Pen Pals, continued

After my last post I heard from my Aunt Barb, who still corresponds with her British pen pal. I'm happy to share a bit of her story in her own words: Just read your blog about the aforementioned pen-pals— just loved it.  In the days before student exchanges and after WWII, we had a teacher exchange.  When Sylvie's teacher returned to London she looked at the list she had acquired at Connecticut Farms School and told this young girl, “Look, this girl shares your birthday,” and so it began. Not only did Sylvie and I correspond, but our Mothers got into the action also.  My grandparents were English, emigrating from England in the late 1800's.  So with the war behind them and many, many needs post war, they began to send care packages to London, with things that were at the time unavailable, i.e.: tea, sugar, flour, etc. (Bisquick was a total mystery, lol!) And now to the present past.  Bill and I left Florida the day after Christmas '11 for London, so that Sylvie and I could celebrate our birthday, the date January 3, 2012. I was 75 and Sylvie 77.  We celebrate this year 65 years of friendship.  She is truly my little English sister. Thanks, Aunt Barb, for sharing this wonderful story!

♥ ♥♥

Pen Pals

I have been reading with great delight As Always, Julia, a collection of letters between Julia Child and Avis DeVoto. DeVoto's husband was a journalist who'd written a piece in Harper's which included a rant about the lack of good kitchen knives in the United States. Julia read it and sent him a knife that she described as "a nice little French model."  Avis, who often served as her husband's secretary (though an editor and book reviewer in her own right) responded. Thus began a correspondence that bloomed into a dear friendship--long before the two women had ever met. Their letters are a delight, and got me thinking about friendships-via-words. My aunt began a pen pal relationship with a young British girl when they were both children during World War II. As far as I know, they still write to each other. My sister has a pen pal in Kentucky to whom she's written for more than 40 years; they've only met twice, yet consider each other dear friends. These days, paper and ink has given way to emails, virtual groups, live chat, and forum postings. We communicate with strangers, and from some of those connections comes the spark of true friendship. We hear each other's voices and answer in kind. Two women I consider dear friends began as my critique partners; we've met only a couple of times, but we sustain our friendships through words. So this post is dedicated to all my virtual pals, the women in my life who comment on this blog, exchange emails with me, share their writing joys and sorrows, and offer encouragement and a laugh. To the friends I haven't met yet (and those I have)--it's good to know you're out there.

♥ ♥ ♥

Ode to Autumn (In Handy List Format)

What John Keats called the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” happens to be my favorite of the year. Here are only a few reasons why: ~Pumpkin muffins ~Crisp mornings and chilly nights ~The first fire in the fireplace ~Halloween decorations ~Visits to the farmers’ market ~Apples in season; apples in pies; apples in my lunchbox ~Comfort food time—break out the soups, stews, and chilis ~Flannel PJs ~Candy corn ~The last blaze of color before the snow

♥ ♥ ♥

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year?

The title of this post does not refer to the Christmas song, but to a familiar ad campaign in which parents are merrily buying their children school supplies, delighted that another endless summer is coming to an end. This summer I am facing the big boy version of that experience as we ready our two younger sons to go to college. Here is Son #2's pile of stuff:

Son #2 is the old pro. This is his third trip back to Boston, and he is more representative of the Stuff it All in a Bag School of Packing. Here are Son #3's accoutrements:

Son #3 was born with one foot out the door, so it's no surprise that he's been packed for days now. But that doesn't make it any easier to say good-bye to two of them. Here is what I tell myself: No morning lunches to pack. No more waiting up on those nights we want to sleep. (And no more waiting them out on those nights we don't.) Weekends away. Romantic dinners for two. A much smaller shopping bill. Ditto electricity and credit card. The second car back in the driveway. A house for grown-ups, at last. It's all about roots and wings, I tell myself. And then I whisper a prayer: may the roots hold. And may the wings bring them back soon.

Italian Lessons

1. Time spent at the table is never wasted. 2. Everybody needs an extra kiss on the cheek. 3. Celebrate the body. 4. The day is long. Take your time. 5. One helping is for sissies. 6. There is beauty in unexpected places. 7. The best wine is the one that's in your hand. 8. Life is loud and colorful. Live it that way.

Summer Reading

So despite a looming deadline on my first mystery, I find I need to take a break now and then for some fun summer reads. Here's what's on the pile and in the Kindle: Poetic Justice, by Alicia Rasley. I would love this book even if the image on the cover were not one of my all-time favorite paintings. It's a Regency romance that is smart, smart, smart. The story features a brainy, feisty heroine, and a dashing hero whose intelligence is as formidable as his fighting skills. At the center of the story is a collection of rare books that the lovers lust after nearly as much as they do each other. AND there are Shakespeare references. (Be still my heart.) Death at La Fenice, by Donna Leon. Friends who are rabid fans of her series featuring Venice police Commissario Guido Brunetti have been urging me to read Donna Leon for months. I have just begun this one, which opens with a dead conductor at the Venice opera house--apparently someone has put cyanide in his espresso. I'm already hooked and looking forward to finding out who had it in for the maestro. 11/22/63, by Stephen King. My husband bought me this book for Christmas, but I haven't dared crack it open--I knew once I started King's latest, I wouldn't be able to stop. What baby boomer could resist the premise? An English teacher (an English teacher hero!) in Maine discovers a time portal in an old diner, and goes on a quest to stop the Kennedy assassination. But when he runs into a strange loner named Lee Harvey Oswald, things really get dicey. Saving this one for when I finish the first draft of my manuscript; I won't have a book to deliver otherwise!

