tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20160756702352243262024-03-28T17:09:23.916-04:00advance reading copybooks, authors, publishing, and the long, winding roadJon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.comBlogger141125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-20036156210406109222024-02-10T11:23:00.012-05:002024-02-10T21:55:18.421-05:00Julia Franks<p> </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifd2W_Uh0y2QaDPVbVrpt8MK7IqaGFVexfN2BstfwHOYcVB2q_OFySk87jyfhSFD7ZSxUL3YnXuVUrhyphenhyphenqp2ZL6T_2r6C9AZGp9qb0f-bb1rFgQOk5mKnNZv1W5Ain5xM_Tb6HLJNf4NFKIS4hD2sHO49KQUv1faXtizmDjFdC4D6Lvw54yWOuHjA5qN8iP/s800/Julia-Franks.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="800" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifd2W_Uh0y2QaDPVbVrpt8MK7IqaGFVexfN2BstfwHOYcVB2q_OFySk87jyfhSFD7ZSxUL3YnXuVUrhyphenhyphenqp2ZL6T_2r6C9AZGp9qb0f-bb1rFgQOk5mKnNZv1W5Ain5xM_Tb6HLJNf4NFKIS4hD2sHO49KQUv1faXtizmDjFdC4D6Lvw54yWOuHjA5qN8iP/w581-h291/Julia-Franks.jpg" width="581" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzk417jbdEXsuWuhvezAR8A-TzYkMrA1ZbOwTh0GiTGak2KSPImF4nzAhYrAI82TctqDccGl1Nk_xVUgyi-lh_fM9ohQDf4_kjYsdtmGnM8LK9AEtbOGMDKwwDEnlj-QOFOAFtE808KLY2yIPLloHpkJ79DH_xjxFOVms5g5xvkH7K15MoB00EDNINUCRy/s1068/The%20Say%20So.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="640" height="467" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzk417jbdEXsuWuhvezAR8A-TzYkMrA1ZbOwTh0GiTGak2KSPImF4nzAhYrAI82TctqDccGl1Nk_xVUgyi-lh_fM9ohQDf4_kjYsdtmGnM8LK9AEtbOGMDKwwDEnlj-QOFOAFtE808KLY2yIPLloHpkJ79DH_xjxFOVms5g5xvkH7K15MoB00EDNINUCRy/w280-h467/The%20Say%20So.jpg" width="280" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Publishers Weekly</i> Starred Review, <i>Boston Globe</i>’s Top Summer Reads, <i>Library Journa</i>l’s <i>Audiofiles Magazine</i> Earphones Award</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoXFjP-n-6eAngbSSX0oWedTlGKpXDaw5cihfuL_uw0oqEOTb3rUWURTgXNkyXppGrnVT7Yui4R8TNKARX7JEQmP2hdn54h8_XiU_sp3g8SBuMWhinmSAlCw80A8ycoqObO1oSqKsi9c46hN_nOhKktVaxpp-pwPaQKSURwzNqMj89mufvSA4wDTpc23go/s500/Over%20the%20Plain%20Houses.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="359" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoXFjP-n-6eAngbSSX0oWedTlGKpXDaw5cihfuL_uw0oqEOTb3rUWURTgXNkyXppGrnVT7Yui4R8TNKARX7JEQmP2hdn54h8_XiU_sp3g8SBuMWhinmSAlCw80A8ycoqObO1oSqKsi9c46hN_nOhKktVaxpp-pwPaQKSURwzNqMj89mufvSA4wDTpc23go/w273-h359/Over%20the%20Plain%20Houses.jpg" width="273" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Thomas Wolfe Award, Southern Book Prize, Georgia Author of the Year, IPPY Gold, and the Townsend Prize for Best Georgia Fiction</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>"Edie Carrigan didn’t plan to “get herself”
pregnant, much less end up in a home for unwed
mothers. In 1950s North Carolina, illegitimate
pregnancy is kept secret, wayward women
require psychiatric cures, and adoption is always
the best solution. Not even Edie’s closest friend,
Luce Waddell, understands what Edie truly
wants: to keep and raise the baby." </i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-size: medium;">What can I say about Julia Franks? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that she astonishes me. When I first read <i>Over the Plain Houses,</i> I was totally hooked.<br /><br />I often have to stop, put down her books, and realize I am living her story, her characters' stories: the details of what the character sees as she enters a room, what she feels as she is talking or listening to someone, and then the deep empathy you feel, as reader and witness, for what is happening to her. <br /><br />Julia's new novel, <i>The Say So</i>, published by the wonderful <a href="https://www.hubcity.org/publishing">Hub City Press</a>, first takes place in 1950's North Carolina, but it could be anywhere in the US at that time. It's about how very young unwed women and their families dealt with an unplanned pregnancies. You'll meet Edie and Luce, and their families and their friends in high school. You'll experience how things were handled then, the trauma, the accusations, the total unfairness of it all.<br />Then we jump to the 1980's and Luce's daughter Meera, to find how the earlier friendships and relationships have (and have not) changed through those years. You will experience sadness and loss, triumph and deep contentment. All expertly told from each character's point of view.</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">One of my favorite passages: </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">"The thing about loss, though, is that it's cumulative, one layer building upon the next until the weight </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">becomes heavier and hard to carry. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">They added up, the kids leaving home, friends moving, someone getting divorced and falling out of touch, lapses and losses and people falling away slippery as water draining down an umbrella. You don't realize they have slid from your life until years have glided past. too late you realize you've lost an easy or fractious relationship and finally see it for what it was: it was love. You'd just never recognized it as such." </span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Wiley Cash, author of <i>When Ghosts Come Home</i> praises:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>“It’s rare that a novel speaks so eloquently to the contemporary moment as </i>The Say So<i> does.
The years may pass but our stories stay the same. Julia Franks has written a beautiful story of
mothers and daughters, old friendships, broken hearts, and tough choices. This is a powerful
novel, and an important one, too.”</i> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Now let's find out a bit more about Julia Franks....</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Julia, tell me about where you live and why you love it so much.</span></i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I feel very much at home in Atlanta, a city with a huge middle class and a huge sense of</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">diversity within that middle class. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhUYz5exmPEgQIvJqrF-n3fHJfTX6KOgfKkDVkZSSqzzmmhxmMGS0OcSuHQfJPMgKrvF204KBjdSLtI2977g6QthyGCDD9gPKATP43cL4oF5Vq0GSij1boIKXRN8WpxwALU-nJKYl8aQj_aunOVEQGx2Sv5e-KyKBk3mRYQHfnpyDImB-CZNT-HFtf1HCdw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhUYz5exmPEgQIvJqrF-n3fHJfTX6KOgfKkDVkZSSqzzmmhxmMGS0OcSuHQfJPMgKrvF204KBjdSLtI2977g6QthyGCDD9gPKATP43cL4oF5Vq0GSij1boIKXRN8WpxwALU-nJKYl8aQj_aunOVEQGx2Sv5e-KyKBk3mRYQHfnpyDImB-CZNT-HFtf1HCdw=w448-h298" width="448" /></a></div><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>A lot of my writer friends have moved to the mountains these </span><span>days, which has its appeal, but I doubt my husband and I will ever do that. There are just so </span><span>many different kinds of life here. For example, we’re both into salsa dancing, which feels to me </span><span>quintessentially Atlantan: people of all ages, hues, and body types coming together to do this </span></span><span><span style="font-size: medium;">fun group thing together. </span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: x-large; text-align: center;"><br /></div></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories?</span></i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I was an Army brat, and we were living in (what was then called ) Fort Bragg. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEikoWCZktwzf2g4Q0Nlj3LeIMYymO09nQ6y67E_DvkUo6XCCQEr1TpHTLkVA-Y1FgUmZrGY7cvOZKilPO3FjyNwshSjHNnAz8DtstyTBQgVxs0ZzYqPTcAbHAoVJe9UugUPTOdsiBP1zWRmnTni96rwSmQ4OQmgB-YZmU5RtngL7yl8OWT7AE3r7IxgF8fc" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1599" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEikoWCZktwzf2g4Q0Nlj3LeIMYymO09nQ6y67E_DvkUo6XCCQEr1TpHTLkVA-Y1FgUmZrGY7cvOZKilPO3FjyNwshSjHNnAz8DtstyTBQgVxs0ZzYqPTcAbHAoVJe9UugUPTOdsiBP1zWRmnTni96rwSmQ4OQmgB-YZmU5RtngL7yl8OWT7AE3r7IxgF8fc=w484-h272" width="484" /></a></div><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium;">I have great </span><span style="font-size: medium;">memories of growing up on army bases, despite the war in Vietnam. Military life was in some </span><span style="font-size: medium;">ways a kind of protected bubble for kids. I sometimes think of it as this experiment in American </span><span style="font-size: medium;">socialism that’s been hidden-in-plain-sight. All our dads (and sometimes our moms) had jobs </span><span style="font-size: medium;">and made government salaries that were comfortable but not extravagant. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhh7kts06xTXvqCf6oTIFNKn6MP5su8E_qx37ShEWVkQT0i9pht7nmtDw71BVk7pW3Ls2J_NCdIl1Ba3lCesfMpOLyk9zuqjqfSoTXzXU3WMgKDxPs4vnkrseguOv6rM-1zjUJuEefwjOk3xM8tBeyUn4J0x_orHt0wdauxs2Vv9uLODZQnG8J_BieeFnA/s3541/1971.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3541" data-original-width="3206" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhh7kts06xTXvqCf6oTIFNKn6MP5su8E_qx37ShEWVkQT0i9pht7nmtDw71BVk7pW3Ls2J_NCdIl1Ba3lCesfMpOLyk9zuqjqfSoTXzXU3WMgKDxPs4vnkrseguOv6rM-1zjUJuEefwjOk3xM8tBeyUn4J0x_orHt0wdauxs2Vv9uLODZQnG8J_BieeFnA/w222-h245/1971.jpg" width="222" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg12hLTd1jCZutTO0wXkh6Um3qKOrUHfF6U9pIoCd4_ssxhOaLLuMRiojMYlXk_VbYq_EdwQSomJilvhuaUICcc02Fk2p8BCzFHFVdbM-0I5uE9sc5p2dBk5IE9XoaEQR15L9ZzEm_8Gve1bs8vYvvVLv7U7O1pPrprZc4nuRcIZ-7lp6vA6mu4i1WFbrEe/s2734/Julia%201968.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2734" data-original-width="1586" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg12hLTd1jCZutTO0wXkh6Um3qKOrUHfF6U9pIoCd4_ssxhOaLLuMRiojMYlXk_VbYq_EdwQSomJilvhuaUICcc02Fk2p8BCzFHFVdbM-0I5uE9sc5p2dBk5IE9XoaEQR15L9ZzEm_8Gve1bs8vYvvVLv7U7O1pPrprZc4nuRcIZ-7lp6vA6mu4i1WFbrEe/w143-h246/Julia%201968.jpg" width="143" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>We had excellent </span><span>safety nets, great health insurance, and what has since been called the best public school </span><span>system in the country. Even though it was the seventies, we lived in integrated neighborhoods </span><span>and attended integrated schools—not perfect, but the rest of the country was at the time </span><span>struggling with busing. We rarely saw poor people, but we rarely had contact with rich people </span><span>either. In retrospect I realize how lucky we were in some ways, but when you’re a kid, you just </span><span>take it for granted that that’s the way the world works.</span></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it makes it so?</span></i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The first book to really change my life was a children’s book called <i>The Island of the Blue</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Dolphins</i>, </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjCRx-Gysc0LFLGWJq2KSMBB2iSnX_BTsWhKldEH88kxPMa3IqEzF3ZixrmWUaVSROrBz-Q1eR-1dnVZVr-H73kOOYcJEFHc_ZBUIssfJ7__AVIK3ryBBePUFzSqOzQ2FOEZM47nxcT7DZe9cQq1YSKWqqX1b-UIdqB-a3JoVVrN6H6vizMMnkDbwUAHlmS" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="294" height="399" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjCRx-Gysc0LFLGWJq2KSMBB2iSnX_BTsWhKldEH88kxPMa3IqEzF3ZixrmWUaVSROrBz-Q1eR-1dnVZVr-H73kOOYcJEFHc_ZBUIssfJ7__AVIK3ryBBePUFzSqOzQ2FOEZM47nxcT7DZe9cQq1YSKWqqX1b-UIdqB-a3JoVVrN6H6vizMMnkDbwUAHlmS=w234-h399" width="234" /></a></div><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium;">which is this wrenching story of a young girl who’s accidentally left behind on an island </span><span style="font-size: medium;">when her tribe is relocated. As a result, she learns to do every job—hunting, fishing, cooking, </span><span style="font-size: medium;">etc.—all on her own. I just remember feeling really empowered by the fact that she was able to </span><span style="font-size: medium;">figure out everything on her own, but also really devastated by her profound solitude. Maybe </span><span style="font-size: medium;">on some level I realized even then that those two things--independence and loneliness—could </span><span style="font-size: medium;">be two sides of the same coin</span><span style="font-size: large;">.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?</span></i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As an adult I think I’ve been most affected by Walt Whitman’s poetry. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEibhwK3Mpcb4J2wuIIpy9rxveXYGs5JxFDL3T0VvyZSgPBv16_qFvMiCJlAElk3YfPKvlLQ0dUaYebYxLtNTzCmOb7x-7oYMJ8bADjKsMHWXHQx3_jPLBV4LdtGtlYVKQ-gXOEttFZ3f11lsbORpoJ98Kocq1MVJRyye7tYmTjVya7yH3lsRr0448dmBaJz" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1486" data-original-width="1200" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEibhwK3Mpcb4J2wuIIpy9rxveXYGs5JxFDL3T0VvyZSgPBv16_qFvMiCJlAElk3YfPKvlLQ0dUaYebYxLtNTzCmOb7x-7oYMJ8bADjKsMHWXHQx3_jPLBV4LdtGtlYVKQ-gXOEttFZ3f11lsbORpoJ98Kocq1MVJRyye7tYmTjVya7yH3lsRr0448dmBaJz" width="194" /></a></div><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgp7STKtZIPLVH2yzPCUwlWWRsI8YEpq3vacLSFmlTC3Kmz8lDRHfD06TzKrXhtjQtlJYQSbdmI-KZJ03oV5fQ7C5Sv6XCTScFcHomYxTIFRO7OBdjMeLPQRcJ8vqprBfLNzARLaXMido4ZPbF2piQP4m5tRxRvIkV-xJRDIOaWeKj3ewhI0ZGlMfkZ5SnC" style="font-size: large; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1141" data-original-width="920" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgp7STKtZIPLVH2yzPCUwlWWRsI8YEpq3vacLSFmlTC3Kmz8lDRHfD06TzKrXhtjQtlJYQSbdmI-KZJ03oV5fQ7C5Sv6XCTScFcHomYxTIFRO7OBdjMeLPQRcJ8vqprBfLNzARLaXMido4ZPbF2piQP4m5tRxRvIkV-xJRDIOaWeKj3ewhI0ZGlMfkZ5SnC=w144-h178" width="144" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjJMG_4B6yG686O7Wk-X-7gEHOsBOCYZY-pJLFPlf8SouNuUHJuYxVy8BttOoMM6QNIr5crKMcQ2wHjB97mxS5-h4k3lJX5slh_9jtuVrwTqg8ZRLp0dWbpnS-qvGQbFomKbFvqCD9lIC55blfc6PP7X0hQqlF4FLlAkx_sNL4t6xL39qeRGwRNyylc5Xup" style="font-size: large; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2400" data-original-width="1800" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjJMG_4B6yG686O7Wk-X-7gEHOsBOCYZY-pJLFPlf8SouNuUHJuYxVy8BttOoMM6QNIr5crKMcQ2wHjB97mxS5-h4k3lJX5slh_9jtuVrwTqg8ZRLp0dWbpnS-qvGQbFomKbFvqCD9lIC55blfc6PP7X0hQqlF4FLlAkx_sNL4t6xL39qeRGwRNyylc5Xup=w134-h179" width="134" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgSmidvjLRRQ2a9NjVRRLnRQJeyUUsaQ_3l2uEcDeMGHfnCpsFY7xjBU1klqDH40pAOYN_gtUTVKKmGStGEVwIXPin34tPZmZ02CMutnUT-kgV9XoLfBqbMK-dZPZqA8nnt3SNTdJHM2gAQJT87Hhrc_QMJ-xn6OHVq1LGJ3n65HliOIKBZiLY82g_7onna" style="font-size: large; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="749" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgSmidvjLRRQ2a9NjVRRLnRQJeyUUsaQ_3l2uEcDeMGHfnCpsFY7xjBU1klqDH40pAOYN_gtUTVKKmGStGEVwIXPin34tPZmZ02CMutnUT-kgV9XoLfBqbMK-dZPZqA8nnt3SNTdJHM2gAQJT87Hhrc_QMJ-xn6OHVq1LGJ3n65HliOIKBZiLY82g_7onna=w133-h178" width="133" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />It expanded my vision of myself and community and the world but also expanded my sense of what was possible as a writer. </span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?</span></i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>I was the only girl among brothers, and my parents had this very 1970s idea that we should all </span><span>be treated exactly the same, so a lot of our family stories focus on the physical and social </span><span>competitions between us. Both my parents like to tell stories about times that I got the best of </span><span>my brothers, or, more often, times that I had big plans to get the best of my brothers but was </span><span>foiled in the end.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">One particular victory I remember was on a family backpacking trip. When I was seven my</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>parents bought me my first external frame backpack. At that time my older brother already had </span><span>one and was already carrying his fair share of weight. But I was just getting used to that</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">backpack when we went on this hike to Maroon Bells in Colorado, </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiOAyF-szWkDwgCl0q2NBvruzxuxFJiswDnSUiGLbIF9qPaUYEIUJ4PBbZck4f1DV-ltZIDgPUA01aiGPoYJvyOIvnaxz16HFQvq29vWjtqncXUdGns4yP6FxQHHvW94WqEezZbuj_ZOEjRd5dYkjFFBy2w-zk-HFnY7OH7ygLZ5Rj0gGxGmd4-_kYy6-Gi" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="413" data-original-width="620" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiOAyF-szWkDwgCl0q2NBvruzxuxFJiswDnSUiGLbIF9qPaUYEIUJ4PBbZck4f1DV-ltZIDgPUA01aiGPoYJvyOIvnaxz16HFQvq29vWjtqncXUdGns4yP6FxQHHvW94WqEezZbuj_ZOEjRd5dYkjFFBy2w-zk-HFnY7OH7ygLZ5Rj0gGxGmd4-_kYy6-Gi=w435-h290" width="435" /></a></div><br />so it was mostly empty </span><span style="font-size: medium;">except a couple changes of clothes. But it looked impressive. My brother and I would race up </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>the trail ahead of my parents, seeing who could get to the next junction the fastest. On that </span><span>particular day I won because I had an empty backpack, but the best part was that when I got to </span><span>the top of Maroon Bells, there were a bunch of people there, and they were amazed to see this </span><span>little kid burst out of the woods with this giant pack on her back. A lot of people wanted to take </span><span>my picture and know where I’d come from, etc. By the time my older brother and my parents </span><span>showed up, I was parading around like a movie star in front of the paparazzi.</span><span style="text-align: center;"> </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiekH4cJqPz-Ae7T29rhnuwIUxci-bKrVHsWRaXUSXpCwXXcndqD0sZe6lB7CDyaVef0ouQZUsyp8mjbJ9eIYbet3VWOxLBSFi-e7ViX2Z213lMNAbrGiLFH0UgW81zCHthK_MMfiWRO3cPylymLqCw5IFwk7EAJNQFWhOPg7T4_ncvgOIIHdHgOfLfu4gZ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="626" data-original-width="417" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiekH4cJqPz-Ae7T29rhnuwIUxci-bKrVHsWRaXUSXpCwXXcndqD0sZe6lB7CDyaVef0ouQZUsyp8mjbJ9eIYbet3VWOxLBSFi-e7ViX2Z213lMNAbrGiLFH0UgW81zCHthK_MMfiWRO3cPylymLqCw5IFwk7EAJNQFWhOPg7T4_ncvgOIIHdHgOfLfu4gZ" width="160" /></a></div><br /></div></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">How did you meet your beloved? How did your first date go?</span></i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We actually met on Match.com.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeLzBEOur7MCIh_g3dqtrRj4xJrTohm8OpLThyaNQm15sLGNnQ4KIb5524ob8TLaEuxfoVIvVqDf_LGR42sIODhy-b_hC4KxPvB8dkrkSQzk_Fy0BG3I49BNMX6_Uj1VetTehyphenhyphene2x0v2uIcuwQwSNnMMk2Dos8ZxZV8CX_kT7cSnW69QBMbbGAhPq9Allj/s250/Match.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="89" data-original-width="250" height="89" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeLzBEOur7MCIh_g3dqtrRj4xJrTohm8OpLThyaNQm15sLGNnQ4KIb5524ob8TLaEuxfoVIvVqDf_LGR42sIODhy-b_hC4KxPvB8dkrkSQzk_Fy0BG3I49BNMX6_Uj1VetTehyphenhyphene2x0v2uIcuwQwSNnMMk2Dos8ZxZV8CX_kT7cSnW69QBMbbGAhPq9Allj/s1600/Match.jpg" width="250" /></a></div><br />The funny part is that I’d been through a divorce and wasn’t </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>really ready to meet anyone yet, and I had this idea I would just lurk a while on the site and see </span><span>what other people were doing. So what I did was write my little profile essay but not post a </span><span>photo. I figured no American male was going to click on a profile without a photo. So I put this </span><span>incomplete profile up and was starting to acclimate myself to the idea of dating again. But </span><span>within a week I got this message from this guy saying that he’d done a search on the words </span><span>“whitewater kayak”, and that my profile had come up and looked really interesting, and, </span><span>“assuming I didn’t look like Attila the Hun,” did I want to go out for coffee? </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>I read his profile, of course, and he looked to be extremely interesting, clever, and funny. But I </span><span>just wasn’t ready to date yet. (My brother said later that I should have told him Attila was my </span><span>uncle and there was a strong family resemblance, but I wasn’t even ready to engage on that </span></span><span><span style="font-size: medium;">level.) </span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: x-large; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjw6spXPLKVZONMpBNS7sA5ksGB-q3uCB854CqvYj00poCYcYHEMzgwpFqTMAShUW6Y3zyiCmEa1NoJerIZ4eeio10Uut5B4kvfPbPm9v59BTrIBSBYcfWG0hlR4ma0vxKQqv-_jM6djO8XtAdVH3EVvGlEaBaqRkTaVuj1_XTI5ngvq_q84FAuEGwjlUA1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="360" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjw6spXPLKVZONMpBNS7sA5ksGB-q3uCB854CqvYj00poCYcYHEMzgwpFqTMAShUW6Y3zyiCmEa1NoJerIZ4eeio10Uut5B4kvfPbPm9v59BTrIBSBYcfWG0hlR4ma0vxKQqv-_jM6djO8XtAdVH3EVvGlEaBaqRkTaVuj1_XTI5ngvq_q84FAuEGwjlUA1" width="240" /></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;">Mostly I waffled back and forth and finally said no.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>Flash forward several months, and I decided it was time to flesh out my profile and fully engage </span><span>with Match and maybe find someone like that Attila the Hun jokester. But there was no one on </span><span>the platform I was the remotest bit interested in meeting. In the end I had to google his name </span><span>and profession and kind of stalk him out there in the digital world and then finally ask him out.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>It was embarrassing: he’d forgotten all about me and was dating someone else. But in the end </span><span>we finally did meet.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZAw212zJ5YXb0bzC5Dnvn0LFZq6MW6CMtkx95G9xiXm1d9NfftcNPd9lX7n4Kmb2i8mOOS_fuOhG2ICeZS7EIRvcxxSFpYpD4dYqTbOAZb6e3wbTH4EKK-MCtoGR2q03UCqfEkn7zUnaY7LEau9SNlArPKBOf18LE9jZm3mmxpQ9DoHJhxDMOuSkYTBT4/s2793/wedding.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2572" data-original-width="2793" height="370" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZAw212zJ5YXb0bzC5Dnvn0LFZq6MW6CMtkx95G9xiXm1d9NfftcNPd9lX7n4Kmb2i8mOOS_fuOhG2ICeZS7EIRvcxxSFpYpD4dYqTbOAZb6e3wbTH4EKK-MCtoGR2q03UCqfEkn7zUnaY7LEau9SNlArPKBOf18LE9jZm3mmxpQ9DoHJhxDMOuSkYTBT4/w401-h370/wedding.jpg" width="401" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Julia and her husband on their wedding day.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Is there a song, person or group that you listen to when you are feeling a bit</span></i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">down? </span></i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blga9Bmz97A">Chopin!</a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit2pgcIrWa8iGq60LpNWLruZjAuLf_OIL6v9YOFogi1IvSIPetFP61AWczcPNK4-hS9NgbI7rC3SOUUPiFK69atXnXQzIqVjGK8pu0Hv-jCsHJVZILEuYbfGH7DJ12zFLQLNVOxcHRcUTwwqVP4drTlUyna2LwBI7ZleFS1kBl4kQFjqqLKkWz6PdQYTVr/s694/Chopin.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="694" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit2pgcIrWa8iGq60LpNWLruZjAuLf_OIL6v9YOFogi1IvSIPetFP61AWczcPNK4-hS9NgbI7rC3SOUUPiFK69atXnXQzIqVjGK8pu0Hv-jCsHJVZILEuYbfGH7DJ12zFLQLNVOxcHRcUTwwqVP4drTlUyna2LwBI7ZleFS1kBl4kQFjqqLKkWz6PdQYTVr/s320/Chopin.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">How are you different now than you were in your 20’s?</span></i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Here’s the most thorough answer, which is probably much longer than you have time for! (But then again, if you read the <a href="https://msmagazine.com/2022/06/02/adoption-abortion/">Author’s Note of <i>The Say So</i></a>, then you’ve pretty much already read it.)</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;">Julia's Note: <i>Over the years friends have asked my advice about their unplanned pregnancies or their daughters’. I don’t give advice. What I say is that I’m thrilled that my son walks the earth, but that the emotional cost was so much higher than I’d imagined. That there was no ‘clean slate’ afterward, only loss. That if I were faced with the same circumstances a second time, I would probably choose an early abortion. That what saved me in the end was the ability to make the choice myself.</i></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">How do you feel about “Independent Bookstores” and their role in your success?</span></i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I wouldn’t have much of a career without independent books stores. In particular, it was the</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">owners of such stores who overwhelmingly recommended that both my novels be included in <b><i><a href="https://www.indiebound.org/indie-next-list">Indie Next</a></i></b>. For someone like me who’s publishing with a smaller press, those recommendations are one of the few remaining ways to be recognized in the national media.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME to any period from before recorded history to</span></i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">yesterday, be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your</span></i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">choice, actually experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all,</span></i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them.</span></i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">When would you go? Where would you go? Who would you want to meet?</span></i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I mostly buy into MLK’s idea that the arc of the moral universe is long but bends toward justice- <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhx_qy5ocaYxfqpwlf0lY83nAebUpgyinzgsD__3IODNJ1qnLvh_gr2xls1D6Lwf1gShv0b_BJ8lnptr-vG4zgtKlr2L6HAXyFGNgwoY8R9FiBvWfsqueKOgnRyJB09YtQglPfmZURGuuj4tThBJEYHCysHfO2TZDS1M0QgJefXhvrgdAp7Me_I0o1i_Oi4" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1128" data-original-width="1428" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhx_qy5ocaYxfqpwlf0lY83nAebUpgyinzgsD__3IODNJ1qnLvh_gr2xls1D6Lwf1gShv0b_BJ8lnptr-vG4zgtKlr2L6HAXyFGNgwoY8R9FiBvWfsqueKOgnRyJB09YtQglPfmZURGuuj4tThBJEYHCysHfO2TZDS1M0QgJefXhvrgdAp7Me_I0o1i_Oi4=w351-h277" width="351" /></a></div><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">-which means I mostly don’t want to go backwards into the past! I suspect life during most</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">periods of history was a lot harder than it is today, and I’d be nervous to revisit any time period </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>for very long. That said, I’m curious about periods in American history when we as a nation </span><span>possessed some hope or quality that has since been lost.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">For example, we now live in a time when most contracts for municipal buildings and</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">infrastructure go to the lowest bidders. But it wasn’t always that way. What would it have been </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>like to live in FDR’s America, when Americans were thinking so differently about architecture </span><span>and public spaces? I wonder what it must have been like to live in a time period when a </span><span>majority of Americans wanted to invest money in public infrastructure and art. I’m thinking of </span><span>bridges and public buildings, but also of all the CCC work that went into creating some of our </span><span>national parks. I’m also thinking about all the powerhouses built on Southeastern rivers in the </span><span>middle of the woods that are often beautiful buildings--not to mention the schools, libraries, </span><span>and museums built in our public spaces during that time. I wonder what it would have been like </span><span>to live at a time when that many people believed in these community projects, in creating </span><span>something beautiful for the sole purpose for the masses to enjoy.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>Thank you Julia, not just for your incredible book, but for you openness and honesty. You are an amazing writer.</i></b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>Readers, be sure to read all about Julia's dream in <a href="https://www.artsatl.org/in-our-own-words-julia-franks-author-and-founder-of-loosecanon-com/">ARTSATL</a> </i></b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Jon, your easy way with writers ( people) inspires me all over to read the books you feature. I will order this from our library. Thank you.</span></span></div></div><p>Please send comments to jonwilloughbymayes@gmail.com</p>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-84497367544258198572023-11-26T17:09:00.004-05:002023-11-26T18:08:47.730-05:00Ann Patchett<p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKG_baZZbH0koUyrvUdYUvZptS9NJVWzv8aWMoOJYmbdqvnsZU0gTaZ6PcKpbc9IVNU7hAV4ahBySE0z30eKuWDXs7U8wYo92ALxSWJK5eGHwExK8DeEvIKCmN0B9QonA2WkQ3QCD6qs92uBqB2xTDK9kOy_Sq7jxfP9JTP-e8NSjoMBGfiJDdjqGeJhm3/s1732/Ann%20Patchet_EmilyDorio_PNG_RS%202.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1732" data-original-width="1672" height="393" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKG_baZZbH0koUyrvUdYUvZptS9NJVWzv8aWMoOJYmbdqvnsZU0gTaZ6PcKpbc9IVNU7hAV4ahBySE0z30eKuWDXs7U8wYo92ALxSWJK5eGHwExK8DeEvIKCmN0B9QonA2WkQ3QCD6qs92uBqB2xTDK9kOy_Sq7jxfP9JTP-e8NSjoMBGfiJDdjqGeJhm3/w380-h393/Ann%20Patchet_EmilyDorio_PNG_RS%202.png" width="380" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA1DjC2J2P7HlYkZBByeUY8WVWOBsKjsWONT0b45yPGmcU-BW8u-9__EczQZ-tRjY6jdSnbrpEc_N3tlH1Hm6AmHFXmoEtiWcGsmJmLV4noOP_v8ElkZMOeWrX61pYY6d6UzbPvT8FiQ6O1ZjIUY_tQTlSgR8dZBODckz7jKX0bsmvVzTGL1cNICuk8ByW/s271/The%20Patron%20Saint%20of%20Liars.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="271" data-original-width="180" height="113" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA1DjC2J2P7HlYkZBByeUY8WVWOBsKjsWONT0b45yPGmcU-BW8u-9__EczQZ-tRjY6jdSnbrpEc_N3tlH1Hm6AmHFXmoEtiWcGsmJmLV4noOP_v8ElkZMOeWrX61pYY6d6UzbPvT8FiQ6O1ZjIUY_tQTlSgR8dZBODckz7jKX0bsmvVzTGL1cNICuk8ByW/w75-h113/The%20Patron%20Saint%20of%20Liars.jpg" width="75" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhituoThhEWn3QaOwo0x0U6IdsK7wvBj_AcfHrZnqHL6pqNCd9fDw3QSAHX-rkFCS-N9tjddGKw4wITEz8_4hfGXbGiPV6_IluyJ_PDBFkN4JXePjhNXHfdJNb-Rop0Tm2uciYcQwgUeFYABYLWvQpQRkEAY7nfzoG_k8erKjutcbVleQ46WZrdR76gtCgq/s271/Taft%20-%20Ann%20Patchett.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="271" data-original-width="180" height="109" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhituoThhEWn3QaOwo0x0U6IdsK7wvBj_AcfHrZnqHL6pqNCd9fDw3QSAHX-rkFCS-N9tjddGKw4wITEz8_4hfGXbGiPV6_IluyJ_PDBFkN4JXePjhNXHfdJNb-Rop0Tm2uciYcQwgUeFYABYLWvQpQRkEAY7nfzoG_k8erKjutcbVleQ46WZrdR76gtCgq/w72-h109/Taft%20-%20Ann%20Patchett.jpg" width="72" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWXMExxLaGa-XY71bpdqd3gLv7oe3y_u3BG-W6iyNT57Xz37vXEQU_AugnAgpZUgJZdwP7mlaT5yf_dR7ybXaat_B_FBiT0hdQddcVjOJQ2Fy2y4uCB3QEIR3t0tWKtSrzkURGPzlee85_jKC0GmowTLwT1NoyLvmxUEQAbeV7s8p9n5w7RmcxbPogBChS/s271/Magician's%20Assistant%20-%20Ann%20Patchett.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="271" data-original-width="180" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWXMExxLaGa-XY71bpdqd3gLv7oe3y_u3BG-W6iyNT57Xz37vXEQU_AugnAgpZUgJZdwP7mlaT5yf_dR7ybXaat_B_FBiT0hdQddcVjOJQ2Fy2y4uCB3QEIR3t0tWKtSrzkURGPzlee85_jKC0GmowTLwT1NoyLvmxUEQAbeV7s8p9n5w7RmcxbPogBChS/w73-h110/Magician's%20Assistant%20-%20Ann%20Patchett.jpg" width="73" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiK0aJRiARh6Nay7kYOP8EJoS1L1RYBnd-A4PlViupQNm1HR7-z0dXBjkDBgHueIFMLaoAy2jBfltg5yU1lPOvm7TtzESux0_-yZpUUoQ8j6ZjcFUzUJV9wBJGCFnPSRaIf7yORAZxINLqeq0A36O5ubykEzZfheuRASL5EcVmZ_3f9jSpX1EHv0AG-NhsH" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1012" height="108" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiK0aJRiARh6Nay7kYOP8EJoS1L1RYBnd-A4PlViupQNm1HR7-z0dXBjkDBgHueIFMLaoAy2jBfltg5yU1lPOvm7TtzESux0_-yZpUUoQ8j6ZjcFUzUJV9wBJGCFnPSRaIf7yORAZxINLqeq0A36O5ubykEzZfheuRASL5EcVmZ_3f9jSpX1EHv0AG-NhsH=w73-h108" width="73" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg90QGAL3O08R3rvtkF5evxN2xB0-vNdvFgGQawRh42jEFbkIw5KbZsV5RhqjO2DyLGDRn89JoKV8x8wufFq5BgPC4UEnYEv5EsjrVRwtoVZVbcY2BvOE_hMFXnuOe3sIPjerkUQWLepNRwHxDPxtIX4kQB_WuMfFk-o7pvUSP_p_kN_lFLRKt64TqzKK-e/s266/Truth%20&%20Beauty%20-%20A%20Friendship.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="266" data-original-width="180" height="105" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg90QGAL3O08R3rvtkF5evxN2xB0-vNdvFgGQawRh42jEFbkIw5KbZsV5RhqjO2DyLGDRn89JoKV8x8wufFq5BgPC4UEnYEv5EsjrVRwtoVZVbcY2BvOE_hMFXnuOe3sIPjerkUQWLepNRwHxDPxtIX4kQB_WuMfFk-o7pvUSP_p_kN_lFLRKt64TqzKK-e/w71-h105/Truth%20&%20Beauty%20-%20A%20Friendship.jpg" width="71" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibi4KRbJDkdqa86WF8p954zJyMwXRXIktVOs6KA1ZclGPKvgIL5kNNdFZ8xv7dCHQ59Imneoa2iaMUVZ_6XKYustr4kksc6qQheXX-yd1Qy8tAmqfGtEUIWNIthcO2uf6TQ9M-XgFjXgxLp5iFJys1T5e-3tIsDtIXjNKyTtauDHvIJ_kYqaut1uGIAWa4/s275/Run%20-%20A%20Novel.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="275" data-original-width="180" height="106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibi4KRbJDkdqa86WF8p954zJyMwXRXIktVOs6KA1ZclGPKvgIL5kNNdFZ8xv7dCHQ59Imneoa2iaMUVZ_6XKYustr4kksc6qQheXX-yd1Qy8tAmqfGtEUIWNIthcO2uf6TQ9M-XgFjXgxLp5iFJys1T5e-3tIsDtIXjNKyTtauDHvIJ_kYqaut1uGIAWa4/w69-h106/Run%20-%20A%20Novel.jpg" width="69" /></a><br /><br /> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif0EP0wR2v-abrIA447JT1ete5WwD8ZQYGE3XP58KTfuOJYI7w47zi1bHhyv_rwF-DXukQhLA-m1cWYOXTAzquJvZoEt9jvLPex8uFI6stUYImhN4ioflvTaKE_sEba2QWVVl2VqY3kvjZJrH2Qjw8tzd8MUVEhK4ngKv-5TQclvcRhYl-6vtMgsYgXr8w/s267/State%20of%20Wonder.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="180" height="104" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif0EP0wR2v-abrIA447JT1ete5WwD8ZQYGE3XP58KTfuOJYI7w47zi1bHhyv_rwF-DXukQhLA-m1cWYOXTAzquJvZoEt9jvLPex8uFI6stUYImhN4ioflvTaKE_sEba2QWVVl2VqY3kvjZJrH2Qjw8tzd8MUVEhK4ngKv-5TQclvcRhYl-6vtMgsYgXr8w/w71-h104/State%20of%20Wonder.jpg" width="71" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizlSIP6Qv6uz4TDYldYFtcSdhbqcuc2g2rpy5sOkGghP-mfTbcgrR7jDyMgXUyIclQQP8iigPcMQR5wqRlF0aOw0rM2-a3nq49E4fCNo6yN4XRuML1yV01S1srQzfIxNh0koRBCi-de1IiZLEaTvnG5elYsNKr87VaeK1ZVN3NaAiM8wOHhw9O9JvA-C-n/s244/Bookshop%20Strikes%20Back.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="244" data-original-width="180" height="101" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizlSIP6Qv6uz4TDYldYFtcSdhbqcuc2g2rpy5sOkGghP-mfTbcgrR7jDyMgXUyIclQQP8iigPcMQR5wqRlF0aOw0rM2-a3nq49E4fCNo6yN4XRuML1yV01S1srQzfIxNh0koRBCi-de1IiZLEaTvnG5elYsNKr87VaeK1ZVN3NaAiM8wOHhw9O9JvA-C-n/w74-h101/Bookshop%20Strikes%20Back.jpg" width="74" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbmEfnMejik85iD6IiGoFGH4jdN3lgfG0vCHU9n04UrlRc0wLkZAPBDqAwz6T3KTm8sRGYXnBwLX9ssLMsFhqGkqfVa7wIdAr1PVJB583zJlyyv4omCiMGqEtSYNx3Apv23DkTnkpu6pH_XJ8B04eEXSFlq5YR6jnXcN3dKwfZAcYgOKY6CsSn2a97IqEL/s273/This%20Is%20the%20Story%20of%20a%20Happy%20Marriage.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="273" data-original-width="180" height="98" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbmEfnMejik85iD6IiGoFGH4jdN3lgfG0vCHU9n04UrlRc0wLkZAPBDqAwz6T3KTm8sRGYXnBwLX9ssLMsFhqGkqfVa7wIdAr1PVJB583zJlyyv4omCiMGqEtSYNx3Apv23DkTnkpu6pH_XJ8B04eEXSFlq5YR6jnXcN3dKwfZAcYgOKY6CsSn2a97IqEL/w65-h98/This%20Is%20the%20Story%20of%20a%20Happy%20Marriage.jpg" width="65" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgI-E2rwRHtXTeUbR6H3gqcZ3PCV6eFMa4vBtfQCyQOX7wt7fBbvHWcbXtbbJQVs34TSqjWM0p_SLhRgfb2rOzMuGRrcJH-BxqIAs3ZQ508Apn7BEu0gVm1JwoFuYxfxIBQ9WOvGFppMREUrQyxcAExv64dxsEgHq3NW-sB8c64LuJj5VEcMDUom6AuTKxX" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="264" height="101" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgI-E2rwRHtXTeUbR6H3gqcZ3PCV6eFMa4vBtfQCyQOX7wt7fBbvHWcbXtbbJQVs34TSqjWM0p_SLhRgfb2rOzMuGRrcJH-BxqIAs3ZQ508Apn7BEu0gVm1JwoFuYxfxIBQ9WOvGFppMREUrQyxcAExv64dxsEgHq3NW-sB8c64LuJj5VEcMDUom6AuTKxX=w66-h101" width="66" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPHxR19jN5w9y4ZEZH3BkFWltZHSmx9T36blwowkg-7m5XH43dYtFaovqptiiXTmmrhOeWSVYDFZNFT897w9qE1sfik29vO06IpOdjHHdTXpow5PgSkc22NC7EMj0n0cIY32C9hyphenhyphenfkPEWYXPg_t-lAPVzbLr7BMg6hFdyZ8YwoaRrxbqrWbjQHbcypiWw_/s181/Lambslide%20-%20Children's,%20Book%201.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="181" data-original-width="180" height="97" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPHxR19jN5w9y4ZEZH3BkFWltZHSmx9T36blwowkg-7m5XH43dYtFaovqptiiXTmmrhOeWSVYDFZNFT897w9qE1sfik29vO06IpOdjHHdTXpow5PgSkc22NC7EMj0n0cIY32C9hyphenhyphenfkPEWYXPg_t-lAPVzbLr7BMg6hFdyZ8YwoaRrxbqrWbjQHbcypiWw_/w96-h97/Lambslide%20-%20Children's,%20Book%201.jpg" width="96" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJvsHmKiLe5bx83vq-0lxxqRbhz2Zn7RXhaiRysrHCc_z_V9OaIhZBf8UdHMt1Qap0zm02AuyTe-OJW-bk6mFBwysyZphhIaG7XybOVjUKHhEPGmp-BlKGY2HwTY5q8PfdTE-mFHb7EtRm7bVzmEZiKeIl_i6uy_-2A742A4i7JCrYFwyuVTOed8Y5Cxu4/s271/The%20Dutch%20House%20-%20A%20Novel.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="271" data-original-width="180" height="98" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJvsHmKiLe5bx83vq-0lxxqRbhz2Zn7RXhaiRysrHCc_z_V9OaIhZBf8UdHMt1Qap0zm02AuyTe-OJW-bk6mFBwysyZphhIaG7XybOVjUKHhEPGmp-BlKGY2HwTY5q8PfdTE-mFHb7EtRm7bVzmEZiKeIl_i6uy_-2A742A4i7JCrYFwyuVTOed8Y5Cxu4/w65-h98/The%20Dutch%20House%20-%20A%20Novel.jpg" width="65" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrjsqWyU7PVrrNpn1Q6mX0YX8S21nn6VoUyx_qdpkvpz2Okl9rJmTCS58ODB86M59ZzAqrfYx112PF45G6T5w_QbM5v7YQnaZwM2vWrh1C7WBsCS_d2qDTH1Fu4hpa2EFWkF1G7ZDsPpcQ2ZSJhJxbs8wol02ZSAbKcFuRTghe4yo1cHFDlJFz6qEkERuE/s1000/Goat.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="993" height="98" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrjsqWyU7PVrrNpn1Q6mX0YX8S21nn6VoUyx_qdpkvpz2Okl9rJmTCS58ODB86M59ZzAqrfYx112PF45G6T5w_QbM5v7YQnaZwM2vWrh1C7WBsCS_d2qDTH1Fu4hpa2EFWkF1G7ZDsPpcQ2ZSJhJxbs8wol02ZSAbKcFuRTghe4yo1cHFDlJFz6qEkERuE/w98-h98/Goat.jpg" width="98" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCwyzyzcAzMcNePy16YsK8J4nqznYc6NiR5uMIp1leYYyBaezYSb5HGaceG7EycuRIvtaOdvZgPiKaeQR71cTtUMNiqoNOrs6SClgnBWAQEr_e4v4sr0HRvfIr8rcP2CzDVNDY4oxyTeXNttARBaH_o0BhmX_PS8-0O9-cTRujVxHoZgPh1Zowp60PST8o/s272/These%20Precious%20Days.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="272" data-original-width="180" height="98" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCwyzyzcAzMcNePy16YsK8J4nqznYc6NiR5uMIp1leYYyBaezYSb5HGaceG7EycuRIvtaOdvZgPiKaeQR71cTtUMNiqoNOrs6SClgnBWAQEr_e4v4sr0HRvfIr8rcP2CzDVNDY4oxyTeXNttARBaH_o0BhmX_PS8-0O9-cTRujVxHoZgPh1Zowp60PST8o/w65-h98/These%20Precious%20Days.jpg" width="65" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhbp9Lf540FVA-AkOu1Qw-7oXmU3Wx50N88aI0sIjQrTRTXMWPShsNwscQIHQRB00k3vIfcWxHTwsLe6AsEEqs47J0dy5qDAsuSsSRqRtg573Tiv4C04mZNUG6OdQm9jBw_3XYym-nOW_dWFkGgKfoKkZurunTXCog8bqrlfmcFSwNpb9nYH6Hbyht5KBqz" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1500" height="96" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhbp9Lf540FVA-AkOu1Qw-7oXmU3Wx50N88aI0sIjQrTRTXMWPShsNwscQIHQRB00k3vIfcWxHTwsLe6AsEEqs47J0dy5qDAsuSsSRqRtg573Tiv4C04mZNUG6OdQm9jBw_3XYym-nOW_dWFkGgKfoKkZurunTXCog8bqrlfmcFSwNpb9nYH6Hbyht5KBqz=w96-h96" width="96" /></a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><span style="font-size: medium;">On a recent trip to Nashville, my wife and I stopped in to Parnassus Books to say hello. I used to call on them when I was a publisher's rep and Linda-Marie, being the executive director of <a href="https://sibaweb.com/">SIBA</a>, wanted to say hello to a member store. Little did we know that Ann Patchett would happen to be there signing copies of her books. She was delightful and graciously agreed to my interview for <a href="https://advancereadingcopy-jon.blogspot.com/">Advance Reading Copy</a>.<br /><br />In November, 2011, Ann opened <a href="http://www.parnassusbooks.net/">Parnassus Books</a> with her business partner Karen Hayes. She has since become a spokesperson for independent booksellers, championing books and bookstores on NPR, <a href="http://www.cc.com/video-clips/tqad40/the-colbert-report-ann-patchett">The Colbert Report </a>(including the <a href="https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/colbert-signs-off-and-ann-patchett-sings-along/article_027e1de2-f2c0-5804-ac18-69e34d0c6d97.html">series finale</a>), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzaCKpps5EU">Oprah's Super Soul Sunday</a>, The Martha Stewart Show, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgOzDXDHXrs">The CBS Early Show</a>, among many others. Along with James Patterson, she was the honorary chair of <a href="http://www.bookweb.org/news/world-book-night-announces-2013-titles-honorary-chairs-opening-giver-sign">World Book Night</a>. In 2012 she was named by Time magazine as one of the <a href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2111975_2111976_2112138,00.html">100 Most Influential People in the World</a>.</span></div><p><i><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Ann, tell me about your new book.</span></b></i></p><p><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: medium;">While I was writing THE DUTCH HOUSE I started to think about a story about a woman who's life had been defined by playing Emily in high school. That was the start of TOM LAKE. I then went on to write THESE PRECIOUS DAYS but I just kept noodling around with the plot. It's a story about the difference between youthful love and married love. It's about children's assumptions about their parents lives, and how we have a very hard time imagining our parents doing anything before we were born. It's about having the life you want, not the life you're supposed to want. It's about the influence of literature. </span></p><p><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: medium;">It's about cherries.</span></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Where you live and why you love it so much.</span></i></b></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I live in Nashville, which is where I grew up. I live on a street I used to ride my bike down as a kid. I always thought it was the most wonderful street in the world because there were sidewalks and the houses weren’t too far apart. My husband bought this house when we were dating. I lived about three blocks away. When we finally decided to get married he said we should both sell our houses and find a place together that would be ours. I said no, I loved his house. I was marrying him and I was marrying his house. That was eighteen years ago. Karl wishes we lived in a much bigger house now, and I wish we lived in a much smaller house. I believe this house is the only place where we could both be happy.</span></p><p><i><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories?</span></b></i></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUwP6NYuCVWNqfW8NCQRd27c1UKqd3NThA4rMB2LJjEg8-VGjRseug8amzYHR8eXly-hcMACPnDyAlgPxjZNzfp9W4njNrQOpfFWlD7RqEoE37ICL4o0h8j7V9kLpDPDQpswjdrbbpRH27g7ZVfqhyt45F-RWNgC9oAHVYRFmEn7XPsqCIvOEjUD4ToXQr/s575/IMG_0837.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="575" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUwP6NYuCVWNqfW8NCQRd27c1UKqd3NThA4rMB2LJjEg8-VGjRseug8amzYHR8eXly-hcMACPnDyAlgPxjZNzfp9W4njNrQOpfFWlD7RqEoE37ICL4o0h8j7V9kLpDPDQpswjdrbbpRH27g7ZVfqhyt45F-RWNgC9oAHVYRFmEn7XPsqCIvOEjUD4ToXQr/w455-h317/IMG_0837.jpg" width="455" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">When I was seven my mother and sister and I moved constantly. I probably lived three different places when I was seven. My mother struggled. She worked all the time, there wasn’t any money. She was trying really hard. It wasn’t a time for fond memories.</span></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?</span></i></b></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">JAMES, by Percival Everett </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVD02FYBlG8cLpws1Fk6XxL3AyQV0ZPXnJVhNbuhKlGgoYfcVhkKmVCPn5kCjcPiNOn2HlKzCc3FsRdP1PDVMcevtj5e0acLXCMlvX4UsH_mCoacnUJbPhNeaICwfFXFQ0sRKEgBT2qaWSIWrMt9tGUCfxsKgxEsSuBpp5M_SjV-fGMeeFl3sCtIhC3aQa/s400/James.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="390" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVD02FYBlG8cLpws1Fk6XxL3AyQV0ZPXnJVhNbuhKlGgoYfcVhkKmVCPn5kCjcPiNOn2HlKzCc3FsRdP1PDVMcevtj5e0acLXCMlvX4UsH_mCoacnUJbPhNeaICwfFXFQ0sRKEgBT2qaWSIWrMt9tGUCfxsKgxEsSuBpp5M_SjV-fGMeeFl3sCtIhC3aQa/w261-h390/James.jpg" width="261" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;">It’s coming out in March of 2024. It’s a retelling of HUCKLEBERRY FINN from the perspective of Jim. It’s a brilliant book, a book that reminded me that what I think I know may not be the truth. I hope it’s a huge success. I feel like it’s a book that’s going to start a lot of important conversation.</span><p></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it makes it so?</span></i></b></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">CHARLOTTE’S WEB. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAQARu9wWiFqkGOf50qsNsh4dG1bTT0K-DFyZKN5ADQfmM3kzTyqomlUJQvh1MbNqYsxhbS_piMNdzl2DHJa6g9EqmAXD4DpeNfpAWjBHWhhG5ZasqwDrjLHTMef9cBNhP8wGtZ8S6H3mIqdQzM1WUBKWFZkRLjvysbjtO8C3HIT34FBtlmBRSmIDPa8Uc/s900/Charlotte.