Writers Plot

A DIFFERENT POV (OR, GETTING INTO SOMEONE'S HEAD)

Posted by Sheila Connolly (Sarah didn't get to go)

By now everyone will have straggled back from the holiday weekend, dazed with sun (yes! the sun shone in Massachusetts!), sounds (loud), and summer. People no doubt ate and drank too much and generally overdid things, in honor of our national holiday, and here we are facing another week, sigh.

The weekend was also noteworthy for the reopening of the head of the Statue of Liberty to tourists. And I felt both sad and smug, because I was there once...and that was before.

I suppose most children who grew up in the greater New York area, as I did, were treated to the obligatory tour of the City and its monuments at one time or another, whether on a school trip or with relatives. My youthful excursions included most of the city museums, the zoos (Central Park and Bronx), one foray to Shea Stadium (the Mets won), Broadway, and the major high-dollar department stores, courtesy of my grandmother. Also a few name restaurants, on the promise that I would behave as a perfect young lady (which I managed to do, because I liked nice restaurants even then). I even skated at Rockefeller Center a couple of times.

But never the Statue of Liberty, and when I saw it, in 1997 as a chaperone on one of my daughter's class trips, I realized why: there was a lot of climbing involved. Literally hundreds of steps, and when I was there, the elevator went only to the observation level, and what fun was that? And my mother and grandmother, the designated tour guides, did not do walking or climbing. If there were not taxis, we did not go there.

My daughter attended school in a relatively affluent community in the Philadelphia suburbs, and the school district in those days sponsored some major annual field trips–New York City, Williamsburg, Washington DC. There were so many parents who wanted to attend as chaperones that they had to hold a lottery for each trip each year. I was lucky enough to be included on the first two trips.

The New York trip was over-ambitious. Imagine three busloads of 12-year-old kids, plus a lot of half-awake parents. We boarded in the school parking lot before dawn, in order to arrive in time for the first ferry to Liberty Island. (My daughter reminds me that the kiddies were warned not to buy anything from the vendors at Battery Park, an order they of course ignored.) We rode the ferry, climbed the monument (more on that later), descended; docked briefly and admired the restored buildings at Ellis Island (we did not get off); returned to Battery Park to eat lunch; reboarded the buses to see the UN (general consensus from the students: boring; I bought a great cookbook there); reboarded yet again to travel to the Natural History Museum–where we had, if I recall correctly, approximately 37 minutes to see the whole museum, including filling out scavenger hunt forms so kindly provided by the teachers. Can you guess that we were running late by then? Then we walked a few blocks to a surprisingly decent restaurant (considering that we were shepherding a group of 100 school kids), ate, and reboarded the buses for the ride home. I think we arrived before midnight, but the memories are a little blurry.

But back to Lady Liberty. This was 12 years ago, in my youth (ha!), and I was determined to climb the thing, as high as they would let me (the arm and torch had been closed for years by then), and that of course meant convincing my little clutch of students that they all really wanted to do it too. I must have been persuasive, because we all did make the climb.

And it was worth it. We were blessed with a gorgeous spring day, so the views were spectacular. I was struck by how small the head is inside (maybe it was all those giggling school children that made it seem small?), and how odd it was to say to myself, I am standing in the head of the Statue of Liberty. I mean, you know exactly where you are at that moment, right? And so would at least half the people in the world, if you called them all and told them where you were right that minute.

On the way out, I laid a hand on the copper shell. It was so thin! It's a single sheet of metal. I mean, here is this monument that stands over 100 feet tall, and it's just a frame with a minimal metal skin draped over it. It makes her seem so fragile.

When the Twin Towers fell, we dragged out the pictures, and the towers were everywhere in them. It makes the pictures a little hard to look at now. But at the same time, every time I see the Statue of Liberty, in a movie or on a commercial, I say to myself "I was there." So I'm glad she's open again, if only to a few hardy souls who are willing to brave long lines and narrow winding stairs for a chance to stand there for just a few minutes.

ROTTEN TO THE CORE!

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, dear new book,
Happy birthday to you!

Please welcome the second book in the Orchard Mystery series, Rotten to the Core (available in bookstores Tuesday, July 7th).

What's the body of an
organic farming activist
doing in Meg's orchard?
She never even met the
man. But when someone
tries to poison her with the
same pesticide, things get personal.

I know times are hard, but
look at it this way: a
paperback book costs less than a fast-food meal, and it lasts a lot longer!

Sheila

Give Me Liberty or Give Me a High Speed Chase

posted by Leann Sweeney

I live near one of the largest cities in the US--Houston, Texas. And gosh, do we love our roads. The city sprawls for miles and miles and you can travel for a good hour and still not get out of town. Endless looping freeways with their convenient feeder roads coupled with a healthy size criminal population make for plenty of high speed chases. We've made it easy for the bad buys in H-Town by pouring concrete until there's hardly a blade of grass left. And we had another chase today--someone who obviously started celebrating their independence day a little early.

I must say, I have never witnessed a high speed chase where the evil doer gets away. And I have been forced to watch plenty of them. Okay not forced, maybe, but when all programming is suspended so that we can be "entertained" by idiots putting lives in danger as they are followed by five helicopters and a hundred cop cars, it is difficult not to follow the event to its inevitable conclusion. I'm a mystery writer. I want truth, justice and the American way. I want my high speed dummies to get caught. I want to see them wrestled to the ground and handcuffed. And I do not want to see them treated "gently." Thank goodness not once have I seen them been asked, "Sir. Do you realize how fast you were going?" Nothing gentle about the take downs, and I find that quite gratifying.

My question is, and has been, why? What's with stealing a car, robbing a store or being stopped for a routine traffic violation and then taking off like your tail is on fire? Is it because the newscasters show the high speed chases on TV from beginning to end and these dumb asses think they've been cast on America's Got No Brains? Does it make a good story in the slammer when the bad guy tells all his bad guy buds about the one big accomplishment in his sorry life? "Did you see that white van on Channel 11 rear-ending people, scaring the crap out of drivers and nearly killing innocent folks? Yeah. That was me. Woo hoo!"

Some of these chase go on for an hour or more so I have a suggestion. Have a script, ready dear broadcasters because hearing the same thing over and over--"Oh, he's weaving between traffic, he's driving on the shoulder, he's getting on and off the freeway, he's putting lives in danger," doesn't make for compelling storytelling. Make stuff up and really entertain us. Have these scripts ready and then pull one randomly and just start reading. It could go something like this: "We understand the driver of the van in this chase lost his pet lizard this morning and became distraught. When he didn't have enough cash to have a likeness of his lizard tattooed on his right shoulder, we are being told he flew into a rage, trashed the tattoo parlor and took off in Ozzie Ink's custom painted van. As an aside, vice is on the scene at the tattoo establishment as we speak. Seems an attached massage parlor was actually a front for prostitution and added to that, the tattoo artist had not cleaned his equipment since yesterday."

Now isn't that more fun?

Reverting to Type

posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

I spent four hours last weekend typing a legal paper for a patron because I figured I could use some gas money; usually I have more time than money, and this was no exception.

It was like a blast to the past. I earned my spending money in college typing papers for cash. I had an old upright manual typewriter that I lugged around when I had to find a place where I wouldn't be disturbing anybody; it was a given that I was typing late at night. That sucker was heavy, but I still miss its bouncy touch.

I was able to do this because (deep dark secret revealed here) I started at the university as a secretarial sciences major. My parents and their trusted friends had convinced me that "secutaries" made decent money and the job field was secure. In order to justify a four-year education, I announced I would be minoring in German and would become a bi-lingual secretary. This was  in the pre-feminist days when a poster with a picture of Golda Meir was captioned, "Yes, but can she type?"

I had taken business courses in high school along with the more academic ones, partly because of my "career goals" and partly because the tiny high school I attended didn't have a wide range of courses in any field. So I know a little about bookkeeping, and I learned to type.

Freshman year of college I took some of the usual required courses (chemistry, anyone?) and a typing class. Already I was in trouble, because business class professors insisted that we arrive dressed in skirts and nylons, and the class was across campus at 8 am. This plan lasted into the beginning of sophomore year, when two things happened. The university came to its senses and canceled the secretarial sciences major, although I would be able to finish two more years before having to transfer to one of the state colleges. Secondly, I was taking filing and shorthand, and I was really, really bad at both. I mean, we're talking alphabet here, and I was getting a C. I had one of those epiphanies the mystics talk about: I was paying for my education myself and could study whatever I wanted. In short order, I changed my major to German, my minor to speech and drama, and announced I was going to be a librarian. And the rest, as they say, is History (which I didn't study, either, much to my later regret.)

