a very human craving, being transported, being connected with something so vast that we cannot comprehend it...also the appeal of religion...which similarly experienced a surge of popularity in late 1800's.

Doty spoke about Whitman's wracking self-doubts, despite his poetic voice that demanded, lip-to-ear, that we listen. Doty asked us an important question: what constitutes a useful amount of self-doubt? Too much self-doubt paralyzes us. Too little makes work that is agrandizing. The doubter, he said, is in search of what remedy for uncertainty can be found on earth. (Think about it for a minute. It's lovely.)

And he used the following passage from Whitman's "As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life" to illustrate Whitman's sense of being one with nature/the universe, to illustrate his creative self-doubt, and to show us a breathtaking point-of-view shift that occurs at the end of the poem when the voice of the poet is at once both the dead creatures at the edge of the sea and the other self--witness to the dead bodies, so that he is both diembodied, but also within his body, the eye in two positions at once: the eye that watches the eye.

Consider:

As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life

As I ebb'd with the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walked where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok,
Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant,
Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,
I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,
Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems,
Was seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
The rim, the sediment that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe.

Fascinated, my eyes reverting from the south, dropt, to follow those slender windrows,
Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,
Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide,
Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me,
Paumanok there and then as I thought the old thought of the likenesses,
These you presented to me, you fish-shaped island,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk'd with that electric self seeking types.

(Skipping a stanza, here comes the writerly shame...)

But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet untouch'd, untold, altogether unreach'd,
Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,
With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,
Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath.

I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single object, and that no man ever can,
Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart upon me and sting me,
Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.

(Skipping to the POV shift...my apologies, Walt.)

Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return,)
Cease not your moaning you fierce old mother,
Endless cry for your castaways, but fear not, deny not me,
Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feat as I touch you or gather from you.

I mean tenderly by you and all,
I gather for myself and for this phantom looking down where we lead, and following me and mine.

Me and mine, loose windrows, little corpses,
Froth, snowy white, and bubbles,
(See, from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last,
See, the prismatic colors glistening and rolling,)
Tufts of straw, sands, fragments,
Buoy'd hither from many moods, one contradicting another,
From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell,
Musing, pondering, a breath, a tiny tear, a dab of liquid or soil,
Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown,
A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifting at random,
Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature,
Just as much whence we come that blare of the cloud-trumpets,
We, capricious, brought hither we know not whence, spread out before you,
You up there walking or sitting,
Whoever you are, we too lie in drifts at your feet.

It's officially over...

...Summer, that is. Sigh.

My kiddos just left for school. My eldest is a Junior in high school, my middle is starting her first day of high school today, and my youngest, no longer a baby, is in fifth grade, top of the heap in elementary school. And to make things worse (better??) he is on Safety Patrol this year and so he isn't riding the bus. Which sounds like a good thing if you know what buses are like, but the thing is, we always had great mom/son time while he waited for the bus. We would shoot hoops, or in winter play a sort of soccer-hockey with chunks of ice from the roof, we'd talk about life, read books together, pet the cats who waited for the bus with us. Damn, I am so going to miss that time. So I told him this morning, "I'll walk to school with you," thinking we could still share a little morning time.

He said, "Mom, do you mind if I ride my bike? I get there faster..." and I could tell he was really worried about hurting my feelings. Then he said, "You can walk with me some other day..." and I'm not sure which was more heartbreaking--the fact that he wanted to go on his own, or the fact that he was so worried about hurting my feelings when doing his own thing.

I assured him it was fine, that it was his first day and he needed to do it however he wanted to so that he could feel comfortable. But I'm sad inside. Proud of him for being independent and strong and asking for what he wants, but sad that he's growing up.

Parenthood. It sure is a mixed bag, isn't it? And the crazy thing is, if we do it well, we work ourselves right out of a job.

When you have that newborn little baby you aren't thinking about the planned obsolescence waiting for you at the end of it. But I suppose it's all about seasons. I truly don't want to be a mother of small children all my life. I have things I want to do, things I want to accomplish.

...But grandmother! Now there's a job I could really sink my teeth into. :)

Waiting for my copy

I got an email saying it had shipped...maybe it will come today. I'm waiting for Jim Tomlinson's Things Kept, Things Left Behind, which won the Iowa Short Fiction Award. Here is an excerpt from his "Backstory" essay, which can be read here.

"There is a saying in playwriting that the scene is never about what the scene is about. So it is in Things Kept, Things Left Behind. The stories, ultimately, are about things not written, at least not overtly. The unuttered core of these stories, the invisible center around which they twine, is the conflict inherent in human connectedness, all the passions and incredible difficulties tangled there."

Can't wait!

The Ex-terminator

So, we called around, holiday weekend and all. Orkin wanted $269, starting price. Another place wanted $150. Finally we found a local place that would do it for between $95 and $140. And they would come right away. Hallelujah.

By 3:15 the cats were getting hungry and giving me disgusted looks at the closed door that separated them from their food, so I snuck in for the food bag--their regular bowl was aswarm with yellow jackets--and gave them a small bowl of food on this side of the buzzing door with the sign that read "Do NOT open!" lest anyone forget what lay--flew--on the other side. Both my cats were born on the same day as I was, and they have many of my stubborn Taurus tendencies; had they been able to work the knob, I have no doubt they would have been in there attempting to eat around the bugs.

The exterminator arrived around 3:30. He was a young guy, very polite, and covered with tattoos and piercings. There was a large celtic cross on his left forearm, a ring of flames blazing from his right wrist up to his elbow, and several more that I could see disappearing under his sleeve or peeking out from his neckline. He had a short buzzed haircut and at least three silver hoops in one earlobe (I forgot to look at the other). Suffice it to say, the man obviously has a fondness for things piercing his skin, so it seemed perfectly natural that he would be here to rid me of a hive of stinging creatures.