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="620" height="429" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAQARu9wWiFqkGOf50qsNsh4dG1bTT0K-DFyZKN5ADQfmM3kzTyqomlUJQvh1MbNqYsxhbS_piMNdzl2DHJa6g9EqmAXD4DpeNfpAWjBHWhhG5ZasqwDrjLHTMef9cBNhP8wGtZ8S6H3mIqdQzM1WUBKWFZkRLjvysbjtO8C3HIT34FBtlmBRSmIDPa8Uc/w295-h429/Charlotte.jpg" width="295" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">We lived on a farm for awhile when I was a kid, not a working farm, but a large piece of land in the country with animals. I related to Fern and I related to the animals. I begged my stepfather for a pig and he got me one for my ninth birthday. I feel so lucky that I got to spend so much of my childhood outside, with animals, in barns. That book was both urgent and beautiful. It made me feel like it was possible to change your fate.</div></span><p></p><p><i><b><span style="font-size: medium;">How do you feel about “Independent Bookstores” and their role in your success?</span></b></i></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Well, I own an independent bookstore, Parnassus Books in Nashville. I spend much of my life promoting bookstores, booksellers, books. Independent bookstores have been very supportive of me and I’ve been very supportive of them. Bookstore people are my friends. We help each other out.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOQsgzjobIxmI7VxyGucbz_ywW1PK0ALZ8YZxUd_-Ca1bfXSa61wvtoeZxwqbJCg9BXxw-4IcUwRv0EAsDv4-YLVtNKeLgihEIyDMBAHU6UNPvVg6_7mfmfz0-Um6A7DnuCHNGLDrhKJ2Li3B70DOgyuo5-NjOVc9CFm0uREZByAHP0_0SRyqlcvFtkKZh/s2262/Ann%20at%20Parnassus.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1508" data-original-width="2262" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOQsgzjobIxmI7VxyGucbz_ywW1PK0ALZ8YZxUd_-Ca1bfXSa61wvtoeZxwqbJCg9BXxw-4IcUwRv0EAsDv4-YLVtNKeLgihEIyDMBAHU6UNPvVg6_7mfmfz0-Um6A7DnuCHNGLDrhKJ2Li3B70DOgyuo5-NjOVc9CFm0uREZByAHP0_0SRyqlcvFtkKZh/w474-h315/Ann%20at%20Parnassus.jpg" width="474" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>What a book needs most is to have people read it. You can have a huge ad campaign and a giant tour but the thing the makes a difference is a bookseller reading a book and saying to a customer, “I loved this one. Try this one.” Booksellers have done that for me. I’m incredibly grateful.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?</i></b></span></p><br /><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Well there is this, about two years ago my sister and I had both gone to see our mother. Kate DiCamillo was with me. When it was time to go Kate and I sat in the car for a few minutes and talked about something, then I backed out of the driveway and my sister backed out of the garage and we ran into each other. Her car (a Subaru) was fine. My car (a Toyota) was mashed. It was my fault. Heather went back to the bookstore (she works at the bookstore) and when Kate and I got there an hour later she was wearing a cervical collar. Everyone in the store was waiting for me to see her. It was like a surprise party. We laughed for about an hour.<br /><br />How did you meet your beloved? How did your first date go?<br /><br />Karl is a doctor and my mother was one of his office nurses for years. I knew him in passing, he was my mother’s boss, but I never gave him a thought. Then he got divorced and he told my mother he wanted to ask me out. It was a strange situation. I told him I was happy to talk to him but I didn’t want to go on a date. We went to dinner and the owner of the restaurant kept sending a waiter over to our table with a message that she had to see him in the back. He kept getting up to go, then she would come to the table and sit next to him. I was laughing my head off. I told him he was doomed. </span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLE7saJHDRA0uAs0KB85he_ozW9K43KIv76vaaEgnF4WJNxMrzjVYjASagtQlU42UizuAQbb3CfP_rJPPVWU-7xUZTspeNuq6a5fQmu26eR3nwqUnLPuRrZlgf7aZ18L9kdR2aIMk16o1jPYTigL650pddVF2zH-jq2BGzSlZtw7hvvdoDC3k1vZPzY5DC/s640/IMG_0836.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="463" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLE7saJHDRA0uAs0KB85he_ozW9K43KIv76vaaEgnF4WJNxMrzjVYjASagtQlU42UizuAQbb3CfP_rJPPVWU-7xUZTspeNuq6a5fQmu26eR3nwqUnLPuRrZlgf7aZ18L9kdR2aIMk16o1jPYTigL650pddVF2zH-jq2BGzSlZtw7hvvdoDC3k1vZPzY5DC/w347-h463/IMG_0836.jpg" width="347" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We’ve been together almost thirty years.</span></span></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Is there a song, person or group that you listen to when you are feeling a bit down? </span></i></b></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">It changes all the time. It was Joni Mitchell <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglVyek7ZvmmTl3-iuHd9vjzkJEG6ohISShXVuGwApjvgRy3EsCxlc6ptHBAJ8jiKskJ33QrP8_gpr5048rNk84rSBTsvOLzRh21UYyXkKPHnH2t5XZNun75EYtXqEts88oXs7L-_3KSoKtn3ChLdVmtfn0aRXLgUQD9-rAIu-HuIQB9iJHXePpCD-qPjff/s2048/Joni.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="115" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglVyek7ZvmmTl3-iuHd9vjzkJEG6ohISShXVuGwApjvgRy3EsCxlc6ptHBAJ8jiKskJ33QrP8_gpr5048rNk84rSBTsvOLzRh21UYyXkKPHnH2t5XZNun75EYtXqEts88oXs7L-_3KSoKtn3ChLdVmtfn0aRXLgUQD9-rAIu-HuIQB9iJHXePpCD-qPjff/w115-h115/Joni.jpg" width="115" /></a></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>and Laura Nyro <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6DtTvSkAwuQAFIK4526T6T7f00fvyyTWtVPdGT-7Sbxx5H0fR1Lr306rd1s7m_8tBRSPXRHw7a-_fHqhe1Us2zF_C7s56QqvYV5QHKQFVQpKaaPeCWvKJmzgEm6tF98yRIXVUtyTYw6A2S1d-D-FkA-m8NeL861JhP8949uui7xXCalqMxPdVrifGx4cd/s417/Laura-Nyro.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="417" data-original-width="355" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6DtTvSkAwuQAFIK4526T6T7f00fvyyTWtVPdGT-7Sbxx5H0fR1Lr306rd1s7m_8tBRSPXRHw7a-_fHqhe1Us2zF_C7s56QqvYV5QHKQFVQpKaaPeCWvKJmzgEm6tF98yRIXVUtyTYw6A2S1d-D-FkA-m8NeL861JhP8949uui7xXCalqMxPdVrifGx4cd/w115-h136/Laura-Nyro.jpg" width="115" /></a> </span>when I was young.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br /> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">These days I go to Olivia Rodrigo <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKI-AABP5l8Ob1CkoZQuKUwxek6LgHFA52n4zy0mRA2ePXhPV0kn9YKo6suhHXxp-4vTgiJEyWuFMF97s2jjK18fPIsne3n6eGCgLRhhjkmH4t18PChA3lml8cS9beUTdCtkL76g-_jyqAerEd22-KEWcsxyzRAU0suqSQhG-x2IK5irvdrhFlAdax6_yr/s2560/Olivia-Rodrigo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="2088" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKI-AABP5l8Ob1CkoZQuKUwxek6LgHFA52n4zy0mRA2ePXhPV0kn9YKo6suhHXxp-4vTgiJEyWuFMF97s2jjK18fPIsne3n6eGCgLRhhjkmH4t18PChA3lml8cS9beUTdCtkL76g-_jyqAerEd22-KEWcsxyzRAU0suqSQhG-x2IK5irvdrhFlAdax6_yr/w90-h111/Olivia-Rodrigo.jpg" width="90" /></a> her song called “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu5yshucHBg">Making the Bed</a>.” </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Sometimes I feel like I don’t want to be where I am.</span></div><div><p></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">How are you different now than you were in your 20’s?</span></i></b></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Older. I’m so much older. I have power now. I probably had a completely different kind of power then but I had no idea how to use it. In many ways I’m the same—I’m disciplined, focused. I’ve never needed much approval. But so much of the energy of my twenties was spent wondering where I would go and whether or not I’d get the job and trying to figure out my love life (Did I want him? Did he want me?) I don’t have to worry about any of that now. It frees up time to help independent bookstores.</span></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Is there a question no one has ever asked you that you wish they would? Something, perhaps, that people would be surprised to know about you?</span></i></b></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I can’t think of any. I write personal essays. I don’t have secrets. If I’m wrestling with something, chances are I’ve written about it.</span></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">And in a short essay…………………………</span></i></b></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME</span></i></b></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,</span></i></b></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,</span></i></b></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">actually experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all,</span></i></b></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them.</span></i></b></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">When would you go?</span></i></b></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Where would you go?</span></i></b></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Who would you want to meet?</span></i></b></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">And most importantly, why do you think you chose this time?</span></i></b></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I’d want to see the people I love again. I’d want to see my friend Lucy. I’d be happy with any period of time from when we became close when we were 21 until she died at 39. I don’t think I could change the outcome of her life but I could go back and give her all the love and support I could possibly give her. The same is true for my brother-in-law. We were really good friends. I’d love to just sit with him, let him know I had all the time in the world for him. I’d love to see my grandmother again, my father, and tell them that things worked out well for me and that I’m so grateful for their love and support. I hold onto so much love for these people. I’m pretty sure they knew how much I loved them but still, I see time travel as a chance to tell them again.</span></p><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>Thank you Ann, you are the first "Most Influential Person of the World" I have interviewed (well there was Michael Palin, but for some crazy reason he didn't make that list). Congratulations on your continued success and thank you for your heartfelt answers to my questions.</i></b></span></div></div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-6684540617443778902023-11-10T14:39:00.001-05:002023-11-10T19:11:52.359-05:00Pauline Gedge<p> </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYHggOTUBc-p8ZeeSUTz-2wzcLzQp9XF58FympU1eG4CZ3cU8xSg-GeNYNlewOW87xC2opjdzMTLi6i62qL4Mru8xRTlZHtKqls4HuhAjdxUgqp5DCJdl2g6fQ93furiF4u3V5m6-meMO6YzwKS532g15YEfLduyeRCY5Gc79nl9jf4xjT4WSku0LswJL7/s2193/Pauline5.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2112" data-original-width="2193" height="448" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYHggOTUBc-p8ZeeSUTz-2wzcLzQp9XF58FympU1eG4CZ3cU8xSg-GeNYNlewOW87xC2opjdzMTLi6i62qL4Mru8xRTlZHtKqls4HuhAjdxUgqp5DCJdl2g6fQ93furiF4u3V5m6-meMO6YzwKS532g15YEfLduyeRCY5Gc79nl9jf4xjT4WSku0LswJL7/w465-h448/Pauline5.jpg" width="465" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div> <img border="0" height="98" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl5zW_fPYaGpcp0RvXO6nK8uXjH-EiCZ_k0gqX3hdVFyanUbzNxe_yx3ENcO6pFsLuqJEY2mPJps7RfwxxIZBKF-Ss7NtPXOYjFkDmJa2m_VL-CsotRsPubEybne3r267TJi6YWIXjXZzuhT1D_kUxPKWJulyOaA8i8S98L5vvI8Zh4t04SHF4cyY8IXsc/w65-h98/Child.jpg" width="65" /> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtRlmyCtzNEv90G_y-gSHfRCt-ylOjzatfJoe_JpkIDhvATue9uUTjmYqwB75GttujyHizUHmLbPX32RD0T1xo4_w8kW9h_m5lrvKalCRs9kpAfwwjjPJfuf3Ifa-ksb2uTeYMMnq58BMrfU998jKFuAQeo6eAjNPkzGxaHdMpr30rNvpLUY-mWlRn5LCT/s350/eagle.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="233" height="98" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtRlmyCtzNEv90G_y-gSHfRCt-ylOjzatfJoe_JpkIDhvATue9uUTjmYqwB75GttujyHizUHmLbPX32RD0T1xo4_w8kW9h_m5lrvKalCRs9kpAfwwjjPJfuf3Ifa-ksb2uTeYMMnq58BMrfU998jKFuAQeo6eAjNPkzGxaHdMpr30rNvpLUY-mWlRn5LCT/w65-h98/eagle.jpg" width="65" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVv2sUgzza_bexWxmgCxAH8JbPS388B0zdar2aMtMZ9KB1zruSCwzWNV-HZbSpS_z7-Wth4mlCG25Uj4xfmEKAO4P61ODw1Zp2YzvvM8A1a6G7HVWMDx4qICROvxUNekdU6PinsTlguAqb3U1-3mRDD4Kfrq5HOGrsJuhRK2Og9CYMFnbaFZ9vmJDft9LB/s500/Star.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="342" height="98" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVv2sUgzza_bexWxmgCxAH8JbPS388B0zdar2aMtMZ9KB1zruSCwzWNV-HZbSpS_z7-Wth4mlCG25Uj4xfmEKAO4P61ODw1Zp2YzvvM8A1a6G7HVWMDx4qICROvxUNekdU6PinsTlguAqb3U1-3mRDD4Kfrq5HOGrsJuhRK2Og9CYMFnbaFZ9vmJDft9LB/w68-h98/Star.jpg" width="68" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9C7LoPXsNnZeEDK5LxqCq0VHG0__ql7sreG7VwQmLzhtLertuM0DgLiw8FBKycet1f5oHGulmM3ParZ0Lvac13wa7sUk4hUowKtp9nnaOOpWmwWPZjUlXyvow-BR2OP6bETXCWYXCNJ3g01WMJVuqlMP4uYno-qo-KUPeyszv1rQBQSPZ5zblcLTtjfU2/s1000/12.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="667" height="97" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9C7LoPXsNnZeEDK5LxqCq0VHG0__ql7sreG7VwQmLzhtLertuM0DgLiw8FBKycet1f5oHGulmM3ParZ0Lvac13wa7sUk4hUowKtp9nnaOOpWmwWPZjUlXyvow-BR2OP6bETXCWYXCNJ3g01WMJVuqlMP4uYno-qo-KUPeyszv1rQBQSPZ5zblcLTtjfU2/w64-h97/12.jpg" width="64" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxdHXOL9NAOVWwmYes8a9mrDJ3zLymCcVWnMJn05_vwZR6BAWDZ1VDSK9qUTpxaYQNP6bSfFY3vSKCoW0tAAbBjaS0_1xHYi2oc09zc9WLKMgvenXTRuFb-bpA0KxygSYKmXWWbxNh8b1_jUYjJReiLqCCiQE_C3IgRh3c-iCicdgNAi1qRD29awLKlH1k/s500/scroll.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="310" height="96" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxdHXOL9NAOVWwmYes8a9mrDJ3zLymCcVWnMJn05_vwZR6BAWDZ1VDSK9qUTpxaYQNP6bSfFY3vSKCoW0tAAbBjaS0_1xHYi2oc09zc9WLKMgvenXTRuFb-bpA0KxygSYKmXWWbxNh8b1_jUYjJReiLqCCiQE_C3IgRh3c-iCicdgNAi1qRD29awLKlH1k/w59-h96/scroll.jpg" width="59" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF2dC8fqq-Bty8xkC9xaLgl9zuPrNbmHkm9cOU_lT60zqbkQsOEZOBJ7JQtuXBuodnxz545DMxzNil94oTr1K-PfIwEZt_4gZIVVtEY28QFxQhgd80EuATWqAlH7sTtJggUpmp9dI72dc5xQ5XN4rOwQ6oCFz_4iHvU_GM9Ld2om-pL_4kvCcpoYQdC1fG/s491/Coven.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="491" data-original-width="330" height="95" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF2dC8fqq-Bty8xkC9xaLgl9zuPrNbmHkm9cOU_lT60zqbkQsOEZOBJ7JQtuXBuodnxz545DMxzNil94oTr1K-PfIwEZt_4gZIVVtEY28QFxQhgd80EuATWqAlH7sTtJggUpmp9dI72dc5xQ5XN4rOwQ6oCFz_4iHvU_GM9Ld2om-pL_4kvCcpoYQdC1fG/w64-h95/Coven.jpg" width="64" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYW_6GSkxxN7lr8eSJh_S9sNbFo6F_Szbep8K3vi35azKl63SPOmuwlD-huDb12VFzHSGMJIALLMCIx7AJyPdyCSpvvAXAf4FhAun7dRe94onIomGsv9b1VYvcokc1-fFdT1PS5WPyB4W0r__ie_jS5uiq5FXvBa1mvuyAV5khveRVwB9zEF0HWivbG5CI/s400/Lady.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="256" height="94" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYW_6GSkxxN7lr8eSJh_S9sNbFo6F_Szbep8K3vi35azKl63SPOmuwlD-huDb12VFzHSGMJIALLMCIx7AJyPdyCSpvvAXAf4FhAun7dRe94onIomGsv9b1VYvcokc1-fFdT1PS5WPyB4W0r__ie_jS5uiq5FXvBa1mvuyAV5khveRVwB9zEF0HWivbG5CI/w60-h94/Lady.jpg" width="60" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt8sE7IspabmJ-rSCcWqmvJee3B45gIFbF_UavJBgs4KPXWrz4UAOdf6QTAhinnThV9ujoUVTA-IcLaaRgaHLzRR27O-WyrwcrbIszBxXHycIUgK9l4UnNWUIXfe77ClDQsANXOils2AywEqyROOFDLT9BsR5ClBUrOfBhOFlXeC3ql1jJOl8gjjARFBTl/s500/House4.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="330" height="95" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt8sE7IspabmJ-rSCcWqmvJee3B45gIFbF_UavJBgs4KPXWrz4UAOdf6QTAhinnThV9ujoUVTA-IcLaaRgaHLzRR27O-WyrwcrbIszBxXHycIUgK9l4UnNWUIXfe77ClDQsANXOils2AywEqyROOFDLT9BsR5ClBUrOfBhOFlXeC3ql1jJOl8gjjARFBTl/w63-h95/House4.jpg" width="63" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYu-ujQKTpAUb0bHKKQ6YljeW0ygSx8bGTY3CLvadd4LWetVyC8kI7vopRWRZss0FS7vK_WOop2LUKykcS0tztefDeHRfmju_9Ox__nLzL2Wbztd97l0EF6INTTJJWcPEBLobi_7QwiZuO_Q6e-9iufl77EUU4QmoOBc85SaiQ1OlrPAvxoVPwNAa__ybT/s400/Hippo.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="250" height="95" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYu-ujQKTpAUb0bHKKQ6YljeW0ygSx8bGTY3CLvadd4LWetVyC8kI7vopRWRZss0FS7vK_WOop2LUKykcS0tztefDeHRfmju_9Ox__nLzL2Wbztd97l0EF6INTTJJWcPEBLobi_7QwiZuO_Q6e-9iufl77EUU4QmoOBc85SaiQ1OlrPAvxoVPwNAa__ybT/w59-h95/Hippo.jpg" width="59" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_zmQBz0SpNcXsxtMHpCUAQU9xn7M9o-MlH8IHv2Q6ST9RYqJ26zbgQtmPUiBot3NXXI2gExwda3zka6By7Lhyphenhypheneif5Qn2B3-VSyyMVY292WJa7j6QoW8Fb41_-GOkHAwDOf1fd28h7T-3ESgxkvgBzkar8zc0JIqxstGz_0xQ2POaQaAUmkRINcrXIk0FG/s400/Oasis.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="244" height="94" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_zmQBz0SpNcXsxtMHpCUAQU9xn7M9o-MlH8IHv2Q6ST9RYqJ26zbgQtmPUiBot3NXXI2gExwda3zka6By7Lhyphenhypheneif5Qn2B3-VSyyMVY292WJa7j6QoW8Fb41_-GOkHAwDOf1fd28h7T-3ESgxkvgBzkar8zc0JIqxstGz_0xQ2POaQaAUmkRINcrXIk0FG/w57-h94/Oasis.jpg" width="57" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWf0bVsQ6dteY1_MvLOldNKuEPjpkKEOdYZyAhZufKE9wa-TxLl0nVFBZCQLzEa8VUuS2wvCXdxkN_VlRouu42tQfPIBuVC_z-wnS1sobwC-A_cbHd3xCSovDES8E1NBojaxoZV4c-HiYEVwRXCRa4OqbxSoZTQScLaUUJYbYwD6zh_VKuxgb0cKUSNgsa/s330/Horus.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="200" height="96" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWf0bVsQ6dteY1_MvLOldNKuEPjpkKEOdYZyAhZufKE9wa-TxLl0nVFBZCQLzEa8VUuS2wvCXdxkN_VlRouu42tQfPIBuVC_z-wnS1sobwC-A_cbHd3xCSovDES8E1NBojaxoZV4c-HiYEVwRXCRa4OqbxSoZTQScLaUUJYbYwD6zh_VKuxgb0cKUSNgsa/w58-h96/Horus.jpg" width="58" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl68jtt1iAM7AU1SFO_lOTKKVzk6m-tCpNyknwSArI0ODt1nBBgLAkA-83e5avGIOEVJz-ZdolY7ikucM_-QRrxTXUXPexCF_g0sPmlt-dkMTtybTDcisiXwe0g82JgiXELNwLN1fADBtcpvsnINU6_CPevZu03O8eAsmEZsePKCbE7VUftALB_m0wUOjj/s375/Twice.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="212" height="96" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl68jtt1iAM7AU1SFO_lOTKKVzk6m-tCpNyknwSArI0ODt1nBBgLAkA-83e5avGIOEVJz-ZdolY7ikucM_-QRrxTXUXPexCF_g0sPmlt-dkMTtybTDcisiXwe0g82JgiXELNwLN1fADBtcpvsnINU6_CPevZu03O8eAsmEZsePKCbE7VUftALB_m0wUOjj/w54-h96/Twice.jpg" width="54" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlG7QzYb2wNtnuvq12G25rY2UamiWme37dCf9C9xjS9I5nyXQNkikFzqdTgiKSuIm0D_xBVJqIe0_A4iJ64cpMgCkNBM4XQ4tx9_skz6hmSkt0UnStINPZsDOe3D5HVKtsFEf713s65lAoorpMmjdWZfy1eVsWN1st7yyap6wn6o5dedlXkNHYC5CYRZmS/s400/Seer.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="97" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlG7QzYb2wNtnuvq12G25rY2UamiWme37dCf9C9xjS9I5nyXQNkikFzqdTgiKSuIm0D_xBVJqIe0_A4iJ64cpMgCkNBM4XQ4tx9_skz6hmSkt0UnStINPZsDOe3D5HVKtsFEf713s65lAoorpMmjdWZfy1eVsWN1st7yyap6wn6o5dedlXkNHYC5CYRZmS/w64-h97/Seer.jpg" width="64" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOddbVKJhy5RHxRPIdbdUXftELjHzpqjEc0uSxDxOBQJhiGiUhtovMs8rDsY1te1Qs7BHJDoA4W0rjBNF9Z9ydLmGbEN76HEL0qIvtSptxasTZOf3_9PbvaQF4dBfDnHl2FjAGGYHrgeXEIbLk2J4Z6zcJ_Cl-6iU93zJ-WJq2DGZeC-4ZgGwDZVLlYyHm/s400/Kings.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="265" height="95" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOddbVKJhy5RHxRPIdbdUXftELjHzpqjEc0uSxDxOBQJhiGiUhtovMs8rDsY1te1Qs7BHJDoA4W0rjBNF9Z9ydLmGbEN76HEL0qIvtSptxasTZOf3_9PbvaQF4dBfDnHl2FjAGGYHrgeXEIbLk2J4Z6zcJ_Cl-6iU93zJ-WJq2DGZeC-4ZgGwDZVLlYyHm/w63-h95/Kings.jpg" width="63" /></a></div><div><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Pauline Gedge changed my life. Literally, changed my life. It all started when I read her first book </span><i style="font-size: large;">Child of the Morning, </i><span style="font-size: large;">in the late 1970's</span><i style="font-size: large;">. </i><span style="font-size: large;">I was the manager of a chain bookstore and had always had a passing interest in ancient Egypt. When I saw the gorgeous cover of </span><i style="font-size: large;">Child of the Morning</i><span style="font-size: large;"> (</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dial_Press" style="font-size: large;">The Dial Press</a><span style="font-size: large;">) painted by the great </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_and_Diane_Dillon" style="font-size: large;">Leo and Diane Dillon</a><span style="font-size: large;">, I was intrigued. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgiXITVE34P0GAQX2nacn1wSLii2Zc--syAM4kHtjaCzMSZxfVSy06KOfMz9SYe_pmV2GdOkAODLPRuQ49A5K0h8_fZNOrL6VpWW9un7ggYnzD181vd9C64I7_g-S5ElFeFHxv0wDhUpTSGCc7Vz4X8dn9yDlsRYG_kAjOu2YHjNkRj0Xq5m7-FR0vkR3ko" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="266" height="410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgiXITVE34P0GAQX2nacn1wSLii2Zc--syAM4kHtjaCzMSZxfVSy06KOfMz9SYe_pmV2GdOkAODLPRuQ49A5K0h8_fZNOrL6VpWW9un7ggYnzD181vd9C64I7_g-S5ElFeFHxv0wDhUpTSGCc7Vz4X8dn9yDlsRYG_kAjOu2YHjNkRj0Xq5m7-FR0vkR3ko=w273-h410" width="273" /></a></div><br /></span><div><span style="font-size: large;">I was hooked within the first few pages and couldn't put it down. I fell in love with Hatshepsut, her beauty, her intelligence, and her kindness. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuCfzotxxungeOk__hSvFXSk71uzqTHwFRCMZ6-EYCMo5e8_ZQPjCVK6X4ZklTWoW7vlYNLCJcqqqaS11BkjLf1-Y3OF6NFtbzvUmM1wQ6roJ9T8GHM9BSPV0iJxH9M6MQLoFexSxYeia49jqM9q3tj2TT9kkr-vpXb340ScNrGSDTaWJ8jSfkbr9peBzf/s908/Hatshepsut2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="908" data-original-width="416" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuCfzotxxungeOk__hSvFXSk71uzqTHwFRCMZ6-EYCMo5e8_ZQPjCVK6X4ZklTWoW7vlYNLCJcqqqaS11BkjLf1-Y3OF6NFtbzvUmM1wQ6roJ9T8GHM9BSPV0iJxH9M6MQLoFexSxYeia49jqM9q3tj2TT9kkr-vpXb340ScNrGSDTaWJ8jSfkbr9peBzf/s320/Hatshepsut2.jpg" width="147" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hatshepsut</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I was fascinated to read how she met her lover Senenmut, how she became Pharoah of all Egypt, and her wise leadership. I was determined to visit Egypt one day and see her and Senenut's resting places. In November of 2012 I actually did! I carried Pauline's book with me and sent her the photo of me holding it at her temple. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div></span><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I also had the honor of sitting completely alone, in the dark, for at least 10 minutes in the antechamber, which is located dead center in the middle of the Great Pyramid of Giza, right next to the Pharoah Khufu sarcophagus.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">All because of you and your amazing book, Pauline. Thank you.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpaaqe7NdPJ8k5_2ILx07BLomkcr7rcCqBDcjbEEKR69ZweQJ2pr1I63L73tJ8Eg6AJV88AA5jRxbtJ8LWiOQFDiXArfpgANubbARivSkcVIqZOncza36WwXr0WkhODC1VamDuGNlih07i7kh4YeioauDeWbZT9kZRPJLcCcUYv9UmYo-ns3VBvPzij07S/s960/Jon%20in%20Egypt.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="649" data-original-width="960" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpaaqe7NdPJ8k5_2ILx07BLomkcr7rcCqBDcjbEEKR69ZweQJ2pr1I63L73tJ8Eg6AJV88AA5jRxbtJ8LWiOQFDiXArfpgANubbARivSkcVIqZOncza36WwXr0WkhODC1VamDuGNlih07i7kh4YeioauDeWbZT9kZRPJLcCcUYv9UmYo-ns3VBvPzij07S/s320/Jon%20in%20Egypt.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jon in Egypt</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Pauline Gedge is one of the most popular Canadian authors. She is well-known for several successful novels based in the historical fiction, fantasy, and science fiction genres, but particularly famous for her trilogy novel series, <i>The King’s Man</i> and the <i>Lords of the Two Lands</i>. Pauline has written 14 novels, which have together sold a total of 6 million printed copies worldwide and have been translated into more than 10 foreign languages. Pauline was born on December 11, 1945 in Auckland, New Zealand, the eldest of three sisters. She migrated to England with her family at the age of 6 years and now lives in Canada.</span></div><div><div><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Pauline, tell me where you live and why you love it so much.</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Since the 1970's I've lived in a very small village in north-central Alberta, Canada where the only noise comes from the trains that rocket past. The one significant event each year is the Sports Weekend. Baseball teams descend from other villages together with chuck wagons, horses, and often tourists who spend their summers driving or towing their RV's from one fete to another. I close my door until the last straggler has moved on and peace descends again.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHRcdfOrzP0egmVDAn47ECvJMjR5i3rS2VzOXjnKMV1rIgeajMzENJkh-eBex1RD0Y8q0XizK3sEws8BuKrkQOuZqk1LloVvvfVm5ktiN7Ax3ztKjYjKMZZXHyvHEJjVFSIUqzbC-bUi0nQbzxZCFnH34ee-KPpvZp7S1P3At6SUIk2_q4s7WawYZ5G4SP/s960/Edgerton%202.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="601" data-original-width="960" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHRcdfOrzP0egmVDAn47ECvJMjR5i3rS2VzOXjnKMV1rIgeajMzENJkh-eBex1RD0Y8q0XizK3sEws8BuKrkQOuZqk1LloVvvfVm5ktiN7Ax3ztKjYjKMZZXHyvHEJjVFSIUqzbC-bUi0nQbzxZCFnH34ee-KPpvZp7S1P3At6SUIk2_q4s7WawYZ5G4SP/w491-h308/Edgerton%202.jpg" width="491" /></a></div><br /><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I think there are two kinds of writers; those who thrive on the stimulus of social interactions and those, like me, who need solitude and silence in which to create. My village gives me a day to day quiet, predictable and precious. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Of course there are drawbacks. My entertainment is limited to my TV and CD player. I eat modestly from the small grocery store across the alley. The local branch of my bank is open 3 days a week, and my doctor's office is almost 2 hours' drive away. But I wake to a blessed absence of anything but the magpies fighting under my trees and perhaps the sound of a woodpecker echoing from far away.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjea_K_T4bN654eXMp8DbuN25Orle997qeYBzS2dCTace3S70vaV_gkZxkTkf2X3w1o0GH3lzAciRBlHswIuGFgcPY_HNaA4D4rCp2vQeW-bVefe36y-RarCzTuIzUmdO_HI-4BStOgCBwORRHnJOnT0IPx_q9l4M30s2KCeyn3nh10BXWRvyaTm6-tnN4W" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="219" data-original-width="230" height="391" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjea_K_T4bN654eXMp8DbuN25Orle997qeYBzS2dCTace3S70vaV_gkZxkTkf2X3w1o0GH3lzAciRBlHswIuGFgcPY_HNaA4D4rCp2vQeW-bVefe36y-RarCzTuIzUmdO_HI-4BStOgCBwORRHnJOnT0IPx_q9l4M30s2KCeyn3nh10BXWRvyaTm6-tnN4W=w410-h391" width="410" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The village itself used to be uniquely beautiful but since I first came here with my two sons, there have been changes that have reduced it to the anonymity of every other village along the major highway. Still, there is a timelessness in the air here that imparts a kindness to the process of ageing.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories?</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When I was 7 years old I was living in a 500-year-old condemned cottage in the Chiltern Hill in England.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjfg_V5q4wN90HMGSoer4vSyRzVmS0v5B6wMyEePfN71gXpYNNnRN3kEmSVdRWx63KR0rgaTCLAgg3d9_BneDO9EgRf8kifMBI0cyl2m6tqTlqxprDLrUE2eDzEyfLf_N8GjWbUASUEhHIrdWdSRi0WetaiCCYcPOVuZgvPXvKHTtcUYxZQeJHEMk22ounO" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1920" height="329" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjfg_V5q4wN90HMGSoer4vSyRzVmS0v5B6wMyEePfN71gXpYNNnRN3kEmSVdRWx63KR0rgaTCLAgg3d9_BneDO9EgRf8kifMBI0cyl2m6tqTlqxprDLrUE2eDzEyfLf_N8GjWbUASUEhHIrdWdSRi0WetaiCCYcPOVuZgvPXvKHTtcUYxZQeJHEMk22ounO=w494-h329" width="494" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />My father was a Theology student at an Oxford college. He eventually became ordained as a priest in the Church of England, but while he studied he lived in residence during the week and was only able to come home on weekends. During that time he worked for one of the local farmers for enough money to buy 2 shotgun shells for his gun. He hunted for rabbits, and that's what we ate, together with vegetables from the garden he and my mother tended. We were desperately poor, but my two sisters and I had a wonderful forest in which to play and we spent most of our time running free and wild in the trees that abutted the cottage.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I had to climb a steep hill to catch the bus to my school. My sisters were still too young for school. We were not aware of our poverty. We made our own toys out of twigs and pebbles. I told my sisters stories. I believe those few years marked me for life with a need for the natural world, and woke in me the creative urge I inherited from my father's genes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Eventually my father obtained a scholarship. We moved to a village close by and our situation improved. My father graduated. His first priestly position was as a curate to an Oxford church. </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj3LgFWYzizRVN82bbfS7MYQvCKyRx_gLnU9NGsjr9xm8651uYtwo6OKPqn4xpIJaIUmBrT_pg8brHPTz4tzp5nMQdBxwDI3khONmUR96oHx6E_-KSJxhUXubu4r67fWRftgM9uCX8QxcUIAW9SSXwvn-w8GIJLQt9TjonRFNSpUAdYs1KZKSaaYFi8gicr" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1200" height="419" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj3LgFWYzizRVN82bbfS7MYQvCKyRx_gLnU9NGsjr9xm8651uYtwo6OKPqn4xpIJaIUmBrT_pg8brHPTz4tzp5nMQdBxwDI3khONmUR96oHx6E_-KSJxhUXubu4r67fWRftgM9uCX8QxcUIAW9SSXwvn-w8GIJLQt9TjonRFNSpUAdYs1KZKSaaYFi8gicr=w419-h419" width="419" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">At 11 I began to attend an Oxford girls school and we lived in a semi-detached in an Oxford suburb, but I have never shed the magic of those early experiences. I look back on them with gratitude.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I've been in love with the written word since before I could actually read. My mother told me that when I was a toddler, I went into my father's study (she and him were living in Adelaide, Australia at the time) and pulled off the shelves as many of his books as I could reach. I made a pile of them, then crawled up the pile and sat triumphantly on the top. Apparently I did this more than once. I like to think my actions were a kind of crazy prophesy, but perhaps I just liked the way the books looked and smelt. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I was never happier than when I was reading. In Oxford C.S. Lewis lived very close to our street, and sometimes I would see him walking past our gate on his way to catch a bus. By then I had read all of the Narnian books and owned them. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiKchmU6JQPSMI5j5Jdj99OPzCLuv-pQyXSMY5BHUBpcwH0O3wSRCIdINldZHruSlRDIyFIiLyvoQ86q5WNj0kbK_Y3t_JWq5-BxEBnpCgHNXCzpEDyNhMRraqcuHHukWkToDzqbwyvaV_2G6hAK6TgfuO-Fd4aRaE1Gnp2lMusqOT9_Zr3p5PER42jh8PJ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="488" data-original-width="488" height="396" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiKchmU6JQPSMI5j5Jdj99OPzCLuv-pQyXSMY5BHUBpcwH0O3wSRCIdINldZHruSlRDIyFIiLyvoQ86q5WNj0kbK_Y3t_JWq5-BxEBnpCgHNXCzpEDyNhMRraqcuHHukWkToDzqbwyvaV_2G6hAK6TgfuO-Fd4aRaE1Gnp2lMusqOT9_Zr3p5PER42jh8PJ=w396-h396" width="396" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">My father took them to Lewis's house to be autographed and I went later to pick them up. Unfortunately he wasn't at home but his wife Joy was. I remember her very clearly, a tall thin woman leaning on a cane. One of my Narnian books was not signed. I had lent it sometime before to a girl in my church, but when I asked for it back she said she didn't have it, had never had it, etc. etc. I still remember her name and when it comes to mind I mutter sinful curses!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Tolkien was still lecturing in Oxford at the time his amazing <i>Lord of the Rings</i> was published. I had read and liked <i>The Hobbit</i>. My father bought the trilogy and read it to us girls every evening by the fire. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiL-xZoKbCda8WL284-KA3Ll5UysupChZtYqqii72RlctYSlLulb0kpbjfdXUwR06wN8SDk49bdS3ZWHIU0bmdrMBxGRnV6a-96Ml9FI0h1cCi90fBjgUHASf-Lf7OVKtq6obOI5zl4c5StE9Ce2t9h-B33sGt3ZcTz6F7j89c4ryKxRzWfrLrNCbFbQJJh" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="1457" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiL-xZoKbCda8WL284-KA3Ll5UysupChZtYqqii72RlctYSlLulb0kpbjfdXUwR06wN8SDk49bdS3ZWHIU0bmdrMBxGRnV6a-96Ml9FI0h1cCi90fBjgUHASf-Lf7OVKtq6obOI5zl4c5StE9Ce2t9h-B33sGt3ZcTz6F7j89c4ryKxRzWfrLrNCbFbQJJh=w514-h289" width="514" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I sat and let the words pour over me and drowsed to his voice and the warmth of the flames. A great memory.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In my teens I found science fiction and gobbled it up. Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clark, Ursula Le Guin, but my favorite was Ray Bradbury, I think because his work was lyrical as well as 'soft' science. I was thrilled and terrified to meet him some years ago when he came to Edmonton to see a play based on his novel <i>Something Wicked This Way Comes.</i> He signed my battered copy, much loved copy of <i>Dandelion Wine</i>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhC8rpFoCd9_1yGVum3C3EMvAg8KUlTiEee9JmoribbiRuo40bNlR8QCXbSY8vXvIbpZPAKPkX_NezYFZPRmcWbg1CsdJOq6NJ5rwf1MdsrsTwC9GLsXT7grj4lQKz9L_t2IVtlhUaL1IKNlnSItP7g1yOHSeDYDWK5Zf1QCRQrRrpmey3g_hm1658kEG4b" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="221" height="368" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhC8rpFoCd9_1yGVum3C3EMvAg8KUlTiEee9JmoribbiRuo40bNlR8QCXbSY8vXvIbpZPAKPkX_NezYFZPRmcWbg1CsdJOq6NJ5rwf1MdsrsTwC9GLsXT7grj4lQKz9L_t2IVtlhUaL1IKNlnSItP7g1yOHSeDYDWK5Zf1QCRQrRrpmey3g_hm1658kEG4b=w233-h368" width="233" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Bradbury was a practicing Christian and I've often found in my reading that authors with strong religious convictions bring a depth of perception regarding the human condition that's lacking in even the most compelling literature.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I read de Beauvoir's <i>The Second Sex</i> when I was 16 and was profoundly influenced by it. At the same age I discovered the French author Collette-only in translation unfortunately. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I like biography, particularly those of writers, and I've always read everything I could regarding the early exploration of Arabia. Wilfrid Thesiger comes to mind.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgJQBQyuweIVkZEqHupsLQ06uIKpY04Y7R0Iu6WqRjjxOxANOPKlW1ZLMHfrB6phzazxyOQLysvztQwnx4N4ohVHXyhmknPTSa2zAr0EgTEL45CnRyYhS30cW1Gxg-73S9pM1FpWv7vDUFShkFdvPJvzE5KRYQvOwTQTd7zjIBfcqg_Pt5oI78j0BLZGY2K" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="319" height="372" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgJQBQyuweIVkZEqHupsLQ06uIKpY04Y7R0Iu6WqRjjxOxANOPKlW1ZLMHfrB6phzazxyOQLysvztQwnx4N4ohVHXyhmknPTSa2zAr0EgTEL45CnRyYhS30cW1Gxg-73S9pM1FpWv7vDUFShkFdvPJvzE5KRYQvOwTQTd7zjIBfcqg_Pt5oI78j0BLZGY2K=w237-h372" width="237" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">He's on my shelves. I still read the Narnia books and Tolkien's trilogy every year as a sort of purge for my imagination.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>What's the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I am a klutz and embarrass myself all too easily. At the dinner <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Culture" target="_blank">Alberta Culture</a> gave for me when I won the 'New Novelist' competition, I rose to make my speech, notes clutched in my sweaty hand, and my long necklace swung free to curl into the sauce left on my plate. I had to wipe it off so that it wouldn't swing back and soil my dress. I don't know what stories of my ineptitude my sons would tell. They are too loyal to remind me of the number of times I have fallen into the road because I've tripped over the curb, or shut a car door on my leg because I've forgotten to pull it in! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Is there a song, person, or group that you listen to when you are feeling a bit down?</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I've suffered from depression on and off all my life, with the worst bouts coming after I've typed 'The End' to each of my novels. My doctor would then put me on a 3 month course of anti-depressants after which I'd be fine. However, after I'd finished the last volume of my final trilogy, <i>The King's Man</i>, the depression didn't go away and I've been on anti-depressants ever since.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Music helps a little, particularly rock music from the 70's or Arab dance music. For every novel there would be music playing as I worked-the same music every day-almost like the opening of a gate that enabled the first words of that day to begin to flow. For <i>Eagle and Raven,</i> I played an album by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_Cassidy#Filmography">Shaun Cassidy</a>. For<i> Lord of the Two Lands</i> it was 'Time' by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Light_Orchestra">ELO</a>. Incidentally, I learned that experiments regarding the effect of music on the creative process had been done, and oddly enough the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rolling_Stones">Rolling Stones</a> came out on top. I was a fan anyway so I tried using them every time I became stuck for a word or a phrase. The result was always an immediate success! Something to do with a correlation between alpha waves in the brain and the beat of the music. Go figure!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I like Arab music because of my many years in belly dance and I sometimes put it on while doing chores. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBiiYEn5-c63Dy3qoB9WJMHrNLK7rRLPivujOWpu4L1IUM0Z4DLdndGxuVw0i5OV5JTx35CNStDlgijJO5CB1guDkBTnyQZGZrfffqDNUq3lyh3J7ZKYOfLkX9wKDvD8GdgefTwwZt8h5N1dxuW7ncKs4EJkkPThyphenhyphenIeNesKbqCUzNv2dJqr1ZmfRBh1wdV/s759/belly.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="357" data-original-width="759" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBiiYEn5-c63Dy3qoB9WJMHrNLK7rRLPivujOWpu4L1IUM0Z4DLdndGxuVw0i5OV5JTx35CNStDlgijJO5CB1guDkBTnyQZGZrfffqDNUq3lyh3J7ZKYOfLkX9wKDvD8GdgefTwwZt8h5N1dxuW7ncKs4EJkkPThyphenhyphenIeNesKbqCUzNv2dJqr1ZmfRBh1wdV/s320/belly.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />I found that classical music requires concentration on the music itself so is not useful for work. I do like to make music myself though. I play both soprano and alto recorders, and when my younger son visits he accompanies me on the piano.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>How are you different now than you were in your 20's?</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I don't think I'm very different now than I was in my 20's. I'm still the spoiled child expecting gifts from Almighty God, and looking back over my life I see that in many ways He has indeed given me everything my heart could desire. I'm less tolerant of ignorance and stupidity than I was, but perhaps more understanding of the weaknesses and vices in others that I see in myself.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I had very little self control in my 20's and I found self discipline very difficult, but I tried harder then to obtain it because I had two little boys to love and raise. Creative writing was a harsh master, forcing me to remember every time I sat down to work that our lives depended on the amount of discipline I could summon against my natural laziness. I panicked more often in my 20's. I've always been somewhat neurotic but at least I've learned to recognize most of my fears and anxieties as largely groundless and I can calm them. Now in my 70's I let myself go with what ever each day brings.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Is there a question no one has ever asked you that you wish they would? Something, perhaps that people would be surprised to know about you?</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I don't remember ever being asked whether or not I'm a religious person. That's odd to me because the ancient Egyptians lived with a polyglot of gods and religious beliefs. In order to write about their lives I had to understand their religious philosophies and incorporate them deeply and naturally into day to day actions and motives of my characters. I think that an irreligious person would have great difficulty putting herself/himself into the minds of such ancients without a personal knowledge of the spiritual- to find a common ground.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg39I46WVgu6QD0GUuuk6gsNuqvx7Lad5zETgatdtEEbYuYcHpU9Nm3N8UgR3VNLQ0x1LyXUHtmfFMCexyG99pLRtzwCta-X4e9auhHLtdCz9lSM4-6E3VD_EqTqTOEu6iHAA_nTmapH1tWZg5dG5ahLCyAdI7Vu62mkC0uiRAwjFZM0ZFwH-6pYwlEhwwG/s457/Gedge%20colour%20photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="457" data-original-width="368" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg39I46WVgu6QD0GUuuk6gsNuqvx7Lad5zETgatdtEEbYuYcHpU9Nm3N8UgR3VNLQ0x1LyXUHtmfFMCexyG99pLRtzwCta-X4e9auhHLtdCz9lSM4-6E3VD_EqTqTOEu6iHAA_nTmapH1tWZg5dG5ahLCyAdI7Vu62mkC0uiRAwjFZM0ZFwH-6pYwlEhwwG/s320/Gedge%20colour%20photo.jpg" width="258" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-large; text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;">How can novelist, even a very good and intuitive one, reconcile the Egyptian belief in a god-king, unless she/he first overcomes the insidious sense that the ancients were primitive in their beliefs and generally ignorant? The battle for empathy might, I imagine, be exhausting. I'm not implying that I've done a perfect job in representing the mind-sets of my ancient characters, but as I'm a Christian believer myself, I think I've come close. The concept of a god-king is familiar to me.</span><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Perhaps it's considered bad manners to ask anyone about their spiritual beliefs. I don't know.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>And finally, the Time travel question:</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>If you could go back in time</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>to any period from before recorded history to yesterday</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>be safe from harm, be rich, poor, or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>actually experience experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all, meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them,</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>When would you go?</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Where would you go?</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Who would you want to meet?</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>And most importantly, why do you think you chose the time?</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The years I spent in England as a child were incredibly formative. My father's job gave him access into the homes of every stratum of society. Sometimes he took me with him on his pastoral visits, and I remember sitting in both modest kitchens on council estates and the grand reception rooms of manor houses. I developed a love of everything to do with the Tudor period of English history; at first the obvious sensual pleasure provided by the architecture, furniture, clothing and art. But later, studying the renaissance in the arts that took place, particularly under Elizabeth, I dreamed of finding myself discussing poetry with Francis Bacon </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEii-RQqYzjcDcJ6GXzKXD-8S-28UXAMyAOkJFKHYaRChoiBec-kVXlrzXQssj8wFfwt4mn1My_s4Fn-26Gqweqn0hL9RZmMqGIRLQcCUIXgkUWT0XqQo2pnt7U1lH4I-IRX7AQYj0iB1vVPz0taoPtIjkC4GeCxbF6JAonSIfG3tGRNYz0au_fEOPPCmtnB" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEii-RQqYzjcDcJ6GXzKXD-8S-28UXAMyAOkJFKHYaRChoiBec-kVXlrzXQssj8wFfwt4mn1My_s4Fn-26Gqweqn0hL9RZmMqGIRLQcCUIXgkUWT0XqQo2pnt7U1lH4I-IRX7AQYj0iB1vVPz0taoPtIjkC4GeCxbF6JAonSIfG3tGRNYz0au_fEOPPCmtnB" width="240" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /> in front of a roaring fire with a goblet of wine, or listening to Walter Raleigh as he talks about shipbuilding. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuxps6QXNjCJ9FI-S_-Xh_Cppg8rD45d5LlY6tG8tg3jZgyEVeCnFIqj6PdJ3T-mkVcbS4YmM_hKPTaxA96CjkS2KNK4nYO6N32VyCKNPJHtTwJkfdVUDvVnhiL_dSNXt-o3zUZOM7uyREXNH2Z_G2quwTG8NugizLt3rk-H4qRlc7PDl59Lf1ueXYmr_o/s3000/walter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="2286" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuxps6QXNjCJ9FI-S_-Xh_Cppg8rD45d5LlY6tG8tg3jZgyEVeCnFIqj6PdJ3T-mkVcbS4YmM_hKPTaxA96CjkS2KNK4nYO6N32VyCKNPJHtTwJkfdVUDvVnhiL_dSNXt-o3zUZOM7uyREXNH2Z_G2quwTG8NugizLt3rk-H4qRlc7PDl59Lf1ueXYmr_o/s320/walter.jpg" width="244" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The desire to retreat into that time was, I think, part homesickness for the life I had known before coming to Canada and partly a need to escape what was a difficult time in my late teens and early twenties. </div></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">One would imagine, after I became entangled in Egyptian history and began to write about it, that I'd want to meet Hatshepsut or Kamose, experience life along the Nile, but I never have. Even a trip into the future holds no fascination for me. I'm entirely content to exist in this age, at this time, enjoying the many luxuries this century affords me-central heating in particular!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I'm a child of my generation. Trying to connect with anyone from the past would, I believe, be a difficult linguistic, philosophical, and moral task. Human nature remains the same, of course, but the structure of society is always fluid, always changing.