A Moment of Zen, Part 1

La Fortuna

As a girl who was born on Friday the 13th in a year that shall go unnamed, I tend to be a little superstitious. I carry a lucky dollar in my purse at all times. I read my horoscope. I try not to attract any mal occhio, as I have mentioned here, but most importantly, I watch for signs from the universe. One such sign appeared several years ago one evening as I was having dinner in an Asian restaurant with my friend Melissa. I was telling her about the book I was working on as we were finishing dinner when our fortune cookies came. She pushed the plate toward me, giving me first pick of the two lone cookies on the plate. And here's what I pulled from mine:

Now, I eat a lot of Chinese food, and I've opened a number of cookies in my time, but none like this one. We laughed and exclaimed over the coincidence, and I tucked the fortune into my wallet. After that, whenever I got discouraged on the path to publication, I would pull out that little slip of paper. Finally, I scanned it, enlarged it, and laminated it so it could serve as a daily reminder of why I write.

For publication, certainly. For profit, not so much. But mostly for love.

♥ ♥ ♥

Why I (Still) Love Nora Ephron

I wrote this post two years ago in honor of Nora Ephron, and today seems like an appropriate time to re-post it. I will miss her. Nora Ephron is my biggest girl crush. My biggest fantasy lunch date. And my biggest influence and inspiration as a writer—when I’m strugging, I often think: WWND? (What Would Nora Do?) This week’s New Yorker did a lovely piece on her, accompanied by a gorgeous photo that in no way suggested she needs to feel bad about any part of her anatomy. The story was about Julie and Julia, her new film, whose trailers I have been watching on line. I’ve been following Ephron’s career since I read Crazy Salad in college. Heartburn has a special place on my bookshelf, and to this day, I hate Carl Bernstein. And like so many women, I am a rabid fan of her films. And I don’t want to hear that they can be saccharine, that things too often turn on coincidence, that characters extricate themselves from situations and relationships with little effort, and that the cities she creates on screen are fantasy places that don’t really exist. I know. That’s exactly what I love about them. (There are few things that make me happier than watching a back-to-back reruns of Sleepless in Seattle in my pj’s while eating chocolate chips out of a bag.) Ephron is the kind of writer who makes you feel as though you know her. She’s smart and funny and unafraid to be both feminist and feminine. She can piss off Rush Limbaugh and still look good doing it. She can be insightful and incisive about any number of political issues, but still admit that Obama’s loose-fitting tie in one of the debates distracted her. She can play with the big boys, but she never underestimates the power of a good meal—or a good haircut, for that matter. And in so much of her work, she tells the often unpolitically correct truth about what women think and feel—open up to any page of I Feel Bad About My Neck; watch the scene in Sleepless when Rosie O’Donnell tells Meg Ryan: “You don’t want love. You want movie love.” (Damn right, Nora.) But we also want our place in the world, a theme Ephron explores in her new film, Julie and Julia, in which a young writer, Julie Powell, realizes her dream through the inspiration of the more famous and successful woman, Julia Child. Ephron doesn’t know it, but her film is a version of a movie I’ve already made in my head—a never-to-be-released little fantasy called Nora and Rosemary. . . (This post originally appeared on Red Room.)

♥ ♥ ♥

The ISR Pile, or. . .

books I Should Read.

I loved The Bluest Eye. Ditto Song of Solomon and Jazz. But I can't bring myself to even open Toni Morrison's best-known work, because I can't get past the premise: desperate slave kills her own children. (I can't watch stagings of Medea, either.)

My son loves this book, and assures me that Susanna Clarke is a genius who owes a debt to Jane Austen. But clocking in at more than 700 pages (and including nearly 200 footnotes), Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell is a daunting read. Part fantasy and part alternate history, this is one of those books I know I'd probably love--if only I could start it.

I'll think I'll just wait for the movie. . .

I did read The Sorcerer's Stone, but truth be told, I just didn't love it the way everyone else in my house did. My guys all keep telling me the series gets better and better, but I'm not particularly interested in learning fake Latin spells or in trying to keep track of hundreds of characters, human or otherwise. (As a teacher however, I do have a soft spot for Hogwarts, the school that becomes Harry's home and refuge.)

Now how about you? What's in your ISR pile?