He was fearless. He sprayed in the laundry room (after I removed the clean stuff, shaking off the yellow jackets first) and then shut the door, phase one complete.

Phase two involved spraying the nest from outside, squatting low (hoping, no doubt, to be less noticeable), swatting them away from his head, spraying again, studying, spraying, studying, spraying. The whole thing looked very Zen from inside my closed second-story window. Then he applied a powder, statically charged, that would cling to the opening and to the yellow jackets. He said, "They groom themselves like cats, so they will ingest the powder when they try to clean it off." Who knew? Yellow jackets are like cats. Huh.

I still don't like them.

But the exterminator? Him, I like. My new favorite person. Thank you, Mr. Pierce Tattoo. You have saved us from the yellow jacket hordes. And in my case, from myself.

Later that evening, I vacuumed up 487 yellow jacket carcasses, some still twitching ominously. What? Of course I counted, are you kidding?

And I went to a party later that night and discovered that infestation stories are like pregnancy stories: everybody's got one. I heard about the man whose living room wall began to buzz and then finally to drip honey, about the family whose living room ceiling fell in on them, overburdened by a huge nest of wasps...it actually made my story seem sort of lame. But at least I had the physical evidence to top them--I had my swollen wrist, my war wound. And I had the numbers. 487. Read 'em and weep, baby. Read 'em and weep.

The nest

I arrived home to a yellow jacket infestation. I've heard about the giant nests appearing this year, to the bafflement of entomologists, but never thought I'd be this close to one.

At first, they were just appearing in our basement laundry room--occasional, groggy fellows that we sucked up with the vacuum or dropped in the toilet with a tissue. We wondered how they were getting in, but didn't stress over it too much.

Then one day, Len turned on the light in the basement only to have ten or so swarm the light (they are attracted to light--natural or artificial). Bravely, he turned on the vacuum and sucked them up mid-flight. It became a game, of sorts, and I quickly learned to do the same. With the sleight-of-hand required, and the threat of mortal injury, it was almost like a video game. Three more days elapsed.

Then, yesterday, I was trimming the front shrubs (manually, in a Mary-Scissors-Hands fashion since our electric trimmer recently bit the dust), getting closer and closer to the end of the bushes, back aching from the strain of using dull clippers, when I was distracted from my work by a small swarm of flying creatures. I had found the yellow jackets' entrance to our house. Three holes in the molding between the first and second floors of my split-level home were their entry-exitway, and it was Grand Central Yellow Jacket Station, I must say. Busy, busy fellows, they were. In and out three and four at a time. Fortunately, they were merely menacing me with fly-bys, and not yet attacking. (I have since learned that when one yellow jacket stings you, it emits a pheromone that sends any nearby nest-mates into a similar stinging frenzy and they will attack anything that moves, favoring the head and face. And unlike bees, who can only sting once because they have a barbed stinger that stays in you, yellow jackets have a straight stinger and can happily sting again and again and again.)

Needless to say, I stopped trimming. Well, for a few minutes, anyway. I am a single-minded perfectionist who really likes to finish what I start, so I edged back in and got those few annoying stray tendrils that make a bush look like it has a bad haircut. The yellow jackets buzzed me, but didn't strike. What's the old saying? The Lord looks after idiots and small children? Fortunately I fall into the former category and so you will not be reading about me in the listing of next year's Darwin Awards.

I called Len, told him about finding the opening and we agreed to buy some hornet and wasp killer and hit them at sunset when the most yellow jackets would have returned to the hive and also quieted down. At about 9:30, we did. The hole was small, though, and it was difficult to get the insecticide inside. Plus there were numerous holes. But we did our best and went to sleep hopeful.

This morning, there were at least 150 angry flying sting-meisters in my laundry room, which is also where the cats eat and use the litter box. Sorry kitties. We shut the door and checked the outside openings. Yup, they were still flying in and out. All we had succeeded in doing was a) angering them and b) confusing them so that even more of them came inside instead of outside.

I think my middle name should have been Pandora. Mary Pandora Akers. I can't let potentially dangerous situations lie. And I always think I can handle whatever comes up. So, after three or four times of peering through a crack in the basement door and seeing that the numbers had risen to two or three hundred, I decided to go in and suck them up.

I know, I know. I'm the stupid girlfriend in horror movies who slowly descends the basement steps with all the illuminating power of a CANDLE after finding her boyfriend's head in the toilet.

But I did at least cover my head with the hood of my hoodie, pull down my sleeves, and turn off the light so that the angriest yellow jackets went to the window. Then I entered quietly...

I turned on the vacuum and used the long hose to suck up the logy ones on the floor. So far so good. Emboldened by my success, I went after the ones attached to the light fixture. I would estimate that I managed to suck up about 75 or so before that one fellow that I missed. He got brushed off the light by the suction hose and dropped, falling onto my wrist, where my watch stopped him. He then proceded to do what yellow jackets do best. And then I did what humans do best: I screamed, flicked him off, turned off the vacuum, and fled the room before his pheromones could alert the remaining 250 hive-mates.

So now, as I type, I have a swollen, stinging wrist and a heightened sense of my own fallibility.

But in my defense, if I'd just had on gloves, I'd still be okay and the yellow jackets would be in the vacuum cleaner bag...where they belong.

I wonder if I have a pair of gloves from last winter's stash lying around...