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Thank you, Pauline, for kindness through all the years we've known each other, and for bringing so many incredible books to the world.</b></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>And for changing my life.</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></div></div></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-1047675565018231852023-09-01T15:37:00.005-04:002023-09-01T15:39:18.325-04:00Donna Leon<p style="text-align: center;"> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj7EngAMU1C-N7zlvgJEkBSK2ROre_FE6S_a7KI1S4wx2uqlvPuW_surMOwR_LirBBoQwE3xqFOlBH1wQAmHs_8xI1Ifh9kTsiLqUkk5Pbni1pUdCpsgWjT7BMONt7fXgUeujSsOdI9dwI1yREn9jNqzu3rq4AoqlDt7gGmV7_82wgEmVEwRQ-rivchHSAL" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="559" height="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj7EngAMU1C-N7zlvgJEkBSK2ROre_FE6S_a7KI1S4wx2uqlvPuW_surMOwR_LirBBoQwE3xqFOlBH1wQAmHs_8xI1Ifh9kTsiLqUkk5Pbni1pUdCpsgWjT7BMONt7fXgUeujSsOdI9dwI1yREn9jNqzu3rq4AoqlDt7gGmV7_82wgEmVEwRQ-rivchHSAL=w422-h402" width="422" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit1Cu4ydt3rJbHMF3bVzJNFWre0qI5IrK7QLKpxKRD0Y9XwXIE_l3KcfhXf249gGMCMaJ8KkyMrNhB1l_NXrsgtzG17FgNK2q0emCl7XzehlcMaCExZ82frgv1_uESCcL1kJRJlCLR7QewkKMFyq2hYxIefrNRYBcIX9liKV4uZqITj3OJbqcWlWsNmdSe/s350/Wandering%20Through%20Life.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="224" height="606" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit1Cu4ydt3rJbHMF3bVzJNFWre0qI5IrK7QLKpxKRD0Y9XwXIE_l3KcfhXf249gGMCMaJ8KkyMrNhB1l_NXrsgtzG17FgNK2q0emCl7XzehlcMaCExZ82frgv1_uESCcL1kJRJlCLR7QewkKMFyq2hYxIefrNRYBcIX9liKV4uZqITj3OJbqcWlWsNmdSe/w389-h606/Wandering%20Through%20Life.jpg" width="389" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="text-align: center;">"Endless Pleasure, Endless Love"</div><br />I have always been a huge Donna Leon fan. I would read her latest Guido Brunetti mystery as soon as I could get the newest ARC from her publisher in America, <a href="https://groveatlantic.com/">Grove/Atlantic</a>. Later in my interview you will read about how she created this master detective. All the personality quirks she instilled in him are just the reasons I love him and her books so much. <br />I was once privileged to take Donna on a picnic when she visited Atlanta. I took her to Piedmont Park where I presented a lovely vegetarian spread from my picnic basket (I knew she was a fellow veggie like me). We had a lovely time and I will never forget that day.<br />I usually show photos of all the books the authors I interview have written under the cover of their latest one; in this case, she has written so many it would have filled the entire post! Click <a href="https://groveatlantic.com/author/donna-leon/">https://groveatlantic.com/author/donna-leon/</a> to view her many titles.<br /><br />Her newest is not a new Brunetti story but a memoir of 30 of her memories. Each memory takes the reader back to a world that is quickly explained and of course, beautifully described. You will learn all about the farm where she was born, her wonderful mother (whose sense of fun she inherited) and her intriguing aunts. Their dog named Sooner and how he was dressed up every Halloween. How we can thank "Fuzzy Wuzzy was a Bear" for helping make Donna the genius she is.<br /><br /><br />You'll also learn more about when she taught English in Iran, China, and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi chapter is priceless! The chapter about what taking the train back and forth between Venice and Switzerland and huge giant crabs have to do with each other is hilarious.<br /><br />And finally you'll learn about bees and George Frideric Handel, two of Donna's passions.<br /><br />Don't miss <i>Wandering through Life</i>, as it's just like having Donna Leon in your living room, chatting with you about her life.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />Donna Leon was named as one of the London Times <u>Fifty Greatest Crime Writers</u> and<br />one of Time Magazine’s <u>6 Detective Series to Savor.</u></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Donna, tell me about where you live and why you love it so much.</b><br /><br />I live in a small mountain village in southeast Switzerland, 7 km. from the Italian border. The local population consists primarily of farmers, and things are quiet.</span><br /><br /><b>Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories? </b><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />I grew</span> <span style="font-size: medium;">up in New Jersey, about a half hour from New York City, so my sense of humor is that of NY. We were a happy family, and I was a happy kid.<br /><br /><b>Is there a book that changed the way you look at life? As an example, The W<i>omen’s Room</i> by Marilyn French changed me forever and it's why I became a feminist.</b><br /><br />Yes, Howard Zinn’s, <b><i>A People’s History of the United States</i></b>. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh77hCfcXh1_rg9y14sLOG1PROGhbMYiFS5XLaFeHv8sqRJXHjv5eLkkGFMZXWk6QKw-cFDoUphlpB_nyBjSBa85fG-9yJWxFHiRKnlP97YPagB3qdIBS2BhLh7dXoProsFacvA4lpKnWQS-_8C_kEdwg-LlHWJgxag5aCXEh2QJgsBL-Ddda-GvxxjFfRg/s350/Peoples.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="233" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh77hCfcXh1_rg9y14sLOG1PROGhbMYiFS5XLaFeHv8sqRJXHjv5eLkkGFMZXWk6QKw-cFDoUphlpB_nyBjSBa85fG-9yJWxFHiRKnlP97YPagB3qdIBS2BhLh7dXoProsFacvA4lpKnWQS-_8C_kEdwg-LlHWJgxag5aCXEh2QJgsBL-Ddda-GvxxjFfRg/s320/Peoples.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Zinn, a Socialist, taught - I think - at Boston College. The book presents the historical myths about America from the side of the oppressed and dispossessed and is an eye-opener. It seems we were not the good guys we think we were.<br /><br /><b>Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it makes it so? </b><br /><br />I love <i><b>The Wind in the Willows</b></i>, which instilled in me a lifelong fondness for badgers.</span></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEinRzB0aFWJWUyQ50wuyWBw_ptGABBJ1eAe2PwU71IogwsiONMBJ5J_8PDX21ceVPeLrkoV931xbnMgOgpmettOtGYFZkKanTfErpCMWoxTenkQ0ZjRNDodKPnqYq7lbsDthZ4x14yrJczDrkESlGnNakjqNxh7uaVGI371PPyeBjac3NUkjUFBdGU2sTCW" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="392" height="375" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEinRzB0aFWJWUyQ50wuyWBw_ptGABBJ1eAe2PwU71IogwsiONMBJ5J_8PDX21ceVPeLrkoV931xbnMgOgpmettOtGYFZkKanTfErpCMWoxTenkQ0ZjRNDodKPnqYq7lbsDthZ4x14yrJczDrkESlGnNakjqNxh7uaVGI371PPyeBjac3NUkjUFBdGU2sTCW=w294-h375" width="294" /></a></div></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Is there a song, person, or group that you listen to when you are feeling a bit down? </b><br /><br />Fortunately, I seldom feel down, but the group I most often listen to is <a href="https://www.ilpomodoro.org/about-us/" target="_blank">Il Pomo d ’Oro</a>, a baroque orchestra with which I work.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjHIZzlJGEtTIbhrH-Uy2sade1aRXhAnk4iX8gIvHBt4xG5i0MNDs9QhHIpp3WInzby-TBfQtzQULv7Pwplq7Bti__VX4tArPgStC8RHTj2hwxz_Z2pffqbQfPETsUkHqdvNuS6i8ZN5j2GjA_tDHBpfmc2Gze4hAfG0uRqqW7NEhoArVfysPlxl6ky4ipi" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="260" data-original-width="565" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjHIZzlJGEtTIbhrH-Uy2sade1aRXhAnk4iX8gIvHBt4xG5i0MNDs9QhHIpp3WInzby-TBfQtzQULv7Pwplq7Bti__VX4tArPgStC8RHTj2hwxz_Z2pffqbQfPETsUkHqdvNuS6i8ZN5j2GjA_tDHBpfmc2Gze4hAfG0uRqqW7NEhoArVfysPlxl6ky4ipi=w533-h245" width="533" /></a></div><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuspU0agDB8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuspU0agDB8</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><b style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;">How are you different now than you were in your 20’s?</span></b></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />I am more cynical about most things, though that in no way prevents my being cheerful most of the time.<br /><br /><b>I love your chapter on teaching in Saudi Arabia. Do you still have the $audiopoly game you and your friend created?</b><br /><br />Yes, I do have the $audiopoly board. Somewhere. I also have the box with all the hand-made paraphernalia. Even after these years, it still makes me laugh to think of the time, energy, and creativity we put into making the board and playing the game.<br /><br /><b>Tell me why you love Handel so much?</b><br /><br />I think it’s impossible to explain why we prefer anything: why white wine instead of red, why the Iliad and not the Aeneid? Who knows? It’s the same with Handel: his music is, to my ears and spirit, the most cheerful and grand-eloquent . </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhU6JlGPGUtwKzl9v7vIbwxc47mNhuNG9OuWYS2BqdCWPk7wOqmJWGn07L43Ni2WSREn_Owl-UrloU4hjlgL1RlBpzVWHptHBEpQrfIWkMHRjgQpbfs6ORlD2oLnBpAjKihhqOmKFn5gNPFvXzCXUMDAlhdcTATQZt3i2Pz6jvqw1MbuR4ynIsqS-ZTBOou" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="826" data-original-width="1024" height="352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhU6JlGPGUtwKzl9v7vIbwxc47mNhuNG9OuWYS2BqdCWPk7wOqmJWGn07L43Ni2WSREn_Owl-UrloU4hjlgL1RlBpzVWHptHBEpQrfIWkMHRjgQpbfs6ORlD2oLnBpAjKihhqOmKFn5gNPFvXzCXUMDAlhdcTATQZt3i2Pz6jvqw1MbuR4ynIsqS-ZTBOou=w437-h352" width="437" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Handel and King George I on the River Thames, 17 July 1717</span><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <span style="font-size: medium;">I am not a musician in any sense, so I can’t give a grown-up-sounding explanation.<br /><br /><b>Tell us about how you feel happiness can be passed down through the generations.</b><br /><br />I believe that happiness can run through a family line, as can blue eyes. I have no information that suggests it does; perhaps I’m just lucky to have had the example of cheerful people around me when I was a kid.</span></span><div><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Here's a question that you've undoubtedly been asked a
million times but here goes anyway, how did Guido Brunetti first come into
existence? What was your inspiration? And what makes me and all your other
readers keep coming back to him and his life time and time again?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I was at an opera rehearsal, 35 years ago (good grief!) with
the conductor and his wife, and we started talking about another conductor. Soon there was an escalation, and then we had
his body on the floor of the dressing room at our feet, and I thought what a
great idea that would be for the opening of a crime book. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Then I had to construct the police officer who would be in
charge, and I started to create a man with whom I would want to spend the time
it took to write a book (who knew?) He’d
have to be a university graduate, probably in law, and he’d probably be married
and have two kids. And I’d want him to
have a sense of humor, good taste, and appreciate the pleasures of life. He’s Italian, after all. He’d be a serious reader, probably
non-fiction, he’d have a sense of justice (as opposed to “law”) and would be
intelligent. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So there we are.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Anything no-one knows about you?</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It is my dream to have a dog, has been for decades. BUT I travel too much, and it’s impossible. Thus I make a fool of myself every time I pass a hiker with a dog, anyone with a dog. I’ve also been known to page through the Encyclopedia of the Dog in my spare time.<br /><br /><b>How do you feel about “Independent Bookstores” and their role in your success?</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I like the idea of a smaller bookstore, where the owner - who is usually a passionate reader - knows the taste of a client and is happy to make suggestions about what the reader might like.<br /><br /><b>Donna, IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME<br /><br />to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,<br /><br />be safe from harm, be rich, poor, or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,<br /><br />actually, experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all,<br /><br />meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them. <br /><br />When would you go?</b><br /><br />I’d like to live in Brook Street in London, </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgRCzdXT1buoqUJ4FiM_zNvYNLq0fDIa7_CLd3v5NLT2qnlr835V5H4mCeW3_dJe8g5gQPwl9nIZm_XQlOuWas68MyidAnATOG8CP7m3jwom9OgMUZ6gwxhOVqOrhHZiQDKsoNrcSgd1ilOE3wbGEU17Kzepv7Do929Pld4SUdJHuRoTLagseUXIU8PoZ2Q" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="350" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgRCzdXT1buoqUJ4FiM_zNvYNLq0fDIa7_CLd3v5NLT2qnlr835V5H4mCeW3_dJe8g5gQPwl9nIZm_XQlOuWas68MyidAnATOG8CP7m3jwom9OgMUZ6gwxhOVqOrhHZiQDKsoNrcSgd1ilOE3wbGEU17Kzepv7Do929Pld4SUdJHuRoTLagseUXIU8PoZ2Q" width="240" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">near to the house where Handel lived during most of his career. </span></span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg8PHc42U5M03Ea51x-50dR3iDTvYPTsqQkIHhhrRMAwBJXEFC-y90WnBTZS8tM_Tp8BnqlKQplP6Ovlb-ZUQmlJr94SsTym1zX6nyIbdK1IeWeR49XDgbP_jZhGwOqQSHydsxTAJUC8x0xVbfv_21qz7aiQg8AYtdqmFGPSjMqvNNBmNP3_3kq2o7aj3je" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1237" height="356" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg8PHc42U5M03Ea51x-50dR3iDTvYPTsqQkIHhhrRMAwBJXEFC-y90WnBTZS8tM_Tp8BnqlKQplP6Ovlb-ZUQmlJr94SsTym1zX6nyIbdK1IeWeR49XDgbP_jZhGwOqQSHydsxTAJUC8x0xVbfv_21qz7aiQg8AYtdqmFGPSjMqvNNBmNP3_3kq2o7aj3je=w276-h356" width="276" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">I’d go to whichever of the opera houses was presenting his new operas. I would love to meet all the people who sang for him. I’m a Baroque Opera Crazy, and he’s the best of them.</span></span><p></p></div><div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Thank you so much Donna, there is so much heart, humor and knowledge (the bees chapter!), in your new memoir. I learned about Puccini, Wagner and Handel, about your mother </b><u style="font-weight: bold;"><i>and</i></u><b> about Rastafarian plumbers in Venice! </b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>And speaking of Venice, one of Guido's favorite meals is </b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>Risi e Bisi</i> (Rice and Peas). I made it years ago and it was so good it is now included in every Thanksgiving feast! Here's the recipe, you can thank me later: </b></span></div></div></div></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><a href="https://www.recipesfromitaly.com/risi-e-bisi-recipe/">https://www.recipesfromitaly.com/risi-e-bisi-recipe/</a></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Godere!</b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></span></div></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-85557417737085466662023-07-14T18:06:00.010-04:002023-07-16T15:09:25.110-04:00Kimberly Brock<p> </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpXto-nGPf0gvLqnJADrbcO45mb4QCtWeXn5tnpatA23theZAwACbnWA6d-WZPvV7C8prC52R9w9BkhDl0pRcb3sPZgRo9x-v5qN0thGp7rydT2BQ_yMGfwQC10yes0_PxHo5j1R5hCC_Uw2r2CUFnp0Wm1mNpgSUQ8E4DkE7eT6BTkSgRWNIB3PGyFdSr/s1024/Kimberly.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="672" height="531" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpXto-nGPf0gvLqnJADrbcO45mb4QCtWeXn5tnpatA23theZAwACbnWA6d-WZPvV7C8prC52R9w9BkhDl0pRcb3sPZgRo9x-v5qN0thGp7rydT2BQ_yMGfwQC10yes0_PxHo5j1R5hCC_Uw2r2CUFnp0Wm1mNpgSUQ8E4DkE7eT6BTkSgRWNIB3PGyFdSr/w348-h531/Kimberly.jpg" width="348" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG3I4j7DBNl-lhq4M-7OYuMHkm3v1xt8_TJswyWDNR_y8QVPm1U9dahTXfpSUxBJv2v5L4fl8uad9H5VEfLeObSxgYsGfCXP_i4U85eIpwwY0JILdoNp6e1RnAZoIoRZKFf45do1OxOQ_NV08xxzCCU8XedCzS69TnYqXWT-SXzmkUggogM5OX14_c8nKV/s500/Lost%20Book%20of.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="329" height="525" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG3I4j7DBNl-lhq4M-7OYuMHkm3v1xt8_TJswyWDNR_y8QVPm1U9dahTXfpSUxBJv2v5L4fl8uad9H5VEfLeObSxgYsGfCXP_i4U85eIpwwY0JILdoNp6e1RnAZoIoRZKFf45do1OxOQ_NV08xxzCCU8XedCzS69TnYqXWT-SXzmkUggogM5OX14_c8nKV/w346-h525/Lost%20Book%20of.jpg" width="346" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhgJ12IpMtk9ZFpoFb-CfD8yprNA1XiD9TPmLLMCs7gHzyxZkDlAfzXdZ0itVAwvNH3ujJOHIbt6Dba5-OjbQbD34YFhpeaR9XSD-o9oIrDkutvUOT3Aa5Ljz1Yb6htM2Hf0XHd1vs2Dcvfc_lcwfnONuuWBR-wyGxdYqdR9fqH0Hao1oP-nmoVwi16efPi" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="166" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhgJ12IpMtk9ZFpoFb-CfD8yprNA1XiD9TPmLLMCs7gHzyxZkDlAfzXdZ0itVAwvNH3ujJOHIbt6Dba5-OjbQbD34YFhpeaR9XSD-o9oIrDkutvUOT3Aa5Ljz1Yb6htM2Hf0XHd1vs2Dcvfc_lcwfnONuuWBR-wyGxdYqdR9fqH0Hao1oP-nmoVwi16efPi=w111-h167" width="111" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="color: red; font-size: medium;">"Later, when people tried to figure out what made me follow her into the forest that day, I swore I would have followed her right out of this life. 'Come with me,' she said. 'I'll tell you the secret to Evertell.'" </span></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The fate of the world is often driven by the curiosity of a girl. What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke remains a mystery, but the women who descended from Eleanor Dare have long known that the truth lies in what she left behind: a message carved onto a large stone and the contents of her treasured commonplace book. </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgamNv5CKrwHEkgTeG7YwVcRykAmqf7Ok-sLC0YRpZhleN8bIlS_not3LUSeDZ_wDD_mQT54JG3OKHZcK3uXyqOk-2E97UNF8llqepeVSVJJ4Xn4GaIB-mvqGLn_34nosLmMnfcqqctjC-TqC8SRnrQwWXrYwbhsaYnyhtPF8mdeBATul_3TSao5bosXwen/s711/Dare%20Stones.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="711" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgamNv5CKrwHEkgTeG7YwVcRykAmqf7Ok-sLC0YRpZhleN8bIlS_not3LUSeDZ_wDD_mQT54JG3OKHZcK3uXyqOk-2E97UNF8llqepeVSVJJ4Xn4GaIB-mvqGLn_34nosLmMnfcqqctjC-TqC8SRnrQwWXrYwbhsaYnyhtPF8mdeBATul_3TSao5bosXwen/w401-h301/Dare%20Stones.jpg" width="401" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Dare Stones</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Brought from England on Eleanor’s fateful voyage to the New World, her book was passed down through the fifteen generations of daughters who followed as they came of age. Thirteen-year-old Alice had been next in line to receive it, but her mother’s tragic death fractured the unbroken legacy and the Dare Stone and the shadowy history recorded in the book faded into memory. Or so Alice hoped. In the waning days of World War II, Alice is a young widow and a mother herself when she is unexpectedly presented with her birthright: the deed to Evertell, her abandoned family home and the history she thought forgotten. Determined to sell the property and step into a future free of the past, Alice returns to Savannah with her own thirteen-year-old daughter, Penn, in tow. But when Penn’s curiosity over the lineage she never knew begins to unveil secrets from beneath every stone and bone and shell of the old house and Eleanor’s book is finally found, Alice is forced to reckon with the sacrifices made for love and the realities of their true inheritance as daughters of Eleanor Dare.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>I love it when the characters of a book become so real you feel like you know them personally. When I put Kimberly's book down for the last time, that's exactly how I felt. Alice, Sonder, Penn, Doris, to name just a few, all so expertly described. Their inner thoughts, their loves and losses, hopes and dreams, everything about who they are. </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Mysteries, magic, ancient history, legends and how the human heart can break and be restored, everything a reader needs to be captivated and enraptured is here.</b></span></p><p><i style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span style="color: red;">"Some say my grandfather was an artist, an explorer to the New World. They say my family was lost. But our grandmothers were women with vision. It came to my Mama, as it came to me. One day it will come to you, the wisdom she called our Evertell. Not a revelation, but something better. A story. When your heart is ready, you'll know. And you will pass these secrets to your daughters."</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Kim, first, a few questions about your book:</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Your previous book, <i>The River Witch</i>, has a somewhat similar theme that includes magic, lost souls and women finding themselves. When did you realize this was the direction in fiction that you wanted to follow?</b><u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">As I’m working on a third novel with much the same themes, I’d say it’s pretty clear that these ideas touch the existential questions that I grapple with as a person, so naturally they are present in my fiction. It’s very intentional that my novels include the idea of wonder, of mystery, of things unseen and often unknowable. That’s grounded in my own set of values and the way I view the world as a female, just like the idea of human beings as seekers, creatures of perpetual longing. I wanted to consider what that looks like and feels like in these feminine lives, the ways we are challenged by these concepts, desperate to escape them, and what it would mean to embrace them instead, maybe decide they are the good stuff that gives meaning and purpose to the journey. I’m always more interested in the questions than the conclusions. The questions are our common ground.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>I think it was brilliant the way you made a generational story out of the lost colony of Roanoke. Has that legend always fascinated you?</b> <u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I remember learning about the Roanoke Colony in elementary school and yes, being obsessed. Haunted. Disturbed. Actually, a little angry. I remember thinking even then that someone wasn’t telling the whole truth. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: center; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; widows: 2;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUk3tcjDl4qFflw0_Q4CgsX5icTenvY4_sYaSe-XMG7BBSAxhz28OWohGtsTPTgWRW5rUszfgvwPxabZjWMUxvxoMuFDPLCSZ3jPJQPEptazW6WzspsZzmKGookRAieSWD2ylZw_2NjZktUXF5k7HuSYy3JBzybvBOsVfso8KIQforlSc5PrBDKHCXKaTq/s1600/Ronoake%20Island.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1079" data-original-width="1600" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUk3tcjDl4qFflw0_Q4CgsX5icTenvY4_sYaSe-XMG7BBSAxhz28OWohGtsTPTgWRW5rUszfgvwPxabZjWMUxvxoMuFDPLCSZ3jPJQPEptazW6WzspsZzmKGookRAieSWD2ylZw_2NjZktUXF5k7HuSYy3JBzybvBOsVfso8KIQforlSc5PrBDKHCXKaTq/w472-h319/Ronoake%20Island.jpg" width="472" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Lost colony at Roanoke Island</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">That feeling really was what overwhelmed me when I learned about the history of the Dare Stones because I’d grown up very aware of a lot of Georgia history and I’d never heard a peep about those stones or that spectacle. When I went to see the stone at Brenau University, it was out of curiosity and also a sense that someone ought to have a look at it and at least wonder what it meant. I was shocked and embarrassed when I stood there and I started to cry. It took me about an hour to understand where the emotion was coming from and on my drive home I realized it was that same anger I’d felt even as a little girl. I was upset that the only thing I knew about Eleanor Dare was that she’d had a child and disappeared. I was upset that her story had been lost not once, but twice, because I was deciding I didn’t care if the stone was an authentic message. It was part of her legacy and because of it, I was remembering her and reflecting on far more than her life and so much lost history, so many stories that go untold. I felt like her fate had complicated things for folks who had been counting on certain outcomes for their own goals, and when things didn’t go their way, Eleanor was lost. Twice. And as I contemplated that, I wondered who that would have mattered to most. The answer for me was her family, and in particular the women who would have cherished the memory of her, for better or worse. Her story seemed to be the story of so many families, so many communities, even the origin story of our country. Colonization is not romantic. Eleanor’s tale is a cautionary tale. But it’s also a fable, as I’ve written it, of the love of mothers and daughters and how we set a table for found family, and how we all face that stone and hopefully, find a way to live with it and keep going.</span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> <u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>I was intrigued by how you described how the ancient millstone operated. Tell me you had to do a little research on that.</b><u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span class="im" style="background-color: white; color: #500050;"></span><span class="im" style="background-color: white; color: #500050;"></span><span class="im" style="background-color: white; color: #500050;"></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I did do a little research on the millstone. I’d been familiar with millstones my whole life but I took a trip to Nora Mill near Helen, Georgia, to see the mill run. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="color: #222222; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHr6P9OxgLjBhtu8jkEWjQrLvtKaN27iP5uc9bfY-fIS6dxNuF-ghZEOn9924mY5oQELrw2ILWJ9fo06IA7LLdFGvD-ceZmfWFC_V3myE5LB5E0LWVxILXrXgv1N4_bxjaTcBbxw9ZwEV24WHvlS7wD_cfgf3asdLlTEkJ4hQ_blnoA4c9_goi3EaIPNbN/s550/nora-mill-granary.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="413" data-original-width="550" height="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHr6P9OxgLjBhtu8jkEWjQrLvtKaN27iP5uc9bfY-fIS6dxNuF-ghZEOn9924mY5oQELrw2ILWJ9fo06IA7LLdFGvD-ceZmfWFC_V3myE5LB5E0LWVxILXrXgv1N4_bxjaTcBbxw9ZwEV24WHvlS7wD_cfgf3asdLlTEkJ4hQ_blnoA4c9_goi3EaIPNbN/w439-h330/nora-mill-granary.jpg" width="439" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nora Mill</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">I’d loosely based the farm in the novel, Evertell, on the nearby Hardman farm. Watching the river power things and the stones work together and against one another in that careful balance was a pretty impressive visual metaphor for everything I was trying to say about family and community and love in the novel.</span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Now let's find out more about Kimberly Brock; t</b></span><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">ell me about where you live and why you love it so much.</span></b><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We
currently live in the suburbs just north of Atlanta where we’ve been since the
early 2000's when we returned to Georgia to raise our kids closer to extended
family. During Covid, some folks got rescue pets but we got a rescue house. We
bought a large house in need of a lot of renovation and we’ve been working on
bringing it back to life for the last few years. We named it Larkwood. It sits
on a beautiful lot with a surprise pond behind the house, a formal garden, and
a wooded area with towering oaks. I have an office space in the rafters, which
is the first room I’ve ever had to myself. I’ve spent the last few years
pouring love into this place and it feels peaceful now. We have a resident
ghost that we believe is a child and she’s very sweet.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />
Where were you living when you were seven years old? Are they fond memories?</span></b><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We moved
into a 1912 farmhouse, in Rocky Face, GA, in need of a lot of work when I was six and I still dream
about that house. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjUMhGKWrBaorGkup86H32yEVFogEnPgYGLBCc_O7rlTvzSQW_jZ4gnRfscyRzlRO_3CRH86_c7xnE6eGEfZxC30dozdzUPftRWn7CVvAhbd3sZ-zZBBb76y14P6O-yp8ZFxw-OxCA_F9unT_7gMTm9C1trks8bFPSlaomn9G-7nf_A_mdUIDF3lP36jsBP" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="325" data-original-width="503" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjUMhGKWrBaorGkup86H32yEVFogEnPgYGLBCc_O7rlTvzSQW_jZ4gnRfscyRzlRO_3CRH86_c7xnE6eGEfZxC30dozdzUPftRWn7CVvAhbd3sZ-zZBBb76y14P6O-yp8ZFxw-OxCA_F9unT_7gMTm9C1trks8bFPSlaomn9G-7nf_A_mdUIDF3lP36jsBP=w460-h298" width="460" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It was built of stories. You could feel all the lives that
had been lived out there. Once, an old man pulled into the drive and asked to
come inside. He had been born in the front room. It sat in a valley like a
beautiful bowl with hayfields spread out around it. When we moved in, it was in
a state of neglect. There was no insulation. The Dawn detergent froze in the
cabinet in the winter and it was cooler outside under the hundred-year-old oak
than inside in summertime. We often had kittens born underneath the house and
they could come into the house through the holes for the plumbing. They’d pop
out of the kitchen cabinets. My grandparents had a farm a mile down the road
and I traveled back and forth on my bike. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirs9v6LuSUxgnVajm_61cRgqnnvr3iE085D7m2rUS0FED7HsqUBHT4Hy3EuwhSOAG7-3FCHDNtRQJDAj7i0yI6dE11s5sUf6lcvzcTQHxUMe71HxVeUJ19Su671F7JUQoUoocshXNfibW-yfexzw5ZBQj0LBYsCydep8phukqAtKSKwTe96YodMZ_ElV0W/s493/20140105190124.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="493" data-original-width="481" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirs9v6LuSUxgnVajm_61cRgqnnvr3iE085D7m2rUS0FED7HsqUBHT4Hy3EuwhSOAG7-3FCHDNtRQJDAj7i0yI6dE11s5sUf6lcvzcTQHxUMe71HxVeUJ19Su671F7JUQoUoocshXNfibW-yfexzw5ZBQj0LBYsCydep8phukqAtKSKwTe96YodMZ_ElV0W/s320/20140105190124.jpeg" width="312" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cute!</td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We had enormous gardens, boarded
horses, worked in my granddaddy’s industrial chicken houses and bottle fed
calves. I got married in the back yard. I can remember walking the fields in
the evenings and when I was maybe twelve years old thinking to myself that we
didn’t own that land, it owned us.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span style="color: red;">"She ignored the lingering bitterness of the tea, closed her eyes to dream of the wilderness that awaited her, comforted by the sharp scent of evergreen on her pillow. She knew well that she had not become a saint. She had not even become a sorceress. She'd simply become a woman."</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i><b>
Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?</b></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I’m just
not that devoted to a single title. Too many books in too many ways have had
things to say that have transformed my thinking in one way or another for me to
pick just one. I keep certain books close to me, however, and I have often said
they need to be easy to grab on the way out of the house if it catches fire. I
was astonished to read <b>Lee Smith’s <i>Oral History</i></b><i> </i>and feel like the voice in her
head was the same voice in mine. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhHxx7XTmVOjalb7sLlmwALMnuSmmr4O-lgidQjYwgo23IvESCGs_5yD093vLmhrYCpef0xOaPcLEGr0lfRU8A9-Y96UM66DLGzk0JHucOFGwgH3orDvxNO9ku3I9FNQGf87Vk1qr58XeAPz7Z9bNTx1jFaLiQ1eC8mn5qY5pbumXl8W7FZcOWxvQt_5czp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="239" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhHxx7XTmVOjalb7sLlmwALMnuSmmr4O-lgidQjYwgo23IvESCGs_5yD093vLmhrYCpef0xOaPcLEGr0lfRU8A9-Y96UM66DLGzk0JHucOFGwgH3orDvxNO9ku3I9FNQGf87Vk1qr58XeAPz7Z9bNTx1jFaLiQ1eC8mn5qY5pbumXl8W7FZcOWxvQt_5czp" width="164" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />I felt very much the same about <b>Barbara
Kingsolver’s <i>Prodigal Summer</i></b>. </span><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjWEWnA-u7tHhk7vUzobgkcM7tSbVzkxkeerTBw8okCBKPKlM1M-IlFR2toHo2U3VabdDLsZnZXP0bg1x7FSsIs8x2cRS9zR4ZanScRGZ5sto_4L8d6B0GRy1bfScdwBaiPWRqhEPkVE310dsO3wjWeCOpPtWWxQdBrhDA6usW6OjK5m66ltlnd-PtMlIQK" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="224" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjWEWnA-u7tHhk7vUzobgkcM7tSbVzkxkeerTBw8okCBKPKlM1M-IlFR2toHo2U3VabdDLsZnZXP0bg1x7FSsIs8x2cRS9zR4ZanScRGZ5sto_4L8d6B0GRy1bfScdwBaiPWRqhEPkVE310dsO3wjWeCOpPtWWxQdBrhDA6usW6OjK5m66ltlnd-PtMlIQK" width="154" /></a></div><br />I can pick up any one of <b>Pat Conroy’s</b> titles and
I am transported and weeping from the humanity. I read <b>William Kent Krueger</b> for
the same reason. <b>Alice Hoffman </b>sweeps me away with language and imagery, as
does <b>Jess Kidd</b>, who makes me laugh out loud like a fool. <b>Matthew Quick, Silas
House, Toni Morrison, Laird Hunt, Madeline Miller, Sarah Perry, Jesmyn Ward and
Shirley Jackson</b> all strip me down and dare me to answer back. <b>Zora Neale
Hurston’s</b> work burns deep. Have they changed the way I look at life? Yes--life,
the world, story, history, curiosity, reality, possibility. They’ve changed the
way I look at myself. I wouldn’t be a writer without them.<o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span style="color: red;">"A story matters not because it is true but because it's been told."</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />
Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it makes it so?</span></b><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When I
remember favorite books from childhood, I have a difficult time naming just
one. There was always a book in my hand. My teachers would often get back to
the classroom and realize I’d been left behind in the school library,
oblivious. I remember listening to books on record when I was too young to read
and I loved fairytales. I especially loved the idea of magic, from <b><i>Cinderella</i></b>
to <b><i>The Secret Garden</i></b>. I loved the <i><b>Little House</b></i> books and <i><b>Charlotte’s Web</b></i>. I was
at odds with being a farm girl in that I was always advocating for mercy for
the animals and often heartbroken over the outcome. But I was also really
obsessed with <b>Nancy Drew,</b> especially the cover art and titles about secret
staircases and attic ghosts. There was also a library book called <b><i>In the Keep
of Time</i></b> by Margaret J. Anderson, about a family of children that visit Scottish relatives. When they
play inside an old keep, they are sent back in time. I never forgot the way
that idea delighted me. I went searching and finally found a copy of the book a
few years ago and it was as fun to read as an adult as it had been back then. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjTBD96xKfQwL4VRDDmaDKlaEJ1N8_ORD3OCVqizolTtxart09Kp3db_hjx8i4eFJ5GCShPljXDZmkL6hdKSiqw7rht3kIdHUA384SVauAeY36Rmea0PNNbHW_yZLSYLu5Zc_Z2Q1e4JMJffJY5CV0efmSnmiS114RMWG8YUkWIGchEHeVsH22f5NAwaPC-" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjTBD96xKfQwL4VRDDmaDKlaEJ1N8_ORD3OCVqizolTtxart09Kp3db_hjx8i4eFJ5GCShPljXDZmkL6hdKSiqw7rht3kIdHUA384SVauAeY36Rmea0PNNbHW_yZLSYLu5Zc_Z2Q1e4JMJffJY5CV0efmSnmiS114RMWG8YUkWIGchEHeVsH22f5NAwaPC-=w302-h402" width="302" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /><br /></span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?</span></b><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">My
favorite funny story to tell is about the baby goat I wanted so desperately. I
couldn’t stop thinking about that goat after I’d seen him at a neighbor’s farm.
I cried myself to sleep thinking about that little goat. So I started a
campaign to get that goat, begging my Granny. She was the one that had taken us
to see the kids, which belonged to a friend of hers. I begged to just go visit
and then I really turned it on. My daddy had already said no, but when we left
that farm that day, that goat came home with me in the back of my Granny’s
sedan. Somewhere over the course of the five miles between that farm and my house,
Granny must have lost her gumption because we passed our farm and went on to her
house where she hurried me and that goat inside so my granddaddy wouldn’t see
what she’d done. The goat tore all through her house, bouncing on her sofa’s,
skidding across her coffee table, racing across her linoleum floors and
leaving traces of his own nerves behind. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOFj_up_UI-hP-KzOVepAsLtsXRrlXjYmz737FBnokmwo2EMhecE6xYMGU5IJOXvUz8RCEutCOcU2wmbbv2it8fte9r02_PdXZBsim9DtP4Eqdg8VZGL3AfmGq5bIkCrzYPfQ63PFcR_4Zd7PeEyDEB1ab4drMxbCIEF_1tJERt-TA3HNLvWlQ6MhTq9Rh/s1440/goat.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="1440" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOFj_up_UI-hP-KzOVepAsLtsXRrlXjYmz737FBnokmwo2EMhecE6xYMGU5IJOXvUz8RCEutCOcU2wmbbv2it8fte9r02_PdXZBsim9DtP4Eqdg8VZGL3AfmGq5bIkCrzYPfQ63PFcR_4Zd7PeEyDEB1ab4drMxbCIEF_1tJERt-TA3HNLvWlQ6MhTq9Rh/w547-h308/goat.jpg" width="547" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-size: medium;">At some point, she worked up the courage to haul me home with my new friend and over the next few weeks, he grew and ate and stripped the bark off all my daddy’s apple trees. Mama bought him a bell for his collar before realizing he was a fainting goat and every time he took off at a trot and that bell jingled, he stiffened up and fell over. We chased him around the yard to get that collar off and I suppose somewhere in all of that, Mama decided the goat had to go. He ended up at my grandparent’s farm, after all, and lived to a ripe old age. I can’t say the same about Daddy’s apple trees. He grew up to be a proud, smelly creature and was responsible for my first curse word, pronounced to the shock of all on Easter Sunday that year. Billy lives on in infamy in our family stories. </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />
How did you meet your beloved? How did your first date go?</span></b><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I’d just
started college when Daniel Brock caught my eye in his blue Blockbuster vest
while I was on a date with one of his old high school buddies. I liked his
khakis and his round frame glasses and sweet blue eyes. I ended up at the Fox
Theater in Atlanta to see The Phantom of the Opera with that same fella,
although we were no longer dating, and Daniel came along. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhYLneN-GPUwXvTDCxvAakmxMEcDkqIe9vmjhYLy0tEaJZ5332lUEcSwRRo59rydvKZhzhtywqqFZbGNU5SmMxcibyc5ie84IbW7QDRTVsuTrR2BTplQGL_u64_FbkfMrKRHOTSRv67o3kHKQsIJMBym4lPGEFgJIvYhtDltz9J1a2Vr-1WXV5rq4smuMuV" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="960" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhYLneN-GPUwXvTDCxvAakmxMEcDkqIe9vmjhYLy0tEaJZ5332lUEcSwRRo59rydvKZhzhtywqqFZbGNU5SmMxcibyc5ie84IbW7QDRTVsuTrR2BTplQGL_u64_FbkfMrKRHOTSRv67o3kHKQsIJMBym4lPGEFgJIvYhtDltz9J1a2Vr-1WXV5rq4smuMuV=w481-h241" width="481" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We laughed at the same places and I learned he was really smart. A few months later, when I was a single gal again, I was working at the mall in a jewelry kiosk and he was home from UGA for Christmas break and I saw him walking out of a Walden’s bookstore. I yelled at him across the crowd. We started talking on the phone and I found out he could keep up with me in an argument. Our first date was dinner and a movie, a VHS rental of The Princess Bride. That night, I told my cousin I was going to marry him. It took a break up and several years before we ran into one another again in that same mall, different bookstore. We married six months later under the oak at the farmhouse.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhLgFFasnLfBnziH9fO88BXt72eiDbKc-gQ0E65rEstu4w5nfHsXLg7cswFQrih-wJ2NueXhrszGkuEe0MAmZWdX47QRetyaXaj5g6LoobLClfOhTOKQs_czgl4GB-Ztmzy7IWGGfFF5w-DczrHmgZueR12qmRsuQzpw46d1k1lLF6WTymFj_ZuhiKrMQ2R=w315-h402" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wedding Day!</td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Is there a song, person, or group that you listen to when you are feeling a bit
down?</span></b><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Music is
very important to me. I’m very emotionally responsive to music and it’s
necessary in my daily life. I love acoustic music and live music. I love to
hear busking on the street as much as I love musical theater. I’m especially a
fan of Americana in particular. I love to sing and I wish I played an
instrument with any kind of skill. I love live music and gravitate toward
strings and good lyrics. I grew up in church, in choirs and listening to string
bands and country music, but I also deeply love <b>Joni Mitchell</b> and <b>Mama Cass</b>. I
learned to sing listening to <b>Patsy Cline </b>and<b> Linda Ronstadt</b>. Since her very
early days, I’ve been listening to <b>Brandi Carlile </b>when I’m up, down or
sideways.</span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg3_ATwu2BvgMASlt360ks2MLsPQwsWvMsSvNxXweWR2csxWOrlemOPR2fqQvaTXsIX0QUO1EiXsvH-w7nmGlQJj3rT5X0ec8lia9kC7N0n4yQCN7k_O3AQWlgcQkn_Bpc_WiOlzYXdQge_sEeXJMMAxIRMA7aWCd-iuJQxEoVKZzyiJAHOVZAuZtZJTlOe" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1465" data-original-width="2040" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg3_ATwu2BvgMASlt360ks2MLsPQwsWvMsSvNxXweWR2csxWOrlemOPR2fqQvaTXsIX0QUO1EiXsvH-w7nmGlQJj3rT5X0ec8lia9kC7N0n4yQCN7k_O3AQWlgcQkn_Bpc_WiOlzYXdQge_sEeXJMMAxIRMA7aWCd-iuJQxEoVKZzyiJAHOVZAuZtZJTlOe=w391-h281" width="391" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brandi Carlile</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stAbG4913kQ" style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Brandi Carlile - "Most of All" (Live at Rockwood Music Hall</span></a>)</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></span><span style="font-size: medium;">I find her music very cathartic and inspiring. There’s a common language of the soul there.<br /><br /><b> How are you different now than you were in your 20’s? </b><br /><br />I was born an old lady, set in my ways. I imagine I haven’t changed all that much, I just have more arthritis now.<br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;">"Once there was a girl who could always find her way home."</span></i><br /><br /><br /><b> Is there a question no one has ever asked you that you wish they would? Something, perhaps, that people would be surprised to know about you? </b><br /><br />When I was young, I wanted to become a dance teacher. I spent most of my youth dancing, even before I started lessons. I loved my ballet classes and I was very focused on the day I would be strong enough for toe shoes. But when I was thirteen, I cut the bottom of my foot while on a beach vacation and I spent the week on my back with my foot propped up. I had noticed I was uncomfortable at night in my bed before the accident, but having my movement limited was really miserable and I was experiencing pain that I couldn’t explain. By the end of the week, my parents suspected the problem and I went to the doctor (only one week before vacation, I’d been to the same office for my sports physical for cheerleading and been cleared). We were all shocked by a diagnosis of advanced scoliosis. Only a week later, I was being fitted for a brace, a process that required me to be in a mesh body sock and stretched over a strange contraption where a plaster cast was made of my torso. As a teenage girl, it was mortifying and frightening. <br /><br />Over the next few years I underwent more brace castings and fittings, monthly x-rays, and very disappointing reports that the disease was progressing despite best efforts. I was declared a brace failure when one of the curves (scoliosis is like a spiral) in my spine measured at a seventy-degree angle. The Christmas I turned sixteen, I had major surgery to fuse most of my spine using bone grafts from my hip, many screws and two, long titanium rods. For the next few years I spent time in physical therapy. I dealt with a foot drop. I waited for the doctor to say the fusion had healed completely. I learned to move differently and to acclimate to loss of range of motion. I’m forever grateful for the success of the surgery and also changed by it. I operate now with an invisible disability which makes me sensitive to many other invisible things in the world and to the things that may not be immediately obvious about the people around me. I never became a dance teacher but I’ve found that creativity will find its way and for me, I’ve found my voice in theater, in teaching, and of course, in writing.<br /><br />"Look there, so fair, the Evertell heirs of Eleanor Dare"</span><br /><br /> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>How do you feel about “Independent Bookstores” and their role in your
success? </b></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I’ve
always been shy about declaring myself a writer and I find it difficult to
introduce myself that way. It took three tries to walk into my local indie
bookstore with my first novel and say hello and when I finally made it to the front
desk and opened my mouth, I brought a basket full of gifts, and started to cry.