So, long story short, I ended up last weekend typing this legal separation agreement for a fellow I'd never met before. We didn't discuss upfront what this would cost him, so I poked around a little online and emailed all my friends asking what it was worth. Answers ranged from $8 per page plus $7 per hour (that would have been $250,  which seemed a little steep to me) to "$1 to $1.50 but that was a while ago." One professional typist quoted $3 to $4 per page. I decided to err on the side of my time being worth something and when I sent the document to him a couple of days later, I asked for $3 a page. The fellow balked at the $65 and offered $50 instead, so I caved and accepted that, which is at least a couple of tanks of gas. I figured I was doing better than a librarian colleague who reported that a kid had asked her to type his paper for 5 cents a page. (She declined.)

This has got me thinking. The same day this fellow was looking for help, another patron asked for software to learn to type. It occurred to me that people don't take typing anymore. I suppose it's called "keyboarding" and nobody hangs over the students making sure they are using the right fingers on the various keys. It's a new world out there.

What do I take away from this experience? Well, it's nice to know I was right--that as a secretary, I make a damn fine librarian.

Oh The People You'll Meet

Posted by Kate Flora

We've just come through graduation season, where thousands of young (and not so young--my own mother finished college when she was over fifty) people listen to the advice and exhortations of commencement speakers and then head out into the world, clutching mortar boards and copies of Dr. Seuss's book, Oh The Places You'll Go. Well, I have a little more advice for graduates, aspiring writers, and other citizens of the world: If you keep you eyes open and your ears attuned, you'll also meet a lot of fascinating people. And meeting these people, and hearing their stories, helps to connect us, and can make life grand.

For example, as a result of a casual discussion by some of my writing students several years ago, I learned about Craigslist. I was then trying to furnish a small Maine cottage on a shoestring, and it seemed like the perfect place to find those necessary bits of furniture. I'm still looking for bits--lamps, desks, small bedside tables, duvet covers and bookshelves. In the course of my driving around, I've met a lot of people and heard so many fascinating stories. I'm still wondering about the little girl in Belmont whose single mother was selling the furniture, loading their possessions into a Honda Pilot, and driving back to California so her family could help her sort out the child's mysterious illness. I got an Ektorp chair and a hassock, she got a fistfull of dollars and a book for her daughter. And after she dropped off the furniture and drove away, she left me admiring her courage and wondering if everything would be okay.

Among my favorite Craigslist encounters was the young doctor who had a whole shelf of thrillers in her living room (we writers love it when someone reads what we write!). I bought a lovely mirror from her. It was still on the wall, and she quickly whipped out a tool kit in a pink case, pulled out a battery-driven screwdriver and detached the mirror. Then she smiled at the pink case. "My father gave it to me," she said. Inspired by her, the following Christmas I bought each of my nieces their own tool kit instead of clothes or jewelry.

Last week, my search for the "right" chair for my son's room led me back to Craigslist, and to an ad for an antique Eastlake reclining chair. (Until recently, the room was maintained as a "shrine" to the lad, complete with Natural Born Killers and signed Marilyn Manson posters. I've finally given myself permission to redo it.) I answered the ad, and was directed to the nearby town of Winchester, Massachusetts. On a whim, since the poster of the chair had used the moniker, "The Painted Porch," I googled that name, and ended up on a facebook page that told me a great deal about the person I was going to meet. (Sometimes, I think we can all agree, the folks selling stuff can be a bit dubious.) Barbara Leslie, who loves to restore and paint old furniture to resell, turned out to be an absolutely delightful force of nature. At eleven in the morning, I got to meet her, her parents, and her house guest, all in their pyjamas. I immediately fell in love with the chair, and she scooped it up and popped it into the back of my car (it's almost as big as I am) like it was a feather. And it was then I learned that living with her husband, as well as shifting large pieces of furniture around, had made her strong.

Her husband, she said, was a professional wrestler. What name did he use, I asked. "Oh, Brutus The Barber Beefcake," she said. So I had to come home and google that. And what a delightful fellow he seems. Here's his photo...but don't go by this. Go yourself and look him up on line. Amazing story. Sadly, he wasn't home, so I didn't get to become the newest Beefcake fan.

But just to show how much value there is in occasionally leaving home and going out among other people, last week I also taught the first session of my six-week class for beginning writers, Six Easy Pieces, a series of lectures and exercises practicing some useful pieces of the writer's craft. And, as it turned out, one of my students runs a series of basketball camps for grown-ups, called Never Too Late Basketball. And here's the REAL inside scoop: S.J. Rozan takes his classes and has named a detective after him.(Who needs six degrees of separation. I've felt close to S.J. since our first books were reviewed together in the Washington Post. And I never wanted China Trade to end.)

So if your creative juices aren't flowing, or you need a new chair, or you just love the thrill of adventure and the inspiration that comes from hearing new stories, leave home, go in search of something--a plant, a chair, an obscure grocery item--and take the time to talk to people. See who you meet and what they tell you. And then, come back here and share it with me.

Hail to the storm

Posted by Lorraine (L.L.) Bartlett, otherwise known as Lorna Barrett

This must be garden week here at Writers Plot, but unlike Sheila’s happy tale, I have a different slant on gardening: the weather.

For the first time in a long time, I’ve planted a veggie garden. Like Sheila, I waited until after Memorial Day to plant -- just in case we had a late frost. (We didn’t.) The only exception: I started heirloom tomatoes from seeds that I’d saved from a tomato I bought at the farmer’s market. It was an ugly cuss--green and purple. It tasted okay, and I decided I’d save the seeds and give growing them a shot. Only I didn’t get started until about May 7th, so they’re really late.

Thursday, my husband Frank and I watched the Doppler. Thunderstorms, accompanied by hail, were expected. We took precautions, getting our seedlings out of danger, and keeping our fingers crossed. The storm moved south of us, so the garden got a good soaking. Yea! We lucked out. The forecast for Friday--sunny and nice.

So Friday morning when the sky was overcast, we didn’t pay much attention, and started packing for a weekend away. Just as we got our two sister kitties buckled into the car, it started to drizzle. I still had to get my purse, so I went back in the house. During those few seconds, all hell broke loose. The drizzle turned into a downpour and it started to hail. At first, the ice was just little pellets. It’ll stop soon, I told myself.

I was wrong.

I grabbed my purse and umbrella and found Frank standing in the garage. The little pellets of ice had changed to quarter-sized disks of ice--the thickness of about three quarters and were pelting the car, making one helluva racket. The rain came off the roof in sheets. The overwhelmed gutter couldn’t handle it all. And the ice kept slamming into the car--and we kept thinking--this has to be over in a minute. And it wasn’t. And it wasn’t. And it WASN’T. Finally, because I had the umbrella, I ran to the car--jumped in and of course the cats were terrified, but they seemed a bit calmer once they realized I was braving the storm with them. About a minute later, sans umbrella, Frank braved the ice and jumped in the driver’s side.

It’s got to end, it’s got to end -- we kept telling each other. And it didn’t! By now, the hail had been pelting the house and car for about ten minutes. I’d backed the car into the drive--but it has to go in the garage frontways, so we turned it around and drove it back into the garage. At last! Some peace! But the ice kept pelting. I was worried it might have broken our westward windows and went back into the house to have a look. That’s when I saw the garden--and was heartbroken. There was no sign of my container beans, which had already started to climb. The potatoes were flattened, and my tiny tomato plants were being drowned by the overflowing gutters. I tried to pull them to safety, but realized it was probably already far too late.

I was soaked through, so changed my clothes. And STILL the ice kept pounding the house. By this time, ten minutes or more had passed since we’d first buckled the cats into the car.

Finally, the ice stopped, but the rain kept up. Figuring there was nothing we could do, we drove through flooded streets and headed off for our “Fun” weekend. Only it wasn’t fun. All we could think about was the devastation in our once-beautiful vegetable garden.

When we got to our destination, I called home and asked my mother if she’d take a look when she went to feed the other cats on Saturday. She dutifully called back to tell me that things weren’t all that bad. The potatoes had sprung back, and the beans were doing pretty well. Whew! What a relief.

On Sunday afternoon, we returned to find the situation wasn’t quite so rosy. The broccoli and Brussels sprouts looked like they’d been shot. Big holes pocked the leaves. One plant lost most of its leaves and was a stalk. The big tomatoes lost side branches, but the flowers made it through. The little heirloom tomatoes didn’t fare as well. One of them was dead. three others were bent, but may still make it. The biggest one stood bravely with just a few branches gone. The beans in the ground fared the best, although they, too, looked like they’d dodged more than a few bullets.