To my great relief, the booksellers were so kind and they embraced me and my
book and have been my best champions since that day. My first novel was
published with a small press and the support of the regional indies made all
the difference in that book finding its way to readers. I got in my car and
drove from Georgia to Mississippi in August that summer, and every store that
welcomed me felt like found family. It has been the same with my latest novel.
But even over the years when I was struggling to write and publish another
book, those indies were a haven for me. I think they exist as businesses, but
also as sanctuaries in the world. Inside an indie bookstore, all voices are
welcome and cherished. No one is a stranger. No one is alone. We are all
readers. In the South, we like to ask who your people are and we can form
immediate connections based on distant cousins many times removed. Indie
bookstores are that family tree for readers with broad and far-reaching
branches.</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> <b>And now, the ever popular time travel question:</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />
<b>Kim, IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME</b><br />
<b>to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,</b><br />
<b>be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your
choice, </b><b>actually, experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all, </b><b>meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them.</b><br />
<br />
<b>When would you go?</b><br />
<b>Where would you go?</b><br />
<b>Who would you want to meet?</b><br />
<b>And most importantly, why do you think you chose this time?</b></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">As a writer of historical fiction, I actually ponder this
question on an existential level most every day, even in my dreams. And while I
have many ideas or whims, there are two choices that stay steady and I find it
hard to pick one over the other. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The first is a sentimental choice and I imagine one that
many people would make given the gift of a moment in time to visit a lost loved
one. I am a surviving twin. After a premature birth, my sister lived only one
day, but that’s not the day I would visit. The day I would visit happened a few
years later when I was about three years old and my mom had remarried to the
daddy that adopted and raised me. He has told me this story my whole life and I
would go back to the night he woke to find me at his bedside, watching him
sleep. He asked me what I was doing out of bed and then followed me back to my
room across the hall to tuck me in, only to realize that I was sleeping down
the road at my grandparent’s house. It’s the only ghost story I’ve ever heard
him tell. He has always believed that he was visited that night by my sister,
checking in to get a look at this loving man that had come into our lives.
Perhaps she appeared to him to let him know she was keeping watch over us. The
way he tells the story all these years later, I’ve no doubt that he experienced
something profound and also that he treasures that moment. I would love to bear
witness to their precious astonishment as they beheld one another. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">I am equally drawn to a part of my family history that seems
almost as unknowable. Multiple branches of my family tree descend from people
who lived in a place in north Georgia called Spring Place where the Moravian
Church founded a mission school for the Cherokee. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhiE0ufUV0MFN-hQ9wwQL1aoPjooV7lKLG4dggj0EHxaf8Kfvla6Uzif2WKVPWROxSgC5IMX0cHJoSpfPAVwB69zHPizG3_DwMKbX45xhiTv5keUkp5WYIdmZsfPGHExqBqHjgY8cB3Q7L9_uao22eeahbDZyUP9FlC_RYAIvtiIPAATOZGii-ZVxtyXDmu" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhiE0ufUV0MFN-hQ9wwQL1aoPjooV7lKLG4dggj0EHxaf8Kfvla6Uzif2WKVPWROxSgC5IMX0cHJoSpfPAVwB69zHPizG3_DwMKbX45xhiTv5keUkp5WYIdmZsfPGHExqBqHjgY8cB3Q7L9_uao22eeahbDZyUP9FlC_RYAIvtiIPAATOZGii-ZVxtyXDmu=w413-h310" width="413" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Springplace historical marker</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">I grew up driving through the
area not far from my home, mostly unaware. I wonder now how much my
grandparents even knew. Many of my family are buried there, while some moved
west to the lands promised to them there. Family members are listed as white on
the local census records, others are listed on the Dawes Rolls as Cherokee by
Marriage, and some are recorded in other records with Cherokee names
memorialized in family Bibles and oral histories as having hidden in the
Appalachian foothills of Tennessee and North Carolina for decades or
generations before returning to Georgia and assimilating into white culture,
sometimes adopting the anglicized names of neighbors and friends. To walk among
those people in that valley and be able to witness their lives, the choices
they made and the ones being forced upon them, their hopes and risks, their
joys and humanity, would be revelatory.</span></div><p></p><span style="font-size: medium;">But ultimately, I truly believe that these sorts of imaginary exercises of time travel appeal to us so deeply because we already carry the past, the love and courage and knowledge of home that we are seeking out like memories we’ve buried--the secrets of the ages--inside of us.</span><br /><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Kim, thank you so much for your intriguing answers, your fabulous book, and your own heartfelt personal story. You are truly amazing.</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Readers, treat yourself and pick up <i>The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare</i> at your local independent bookstore.</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-54206912398037441882023-03-05T14:38:00.016-05:002023-03-05T16:57:11.414-05:00Ari Honarvar<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUhFKLdkconSKPNSjsDEc2vePIPKpFptxpsmc7oXfPre3U0pshXb4MrQ0JJo1TfyrrJpt6fIPtk6kbhO3JDl-E4G-kyk2cE9YUVHGVMx3KST-CsQKVROOFzt0kL5_QfZ50exb78loQ1wTqQiA3UR2zwuMxw1Kdd8exWh0jkgjZQpG_Pu0DXqBfIL4PuA/s400/Ari.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUhFKLdkconSKPNSjsDEc2vePIPKpFptxpsmc7oXfPre3U0pshXb4MrQ0JJo1TfyrrJpt6fIPtk6kbhO3JDl-E4G-kyk2cE9YUVHGVMx3KST-CsQKVROOFzt0kL5_QfZ50exb78loQ1wTqQiA3UR2zwuMxw1Kdd8exWh0jkgjZQpG_Pu0DXqBfIL4PuA/s320/Ari.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi35eQv9HmqfBltHHy7dyTB4uee8iesDtek4hCm_Rbt0JmLhIVrpitfeXDiZQMRLZHA0gwAa_DfWqSK14Vd44hOsZyf1TtWmuA3G7BijZbEY7tcyn1hNrBt38N8Kr277WSiiJzyzHcFrKpMeoJyCBXapkEaxbPL84mVpjtTyXHnh84MoLUQgiVvpFpVhg/s350/Rumi.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="234" height="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi35eQv9HmqfBltHHy7dyTB4uee8iesDtek4hCm_Rbt0JmLhIVrpitfeXDiZQMRLZHA0gwAa_DfWqSK14Vd44hOsZyf1TtWmuA3G7BijZbEY7tcyn1hNrBt38N8Kr277WSiiJzyzHcFrKpMeoJyCBXapkEaxbPL84mVpjtTyXHnh84MoLUQgiVvpFpVhg/w269-h402/Rumi.jpg" width="269" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Cover art of a Simorgh by the author</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">"A magical journey to a world of mystical delights, enchantment, and revelation. It's a page-turner that goes deep into the nature of reality beyond perception" -<b>Deepak Chopra</b>, MD<br /><br /><b>Okay, who am I to out-blurb Deepak, but I'll try. <br /><br />Never before have I read a novel that so brilliantly merges the real world with the mythical. Both of these worlds incorporate sadness and love, horrors and tenderness. Enter the world of Iran from the perspective of a young, irrepressible girl named Kimia who chafes against the sexist laws of her homeland. Follow her through her journey into the world of Attar and how his ancient stories and poems alter her life, both as a girl and then as an adult. Her story and all who are part of it will touch you deeply. <br /><br />Her publisher, <a href="http://www.forestavenuepress.com/" target="_blank">Forest Ave. Press</a>, describes A Girl Called Rumi like this: </b><br /><br />Kimia, a successful life coach, has made a career of running away from her past and living in the present moment. When her mother, who suffers from PTSD, wants to return to Iran to die, Kimia attempts to change her mind. Before she has a chance, though, Kimia collides with a mysterious bird who knocks her to the ground and releases a flood of memories. She begins reliving her life as a nine-year-old girl in war-torn Iran, including her friendship with a mystical storyteller who led her through the mythic <u>Seven Valleys of Love</u>. Haunted by her memories, Kimia decides to accompany her mother back to Iran, only to arrive in the midst of the <u>Green Uprising</u> in the streets. Against the backdrop of the election protests, Kimia begins to unravel the secrets of the night that broke her mother and produced the dangerous enemy now ready to take his revenge. She must choose between escaping or completing her unfinished journey through the Valley of Death to save her brother.<br /> <br /><br />Ari’s critically acclaimed debut novel is a BookFest <u>award winner</u>, a Nautilus <u>award winne</u>r, a Locus <u>award finalist</u>, a Foreword INDIES <u>award finalist</u>, and a Kirkus Reviews <u>Best Books of 2022. </u><br /><br /><b>And now, let's get to know Ari a bit better.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Ari, before I ask you about yourself and your wonderful book, tell me about the <i>Global Day of Dance for Freedom</i> that you are part of?</b>
</span><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-line-height-alt: 12.65pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: black;">We kicked
off the day on February 10th and since then we've received videos posted
by hundreds of people from 7 continents for Iranian protesters who are
risking their lives for freedom. As you may know, dancing is illegal in Iran
and a young couple was just sentenced to 10 1/2 years of prison for
dancing. So dancivists around the world keep dancing for their freedom and
for all Iranians who are not allowed to dance.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-line-height-alt: 12.65pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="color: black;">Clearly
this is such a worthy project. To learn more visit</span></b><span style="color: black;"> <a href="https://rumiwithaview.com/dance-for-freedom/" target="_blank">Rumiwithaview.com</a></span></span></p>
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /><b>How much of Kimia's childhood mirror's your own? </b><br /><br />Quite a bit—especially if we include the world of my childhood imagination. So much of the book is the dance between memories and imagination. I did a bit of research, too, to keep the timelines, descriptions of the place, and events somewhat accurate but because the work is fictional, I enjoyed the freedom of world-building without being too constrained. And at the end of the book, I talk about some of that process, some of the events that were from real life such as our neighbor’s birthday party that was raided by the morality police and a woman ended up having a seizure in our front yard and the armed men held us at gunpoint. We had a wall-sized library that allowed me to get lost in the world of literature and create my own sanctuary within my imagination. <br /><br /><b>Your use of words and descriptions of place are so beautiful throughout the book, for example: "I grabbed Reza's hand and we ran, giggles falling like scattered cherry blossoms behind us" (just had to say that).</b></span>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: black;">Thank
you!</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="color: #500050;">The Hoopoes that come up often in the story
are so pretty! </span></b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZiEeG5qdL1AI782UuanKXVxrzrDPQuUr_p6TwkEiuQ8zV0oVYHVtHshD3kY7504mK5pQkd6NsMVilbZ84V8AiIa6SCShARrsybpzQfFMzfI_TgD5sM83EBYVWEvBvWaRMM_I472hCWibx41KIm5h3VMfZmYixPBBLxZ5Z0W_dJKJFTtNFxHV4vmpOfg/s640/hoopoe-2.jpg" style="font-weight: bold; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="640" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZiEeG5qdL1AI782UuanKXVxrzrDPQuUr_p6TwkEiuQ8zV0oVYHVtHshD3kY7504mK5pQkd6NsMVilbZ84V8AiIa6SCShARrsybpzQfFMzfI_TgD5sM83EBYVWEvBvWaRMM_I472hCWibx41KIm5h3VMfZmYixPBBLxZ5Z0W_dJKJFTtNFxHV4vmpOfg/w272-h182/hoopoe-2.jpg" width="272" /></a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><b style="text-align: center;">Was backgammon really banned in Iran? Was it because it's a type of gambling?</b></span></p><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Yes, it was. Also playing cards. It might be futile to venture into the perverted justification of fundamentalists who went to war on joy and even bright colors!</span></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="color: #500050;">Now Ari, let's learn a
bit about you.</span></b></span></p><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Tell me about where you live and why you love it so much. </b><br /><br />I live in San Diego. I love springtime here that shows up about mid-Feb—so many colorful blossoming trees and bright green vegetation. I love the ocean and clean air. I love Balboa Park with all the museums and gorgeous architecture. I love the Southern CA charm and how you can get good vegan food all over the place. I love my neighborhood with little old Spanish-style houses and lovely neighbors and friends.</span>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="color: #500050;">Where were you living
when you were 7 years old? Were you still in Iran? Favorite memory? Worst?</span></b><span style="color: #500050;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: black;">Yes, I
lived in Shiraz until I was 14. My favorite memories are about passing as a boy
and all the privileges that came with that.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-r9Yxjky82KrfqcK3Lfj7kj3Qxfp7r3x5rTf6_JWzRlgBaXUJj-NM5fU1cRarYHJ1Hs0oYOH3d8rfT12ixvi5mgRh9_aGGjIpCLsSiyz7KGRxOFAkYeppF0e73W_BJz82-r1dSuon5t5tDyNdP8leG71_ORKsygo4sYXBF0voanUjG61CYDFt8soRQQ/s260/Ari%20boy2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="152" data-original-width="260" height="152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-r9Yxjky82KrfqcK3Lfj7kj3Qxfp7r3x5rTf6_JWzRlgBaXUJj-NM5fU1cRarYHJ1Hs0oYOH3d8rfT12ixvi5mgRh9_aGGjIpCLsSiyz7KGRxOFAkYeppF0e73W_BJz82-r1dSuon5t5tDyNdP8leG71_ORKsygo4sYXBF0voanUjG61CYDFt8soRQQ/s1600/Ari%20boy2.jpg" width="260" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ari passing as a boy.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">My worst memories are going to funeral after funeral (because of war,
stress, and crackdown on dissidents).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="color: #500050;">Is there a book that
changed the way you look at life?</span></b><span style="color: #500050;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-line-height-alt: 12.65pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Hmmm.
Every book I read changes my perspective—a little or a lot. And the self is a
moving target so when I read a book again, I often have a different response to
it than before too. One of the recent ones: <i>How Emotions Are Made: The
Secret Life of the Brain </i>by Lisa Feldman Barrett. </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5OhxkKhVHb3YsnN2pgMSI6waJu5fFfxMVwumhpOZy9ww5Sxw2sYM4LO3QNlo__eWlBVwv4UdL38LeQuFxrg3x0WhMQZWBvwq1DTI3uaMlu0dj7xHF6jyk87msancxe-Z-XvNtwn2xU_ctJZRRjU9qbUbr0ZVPm815W1RlPorn4VA11CdfwsqHrKkeWg/s1000/emotions.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="650" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5OhxkKhVHb3YsnN2pgMSI6waJu5fFfxMVwumhpOZy9ww5Sxw2sYM4LO3QNlo__eWlBVwv4UdL38LeQuFxrg3x0WhMQZWBvwq1DTI3uaMlu0dj7xHF6jyk87msancxe-Z-XvNtwn2xU_ctJZRRjU9qbUbr0ZVPm815W1RlPorn4VA11CdfwsqHrKkeWg/s320/emotions.jpg" width="208" /></span></a></i></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #500050;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Do you have a favorite
children’s book and what about it makes it so?</span></span></b></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-line-height-alt: 12.65pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: black;">The Lorax
comes to mind</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB9qVY_HCV2XcsZcB9bvG37zmDfwqLNmDjY3pdIv21K6dXr8Cf-ggHgQnEpEOOSiznPMw7BQfdmwrRLqnFTYr_wGcIf4coPw7z-8shStsVV8_gg_re6BmH3cNmvGQyV7eV1ofSOjV7q10aw09sjFXiANZRODVs049wFW68Pm1T_31FLlb7hu3eSbvqiA/s475/Lorax.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="355" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB9qVY_HCV2XcsZcB9bvG37zmDfwqLNmDjY3pdIv21K6dXr8Cf-ggHgQnEpEOOSiznPMw7BQfdmwrRLqnFTYr_wGcIf4coPw7z-8shStsVV8_gg_re6BmH3cNmvGQyV7eV1ofSOjV7q10aw09sjFXiANZRODVs049wFW68Pm1T_31FLlb7hu3eSbvqiA/w157-h210/Lorax.jpg" width="157" /></a> <span style="color: black;">because it's a timeless story of humans and what they do/can do
with their non-human relatives.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="color: #500050;">What are the funniest or
most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?</span></b><span style="color: #500050;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-line-height-alt: 12.65pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: black;">One that
my mom likes to tell is when she came to pick me up from school during an air
raid. And rather than happening upon crying kids and chaos, she saw me with a
blowhorn as I entertained the whole school by making impressions of our
favorite TV characters. It's a scene from the book, too:) </span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbb2X4IpAU27FwGSqLaxUrmSVr4TcOzrE10EkMWqG4jyf3MiG0cHqFwBbBZDUz8LiSq88OzdD15w1Muux5suftFu_YAL4khvKcZdtPVuwpOc_L2kHDjOzf8Uph3ptl_LZJCQnV3EriclV0RKNZcqslRKnB2ucqHu5DF0_r5Z4WqeQGkdUpE-bYX6vH6g/s720/simorgh.jpg"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="720" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbb2X4IpAU27FwGSqLaxUrmSVr4TcOzrE10EkMWqG4jyf3MiG0cHqFwBbBZDUz8LiSq88OzdD15w1Muux5suftFu_YAL4khvKcZdtPVuwpOc_L2kHDjOzf8Uph3ptl_LZJCQnV3EriclV0RKNZcqslRKnB2ucqHu5DF0_r5Z4WqeQGkdUpE-bYX6vH6g/s320/simorgh.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><p></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Simorgh, the legendary and benevolent, mythical bird in Persian mythology plays an important role in the story.</span></span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></b></p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">How did you meet your beloved? How did your first date go? </span></b><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-line-height-alt: 12.65pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: black;">I met my
beloved at Bookends café of Boulder bookstore. It's no longer there. We
met for dinner that day at</span><span style="color: red;"> </span><span><a href="https://www.leafvegetarianrestaurant.com/dinner" target="_blank">the Leaf Restaurant</a> </span><span style="color: black;">and had a
lovely time. We will celebrate our 17th year together this October, Inshallah</span>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="color: #500050;">Is there a song, person,
or group that you listen to when you are feeling a bit down?</span></b><span style="color: #500050;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: black;">Many
childhood Persian songs. <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Soltan+e+Ghalbhais&rlz=1C1DVJR_enUS800US808&oq=Soltan+e+Ghalbhais&aqs=chrome..69i57.1090j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:7e3cd5a2,vid:cYMe4gcrXDI" target="_blank">S</a></span><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Soltan+e+Ghalbhais&rlz=1C1DVJR_enUS800US808&oq=Soltan+e+Ghalbhais&aqs=chrome..69i57.1090j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:7e3cd5a2,vid:cYMe4gcrXDI" target="_blank">oltan e Ghalbha</a><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Soltan+e+Ghalbhais&rlz=1C1DVJR_enUS800US808&oq=Soltan+e+Ghalbhais&aqs=chrome..69i57.1090j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:7e3cd5a2,vid:cYMe4gcrXDI" target="_blank">is</a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje9jNc54gnIgJDDOuBMSQ3AFYlc74KzQuWTOz8EjqgSsS5SLcriZ6zRhSDvB2RlHpFrr4tXslxsu11XLrUf1C8C8uEICZzxhYd0PkWxBpnR3e-GsVSBF8olpCqGWHlHY0KJSkK8_u2Qod0c1rlIsf9uqdfxACHtVByLn0H5dl1KbV4N4R2pVJYOOGyIw/s1024/Aref-Behtarin-Bahaneh.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje9jNc54gnIgJDDOuBMSQ3AFYlc74KzQuWTOz8EjqgSsS5SLcriZ6zRhSDvB2RlHpFrr4tXslxsu11XLrUf1C8C8uEICZzxhYd0PkWxBpnR3e-GsVSBF8olpCqGWHlHY0KJSkK8_u2Qod0c1rlIsf9uqdfxACHtVByLn0H5dl1KbV4N4R2pVJYOOGyIw/w188-h188/Aref-Behtarin-Bahaneh.jpg" width="188" /></a><br /><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">is one of them, and the song that appears in my book: </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVz9wXliXDE" style="font-family: georgia;">Baz Havaye Vatanam</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEvtk00OtTzoI-Tc8xjBN_QyyRL-5s5s5BelVe1J0eJYF1lwupL8iTM-60ISa9eISUt6Uz6_baHAj53DzB8hi1lWlAMgnXV9Bk4349V9dP-SFJQXhX9BSV8KleIcAOdlyErtccw167TpUZu0AeybWoBegvvxoiExzEHyB3WdnaF1uBnPWuDRXoN8XJXw/s300/vata.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEvtk00OtTzoI-Tc8xjBN_QyyRL-5s5s5BelVe1J0eJYF1lwupL8iTM-60ISa9eISUt6Uz6_baHAj53DzB8hi1lWlAMgnXV9Bk4349V9dP-SFJQXhX9BSV8KleIcAOdlyErtccw167TpUZu0AeybWoBegvvxoiExzEHyB3WdnaF1uBnPWuDRXoN8XJXw/s1600/vata.jpg" width="300" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><b><span style="color: #500050;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">How would you say you are you different now
than you were in your teens?</span></span></b></p>
<span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm much freer and more comfortable in my body. I can enjoy life fully. Anxiety is no longer a fixture in my being. As you can imagine, life was difficult as a child—8 years spent in war and oppression and then moving to the US without my parents, sister, and friends. It makes sense that it would take time/inner work to release the trauma, anxiety, and depression. As a teen, I couldn't enjoy myself fully because I was hypervigilant about the next traumatic event that would destroy me.</span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilkRKONWBuWnNCCzpw8cohyZ7SCieqxBtWP4HEpx0j0o1oez0mp8lG4Qi2basLHB3JxfmCAdADCGU-l2QGRUQCFLvajT6j15uBqJwl1sWzedT47EM5SvpADHPnqoVueKQz4pckgo6WT3je-R7TSAwqxw9Aq3hMmNHvsfl10bI0sFAweOfRj_BQ9rG42Q/s788/Shiraz.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="788" data-original-width="639" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilkRKONWBuWnNCCzpw8cohyZ7SCieqxBtWP4HEpx0j0o1oez0mp8lG4Qi2basLHB3JxfmCAdADCGU-l2QGRUQCFLvajT6j15uBqJwl1sWzedT47EM5SvpADHPnqoVueKQz4pckgo6WT3je-R7TSAwqxw9Aq3hMmNHvsfl10bI0sFAweOfRj_BQ9rG42Q/w239-h295/Shiraz.jpg" width="239" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Shiraz, Ari's hometown in Iran.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDCVfVDvVuh0_sHls0kt5l5Bq899npMl5BZSBez7a3TepBzvow0TLJAUyqqXfjrLnSkzDsWLUxSb3v_Gj5d7wHKSufpx7FJsblgJ3KZISOYoJvK-5N9OKjUpZ6dIteZY21Netn2NGJwbkup7w3CINGFbsLKJRNvCGKsSEEL2iF4srYwrpAscHqJwOr9Q/s1280/Shiraz_Gardens.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="834" data-original-width="1280" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDCVfVDvVuh0_sHls0kt5l5Bq899npMl5BZSBez7a3TepBzvow0TLJAUyqqXfjrLnSkzDsWLUxSb3v_Gj5d7wHKSufpx7FJsblgJ3KZISOYoJvK-5N9OKjUpZ6dIteZY21Netn2NGJwbkup7w3CINGFbsLKJRNvCGKsSEEL2iF4srYwrpAscHqJwOr9Q/w269-h176/Shiraz_Gardens.jpg" width="269" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Is there something, perhaps, that people would be surprised to know about you? </b><br /><br />I'm perhaps the only woman who's visited the Prophet Mohammad's grave in Saudi Arabia. Women aren't allowed but I pretended to be a boy. I was only 5, maybe my unconscious was preparing for what was to come post-revolution. <br /><br /><b>Is Taadon, your beloved hummingbird, still around? </b><br /><br />Yes! I also wake up to the view of a lovely hummingbird khanom who has a nest outside of my kitchen window. I don't post videos of them with me anymore because people become tempted to put out hummingbird food but forget to be diligent about cleaning out the feeder and mold grows and kills the birds. A couple of years ago I came back from vacation to find one of my hummingbird friends dying on the sidewalk. The disease is called Hummers Candidiasis during which the hummingbird's tongue swells as a result of being infected by the mold in the dirty feeders. They die of starvation. They can't feed their babies and they die too. <br /><br /><b>How do you feel about “Independent Bookstores” and their role in your success? </b><br /><br />Indie writers and indie bookstores have a beneficial symbiotic (mutualistic) relationship. We might be independent but we depend on one another. For me, getting my book on the shelves of independent bookstores is one way to gain exposure to readers who might not have otherwise heard of my work. Because they’re an integral part of the local community, they’re likely to host book clubs, events, and other activities that bring people together where authors connect with readers. They’re also more likely to stock and promote indie books than bigger chains. By supporting independent bookstores, indie authors like me are also supporting local communities and together we help keep the literary arts alive and thriving.</span>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="color: #500050;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><i><u><span style="color: #500050;">IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN
TIME</span></u></i></b><span style="color: #500050;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="color: #500050;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">to any period from before
recorded history to yesterday,<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="color: #500050;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">be safe from harm, be
rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="color: #500050;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">actually, experience what
it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all,<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #500050;">meet anyone, if you
desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them.</span><span style="color: #500050;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="color: #500050;">When would you go?</span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">1947</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="color: black;">Where would you go?</span></b><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: black;"> Arunachala,
India.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="color: #500050;">Who would you want to
meet?</span></b><span style="color: #500050;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.65pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ramana
Maharshi. </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitvH9o1q_WPZPsr8fIxOeI-EvoZRTgP5OHcfKMcV-9svVv4yGebOSIJjWU0ta8t4p7mU8i7-poTlI9RkiaDoKoNvmDEijtOSKUSXLXYWZlW_6i5fRDVy67x2idxOB7c8bxaY833C-2OR92y5aec5v-PPeTEELhSs6kS4h-bbyKz56zmeP294lfZiVoxg/s1280/Bhagwan-With-A-Monkey.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1130" data-original-width="1280" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitvH9o1q_WPZPsr8fIxOeI-EvoZRTgP5OHcfKMcV-9svVv4yGebOSIJjWU0ta8t4p7mU8i7-poTlI9RkiaDoKoNvmDEijtOSKUSXLXYWZlW_6i5fRDVy67x2idxOB7c8bxaY833C-2OR92y5aec5v-PPeTEELhSs6kS4h-bbyKz56zmeP294lfZiVoxg/s320/Bhagwan-With-A-Monkey.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />We'd enjoy silence together. I heard about him in my late teens and he didn't interest me. But then I saw a photo of him and felt a resonance beyond words. Gandhi incidentally wanted to meet Ramana but his crew said no. Here's what Ramana said: 'Gandhi would like to come here but Rajagopalachari (Former Minister of Home Affairs of India) was worried about the consequences. Because he fears that he might go into samadhi (a state of intense concentration achieved through meditation) here and forget all about politics. That is why he gestured to the driver to drive on.'</span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><b>And most importantly, why do you think you chose this time? </b><br /><br />It was around the time that India gained independence from British rule through a non-violent revolution. But what particularly attracts me to that time and place is my desire for a period of silence in lovely surroundings in the company of someone who's all about silence. <br /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVUruoH92EaKieikCd7uk-oDQSOr0c_-2PMy15Dx3vWMuNVClx_3eCAgK9UjBO50SYMk4O0GponynV45Wi-lksVMKDKhPrzOIO5sJmHOkBEMGOXKSaVzLaANW_VYd_NivfCTFydE8L0FpEcIL556P8Dfw7uKUnXD4ozoqu7wQOkqGB0iHg47eYU4eX3g/s800/Ari%203.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVUruoH92EaKieikCd7uk-oDQSOr0c_-2PMy15Dx3vWMuNVClx_3eCAgK9UjBO50SYMk4O0GponynV45Wi-lksVMKDKhPrzOIO5sJmHOkBEMGOXKSaVzLaANW_VYd_NivfCTFydE8L0FpEcIL556P8Dfw7uKUnXD4ozoqu7wQOkqGB0iHg47eYU4eX3g/s320/Ari%203.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: black;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">Thank you Ari, your writings and stories are a balm for me in a troubled world. I wish you success in all you do.</span></b></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></p><p></p></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-8731469872034765012022-07-23T11:22:00.002-04:002022-07-23T14:39:06.151-04:00Matthew Quick<p style="text-align: center;"> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaSbvQjBOENQ319mXnrkoA3FTZ9r2_meZWfhiVBkN_hrWdqEwIdkmHBQUHBmdyxPj4IDR2_g1_8ZYEVnbXw-9O1jD6Jna3jM8zN0_ZRPZUFa-MTLgyIdFL30HdopCfW0qa1hQCaWdIBvkmzgsLrSjhw7x_rrq0CG3XlgC11Po5jiHk5mYa7rGlWDJl4g/s1329/Matthew-Quick-Author-PRESS-.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1329" data-original-width="1049" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaSbvQjBOENQ319mXnrkoA3FTZ9r2_meZWfhiVBkN_hrWdqEwIdkmHBQUHBmdyxPj4IDR2_g1_8ZYEVnbXw-9O1jD6Jna3jM8zN0_ZRPZUFa-MTLgyIdFL30HdopCfW0qa1hQCaWdIBvkmzgsLrSjhw7x_rrq0CG3XlgC11Po5jiHk5mYa7rGlWDJl4g/s320/Matthew-Quick-Author-PRESS-.jpg" width="253" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPefJOFAzB-tzYc3KkQjP2agHDZfrOkUFEM6jacyyMGJlyzP9VcdFo-69f6yZ6xTw54L3EPRKwGOuM80t33QiG3Y0-ZaMQtifenzFOlxM4LvdLr_KAbw1oOrmYSG79Uf0Q9fCR6sbyjqumbpSAh8ODZ1_FGmuPQjXSjqi0O216Gax4nZvcI-5FJpNH4A/s499/41IFoR-JdrL._SX337_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="339" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPefJOFAzB-tzYc3KkQjP2agHDZfrOkUFEM6jacyyMGJlyzP9VcdFo-69f6yZ6xTw54L3EPRKwGOuM80t33QiG3Y0-ZaMQtifenzFOlxM4LvdLr_KAbw1oOrmYSG79Uf0Q9fCR6sbyjqumbpSAh8ODZ1_FGmuPQjXSjqi0O216Gax4nZvcI-5FJpNH4A/s320/41IFoR-JdrL._SX337_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="217" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhf7POxCXPzlU7KCOmfEPZJA_YTaauzts8hZNGf7xJ_5AjGe1pln1b9qigNElSJmleNniuKzci7F4VG8lagHlZSHaeKNS1X3iiV6Tm5Wm6j5hEgMK0Lpt1pMZGYajGhT-1z3kj1PlsV7AtnMBOPXQ61YTIY-Fr1RQH2YMI0UJnyWt665R3PEazH_7-K0A" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="232" height="104" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhf7POxCXPzlU7KCOmfEPZJA_YTaauzts8hZNGf7xJ_5AjGe1pln1b9qigNElSJmleNniuKzci7F4VG8lagHlZSHaeKNS1X3iiV6Tm5Wm6j5hEgMK0Lpt1pMZGYajGhT-1z3kj1PlsV7AtnMBOPXQ61YTIY-Fr1RQH2YMI0UJnyWt665R3PEazH_7-K0A=w69-h104" width="69" /></a> <img alt="" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="231" height="104" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg54czqoEd14iVN7F-gcwwDhZn4r051B1Iqu8aRow8B67VGS-xBvf_BStiYCBFd22K8RRjSx4ZJJuEyB3qNlv8KfV89N3VJ_wbI67UUpYrow0xVDe-9q1YXiuQmgE1Ns1kJM91qzko3QXjEOK4-ox8k2Tx3phlrkXolHo-Z-9-JCf83QvU5fVK7nmgnYg=w69-h104" width="69" /> <img alt="" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="232" height="105" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiIxjQ2zwxdntOo641Gekh4ssCar4kW4QoE8Fw0TBv8yGuujnr8_hJ9KnhYLKnUgpb7P7HMN6hmR87y9eJ4TWZkbo9_PdTCJyxfF3g9kaOv3FaR6TzWIoZe8R2GFFJMA_NgILkj9T1WgqT82kiFpoy9cCk2h9jwI8CMnbqzXHSPaFJ3Vp7z1fFiR8r3lA=w70-h105" width="70" /> <img alt="" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="231" height="105" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEijw2OAi4lox2P2aVYdUDkbIpKLozuI3v-qC---pMSNV82i6uywFGN0RJb6jThzOx7xA6cNFlUlvJvvPWO3_ZQpke34ub4sb4xzfqZD-PSnJWaHWL6Kvw1idWNvoUXM5Jzr55eG4vf4IcA03keEiw0BvbS3ag7sFA1HhO7WBkazEZ3xEi7G4mO6ucQlJg=w69-h105" width="69" /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjf3E2g4h5OtlVGtE5sHJpmkvaGqlf__5H8AnhPw_EjxMQUvaE-ybAyySpWOZDEOkfBqgo0mhx_80GZQMG_r6aRUeD8kHXouHX3v6L9LMwIjpJak0vBtrEoHEbIPOKAEo55zJ0Pmv65M6Qr1VHz5SKa31P5TDqyFfGRG2K8EwIuZgM5QgUWf8bGQpgtwg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1715" height="101" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjf3E2g4h5OtlVGtE5sHJpmkvaGqlf__5H8AnhPw_EjxMQUvaE-ybAyySpWOZDEOkfBqgo0mhx_80GZQMG_r6aRUeD8kHXouHX3v6L9LMwIjpJak0vBtrEoHEbIPOKAEo55zJ0Pmv65M6Qr1VHz5SKa31P5TDqyFfGRG2K8EwIuZgM5QgUWf8bGQpgtwg=w67-h101" width="67" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhl623LSDx9MFtns8OnHfxnBVxNNB15rOWHJi97Mj_ZRLLUBaHCJg0mX7VGsDpIbXgqY-Vc6HUAc13GZzE4BxflZz8Zl9aBXgKMqGtkMzwegIdegcU9rhCl8BUVLV2s-MvPiipQTnIfjuYDoOK2z0R9OBQ9E_h0hvQ3zmcSVHI2FShav7aiKxtudV6v1g" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="445" height="108" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhl623LSDx9MFtns8OnHfxnBVxNNB15rOWHJi97Mj_ZRLLUBaHCJg0mX7VGsDpIbXgqY-Vc6HUAc13GZzE4BxflZz8Zl9aBXgKMqGtkMzwegIdegcU9rhCl8BUVLV2s-MvPiipQTnIfjuYDoOK2z0R9OBQ9E_h0hvQ3zmcSVHI2FShav7aiKxtudV6v1g=w71-h108" width="71" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgtM2nVs7lggZxbUHZl_R2hkSX6zdYnUUigJ-FMukY0dN-3xA5prVyz3eX3l5wou9CMyzCIbD9bb2lmFZ8Z5fTg1E6px1saGd45pKu0G-Z67rQpkgzidKl0OZ5ypMcSr2RsTDAyu_x93bIKXbBtdTnrb9IifDNNWJXgrjHPAlaFR13DW-nhfvNIyey2wA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="327" height="108" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgtM2nVs7lggZxbUHZl_R2hkSX6zdYnUUigJ-FMukY0dN-3xA5prVyz3eX3l5wou9CMyzCIbD9bb2lmFZ8Z5fTg1E6px1saGd45pKu0G-Z67rQpkgzidKl0OZ5ypMcSr2RsTDAyu_x93bIKXbBtdTnrb9IifDNNWJXgrjHPAlaFR13DW-nhfvNIyey2wA=w70-h108" width="70" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhoXJ1xeCZRHwV2V4tEAMtC3yHKuJv_zJ_oVk45U4DGcH6uKGDhIoa00pPGpTpgdzcCGSROKaSNm_UO2kH_r7vsHwFCWIS3qGke5gWIY_lanBJKhjxHLso3xwtWH3ldFSNP0qu0exYhX4Kgriyd-0TaWtLTYlxwaHyhyafxXMI2EtI5xo5v6UxCHGcj1Q" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="364" height="107" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhoXJ1xeCZRHwV2V4tEAMtC3yHKuJv_zJ_oVk45U4DGcH6uKGDhIoa00pPGpTpgdzcCGSROKaSNm_UO2kH_r7vsHwFCWIS3qGke5gWIY_lanBJKhjxHLso3xwtWH3ldFSNP0qu0exYhX4Kgriyd-0TaWtLTYlxwaHyhyafxXMI2EtI5xo5v6UxCHGcj1Q=w70-h107" width="70" /></a> <br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #0a0a0a;"><span>Matthew Quick, well-known for his book and film </span><i>Silver Linings Playbook</i>,<span> has written a new, extraordinary novel, </span><i>We Are the Light</i>, which has been</span><span style="color: #0a0a0a;"> </span><span style="color: #0a0a0a;">described as a "journey." That it is, a journey through grief, mourning and unbearable sadness to healing and peace. To rejuvenation and </span></span></span><span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: times;">renewal. Read how Lucas and Eli save a whole town after a horrific experience no community should ever endure. That journey is one you, dear reader, definitely want to be a part of.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0a0a0a;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0a0a0a;">Lucas Goodgame lives in Majestic, Pennsylvania, a quaint suburb that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy. Everyone in Majestic sees Lucas as a hero—everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Insisting that his deceased wife, Darcy, visits him every night in the form of an angel, Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst, Karl. It is only when Eli, an eighteen-year-old young man whom the community has ostracized, begins camping out in Lucas’s backyard that an unlikely alliance takes shape and the two embark on a journey to heal their neighbors and, most importantly, themselves.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #0a0a0a;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #0a0a0a;" /></span>In a letter to readers of the advance copy of his novel, Matthew Quick writes, "<i>We are the Light</i> encourages all of us to let go and love, even in our darkest hours, and when we ultimately fail, which Lucas Goodgame and all of us will, it bids us to try once more to let go and love--and then again and again and again." </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><i>Here is my interview with Matthew where he allows us to be a part of his own journey.</i></b></div><p><b>JM: Tell me about where you live and why you love it so much.</b></p><p>MQ: I currently live on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, right on the Albemarle Sound.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiSHtFV-OM5poY9eu88m4bTsb98VhsJKJJq8FyhLmRDItVoyAPkPLNXuQAy-_Qo1BDzy9i-E5Tf9GbFR9E9ypram3IFECoRjtJhkFV9G1GlvQa2En_KC5uQARej6dhgxaCMgL_NAwcgSMD_fRGvpT9yDFH8rSmLdcgNLxbSi5gbQfL44HFLJok9br2ktg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="509" data-original-width="360" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiSHtFV-OM5poY9eu88m4bTsb98VhsJKJJq8FyhLmRDItVoyAPkPLNXuQAy-_Qo1BDzy9i-E5Tf9GbFR9E9ypram3IFECoRjtJhkFV9G1GlvQa2En_KC5uQARej6dhgxaCMgL_NAwcgSMD_fRGvpT9yDFH8rSmLdcgNLxbSi5gbQfL44HFLJok9br2ktg=w284-h400" width="284" /></a></div><br />The natural light here is spectacular and healing, which is important for my wife who suffers from <i>Seasonal Affective Disorder</i>. I love that Alicia feels well near the ocean. Whenever we come back from a trip off island, just as soon as we cross one of the bridges to OBX and see the light bouncing off the water like magic, we’re dumbstruck anew. Tourist season can be tough for this introvert. And since Covid reshuffled the deck, tourist season is now pretty much every single minute of the year. But there are still a few places where an introvert can escape from the crowds. Many of the old-school born-here types are warm and lovely. Watching the setting sun slowly drift back and forth along the western horizon of the sound as the seasons and years pass has been a gift. Alicia and I love to sit on our back deck and watch the ospreys divebomb the water and<p>then carry fish up to nests hidden away in high branches.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs68Vn2jIysA42xJ5Wn5eU_Si80w1Mm8rfFkFVtI18zLmv_LwCb8c2Ornkl0BdGqaeC2Y3pzZ1C6oH3egZva7C31NSxEigGHESiUkhpWsXF_ZM4ex5nyIiiTpsecWaBaJumBT_7y3l715r9YAiZd4sML0b_vC7F5CH3lXncq3IgFNgMxFKeBNYFCX1dA/s2023/osprey.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: right;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1918" data-original-width="2023" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs68Vn2jIysA42xJ5Wn5eU_Si80w1Mm8rfFkFVtI18zLmv_LwCb8c2Ornkl0BdGqaeC2Y3pzZ1C6oH3egZva7C31NSxEigGHESiUkhpWsXF_ZM4ex5nyIiiTpsecWaBaJumBT_7y3l715r9YAiZd4sML0b_vC7F5CH3lXncq3IgFNgMxFKeBNYFCX1dA/w153-h146/osprey.jpg" width="153" /></a></p>I love swimming in the ocean with my friends. <div><br /><div> I love playing Kubb on the beach.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCjj6lFJvypODmJdDFsYjJ6sJNGVTH8t5hmnFag1m8j_UHTe-GWx7lMZsd70w84HalLkPVt7SQKISMM6yPJKHdtufZoMQ1ueXcjm3IdQjgzVTCQSZGwQYzPlRq1yZk-c3qtmzpWTuSafUpD7gUdb9kMVAg1z8U1Q5gTpn1ahH47ddrJbCZlA2mnURr6A/s640/MQ%20Kubb.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="593" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCjj6lFJvypODmJdDFsYjJ6sJNGVTH8t5hmnFag1m8j_UHTe-GWx7lMZsd70w84HalLkPVt7SQKISMM6yPJKHdtufZoMQ1ueXcjm3IdQjgzVTCQSZGwQYzPlRq1yZk-c3qtmzpWTuSafUpD7gUdb9kMVAg1z8U1Q5gTpn1ahH47ddrJbCZlA2mnURr6A/s320/MQ%20Kubb.jpg" width="297" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The master Kubb player.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> I also love eating lunch at <i>Woo Casa Kitchen</i>. <p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg7XiY4Wy5ptceWIUWeszWV4tjLdai2IrkVNgGeKHsWQxKg86yHy6U2PseV3f1ApCfiEHdEzFnAzVV3AL-iP2tJ6G_U3bgJDmNohdlKcumpoO17MaMiaYaDG5t6QoIRAa6py0RRkNwS_nH8AoxqxvbFgK6YDei7Na5jk6Dec169ec7A2CRP3oK6vYAUrA" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="320" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg7XiY4Wy5ptceWIUWeszWV4tjLdai2IrkVNgGeKHsWQxKg86yHy6U2PseV3f1ApCfiEHdEzFnAzVV3AL-iP2tJ6G_U3bgJDmNohdlKcumpoO17MaMiaYaDG5t6QoIRAa6py0RRkNwS_nH8AoxqxvbFgK6YDei7Na5jk6Dec169ec7A2CRP3oK6vYAUrA" width="192" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sample Woo Casa menu</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><p>And I love how my wife’s face absorbs and then radiates the summer’s glow.</p><p><b>JM: Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories?</b></p><p>MQ: The years were 1980/1981 and I was living in a small green house in the tiny town of Oaklyn, NJ, which is right across the Delaware River from Center City, Philadelphia.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmE50gOD02lZOQZGwXTVjIqiHECtTEtxrxzClraobDK1l_oVJ-tOlELekhxU31Tf32oh1VWQKJ0X9xBSY_xRUN3bW5vp4F610_a7fYOMp4ECwxMhqxq22say4z0aFh6OABOBZIxU0xxrH4NoNJQtU3beY2yFxKSFyDcoR3ceWExWvL8WxBkvfWsiAfqg/s342/Matthew%20Quick%20almost%20seven%20years%20old.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="342" data-original-width="312" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmE50gOD02lZOQZGwXTVjIqiHECtTEtxrxzClraobDK1l_oVJ-tOlELekhxU31Tf32oh1VWQKJ0X9xBSY_xRUN3bW5vp4F610_a7fYOMp4ECwxMhqxq22say4z0aFh6OABOBZIxU0xxrH4NoNJQtU3beY2yFxKSFyDcoR3ceWExWvL8WxBkvfWsiAfqg/s320/Matthew%20Quick%20almost%20seven%20years%20old.jpg" width="292" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Seven year old Matthew holding his new baby brother Micah.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />I remember feeling very lonely as a child. I think I was extremely introverted even back then and many of my fondest memories are often devoid of other people: </div><div>reading a <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrcRoP-XtJOyhMpNFo4Mvg7qfrKq2h4GYF28bp8N7fRY7kiW2KAn35qCHUQT_q_UoakhUELbCwxjRR4yxK5vGxcXC1MSMiVVBFXOT5pd1JKxCKMYzXw6Bo9da0Tf4jinm5FnlfMlfbhVTQuGNm_yTAc3VbbbYFvuT6v1b0AQ4zq3VeiG2MT2LOCL1ROw/s1698/reading%20alone.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: right;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1317" data-original-width="1698" height="115" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrcRoP-XtJOyhMpNFo4Mvg7qfrKq2h4GYF28bp8N7fRY7kiW2KAn35qCHUQT_q_UoakhUELbCwxjRR4yxK5vGxcXC1MSMiVVBFXOT5pd1JKxCKMYzXw6Bo9da0Tf4jinm5FnlfMlfbhVTQuGNm_yTAc3VbbbYFvuT6v1b0AQ4zq3VeiG2MT2LOCL1ROw/w148-h115/reading%20alone.jpg" width="148" /></a> book in a forgotten corner of the elementary school library during free time, sitting on a bench alone looking at the creek, lying on my back and staring up at clouds, hiding in the lesser-traveled sections of my church, exploring my grandparents’ closets and attic. I never really felt like I belonged. And I often worried there was something wrong with me. I had friends. I played sports. I tried to fit in and mostly succeeded. But I suspected that there was something else I should be doing. It turns out that thing was sitting alone in a room for years and writing novels.<p><b>JM: Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?</b></p><p>MQ: I read Gao Xingjian’s <i>Soul Mountain </i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjOyKuHsDyBukE02Tjpb2HceUV4fhq4fJ0gqGEWpTLOAfFAi-QZwuL20xlVy2XHy3iwT-IlAIvpmoKagVcucCDPS7aom24oGRxd1oNInkRP3CLH_zi0uO96Q7rITghZAA0C5Qn0vTALEuOTzSnmVNh7lNCJUcYmLUuBc7v6Pt9SCA6YY4kR8Qdk8kAlEw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="334" data-original-width="220" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjOyKuHsDyBukE02Tjpb2HceUV4fhq4fJ0gqGEWpTLOAfFAi-QZwuL20xlVy2XHy3iwT-IlAIvpmoKagVcucCDPS7aom24oGRxd1oNInkRP3CLH_zi0uO96Q7rITghZAA0C5Qn0vTALEuOTzSnmVNh7lNCJUcYmLUuBc7v6Pt9SCA6YY4kR8Qdk8kAlEw" width="158" /></a></div><br />when I was doing my Creative Writing MFA, circa 2005. Then I wrote my thesis on his work. He was censored by the Chinese government and ultimately decided to leave China and live in exile. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he talks about the need for ‘cold literature’ or art that doesn’t follow trends and political movements, but is simply the expression of a single individual. It’s been quite some time since I read it, but I remember <i>Soul Mountain</i> being a literal journey into rural China and simultaneously one man’s journey inward. I think maybe what I started to realize while reading <i>Soul Mountain</i> (and all of Gao Xingjian’s work) is that there is sometimes an extraordinary cost for journeying inward and trying to find and then express your true self. Part of that cost is often loneliness or at least solitude. I admire the man greatly.<p><b>JM: Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it makes it so?</b></p><p>MQ:<i> The Monster at the End of This Book: Starring Lovable, Furry Old Grover</i> by Jon Stone and illustrated by Michael Smollin.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj7s7FwSkY__fm6y0QwdPu71thJ1ObpjMimwyTM1SmJn-RM_EcVSvd0-6wG0VhjHUvU67w6IvFcIHbZsJAUePaW3WOe1qEudVVnbKqI2N4RR4rDBI0GafauWZmEHwSWu5_NTLP5Sem3z_KLmhlbhA0LeBoYdDOTiz-2TL-cuuAKQBIdG00TnT7GNCJ8rg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="299" data-original-width="220" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj7s7FwSkY__fm6y0QwdPu71thJ1ObpjMimwyTM1SmJn-RM_EcVSvd0-6wG0VhjHUvU67w6IvFcIHbZsJAUePaW3WOe1qEudVVnbKqI2N4RR4rDBI0GafauWZmEHwSWu5_NTLP5Sem3z_KLmhlbhA0LeBoYdDOTiz-2TL-cuuAKQBIdG00TnT7GNCJ8rg" width="177" /></a></div><br />I think even as a child I really appreciated a good perception shift. Also, maybe I intuitively knew—and huge spoiler alert here—that the monster we subconsciously fear most is often the person in the mirror. The Jungian work I have been doing lately teaches me the same message. We can tell ourselves not to turn the metaphorical pages, but inevitably we all must. And the truth is always there waiting.<p><b>JM : What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?</b></p><p>MQ: My father likes to remind me that I refused to wear more than two colors at a time when I was little. One Sunday morning, my mother dressed me in multi-colored plaid pants, <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBdGQKqketv6KPt4omBdO2l2BDM9VnhiE-sxn4AoeSdqxCHUh8wIWOTjvH73JIWfgkxFwKgJ89_vQkX6qvFIamm9skB7O3Iqs9NbrhpYfndpJHv-yOGc7Sj35lCQg3rttN8wBXZzcKXh3qxG_QPs44j3AVjjr-WbqHnpQhFiaIsmXq_P7OKsQ1iU7NTg/s1059/plaid.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: right;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1059" data-original-width="978" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBdGQKqketv6KPt4omBdO2l2BDM9VnhiE-sxn4AoeSdqxCHUh8wIWOTjvH73JIWfgkxFwKgJ89_vQkX6qvFIamm9skB7O3Iqs9NbrhpYfndpJHv-yOGc7Sj35lCQg3rttN8wBXZzcKXh3qxG_QPs44j3AVjjr-WbqHnpQhFiaIsmXq_P7OKsQ1iU7NTg/w144-h155/plaid.jpg" width="144" /></a>which effectively short-circuited my young brain. According to Dad, when my mother refused to allow me to change into a pair of solid, one-color pants, I ran out back and repeatedly slid knees-first through the grass, knowing full well that Mom would never allow me to wear grass-stained pants to Sunday school. I’ve come to believe that this stunt both infuriated and impressed my father, although I’m sure I caught his wrath the day of.</p><div><p>There is also one about the seven-year-old Matthew Quick getting caught peeing off the deck of my uncle’s OBX vacation house. Apparently, my parents’ guests didn’t appreciate the tranquility of a thin yellow waterfall.</p><p><b>JM: How did you meet your beloved Alicia? How did your first date go?</b> </p><p>MQ: Our paths initially crossed at La Salle University in Philadelphia, where we both studied as undergraduates. The guitarist and singer of the band I was in at the time asked me to be his wingman for a breakfast date he had with one of the new frosh. My future wife had agreed to be the wingwoman for my friend’s date and so—when our friends hit it off and therefore didn’t need us to save them—Alicia and I ended up having our first of thousands of breakfasts together. She was seventeen at the time and I was nineteen. Having scored free tickets via our school paper, The Collegian, we went to see the 1993 movie adaptation of The Three Musketeers at the Ritz Five in Old City, Philadelphia. We must have ridden the Orange Line down from North Philly. I don’t remember much about the film, but the handholding we did during it and the kissing afterward on a cobblestoned street corner felt fated enough for Alicia to keep the free promotional poster we received, which hung in the closet of her childhood bedroom for decades afterward. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiSndrywefUa6DBIX0GOaNh80Ycdgme9bNADhIPMS0wtrriQ-CjsQ8ANcbzWbst34MCy5nfllkMXMbJtWk15hyy8ZOeX2rldo0mJbi-hPch_TvvsMtuc_06L-OQXDxrSbMYp3w6E81Jmq7bY7WCduk_W9sIwClfUp019ymxSeROtlYgzyRk7i2G0Wm9yA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="2066" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiSndrywefUa6DBIX0GOaNh80Ycdgme9bNADhIPMS0wtrriQ-CjsQ8ANcbzWbst34MCy5nfllkMXMbJtWk15hyy8ZOeX2rldo0mJbi-hPch_TvvsMtuc_06L-OQXDxrSbMYp3w6E81Jmq7bY7WCduk_W9sIwClfUp019ymxSeROtlYgzyRk7i2G0Wm9yA" width="165" /></a></div><br />Alicia will tell you that I “broke up with” her shortly after our first date, but I do not remember doing this. Having recently been wounded in love, I might have seemed a bit noncommittal at first. But since that 1993 La Salle breakfast, my heart has belonged to only one woman.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGBfKr0s3NZ8xzYq-TWlQURt0KvGt9MaKYGBGzL3LYLVsk79Z80XcAGfx7yfJwxJzo46kMtzmoGGM6hC-FB5XqUu5v1Sf89_9Yjyo2Wato7_QfHKzZP0bYsxfXpvqpbw7OWmVPm-29SNjdjcAepABL8LUzWPWFSwoO58GTs3CWjmUKw_z8Sl24Ap3bQg/s746/Matthew%20Quick%20and%20Alicia%20Bessette%20wedding%20day.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="746" data-original-width="592" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGBfKr0s3NZ8xzYq-TWlQURt0KvGt9MaKYGBGzL3LYLVsk79Z80XcAGfx7yfJwxJzo46kMtzmoGGM6hC-FB5XqUu5v1Sf89_9Yjyo2Wato7_QfHKzZP0bYsxfXpvqpbw7OWmVPm-29SNjdjcAepABL8LUzWPWFSwoO58GTs3CWjmUKw_z8Sl24Ap3bQg/s320/Matthew%20Quick%20and%20Alicia%20Bessette%20wedding%20day.jpg" width="254" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Wedding Day!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><b>JM: Is there a song, person, or group that you listen to when you are feeling a bit down?</b></p><p>MQ: When melancholy, I tend to listen to women who play the piano. (My wife composes music for and plays the piano, but I listen to Alicia’s music when I am feeling anxious, especially on airplanes.) When I’m feeling blue, I often listen to Tory Amos </p><p><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="80" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiuk4HRvpV0jMRKNQCsC5rT5tldOsYikxFshfMfHgRziS6qyrz4DkX5qoTGThg8xPQvxKRnm6ZED02KC1-83bbduzkOQ-FLSNfgVrooulHR9e0NUTzCfiloVACEgbbQKoZ6ZU9X4TIahmln7SNMjur8FkuSxsvjsOiOCufJ7NsrWDp9WWXg3hpJ8SyCdQ=w80-h80" width="80" /><br /><br /> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSYr0etDzRM" target="_blank">Silent All These Years</a>; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtKKqcWVgaw" target="_blank">Mother</a>; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr8auZq-Xn8" target="_blank">Pretty Good Year</a>; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwIanQ8FnqM" target="_blank">Icicle</a>; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUqtaShg09U" target="_blank">Yes, Anastasia</a> or Regina Spektor </p><p><img alt="" data-original-height="4500" data-original-width="3000" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg2mfeY4E9sKELSC9faPzKL2K_qdiF-sFkia5VOOvXI8O84osrIUcgg86wem-62UgslyscpFZrKNSpFuq7PBJYOnWO-p_6YBB2VGI_GXOXvkEgP76bmqe8dcTUTmlSqgs-bM8beIBLl5Jy51aPo5sElHuVgrcfXfH6ph8LYNUsNm0o40toHU4dCFsOs5g=w74-h110" width="74" /> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLvE2bbpVmU" target="_blank">Braille</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g-dlnH3wc8&list=RD-g-dlnH3wc8&start_radio=1" target="_blank">Hero</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPQOi3EQfiE" target="_blank">Somedays</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pxRXP3w-sQ" target="_blank">Laughing With</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_EJIImCbzc" target="_blank">Human of the Year</a> or Vanessa Carlton</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiLqgB7w1ZVqk0XoSvOyvd2gOqmJQ902rCKh6JRwIcNmb6Q3jvmVhoqjVXu4b_aiXldtpj4y72185VGxL6iAsuhiNy3n33YrV-52Ek6WmAAuVrIuOVH1r8Zx084dcbdLCH0o9m17pvw_ARs5phY6fljTXfe8qgTRY0VX2ldzsV2bIpSTbyRSWV1xgX9yA" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="767" data-original-width="620" height="98" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiLqgB7w1ZVqk0XoSvOyvd2gOqmJQ902rCKh6JRwIcNmb6Q3jvmVhoqjVXu4b_aiXldtpj4y72185VGxL6iAsuhiNy3n33YrV-52Ek6WmAAuVrIuOVH1r8Zx084dcbdLCH0o9m17pvw_ARs5phY6fljTXfe8qgTRY0VX2ldzsV2bIpSTbyRSWV1xgX9yA=w79-h98" width="79" /></a></div> <a href=" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu-ZCi3gfZc" target="_blank">River (Living Room Session)</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-uW2PmRc7c" target="_blank">Fairweather Friend</a>.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>JM: How are you different now than you were in your 20’s?</b></div><p></p><p>MQ: Late forties Matthew Quick is definitely much less social and much more sober—four plus years of sobriety and counting—than mid-twenties Matthew Quick. I think I’ve grown to accept my introverted stay-at-home nature. I’d rather be sober and in control and in bed by nine thirty PM than drunk and surrounded by people whose words I won’t remember the next day after waking up at four AM completely dehydrated.</p><p>I also exercise a lot more, mostly for mental health reasons. And I’m in Jungian analysis instead of pretending like I don’t have mental health problems. The older I get, the more I enjoy films and television shows of the past. My two-man movie club has been on a Bergman run lately. I would never want to be in my twenties again, but I really miss the nineties. On fellow author and friend Nick Butler’s recommendation, Alicia and I have been making our way through the nineties-TV-show <i>Northern Exposure</i>. It feels like going home.</p><p><b>JM: Is there a question no one has ever asked you that you wish they would? Something, </b><b>perhaps, that people would be surprised to know about you?</b></p><p>MQ: I once felt overwhelmingly called to be a minister, especially in my late teens. Not sure why that’s coming to mind now. I remember in my mid-twenties inviting a Presbyterian preacher into my home to discuss the possibility of my entering into the religious life.</p><p>But when he put his hand on my head and prayed, I felt repulsed.<img border="0" data-original-height="1167" data-original-width="973" height="131" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWuWz-qvwaPCiV158PNZwp895QbmUY7llI8yC3Hta5MTtmB58VeRpYkzMu3q14EhQ1YZ1axxre2L-24zXJmWLUxxPmoG6AmUMv_ZlzYY68O1DhSORvAAHhbOvgvWn9bpHnoE7f_vkc8tqVvuXMMneSyit2FjqaX2ii4p4aTKUdLdqEbMuje_48N_vVIQ/w110-h131/pres.jpg" width="110" /> It was an intense and loaded feeling. The preacher quickly advised me to move in a different direction, saying the religious life was difficult and that it would be hardest on my wife, which struck me as a surprising bit of honesty at the time. I haven’t attended a church service in decades. But religion was a huge part of my childhood, which no doubt colors my writing. I miss going to church, but I also simultaneously really don’t want to go to church ever again. There is a mystery there. And I’m not sure I have even begun to understand it.</p><p><b>JM: You mention having to deal with your anxiety in your opening to your book, can you talk </b><b>a bit about where that comes from? Did it play a role in helping you visualize Lucas?</b></p><p>MQ: My grandparents grew up poor during the great depression and then both of my grandfathers fought in World War II. I know a lot more about my paternal grandparents than I do about my maternal, but I can safely say that trauma was passed down through the generations on both sides. Growing up, there was always a lot of anxiety about money and politics. There was a lot of Protestant end-of-times religious anxiety too. It’s a hard way to live. And I took all of that very literally when I was a child.</p><p>Alcoholism and mental health issues run in my family. My parents—who never drank when I was a kid—got genes and brain software from their moms and dads, which they inadvertently passed on to me.</p><p>Historically, I’ve been a fairly anxious person and my anxiety has led to depression in the past. My former dances with alcohol provided much-needed temporary relief but ultimately made things worse as decades passed. Sobriety and Jungian analysis have begun to remedy much of the above, but I still have a lot more work to do.</p><p>At the start of the novel, Lucas is dealing with the horrors of his present-tense trauma, but we slowly learn that he also has a trauma history and a very complicated relationship with his mom and dad. Lucas isn’t me and his parents aren’t my parents.</p><p>But my own battles definitely informed the writing of Lucas Goodgame.</p><p><b>JM: How do you feel about “Independent Bookstores” and their role in your success? </b></p><p>MQ: I’ve had many incredibly wonderful experiences via indies, but what’s coming to mind now has to do with the local bookshop supporting my better half.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Alicia published her novel, <i>Smile Beach Murder</i>, in May of 2022. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi5thwlZBPfR60xEz9MBFpYeSQZQsimUwwTdMoRiZieMAMSSE1vWKf6hst8oStdQ9taE86qg2Asu5H5iwX8mVt3wwCJ1P-8BvVos-XMt6zkteFrN6BpW0YK18mNBPa8ByUZAA2kSGyuSI_1aa2MxH_HI-I9kDeZ4O0lbPJzCOJsSNzs16Xy0EBsffhLHQ" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="900" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi5thwlZBPfR60xEz9MBFpYeSQZQsimUwwTdMoRiZieMAMSSE1vWKf6hst8oStdQ9taE86qg2Asu5H5iwX8mVt3wwCJ1P-8BvVos-XMt6zkteFrN6BpW0YK18mNBPa8ByUZAA2kSGyuSI_1aa2MxH_HI-I9kDeZ4O0lbPJzCOJsSNzs16Xy0EBsffhLHQ" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Alicia with her new book.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Her first promotional in-person event happened a half-year before publication and with our fantastic local bookseller here in OBX, Jamie Anderson of Downtown Books and Duck’s Cottage.</div></div><p></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj6gH_pnMB2M6H1kVxLRrvWucngWvseJXLcAzPpLGlFAThPsQNLmF0gqUPfLO7s8CByL4FRFSvEmwWsoOJiZiHgOssyTgJRBy01kVqYARYCeK_qecawKJHOnrIcPJOTM399KCrsLpDq06qvWHChzHxtRYZb0oecVxbv7hTSIQNd7wGlqg04nobntdIZsw" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj6gH_pnMB2M6H1kVxLRrvWucngWvseJXLcAzPpLGlFAThPsQNLmF0gqUPfLO7s8CByL4FRFSvEmwWsoOJiZiHgOssyTgJRBy01kVqYARYCeK_qecawKJHOnrIcPJOTM399KCrsLpDq06qvWHChzHxtRYZb0oecVxbv7hTSIQNd7wGlqg04nobntdIZsw" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Downtown Books</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Jamie billed it as Parapalooza. Local authors were invited to read a few paragraphs from their latest book. Alicia hadn’t published a novel in a decade. She was nervous as we drove to downtown Manteo, where the event took place. Jamie lined up a half-dozen authors in a newly constructed courtyard and then a small crowd gathered to stand and observe. As I watched and listened to authors of all ages proudly read from their novels and picture books and in one case a deceased spouse’s secret poetry stash, I was struck by how captivated the audience was. Everyone was standing—on concrete—for an hour, listening respectfully in 2021 to writers doing nothing more than reading aloud. People applauded generously. They did not seem restless. They were not looking at their phones. They seemed fully present and glad to be listening to local authors read on a Saturday morning. Shortly after the event began, I got a good tingling sensation in my body that reminded me of when I used to be a teacher of literature and my young students were fully participating—when they were supporting each other not for grades, but because they really were starting to believe in the necessary and transformative power of the written word. Alicia read well enough to send a few people scurrying directly to Downtown Books, where they preordered <i>Smile Beach Murder</i>. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgVvLMkSSGf2U4PFdi4Do12CNxnnaoXEwVylr3f3aSyH1g1uOjk7-GqhdRVaVV5X1bhTyHxHqEhdh9bwIGlbfRvBeoSPu9SDl_ZTdPXq-68t_jhKFR-0TU5isvH2cv19GcMEB1hQV4fF77SIo7jx1kKKQi0ApODYvu8t57ZPjgYnR1Kn0Zq0yzsBMiN_Q" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="286" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgVvLMkSSGf2U4PFdi4Do12CNxnnaoXEwVylr3f3aSyH1g1uOjk7-GqhdRVaVV5X1bhTyHxHqEhdh9bwIGlbfRvBeoSPu9SDl_ZTdPXq-68t_jhKFR-0TU5isvH2cv19GcMEB1hQV4fF77SIo7jx1kKKQi0ApODYvu8t57ZPjgYnR1Kn0Zq0yzsBMiN_Q" width="153" /></a></div><br />When the book officially came out, Jamie scheduled several signings with Alicia, which helped catapult <i>Smile Beach Murder</i> onto the SIBA (Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance) bestseller list for four glorious consecutive summer weeks.<p>It’s tempting to focus on the transactional handselling aspect of the above story. Believe me, we are very grateful for the sales. But that Saturday morning when a small crowd willingly stood on unforgiving concrete for an hour to listen to local writers read—that’s a testament to the true power and beauty of the local bookshop. And I think we need that now more than ever. (Jamie is currently taking preorders for signed copies of <i>We Are the Light</i>. Downtown Books in Manteo is the official provider of signed Matthew Quick novels.)</p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="line-height: 107%;">JM: Jungian analysis plays a major role
in your main character’s life and the storyline of your book and it’s clearly a
big part of your personal life. Using the epistolary style to tell the
narrative was brilliant, was that always your intent?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;">MQ: When I was
creatively blocked, Alicia suggested—many times—that I write another epistolary
novel. I love writing letters and have had some epic pen-pal exchanges. I’ve
maintained intense and intimate email relationships. Some have spanned decades.
But I balked at Alicia’s suggestion. I felt like I had already done that. I
wasn’t sure about the marketability of an epistolary novel. People/critics had
been snarky about it in the past. And I worried that maybe the format was a
crutch.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;">But then
years passed and I couldn’t manage to write anything even remotely publishable.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;">The writer,
Nickolas Butler, seconded Alicia’s suggestion as we tried to tease out my
writer’s block during a phone conversation. If I remember correctly, I had told
him that I could write very long emails and letters to friends, but I’d sit at
the computer unable to complete a single page of fiction. I was desperate at
this point, as it had been multiple years since I had completed anything good.
I was ready to try anything.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Two
questions logically followed: Who was my protagonist? To whom would he be
writing?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;">At the time,
I was doing three hours a week of intense Jungian analysis. I felt very dependent
on my analyst. I also often felt like I needed more time with him, especially
since we hadn’t yet solved my writer’s block. A small part of me irrationally
feared being abandoned by my analyst. That’s when I thought, <i>What if my protagonist was jettisoned by his
Jungian analyst? What if the letters were my protagonist’s attempt to woo his
analyst back?</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Shortly
after asking myself those last two questions, I was happily writing.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="line-height: 107%;">JM: Am I correct that you first came up
with the tragedy in a theater idea more than five years ago? How did that first
come about?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;">MQ: Back in 2014,
I did a wonderful speaking/signing event at Ambler, PA’s historic Ambler
Theater,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhQ-CY8vywXfNhVzWsTiCc2FYnPEdddrQby0Jlb130V8JubNzwi14Va_G1tsxi66pckBMqajJn8rgDybHZaxK5pwz6zrlWfPlugUypUGkTfuVU7Hca8DxG8MY6L4UKvsFLag31fyvU09cxdZPyCORSNhCd7LCem33kYNWDFzscsjGU0eFKogeGdBuDJXw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="773" data-original-width="580" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhQ-CY8vywXfNhVzWsTiCc2FYnPEdddrQby0Jlb130V8JubNzwi14Va_G1tsxi66pckBMqajJn8rgDybHZaxK5pwz6zrlWfPlugUypUGkTfuVU7Hca8DxG8MY6L4UKvsFLag31fyvU09cxdZPyCORSNhCd7LCem33kYNWDFzscsjGU0eFKogeGdBuDJXw=w480-h640" width="480" /></a></span></div><span style="line-height: 107%;"><br />which is pictured on the cover of <i>We
Are the Light</i>. I was struck by the almost cathedral-like architecture. There
were black-and-white photos hung inside to document its storied history. This
wasn’t your modern cookie-cutter chain theater. It felt almost holy to me. A
proper storyteller’s church. I made a mental note that night, promising myself
that one day I would write a novel about a historic movie theater.<o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Coincidentally—or
for the Jungians out there, perhaps this is a bit of synchronicity—a few years
later my parents bought a home within walking distance of the Ambler Theater,
where I started to see films whenever I visited. Each time, I remembered my
promise.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Over the
years I wrote many false starts. I couldn’t figure it out, until I realized
that the story wasn’t about the movie house—it was about the people who loved
the movie house. Why does a community need to gaze up at light projected onto a
huge screen? I wanted to answer that question.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="line-height: 107%;">JM: You mention that Lucas is trying to
reorient to the feminine in a positive way. Can you explain that a bit more?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;">MQ: Well, it’s
pretty obvious that Lucas has what Jungians would call a mother complex.
Unfortunately, his mother doesn’t really see him as an independent person, but
as an extension of herself. She also sees his masculinity as a threat and,
therefore, tries to undermine his agency. She wants him to remain a boy
forever. This is developmentally damaging to Lucas when he is younger. Because
of this, Lucas can be particularly—and maybe unconsciously—afraid of women. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;">As we make
our way deeper into the novel, we see that his wife, Darcy, had done a lot to
repair his relationship to the feminine. She sees him as a full person. She
embraces his masculinity. She treats him as an equal. But when she is taken
away from him, Lucas becomes a bit unmoored and regresses to an earlier mind
frame. This is only further stoked when Sandra Coyle starts making intense
demands before Lucas is psychologically ready to respond to the tragedy. Even
Jill, whom I view as heroic, puts a lot of pressure on Lucas that isn’t
particularly helpful at the start of the novel.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;">The Jungian
work I have been doing teaches that everyone has both masculine and feminine
inside. So when we become afraid of one side of that coin—or worse yet,
demonize it—we are doing violence to those inner parts of ourselves, which
always makes us unwell.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Lucas’s
strong intimate male friendships—particularly with Isaiah, Eli, and even Karl—really
are medicinal. When Lucas takes on the task of initiating Eli—who is also
struggling with a mother complex—they both begin to process the tragedy and
come to terms with the masculine and feminine parts of themselves and others.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><b><i>J</i>M: And finally Matthew, the ever popular time travel question:</b></p><p><b><i>IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME</i></b></p><p><b><i>to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,</i></b></p><p><b><i>be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,</i></b></p><p><b><i>actually, experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all,</i></b></p><p><b><i>meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them.</i></b></p><p><b><i>When would you go?</i></b></p><p><b><i>Where would you go?</i></b></p><p><b><i>Who would you want to meet?</i></b></p><p><b><i>And most importantly, why do you think you chose this time?</i></b></p><p>MQ: When I proudly told my father that I’d sold my first novel, he said he had always wanted to publish a book and then started talking about how he had once dreamed of moving to Boston and pursuing an artistic life. At the time, the comment wounded me. I, of course—perhaps narcissistically—wanted him to celebrate my accomplishment, not wax nostalgically about the roads he hadn’t taken. Back in junior high, I found two guitars in our attic—a six string and a twelve string. Inside the cases was music written in my father’s handwriting. When I asked my mother, she told me Dad used to play and had even once regularly performed for sick children at a hospital. It was like hearing my father was actually an alien from another planet. I had never seen Dad play a musical instrument in my entire life.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwJOzIaI06GK0CargzHVdmZ_hNLK0zc7PzDnM5r5or75WLIjYF7nl_TBOqOVDI0Y4clXC1rLRs0StIP0r4V96Ohisy6ERraD9ureychzaVTFLkhg3HvKUafFV6GDco2QlUGV2YpUb5n1eqzgYKAKE2mobk3hMk8UZ6rWwK9iyk9F_0ZQWkXiekbdHyzw/s668/Doreen%20and%20Michael%20Quick.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="434" data-original-width="668" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwJOzIaI06GK0CargzHVdmZ_hNLK0zc7PzDnM5r5or75WLIjYF7nl_TBOqOVDI0Y4clXC1rLRs0StIP0r4V96Ohisy6ERraD9ureychzaVTFLkhg3HvKUafFV6GDco2QlUGV2YpUb5n1eqzgYKAKE2mobk3hMk8UZ6rWwK9iyk9F_0ZQWkXiekbdHyzw/s320/Doreen%20and%20Michael%20Quick.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Matthew's parents, Doreen and Michael.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">My father was a lower-to-mid-level banker because his father had been a lower-to-mid-level banker. Dad had been colonized by banking. Ultimately—after I left his house—my father became a top-tier banker. But I remember him being a sad and frustrated banker when I was child.</div><p>At an event promoting one of my novels, a woman in my signing line handed me letters that my father had written her while they were in college. I didn’t recognize the man who had written the words. It made me realize that my father had once been a very different person before he had been forced by his father to be someone Dad maybe didn’t want to be.</p><p>I’ll time travel to 1968 and visit the twenty-year-old college-student version of my father at his alma mater, Albright College. I’ll hold up the paperback copy of Salinger’s <i>Franny </i><i>and Zooey</i> that I found in my grandparents’ house. I’ll ask Dad about the handwritten notes he had recently scribbled inside while taking a literature class. I’ll ask him to play me a song on his guitar. Maybe we’ll sink a beer or two while listening to the new Simon & Garfunkel album <i>Bookends</i>. Maybe we’ll hum along to the song <i>America</i>. Maybe I’ll tell him I’m going to play the last song on the album, <i>At the Zoo</i>, for my future high school students when we read Edward Albee’s <i>The Zoo Story</i> thirty-some years later.</p><p>When the beer kicks in and he finally opens up about his hopes and dreams, I’ll encourage him to move to Massachusetts and write a novel. And when he balks, like he has to in order for me to come into existence just five years down the road, I’ll put a hand on his shoulder and say, “Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll do it for you. In about thirty-six years. We’ll get there. I promise.”</p><p><b>JM: Thank you Matthew, not only for writing such an extraordinary book but also for being so open about yourself and your life.</b> <b>I know We Are the Light will touch many, many lives.</b></p><p><br /></p><p>Many thanks to the great Man Martin for his illustrations: <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?llr%3Dbnh4jixab%26p%3Doi%26m%3Dbnh4jixab%26sit%3Dsvkw6jrkb%26f%3D57144b0b-7634-4140-88f4-4f9e0e803937&source=gmail&ust=1658512006410000&usg=AOvVaw0il8FOyspfrvH-FOCkhQhS" href="https://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?llr=bnh4jixab&p=oi&m=bnh4jixab&sit=svkw6jrkb&f=57144b0b-7634-4140-88f4-4f9e0e803937" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "new times", serif; font-size: 16px;" target="_blank">https://visitor.r20.<wbr></wbr>constantcontact.com/d.jsp?llr=<wbr></wbr>bnh4jixab&p=oi&m=bnh4jixab&<wbr></wbr>sit=svkw6jrkb&f=57144b0b-7634-<wbr></wbr>4140-88f4-4f9e0e803937</a></p></div></div></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-70325694158193147692022-05-28T18:03:00.007-04:002022-05-28T19:13:15.620-04:00Rosalyn Story<p> </p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdTPYvMCMTd6xOj8ovYh_f80xflm73BK1RqZtm0ebydj6B4N9caHr3v9nkD6frhPPaoBooVhM_9JQ2-bCPVgbps4kVSb-0dPt6ycNwXZi4mGVr7wcWCWCbE21iJxCsXLoG4al9L4KofOIQfJFceROneVutdWiffZrIBRQ4pzUBhWTTHz8pyduAlJwCdA/s320/RosalynStory.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="214" data-original-width="320" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdTPYvMCMTd6xOj8ovYh_f80xflm73BK1RqZtm0ebydj6B4N9caHr3v9nkD6frhPPaoBooVhM_9JQ2-bCPVgbps4kVSb-0dPt6ycNwXZi4mGVr7wcWCWCbE21iJxCsXLoG4al9L4KofOIQfJFceROneVutdWiffZrIBRQ4pzUBhWTTHz8pyduAlJwCdA/w437-h293/RosalynStory.jpeg" width="437" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifHvse-GSC0_08a0z7ySEHwi06VKmIO5x-lkEvvYj86nZG5-J5iIoG_s7GNPRuOAHxx3AdVTMHN8BxkqILRV41p5ddZHb1CMFAMpYVqbrzKEIhyGbrlEfIq0bvKZ3PtbzgaUrTqEUPIkJlAJNygTt5CpgMl0QhWJKNfD5vX5I3V9FZ1qvf0Vkf41HC-Q/s370/Cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="370" data-original-width="234" height="491" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifHvse-GSC0_08a0z7ySEHwi06VKmIO5x-lkEvvYj86nZG5-J5iIoG_s7GNPRuOAHxx3AdVTMHN8BxkqILRV41p5ddZHb1CMFAMpYVqbrzKEIhyGbrlEfIq0bvKZ3PtbzgaUrTqEUPIkJlAJNygTt5CpgMl0QhWJKNfD5vX5I3V9FZ1qvf0Vkf41HC-Q/w310-h491/Cover.jpg" width="310" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span> There</span><span style="font-family: times;"> are few books that have affected me as much as Rosalyn Story's <b><i>Sing Her Name</i></b>. It has everything an excellent novel needs: compelling characters, inspirational story, fascinating history, and is oh so poignant and moving. I had tears in my eyes when I turned the last page so, if you love a good story that moves your heart, read this wonderful book.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><b><i>Sing Her Name</i></b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: times;"><span><i style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0.5px;"> </i><span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0.5px;">follows two musically gifted women whose lives overlap across the boundaries of time. </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: times; letter-spacing: 0.5px;">Beautiful and brilliantly talented Celia DeMille is a nineteenth-century black concert artist who has garnered fame, sung all over the world, and amassed a fortune. But prejudice bars her from achieving her place in history as one of the world’s greatest singers, and she dies in poverty and obscurity.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0.5px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: times;">In 21st-century New Orleans, Eden Malveaux, a thirty-something waitress with a beautiful but untutored voice, is the sole guardian of her 17-year-old brother. Motherless for most of their lives, she has struggled for years to make ends meet. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: times; letter-spacing: 0.5px;">After a hurricane displaces them to New York City, Eden seeks safe refuge for her and her brother.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0.5px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: times;">Months into their New York stay, Eden’s estranged Great Aunt Julia summons her back to New Orleans for a brief visit, and the older woman gives Eden something that alters the course of her life: a box she found in the midst of flooded rubble containing a hundred-year-old scrapbook and a mysterious and valuable gold pendant necklace belonging to one of the greatest singers in history—Celia DeMille.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0.5px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: times;">Rosalyn Story, a native of Kansas City, Kansas, has been playing the violin since the age of 10. She has been a proud member of the <a href="http://fwsymphony.org/" target="_blank">Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra</a> for 30 years.</span></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: var(--text-margin); max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: times;">In addition to her musical career, Rosalyn is a freelance journalist and fiction writer. Her first book<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: times;"><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>And</b> <b>So I Sing: African American Divas of Opera and Concert</b></em><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>(Warner Books, 1990), inspired the nationally broadcast PBS documentary<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Aida's Brothers and Sisters</em>, about the history of African-Americans in opera. Her second book, a work of fiction titled<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>More Than You Know</b></em><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>(<a href="https://www.agatepublishing.com/" target="_blank">Agate Publishing</a>, 2004), pays homage to the African-American family and the jazz world and <i><b>Wading Home</b> (<a href="https://www.agatepublishing.com/" target="_blank">Agate Publishing</a> 2010), </i>about </span><span style="color: #444444; letter-spacing: 0.5px;"><span style="font-family: times;">New Orleans natives struggling to recover their lives as well as their property after Hurricane Katrina. <i><b>Wading Home</b></i> was made into a very successful opera, which was a collaboration with composer <a href="http://maryalicerich.com/" target="_blank">Mary Alice Rich</a>, that has been performed internationally.</span></span></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: var(--text-margin); max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: times;">Since 2000, Rosalyn has been a member of the <a href="https://www.sphinxmusic.org/sphinx-symphony-orchestra" target="_blank">Sphinx Symphony Orchestra of Detroit</a>, which performs annually for the International Sphinx Competition, devoted to increasing the participation of young African American and Latino string players in professional classical music. </span></p></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">And now my interview with this fascinating woman.....</span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><b><i>Rosalyn, tell me about where you
live and why you love it so much.</i></b></span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I live in Dallas, TX and I
wouldn</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">’</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">t say I
love it so much! I like many things about it - the weather, the size and amount
of land and space, it</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">s diversity, and the fact
that it is no more than a few hours</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">’</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> drive from my home town, Kansas City, where family members live,
and Houston, where other family members live. I like the fact that even though
I live in a very conservative state, I live in one of the most liberal,
progressive cities here! </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEii2Z_BixqatL2xD_PaJnXAqcrERcao0Gf9qYCLrXZVbpBjs4qdRMJutLOoVsMzcJfQ3VNQoLUpOS5u-XHmDLE7eZnFTyW-k5ViMQHWN-RykGOn9u3oD7y9JR0K9kZ135vJyhJJKk8Dg13IhA1KdGJx1HvInnC9rGF1Jvy500ct_nHtg2jZreomWwjOPA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="456" data-original-width="894" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEii2Z_BixqatL2xD_PaJnXAqcrERcao0Gf9qYCLrXZVbpBjs4qdRMJutLOoVsMzcJfQ3VNQoLUpOS5u-XHmDLE7eZnFTyW-k5ViMQHWN-RykGOn9u3oD7y9JR0K9kZ135vJyhJJKk8Dg13IhA1KdGJx1HvInnC9rGF1Jvy500ct_nHtg2jZreomWwjOPA=w423-h216" width="423" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><b><i>Where were you living when
you were 4 years old? Are they fond memories?</i></b></span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I was living in the
northern part of Kansas City, Kansas. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj_m2c7xuTeO03BqMAgnOlRG-2_gUZ4qUSaiSACouqEmFkKcM7BKTT3MmgaWIoqKID4FBVqrpMW5ofEIKBau_-FrP3KgjBJbzhQzPvkyn_9Qu2MWaPsJgCaKnt9UDCNTm9gWzxuFccd5nTkL_U2-z44JMyJg_A4NAen3oyCIi3mgHo7-QOng-QGmzRhrQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="850" data-original-width="1520" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj_m2c7xuTeO03BqMAgnOlRG-2_gUZ4qUSaiSACouqEmFkKcM7BKTT3MmgaWIoqKID4FBVqrpMW5ofEIKBau_-FrP3KgjBJbzhQzPvkyn_9Qu2MWaPsJgCaKnt9UDCNTm9gWzxuFccd5nTkL_U2-z44JMyJg_A4NAen3oyCIi3mgHo7-QOng-QGmzRhrQ=w411-h230" width="411" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">My fondest memories are associated with
family - my parents, aunts, uncles, cousins on both sides, big family Christmas
and Thanksgiving dinners, birthday celebrations and picnics, and the old
rambling house we lived in with a huge wraparound porch, where cousins would
shoot fireworks on Fourth of July nights, and where my brother and I would
sleep in our pajamas on summer evenings. </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">Here's a photo of me (in the middle) at about 3-ish (maybe close to 4?), I think! Don't know who the girl is </span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">giving me 'side-eye', but I may have stolen her doll, so I don't blame her! My mother is in the back, getting her hair done!</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR2emToLCwKwjQckz8zHdsIlF0fwMprWYAFFJBJnJIWsw-XB16U2fTcpunEs1ywttVGlmw8MuhNLdco8-88-xwAdWkLUoqWplFtIkCkzaFUrudEov_07R4oFK7waVnzE5bcvN3Ust8CGYLPbCfCHHFmb-wtYDcsHTHvWQ6nyPlW8ddigBm-iQwfMsNLA/s2724/Rosalyn.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1912" data-original-width="2724" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR2emToLCwKwjQckz8zHdsIlF0fwMprWYAFFJBJnJIWsw-XB16U2fTcpunEs1ywttVGlmw8MuhNLdco8-88-xwAdWkLUoqWplFtIkCkzaFUrudEov_07R4oFK7waVnzE5bcvN3Ust8CGYLPbCfCHHFmb-wtYDcsHTHvWQ6nyPlW8ddigBm-iQwfMsNLA/w433-h304/Rosalyn.jpg" width="433" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 11pt;"><i>Is there a book that
changed the way you look at life?</i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>Siddhartha</i> by Herman Hesse.
</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjv5n7m1gaWVM8IlB4qCTvmMFFABaFcuV55nqhnU1kYL_9T_yHc3_5q1bBK5K6W6G_7ji80f8JJZUH_qZNjflN5X0ZrwJq3CA6Yk0UAlAU_saORBqqcrN5GhBxJJficVSO-GUFAPLyI_OhpMeDGbBWLwMqHZ7Mm7cUnQ42iy-VWy6ZVTd8qSR5BRRXduA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="330" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjv5n7m1gaWVM8IlB4qCTvmMFFABaFcuV55nqhnU1kYL_9T_yHc3_5q1bBK5K6W6G_7ji80f8JJZUH_qZNjflN5X0ZrwJq3CA6Yk0UAlAU_saORBqqcrN5GhBxJJficVSO-GUFAPLyI_OhpMeDGbBWLwMqHZ7Mm7cUnQ42iy-VWy6ZVTd8qSR5BRRXduA" width="158" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br />It is still an amazing book but I can</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">’</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">t remember details about it as much as I remember how I felt when
I read it one night when I was about 19 or so, between the hours of midnight
and 5 a.m. I was blown away. The spiritual journey and discovery aspect of it
haunted me. Another book was <i>I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings</i> by Maya Angelou,
the first book I read about a black woman</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">’</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">s life.</span></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEha4MK8glXMHkneJjXm03nwQ2WGfTHAAsRcCwIwTC-HBWRWMGrWOJu-es0hHXcovNgtIU6yaCTlCWVIrc1QLhTCXYdfQb6oa4NA9yY-Asx06sXViAubA64Qy8BQQzyIhD_BpJDgYZmgPtyUqC76iSFm2ywEDXmIWDBO-FgCeNkUSmLvX39rn-UKZYw4rQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="303" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEha4MK8glXMHkneJjXm03nwQ2WGfTHAAsRcCwIwTC-HBWRWMGrWOJu-es0hHXcovNgtIU6yaCTlCWVIrc1QLhTCXYdfQb6oa4NA9yY-Asx06sXViAubA64Qy8BQQzyIhD_BpJDgYZmgPtyUqC76iSFm2ywEDXmIWDBO-FgCeNkUSmLvX39rn-UKZYw4rQ" width="145" /></a></div><br />For the first time I saw my own life in print. It was then
I realized that a black woman could write a book.</span><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><i><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Do you have a favorite
children</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">’</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">s book
and what about it makes it so?</span></i></b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The Little Prince, </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 14.6667px;">Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and The Velveteen Rabbit.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiPAzgmObzXFDTQxXsUxJF79CuBD8T-xThx1xLr83gFWE2A81KH-D2-0awkd6NpoLlQm79fp53cYbHMB4Fx1tewGEEydCVQirtdex4627y4E1Ax6Q9wXe7HG2h-H13NtkddnfZmNKY1j2nawYyEDMgovKG_OAXJ-VYc-NQmo60lpnzEjDvuIB1Uc2iAQg" style="font-size: 11pt; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="403" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiPAzgmObzXFDTQxXsUxJF79CuBD8T-xThx1xLr83gFWE2A81KH-D2-0awkd6NpoLlQm79fp53cYbHMB4Fx1tewGEEydCVQirtdex4627y4E1Ax6Q9wXe7HG2h-H13NtkddnfZmNKY1j2nawYyEDMgovKG_OAXJ-VYc-NQmo60lpnzEjDvuIB1Uc2iAQg=w109-h135" width="109" /></a><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgTwoxoM5xXhCjnN0l6mffz2iWuOiRwZ1sSizjFp4ayObJf2O_zbCJctIwRanA-cga3Vam-WCvZxO-i6fS_qMvAMEifnVaKFLaysbOhuzBervRMmhxgJPqwc4AvUZWtDReok60oD6hBwF2HvrS_3gDdN2RzvrPXuxkxQp68di5gabP73ygZQawtqVD2eg" style="font-size: 11pt; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="382" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgTwoxoM5xXhCjnN0l6mffz2iWuOiRwZ1sSizjFp4ayObJf2O_zbCJctIwRanA-cga3Vam-WCvZxO-i6fS_qMvAMEifnVaKFLaysbOhuzBervRMmhxgJPqwc4AvUZWtDReok60oD6hBwF2HvrS_3gDdN2RzvrPXuxkxQp68di5gabP73ygZQawtqVD2eg=w104-h136" width="104" /></a><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi4V4FGV7vPdBGmFjmd6acv2iiVvdo1aYMc1_qDmdW7it3HQJTmkQiGUOQJZdpQyXw00je-yE2LHm3XfzNTLst2GT2HlrfH7TWSZX9Az71GTeGeBjeJYoaGetuHtEPWeYBAH3DnplD3NQkc4lvNC6DmCiVqXSiTOozSbkbmURKq3zPnwweGvh5Zqd6lAw" style="font-size: 11pt; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="310" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi4V4FGV7vPdBGmFjmd6acv2iiVvdo1aYMc1_qDmdW7it3HQJTmkQiGUOQJZdpQyXw00je-yE2LHm3XfzNTLst2GT2HlrfH7TWSZX9Az71GTeGeBjeJYoaGetuHtEPWeYBAH3DnplD3NQkc4lvNC6DmCiVqXSiTOozSbkbmURKq3zPnwweGvh5Zqd6lAw=w106-h136" width="106" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> Love, self-belief, and
self-fulfillment, individuality - those are themes I found in these books, and
I enjoy them as an adult. I never read anything like them when I was a child,
and I find them inspiring.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbjiZO_XBz0NJcPswz0Nv2G5wyDOdRl4h2TKgfGPaNsn18PLNafKRgkQrZCCouksA_LfDzzx3VOZ3mKs7jHkBglnkUWr8lZ5RlxppRtCslzLjc6wJAo99qXT--ClTFlZOnVgr7zDsFcrgHDIQdbb6xQjz75A5HDQhFPZSWB3YzdzmBlBDZh7R7IucL1w/s3667/Agate%20ad.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1042" data-original-width="3667" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbjiZO_XBz0NJcPswz0Nv2G5wyDOdRl4h2TKgfGPaNsn18PLNafKRgkQrZCCouksA_LfDzzx3VOZ3mKs7jHkBglnkUWr8lZ5RlxppRtCslzLjc6wJAo99qXT--ClTFlZOnVgr7zDsFcrgHDIQdbb6xQjz75A5HDQhFPZSWB3YzdzmBlBDZh7R7IucL1w/w640-h182/Agate%20ad.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 11pt;"><i>Is there a song, person, or
group that you listen to when you are feeling a bit down?</i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Anything by <a href="https://www.earthwindandfire.com/" target="_blank">Earth, Wind and Fire</a> from the 1970s, </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqShlifHSVwHOYT1GfTsVAI_xzfwzNQsIqtz6OEY47B56VxrFUlRsj-ntTPJAiKIlFHAPFMV2_Mn1x-_OBxib7KvFpLmG1qM6On9R1OdS2Kcwcq53L1JqguJA-To_XqrFcR_h9LA8FnuORgqrmgQ_0GtPq4mtos-8jgYDlZKK4JfeB-_G1vks9QI6D5Q/s3000/EWandF.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2196" data-original-width="3000" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqShlifHSVwHOYT1GfTsVAI_xzfwzNQsIqtz6OEY47B56VxrFUlRsj-ntTPJAiKIlFHAPFMV2_Mn1x-_OBxib7KvFpLmG1qM6On9R1OdS2Kcwcq53L1JqguJA-To_XqrFcR_h9LA8FnuORgqrmgQ_0GtPq4mtos-8jgYDlZKK4JfeB-_G1vks9QI6D5Q/s320/EWandF.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /> especially <i>After the Love Has Gone, Reasons, That</i></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic;">’</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>s The Way of the World, </i>and<i>
Can</i></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic;">’</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>t Hide Love</i>. </span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qz_b1di3i8" target="_blank">Reasons</a> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tuJfud4W6U" target="_blank">After the Love is Gone</a></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge9hWcx1_ZI" target="_blank">That's the Way of the World</a><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKQzvzH8HIQ" target="_blank">Can't Hide Love</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Or, any kind
of slow jazz by Miles Davis in the 1960s, </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTCW_TabfaoUee-ZjNTwbdIABj_ny_SJMnDhKXLbqMg9Y2wQ0HLaAgMtTHHt2yr5az3bOAcgkc-e8DOmg8HFtOPM2lmrw3ZsX7KNr-HL3m9r-39-BcKWJ2Qne83Gd_QGPeBSOq5W2GNR0DbNeKfzsKenTaTx5bmlkClTXSlnW0oni5RVTbsfSLYb4oEA/s2560/Brody-MilesDavisDocumentary.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2026" data-original-width="2560" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTCW_TabfaoUee-ZjNTwbdIABj_ny_SJMnDhKXLbqMg9Y2wQ0HLaAgMtTHHt2yr5az3bOAcgkc-e8DOmg8HFtOPM2lmrw3ZsX7KNr-HL3m9r-39-BcKWJ2Qne83Gd_QGPeBSOq5W2GNR0DbNeKfzsKenTaTx5bmlkClTXSlnW0oni5RVTbsfSLYb4oEA/s320/Brody-MilesDavisDocumentary.webp" width="320" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /> especially his album, Kind of Blue, and the piece Flamenco Sketches. </span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsT9Ys0JNmM" target="_blank">Flamenco Sketches</a><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Even though I play classical music for a living,
when I want to chill, it</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">’</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">s always jazz, or old-school R&B.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><i><span style="font-size: 11pt;">How are you different now
than you were in your 20</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">’</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">s?</span></i></b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">More confident in meeting
people, expressing myself and speaking in public, less concerned about what
others think of me, less </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;">naïve</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> about human nature. In my 20s, I think I
believed more strongly in the inevitable dominance of good over evil, truth
over lies. But in the past few years I have been shocked at the gullibility of
people, their tendencies to believe the loudest, most vociferous mistruths
without challenging them through research or critical thinking. Though I am no
longer shocked at meanness, negative thought and bad human behavior, I still
remain hopeful about the future, because that’</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">s my nature! </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><div><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Has anything happened to you that is really embarrassing?</span></i></b></div><div><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></i></b></div>I was on my very first white water canoe trip with some friends, all of us violinists in the Tulsa Symphony orchestra. Real city kids, rookies, except for the two guys who organized the trip. Not a big deal, but I don't swim, and though I love water, I never got over my fear of it, which is why I never learned!<br />When we arrived at the river, we 'put in'. It had rained heavily earlier as my friend and I were putting in our canoe/raft on to what had become a rapid, deep stream on the Buffalo River in Arkansas. In my canoe there were two of us; me and my best friend, who didn't swim much either.<br /><br />When we got in we were fine for a while. Then the passages between rocks narrowed as the water, because of the rains, became higher and swifter. The current was strong. We tried furiously to navigate, but we hit a rock. We capsized! </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzt4nxj3caEubJXKTBaklJhK5dpJqbPh8fx0Upz3SLeyGDrb756mZ9es84_02ufwz6GZjmAyxti_gaCdCqwJnjICsz7SJ6tlO56A6dKQ52lo80eVIsMQLGCgUEP4H3kTUW9MQuwL-AxzAqHycetxunA6TsxCrHMsxkvl9_G0jUGVTg9LGH-DAzR4clNQ/s239/canoe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="172" data-original-width="239" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzt4nxj3caEubJXKTBaklJhK5dpJqbPh8fx0Upz3SLeyGDrb756mZ9es84_02ufwz6GZjmAyxti_gaCdCqwJnjICsz7SJ6tlO56A6dKQ52lo80eVIsMQLGCgUEP4H3kTUW9MQuwL-AxzAqHycetxunA6TsxCrHMsxkvl9_G0jUGVTg9LGH-DAzR4clNQ/s1600/canoe.jpg" width="239" /></a><span style="text-align: left;">I saw my life flash in front of me! The other friends in the two other canoes looked at us in horror. I was floundering in the water, and so was my friend. We tried to reach out for the overturned boat but it kept getting away from us. After what appeared like minutes and minutes of flailing around in the water, I felt my feet touch something. It was the bottom of the river. I realized then that the water was only about 3 feet high. We both stood up, grabbed our little canoe and dragged it to the shore, and started again. A little humiliating, but the stronger feeling was relief!</span></div></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><b><i>Is there a question no one
has ever asked you that you wish they would? Something, perhaps, that people
would be surprised to know about you?</i></b></span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">No one ever asks me about
my parents - what they did for a living, who they were. I think they would be
surprised to know that I come from very humble stock; both my parents were
products of the Great Depression. My dad was a steel worker, my mom a garment
worker. They were not educated beyond high school, and both worked factory
jobs. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqIo34m5128pWM4KR7Xlc0gYOVJCBUL9cLzeHquDwxsLQVKvrXRtfSHCiu74cwbibx8-CxsRpO7vNunuVQysRHNKy1JQY5Pjf1gNkb9QxOSuRYwlDiucNdW1ffkD9ZWcbV1tJloNmXJcr1lz0oud9_ePhUKplFsOkFqDzqo5gxF9YhAaA_zWl4v8H_rg/s640/Rosalyn%20parents.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqIo34m5128pWM4KR7Xlc0gYOVJCBUL9cLzeHquDwxsLQVKvrXRtfSHCiu74cwbibx8-CxsRpO7vNunuVQysRHNKy1JQY5Pjf1gNkb9QxOSuRYwlDiucNdW1ffkD9ZWcbV1tJloNmXJcr1lz0oud9_ePhUKplFsOkFqDzqo5gxF9YhAaA_zWl4v8H_rg/s320/Rosalyn%20parents.jpg" width="240" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">In fact, my mom worked in what was literally a sweat shop - a coat and
suit factory that never had air-conditioning, even though she worked through
the 1980s. I think people assume that since I play classical violin for a
living, I was brought up by educated, middle class black people. Certainly I
was surrounded by them. Back when I was growing up, because of housing
segregation, black people of means (doctors, lawyers and other
professionals) lived alongside working
class folks like my parents. I would not say I grew up poor - as all of my
needs were met. But I didn</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">’</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">t have the advantages some of my friends had, because of who their
parents were and what their circumstances were.</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></div></span></span>As unfamiliar as my parents were with the classical music world, they were incredibly supportive of my musical career. They never missed a concert I was in while I lived in Kansas City, playing with the Youth Symphony or the Kansas City Symphony! <p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><i>Tell me about Eden, the main character in your book, is she based on a real person?</i></b></span></p>Eden is not based on a particular real-life person, but rather is a composite of several young black women that I have gotten to know while writing about opera singers for Essence magazine, for Opera News and in my first book, <i><b>And So I Sing</b></i>.<br /><br />It's been interesting over the years to see how many unbelievably talented young people have voices that are just made for opera, but who have no idea what opera is! What I mean is this...they have extraordinary range, natural vibrato, unusual timbre, sense of pitch, volume and a particular quality in their voices that is rare, and is usually heard on the opera stage. Of course they need training to develop it, but there is a unique quality that sets them apart from pop, gospel, jazz, and blues artists.<br /><br />A lot of the young women I have written about have grown up in the black church, and many have come from a tradition of gospel. But they have been discovered by someone who hears that quality, and then they are plucked out of a chorus for special attention. A way is provided for them to have the training classical singing requires. Many of these young women are in working class families and don't have resources or even advocates to help them along. It's an often told story - and Eden's story happens a lot in real life.</div><div><br /></div><b><i>And Celia?</i></b><br />The character of Celia is definitely based on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sissieretta_Jones" target="_blank">Sissieretta Jones</a>, who lived from 1869 to 1933, and had a fabulous career, even though she wasn't allowed to sing with white singers, nor was she recorded by any of the recording companies. She loved opera and likely was heartbroken not to have been allowed to perform on the mainstream opera stage. At one point, she was the highest paid black performer in America, but then died penniless and on 'relief'. One can only wonder what her legacy might have been, had she been born in a different time.<br /><br /><div><b><i>Two important recurring themes of Sing Her Name is the Mozart's heartbreaking Deh vieni non tardar from the Marriage of Figaro</i></b><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><o:p><span style="font-family: times;"> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlzxugLzSWc" target="_blank">Giunse alfin il momento . . . deh, vieni</a></span></o:p></p><b><i>and the French Opera House in New Orleans that sadly, burned to the ground.</i></b><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><o:p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEggdjI9kHSaYtUO75BSggPn4exUiK0gAmm7AZOHqWk7fVEvdbYYG6zF4qINkiWpAynisBUIiXD1NC-YE4w5l3d7I4WrsEVpkq2JxfGNKwy7RI34Z4Db62HZHG2d9Oo4I4TgVj-zAr5USpajeyrkB-YLGkX8DCnU-dWnzHM4GgJpoxov0oHzRgK6b6fHKQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="536" data-original-width="800" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEggdjI9kHSaYtUO75BSggPn4exUiK0gAmm7AZOHqWk7fVEvdbYYG6zF4qINkiWpAynisBUIiXD1NC-YE4w5l3d7I4WrsEVpkq2JxfGNKwy7RI34Z4Db62HZHG2d9Oo4I4TgVj-zAr5USpajeyrkB-YLGkX8DCnU-dWnzHM4GgJpoxov0oHzRgK6b6fHKQ=w438-h293" width="438" /></a></o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><i><span style="font-size: 11pt;">How do you feel about </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">“</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Independent Bookstores</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">”</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> and their role in your success?</span></i></b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Love them and happy to see some rise in the number of Indies compared to a few years ago when the </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">‘</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">big box</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">’</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> stores took over. I think people now see what bookstores provide to a community - a gathering place, a place to learn, to talk and read and exchange ideas. I</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">’</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">m especially hoping that black-owned, African American and other culturally-themed bookstores will return. One of the best black-owned bookstores in the country, Black Images Book Bazaar in Dallas, was very helpful when I wrote my first couple of books, and the owner and I are still very much in touch. I can recall the day I learned they were closing down due to economics. It was a very sad day. But Emma Rodgers is still actively promoting books by black authors!</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Independent bookstore owners and staff are very active readers and supporters of authors. They actually hand-sell books that they love. I owe a lot to independent bookstore owners and I am grateful for them.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>And finally.....</i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><i><u><span style="font-size: 11pt;">IF
YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME</span></u></i></b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="font-size: 11pt;">to any period from before
recorded history to yesterday,</span><o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="font-size: 11pt;">be safe from harm, be rich,
poor or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,</span><o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="font-size: 11pt;">actually, experience what
it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all,</span><o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>meet anyone, if you desire,
speak with them, listen to them, be with them.</i></span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">From an African American perspective,
this question is loaded! As difficult as these times are, it is without a doubt
the best time to be black. (Would I want to go back to any previous time in
America and be a black woman, or any region in this country? Or any country? )
That said, I</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">’</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">ll give
this a shot.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="font-size: 11pt;">When would you go?</span></b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>The 1920s.</i></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Where would you go?</span></b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>Two different places;
Paris, France, and Harlem, New York</i></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-weight: bold;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Who would you want to
meet?</span></b></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>Josephine Baker, W.E.B.