It was the beans in the container pot that fared the worst. Friday morning, there were more than 30 robust plants. By Sunday, there were less than 15, and what was left had been broken. But, Mother Nature is determined. Already those 14 plants have sprouted new leaves. They’re looking to climb.

Overall, we were very lucky. To celebrate, we went to the garden store to buy a clamatis. We asked the guy how the nursery had made out during the storm. He told us they’d lost a LOT of plants. We picked out our clamatis and took it home. It was only then I got home I realized our little clamatis had also suffered storm damage. Most of the flowers only had two or three petals (only one of them had six). But we planted it and hope for the best.

We couldn’t possibly get another thunderstorm like the one we had on Friday, right? It was a fluke. It won’t happen again. But we have more than two months of summer storms to go through. I just hope the garden can survive them.

HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?

Posted by Sheila Connolly and Sarah Atwell, both of whom have dirt under their fingernails now.

I may have mentioned that I planted a vegetable garden this year.  Yeah, yeah, most people did that eons ago.  Heck, I did that eons ago, although the last serious effort was in student housing in California, where you could lay claim to a plot in the community garden.  I enjoyed that a lot–until the moles ate it.  They sneak up from below and eat the roots first, the furry little...creeps.

So there were a few moves, and a number of inhospitable yards (um, sun is required to grow things, right?), and then we ended up in Massachusetts and I found myself writing a mystery series about a woman struggling to transform herself from a municipal financial analyst into a small farmer overnight.  I don't pretend that it is easy.  In solidarity for my heroine Meg, I decided I should put my money where my mouth is and plant something (in addition to the two apple trees in my front yard).

My lot (all one-quarter acre of it, largely occupied by house, stable, driveway, sidewalks, etc.) gets little sun, thanks to some trees that are probably as old as the Victorian house (and are threatening to fall down, but try to find a tree company who wants to tackle giant dying maples, especially those where public utility wires are intertwined).  So I spent some time observing, and trying to find a spot that received at least a few hours of sun daily (that is, if the sun ever shines again in Massachusetts, which right now is debatable).  I located the optimal place.  I measured.  I came up with a plan.

Soil was the next problem.  We are not exactly on the beach, but the soil on the lot is mainly sand, in between a lot of smooth pebbles, with a few tree roots thrown in.  In other words, not much will grow in it, which means I had to add soil.  Which meant I had to build a raised bed to fill with soil.  At that point my husband conveniently left the country for three weeks.

But I am a determined Yankee (when I'm not an Irish dreamer), so I persevered.  I ordered lumber and had it delivered (I chose to go with a garden bed the same size as the lumber, so I wouldn't have to cut anything–I don't do power saws).  I cleared the space of what pathetic stringy grass there was.  Then I had to level it, because it sloped a bit (four inches over 16 feet, if you really want to know).  Then I built my box, level and square.  Go me!  And I set in it place and I anchored it with lengths of 2x4s hammered into the ground and screwed to the box.  That thing is not going anywhere.

Then dirt.  I ordered dirt:  four cubic yards of primo topsoil, already mixed with manure.  It was delivered–in a heap on my front walk.  Small problem:  no way a dump truck could get anywhere near the garden bed.  That meant I had to schlep the dirt, one wheelbarrow at a time, from the front of the property to the back of the property.  Great exercise, all that shoveling and shoving.  And I accomplished it (although there's still a lot of dirt sitting on the sidewalk, but I'm working on that).

Then, per the instructive class I took a while back from Frank the Organic Farmer, I carefully mounded my bed (for drainage and for access down the middle).  I was ready.

Like all good newbie gardeners, I ordered a whole bunch of catalogs and pored over them.  As a new convert to local and heirloom foods, I stuck to organic catalogs and those which preserve seeds at risk of disappearing forever.  I also discovered I wanted all the weird-looking plants, like conical cabbages and spiral cauliflower.  What I didn't want was food that I could buy at my supermarket, or even at the local farmers market or farm stand.

And I wanted to plant potatoes.  A decade ago, when I was visiting Ireland with my daughter, we stayed at a bed and breakfast in Leap, Co. Cork, the town nearest to the townland where my grandfather was born, population 250 on a good day.  The B&B had a wonderful view of Glandore Harbour (and it turned out that the owner's mother-in-law had known one of my great-uncles, who kept a horse in what is now the recording studio behind the pub Connolly's), and my daughter and I would usually take a walk along the harbor at the end of the day before dinner (we would feed the swans along the way).  Once, in living memory, there were twelve families in the cove where only two live now, and we would walk by what I first thought was an old shed–until I looked more closely at it and realized that it had been a tiny cottage, and there were potato hills outside the door, even 50 years after abandonment.

So the Irish side of me had to plant potatoes.  Now, I have never grown a potato in my life, and I had no idea what to expect.  I dutifully ordered some (yeah, I know, I could get the same bleeping things at the market, but that didn't seem right) and followed instructions and planted them.  And waited.  And while I was waiting, I looked at my compost pile (another earnest project conceived last fall, because we have no leaf pick-up around here, and no way to drag all the leaves those aforementioned giant maple trees produce each year to the town dump ten miles away), where last year's leaves are still sitting in wet clumps.  Of course I also deposit my organic garbage there, and lo and behold, a plant sprouted and grew–fast.  I looked upon it:  could that be a potato?  It could indeed.  I carefully transplanted it into the "real" garden.  It survived, and it thrived.  It was two feet tall when the "store-bought" potatoes finally made their appearance in the garden.

I'm happy to say the ones I planted have sort of caught up and appear to be doing well.  But...the chunks I discarded in the compost heap are doing a lot better.  Let me add that the compost heap GETS NO SUN AT ALL!  Apparently nobody told the potatoes, so I guess I have to go with the flow and encourage those, which are trying so hard to survive.

If you want a conclusion to all this, here's what I've got: (1) Be prepared for the unexpected; (2) you can't always get what you want; and (3) good things can come from unlikely places.

When Icons Die in Our Time

posted by Leann Sweeney

Two in one day.

First, Farrah Fawcett, known for her year on a campy TV show, for her hair, (how I wanted that hair), and then for an amazing performance in a movie called "The Burning Bed," which had me saying "Where did that come from?" Eventually she was nominated for three Emmys, so she'd been hiding her real acting ability behind that smile and the hair. Farrah Fawcett died very publicly, documenting her struggle with cancer. She left journals and videos that will long be remembered. We knew so much about her, about them.

Knew about Michael Jackson, a huge star and winner of thirteen Grammys. I am old enough to remember seeing him as a child on TV and thinking how amazing he was. He changed pop culture because of his talent, his originality, his Thriller career. Yes, that is iconic. But his off-stage life as an adult grew more bizarre the older he became, reminiscent of Howard Hughes. He retreated into mental and physical illness and became a ghost--pale, skeletal, perhaps skirting reality and observing what he was and what he could have been. Isn't that what ghosts do? Everyone knows his story, but if he was as painfully shy as I have heard over and over, I believe he would be happy at how he died--quickly, without time for paparazzi and fans to gather and make the job too difficult for those who tried to save him.

I remember taking a philosophy course and wish I could remember the brilliant writer who foresaw that American culture would become consumed with spending most of their time and money on leisure pursuits. As I watched CNN yesterday and then the network news coverage of these two deaths, I realized just how brilliant that philosopher was. Part of this pursuit of constant entertainment involves the kind of adulation heaped on celebrities and sports figures. Many ordinary folks no longer find pleasure or satisfaction in their work. They work only to get enough money to go to the mall, to go to the movies, to attend concerts and sporting events, to move to L.A. and live close to Michael Jackson's house. Yes, this is what CNN reported today. People do such things.

I do not believe, however, that my nameless philosopher would have ever anticipated how quickly word would spread about these deaths. Twitter, Facebook and TV leapt on these stories with unbelievable speed. With Farrah, the obituaries were already written and Jackson's obit appeared on NPR within an hour of his death--probably ready and waiting, too. What amazed me most was the Jackson coverage. CNN must have had twenty people reporting  the story from the minute the 911 call was made. Within half an hour, one of them had even interviewed a tour bus driver who had seen an ambulance in the vicinity of his house. That's all she knew. Newsworthy? Really? It was his rented house, by the way. The commentator had to throw in that he had a money problems, of course. How many obituaries or eulogies have you read or heard about of everyday people that included the words "And of course he had money problems."