DuBois, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ida B. Wells, Marian Anderson (I
actually did meet Marian Anderson, but she was about 93 years old at the time.
I would like to have met her in the prime of her career.)</i></span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="font-size: 11pt;">And most importantly, why
do you think you chose this time?</span></b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The 1920s period of the
Harlem Renaissance was a time of great enlightenment and hope for black people.
60 years after the end of slavery, it was a time of promise, especially if you
lived in the north.</span></span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span></span></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF60QpSav9ASQgVMsSSeHyMwZ27x_PN7hpIIh9MTCx4YspMpqnoEafyCBTr4TOyguyc2xS-2_Y8NDLcm7K3pRoPUsKoJ9NwyTM-aXzj_oc_VoyzwjPoWf9U1hRIhiCKaxxBxS7UiCHNpM1w2JqdrPInxK6ldYJhxkFGtRR5_E6pRkMdnZeIbUwfQiYww/s1093/Harlem.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1093" data-original-width="933" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF60QpSav9ASQgVMsSSeHyMwZ27x_PN7hpIIh9MTCx4YspMpqnoEafyCBTr4TOyguyc2xS-2_Y8NDLcm7K3pRoPUsKoJ9NwyTM-aXzj_oc_VoyzwjPoWf9U1hRIhiCKaxxBxS7UiCHNpM1w2JqdrPInxK6ldYJhxkFGtRR5_E6pRkMdnZeIbUwfQiYww/s320/Harlem.png" width="273" /></a></span></i></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></i></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> Even though the times were fraught with horrible events
(</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;">lynching's</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> and other racist acts), there seems to </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;">have</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> been a spirit of great
awakening and promise for those with an interest in art, music, literature,
etc. - i.e., my interests! I think I would have been inspired by all that was
happening around me, and by being in the company of such creative geniuses.</span></span><o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>I would have loved those
times. I would have figured out a way to get invited to one of the posh parties
held by Harlem luminaries, and in Paris I would have loved the music and the
food!</i></span></span><o:p></o:p></p><p>
</p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">Thank you Rosalyn for not only writing such an exceptional book but also for your wonderful answers to my questions. One day, if I am fortunate enough, I will be able to hear you play your violin with your friends at the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra!</span></b></div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgywse2Dx1bLHOq-iWHuw_0b96nHRXT2BFRsNDUAYaXpNLmNfpwyOf42_fOyIE0XyjLohdDGfoNmoJQdZ5C1SulWyZJW4rqinyLAEukHfEfgeLRXpfeqiaW8vhJSQK-VS0JwJZOX5Cu-VdWPXLKMFhWl-NM-KjDGoN6fujpELTONvYMDcHyRrgb15q1jw/s469/story-rosalyn,%20violinist.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="469" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgywse2Dx1bLHOq-iWHuw_0b96nHRXT2BFRsNDUAYaXpNLmNfpwyOf42_fOyIE0XyjLohdDGfoNmoJQdZ5C1SulWyZJW4rqinyLAEukHfEfgeLRXpfeqiaW8vhJSQK-VS0JwJZOX5Cu-VdWPXLKMFhWl-NM-KjDGoN6fujpELTONvYMDcHyRrgb15q1jw/w434-h278/story-rosalyn,%20violinist.jpg" width="434" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-50548085772331395202022-03-17T14:47:00.000-04:002022-03-17T14:47:00.478-04:00Nita Prose<p> </p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj0Nlk-3mkd_tGso0AG7nGVhYiioANuxTDYruQrm_d8MEOqyc9abKhA1GRD_xytCMlckEhWYwEtlkROaKLdF2m6eb5xz8cS06U0qPIzPOLzIKorJkYVkiS98Tt4yUWWIm6LQIQzfQ-38AiAA1KxXGxrXbCkTdny1v5KvZEWj6ZId32o59OXqeEK8NuZeQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="842" data-original-width="673" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj0Nlk-3mkd_tGso0AG7nGVhYiioANuxTDYruQrm_d8MEOqyc9abKhA1GRD_xytCMlckEhWYwEtlkROaKLdF2m6eb5xz8cS06U0qPIzPOLzIKorJkYVkiS98Tt4yUWWIm6LQIQzfQ-38AiAA1KxXGxrXbCkTdny1v5KvZEWj6ZId32o59OXqeEK8NuZeQ=w320-h400" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjAB_kwePsxONt_zSCshQCpfXei-41tV9KJk-g3hZ5cc9cxz6jhDxiF8p6hpNzzB0kNlPF2sGCtmvrTail1LbQ-7WDKZdMk8Hqlxk_ybOw5lnuLhJkRBbeQ92uRzyRSZFUaot5XkggkkIdQPnVlnVjI4esHy6agRj9LNOuAKdEzstxaNqAR-G8As36-_Q" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="263" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjAB_kwePsxONt_zSCshQCpfXei-41tV9KJk-g3hZ5cc9cxz6jhDxiF8p6hpNzzB0kNlPF2sGCtmvrTail1LbQ-7WDKZdMk8Hqlxk_ybOw5lnuLhJkRBbeQ92uRzyRSZFUaot5XkggkkIdQPnVlnVjI4esHy6agRj9LNOuAKdEzstxaNqAR-G8As36-_Q=w263-h400" width="263" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">This from <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/57084/ballantine/" target="_blank">Ballantine's Book</a>'s excellent description of <a href="https://www.nitaprose.com/" target="_blank">Nita Prose</a>'s brilliant book (you know I only interview brilliant authors) :</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">Molly Gray is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and misreads the intentions of others. Her gran used to interpret the world for her, codifying it into simple rules that Molly could live by.</span><br style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;" /><br style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">Since Gran died a few months ago, twenty-five-year-old Molly has been navigating life’s complexities all by herself. No matter—she throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for the job. She delights in donning her crisp uniform each morning, stocking her cart with miniature soaps and bottles, and returning guest rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel to a state of perfection.</span><br style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;" /><br style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">But Molly’s orderly life is upended the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself dead in his bed. She quickly finds herself caught in a web of deception, one she has no idea how to untangle. </span></i></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">There are scores of rave blurbs for Nita's book, here are just two of my favorites:</span></p><p><span face="Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"><i>“A heroine as loveable and quirky as </i>Eleanor Oliphant<i>, caught up in a crime worthy of Agatha Christie. Loved it!”</i></span><strong style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;">—Clare Pooley<em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;">, New York Times</em> bestselling author of <em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;">The Authenticity Project</em></strong><br style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;" /><br style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;" /><span face="Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic;">“</span><span face="Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;">The Maid</span><span face="Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic;"> is a masterful, charming mystery that will touch your heart in ways you could never expect. The endearing, unforgettable Molly reminds us to challenge our assumptions about one another, and shows us how meaningful it is to feel truly seen in the world.”</span><strong style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;"><i>—</i>Ashley Audrain, <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;"><i>New York Times</i></span> bestselling author of <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;"><i>The Push</i></span></strong></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Nita, tell me about where you live and why you love it so much.</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I live in midtown Toronto, on a quiet street that’s close to
a rambling, forested ravine to the north and a great street filled with
neighborhood coffee shops and restaurants to the south. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhccm4Eo3P2HnKPmS6Yi53DTjKawSnoFJFwEJiE-QLslbcv28z5TlYrBBYWDYPCptQ4v55HTRApjc22ubr4D5GkWjIp3IjVzZIgvu3ExKmd7Tu7EeLzg8XcXlZKO1ljCh7c1_VOkfGQzelmSqj0dvyGsgvYHD0TUvnf2ClGUqv_SMwpX8nrxF-xj2ZZow=s1900" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="758" data-original-width="1900" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhccm4Eo3P2HnKPmS6Yi53DTjKawSnoFJFwEJiE-QLslbcv28z5TlYrBBYWDYPCptQ4v55HTRApjc22ubr4D5GkWjIp3IjVzZIgvu3ExKmd7Tu7EeLzg8XcXlZKO1ljCh7c1_VOkfGQzelmSqj0dvyGsgvYHD0TUvnf2ClGUqv_SMwpX8nrxF-xj2ZZow=w640-h256" width="640" /></a></div><br />I’m able to bike downtown in half an hour with the wind in my hair, though the return journey takes a tad longer because it’s uphill—suffice it to say, that last stretch is good exercise!<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they
fond memories?</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When I was seven, I lived in a place that has no name on a
rural route in the middle of nowhere. It was idyllic in many ways, with lots of
acreage for a young girl to run around in, discovering natural wonders and
coming home mud-caked, grinning ear to ear with frogs in both pockets. It is
entirely possible that I snuck several amphibious creatures into my room over
the course of my childhood, and also entirely possible that I got caught by my
mother many times, was scolded, but nevertheless continued to sneak in my
beloved “pets.”<o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi8x3pgKwqVn8SFopGE81zxGqoj7t3BA6r9pl1sPJR0Y54LNZwifpKoN8EOxrCaxqLPwJOHU2cYEwBSpzvN6Fm3bCc-SbY1b11n501kbGajUnoDVRG7o7ckchCnaFuKZ_C87CK03ZhdJXcDQBJwXwcdYOeuNhhPTrhVICXBIK3W7SiNXsEiIAD8Yjdj5w=s2185" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1673" data-original-width="2185" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi8x3pgKwqVn8SFopGE81zxGqoj7t3BA6r9pl1sPJR0Y54LNZwifpKoN8EOxrCaxqLPwJOHU2cYEwBSpzvN6Fm3bCc-SbY1b11n501kbGajUnoDVRG7o7ckchCnaFuKZ_C87CK03ZhdJXcDQBJwXwcdYOeuNhhPTrhVICXBIK3W7SiNXsEiIAD8Yjdj5w=w400-h306" width="400" /></a>*</div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><b>Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>The Life of Pi</i>, a sacred text in the form of a novel.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjQxkhu5pJ3N04551JUGAA2q9UMQIOVol6PiM1t1Tx37mQJDO6r_rUTPgVqUimyn4kOWrECKPXpYEa1slPFWwtm4N4CIFB26PzTBfDFWEEqylyH_Soz0MYAwve0pT79WvfeVKDEUD0nyRLNeye6KPLLmxbog2T9IGPwv6-no_3wrYAVAvQD6HBbACF0Jw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="327" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjQxkhu5pJ3N04551JUGAA2q9UMQIOVol6PiM1t1Tx37mQJDO6r_rUTPgVqUimyn4kOWrECKPXpYEa1slPFWwtm4N4CIFB26PzTBfDFWEEqylyH_Soz0MYAwve0pT79WvfeVKDEUD0nyRLNeye6KPLLmxbog2T9IGPwv6-no_3wrYAVAvQD6HBbACF0Jw=w262-h400" width="262" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it
makes it so?</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Charlotte’s Web</i>. Given what I said above about my
beloved “pets,” it’s not entirely surprising that an impossible relationship
between an pig and a spider captured my imagination as a child and continues to
do so to this day.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgz9JzV63jk1mCoxhjzedFzmD-AdIN3R8bo4ewMA1oIouoc8P9MDrMyZ2wfkhfJcaFJRczC8wkkLuBaRmckCUhqMhStRNbp-RH-9HP0Yf-5YZSGF7HyzASd6kMDjQ5pCH6xVH-7XZBHrSX6YqrdUFt4ps4OKWtejZZ9fYMC3fJzAMFeKa2MOTm7lW9kSw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="258" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgz9JzV63jk1mCoxhjzedFzmD-AdIN3R8bo4ewMA1oIouoc8P9MDrMyZ2wfkhfJcaFJRczC8wkkLuBaRmckCUhqMhStRNbp-RH-9HP0Yf-5YZSGF7HyzASd6kMDjQ5pCH6xVH-7XZBHrSX6YqrdUFt4ps4OKWtejZZ9fYMC3fJzAMFeKa2MOTm7lW9kSw=w258-h400" width="258" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><b>How do you feel about “Independent Bookstores” and their
role in your success?</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Indies make neighborhoods go round and they enhance any
author’s career in myriad ways. There’s a sense of discovery that is synonymous
with a good independent bookstore, that feeling that when you enter those doors
and peruse the stacks of books inside, you’re going to find some wondrous
treasures that will move you, entertain you and, moreover, sustain you.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b>What are the funniest
or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Frogs in my pockets wasn’t enough? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I once almost made an entire tour bus stop on the side of an
L.A. freeway because I was certain Frankenstein was going to kidnap me at Universal
Studios. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg0Tr3vkJT7jKM224aPxdP6-j2TuElTlRgd94EpYaJgLf5of6r3rXofpSntK-cGF8HS03LxvyFxzeTZoDkBmB5SPredtv22FYEZ8aPLnpNbHJLJwvJunAHiTipG_L-_BSPU96Yi00kmU0MLKa5fl069pfBgUc43tum0n_Y8-D5e3rHCj6GIhwygplx9dQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1298" data-original-width="1298" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg0Tr3vkJT7jKM224aPxdP6-j2TuElTlRgd94EpYaJgLf5of6r3rXofpSntK-cGF8HS03LxvyFxzeTZoDkBmB5SPredtv22FYEZ8aPLnpNbHJLJwvJunAHiTipG_L-_BSPU96Yi00kmU0MLKa5fl069pfBgUc43tum0n_Y8-D5e3rHCj6GIhwygplx9dQ=w400-h400" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>How are you different now than you were in your teen’s?</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One of the defining aspects of my personality is that, for
better or for worse (let’s be honest: mostly for worse), I have remained
largely unchanged for as long as I remember. I’m an old soul, with an old
soul’s proclivities and peculiarities. Makes for fun times as a teen! Things
get a lot easier, though, as one ages. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And Nita, in a short essay…………………………</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><u>IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME</u></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Dear Time Machine and the Wonderful Wizards at Its
Mysterious Helm,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I humbly request that you send me back in time to
approximately 1599, when a bard by the name of William Shakespeare was writing
a play called <i>Hamlet</i>. That being said, can I also request immunity from
small pox, bubonic plague, rickets, gonorrhea, syphilis, and the many other
illnesses raging during the Elizabethan era? (Many thanks!)<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgSEtnyA-VNG0oV0NavRL719vmNM_ANMA0a6xiMPfGlmyThF1Rfh5PTEOMV9A-blcu-epkg_sRj9dHB8wDcvne-TUvhm1lKDYT7XhHPq9IC8u_5ormS7dp33mJUOE1a-RoTL_36RUkcYqFfsyKuB-3sxdCT1NB4FIvx_QLkuoRlIc9wua4S8ulbX7V20g" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="332" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgSEtnyA-VNG0oV0NavRL719vmNM_ANMA0a6xiMPfGlmyThF1Rfh5PTEOMV9A-blcu-epkg_sRj9dHB8wDcvne-TUvhm1lKDYT7XhHPq9IC8u_5ormS7dp33mJUOE1a-RoTL_36RUkcYqFfsyKuB-3sxdCT1NB4FIvx_QLkuoRlIc9wua4S8ulbX7V20g=w265-h400" width="265" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal">What I’d like to know is how the bard did it, where his
inspiration came from, who inspired him. Was his play truly a solo creation, or
did he benefit greatly from the many actors, playwrights, royals and commoners who
were all mixed in, cheek to jowl, in the streets of London at the time?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I won’t interfere in the past, I promise, because, yes, I
have watched <i>Back to the Future</i> and <i>Jurassic Park</i> as you
requested and understand not only the tempting consequences of meddling but
also the fact that happy endings aren’t nearly as likely IRL as they are in
fiction.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Yours with equal parts gratitude and trepidation,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Nita Prose<o:p></o:p></i></p><p class="MsoNormal">Thank you Nita, I absolutely loved your book and especially Molly. And congratulations on the movie deal, I think Florence Pugh will be great!</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-small;">*Young Nita with her frogs compliments of the great <a href="https://conspicuous-force.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Man Martin</a>, creator of <i>Man Overboard</i>.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-small;">If you would like to subscribe to my blog please email me at jonwilloughbymayes@gmail.com</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><br /><p></p>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-36337353266025726642022-01-16T15:53:00.004-05:002022-01-17T14:03:14.807-05:00Alix E. Harrow<p style="text-align: center;"> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwdG0inY6fer9kTqiUCaKunl3imM-imC-rDRVwv513AinLlo-ctTxYzwrx5r_mF8izN3Q3ohmsfci15N_uZOV2tmPad-PfEDJMOAXbirwxwqZ38NK8Ah3cHZaycgLv3FtyJHe43_MYbR-z/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1944" data-original-width="2592" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwdG0inY6fer9kTqiUCaKunl3imM-imC-rDRVwv513AinLlo-ctTxYzwrx5r_mF8izN3Q3ohmsfci15N_uZOV2tmPad-PfEDJMOAXbirwxwqZ38NK8Ah3cHZaycgLv3FtyJHe43_MYbR-z/" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgGBHNFAuVLmY2RJEVZlM_VLlFQ78jufoY4L6dELoGOzRnNQYiY71TUXi4eSDG9jbxKkPLcCJ7iRzTyExce8JAAYPLw42NcB3qsyGfm7HrC7Ks36KMzrohulrCqOKzoXAwgWq5uxZmBLDkzYhGf0trmEl3kwUyytQILcTNxMQ_xbDEPcgfnoPHbEfbsiQ=s474" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="474" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgGBHNFAuVLmY2RJEVZlM_VLlFQ78jufoY4L6dELoGOzRnNQYiY71TUXi4eSDG9jbxKkPLcCJ7iRzTyExce8JAAYPLw42NcB3qsyGfm7HrC7Ks36KMzrohulrCqOKzoXAwgWq5uxZmBLDkzYhGf0trmEl3kwUyytQILcTNxMQ_xbDEPcgfnoPHbEfbsiQ=s320" width="203" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: center;"><img height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6eegs2lmmlzdiCy-psy10Sp1VwleAQgJhrJREplYId5JdAuPPVp7pv-U9_92K17OFrkLU-ap0dipk_HneVfVd-kyOtMz9uHb5DUHfzY0VNptL5XyvIV6YYDMv8INMEyTU53A31lXaRSaK/w117-h176/image.png" width="117" /> <img height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXjB91tIIiPkSDFzcKesS4TcNxPXzvWGW2NhKab0h4bMCejsoUo0cJnsqkBI1-zgiki-5iqUMDzeqbUGGTT_9aDzbOB9sIqunE9J2Zlid0GEweLQu8UxGe_KHVtVQ3V-Isz2oiag4BHJ17/w117-h174/image.png" width="117" /> <img height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0gElIotOU-L-CK6HWBpIXpmoYYzfBwiFmbjcb5nGtE5BQU0I5OMwzHKdV3HGThKinxe7NRKACtrw60MFDNxbU4J5n0ZgctkIwthK1rTZ5ddNT67nZyejTFO7Q_2jeHAvUW12ncdfcY6Bs/w104-h173/image.png" width="104" /> <img height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4RVjvylSajW3Z7SSRr2zi9qrAyPx9lnu_sSPG5yMUwWG8USqen6M5vdF2ia5oJZWvUiiD9521ty8P_LvMgwI4fJwBKv3yLBKOHZiYgn6JVZJ0WPZpstKcG2zknWirpyTvDM2wTXlvWp7A/w104-h173/image.png" width="104" /> <img height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0KWNbhvAIw0wtlAfonIccxYShJGwsYp5rsf7gMhiYLoiSFq2i2Mm6IEV-fV2KxaHH9KBAX_9AIby5dAXUX69hP08Hh0Oa1yl6gLFFXuXeTbg1e7KjvSvDRQEQzHzoJTv0IUw1z-70Qa_w/w104-h173/image.png" width="104" /></p><div>Who loved to stick out her tongue until she was thrown in a pond, is more obnoxious now but happier, one hell of a ping pong player <i>and</i> wouldn't be an author without Ursula K. Le Guin? Read on.</div><div><br /></div><i>"It's Zinnia Gray's twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it's the last birthday she'll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no-one has lived past twenty-one.<br /><br />Her best friend, Charm, is intent on making Zinnia's last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate."</i><div><br /></div><div>My first book report in 7th grade English class was all about Grimm's fairy tales. Everyone else did their reports on much more modern, and much more "hip," contemporary books. I was not, at that time, much of a reader so I fell back on stories that I had grown up with. To my great surprise, everyone loved the report! I was thrilled. </div><div><br /></div><div>My 12-year-old brain had stuck with stories that I loved: castles, princesses, ogres, and fairies. But I was so young and I didn't dig into their origins or history. I clearly see now how misogynistic and sexist they were. Alix Harrow not only shows this, but she shows it by turning the stories on their heads in the most entertaining way possible. I absolutely loved her newest book, <i><a href="https://publishing.tor.com/aspindlesplintered-alixeharrow/9781250765352/" target="_blank">A Spindle Splintered</a></i>, published by <a href="https://publishing.tor.com/" target="_blank">Tordotcom</a>!</div><div><br /></div>One of my favorite lines from the book: <div><i>A shape wings toward us across the moor, ragged and black. It lands on the standing stone in a rush of feathers, and for the first time in my life I fully appreciate the difference between a crow and a raven. This bird is huge and wild looking, clearly built for midnights dreary rather than McDonald's parking lots.</i></div><div><i>It dips forward and laps at (the blood) from Primrose's palm with a think tongue and this, I find, is a little much. "Okay, what the fuck!"<br /></i><br /><p></p><span style="font-family: times;"><b>Tell me about where you live and why you love it so much. </b><br /><br />We recently moved to Charlottesville, VA, a city we chose based on a complicated spreadsheet with columns for walkability, diversity, affordability, and four years of electoral data (no, seriously). We love it for all those reasons, but I particularly love our new house, which came with seven chickens (no, seriously). <br /><br /><b>Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories? </b><br /><br />In a termite-riddled farmhouse in western Kentucky, surrounded by a hundred and forty acres of heaven. My Dad says I’ve always tended toward nostalgia—he’s right—but I remember it more than fondly. It was perfect.</span><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWI6dpQikiFqkpNPX8sQyfxkWMEhhpWAslzC5dgPHyCm-1drAKEF1fnsmhXM4lwnjN-mUoYojVZNp9m99xKNtw9TrAvtAH4A84-kFpMDQD46VAv14AG0NLwLuArvnvVfNyhIYr3e2mntMYmm9Kn4vIB3Mbca3eAeHUsiENeFx_QRJKc1AscuAAQ4vZtw=s1519" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1519" data-original-width="1295" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWI6dpQikiFqkpNPX8sQyfxkWMEhhpWAslzC5dgPHyCm-1drAKEF1fnsmhXM4lwnjN-mUoYojVZNp9m99xKNtw9TrAvtAH4A84-kFpMDQD46VAv14AG0NLwLuArvnvVfNyhIYr3e2mntMYmm9Kn4vIB3Mbca3eAeHUsiENeFx_QRJKc1AscuAAQ4vZtw=s320" width="273" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p>
<span style="font-family: times;"><b>Is there a book that changed the way you look at life? </b><br /><br />As an indiscriminate reader and a moral packrat, I think I can safely say that most books I’ve read have changed the way I look at life, at least for a while. But fewer have changed the actual direction of my life. I re-read <i>A Wizard of Earthsea</i> in grad school and it brought me back to fantasy as a reader and writer in ways I can’t fully express.</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjaFitt0eb-Xo_a46LC1ffXC0oa2lQ0R9wFelfJl0pc0TBECkWNpNMYiAP2jhHCiSxnWqsNP2MKwnCpqL4E_LpPyHZt8yiu3UTiAApYVetaY7jFJa3vSCmwee5knGfUJ-iTRTBnuSUr_gZnwqpp9DSGkcEtbZGDY6GofArm645_g0iJiLGsMMKS7Zp9Og=s2557" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2557" data-original-width="1832" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjaFitt0eb-Xo_a46LC1ffXC0oa2lQ0R9wFelfJl0pc0TBECkWNpNMYiAP2jhHCiSxnWqsNP2MKwnCpqL4E_LpPyHZt8yiu3UTiAApYVetaY7jFJa3vSCmwee5knGfUJ-iTRTBnuSUr_gZnwqpp9DSGkcEtbZGDY6GofArm645_g0iJiLGsMMKS7Zp9Og=s320" width="229" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: times;">I wouldn’t be writing now if it weren’t for that book.<br /><b><br />Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it makes it so? </b><br /><br />My favorite changes every couple of months, whenever my kids get a new obsession. Right now they love everything Joe Todd Stanton has written, especially <i>Leo and the Gorgon’s Curse</i>.</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhnjd-w2GhE4w2CgZ0E8R3nRh3khvwL9pHUvHd4DfwLDaoCucRd0nwjldCcphzUmPKKZAnRrr6PS5fhAbhweyy2oFuBGxbPxXdbFT8dKrQy2H0oRfnzgHQUOKjBFmsUXpHNFfk1L5VHhqpXSb8IyjAH06fosTkT9xpUAVBIlCcROVZX1YSiBYtdTlzaVA=s630" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="455" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhnjd-w2GhE4w2CgZ0E8R3nRh3khvwL9pHUvHd4DfwLDaoCucRd0nwjldCcphzUmPKKZAnRrr6PS5fhAbhweyy2oFuBGxbPxXdbFT8dKrQy2H0oRfnzgHQUOKjBFmsUXpHNFfk1L5VHhqpXSb8IyjAH06fosTkT9xpUAVBIlCcROVZX1YSiBYtdTlzaVA=s320" width="231" /></a></i></div><i><br /><o:p></o:p></i><p></p>
<span style="font-family: times;"><b>How do you feel about “Independent Bookstores” and their role in your success? </b><br /><br />I never had a local bookstore growing up. I was a teenager before there even were big chain stores around. So indie bookstores have been something of a revelation to me—uniquely curated spaces run by passionate locals? Which also serve as event spaces and community centers? How divine, and how lucky I feel to be a part of that ecosystem. <br /><br /><b>What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you? </b><br /><br />One time my Dad told me he’d throw me in the pond if I stuck my tongue out one more time and obviously I stuck my tongue out one more time and he threw me in the pond.</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjubi3WxT1IObbnJWI2ppDgFXZzL6efzj3wBSQ7ns_uGXzZ1uqQQo2TqqkRrAf82f4ZI1oCgmXoy1HMoTmoI1k0wV0izZ8qecy1xhMSgq_3JyHTkAbvAZUPDm3FOawSrz4JNDF5GOyd3-fP5d4bUJkcaTfLx-_vbjZqC0EB62_KU8VsTeWLFX1zi6MVmw=s215" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="215" data-original-width="149" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjubi3WxT1IObbnJWI2ppDgFXZzL6efzj3wBSQ7ns_uGXzZ1uqQQo2TqqkRrAf82f4ZI1oCgmXoy1HMoTmoI1k0wV0izZ8qecy1xhMSgq_3JyHTkAbvAZUPDm3FOawSrz4JNDF5GOyd3-fP5d4bUJkcaTfLx-_vbjZqC0EB62_KU8VsTeWLFX1zi6MVmw" width="149" /></a></div><span style="font-family: times;"><b>How did you meet your beloved? How did your first date go?</b></span><br /><br />We both answered the same craigslist ad and ended up harvesting and packing blueberries in rural Maine. I was 19, living in my van with my dog and my best friend. He was 22, living in a leaky tent with his guitar and his books. We haven’t parted since.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEghz-24EShia6NIMM2nH76KJHsex4nhdjSCoT18Ziohlt15J8CKU5zdHuFgpeDULD9AKMLYPJBNEa3ydpNhDLAu_BhA7kFxOt7-ntvNU092tBAOUYDK3WwK8HldmSmFne7FpGRCeXCaCbIREr3d9gGqv4I2jljnDAmrNgq0lTbQCsaLnX0zRHSRRLhdaA=s640" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="351" data-original-width="640" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEghz-24EShia6NIMM2nH76KJHsex4nhdjSCoT18Ziohlt15J8CKU5zdHuFgpeDULD9AKMLYPJBNEa3ydpNhDLAu_BhA7kFxOt7-ntvNU092tBAOUYDK3WwK8HldmSmFne7FpGRCeXCaCbIREr3d9gGqv4I2jljnDAmrNgq0lTbQCsaLnX0zRHSRRLhdaA=w424-h233" width="424" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: times;"><b>Is there a song, person or group that you listen to when you are feeling a bit down? </b><br /><br />When I’m sad I listen to even sadder music, in a cathartic race to the bottom. Phoebe Bridgers, Elliot Smith, Gregory Alan Isakov—you’re up.</span><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://phoebefuckingbridgers.com/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="2667" height="104" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6nWttzZicpOxsrn_6hBnz8jwkWPyliYpggLGqd7huEoC8Xi2kyc66-2DNsxxK1_JiQ6cvfVYXDlNufFdiZBOkgywV1Jv76axeKa7TmB0K99bJgZvDWwPKqsSh4ZqyftZujNDqs9AIjeRX/w185-h104/image.png" width="185" /></a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Smith" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;" target="_blank"><img alt="" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="624" height="102" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5M-m5PWmL5v2pcZ8yKB8aajnROdD2eukJJz9kxz-s2L99Zz5zR2AXrc01y3e7xXjJp8mZz2F3L0TM-wS1arFXIQ265wRVrDWFP-ciFwIL0m1QTp3Er4aia_KoZAXQOrrWJjVW-YxAISLH/w153-h102/image.png" width="153" /></a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Alan_Isakov" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;" target="_blank"><img alt="" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1800" height="101" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY5Ip624YqMSamtPSMfPsqns-ZFLrt9sM30qAA1F9V3adUjRNGanks7iVYsjWE4R5o5RgCzoOJn6wzVqZzLsEX8ESNSY0ON0LxRMkeXpwGK0Zrd9SxAroGyEZeXx8rsAjPIZAyF7aQaLV2/w152-h101/image.png" width="152" /></a><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times;"><b>How are you different now than you were in your twenties?</b><br /><br />I’ve been out of my twenties for two years now, but they were pandemic years, which makes them subjectively closer to decades. I’m more anxious, less optimistic, a little smarter, a lot creakier, better at writing, worse at staying up late, less poor, more obnoxious, and a lot happier.<br /><br /><b>I know you love Robin McKinley's writings, have you had a chance to meet her?</b><br /><br />I’ve never met her, and sort of hope I don’t. It’s one of those situations where her work was so formative to me, at such a young age, that it would be impossible for Ms. McKinley the actual person to bear the sheer force of my admiration. <br /><br /><b>Is there a teacher that really made an impact on you?</b><br /><br />I wrote an absolutely atrocious, egregious novel in middle school. I would like to give a shout-out to Mrs. Parsons, my language arts teacher in seventh and eighth grades, for staying late and reading my book chapter by chapter, which is just above and beyond. Absolutely unnecessary. Twelve-year-old's are pretty brave, and they’re like, ‘I want to be a fantasy writer, so I’m going to write a fantasy book.’ I did, and it was fantastic. I mean, the book was terrible, but the experience was fantastic.<br /><br /><b>In <i>A Spindle Splintered</i>, I love how ferociously loyal Charm is to Zinnia. Did/do you have a friend like that?</b><br /><br />I like to think everybody has a friend like Charm, or had one, or will have one someday. It was one of my favorite tricks, to substitute the romance of Sleeping Beauty with an equally important but radically different type of relationship. <br /><br /><b>Your main character, Zinnia, suffers from "Generalized Roseville Malady". I know it's a fictional disease, but is it based on anything similar?</b><br /><br />Not really. I tried to make the symptoms medically plausible without mapping onto a real chronic or terminal illness. It was supposed to be light and escapist—I didn’t want to make any readers feel jarred back into harsh realities. <br /><br /><b>Is there a question no one has ever asked you that you wish they would? Something, perhaps, that people would be surprised to know about you? </b><br /><br />Nobody ever asks me about ping pong. If they did, I would tell them I’m really good at ping pong. Which is true, but also a very a safe lie, because there’s rarely a ping pong table around to check.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6oMvoPoz_dkBgzHuFG2BgCkiOE9_F_HEuviwSTtILLp2jvW3awvgMwmK_PXkonXcBHAUeqHwU98SfJPncFH3jJITYOTDdlA_N_6Iab9IzDRoJzOB1O5EG08cWIgj3iqxj9p5Yw3hNOkXk/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="640" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6oMvoPoz_dkBgzHuFG2BgCkiOE9_F_HEuviwSTtILLp2jvW3awvgMwmK_PXkonXcBHAUeqHwU98SfJPncFH3jJITYOTDdlA_N_6Iab9IzDRoJzOB1O5EG08cWIgj3iqxj9p5Yw3hNOkXk/" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And in a short essay…………………………<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><u>IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME</u></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if
appropriate to your choice,<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>actually experience what it was like to live in that
time, anywhere at all,<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to
them, be with them.<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times;">The problem with having a couple of degrees in history is
that, little by little, your desire to actually visit any historical periods is
eroded by your familiarity with the facts of those historical periods. It’s not
just the dysentery or the bloodshed or the lack of indoor plumbing—it’s the chilling
cultural assumptions, the casual certainties about human worth, the intricate
sets of rules that determine who is a person and who isn’t, who has rights and
who doesn’t. Picture a boot stamping on a human face, forever. Orwell said that
about the future, but he was plagiarizing from the past.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times;">Maybe I’m just tired. Maybe I’m forgetting all the ordinary
people who were scraping by, doing their best to protect themselves and the
people they love in a chaotic and often cruel world. I think if I could visit
anywhere, I’d go back to western Kentucky in the early 1990s, and visit that
hundred and forty acres of heaven for a while. </span><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1iijwPMbHqP5sFupCLffmk37mv7K06teM9cRs_86gD4pUlI_Bfn3fXQ6FHdWqgdEeXk2ZeRSbFe8xnl4MXRm2y6aKissqNm8I-Ha2cFWWzGmWTqgYF_L1O5d34L7UNxFlydbXs7MAfaSj/" style="text-align: start;" /></div><div><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal">Thank you, Alix, I loved your answers to my questions. Let's shoot a game of ping pong next time you're in Asheville. After I beat you we can critique my Fairy Tale collection!</p><p></p></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-71867169886986109252021-12-07T10:46:00.003-05:002021-12-08T08:39:56.521-05:00Man Martin<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEior5pmEGBfsdI5uM9NyFK6mrXngDc1JBv38ZvYRDQ0sSJRXlxI-_Dfx-TFR_0r78i9PaPl4pZYaJXymq-pQy5ur5CXz-0y2bojZYV6nmNcMG5Ux2s6SXIK0i4FUjlRPPxctiFfq7nb2cOs/s200/Man+Martin.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="150" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEior5pmEGBfsdI5uM9NyFK6mrXngDc1JBv38ZvYRDQ0sSJRXlxI-_Dfx-TFR_0r78i9PaPl4pZYaJXymq-pQy5ur5CXz-0y2bojZYV6nmNcMG5Ux2s6SXIK0i4FUjlRPPxctiFfq7nb2cOs/w300-h400/Man+Martin.jpg" width="300" /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></a></div><div><br /></div> <img border="0" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgosyGxScBKlQLS_mgMm-I9j20fGDpzOXOHGrtZEMgCfyc9tMAzaHLvmzVdOsZMJZnpIZ9Kmb8j0A4HzwIdN18szgWxcnfO6uPNuLB6_pODTvpl36UHz4NuaQsyPkrrf4tkVPOfKO8-xIRMWGpKFn-a-vTb5KQr355koMNsje7BH08MSHHJrievUXfZRw=w109-h164" width="109" /> <img border="0" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjZmOPndFgmBkxlya2jPqSch1AbZn3dQjkjgFVHdT38BnIa3Md5EInbjHdT2LbCkh61qlRzE68CwuYUItTsxlOjbbFLdTzCF3hSbbj9JyhDFvk1PRgT57LN5bLRJZMHzyCjKNig76UNjkZZxByiSLDuzU_x2BXm2RZ79k7LEtO5BF3szOvICMPh_pwTXg=w108-h162" width="108" /> <img border="0" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjvhf3ST_I_g93hajIIO7XOdpNJbAZ_eaMcO8QNTZwwqWJtePcbdUCWjDYSYZ4mH0h7PxCUYRNK3BsFqL1BVlQi209vdLKAacnB2WskIVuFmPChWr9jOxcUrR9jesgXoea1PUW2OSI0lijJLeKB2ZH7dO7JZ_K8CwphOew6CnfGmG0sX9sMVXpv2LTRgA=w109-h162" width="109" /> <img border="0" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh2l8F_TKUWBCz7kLWFfgKQN9OnHy7LNceMBuh5Zr3_JcIVWMHSd6wbpqx52kpTXDFSpw76eR2dHzV6mwJWCs7Nn_lN9pdVpOYuq86mTXsK3PgQQSkxtH5suRfP4dzNlOkMe6J76hgbSFB3bJMb-BJiBH39sXdWvDEVwFkjoZQE0wsWxRqvnk203Z06fA=w109-h163" width="109" /> <img border="0" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj3l0scCi8PoZhq-kbGFFK4owHI4whx6z1vGhGuw6_79DGFT7XNt2hODqzhUjtkhQ9SntPvgoSAQImKQDqzTIQLZktietDUo6vsg_5pf_ikDoXn6KyjV4L2o0O8tFaXII6OioFxwwWVGmpZKATqWLpt9IdcJ2IqTGop2eRwemCQGDS116MBwWqSKjPpLw=w110-h164" width="110" /><br /><br /><div>One of my favorite writers is Man (Emanuel) Martin. He fits the "gentleman and a scholar" description to a T. When I lived near Atlanta we would get together occasionally for dinner; he always knew the best restaurants. His writing career was already well established with wonderful books but then he had to become greedy and become an outstanding comic strip creator as well, the genius behind "<a href="http://manmartin.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Man Overboard</a>". If you haven't seen his comics yet, I have included some of my favorites throughout this interview. Oh, and a few just for this blog!</div><div><br /></div><div>Prepare yourself to get to know the man who loves Umps, is a close friend of Drip, listens to Imelda May sing <i>Inside Out</i> endlessly, wonders if Mark Twain ever said "Boy Howdy" <i>and </i>includes fighting dinosaurs and Gumby and Pokey in the same scene with his time travel answer. Told you, the man's a genius.<br /><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Tell me about where you live and why you love it so much.<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I live in a tree-shaded neighborhood in suburban Atlanta, not far
from my children and grandchildren, which is the nicest thing I could wish.
Looking out the window from my home office I can see the charcoal gray cube of
a State Farm building rising behind the hardwoods, which distresses me, but I
also see the hardwoods themselves, which offer a counterbalancing soothing
effect, and just now the leaves are changing yellow, and gold, and coral red,
so that’s even better. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiqGTaL6T6yfB65n19hqU4eOuHzZswYNiFZPaek4BLfI_HiYq682I51jYOhUcMiMx88rTOmkdg3b0EzqtCUuPxE-CBatsk4Jf0spx5_qynXP5RVqKhSa-AnBr-rPXZ_0r7biULpI-c5XoNwg77VSd1ljNE9fW7EljpgZPC7ZIFU5jNBrUA6H7Hmh1VtmQ=s1394" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1394" data-original-width="1308" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiqGTaL6T6yfB65n19hqU4eOuHzZswYNiFZPaek4BLfI_HiYq682I51jYOhUcMiMx88rTOmkdg3b0EzqtCUuPxE-CBatsk4Jf0spx5_qynXP5RVqKhSa-AnBr-rPXZ_0r7biULpI-c5XoNwg77VSd1ljNE9fW7EljpgZPC7ZIFU5jNBrUA6H7Hmh1VtmQ=w180-h192" width="180" /></a>I also have birdfeeders and a birdbath outside my window
where I can watch cardinals, finches, woodpeckers, and thrashers, and in the
warmer months, hummingbirds. I have four chickens in a pen in the backyard, who
provide eggs but more importantly a sense of personal wellbeing. The same goes
for the little garden where just now we have broccoli, cabbage, and collards. </div></div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond
memories?<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Fort Pierce, Florida, and yes. As a child I had a host of learning
disabilities, severe enough that my first-grade teacher wanted me tested for
intellectual impairment. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1055" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjH4MFN4tsQOY0eSAQ3-5fzXrt9n4B8vofb0fwjCwIdvy7F-9nWF5xBur1K3qeF_8sMbRcUhW2eJiOFDHE7jQn0yTE7Y0uaqIhTFF9F6DwilhKZlhz0qIAD4yw6H9JuCf4dkI3ElLTNwk6wsveD8Bfg3OwBna1Duxge8YkssLBeVcUC2UC1HH3YNuXSNQ=w148-h288" width="148" /></div>When we moved to Fort Pierce, my teacher was Ms.