Icons used to be presidents, authors, martyrs, future saints, doctors, nurses, inventors, scientists. The arts have had their share, but only more recently have we worshiped actors and pop stars with such compulsive enthusiasm. The headline grabbing news of these deaths tell us much about our world. One newscaster even called Jackson "the most recognizable person in the world."  And as I considered this, I concluded this was indeed true. 

I haven't had much time to ponder these dual tragedies, but I certainly am sad--and for more than one reason. What keeps popping into my head? That I admired their talent, I enjoyed their work, but gosh, I wish I didn't know so much about their private lives. But that is the path humanity has chosen to walk down. The stories people seem to want to hear most are no longer in books. They come to us via TV and the Internet, with unflattering pictures and videos included--tales laced with more tradegy than the Greeks could have imagined. And I am most sad because I don't believe there is any turning back.

More notes from the backseat....er, road

posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

I live about 13 miles from my job, which I describe as a short but slow commute. I just mention Route 2 and everyone groans. Wall to wall traffic, bumper to bumper traffic, back to back and belly to belly traffic. And that's on a good day, with sunshine but not at an angle to blind drivers. A few drops of rain screw up the process, and God forbid a flake of snow should fall. Chaos.

Most mornings (and I say this with trepidation, in fear of incurring the wrath of the Traffic Gods) I have a fairly smooth ride to work.
It's a good thing, too, because morning is not my finest hour. Even showered, clothed and somewhat caffeinated, I can be a leeeetle touchy. Most mornings, too, I carpool with my older daughter, which can lead to deep sighs on her part at whatever audiobook I am "reading" at the time. So she (after grabbing a smoke--when did I start allowing her to smoke in the car?) tunes up her MP3 player and I, if not distracted by a particularly good narrator or tale, am reduced to talking to the other drivers.

Sad to say, my "backseat driving" doesn't end at my bumpers or fenders. I have enough good advice to spread around, and I do so liberally. In case you are sharing the road with me and haven't picked up on my helpful hints, here is a sample:

"Hey, you! The guy driving the car behind me! I can see you just fine. I can almost read your watch. Did you have a question? If not, BACK OFF!"

 "See that sign up there? The one that says "25"? In case you're as clueless as you seem, that's not your age, your golf handicap or, (and I'm stretching it here) your IQ. It is a "speed limit" and it's not a vague suggestion. I may be only driving 5-10 miles an hour over the speed limit, but that's the level at which I feel comfortable, given the hoards of not-very-good drivers sharing the road this morning. I would feel even more comfortable if you would BACK OFF!"

"You and I both know that you are going to pass me without regard to solid yellow lines,  hills, curves, or potential oncoming traffic. And I will be praying that there is an officer hiding around that corner, but you'll probably be very lucky in that regard and get away with nearly killing both of us. However, when I, following at my sedate, nearly-legal pace, catch up with you at the next traffic light, I'll wave and blow you a kiss, because I'm in the right lane, you're in the left lane, and in a minute I'll be ahead of you again. HAH!"

"Yeah, I know we're approaching the infamous Reformatory Rotary by the medium-security prison. Do I have to explain again how this works? MassHighway officials, in their infinite wisdom and probably tired of clearing accidents at the "roundabout", have posted the law: Entering Traffic Yields to Traffic in the Rotary, or similar wording. It's right up there with the triangular YIELD sign, with also is not a suggestion. We have three drivers in our family at the moment; two of us have had not-our-fault accidents at the rotary. That's 66 2/3%, which I suspect is pretty close to the fenderbender ratio among all commuters who have to navigate Reformatory Circle on a regular basis.

"So you'll still pull up beside me at the rotary, in the non-existent "left" lane, blocking my view of oncoming traffic, you and your huge SUV with freakin' black windows, which should be outlawed for safety reasons.

"If you had clear glass windows, are you afraid someone will see you picking your nose? Well, get over it. Or don't pick your nose. Makes me no nevermind."

And while I'm at it,"HANG UP THE DAMNED PHONE!" ( Last week I saw a huge tour bus negotiating a tight turn, the operator with one hand on the wheel and the other clutching a cell phone firmly to his ear. I wondered what his passengers thought of that maneuver. Maybe they were all asleep, or at least had closed their eyes in terror?) 

By then I'm approaching my turnoff to skirt Walden Pond and spend the last couple of miles on a scenic backroad between newly planted fields of cabbage, pumpkins, and sweet corn. Of course, I have to share that narrow road with joggers and cyclists on good days and especially on weekend mornings.

But that's another rant for another day.

You stay safe out there on the highways, you hear?

And if you're behind me, BACK OFF!

Thank you very much.

Sheets Like Old Friends

Posted by Kate Flora

 It has been raining here for so long I'm beginning to wonder if I should build an ark. Get a little wood from the back of the garage, dig out the hammer that I carry in the car in case I need to break a window in an emergency, and just start pounding away. (Do other women carry hammers in their cars, I wonder? I also have a paring knife and sometimes think: If the cops ever searched my car, would they know I just absent-mindedly carried it home from my mother's one day and it somehow felt right and became a fixture?) Cold gray wet day follows gray wet day. Exploring a second-hand store recently, I found I wasn't looking at tee-shirts or shorts or even soft summery blouses or sturdy denim capris. I was checking out the rows of sweaters. What I came home with was a wonderfully soft brown turtleneck cashmere sweater. I've been wearing it ever since.

My gorgeous blue delphinium--my favorite flower--is so heavily decorated with slugs it's like some peculiar kind of Christmas tree. I've plucked them off until my fingers are too slimy to open the front door, slimed right through my gloves. I long for scientists to find some important new use for slug slime, so there might be some redeeming value in these creatures. For now, they swim lazily in the pans of watery beer, languid and hideous, enjoying their summer even as mine, and that of other avid gardeners, is wrecked. Many of our plants are in gummy tatters, rain-blown flowers fallen from their stems like torn party dresses. Plants assigned the task of illuminating the dusty heat of August grown leggy and feeble from all the wet, tottering and falling on their neighbors like unsteady geriatrics.

The peonies whose return we've awaited for a whole year are gone in an instant. Even rescued from the garden, where their heavy, waterlogged heads are dragged to the ground as soon as they open, and brought inside to add some color on yet another unremittingly wet day, they drop their petals onto the blueberry print tablecloth in less than a day, a gorgeous, careless scattering of petals, as if a ballerina has changed in a hurry and rushed off to more promising climes, leaving her dress in a heap behind her.

It is good writing weather, though. Normally, at this season, the gardens are a big distraction. It's too easy, on a bright sunny morning, to drift out of the chair, out the front door, grabbing a pair of garden gloves from the front porch, and heading out to one of the perennial beds where something always needs weeding, or pruning or staking. Where the plant that was a perfect if last year is now too big for its neighbors, or where there's a hole because over the winter some creature has eaten the roots of a plant, leaving nothing but a spindly little remnant struggling gallantly to survive.

I'm the queen of invasives. They're about the only thing that I can't kill. Luckily, invasives   can be charming. Right now, the yellow corydalis has taken root in the stonewall, and filled every crevice going up the stone steps to the upper lawn, creating a stunning pathway of bright green and sunny yellow that I could never have planned and created. In the spirit of live and let live, I have wild geranium among the anemones, skunk cabbage and jack-in-the-pulpit among the hosta. I love being surprised about where plants decide to put themselves, even as they throw back in my face the irony of my efforts to grow them where I think they're supposed to be. Why is it, for example, that I struggle to get a few foxgloves to grow in the "cottage garden," yet they will seed themselves between the stones of the patio? That two years after I tried to grow a few feeble portulaca in my planter, bold little sprouts of the plant are coming up between the stones? Perhaps it is only nature reminding me that I'm not in control. Perhaps, looking at it more positively, it is that these plants have such a powerful instinct to live?

If you've gotten this far, you're no doubt wondering what all this has to do with sheets? Well, I'll tell you. When the summer is so miserable that everyone is growing green with mold and seriously grouchy from a lack of sun and continually wet feet, it is tempting to linger in bed in the morning instead of jumping up to face another gloomy day. That's what I was doing on Sunday morning. The sea was seething around the rocks. Rain was rattling on the roof and bursts of wind were slamming it like handfuls of flung gravel against the windows. I was huddling in bed, under far too many blankets for the middle of June. Despite the bad weather, I realized that I had my favorite sheets on the bed, a lovely pair of old blue and white striped ones that are always perfectly comfortable. The sheets are getting old. Probably they're not long for this world, and I was thinking about how often things are best--most perfect--just before they give up the ghost entirely. Haircuts are like this. Hair always looks best just before it decides to no longer hold a shape and flop in our eyes. Flannel nightgowns are like this. They are at their most comfortable and soothing just before some poor worn patch shreds and splits, and we go on wearing them, in a state of utter disgrace, because we can't bear to consign them to the rag bag.

Right now, my garden is also like this. There are places that are momentarily perfect, just right. Next week, they will be past it, or will have flopped, or the avid slugs will have finished the job and reduced the brave plants to rags. But if there is a pause in the rain, I can go out with my trusty mother's day camera, and capture some moments of perfection. Plants like old friends, merging together in random, delightful displays. Small moments, small things that can still give pleasure, if only I can slow down, look around, and NOTICE. And I will carry this magic back inside, push the gloom of another gray day away, and settled back into my writing, letting my imagination paint a world over which I have control, and where I can hang the sun whenever I wish.

Strawberry Festival!

Posted by Lorraine (L.L.) Bartlett, also known as Lorna Barrett

For the past month, we’ve been looking forward to attending the Wolcott Strawberry Festival.  Mind you, it’s not star-studded extravaganza.  Some ladies organization sells baked goods and plants.  The high school band does a set.  Kids kick and shout showing off their karate moves.  “Crafters” come to sell resin figurines and other goods made in China.  One of the local churches sells fried dough.  (My favorite.)  And some fraternal organization sells hotdogs, hamburgers, sausages and salt potatoes.  And, of course, there’s the strawberry shortcake booth.

The day dawned overcast.  Okay.  We’ve attended the festival in the rain, and while it wasn’t as much fun—it was still good to dive into a bowl of steaming salt potatoes before that big bowl of strawberry shortcake.  But when we drove into town, we found the big sign in the park had had an addition plastered across it:  POSTPONED DUE TO BAD WEATHER.

And then it started to rain.  Not gentle droplets.  Big, Heavy, HUGE, drops of rain.  And it poured.  It drizzled.  It spit.  It misted.  It rained cats and dogs.  And it did it ALL DAY LONG.

Mind you, the town fathers had made the decision to postpone the festival on a bright sunny day, listening to the weather prediction—which, for some reason, was actually correct.

So we moseyed on down the road to the local farm market, bought a few more flowers to fill out the garden, and a quart of strawberries, and headed for home.  Oh well, we figured, we were having guests for Father’s Day, and decided some homemade strawberry shortcake would top off the day.  (Note my strawberry tea towel, which I just happened to have used to dry the dishes just before we left the house.)

So out came the paring knife and the little strawberry huller.  I soon found the huller was not worth the metal it was made of, leaving a tiny bit of stem, so abandoned it for the knife and cut up all but the cutest strawberries, figuring they’d be the garnish.  And for the first time, I decided I should make my own shortcake.  (Writing about Angelica Miles’s cooking and baking successes seems to have rubbed off, and I’ve been doing more of it of late—with some pretty good results.)

A few of the strawberries looked like mutants from another world.  The big boy seemed like some kind of conjoined triplet strawberry.  Another was in the shape of a tripod.  Chop, chop, chop—into the mix they went, were sprinkled with sugar, and put in the fridge to sweeten.

And voila!  Here’s what the finished product looked like. 

We didn’t get to attend the Strawberry Festival on Saturday, and we’re hoping that it’ll come off on its rescheduled date.  But even if it doesn’t, we had homemade strawberry shortcake. 

Yum!

HEARING VOICES

Posted by Sheila Connolly (Sarah Atwell has no Irish in her, more's the pity)

Recently I had the opportunity to hear Patrick Tracey speak about his book, Stalking Irish Madness, at a local bookstore.  I read a review of it a few months ago and made a mental bookmark:  this was something I wanted to read.  I also knew the bookstore where he would be speaking (Front Street Bookshop in Scituate Harbor) and I knew it would be an intimate setting with a chance of some real interaction with the author, so I made sure I was there.

Tracey's family has a long and difficult history with schizophrenia:  his great-great-grandmother had it, his grandmother had it, and two of his sisters have it.  As you might guess, he is interested in any possible genetic link or predisposition to this devastating disease, which strikes in adulthood and which at best is manageable, but is not curable.  But there's another level of complexity:  the Irish seem to have a long history of the disease, and one has to wonder, is it biological?  Cultural?  Since my father's family was Irish, it is interesting to me.

I won't go into a lot of detail, but it's possible that the Irish concentration is based on several factors that came together in an unfortunate way.  One is maternal malnutrition, and Ireland has suffered a long series of famines (not just the Great Famine, although that was perhaps the greatest catalyst for Irish emigration).  Another is the advanced age of a lot of Irish fathers.  You see, under the past few centuries of landholding (I can't even say ownership, because for a long time that wasn't permitted to the Irish), it was important to keep the small plots intact, and generally they were passed on to the eldest son–after the father died.  You can imagine there were some long waits.  Now, a middle-aged Irish bachelor with a farm could have his pick of young women in the neighborhood, but his genetic materials may already have suffered.  A third factor is substance abuse.  I won't buy into the offensive stereotype that the Irish are heavy drinkers; I have a theory that Irish pubs evolved so men would have someplace to escape from the two-room smoke-filled cottage with six squalling children.  But it may be the combination of these factors, and probably others not yet determined, that gave the Irish a statistically higher chance of displaying the signs of schizophrenia.

The primary symptom is hearing voices.  And of course, as a writer I have to consider that, because isn't that what writers do?  The problem for a schizophrenic arises when the voices (usually plural) start telling him or her what to do–and it's evil.  One of the more interesting recent developments in therapeutic treatment has been to try to teach schizophrenics to listen to their voices–in effect, giving them permission to acknowledge them.  For far too long, well-meaning parents and therapists have tried to downplay the voices, telling the sufferers to ignore them or pretend they're not there.  Funny thing:  recent medical scanning techniques have shown that when a schizophrenic is "hearing voices", the same area of his or her brain lights up as when he or she is listening to "real" voices.  Yes, these voices are very real to the person on the receiving end.

So telling the patients to ignore them puts them in a terrible position.  They are forced to believe that they are defective.  They have been told that it's a form of moral weakness–in effect, to "just get over it."  They learn strategies to hide what they hear, and they struggle not to respond out loud so they won't be labeled as crazy.  And it doesn't work.  In fact, preliminary studies have shown that if a schizophrenic can actually enter into a dialogue with the voices, acknowledge their reality, they do a much better job of managing and controlling them.  Interesting, isn't it?

The Irish have a long history of writers.  Even when it wasn't possible to publish in Irish, there was a tradition of the traveling seanchaí–the itinerant story-teller who would go from place to place and repeat the old stories which might otherwise have been lost, in exchange for a meal and a place to sleep.  So the spoken word, and the written word, have long been treasured in Ireland.  And how much of that is related to hearing those voices?  Is it really binary–you've either got it or you don't–or is there some grey (or more colorful) middle ground where you hear whispers and can harness that and weave something from it?

Tracey doesn't have all the answers.  He's not a scientist or a doctor, and this is his first book.  But the story is one he felt compelled to write, to explain what happened to his bright and talented older sisters that scrambled their minds.  He's old enough that he figures he's safe from the disease itself, but both he and his "normal" siblings have struggled with substance abuse issues.  Which makes the book all the more compelling.  It's not a dry analysis of a modern medical problem; it's one man's effort to understand this difficult thread that has run through his life, and through the lives of many people before him, most notably the Irish.

I can't point to any madness in my Irish family.  There were a few drinking problems, including one great-uncle who loved to sing, and who late in life married his cousin from next door–who was deaf.  I was told about this by one of his former neighbors in Ireland, who fifty years after Great-Uncle Patrick's death still remembered him fondly.  And I think that's one more piece of the puzzle–the Irish looked after their own, and they were forgiving of the foibles of their relatives and friends, the ones who were off "talking to the fairies"–or just listening to the voices in their heads.

When is a Flat Tire REALLY a Flat Tire?

posted by Leann Sweeney

If you are in a relationship of any kind you might relate to this post--or not. I've only been married once and for a long time so this may not be universal behavior. What I am about to write out is a recurring theme in my life and any and all insights, suggestions or creative curse words are appreciated.