Hussein, whom I adored. She never belittled me, as my first-grade teacher
sometimes did, and gave me independent work to do. I soon caught up and
surpassed my grade level. I will be forever grateful to her. <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hmmm. And again, hmmm. The question is not my favorite book or one
that I’ve read the most often, but one that changed how I look at life. The
answer to that question would have to be <i>The Myth of Sisyphus and Other
Essays</i> by Camus. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOxPwbn3_FwCJBHGfHk3KnabN-gc-sAO9hzuZhSifMNsa7S9cn5BSD3NPJ9QM8i3BUges3CT7E0atCmx1ni0jz3qvVrJoT30KturBaweI1RlpFyDGIWW81r-UPYQ2WvyQTD0RiEV6l-uGR/" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="274" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOxPwbn3_FwCJBHGfHk3KnabN-gc-sAO9hzuZhSifMNsa7S9cn5BSD3NPJ9QM8i3BUges3CT7E0atCmx1ni0jz3qvVrJoT30KturBaweI1RlpFyDGIWW81r-UPYQ2WvyQTD0RiEV6l-uGR/" width="138" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">I’ve read it multiple times, and as far as I can make out,
his thesis is that the meaning of life, such as it is, is Work. This is not as
grim as it may sound, but Camus himself seems to throw up his hands and shrug
his shoulders that this is the best he can come up with. For many years I would
have agreed with him, but have concluded that although Work is a very good
guess, Love is the real meaning of life. This may seem so obvious as to be not
worth stating, but it took me years of cogitation to get there, and I probably
wouldn’t have if Camus hadn’t set me on the path of wondering.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it makes it
so?<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When I was seven years old, in the Fort Pierce public library (see
answer to Question 2) I pulled a slim volume from the shelves called, <i>The
Wuggly Ump</i>, by Edward Gorey, </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMF9Qhb6CJcr6pBxGk6KZDoY5gHDCiNS6zQCr_B7dha7e4KwSSeSi9logPkDYewFqj0uT6HtXj5-O3jDK4kButBJcKHZkcz6DhwdUsIGQmsg8jwrTdcRk3mvBbW1QNsKT0K-VGf35ReWUW/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="376" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMF9Qhb6CJcr6pBxGk6KZDoY5gHDCiNS6zQCr_B7dha7e4KwSSeSi9logPkDYewFqj0uT6HtXj5-O3jDK4kButBJcKHZkcz6DhwdUsIGQmsg8jwrTdcRk3mvBbW1QNsKT0K-VGf35ReWUW/" width="320" /></a><span style="text-align: left;">in which the title monster eats three children
who </span>for some reason seem to be from the Edwardian era. On the last page, the Ump grins a pointy toothed grin and a cutaway shows the three kids floating in its belly. The final rhyme is, <br />“Sing tir-aloo, sing tir-alump/ From deep inside the Wuggly Ump.”</div><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What a great book.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div style="text-align: left;">By comparison, <i>Cat in the Hat</i> and <i>Where the Wild Things
Are</i> were tameness itself, because nothing actually <i>happens</i>. As a kid
I loved anything that wasn’t pre-sanitized or carry the “Concerned Parents for
the Betterment of America’s Youth” seal of approval. As for the school-sanctioned
reading matter, forget about it. </div><div style="text-align: left;">I am old enough to remember the hoary primary
reader, <i>Fun with Dick and Jane. </i><img border="0" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUN1MHTSooJtfBTS9CbEmUlsGX-uryPviTsbwU6FjrCDMA44wwNnktdMr8xfi9NnPR7H0XE439gkhbjazeQXW-U2nNbY7OM2idmYsyny0KkENwY1nrG6WYQsyQAfAnQ2vGzCTCSsyLfv4e/w109-h164/Dick.jpg" width="109" /> In one memorable episode, Dick runs.
“‘Look, look,’ Jane said. ‘See Dick run.’” The only topic less entertaining
than a boy running, is a girl <i>seeing</i> him run. I believe many of the neuroses
of my generation could be traced to those very books.</div><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I dutifully returned <i>The Wuggly Ump</i> when it was due rather
than checking it out again, from a sense of that someone else should have a
chance to discover it. On repeated visits to the library, however, I never
found it again. No doubt some officious parent had it removed on grounds of
unwholesomeness. If you’re a person who believes children shouldn’t be exposed
to anything that might possibly be troubling or upsetting, and they’re better
off with a diet of the classics, I recommend you take another look at <i>Alice
in Wonderland, Grimm’s Fairytales</i>, Hans Christian Anderson, or better yet,
the Bible, and then get back to me. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3WDWAhNgu20D2p4Lm_HhrckqDWlw0O3CVukOjSEHan8k5FZep9n9W7HCwFNYSWxh6k_-hDi0EWKiq5D7VgAtKhd7NJYEFhZrNU-fMZPbNnprjNxQm3nec27__VcWhPxToqu90vpyxTS2x/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1833" height="464" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3WDWAhNgu20D2p4Lm_HhrckqDWlw0O3CVukOjSEHan8k5FZep9n9W7HCwFNYSWxh6k_-hDi0EWKiq5D7VgAtKhd7NJYEFhZrNU-fMZPbNnprjNxQm3nec27__VcWhPxToqu90vpyxTS2x/w415-h464/2.jpg" width="415" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>How do you feel about “Independent Bookstores” and their role in
your success?<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">Independent booksellers, particularly Frank Reiss of A Cappella
Books, Atlanta,</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjaI5-6l39xZxDoAOY8Jg04a5KwUc32NEzFXlcsi_R20w8AKeNhyphenhypheneUuR6R716rsrBxN6Cgw_AfzL0nCMsMqf2OGSIppw5fPSlq8LLiDkvyG-QBxvuIjbhaEmsh2xsM94VHf80QUtvrkN3Q/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="374" data-original-width="280" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjaI5-6l39xZxDoAOY8Jg04a5KwUc32NEzFXlcsi_R20w8AKeNhyphenhypheneUuR6R716rsrBxN6Cgw_AfzL0nCMsMqf2OGSIppw5fPSlq8LLiDkvyG-QBxvuIjbhaEmsh2xsM94VHf80QUtvrkN3Q/w147-h195/image.png" width="147" /></a><i>and</i> Doug and Charles Robinson of Eagle Eye Books in Decatur <span> </span><img border="0" height="116" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiUQn19q72VkLftO6Vuh_ApYpy3mCzLcfBx24lbEnAMKwSJYHE5MQk7Zoa_z-XNUN0MGoeRhZGQLy-9VCBV5e51LClvD7-6_H8YMfXfm2fcRdK-1jkQqiuNxZ2Nb8YazCuCitWhyjsUlZfyWOe6n3UC2kkZBIYeaX-l756gOv410ZoSCrjXQ4gsXCjeLQ=w198-h116" width="198" /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span>have always
taken a personal interest in helping me launch my books, publicizing and
hosting readings and book signings, and I am indebted to them. But deeper than
that, there is a value to the independent bookstore in shaping t</span>he sort of society we want to have. When we think of a community, the sort of community celebrated in the old Sesame Street Song, “Who are the People in Your Neighborhood,” the local bookstore is as integral as the barber, the baker, and the house of worship. It’s one of the ingredients that transform a collection of intersecting streets and storefronts into a hometown. When you walk in the store you are greeted, if not by the owner, by someone who cares about books, not some indifferent retailer who would be as happy working at Banana Republic or Jiffy Lube. Current bestsellers will be on display, of course, but also a carefully curated selection of titles suggested by the staff. And if you ask for a recommendation, you will get a real recommendation, from someone who has listened to what you like, rather than a cyber-generated algorithm, a la Netflix; “You like movies with strong female leads and the documentary, ‘Autopsy,’ so we think you’d enjoy ‘Zombie Strippers from Outer Space.’”</p><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Over the past decades, many a lovely bookstore has had to shut its
doors, and the ones that have survived have done so precisely because of their
commitment to building as well as serving the community, and most of all, the
deep-seated love of reading. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Christmas is upon us. What better gift for someone you love and
your neighborhood than a good book from your local bookseller?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1bhd2xQLmkV0stXIHJd0y8u9dNvVTT89dFwCh7cBtDFEKMeICGYV-FcA5Mx7IK9wH21Uy-YnC4Uj1m1V-LIYR0GZUYx-aIXEk6CKJe0KdhveUrb4GBA38wao0xGelY1MK81rcxkbd6cdt/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1781" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1bhd2xQLmkV0stXIHJd0y8u9dNvVTT89dFwCh7cBtDFEKMeICGYV-FcA5Mx7IK9wH21Uy-YnC4Uj1m1V-LIYR0GZUYx-aIXEk6CKJe0KdhveUrb4GBA38wao0xGelY1MK81rcxkbd6cdt/w557-h640/11.jpg" width="557" /></a></div><br /><b>What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family
tells about you?</b><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Oh, dear. They are so many and so terrible. I would have to say it
was the time I cooked a pig in a plywood box. The magnitude of the fiasco was
too great to accomplish unaided, but required the combined stupidity of me <i>and</i>
my wife. Suffice to say, a firetruck was involved.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiJ_jdZLXgCfZPgEQi9NbejcQOS6L3kRL_XTtdmC1HzQsN6T9QN50tfVrbh6lmRvs3-QDh0HtAthYWVoQcfG4YGn4qJeksQIRYvP2hfwQp9fRl8dLkP_yhSx7TWF9EhIl1kVHMF-aM14XSqPk77O5ORCjTSVvVeG1s8JPo78xY8eWf9BkkC7QtY194OFw=s1207" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1040" data-original-width="1207" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiJ_jdZLXgCfZPgEQi9NbejcQOS6L3kRL_XTtdmC1HzQsN6T9QN50tfVrbh6lmRvs3-QDh0HtAthYWVoQcfG4YGn4qJeksQIRYvP2hfwQp9fRl8dLkP_yhSx7TWF9EhIl1kVHMF-aM14XSqPk77O5ORCjTSVvVeG1s8JPo78xY8eWf9BkkC7QtY194OFw=w198-h171" width="198" /></a>If you want to read the
whole sorry incident, click here: <a href="https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/hank-williams-jrs-all-my-rowdy-friends">https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/hank-williams-jrs-all-my-rowdy-friends</a> </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeO-IX6HFfyurS3NibdkU2gDxBypy4wVnSTiWv0qgvyXZxP0r2U47b02DpIHwAJ96wU4xNi5Hy-ALUARCvTC4kZRNBl6sAM0vIJFrEnyKvK7mKgvj_rWEKYxtRhBoL8nCwrcK10ZJupmEt/s640/Man+Martin+comic+2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="542" data-original-width="640" height="542" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeO-IX6HFfyurS3NibdkU2gDxBypy4wVnSTiWv0qgvyXZxP0r2U47b02DpIHwAJ96wU4xNi5Hy-ALUARCvTC4kZRNBl6sAM0vIJFrEnyKvK7mKgvj_rWEKYxtRhBoL8nCwrcK10ZJupmEt/w640-h542/Man+Martin+comic+2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><b>How did you meet your beloved ? How did your first date go?<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As a college sophomore in John Blair’s History of English Drama
class at Georgia College, I sat across from the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.
Not just pretty, but take-a-surreptitious-peek-to-confirm-if-she-could-possibly-be-as-pretty-as-I-think-she-is
pretty. Alas, she had an engagement ring on her finger, so I made up my mind
she could never be for me. As the semester wore on, I learned her name was
Nancy, and not only was she astonishingly beautiful but witty and smart. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Then my buddy Charles Waldrip gave a presentation on <i>Tis Pity
She’s a Whore</i> (actual title) He asked me beforehand to interrupt, imitating
of a bit from the Johnny Carson show. I was to say everything you needed to
know about the play was in the handout, and he would reply, “Oh, no, Petrarch
breath,” and go on with his talk. When Charles began his presentation, I went
into my spiel on cue, and Nancy seized <i>The Riverside Shakespeare</i>, which
is eight inches thick and hardbound, and slammed it on my head saying, “Shut
up!” <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiFxaOul7nBBAiAIyZQ1SOUe73ehBAaC7u7_e8vSnfWgckScqGtayDG16Q-4jwNF6njGTc6qowDpJOqxW3e6_-wps4AFBk-gPCcwWCgH3LZTxWyls2LvWAR3Lk5OXhdLhZV-zPq6zONxP5Eto2vqd97coVFNTQm9GcF_rF_SjVJ48Fba00MGF6mWLwx1g=s1352" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="999" data-original-width="1352" height="147" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiFxaOul7nBBAiAIyZQ1SOUe73ehBAaC7u7_e8vSnfWgckScqGtayDG16Q-4jwNF6njGTc6qowDpJOqxW3e6_-wps4AFBk-gPCcwWCgH3LZTxWyls2LvWAR3Lk5OXhdLhZV-zPq6zONxP5Eto2vqd97coVFNTQm9GcF_rF_SjVJ48Fba00MGF6mWLwx1g=w199-h147" width="199" /></a>I was in love, of course, from that moment on, and there was
nothing on earth that could change that fact. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Later, Tammy, a mutual friend, told me Nancy had broken it off
with her fiancé. I knew such a gem wouldn’t be on the market for long, and said
I was going to ask her out. Tammy stole from the room at once, going, as I
suspected, to inform Nancy of my intentions. When Nancy arrived, I wasted no
time.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Speaking of movies,” I said, loudly enough to be heard by the
entire room – no one had been speaking of movies – “how would you like to go
see <i>Fast Break</i> with Gabe Kaplan with me?”<br />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Twenty-two pairs of eyes turned in Nancy’s direction. Would she
say yes? Would she say no? Would she dare to break my heart or would my fond
hopes be realized?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We have been married forty years this July.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiG7ORaF0jt9a5Sa2hAK5xIBAqMEwLd4OjS6jsmZ1ev2u0oqqFnSKxZpsXlOC3Q39jYyIx2U6Dp9Ohxs9Sotx_sK7bPIH2yvUAyPiZd3fbSzeSTHcALxRjJIUqCDmLNLb7Vyq9gAjagaFZghsJefvmIiwdwzfhpuXJA2_MfgvyEEWma6UUU03pKpIc65g=s1822" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1215" data-original-width="1822" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiG7ORaF0jt9a5Sa2hAK5xIBAqMEwLd4OjS6jsmZ1ev2u0oqqFnSKxZpsXlOC3Q39jYyIx2U6Dp9Ohxs9Sotx_sK7bPIH2yvUAyPiZd3fbSzeSTHcALxRjJIUqCDmLNLb7Vyq9gAjagaFZghsJefvmIiwdwzfhpuXJA2_MfgvyEEWma6UUU03pKpIc65g=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>You mentioned your "buddy" Charles Waldrip, tell me about him.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal">Charles Waldrip, or “Drip” as we called him, was one of my buddies
in The Roges and Vagabondes theater group. (The teacher of the afore mentioned
History of English Drama class was our director.) I have too many dear friends
to list here, for fear of omitting any, but I will share briefly how Drip and I
became friends.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">During my first ever play at Georgia College – <i>Gooper in Cat on a
Hot Tin Roof</i> – </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" data-original-height="970" data-original-width="676" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjwTG4-iPtdsacIaN8ng7Rxf9-DzwzMx45zuaKEeLbKLtasyb9IF6Ag2KihAy2AIljFrkQMvXkMCGqXR3eYR1EnpVTpgMdJ0pV2FMFRj1dOn63b7kaWyJg5oLm1HJ_0-zVkCzvxk-HYmGhKoVvCNScMBga-klLyui8034FR9x6J2MdYwfCs7FVMNsg5YA=w139-h200" width="139" /> <span style="text-align: left;">Drip and another performer, <a href="https://andyirwin.com/">Andy Irwin</a> (who has since become an </span>internationally acclaimed storyteller and whistler) invited me to participate in a practical joke on the music department. In the music building were two sets of identical lockers, both numbered, if I recall correctly, 1-16. We simply broke into the music building and switched the lockers. This involved a certain amount of heavy lifting, hence the need for an extra conspirator.</div><o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The next morning, chaos and fury ensued when students discovered
the combinations on “their” lockers no longer worked, or the locks appeared to
have been replaced altogether. The situation was soon sorted out with no harm
done, the perfect practical joke.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal">Collectively known as “The Phantom Janitor,” Drip, Andy, and I had
several escapades of this sort, about which, perhaps, the less said the better. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxwwi9164BXCQrurmp1sjkVxxQJzFx5wlt3uqxu9xOP2HYVPqgGoWzUvadQnXgc7MchgKESe64YCWIHZ9arMbIPXIYgdi2HAU272LCHC55FoEZXhtWP-VLkV5EDnJAXfY9Yzk6OUZW2bhR/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1814" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxwwi9164BXCQrurmp1sjkVxxQJzFx5wlt3uqxu9xOP2HYVPqgGoWzUvadQnXgc7MchgKESe64YCWIHZ9arMbIPXIYgdi2HAU272LCHC55FoEZXhtWP-VLkV5EDnJAXfY9Yzk6OUZW2bhR/w568-h640/22.jpg" width="568" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Is there a song, person or group that you listen to when you are
feeling a bit down?<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I like music no one else seems to enjoy, but I apologize for this
fact to no one. I likes what I likes, and what I likes is tuneful, easy to
sing, melodies and lyrics that have a clever topspin. I especially like female
vocalists. Nancy chides me for listening to the same songs over and over, but I
can’t help it. I’ll listen to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsYwNZLSFTQ" target="_blank">Imelda May sing “Inside Out”</a> twenty times in a
row, just to catch the line, “I love your wits/ and all your wobbly bits,” or
to hear <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Q0y5rf7J8" target="_blank">Toby Keith</a> sing, “Ain’t no high
maintenance woman gonna fall for no maintenance man.”<o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnUo4_jrv31GF_6R6apyEu7iyeX8YH07IZYU9urZ4r2j4BnHoBcFZiCF-TBHgH6_WfhBYEZv_tR1BxPxCv25vbmpUvJzdgq9FZkQ4QGk34E5zWAn9UGPQCDDfgqIl-FceeLOUSf6wZn6pi/s640/Man+Martin+comic.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="538" data-original-width="640" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnUo4_jrv31GF_6R6apyEu7iyeX8YH07IZYU9urZ4r2j4BnHoBcFZiCF-TBHgH6_WfhBYEZv_tR1BxPxCv25vbmpUvJzdgq9FZkQ4QGk34E5zWAn9UGPQCDDfgqIl-FceeLOUSf6wZn6pi/w400-h336/Man+Martin+comic.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><b>How are you different now than you were in your 20’s?</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I would like to say I am wiser. I am probably not. I would like to
say I am kinder, more generous, more patient, more loving. I am probably not. I
would like to say I am thinner, have more (or as much) hair, had bigger biceps.
I do not. My political views have moved to the left. But is that really me, or
has the rest of the world shifted while I stood in place?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I like okra now. I didn’t used to. I like buttermilk with cornbread.
I didn’t used to. I have had daughters, who in turn have married, and have had
children of their own. I cannot even begin to express the sea change that has
had on my perspective of the world, the future, myself.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, yeah. That sums it up. Okra, buttermilk, kids, grandkids.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><u>IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME</u></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>When would you go?</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Where would you go?</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Who would you want to meet?</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>And most importantly, why do you think you chose this time?</b> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My immediate answer is I’d like to witness the battle between at
T-Rex and a triceratops which took place in Hell Creek, Montana 67 million
years ago. That would have been totally boss! Like something out of a Ray
Harryhausen movie. <o:p></o:p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjM4TREFExNeOh--M_0vh38R5W8_yoBMlhveAa0cR6IfkWjl_NV_L_RGmdHSPpjV9Iff91zUlgejYbZJcstBAhDTl-ypyRmUbBv4Wk-j91JPQFVzv3CDOyfqO08oWzQExUsAwxOTS2Za5H2RqODmbMLei5oysnB3a7WSHeZgjyw_w2gVb9m_QNIfmSeZQ=s804" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="277" data-original-width="804" height="138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjM4TREFExNeOh--M_0vh38R5W8_yoBMlhveAa0cR6IfkWjl_NV_L_RGmdHSPpjV9Iff91zUlgejYbZJcstBAhDTl-ypyRmUbBv4Wk-j91JPQFVzv3CDOyfqO08oWzQExUsAwxOTS2Za5H2RqODmbMLei5oysnB3a7WSHeZgjyw_w2gVb9m_QNIfmSeZQ=w400-h138" width="400" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But no, let’s be mature and grown-up about this.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The basic possibilities are to be present at an historic event,
meet a bygone luminary, or return to a halcyon period of one’s own youth.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The problem with historic events is, they’re bound to disappoint. Oh,
sure, it’d be great at first. “Looky, they’re signing the <i>Declaration of
Independence</i>,” but the thrill would wear thin. “Why’s it taking so long?”
you’d think, “Whose idea was it for everyone to sign <i>one at a time</i>? Do
they really <i>all </i>have to sign? Hancock’s turn was over so quickly, I
missed it. And Ben Franklin keeps falling asleep, and who’d have guessed John
Adams had such terrible body odor?” Etcetera.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And then enduring the snoots who picked better historical events
than you did. “Oh, you saw the <i>Declaration of Independence,</i> did you?” <i>Sniff.</i>
“Muffy and I saw that<i> last </i>year. <i>This</i> year we went to the <i>Magna
Carta</i>. So much more<i> foundational</i>, you know.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">So if
historical events are out, I’d like to meet Mark Twain. But suppose I arrived
on a day he was constipated and only wanted to talk about laxatives? </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOndX86TJvJbul5iHQbfO5LqgaOzQeDBwPZmkqVIMADpb9sktcPV5_F324shoe-EplvlkvsK6DOBm8wVduXTaX-8keoACCkzgVRsGgpgTo-Fesu1_-y1_mB5jlymA5jCIVw9FgOrfrjuXn/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="560" data-original-width="1000" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOndX86TJvJbul5iHQbfO5LqgaOzQeDBwPZmkqVIMADpb9sktcPV5_F324shoe-EplvlkvsK6DOBm8wVduXTaX-8keoACCkzgVRsGgpgTo-Fesu1_-y1_mB5jlymA5jCIVw9FgOrfrjuXn/" width="320" /></a>And what if
he were exactly as I imagined, would that be any better? Say he was forever spouting
things like, “<span style="color: #222222;">Heaven
for the climate, Hell for the company.” At that point, I might as well watch a
Hal Holbrook on YouTube.</span></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #222222; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">No,
visiting Twain would not be enough. I’d want to get to know him. Better still,
I’d want him to know <i>me</i>. I love Twain, but it’s an unrequited love. I want
him to reciprocate. I want him to slap his knee and say, “Boy howdy, Man Martin,
you are one fine writer!” But how likely is it, really, that Twain would say
“boy howdy.” What if he didn’t like me or – worse still – ignored me, if he considered
me not even worth noticing? The thought
is too terrible to contemplate. No, meeting Twain’s not worth the risk.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #222222; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That
leaves the option of returning to some sweet memory of my misspent youth.
Fortunately, I know just the spot. 1414 Drake Avenue, Ocala, Florida, 1964</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisQ5S3n6C-NTU-gREfnCMh3D-XOjZ0Y191aYa4-7FuKnlZ-pYbge2jpY0PpiohWxcSY5oFrKnbpHt7Zdf2jFAF8X33AylX_arfYXzOf2Sow1B0r96A12p6TvBmM9fYafVeRHrFCPp63cuo/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="422" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisQ5S3n6C-NTU-gREfnCMh3D-XOjZ0Y191aYa4-7FuKnlZ-pYbge2jpY0PpiohWxcSY5oFrKnbpHt7Zdf2jFAF8X33AylX_arfYXzOf2Sow1B0r96A12p6TvBmM9fYafVeRHrFCPp63cuo/" width="282" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> I
am five years old, playing in the front yard with my Gumby and Poky dolls. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiKwrkufcPo1u4HBP6zJEZUG1K6vINalbRD32kp5lmtZ3D1hb5ElFksSAaJhYgjlZpRc_QvWQuTmLspLb0CZtvVYtXCdYNDzI_iz73W1GNg_AZeMY5qih202YHO-d2zx_qF9D6jAdjviTV/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="493" data-original-width="425" height="123" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiKwrkufcPo1u4HBP6zJEZUG1K6vINalbRD32kp5lmtZ3D1hb5ElFksSAaJhYgjlZpRc_QvWQuTmLspLb0CZtvVYtXCdYNDzI_iz73W1GNg_AZeMY5qih202YHO-d2zx_qF9D6jAdjviTV/w106-h123/image.png" width="106" /></a>Two
live oaks hung with Spanish moss droop down like the arms of a loving giant.
The morning is still, the grass slightly damp. Ocala is rural in those days,
and from somewhere I hear a rooster crow, its voice sweetened by distance.</div><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But would I really want to turn the clock back to 1964? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Of Ocala’s two theaters, one allowed blacks only in the balcony,
the other not at all. Gays in the community feared not just harassment, but
outright arrest. In Southeast Asia, teenagers killed and were killed in a war
that accomplished precisely zero, as far as I can tell. And America had yet to
live through the assassinations of Martin Luther King and John and Robert
Kennedy. I was unaware of all this at the time, of course, but would it be fair
to make everyone else go through all that again, just so I could relive a
pleasant memory?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So here’s what I want. It is 1964, but only within a tightly
circumscribed section of Drake Avenue, reaching no farther than Raleigh Street
to the east and Essex Lane to the west. I have Gumby and Pokey for company</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">, and
the shadows of the live oaks drift across the dew-wet lawn like friendly giants
passing by. There is the melody of a farmer’s rooster. And across the street,
for my especial delectation, a T-Rex battles it out with a triceratops. Just
like a Ray Harryhausen movie!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEguqRGCbbjmjdrooUGOTSolyhV6E0PxoAVCqPX0PmgUAY2cPOm1LKEnah8VnPFKQi6k-A8ul0DhUB-snSkXywO7PxLEoEGiA2tjyGhMtKiq7EASPfRkZUeRdZNdxL1tKWgtZLCN-9amXwXNVRnZi709yqTFq8cxj2eCgVvnbDfn5sTw6nE_5-fERYb0cw=s1946" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1040" data-original-width="1946" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEguqRGCbbjmjdrooUGOTSolyhV6E0PxoAVCqPX0PmgUAY2cPOm1LKEnah8VnPFKQi6k-A8ul0DhUB-snSkXywO7PxLEoEGiA2tjyGhMtKiq7EASPfRkZUeRdZNdxL1tKWgtZLCN-9amXwXNVRnZi709yqTFq8cxj2eCgVvnbDfn5sTw6nE_5-fERYb0cw=s320" width="320" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>That would be boss.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Thanks Man, not only for your wonderful answers to my questions but also for letting me know we are true soulmates (loving Gumby, Pokey <b>and</b> Ray Harryhausen!)</i></div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "new times", serif; font-size: 16px;">Click the link to sign up for your daily cartoon from Man Overboard </b><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?llr%3Dbnh4jixab%26p%3Doi%26m%3Dbnh4jixab%26sit%3Dsvkw6jrkb%26f%3D57144b0b-7634-4140-88f4-4f9e0e803937&source=gmail&ust=1638119893794000&usg=AOvVaw3TBriVpmjpuc2eZYyJqoxV" href="https://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?llr=bnh4jixab&p=oi&m=bnh4jixab&sit=svkw6jrkb&f=57144b0b-7634-4140-88f4-4f9e0e803937" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "new times", serif; font-size: 16px;" target="_blank">https://visitor.r20.<wbr></wbr>constantcontact.com/d.jsp?llr=<wbr></wbr>bnh4jixab&p=oi&m=bnh4jixab&<wbr></wbr>sit=svkw6jrkb&f=57144b0b-7634-<wbr></wbr>4140-88f4-4f9e0e803937</a></p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-44980491060062215442021-11-20T12:39:00.003-05:002021-11-20T12:44:44.890-05:00<p> </p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJu3stu_6iB6TPAzEE-8O_aE8MT-6zr1mxOzc7tf7bre40BVsYyY9tSMxVEToviN9VhOAJmFdxgJaGCVy6aTwiC_sxjuUkDuadjOLrnGef03icnOsIkVqIznvip7YBAgC4GohJLycr-o5o/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="361" data-original-width="578" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJu3stu_6iB6TPAzEE-8O_aE8MT-6zr1mxOzc7tf7bre40BVsYyY9tSMxVEToviN9VhOAJmFdxgJaGCVy6aTwiC_sxjuUkDuadjOLrnGef03icnOsIkVqIznvip7YBAgC4GohJLycr-o5o/" width="320" /></a></div><br />A Thanksgiving Homage to Southern Booksellers</span></div><br /><br /><p></p><p>Before I feature the great <b><a href="http://manmartin.net/manmartin.blogspot.com" target="_blank">Man Martin</a></b> in my next <a href="https://advancereadingcopy-jon.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><i>Advance Reading Copy</i></a>, I thought it would be nice to celebrate and give thanks to the booksellers that I worked with for 37 years, as a PGW publishers rep, one more time. I made this video in my last year on the road, to honor them. Even if you're not a bookseller, you may like seeing all their pretty faces.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhEwZNSR1_c&t=24s" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhEwZNSR1_c&t=24s</a></p>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-9956650110097350852021-11-03T11:06:00.008-04:002021-11-10T12:45:02.103-05:00Janisse Ray<p style="text-align: center;"> </p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6aRvAJ0dIxzWiohoR7L2F7semfxT3A4Gb-ror_6xST5GBQs0toZ8-_-gm97ZaA3tRP-LLxxA0YnG2SFhH4oo8YSrkQMKCvRCCcvESvMCyl-KfsllvfmKPepSCwVKVI7TdEWOC8-JHV5uJ/s799/Janisse+Ray+2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="799" data-original-width="732" height="353" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6aRvAJ0dIxzWiohoR7L2F7semfxT3A4Gb-ror_6xST5GBQs0toZ8-_-gm97ZaA3tRP-LLxxA0YnG2SFhH4oo8YSrkQMKCvRCCcvESvMCyl-KfsllvfmKPepSCwVKVI7TdEWOC8-JHV5uJ/w323-h353/Janisse+Ray+2.jpg" width="323" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm6rPYGdWvt4i3342X6hM_CeBNl_etyzfg4WEWYpFPgmYR50JeIRgJETUeb1fwYtF8dQiv2fER-A7dG_4HaXDvFobQ-oIi64I82cEnaS3ScVvzin2Wo5ArL2LwzVzFDNpaf74S3zpbFz1s/s350/Wild+Spectacle.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="227" height="498" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm6rPYGdWvt4i3342X6hM_CeBNl_etyzfg4WEWYpFPgmYR50JeIRgJETUeb1fwYtF8dQiv2fER-A7dG_4HaXDvFobQ-oIi64I82cEnaS3ScVvzin2Wo5ArL2LwzVzFDNpaf74S3zpbFz1s/w324-h498/Wild+Spectacle.jpg" width="324" /></a></div><br /><p>I first met award-winning author Janisse Ray at a <a href="https://sibaweb.com/" target="_blank">Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance </a>(SIBA) tradeshow when her first bestseller, <i><a href="https://milkweed.org/book/ecology-of-a-cracker-childhood" target="_blank">Ecology of a Cracker Childhood</a></i> , published by <a href="https://milkweed.org/our-story" target="_blank">Milkweed</a>, was released in 1999. I was bowled over by her wonderful personality and innate charm. Since then she has gone on to become a major voice for the wilderness and how we interact with it.</p><p>Her new book, <i><b>Wild Spectacle</b></i>, this time published by <a href="https://tupress.org/" target="_blank">T</a><a href="https://tupress.org/" target="_blank">rinity University Press</a>, is yet another marvelous insight into Janisse, our world, and how we desperately need to treat with respect all the other creatures that share this planet with us.</p><p>Each chapter focuses on her exotic travels and adventures. Every one of her encounters is like reading a new short story that I'm instantly drawn into. From the destination of the monarch butterflies in Mexico, to sitting in a creek surrounded by wild elk close to the Canadian border, to scratching a manatee's stomach in a spring in Florida, Janisse brought me with her in every sentence.</p><p>This is one of my favorite lines<b>:</b><i> "Silence is the resting place of a forest. But the forest is never silent. Every move makes a sound, and something always moves. The wind passes underneath a single leaf, gently lifts it, then eases it down. Earthworms slide through loam, causing grains of dirt to make the tiniest of clinks as they knock against each other. Sap rises and falls through the xylem. Trees whisper as they grow, pushing upward and outward, stretching toward the sky. Leaf-cutter ants hurry along with their ripped green sails whistling."</i></p><p>In this remarkable new book, Janisse has again plunged herself into the world of wildness and shows what that world can teach us.</p><p>Bill McKibben, author of <b><a href="http://billmckibben.com/wandering-home.html" target="_blank"><i>Wandering Home</i></a></b>, describes it perfectly:</p><p><i>"If there's a more open, honest, and appealing writer than Janisse Ray, I've not met her. Here she is at her best, fully immersed in wilderness, immersed in friendship, immersed in parenthood-engaged with the world in a way that few can manage in this screened-off age."</i></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Janisse, tell
me about where you live and why you love it so much.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Oh, my friend. I don’t always love the place where I
live. Sometimes this is a very difficult place to exist—first of all, I live in
a sparsely populated, rural place, which ensures that I deal with loneliness;
and secondly, my politics, my ideals, and my beliefs are often diametrically
opposed to those of my community. Of all the human needs, belonging is a major
one, and even when I don’t belong culturally, I always belong to my place. I
live in the delta between the Ohoopee and Altamaha Rivers. My neighbors are the
tiger swallowtails, swallowtail kites, and barn swallows, also the sun, moon,
and stars. There is a strange otherworldly feeling here. Millions of years ago
the place was under the ocean. Although in the ensuing millennia a wonderful
diversity of biota moved in, most days I feel as if the land around me
remembers the silence of underwater. Sometimes I remember that silence as well.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Where
were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">At 7 I lived on a junkyard in Baxley, Georgia, about
30 miles away from the farm where I now live. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfvRd7z8-R8ao-aHrorbt3NSj_8NXYhQtwGuJUm7xBfM0bw9-OaIheqNuGiIUi73yVEFjIlg1t1I8aa8T7Sqh9_h5sAS1c9-bXcpEC0TJiBuJkyUWi5jEkvlMzKMOPaFq2IZEfffzx2fl2/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="422" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfvRd7z8-R8ao-aHrorbt3NSj_8NXYhQtwGuJUm7xBfM0bw9-OaIheqNuGiIUi73yVEFjIlg1t1I8aa8T7Sqh9_h5sAS1c9-bXcpEC0TJiBuJkyUWi5jEkvlMzKMOPaFq2IZEfffzx2fl2/" width="282" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />The memories are complicated. My
birth family managed to survive some tough things, including poverty and mental
illness. I would not use the word “fond.” However, a junkyard is a
super-interesting place to grow up, so let’s just say I have some colorful
memories. Like the Thingfinders Club with my brothers, spending the coins we
found in junked cars on penny candy.</span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjumba40Oj1h3PeV5i-g-DFji8YNOqjEKiyCrpm71T3L8SjlZAMoY07xmtinGI27SNMJyHvxBcJEPWaFjWj5NW47xuwLAV8oMCj-mIV7Mteyln21FmjFWySHvNAtlpE-t_5TXOglcf3eMDT/s459/Janisse+as+a+child.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="353" data-original-width="459" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjumba40Oj1h3PeV5i-g-DFji8YNOqjEKiyCrpm71T3L8SjlZAMoY07xmtinGI27SNMJyHvxBcJEPWaFjWj5NW47xuwLAV8oMCj-mIV7Mteyln21FmjFWySHvNAtlpE-t_5TXOglcf3eMDT/s320/Janisse+as+a+child.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Janisse as a child with her siblings and her dad, Franklin Ray.</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Is there a book that changed the way
you look at life?</span></b></div></span></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Many,
many books changed the way I look at life. Thoreau’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>Walden</b> </i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGsusqZynVAJER8Dh_V_TcNllxTPvlaJvbNC-__r1ymd9rViAsU5vqqoDy7N2tslfpX41W3A_cCFhYk7AtrzHOqfAd7amwduUGGzPOgRaNZ0eS2h9KEUmFQlaPoqakVsqWOELeKijakz_q/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="228" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGsusqZynVAJER8Dh_V_TcNllxTPvlaJvbNC-__r1ymd9rViAsU5vqqoDy7N2tslfpX41W3A_cCFhYk7AtrzHOqfAd7amwduUGGzPOgRaNZ0eS2h9KEUmFQlaPoqakVsqWOELeKijakz_q/" width="156" /></a></span></div><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />was transformative at a time when I was especially open to
it.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Do you have a favorite children’s book
and what about it makes it so?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’m
going to vote for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>The Yearling</b></i> by
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1lVoRwO7qyWsJql-tj_iYvkqlPnFZfRK8N7vlRo-xl3sL66rCNZYlE3w7ACIbB_EUGXjq19DkowrpixbgwoMQWAJdwEAV-aLfiea0JgPljHn3P7zhzaaRHscn7cbTjc8aQYfiylZLwcuw/s350/Yearling.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="255" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1lVoRwO7qyWsJql-tj_iYvkqlPnFZfRK8N7vlRo-xl3sL66rCNZYlE3w7ACIbB_EUGXjq19DkowrpixbgwoMQWAJdwEAV-aLfiea0JgPljHn3P7zhzaaRHscn7cbTjc8aQYfiylZLwcuw/s320/Yearling.jpg" width="233" /></a></span></div><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />It was a story that brought my own childhood to life.
Plus it’s a perfect story, with a perfect narrative arc.<o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What are the funniest or most
embarrassing stories your family tells about you?</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Peeing the bed, hands down. I should have been an
engineer, because I was always constructing lakes when I was a kid. Bad dream,
another lake.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Did
you have a favorite teacher and are you still in touch with her or him?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I had so many favorite teachers. I really loved my
history teacher in high school, Coach John O’Brien. He was brilliant and he taught
history straight from his head, not from a textbook. He could sit down and
lecture for an hour about any period in history. He pulled no punches. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWRmta2ZjQTB0z9TswnXfHhsgekwQUjIOepWn9PnL6eg_DxWs7NJceA1pScd86pHrugSVMuFC5dxhTslLk8wKZZ8LOp5W9bAsZ2czDMDQyuYuU-X0-T3yuXqZZ-lsLXnPkN0TOdAiUOZNb/s2048/John+O%2527Brien+%25282%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWRmta2ZjQTB0z9TswnXfHhsgekwQUjIOepWn9PnL6eg_DxWs7NJceA1pScd86pHrugSVMuFC5dxhTslLk8wKZZ8LOp5W9bAsZ2czDMDQyuYuU-X0-T3yuXqZZ-lsLXnPkN0TOdAiUOZNb/s320/John+O%2527Brien+%25282%2529.jpg" width="250" /></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;">He told
history straight, and oh my goodness, human history is nothing if not
interesting. Coach still calls me occasionally to make sure I’m on the straight
and narrow.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">How
did you meet your beloved husband Raven? How did your first date go?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I met Raven at the Florida Folk Festival. We were
sitting on blankets near each other. At our meeting I had a terrible slip of
the tongue. I asked him if he wanted to spend the night together. I meant
“evening,” as in, did he want to sit together and listen to music that evening.
But that faux paus and the subsequent glint in his eye set us on our course. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuDlpLsfBj9OxRBBnmHdFL4Nnx2v4ed3DWEFTV9B_rTHE4bOka8AfNhxm62iYLYXCo7IjWtH9C5A_ZHfF-9jH1cl3PaOLpvpLfyxyf8ufRoQOKejOuek83qgPZR6S2lEbke2GmRAMU-aAR/s879/Janisse+and+Raven.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="416" data-original-width="879" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuDlpLsfBj9OxRBBnmHdFL4Nnx2v4ed3DWEFTV9B_rTHE4bOka8AfNhxm62iYLYXCo7IjWtH9C5A_ZHfF-9jH1cl3PaOLpvpLfyxyf8ufRoQOKejOuek83qgPZR6S2lEbke2GmRAMU-aAR/w400-h189/Janisse+and+Raven.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div>In this wedding photo—Raven Waters & I got married on the spring equinox of 2002 at Stephen Foster State Park on the Suwannee River, where we met. After the ceremony, we got in our boats & went down the river (then came back for the party.) Friends had tied cans to our boats, and they threw rose petals in the water around us.</div><div><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Is there a song, person, or group that
you listen to when you are feeling a bit down?</span></b></div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The blues, all the blues, especially <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHyM5nNIxWg" target="_blank">Elizabeth Cotton</a>.
</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYfRttxuXPsQ6iUkcH9rtnzOkYEaEagBcqvcMp2IxTCbGPeSagcTbkC1VVNxou2lDfS-eVJGuyFV1LMgR0mK_DiBrnNFS6PaVo1jntxu87hQmmM-YqRlktO2tc57EGopasSLoY7keOeT3s/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYfRttxuXPsQ6iUkcH9rtnzOkYEaEagBcqvcMp2IxTCbGPeSagcTbkC1VVNxou2lDfS-eVJGuyFV1LMgR0mK_DiBrnNFS6PaVo1jntxu87hQmmM-YqRlktO2tc57EGopasSLoY7keOeT3s/" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />The real blues make my blues go away.<o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">How are you different now than you were
in your 20s?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I was too nice and too hesitant then. I am happier
being much less nice and much more decisive. Both those get me in trouble
sometimes, but “being a nice girl” (my parents’ dream for me) is highly
overrated.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Is there a question no one has ever
asked you that you wish they would? Something, perhaps, that people would be
surprised to know about you?</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I wish someone would ask: Perspiration or inspiration?