About three weeks ago, I came out of the Walmart superstore not far from my home and saw that one rear tire seemed very deflated. Not totally flat, but almost there. Since Walmart has a gas station, I felt safe driving a short distance to add air and hopefully make it home. If the tire leaked out all the air, then fine. I would call someone. I'm not in the greatest shape of late to be changing tires in ninety degree heat. The tire inflated and all was well on the way home. For the purposes of this blog, the husband will be referred to as S.O. -- significant other. It's easier, and I promise to not add any additional adjectives before the S.O. I mentioned this tire problem to S.O. and told him I put air the tire. I believe the response was something like, "Good."

A week later, you guessed it, same thing. I was returning from an errand, again not far from home, and stopped at the same Walmart. That evening I mentioned this problem to the S.O. This time I think I got a grunt as a response. When I received no feedback about the offending tire after several days and the weekend came, I politely asked S.O. to look at the tire. He did. He pulled out the gauge I cannot seem to use properly which showed the tire was horribly, yes horribly over-inflated. For this transgression I received a lecture from S.O. on what my fate might be if that tire exploded. He proceeded to remove air from the tire--something that left me with a very bad feeling.

I do the indoor things that I can do (I have been kind of sick for the last five years, so yes, my production is down) and S.O. takes care of things like cars. Remember, I can't even make the tire gauge work--and God knows I've tried. S.O. pretends to comply with this arrangement. But since S.O. never saw the tire nearly flat, apparently that means I was having hallucinations or paranoia or some other serious psychiatric reaction to my tires. Yup, those tires can be evil.

Today, I drove more than twenty miles to an appointment and when I pulled into the parking lot, I knew I was in trouble again. I felt the drag, I heard the sound. The removal of air this weekend--perpetrated by the S.O.--apparently made the OBVIOUS slow leak accelerate the release of what little air was left in the tire. I went in for the appointment and when I came out it seemed even flatter. Fortunately several gas stations were nearby, and I drove with hazard lights flashing to again re-inflate the evil tire I have been hallucinating about for weeks. This place had a handy gauge on the air injector thingee (note my knowledgeable terminology) and there was less than 10 pounds of air in the tire. I was actually able to re-inflate to the right amount--30 pounds.  Seems not all air injector thingees are alike. Who would have thought there are easy ones to read?

So now I once again have a fully inflated tire, a bad attitude and a bone to pick. But I think I have answered the question posed by the title of this post. When is flat tire really a flat tire?

When you take a picture of it with your cell phone--which I did.

Come Fly With Me....or not

posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

Vacation time approaches. Time to get out the guidebooks, check the wish lists, consult the bank balance, log onto travel sites, and plan for summer fun. I have always loved the planning part of travel--no bags to pack, no whining children (except my own), no crammed airline seats, no missed flights, no sitting on the runway while the storm passes...just lots of pretty pictures and enthusiastic descriptions of exciting places. 

I used to spend hours planning cross-country road trips, figuring the distance between two cities by highway, scoping out the sights along the way, dreaming of carefree days building memories for my family.

Of course, reality was a little different. We rarely had a very big car, and we rarely had a particularly new car, so we also got to know garage mechanics from Missouri to upstate New York, from New Jersey to Virginia. My kids remember our vacations, all right--but they insist the dreams were more like nightmares.

Now we mostly fly and leave the kids home. I thought it was bad having to ride for a thousand miles unable to move my feet due to all the stuff we were transporting in our subcompact car, but I have learned that being unable to move my entire body while traversing "The Pond" on the way to Europe is actually worse, and seems to take about as long. And that's once we're on the plane.

The lead-up to departure is not "half the fun." That woman in the ad who goes through security naked because she has nothing to wear to Europe has the right idea. Doesn't take long for her to clear the dreaded metal detectors, does it? Right on, sister!

My worst dreams are the "naked in public" ones, so there's no way I'm going to strip down for travel. So security is sometimes a challenge. I study up the latest TSA regs and pack accordingly, but that doesn't guarantee a free ride from check-in to gate. My husband wears suspenders and has in the past been patted down from coast to coast because he refused to remove them--claiming (imagine this) they were holding up his pants! Last year I bought him a couple of pairs of suspenders with plastic clips and figured we were home free for our Hawaii trip.

Uh huh. First, we were flying with good friends, named the Smiths. There are thousands of guys in the US named Bob Smith, and apparently one of them is on the no-fly list, which triggers extra security measures. Our Bob Smith and his wife are inevitably pulled aside and subjected to various wands and similar intrusions. They aren't particularly shifty looking, being a retired pharmacist and a retired schoolteacher, but the fact that they travel laden with a boogie board, beach chairs, snorkel equipment, and a suitcase full of condiments and spices apparently makes them somewhat suspicious. Also, they invariably fly on one-way tickets obtained by their airline pilot son, which is another red flag.

They are pretty good-natured about it, which is more than I can say for my husband when he is challenged by one of the security dudes. Well before 9/11, we were stopped because we were traveling with a picnic basket, which had a barbecue fork in it. We actually got past with that one, but since then my spouse has contributed several pairs of little scissors to the cause--including one pair after the regs changed to allow them but before said regs went into effect.

On the Hawaii trip we did okay with sharp objects at security, but we ran into trouble with food. The security guards confiscated our unopened jar of peanut butter, which is not a liquid in my book, but I didn't argue. My husband started to mumble about providing jelly, too, so they could have lunch, but I glared him to silence before the agents heard him. Otherwise we'd probably still be sitting in a cell somewhere. On the next flight of the multi-island trip, we stuck an unopened can of vegetable soup in the carry-on. That, too, is liquid. Ray was going to give them the crackers, too, but I stopped him before he could get us into trouble.

Our companions the Smiths, meanwhile, were standing aside with arms out while agents searched their carry-on luggage for nefarious goods. Aha! they found contraband--the dreaded avocado! Probably thought it was a grenade in disguise.

A Brown Thumb Stuck With Thorns

Posted by Kate Flora

The expectations that our parents leave us with are often not the ones they communicated directly. My parents directly told me that they expected me to do well in school and go on to college, live my life as an honorable person, fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship both by voting and by giving back to my community through public service, and to work hard because work was its own reward. They expected me to show good manners, especially around older people and my relatives. They expected me to be patient with children and the elderly. They expected me to use my education to make the world a better place.

What they didn't talk about was gardens, yet gardens were a major part of our lives. My father had a degree in horticulture from the University of Massachusetts, as well as a business degree, and he was one of those people who could hold his hand out over a patch of ground and the plants would almost jump up like puppies to be petted. His flower gardens were spectacular; we lived on the vegetables he grew. Summer nights during my childhood nearly always involved food. We would spend the day picking baskets of produce, and when the sun finally set over Appleton Ridge, we would give up swinging in the old apple tree and sit in the half-lit kitchen, shelling peas or snapping beans or blanching spinach or pitting cherries, getting food canned and frozen for what was always called "the long, cold winter."

For years, my mother played acolyte, processing the food that my father grew. The pressure cooker would hulk there on the stove, potentially explosive, as batch after batch of pickles, apple sauce, spaghetti sauce, spiced pears, dill beans, or jam were processed, labeled and carried down to the dirt-floored cellar, where they would be lined up on the shelves. Almost every morning when school was out, we'd get typed chore lists which told us what had to be accomplished before we could put on our bathing suits, race down the hill, and jump into Sennebec Pond.

But growing and preserving food was only part of the gardening process. My father also had spectacular flower gardens, gardens so lovely that people driving past would brake and drive into the yard to admire them. (That was the country way. People were curious; people were friendly.) 

One day, my mother, who longed to garden herself but didn't want to poach on my father's area of expertise, asked for a small garden patch for herself for a little kitchen garden. Always deeply curious and a scholar, she not only planted flowers and vegetables, she read up on the history of the plants, how they'd first come to America, and then to Maine. What kinds of soil and weather conditions they liked. Long before organic gardening was popular, she was using flowers among the vegetables, and plant combinations, to deter pests without using masses of pesticides. She planted in raised beds and lined the paths among the beds with old newspapers and magazines discarded by the local drug store, topped with sawdust from the local sawmill.

(One early memory I have is of standing in the rhubarb bed, ostensibly mulching with discarded magazines, but secretly reading those lurid crime and detective magazines. They were denuded of their covers showing scantily-clad, bound women, but the stories were racy and forbidden.)

So, I grew up on a farm with gardening parents who eventually had dueling garden plots. I spent my formative years immersed in the production of food and the admiration of flowers. I can still sigh over the blue of delphinium or the smell of heirloom roses. And I can't help myself. Even though I have a brown thumb, I am completely addicted to gardening. Right now, for example, I am very excited by the fact that I am finally going to have a lupine bloom in my garden. What's the big deal, someone might ask? You just go to the nursery and buy one, you dig a hole, and you put it in the ground, right?

Wrong. This is lupine season in Maine. Along the highways, vast swaths of lupines, mostly blues, a few purple blues, and the occasional pink or white, are blooming with utter exuberance. We had a field of those lupines across the road from our house. I've dug them and brought them home. They died. I've carefully collected seeds and scattered them in my garden. Nothing happened. So my lupine's bloom is a special, and  long anticipated occasion.

For better or for worse, I am my parents' daughter. At this time of year, I am torn daily between the work that keeps me at my keyboard, and the gardens that call me to come outside and give them some attention. Unlike my brother John and my sister Sara, I am not really much of a gardener. I am not entirely joking when I explain that really do have a brown thumb, and most of my success in the garden is the result of my ability to use a credit card. But even when, as this rainy week, the slugs are eating much of what the deer have left standing, I still find joy as I stroll past those small pieces of the landscape that are working this week. My wonderful tumble of cranesbill geraniums. The blue and yellow flowers that are emerging around the Japanese maple. The incredible intricacy of foxglove. Next week it will be something different, some new pairing or medley that surprises me.

Brown thumb. Stuck with thorns from digging up a rose. A smear of dirt on my nose and a dozen mosquito bites. Fingers slimy from picking slugs off the delphinium. And, like my parents before me, a happy smile as I prune and stake and pinch back and divide and mulch.

A Walk Down The Road

Posted by Lorraine (L.L.) Bartlett, also known as Lorna Barrett

My husband has a bad knee. But he also has a new knee.  And he likes to test them both out every so often.  Sunday, he decided he wanted to talk a walk down the road to see the state of things.  Or rather, the state of the neighbor's gardens and the state of his knees.

Our neighbor Eddie--who has been an acquaintance of mine since I was an infant--has the most magnificent garden (and, darnit, why didn't I take more pictures of it?).  It's a treat to walk by his yard ever so often just to see what's blooming.  (And, BTW, his mother made the best peanut butter cookies in the universe--God rest her soul.)   This week, Eddie's garden featured some kind of daisy I'd never seen before--and I'm not sure this picture really does them justice.  The color was just mind-blowing.  He also had a huge cactus, and some gigantic garlic that was taller than me.  (And I'm 5' 7".)  My attempts at gardening seem like a joke compared to what Eddie does.

Home renovation continues on several properties.  This year, the big thing seems to be sidewalks made of pavers.  Although one of our neighbors had a huge pile of mulch delivered and was relandscaping her yard herself.  Whoa--big job, and did I think it take a picture?  Nooooooo!

But I did take a picture of the woods.  I seem to take a lot of pictures of these woods and they always come out looking overexposed, which has been either terrific or a big disappointment.  Now, through the beauty of Photoshop, I can play with the pictures until it looks like what I saw.  And this is it.  (Although it looks a lot darker on this computer screen than on my iMac.)  Why do I take so many pictures of this spot in the road?  Because in the spring the woods are so green and look so inviting.  There are ferns and a little creek, and I'll bet a whole lot of mosquitoes.  But it looks pretty, and I think I'm going to actually print this one out so that in the dead of winter I can look of it and think about a hot day and the cool woods.

At the end of the road is a big sign telling you it's a snowplow turnaround--so DON'T YOU DARE THINK ABOUT PARKING HERE.  And as it was hot and sunny, and everything was in bloom, it's hard to put your brain back into snow mood.

We walked back to the house, and I asked my husband if he wanted to walk up the other end of the road, but his knees had had enough (why didn't I think of going up there myself?  Could be because I hadn't made my word count for the day, and the computer was calling me back. . .)  So we walked up to the house and looked at the hanging baskets we'd bought the day before.  Time to hang them for the season. 

It was a pleasant walk on a lovely day.  We didn't smell any roses, but afterwards, we felt like we had.

WHAT'S TALENT GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Posted by Sheila Connolly (and the ever-present Sarah Atwell)

I'm a big American Idol fan.  I've been watching since the beginning (although I haven't actually voted, unlike tens of millions of other viewers).  The whole phenomenon is interesting because viewers are asked to decide, week to week, who is "best" among the singers. 

What the heck is "best"?  The judges try to steer us in various directions–one participant is "pitchy," another is "karaoke," yet another is "safe."  All the judges have opinions–and they don't always match up.  Nor does the voting public necessarily agree with the judges.

Which leaves me wondering, just what is talent?  In theory none of the finalists advance to the competition round unless they have some talent (we can ignore a few of the comic-relief candidates, who usually can at least carry a tune).  After all, we watched the judges screen tens of thousands of wannabes crammed in stadiums and auditoriums for the privilege of making fools of themselves on national television (and that's the lucky ones–the rest we never see).  It never ceases to amaze me how many people think they can sing when they're flat-out lousy.  Okay, their mother and their boy/girlfriends love them and encourage them, but can't they hear themselves?  In this age of easy recording (even on your cell phone, for heaven's sake!), did it never occur to them to record themselves and listen?  There's an infinite capacity for self-delusion operating out there, and even after eight seasons of AI, the clueless are still coming out of the woodwork.

This year's finale was particularly interesting.  I'll confess I was a big Adam Lambert fan, ambiguous sexuality, eyeliner and all.  Damn, the kid can sing!  And isn't that what matters?  I don't care what he does off-screen, as long as he continues to be amazing on-screen.  In the end he was paired with What's-His-Name.  Oh, right, Kris Allen–the nice young person who looks like the boy who cuts your lawn or bags your groceries.  Pleasant and ultimately forgettable.  Except that he won–much to his surprise.  Apparently the viewing public (or at least the voting public) prefers safe to edgy.  They're more comfortable with the boy next door.

Hang in there–I'm getting to how all this relates to writing, really I am.  I am sure that the AI finalists have worked hard at their craft (or at least most of them–there always seem to be a few who decided to try out on a whim and surprise themselves and everyone else by advancing).  They have taken years of music lessons.  They have participated in their high school musicals or open mike nights.  Some have even had a few professional gigs or have a garage band.  They care passionately about singing, and about reaching more than a dozen people (and probably about making a lot of money and about being recognized on the street and about hosting the Grammy Awards in a couple of years).  In short, they are doing all the right things.  But that doesn't guarantee anything–just look at those other thousands of competitors who never made it past the door.

And that's a lot like trying to become a writer.  We all write for many of the same reasons:  we love writing, we want to reach people, we want fame and recognition and maybe a few bucks.  We do whatever we can to hone our craft–classes, both live and on-line; entering contests; "auditioning" for agents and editors whenever we can.  And practicing endlessly, all while trying to keep that flicker of hope alive–"I do have talent, I can make it."

And some do.  But a lot don't.  So where does talent fit in there?  In a singer, it should be obvious (to anyone other than the singer him- or herself) that he or she has a voice.  It may be raw, it may need training, but it's there.  If it isn't there, you can't be a singer, at least for the public.  With writers it's less clear.  Most writers do have a "voice," but that voice may appeal to only some people, some of the time.  If it appeals to enough people, you get an agent and a contract and a book and sales.  If it doesn't, you get a pat on the head and you're told, nice but not for me.  And if you're lacking your own true voice, all the training and studying and practicing you want are not going to get you where you want to go.

So are we deluded too?  We want to write, and we want to believe in ourselves.  We keep trying, over and over, in the face of criticism and rejection.  We break our own hearts trying.  But only a few make it into print, out of the many who try.

Okay, so it's not all or nothing.  There are different levels to aspire to.  There are the superstars, the multi-million sellers, the ones who get the five-figure contracts up front.  And then there are the midlist writers, the ones who turn out a book or two a year and have a small but faithful following.  If they're lucky, their publisher will let them keep doing that.  Unfortunately, in these difficult economic times, publishers are looking for better return on their dollar, so those midlist contracts are harder and harder to come by (at least for now).  If the superstars are the ones who fill concert halls, the midlist crowd are the ones who staff traveling roadshows of Broadway revivals.

And every now and then there are the ones who don't make it to the top, but who go on to surprise everybody.  Maybe winning isn't all it's cracked up to be; maybe slow and steady can pay off too.

Talent:  what is it, and do you know it if you see it?  And, oh, isn't it glorious when you do?

Queen For A Day

posted by Leann Sweeney

I've decided my love of reality television goes back to my childhood since the original reality show was one I watched on a black and white set back in the fifties. Yup, Queen For A Day. (I have now dated myself without regret.) A recent event has me conjuring memories of that show. Yesterday I learned my new book is a bestseller--number one on the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association's May list. I was excited and thrilled and shocked. Didn't quite believe it, to be honest. Today, when I began to process what this meant to me on a personal level--forget that it made my editor ecstatic--I thought of Queen For A Day.

Why would I pull an old show like that from the depths of my memory at a time like this? A program that made me both happy and sad? I loved watching the four chosen women-- those ladies down on their luck, plain or overweight, way too skinny or just sad--being given the royal treatment. Susan Boyle-ish ladies. Their prize was a night out with their husband and they got to wear a crown and a velvet robe. What exactly was the appeal?, I was a kid, for crying out loud. But it didn't take much thought for me to figure out what that show had offered me back then.

My mother was already a dedicated alcoholic by the time I was ten. She and my father fought constantly, their language was abusive, and their bitterness filled our home to overflowing. And like most children of alcoholics, I wanted a happy family. I wanted them to love each other, treat each other with kindness and concern. And maybe then that kindness and concern would spill over on to us--on to me, my brother and my sister. This is not a unique story. This is a story that repeats itself all over the world even to this day, despite awareness of addiction problems and how they harm children. That awareness was missing in the fifties, however. But I, a little kid, looked for answers to our family problems every day when I turned on the TV.

I recall wondering how I could get my mom on that show. Because despite how much I hated her at times, she was still my mother and I wanted her to be happy. If something, anything, nice could happen to her, maybe then she'd feel lucky and appreciated. Maybe if she felt special even for one day, she'd quit drinking and we'd all live happily ever after. And my dad, oh yes, he would see her once again as the smart, pretty eighteen-year-old he'd married. Everything would be fixed if she could be queen, yes, even for one day.

Today, as I thought about all this, I was so grateful I'd landed at number one on that bestseller list. I'd just become a sort of "queen for a day" and this has helped me realize that before I began to hate my mother more than I loved her, before she was totally lost as a parent to me, before we lived in a house with never ending conflict and tension, I cared enough to wish that a dream might come true for my mom. I wanted it so much, but of course that fairy tale had no happy ending. By the time I left home at eighteen I hated my parents so much and my self-esteem was so low that only years later would I begin to heal.

But I loved her unconditionally once--as only children and pets can do.  The last feelings--my anger, my feelings of abandonment--had overwhelmed the love. But if I could dream a dream for my mother, I know now I loved her very much. That said, I feel like I won that crown when I heard about making the grade. And if my mother was alive, that crown would belong to her, too. I finally made her queen for a day.

On the Road Again

posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

As mentioned last week, summer is upon us. Summer is Maine to me--my husband and I spend most weekends and occasional longer spells at a campground in Maine. It's located in Poland Spring, which most people associate with bottled water. Yeah, the bottling plant is a mile or two from the campground.

Poland Spring, Maine, is about 135 miles from home. That's a bit over two hours when the traffic is right, and a lot more time when it's not. I think this is the fourth or fifth summer we've spent at the campground, and we have the travel thing down to a minor science. This year we're trying something new: driving up on Saturday after doing some chores at home that never seem to get done on my Monday to Friday schedule. We spend two nights there, coming home on Monday morning in plenty of time for a shower and my commute.
When we bought the trailer a few years ago, our daughters wanted to know why, since it was only big enough for two adults.

Exactly, we replied. They never liked any of the other campers we had anyway, and they didn't like camping, and they didn't like traveling with us after they reached about the age of twelve. Now we leave them behind to take care of the pets and keep the home fires burning, more or less.

Actually it works quite well, except for the two hours plus that it takes us to get there and home again. My husband and I have been married for over 39 years and still nobody has won The Battle of the Airwaves. We have wildly divergent tastes in music, which means that choosing a radio station is just asking for trouble.

I have tried to compromise by using audiobooks. Sometimes it works. I skip playing one of the sexier romance books, which is emphatically not a family listening experience. But recently other recorded books have fallen on, well, deaf ears. I had Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men on the Bummel but even I had to admit that the digressions were overtaking the story, such as it was. We also had a Jeeves and Wooster book on CD, and I was happy with that, but my husband got pretty antsy, and he was driving, so I caved and let him turn on the radio.

The perfect solution, of course, is tuning in to a Red Sox game, but there are darned few major league games played on Saturday or Monday mornings. So I expect we'll spend our weekends until early October battling over my audiobooks and his radio stations. He likes oldies. I can't stand the World War II era swing and Big Band music for more than a few minutes. One of his stations does play a mix of 50s, 60s, and 70s music, and some of it I even like, although there is always the risk of getting something like "When a girl changes from bobby sox to stockings" in your head for a couple of days.

When my spouse turns on his radio stations, everybody in the car who has an MP3 player dives for their earphones. I have heard the phrase "Daddy's junky music" mumbled, and I assume they're not referring to the music stores. I just stick it out. Sometimes there is a song I actually like a lot, which means I have to dance. In a seat belt ratcheted to the seat back. So I sing along and throw in some cheerleader arm motions, a little twist-in-place, some melodramatic hand-wringing (when they play one of those cheesy songs about teen angels or the girl he met at the dance tonight who really died last year--cue "Twilight Zone" theme), and a few macarena moves. I can imagine what passing truckers make of the whole scene.

Interspersed with this general merriment are my gasps, cringes, armrest grabbing, and other little helpful hints I use to point out possible traffic problems, dizzy drivers, and potential hazards on the interstate.

He appreciates it all, of course. Sure he does.  Right.

Between you and me, though, it's pretty much aerobic backseat driving.

Seduction, Back-Street Abortion, and the Unpunished Guilty

Posted by Kate Flora

The murder of Dr. Tiller has been much on my mind this week. I expect it has been on many minds. I came of age in the early years of MS magazine, the second wave of the feminist movement (the first having brought us the right to vote and a few other good things) and women's struggles for birth control, the right to seek any job they were qualified for instead of being confined to "HELP WANTED MALE" and "HELP WANTED FEMALE," and the right to own our own names rather than lose them automatically upon marriage.

For years, I've been embarrassing my sons by asking their girlfriends how young women on college campuses are dealing with the abortion issue. I've been repeatedly shocked to learn how indifferent they are, how casually they assume that the battle has been won, our rifles stacked in the corner, and that there is no need to even think about such details as access and training. Perhaps now, in the wake of this taking of a life in the name of preserving life, there will be more discussion. More concern. Perhaps women, who now are the majority in most medical schools, will wonder why so many schools are refusing to teach the basics of performing an abortion to their students. Perhaps our daughters, our nieces, our daughters-in-law, the women for whom we fought the battles, will look around and realize that there are issues of particular concern to women, and those issues will not take care of themselves.

I heard a doctor on NPR today talking about how she has performed perhaps 30,000 abortions over the course of her medical career, and she has not encountered a single woman who was casual about the process. It isn't something to be casual about. Like marriage, it is not to be embarked upon unadvisedly or lightly. Those friends who have embarked upon it did it with trepidation, deliberation, fear, regret, and a great deal of pain.

What I was thinking about today in the car, listening to the stories on NPR, were the revelations about abortions past that I've only learned about recently, as there has finally been enough time past for people to discuss them. Both cases involve young, naive, innocent girls away from home for the first time and at college in the sixties, and older boys--or men--who set out to get them intoxicated and then seduced them. At least one of the seducers was a law student, the other a graduate student, perhaps a medical student--the story does not say. In both cases, their immediate and selfish goals achieved, the men--who had failed to take any precautions about the risks to their prey, the women they'd targeted and seduced--walked away without knowledge, guilt or regret.

Even hearing these stories after forty years, I get angry. Part of it is sisterhood. It could have been any of us, naive, innocent, and trusting, unused to drinking and being plied with lethal punch. Part of it is the mystery writer in me, knowing that many times what drives the plot in the present are secrets from the past, or acts committed by someone who believes they've gotten away with it, when suddenly, it rises up to smite them. Part of it is in the thinking that these men have probably never known the pain, disruption of lives, and the subsequent distrust of self and others that their casual, selfish pleasure seeking at the expense of others, wrought.

So I sit here in 2009, thinking about how much people are still trying to control others' decisions, and I imagine a terrified young Catholic girl in the late 1960's, seduced and pregnant, calling her big brother for help because she cannot tell their parents. I hear him recount the details, this responsible brother, of using the underground college networks to help him find a doctor who will "help." And I think of the pain and anguish of these young people, and the lasting damage done by one young man's selfishness, and I wonder. Did the men who used those girls to satisfy their momentary lust ever wake up and feel regret at what they did? Would they today, if they knew?