You know what I’d say.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4ahmie79h4Xr5xJXBDA6fgWNnx4DDbtvRH2dWxyYSSlU5RN8bsFwCjbAwqPACyCICe4_rG9JKF0XYXriEK58NnMkVKHjnZP5FiyZKveCVNsUN_Kqeed-nZnZXMZ2pv-8emaEfVEOcX_R1/s440/woodsqueerAD+%25282%2529.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="125" data-original-width="440" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4ahmie79h4Xr5xJXBDA6fgWNnx4DDbtvRH2dWxyYSSlU5RN8bsFwCjbAwqPACyCICe4_rG9JKF0XYXriEK58NnMkVKHjnZP5FiyZKveCVNsUN_Kqeed-nZnZXMZ2pv-8emaEfVEOcX_R1/w533-h151/woodsqueerAD+%25282%2529.png" width="533" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Are
surprised at how your life is working out?</span></b></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I am surprised at how fast it’s going and how much
farther along in wisdom I thought I’d be by the time I hit my 50s. When are we
supposed to get the download? I could use it about now.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span></p><div style="min-height: 100%; position: relative;"><div class="nH a4O" style="width: 1396.36px;"><div class="nH" style="position: relative;"><div class="nH bkL"><div class="no" style="display: flex; width: 1396.36px;"><div class="nH bkK nn" style="min-height: 1px; overflow: hidden; width: 1153.35px;"><div class="nH"><div class="nH"><div class="nH ar4 B"><div class="AO" style="position: relative;"><div class="Tm aeJ" id=":3" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; height: 544px; overflow-y: scroll; padding-right: 0px;"><div class="aeF" id=":1" style="min-height: 354px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: bottom;"><div class="nH"><div class="nH" role="main"><div class="nH g"><table cellpadding="0" class="Bs nH iY bAt" role="presentation" style="border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0px; display: block; padding: 0px; position: static; width: 1068.36px;"><tbody><tr><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><b>In your book you speak about what "Duende" means in your chapter entitled </b></td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><b>"The Duende of Cabo Blanco". Would you comment on how that spirit still affects your life?</b></td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><br />I continue to try to understand this idea of “duende,” which in writing can be achieved by working with </td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">the meanings behind words and trying to describe the undercurrents of whatever is happening. </td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">So a writer is always asking herself, What does this really mean? What is below the surface? </td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">What are the invisibles here? The same is true for any part of life, not only writing: what is really </td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">happening here? How does this feel, deep down?</td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><b>In the chapter "Manatee", the manatees spoke to you. Do you feel things improved for them? </b></td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><b>If not, what do you feel would help?</b></td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">The manatee situation is hard to decipher. There was definitely a time when we were down to 500 </td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">manatees in Florida, or at least that was what was being reported. In 2017, the manatee count was a </td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">little over 6600, so things definitely improved. However, they may be declining again, this time because</td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">of cold stress, because the count in 2019 was 5700. They continue to be a very threatened species. </td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">What helps is shoreline cleanups and proper disposal of monofilament fishing line, so that manatees </td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">don’t become entrapped and drown. Motorboat operators in manatee territory should make sure they </td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">have propeller guards, obey boat speed limits, boat slowly to give manatees time to get out of the way, </td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">and avoid boating in shallow water where they live.</td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><b>How do you feel about killing spiders now, after your time with the "Spiderwomen”?</b></td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">Even before I went out with the Spiderwomen, I never wanted to kill spiders. Someone long ago told me </td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">that they are our ancestors, living among us, so I carefully gather them up and take them outside. </td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">However, parts of my house threaten to get swaddled in spider webs, so I have actually begun to be less </td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">tolerant of them. I have read this chapter a couple of times in public lately, because yesterday was </td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Halloween, and I’m amazed at how many people shudder at the mention of “spiders.” </span></span></td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I find them to be mesmerizing creatures—just enemies of good housekeeping! </span></span></td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></td><td class="Bu bAn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">And…………………………<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME</span></u></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">To
any period from before recorded history to yesterday. Be safe from harm, be
rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your choice. Actually experience
what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all. Meet anyone, if you
desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them. <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">When would you go?</span> <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Where
would you go?</span> <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Who would you want
to meet?</span> <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">And most importantly,
why do you think you chose this time?<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I’d like to be a hunter-gatherer for a while. I hear they
had more free time than we do. They lived in little bands, so they had a
built-in community, and I wouldn’t mind sitting around a morning fire with some
sisters, chatting about buffalo. I’m not particular about which band of
hunter-gatherers I’d like to join, but I’d hope for a matriarchal culture. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCERWu0CPMeDcYpfM9ALwUWM6CpZCdPLsZ1GavJ6kfZY0JxM6dVrUegKdTmMD5KCfGDFO75lTZdfAglLiQO6NJXi1jk7Fy6zlwfREBFYtCZJrrX1D2Yjgye557ZXGdr08Xgz2er7eL-TKV/s600/93e92cbcc87b52d35c69371789b3259f.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="431" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCERWu0CPMeDcYpfM9ALwUWM6CpZCdPLsZ1GavJ6kfZY0JxM6dVrUegKdTmMD5KCfGDFO75lTZdfAglLiQO6NJXi1jk7Fy6zlwfREBFYtCZJrrX1D2Yjgye557ZXGdr08Xgz2er7eL-TKV/s320/93e92cbcc87b52d35c69371789b3259f.jpg" width="230" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />And
I wouldn’t want to experience hunger or war. I’ve seen enough of that in
industrialized society. Being a hunter-gatherer in the U.S. before it was North
America would be amazing. Maybe I’d get to see the vast forests that I now only
dream about. In fact, along the coastlines of the Southeast are crazy middens
of oyster shells, and I guess I’d be happy to be a part of one of those for a
while. I’d like to sit around a fire telling stories, eating raw oysters. But
I’d want horses to be involved—I’ve always wanted a long familiarity with
horses—so maybe we’d have to go back to Celtic Scotland for me to find a matriarchal
tribe I’d like to join. </span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwvNtFEraLkE1OTm8i4_vf6yFs6dfpolfgJKIHXFJBzDeM1ERxmjHHQ_1mJaCD6devGJKmJJOrhvL66wdDDp0oSs_QkLUxG_sNN9vW-cuLZreVUy-Y3nLSym07_MMrTtsjmPD2yBcu9Nrg/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="344" height="355" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwvNtFEraLkE1OTm8i4_vf6yFs6dfpolfgJKIHXFJBzDeM1ERxmjHHQ_1mJaCD6devGJKmJJOrhvL66wdDDp0oSs_QkLUxG_sNN9vW-cuLZreVUy-Y3nLSym07_MMrTtsjmPD2yBcu9Nrg/w244-h355/image.png" width="244" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />Also, I don’t want to have to drag big rocks around
trying to make Stonehenge. I just want the fermented beverage and pot of soup
and the jerky and the women and the fire.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">*******************</span></div><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Thank you Janisse, for your insight, courage and remarkable voice in helping our earth's other creatures and their wild homes. I hope you find yourself in Asheville, I would love to share a hike with you into our breathtaking forests and mountains.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Don't miss Janisse Ray's other books available at an independent bookstore near you.:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyobJYSCONX19tAQMZQs2qtsGY3TaomGSPRAaKoENtzjTkM6ktQlfWIRP-_KOiNNZiSOI0B12lb-yVq-dLzXHQq2CZPcCKLqeki78pBnA61007hlk_orMJXvQhHFy9zogYwSGXV4UWVuD8/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="227" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyobJYSCONX19tAQMZQs2qtsGY3TaomGSPRAaKoENtzjTkM6ktQlfWIRP-_KOiNNZiSOI0B12lb-yVq-dLzXHQq2CZPcCKLqeki78pBnA61007hlk_orMJXvQhHFy9zogYwSGXV4UWVuD8/w92-h143/image.png" width="92" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrbWWblWBt0Z5X_YonfywoAfFPS0Qd3uRkyZikSEuhhBRIrsFa7INIUSxC5XpHY2pZo8Gih_KnJwLGLy2G8tHbHJAsc_6qlU4HVxSe0NSYL7BVyjWNTR9IgLclzBb42s7rzXvCEATN5vRy/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="333" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrbWWblWBt0Z5X_YonfywoAfFPS0Qd3uRkyZikSEuhhBRIrsFa7INIUSxC5XpHY2pZo8Gih_KnJwLGLy2G8tHbHJAsc_6qlU4HVxSe0NSYL7BVyjWNTR9IgLclzBb42s7rzXvCEATN5vRy/w96-h144/image.png" width="96" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAVqFE9MFN1YvNmTvoQqhTwFI9rJrcmvTksI2fvKSTz8Zb5_4024Py3mRxFLLohaWLJJzQNatFJ2K9GylJ4CdrapNzgHhgRYVCp7pD0HyVQVdct4WZHD45kRQDG39oVClvjia4SsLF6Mlp/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="225" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAVqFE9MFN1YvNmTvoQqhTwFI9rJrcmvTksI2fvKSTz8Zb5_4024Py3mRxFLLohaWLJJzQNatFJ2K9GylJ4CdrapNzgHhgRYVCp7pD0HyVQVdct4WZHD45kRQDG39oVClvjia4SsLF6Mlp/w92-h143/image.png" width="92" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHfMwoGPSWSJnJbDpph1YwBt-xgxoPnt1pj8OSRNeJ4pvhaZ5DzqTfVER7Rg0qAzqZtiXYc9TxXfKd79DMqmHWeBmCavMVktSRTS4rNc41fwrQKibOrY-zNB9fJZatZ2byCDX94CMJq2uR/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="278" height="142" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHfMwoGPSWSJnJbDpph1YwBt-xgxoPnt1pj8OSRNeJ4pvhaZ5DzqTfVER7Rg0qAzqZtiXYc9TxXfKd79DMqmHWeBmCavMVktSRTS4rNc41fwrQKibOrY-zNB9fJZatZ2byCDX94CMJq2uR/w99-h142/image.png" width="99" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjspHj-5UDybv_ENWYKs_RbA0ee5W0ZzqUeZjzetdJyeNQmHwJxwpWEKr6Ml7Jz_Euvfh3aER5OZCtAGUURbplsbiLMSiC0_LXOUh3A88Uw40Aa89FwkktS4sqIYSma2JnBkjOp0Fvkg4h/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="142" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjspHj-5UDybv_ENWYKs_RbA0ee5W0ZzqUeZjzetdJyeNQmHwJxwpWEKr6Ml7Jz_Euvfh3aER5OZCtAGUURbplsbiLMSiC0_LXOUh3A88Uw40Aa89FwkktS4sqIYSma2JnBkjOp0Fvkg4h/w94-h142/image.png" width="94" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkVPCW5NDTIwolDRxKWFpTQ9V-R2jURhd6RXuuFFfzqkZg3xWfxqx_2mEOn8N9GGOjrCexTa_xk690FyS1yt4JGo7P072JDoBjmCU2UCqM5S6iBMn4cfSTZsk9mT_iScDz8-HprtNozpd8/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="327" data-original-width="212" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkVPCW5NDTIwolDRxKWFpTQ9V-R2jURhd6RXuuFFfzqkZg3xWfxqx_2mEOn8N9GGOjrCexTa_xk690FyS1yt4JGo7P072JDoBjmCU2UCqM5S6iBMn4cfSTZsk9mT_iScDz8-HprtNozpd8/w108-h166/image.png" width="108" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1IDnBtfjFhyXYKXgA7y8fuLGr-tiTvDfbipRAPlAM4Zy1bSbEZ1LGpQScE7bFhOZmzp4DCqasVUdLxz1Rd80uQYv3U7ZfyO6UAsIRPxbI6Bo50WnZbFGKOgSaUskEKDv4npBAxKD01CbV/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="324" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1IDnBtfjFhyXYKXgA7y8fuLGr-tiTvDfbipRAPlAM4Zy1bSbEZ1LGpQScE7bFhOZmzp4DCqasVUdLxz1Rd80uQYv3U7ZfyO6UAsIRPxbI6Bo50WnZbFGKOgSaUskEKDv4npBAxKD01CbV/w107-h164/image.png" width="107" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6-T4FnO-cxHmywwC5klrp94fgCjj89guHClv47k9vXbvIECG_oUqBqUVgRLyTU8dSjycGrv3CEzPhxxEHpecx-KZs1Zumqdc-iRFQwsRFRJOCCKldyha3WU1fjd9qtBOFlAdcJzpCfIbL/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="314" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6-T4FnO-cxHmywwC5klrp94fgCjj89guHClv47k9vXbvIECG_oUqBqUVgRLyTU8dSjycGrv3CEzPhxxEHpecx-KZs1Zumqdc-iRFQwsRFRJOCCKldyha3WU1fjd9qtBOFlAdcJzpCfIbL/w102-h163/image.png" width="102" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5FQDvndYvxT5n3CzMkuJnPHLcVXo1BmXqgtyPh0ItHutEJP0KWnkjxJ-GkPlhWEevMbOefxraJVQVt6UEDJRLToTGd1z5rPxKGEEdNKtnXWhMGgS-QHLCiAxf7AHi-YJGQYZPYodE9TCv/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="314" height="159" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5FQDvndYvxT5n3CzMkuJnPHLcVXo1BmXqgtyPh0ItHutEJP0KWnkjxJ-GkPlhWEevMbOefxraJVQVt6UEDJRLToTGd1z5rPxKGEEdNKtnXWhMGgS-QHLCiAxf7AHi-YJGQYZPYodE9TCv/w101-h159/image.png" width="101" /></a><br /><br /></div></div></span><p></p></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-16756652315908353892021-10-02T11:25:00.011-04:002021-10-12T08:35:27.331-04:00Torben Kuhlmann<p style="text-align: center;"> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFWcClDu1DNknEQUkc3Z0_mwH_rr30TSKvw_gMMC4Fwg0M_ERpwrS30d1SCTCxajp8JRIYQjqADBdpT1DJ_gxauMn0jW60-sugTcDoPG-P7DYHL1pEgvN3lYFZxs1JBvDA6efEPeI4eroG/s259/Torben+Kuhlmann2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFWcClDu1DNknEQUkc3Z0_mwH_rr30TSKvw_gMMC4Fwg0M_ERpwrS30d1SCTCxajp8JRIYQjqADBdpT1DJ_gxauMn0jW60-sugTcDoPG-P7DYHL1pEgvN3lYFZxs1JBvDA6efEPeI4eroG/w400-h300/Torben+Kuhlmann2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX40snhUfRQ41ZGv_vqQS9XadF9WynLCRkcyGISmScZ_ed6N1MQV7GUNPgIqE2pvuNjZLbeD9sEmi2xXT-NruNp2fBfPEKpBU2sV4iWk9WLd4HVpls0fFiBiSRksk9WOCiqVwwvZnpS6e-/s400/einstein-9780735844445_lg.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="309" height="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX40snhUfRQ41ZGv_vqQS9XadF9WynLCRkcyGISmScZ_ed6N1MQV7GUNPgIqE2pvuNjZLbeD9sEmi2xXT-NruNp2fBfPEKpBU2sV4iWk9WLd4HVpls0fFiBiSRksk9WOCiqVwwvZnpS6e-/w333-h432/einstein-9780735844445_lg.jpg" width="333" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.2px;"><i><span style="color: #0a0a0a;">"When an inventive mouse misses the biggest cheese festival the world has ever seen, he’s determined to turn back the clock. But what is time, and can it be influenced? With the help of a mouse clockmaker, a lot of inventiveness, and the notes of a certain famous German physicist</span>,<span style="color: #0a0a0a;"> he succeeds in traveling back in time. But when he misses his goal by eighty years, the only one who can help is an employee of the patent office, who turned our concept of space and time upside down." </span></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0a0a0a; font-family: georgia; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.2px;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: georgia;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.2px;">Torben Kuhlmann has done it again, combined the cutest mouse in the world with history in a way that you can't help but learn something. He's amazingly talented and ingenious with his art and stories; I am in awe of him.</span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> Here is <a href="https://northsouth.com/" target="_blank">North/South's</a> brilliant trailer.... </div><span style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y8kizs9MCBo" width="320" youtube-src-id="Y8kizs9MCBo"></iframe></div><br /></span> <span style="background-color: white; color: #0a0a0a; font-family: georgia; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.2px;">One of the rave reviews for <i>Einstein</i>:</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #0a0a0a; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.2px;" /><q style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #0a0a0a; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.2px;"><i>His unique ability to combine fun, facts, science and biography makes </i>Einstein<i> a real triumph.</i></q><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #0a0a0a; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.2px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #0a0a0a; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.2px;">BookPage, Starred Review</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0a0a0a; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.2px;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #0a0a0a;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.2px;">Below find out how a small boy from a tiny town in Germany built treehouses, dissected intricate machines, "Twisted the Night Away," and grew up to be an immensely talented author and artist.</span></span></span></span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Torben, tell me about where you live and why you love it so much.<o:p></o:p></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO22XwS0mXeh12vi2ornZgZnaKUPBaIC81No2RTupXgZeU3UGCnBqdSF3QpAKK1AGO3LrLcW4ZLZtfAf0DzOeG-558Xhsnwxctxvu3wno-BOVqfyiD9a40vFa4OjkN0OPytncuBvxVfVFg/s2807/destinations-germany_hamburg_city_hall_square.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1120" data-original-width="2807" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO22XwS0mXeh12vi2ornZgZnaKUPBaIC81No2RTupXgZeU3UGCnBqdSF3QpAKK1AGO3LrLcW4ZLZtfAf0DzOeG-558Xhsnwxctxvu3wno-BOVqfyiD9a40vFa4OjkN0OPytncuBvxVfVFg/w558-h223/destinations-germany_hamburg_city_hall_square.jpg" width="558" /></a></i></b></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Hamburg is one of Germany's largest cities. The city exudes a
very maritime charm. There are rivers, canals and countless bridges everywhere.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdl4DQuNeKoAfQTHEVNbwyJq3Q4hEGwKq5ZMlW6GsoX7NBEYxiduqVErXs3mvHD-ZzCsbw2xP1z8qY_FZ-U9BuUFavFztHuvr1nGUVrNHGuYlVzbCzgpHw6ylqRQIEjKxl20aOR2ZsQ2JE/s759/hamburgo-iluminado-759x500.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="759" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdl4DQuNeKoAfQTHEVNbwyJq3Q4hEGwKq5ZMlW6GsoX7NBEYxiduqVErXs3mvHD-ZzCsbw2xP1z8qY_FZ-U9BuUFavFztHuvr1nGUVrNHGuYlVzbCzgpHw6ylqRQIEjKxl20aOR2ZsQ2JE/s320/hamburgo-iluminado-759x500.jpg" width="320" /></a>In addition, Hamburg is home to one of the largest ports in Europe with huge
container ships. In short: There is always something interesting to see in
Hamburg.</div><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond
memories?<o:p></o:p></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div style="text-align: left;">When I was 7 years old, I lived on the countryside, in a
small town called Sulingen.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghIrlfZTYkyvWbWtssK2ntPN5h5d0rfDAkX3DGOh4Z9zQfrpdVbquNc5J8Qx_-0iXoFgnplNq3iQok6tdLqrnbF9mkO36B7JZcYRbd1EwJhVDV9wHLcu0Luum67SWgPR5dpofUFkTE9uqI/s600/Sulingen.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="371" data-original-width="600" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghIrlfZTYkyvWbWtssK2ntPN5h5d0rfDAkX3DGOh4Z9zQfrpdVbquNc5J8Qx_-0iXoFgnplNq3iQok6tdLqrnbF9mkO36B7JZcYRbd1EwJhVDV9wHLcu0Luum67SWgPR5dpofUFkTE9uqI/s320/Sulingen.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><br /></div>And I have indeed very fond memories of that time.
After school I spent most of my days riding my bicycle and having adventures,
building treehouses, inventing strange contraptions out of junk from a nearby
junkyard, and building dams in small creeks. I was frustrating the farmers left and
right of said creeks. It sounds almost like a cliché from a 1980s movie.<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgnyFC9IXOl0GNxweazEBgNq_IcONwJ0ZfJjMXi-vh-4PxqxnUlJwL4yA84gbrJ9Wtks80IIEPJQl7mUEQJKoAVRXDTfrAo_UuWZbohsC16CIoWAhgTu50PErmTI_2AaHX80ZgBuFXAZ53/s1521/Tobby1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1020" data-original-width="1521" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgnyFC9IXOl0GNxweazEBgNq_IcONwJ0ZfJjMXi-vh-4PxqxnUlJwL4yA84gbrJ9Wtks80IIEPJQl7mUEQJKoAVRXDTfrAo_UuWZbohsC16CIoWAhgTu50PErmTI_2AaHX80ZgBuFXAZ53/w307-h206/Tobby1.jpg" title="& year old "Tobby"" width="307" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;">7 Year old "Tobby"</span><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i>Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?</i></b></div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A book that changed how I look at life? That’s a difficult
question. I would say that the sum of all books I read and all the books I grew
up with defined my look at life and shaped me as the person I am today. It’s
hard to point to one book in particular.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it makes it so?<o:p></o:p></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I treasured my collection of non-fiction books. I had always
been fascinated by science, engineering, inventions, and history. And I remember
a particular interest in the illustrations of these books. I would go so far as
to say that my very first illustrations were rough copies of artworks I found in
these books. They left a mark on me.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells
about you?<o:p></o:p></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The funniest and most embarrassing story told about me is
one about my inventive and tinkering habits. When I was an elementary school
student, I discovered an interesting piece of junk in the cellar: A huge
mechanical contraption with a seductive electromotor inside. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIIJO8tzjtCCpmCPvb0MjNZ5URgRD0yv1O2LxL2lICS9pwmKd866geakXhfhiiksLk8IOw6-au3t2R75MjbMe7vjd0BApsxR4j2hcPkHkDXTIOCYO62mQE12Ag9pLjJFYqImtckhNX9gKs/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIIJO8tzjtCCpmCPvb0MjNZ5URgRD0yv1O2LxL2lICS9pwmKd866geakXhfhiiksLk8IOw6-au3t2R75MjbMe7vjd0BApsxR4j2hcPkHkDXTIOCYO62mQE12Ag9pLjJFYqImtckhNX9gKs/" width="320" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal">So I unscrewed the
device and cut the wires. Finally, I got my motor. It was a component that
could be built into other inventions or pseudo-flying machines. Then I learned
that the device was a brand new file shredder for my parents’ office, worth
several thousand Deutsche Mark (at least over a thousand dollars). And of
course the damage was irreversible. My parents never again purchased a file
shredder…<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Is there a song, person or group that you listen to when you are
feeling a bit down?<o:p></o:p></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This might be a rather unusual answer, but there is not just
one single song I listen to when I need something uplifting. The one song that
comes closest might be Sam Cooke’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yIMt-aZjCo" target="_blank">“Twistin’ the Night Away”</a>.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3M4v6nAyyFK3-shehcCg-m6mfocE8oAuLAEz4hloL5-u0M9mnKcpkWNMLAqABIEVp4CM5e-5sjpVqRiCdWSzM3zdbqP48NoYEUKIbk74ML_kulJwUiGbkQwTeN44nTul7PTAXE8NrvTsC/s720/samcooke.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="487" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3M4v6nAyyFK3-shehcCg-m6mfocE8oAuLAEz4hloL5-u0M9mnKcpkWNMLAqABIEVp4CM5e-5sjpVqRiCdWSzM3zdbqP48NoYEUKIbk74ML_kulJwUiGbkQwTeN44nTul7PTAXE8NrvTsC/s320/samcooke.jpg" width="216" /></a></div><br />But rather it’s a
whole subgenre of music that can do that for me. It’s the music of older 1970s
or 1980s science fiction or fantasy movies – from "E.T.” to “Krull.” In addition, these soundtracks have the ability to fuel my imagination.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>How are you different now than you were in your 20’s?<o:p></o:p></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I tend to believe that I did not change that much during the
past twenty years. To be critical of myself for a moment, maybe there is a
slight decline in my ability to daydream and certainly there is a bit more
cynicism in my humor. There have been a few pretty rough years since I was 20 that made it a bit harder to remain as unreservedly optimistic as my
younger self. But, on the other hand, I experienced some wonderful things
during that time as well: the publication of my first picture book and becoming
a freelance illustrator and author.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Is there a question no one has ever asked you that you wish they would?
Something, perhaps, that people would be surprised to know about you?<o:p></o:p></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Here is a previously unknown fact: Through some strange
connections, a piece of music, performed by me, was played at a concert at Madison Square Garden once. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZsXlFW74lJ6ANXqPra4mrevf3b5VYfW0qITd3r-0oTl8OYvWKQXW9uK7iHPLIjp_NKRH3evBzTXl9DS1o_PNcL8bWREeqgO7qwCxTjrN2Kn9tN2KAGnA4mc9n_pExhnHHRV-ocZ2J9mrS/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="232" data-original-width="413" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZsXlFW74lJ6ANXqPra4mrevf3b5VYfW0qITd3r-0oTl8OYvWKQXW9uK7iHPLIjp_NKRH3evBzTXl9DS1o_PNcL8bWREeqgO7qwCxTjrN2Kn9tN2KAGnA4mc9n_pExhnHHRV-ocZ2J9mrS/" width="320" /></a></div><br />What exactly and in what context remains a secret.<o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Torben, now a few questions about your wonderful book. The first, most
obvious question, is where did you come up with the idea to have a mouse help
Albert Einstein with his theory of time’s relativity?<o:p></o:p></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">As with all my mouse
adventures there is a need for a prominent historical figure providing a name
for the project. <span lang="DE">Having Albert Einstein in this role was
one of the very first decisions I made. I wanted to highlight his work and his
revolutionary theories about the universe. But there was one thing about
Einstein’s methods that single-handedly kickstarted the whole project: Einstein
is known for his thought experiments. These “Gedankenexperimente” (<i>Thought experiments</i>) often start
with one question: What if...? I borrowed his approach. What if Einstein had
gotten his inspiration for his thought experiments from a rather unexpected
source? And since the relativity of time plays such an important role in
Einstein's theories, it seemed to be a natural fit to have this source be a time-traveling
mouse. But why would a mouse even attempt a time jump in the first place? Obviously
because this particular mouse missed the most important event in any mouse’s
life: A cheese festival in Bern, Switzerland! That is a journey only possible by
fully understanding and augmenting Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, a theory
written in Bern, Switzerland. </span>You can
almost see the puzzle pieces falling into place here.<span lang="DE"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>I love how you bring the idea of
time travel into the story using the cheese fair and being called “Einstein” by the
rude other mouse. Did it take awhile to think of that? Were there other ideas
that were thrown away?<o:p></o:p></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">That was an idea I am
a little bit proud of. <span lang="DE">While writing the first draft of
the story, I was searching for ways to name-drop the name “Einstein” pretty
early. </span>Our protagonist, being
unfamiliar with Albert Einstein at that moment, is a bit confused and doesn’t
understand the sarcastic undertone when being called "Einstein." <span lang="DE">But as a reader, you should have a first glimpse of what is about to
happen. </span>And when reaching the
climax of the story, you might think back to this early moment and realize the
irony: Without that “stupid” mouse’s actions there might have been no Nobel-Prize
winning physicist Albert Einstein. To answer the second part of your question:
There are indeed numerous ideas I had to abandon. First, I was toying with even
more time-loops in the story, linking the first dialogue with the last words
uttered. There was even an idea to hint at an earlier meeting between the rude
mouse and our time-traveler on the day of the cheese festival, prompting a
different situation where a sarcastic “Einstein” is used. But unfortunately,
that idea disrupted the pacing of the epilogue. Other examples are some
different attempts by our mouse to travel back in time misinterpreting the
concept of time-zones. But that, too, would have had a negative effect on the
pacing. Even as is, the book is unusually long with its 128 pages.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Your use of different
perspectives in each painting is brilliant. Congratulations!<o:p></o:p></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE">Thank you! </span>This is something I really enjoy while planning a book. It is almost
like working on a storyboard for a motion picture. Sometimes I will describe
myself as a kind of cinematographer with a pen and a brush. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd10IzvRtV4d_MbxhCHMtUhj_BhkIdtGNxVfW9ViMtVDA-8DEMXUfDz_lcF2NySmHJq4QgDxs4kkkPpm_ENvVbRylE2Ki6YchQZpcdtxIQh8SDnWX1mrTYAAJqvr23xccF0fY2EOjT3nqI/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1334" data-original-width="2048" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd10IzvRtV4d_MbxhCHMtUhj_BhkIdtGNxVfW9ViMtVDA-8DEMXUfDz_lcF2NySmHJq4QgDxs4kkkPpm_ENvVbRylE2Ki6YchQZpcdtxIQh8SDnWX1mrTYAAJqvr23xccF0fY2EOjT3nqI/" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>There is so much that can be told visually by using lighting, framing, blocking and composition. These are all words from a cinematographer’s vocabulary as well.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkqS0PdYkS9F56nAztKtRY-R-1-fnx5TquoblfNXn8yJjY4x6IUgH1cOGzIK6GVlSjIyC0Jaj5U2jiKkYWKiwtPpdzCVhvrHnHXiuv1W_rtu5siSHQ3orTnIU_F4gMF0PFtce8FwPI48dE/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1244" data-original-width="1717" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkqS0PdYkS9F56nAztKtRY-R-1-fnx5TquoblfNXn8yJjY4x6IUgH1cOGzIK6GVlSjIyC0Jaj5U2jiKkYWKiwtPpdzCVhvrHnHXiuv1W_rtu5siSHQ3orTnIU_F4gMF0PFtce8FwPI48dE/" width="320" /></a></div></span>Varying perspectives can be used as a great narrative tool. For example, a low camera angle allows me to present a scene from a mouse’s view and therefore put you as a spectator right in that mouse’s world.</div><o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Your mouse is so realistic; did
you use a live model?<o:p></o:p></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">Unfortunately, no. But
I did visit some pet shops while prepping my first adventure “Lindbergh” ten
years ago. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8DDL4ZmxTGh9IoaceAfg8WDAk1q09jxn8yTLieeuBakplwJTkrwh2CyDKrpT1VWggDlRbqR8XYNskhvZWVlj89O-3eHQLTugy3cLgQyDFJzRxq3tcceBwXSnuwSNUtQ4IlUeDgTcYV4lS/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="384" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8DDL4ZmxTGh9IoaceAfg8WDAk1q09jxn8yTLieeuBakplwJTkrwh2CyDKrpT1VWggDlRbqR8XYNskhvZWVlj89O-3eHQLTugy3cLgQyDFJzRxq3tcceBwXSnuwSNUtQ4IlUeDgTcYV4lS/" width="185" /></a></div><br />For that project I needed some references for my illustrations, so I
spent quite some time there, clandestinely making sketches and studies. These
prove to be useful to this day.<o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span lang="DE">Have you ever seen things differently after being whacked
on the head like the mouse?<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">Fortunately, there haven’t
been that many moments like that in my life. But figuratively there were been
moments when a new information or a realization hit me over the head just as
hard.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Finally, is there a bit of
interesting trivia you can tell us about the book that no one has asked?</i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal">There is a chance for
a fun hunt for so called Easter eggs. I hid several pop-culture references
within the book. So even for my adult readers there should be a reward for
looking closely at every detail. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>And the ever popular time travel question, in a short essay…………………………</i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><u>IF YOU COULD GO
BACK IN TIME</u></i></b><b><i> to any period from before recorded history
to yesterday,<o:p></o:p></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your
choice,<o:p></o:p></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>actually experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at
all,<o:p></o:p></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with
them.<o:p></o:p></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>When would you go?</i></b><b><i><o:p></o:p></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Where would you go?</i></b><b><i><o:p></o:p></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Who would you want
to meet?</i></b><b><i><o:p></o:p></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>And most
importantly, why do you think you chose this time?<o:p></o:p></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To answer a question about time travel seems almost perfect,
given that my latest book “Einstein” deals with the imponderables of a mouse
traveling back an time. But first, the time machine itself will be of interest.
Since I love to be inventive and tinker with different designs, I am very
interested to see what my time machine might look like. Maybe it will be not
that dissimilar from my mouse’s invention, which itself is inspired by
H.G.Wells’ description? My first instinct would be not to visit the past, but
to look ahead. I would like to see what lies beyond my life-time. What will the
world look like in a hundred, in a thousand or even a million years? Hopefully,
I will see a mind-blowing utopia. Let’s keep fingers crossed. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQbXsx9gjgt3rMr5HdHWQIKKdBMNIBGvJ4OyQt9qfd7sKhdK0RldwXXFYfR41TBHS3QpXnvn4EnfUAc61uirE4Hl9XBqDDXV2p8-RA8Hm-XWIsKI2y_EjKY2CMAw2b34-To1AkmdHHEzG1/s1920/futuristic-14.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="323" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQbXsx9gjgt3rMr5HdHWQIKKdBMNIBGvJ4OyQt9qfd7sKhdK0RldwXXFYfR41TBHS3QpXnvn4EnfUAc61uirE4Hl9XBqDDXV2p8-RA8Hm-XWIsKI2y_EjKY2CMAw2b34-To1AkmdHHEzG1/w574-h323/futuristic-14.jpg" width="574" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal">After that,
hopefully with a high spirit, I will turn my focus to the past. Most certainly, I would like to witness and experience some important historical events. The
moon-landing comes to mind, as well as the first flight of the Wright brothers.
Seeing the pyramids or Stonehenge being built would be treat as well. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEMpsZmBf8RV2eV3fVE5mpWRqXA6fqTEG73ZBCtqH2GPPBJIQDzhmP8Bo4utQVI_Dryr4rLigZ_6UxrjtVE1G_1OO-WwnRjIa_IADqtoqC1jUUG4HSGjyBJLqR-9rSZU8R_eZuwbrQvzEM/s900/building-stonehenge-angus-mcbride.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="868" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEMpsZmBf8RV2eV3fVE5mpWRqXA6fqTEG73ZBCtqH2GPPBJIQDzhmP8Bo4utQVI_Dryr4rLigZ_6UxrjtVE1G_1OO-WwnRjIa_IADqtoqC1jUUG4HSGjyBJLqR-9rSZU8R_eZuwbrQvzEM/s320/building-stonehenge-angus-mcbride.jpg" width="309" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">And
finally and very carefully I would do a scientific and philosophical
experiment. Can you change the past? Or will every change result in the known
outcome. Maybe time travel shenanigans are responsible for the known outcome in
the first place? Is there free will when time travel is possible? So many
headache-inducing questions. Maybe I should visit Albert Einstein and Isaac
Newton first to discuss these questions before the experiment. But then, my
visit might change history… Or result in the known history unfolding… For more of
these time-travel antics you should have a look at my latest book.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i> </i></p><p style="text-align: left;">Readers, click here to watch Torben hard at work showing how he produces his magic!</p><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqrmUdJG2e4" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqrmUdJG2e4</a></p><p style="text-align: left;">Other wonderful mouse adventure books by Torben:</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-hLe6JUY2vMmwo69n5wszkujp5VJSpuJIXLPJ4NkpvQCSE8obOnsadFrlUK89MW8x1t65HSOuASlehbAeI7gA5hgqHOkOPsqEuZ-KVS6uNAKNkeD_0q0QYBKWxKwz5ySAPbwOmLGovtQ0/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="377" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-hLe6JUY2vMmwo69n5wszkujp5VJSpuJIXLPJ4NkpvQCSE8obOnsadFrlUK89MW8x1t65HSOuASlehbAeI7gA5hgqHOkOPsqEuZ-KVS6uNAKNkeD_0q0QYBKWxKwz5ySAPbwOmLGovtQ0/w151-h200/image.png" width="151" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJUHB26WITdVkFjysJODVGNPjuc4YhuepF5KRwYSwEdNTSe-0AEc9bu1BBV5LvLqmuaXg1brU_YZ45ZfbbiPWD-CdHXVWmBB2FQfmWGxx1j884m1ISJkbPWHmRHP9H7n8sxk0GWPLSEzTE/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="388" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJUHB26WITdVkFjysJODVGNPjuc4YhuepF5KRwYSwEdNTSe-0AEc9bu1BBV5LvLqmuaXg1brU_YZ45ZfbbiPWD-CdHXVWmBB2FQfmWGxx1j884m1ISJkbPWHmRHP9H7n8sxk0GWPLSEzTE/w156-h200/image.png" width="156" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDOUKqjCYLM06TZ4ncmZzfn7uyQgIdFMIgiQq-bC4H295dM-R8V0YmVLq63Ys3x_AM1ZMm57mRFlYnj9K64kVGrYZiqjccym84WI_HDMEOeRq649kVbkTmXueICaOULPzp4twmBJwaNBqE/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="384" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDOUKqjCYLM06TZ4ncmZzfn7uyQgIdFMIgiQq-bC4H295dM-R8V0YmVLq63Ys3x_AM1ZMm57mRFlYnj9K64kVGrYZiqjccym84WI_HDMEOeRq649kVbkTmXueICaOULPzp4twmBJwaNBqE/w154-h200/image.png" width="154" /></a><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Thank you, Torben, for your time and talent. Continued success to you!</div><br /></div><br /><br /><p></p></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-50098961938438037922021-06-09T13:13:00.000-04:002021-10-04T11:03:16.377-04:00Peter Loewer<p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXqYUHLvyt-xAeYtMqUGkvzTt0MViUZlR3IRCO-RS9WuqsdyadWDspt0enKsFYhBGawvR1V9dfTB-Vm9lMkPLmKfO2vpPCV80903iH1L5WEEYjMZ9snqEXInLYoNGhIMDnOjKmfi8LLwkB/s390/Peter%2527s+pic.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="315" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXqYUHLvyt-xAeYtMqUGkvzTt0MViUZlR3IRCO-RS9WuqsdyadWDspt0enKsFYhBGawvR1V9dfTB-Vm9lMkPLmKfO2vpPCV80903iH1L5WEEYjMZ9snqEXInLYoNGhIMDnOjKmfi8LLwkB/s320/Peter%2527s+pic.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMDQCWVh1YDwJqButIXqOz8_1KEUy83lhxmUlZGMMzW0jbwwgT8KPaa7TMmnYZalGOFL8HsXng6W-snAPaUNVmytlXoJr5_jy5dJiybLOX-0_0j7RGUcmK_rQVqL1KxryvmlFuFF0-Ck-X/s1238/The-Last-of-the-Swindlers-front-cover-low-rez.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1238" data-original-width="846" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMDQCWVh1YDwJqButIXqOz8_1KEUy83lhxmUlZGMMzW0jbwwgT8KPaa7TMmnYZalGOFL8HsXng6W-snAPaUNVmytlXoJr5_jy5dJiybLOX-0_0j7RGUcmK_rQVqL1KxryvmlFuFF0-Ck-X/w274-h400/The-Last-of-the-Swindlers-front-cover-low-rez.jpg" width="274" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div>I've known Peter Loewer for a good number of years as I used to work with his other publishers. He and his wife Jean hosted a delicious lunch for me and Linda-Marie at their incredibly beautiful home next to Lake Kenilworth in Asheville. <img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicU0sbdDCf1DBN7UAd8JkeA5NMCq2CYk-ZulyHFyDU06NgJpHGUN-g9lreDFIkG_FBWr8bvU4dOQRKjEKu5eO-d9o3S-hcJVWbbzTlg0CCh_HavHXFEYBZhfdNZStXXVSq-YDOfRcvE90x/w306-h203/image.png" /> He is the master of all things having to do with gardening, hence all his previous books. For a complete list (you'll be blown away), see below my interview. His writing, beautiful artwork <img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFsktSiSEsqO_tiTyjlllUFH6h9Cx2VUo0L34XoJmcbkvWxERbGfVADaC-pyG2Vxs9HWeHDPJc2phgLDXnxJ4a-rGwxbhyphenhyphenbQWAr_sz1n_1atHOGr-aWHA6cA8LbLx7TftlJnOXi9wE-JBc/w192-h250/S-images2009-07-24.JPG" width="192" />, <br /> <a href="https://draft.blogger.com/u/1/#">radio show</a> and teaching as "<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/u/1/#">The Wild Gardener</a>" have brought him fame and fans from around the country.<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><p class="MsoNormal">Unlike his many previous books though, <i><b>The Last of the Swindlers</b></i> is
a retro murder mystery, published by <a href="https://pisgahpress.com/">Pisgah Press</a>. It's set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North
Carolina in 1978. Earlier in his life, Peter worked as the editor of a
small-town newspaper, and he drew on those experiences to create the novel. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Pisgah's synopsis is spot on:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>As the publishing trade begins its transition from
traditional cold-type to electronic publishing, </i><b>The Last of the Swindlers</b><i>
captures the magic of story-gathering and small-town politics as it evolves
into tracking down a double murderer, a smuggling ring, and fraud. The
protagonist, Oliver Swindler, risks his own life and that of his new-found
girlfriend and coworker, Adrian, to solve the many layers of mystery that
beset idyllic Fernglade, NC. </i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Merriweather; font-size: 17px; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 13px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>The novel also previews, in an unexpected way, the current
phenomenon of wealthy big-city residents’ flight to smaller, less urbanized
areas of the country. Although today’s migration is to escape the Covid-19
pandemic, the book paints a wry picture of self-indulgent rich people’s search
for an “undiscovered paradise” (with, of course, all the comforts of the
big city).</i><o:p></o:p></p>Here is my interview where you'll find out about Peter chatting with animals, his perfectly reasonable fear of lightning, and walking in the government's secret tunnels under Pennsylvania.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div><i><b>Peter, tell me about where you live and why you love it so much.</b></i></div><div><br /></div><div>Asheville is a city that immediately upon settling within its borders, drags new residents into a continuing love-hate relationship. In my case, it forced me to bear fidelity to my neighborhood known as Kenilworth--because the founder, Mr. Jake Childs, loved Scotland and the novels of Sir Walter Scott—but allowed me to (occasionally), modify my expectations, extoll my surroundings, pledge to forget those surroundings, tolerate my surroundings, but always try to save Asheville from itself.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories?</i></b></div><div><br /></div><div>Until the early 1960s, my family lived in Buffalo, New York, <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgblyqpMNghug7U1OcR9MoEoi64EqNmW6u73lAcC7ZF7h7AUP4jp7cjkkcUP_02dJIudWruxaY9u38QCuNOyCU3vaufmwo42pDBOiMyJ7wMc-CE04dvvfk6fSbI8WNhNZ-vFO7_gQ1fsrAw/s2048/Peter.garden.4yrs.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1808" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgblyqpMNghug7U1OcR9MoEoi64EqNmW6u73lAcC7ZF7h7AUP4jp7cjkkcUP_02dJIudWruxaY9u38QCuNOyCU3vaufmwo42pDBOiMyJ7wMc-CE04dvvfk6fSbI8WNhNZ-vFO7_gQ1fsrAw/s320/Peter.garden.4yrs.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />not far from elm tree-lined Humboldt Parkway, the <a href="https://www.sciencebuff.org/">Buffalo Museum of Science</a>, and another famous neighbor, <a href="https://kleinhansbuffalo.org/">Kleinhans Music Hall</a>. I had parents that knew how exciting the world really was. Also, having a father who took me to matinees at the Erlanger Theater and to old bookstores, and knew from my protestations that baseball games were not one of my favorite things to attend. He was also an aircraft designer at <a href="https://www.curtisswright.com/company/history/">Curtiss-Wright</a>. My mother was a dress designer for years--and because of business connections--loved movies almost as much as I did--and during WWII ran <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_War_Relief">Russian War Relief</a> for the city. They are for the most part, fond memories.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?</i></b></div><div><br /></div><div>Yes, <i>Mysterious Island</i> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhobG0l3j141XZ4zHM-gGmDvRCyfRkdJ9Jr8lpZVL6rJgmqByzt24okEwD6OF1PN6DOogxsw-0qc67GL30TjZ1w8ReZrjc4YeI7mHlKB36c8Qb1O3Qe8sVRHuKvQZgFKkphlfRF4u4G6TWr/s320/Mysterious+Island.jpg" /> by Jules Verne <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSlYkEYJzgUWNkMl2FZca3u2-Hai__NUhTJj15YSGTy7cjCKWdfmWElvs7ERWUuWsgBzewFMm9q-vmLhPRq8OjEyAmsaIDH3FyDRt0fuJPFXXCAClpr8otjbMLuykyniT7nehnjr7SUOTs/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1644" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSlYkEYJzgUWNkMl2FZca3u2-Hai__NUhTJj15YSGTy7cjCKWdfmWElvs7ERWUuWsgBzewFMm9q-vmLhPRq8OjEyAmsaIDH3FyDRt0fuJPFXXCAClpr8otjbMLuykyniT7nehnjr7SUOTs/w134-h167/image.png" width="134" /></a>.<br /><br />It’s the sequel to <i>Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea</i>, and tells the adventures of five northern prisoners (four white men and one Black) who escape from a Civil War detention by stealing a working observatory balloon and flying off in wild storm. Eventually falling to an uncharted volcanic island in the Pacific, by dint of uniting their various abilities, they all successfully work together in building and maintaining a viable camp, staying alive by knowing what the island can offer in survival treasures, and eventually constructing a boat for a return to civilization. I read it when ten, again when I was forty, and a few years ago at seventy. It is a marvelous book and an aid to having a great education.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it makes it so?</i></b></div><div><br /></div><div>Any book written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting, <img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQIsIKK0yE5jBQfYLzeTiy9p4UwoyE6p6iHua3BJJQIM8IXl1VIsTowfv9_0nKYElEAYlqsL-A7u-XcTREwTAfsGvi8UMCU0PrmvCsNNHaqlo6umMORs8sVnlKxSLva1SWL9YSkUc0MugJ/w200-h171/Hugh+Lofting.jpg" width="200" /> concerning Doctor Dolittle and his life as a vet and a respecter of animals, <img border="0" height="322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOj36xc_9tpEKpkbPH3VwxA5r0uSCas1EvK4GnlScUz3fGpD489t1QXAYILBUtDBBjeISWD3YVeoQivIV-57pV2Q_FnIAOBeuFTrMiTE1xsipcI5csBGDAldpQy1mJ56J6Dj43ks87Ufnd/w205-h322/Dr.+Dolittle.jpg" width="205" /><br />a respect I have celebrated and followed my entire life. And, yes, I talk to animals, too.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?</i></b></div><div><br /></div><div>I have suffered embarrassments both at home and abroad but the greatest that remains tellable, revealed my fear of electricity. A group of some ten friends and neighbors were sitting on the front porch of our once home in upstate New York, where I had warned the group about the power of lightning and electrical storms, when not ten feet away, a bolt of sheer white energy struck the telephone pole in the driveway. <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0ZRVdK-0cjxyNSyIpmUSlTn67MzjStJFBhrkP4yTZeydrZ-AYWhRex28xRLFgtixhlk4_a5M3pmuY_HvOqcEuLt0rk5J6Tu7jm_jGok9WKh_D6jM_VUxbz3LGWV5mExszve18wifwGldE/s0/lightning-bolt.jpg" /> Upon striking, I was left speechless and numb, needing a glass of Scotch to recover.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>How did you meet your beloved? How did your first date go?</i></b></div><div><br /></div><div>Jean and I met as art students at the Albright Art School, a division of the University of Buffalo <img height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeakxIi5DPlRfcvJ-KRd5eg4C7F9-Kg7PeUNvCKb6Vmv_kokvISMMme41Qecgq0U0rNxswVtZRcDsR9arurXju1z2s35nFihuA7jV4HLJtYC1lMkPlSWtRHlwzep5kkeGO5kKeIZgtmMos/w400-h268/image.png" width="400" />. On our first date I took her to the Town Casino, a downtown Buffalo club to hear Johnny Ray in person. The cost of living was then much less than today and I worked extra hours at a local drugstore to replace some of the money I spent. We also went for walks at the Albright Art Gallery and The Buffalo Museum of Science. I dragged her to a lot of movies, which she approached with a good sense of humor, not liking movies as much as I do. </div><div>But everything else eventually jelled. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6F1oZXnzKlhzVpEutDdOJCrldccc-xwqfa6wVZg2XrUqzlOjIrckKxMl4gZhLfKLpaIKizoHYhom_iY5D6eRKy3LsiWDTlkOffRZ227B_opyXwDSAkwBvR6lxZX18sYDIA3TfJ2T0ntnj/s976/we-two-two+001+%25282%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="661" data-original-width="976" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6F1oZXnzKlhzVpEutDdOJCrldccc-xwqfa6wVZg2XrUqzlOjIrckKxMl4gZhLfKLpaIKizoHYhom_iY5D6eRKy3LsiWDTlkOffRZ227B_opyXwDSAkwBvR6lxZX18sYDIA3TfJ2T0ntnj/w318-h215/we-two-two+001+%25282%2529.jpg" width="318" /></a><br /><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Is there a song, person, or group that you listen to when you are feeling a bit down?</i></b></div><div><br /></div><div>Yes, when I was in my 20’s, it was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIrbnPjcZLM">Gordon Jenkins' Manhattan Tower</a>. <img height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFpHLd4cCTog8kYoONHV4SvBF-QDrfBH78UgNMJxeKFyNTBse4JkpII9xp2hFJ3J6A4b5suMLkJP3hhvqKIv9dB-JDl30pwF3ROhR4qBXnMpk2A-ql-L1S_7LLR1Ne154SlzYuAy-QwpWG/w165-h163/image.png" width="165" /><br />Thankfully, upon reaching adulthood it was, and remains, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7wvYMgxv2E">Sea Pictures, Op.37 - Edward Elgar and sung by his wife, Janet Baker.</a> <img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3ZIjnHUB5mtHDh0xQmyXf0pnwH5YatOk-w0PA-aOoK64QyQ7vVh-RZr0u-6k6tCgjbtEDqi85yvtQJoDYV7sMpQwMtvAZtiTaj9TY0qDK4WLJrQ24ePw4qjrmsaF2BRwbdZF_Q4-zcvjR/w162-h161/image.png" /><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>How are you different now than you were in your 20’s? </i></b></div><div><br /></div><div>Hopefully, I continue to be inquisitive about the world of nature, knowing in my heart that there’s a lot more out there than dreamed of by most, and try to accept dealing with the continuing insanities of mankind in general—and hoping that womankind fights to stay above that sort of thing. Life is often a struggle, but boring, never!</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Is there a question no one has ever asked you that you wish they would? Something, perhaps, that people would be surprised to know about you?</i></b></div><div><br /></div><div>That among the most marvelous things about my life concerns being drafted into the U.S. Army, and assigned as a cryptographer to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_Rock_Mountain_Complex#:~:text=The%20Raven%20Rock%20Mountain%20Complex,called%20an%20%22underground%20Pentagon%22.">Underground Pentagon</a>, buried beneath a mountain in southern Pennsylvania. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFiINB-3jXsZvI7tfefUOzMy4kNJNezxxxXKy6IqmHg88WbzCgpb9DGM_uRtNY0xgZtLdURQg_6L8iOgnhFQ-Q-xFrfHRaGSAqydrfx00CQMCsUXNjdkVOjKuD7pePCU_HX5z5swtjbs4w/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1200" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFiINB-3jXsZvI7tfefUOzMy4kNJNezxxxXKy6IqmHg88WbzCgpb9DGM_uRtNY0xgZtLdURQg_6L8iOgnhFQ-Q-xFrfHRaGSAqydrfx00CQMCsUXNjdkVOjKuD7pePCU_HX5z5swtjbs4w/" width="320" /></a></div><br />And while serving there being assigned to the State Department in Washington, when the Berlin Airlift meant cryptographers were in short supply. In 1960, President Kennedy appointed Dean Rusk as secretary of state, and while I worked as a cryptographer, Mr. Rusk participated in the negotiations for the 1963 test ban treaty and in conferences on the Berlin situation. I might add, he supported economic and military aide for Korea.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Your thoughts on independent bookstores?</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Until the virus struck, I did a number of lectures at various garden associations across the country. I fiercely remember that whenever I booked a hotel room, I asked those in charge the location of the nearest independently owned bookstore... In all those years, I never came home without a new book to add to our library at home.</span></div><div class="yj6qo ajU" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; cursor: pointer; margin: 2px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 10px 0px; width: 22px;"><div aria-expanded="false" aria-label="Show trimmed content" class="ajR" data-tooltip="Show trimmed content" id=":1at" role="button" style="background-color: #e8eaed; border-radius: 5.5px; border: none; clear: both; line-height: 6px; outline: none; position: relative; width: 24px;" tabindex="0"><br /></div></div></div><div><b><i>And finally, in a short essay…………………………</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div><b><i>IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME</i></b><b><i> </i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div><b><i>to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div><b><i>be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div><b><i>actually experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all,</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div><b><i>meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them.</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div><b><i> </i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div><b><i>When would you go?</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div><b><i>Where would you go?</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div><b><i>Who would you want to meet?</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div><b><i>And most importantly, why do you think you chose this time?</i></b></div><div><br /></div><div>It’s a difficult choice to make but because of language difficulties, and as mentioned above, the importance of being safe from harm--plus a reasonable bank account to pay for train rides north to Edinburgh. Yet having only a rudimentary knowledge of civilized German, but a good command of English, wins me the biggest slice of fruitcake. It would have to be London towards the end of the Victorian Era, <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-7yJm6E8IcXUG-7q1nRAsAwS49mYFrnD8zWkYDT1_nSysczbp2OBDRxiBXnCHNKOzn4S8PTe84lWU-LIWKVPoCzeiSPZDggv3updAk0Qy-ONmZpUtOLJehatnI6ESod-KNkYSGw2tYjQW/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="365" data-original-width="960" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-7yJm6E8IcXUG-7q1nRAsAwS49mYFrnD8zWkYDT1_nSysczbp2OBDRxiBXnCHNKOzn4S8PTe84lWU-LIWKVPoCzeiSPZDggv3updAk0Qy-ONmZpUtOLJehatnI6ESod-KNkYSGw2tYjQW/w640-h244/image.png" width="640" /></a></div><br />a time when the incredible English estates were at their height, and the world of literature saw England living up to the reputation of being the world’s home where the development of fiction is a state of the arts.</div><div><br /></div><div>Obviously, I would have to be a middle son in a fairly successful family, the older son eventually, becoming heir to the estate, and not the younger son, always wishing to be somebody else, but, say the son between, having a respectable public-school background (with moderate honors—nothing too pushy), thus giving me the chance to meet some of the great and near great writers of the day. I did a quick Wiki-check and there would be some 275 men and women writers of some note that I might meet at an afternoon gallery showing, or a fashionable tea party, remembering that even those of lowly ascent, if neat and clean, plus some pocket cash, could go to the Ritz for tea. </div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxuAWCwxXDx1tSUBevnUneCjI6pkeV-41FywxsvcpfI5WPtL50H4Z5bDQzS1zTcCl6qNAs2WhZe0lNCWlnxvMVM22Ea0srOC0DnfecsVEmno1cI83NIJrpOL_lGnNk05eOKBVPutpSYRD5/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="310" data-original-width="400" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxuAWCwxXDx1tSUBevnUneCjI6pkeV-41FywxsvcpfI5WPtL50H4Z5bDQzS1zTcCl6qNAs2WhZe0lNCWlnxvMVM22Ea0srOC0DnfecsVEmno1cI83NIJrpOL_lGnNk05eOKBVPutpSYRD5/w400-h310/image.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>There are too many writers of note that would have to be visited to be mentioned in a story, unless it be about 1905—Edward VII now the king-- and the great estate of Chatsworth has a fire, quite short of burning out-of-control--and without any injuries—leaving some 30 people of note (often on both sides of The Pond), milling about on the lawn, all there for a great weekend Festival of Fiction, including, among others</div><div><br /></div><div> Bram Stoker <img height="139" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyAdGgAyIBX8Z8j4LimvTxcBULWdYn8W3bva3F6WsvzLwjwZpCNzVpchb0E-gFnWge7l2R5oDhq7_DP4nIvyirP5YPBUSBgO0K-GFcg_kHHwE1ZfYbUl39ZVNmou0XdEkRt0XMJrelOZHm/w108-h139/image.png" width="108" /> (The <i>Lair of the White Worm</i> is horrifying), </div><div>C. S. Forester <img height="134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs40fjuDF0qqe0BWsvo3z5UEvvd4dCKXLvPnGKrynKVxi4wFqnfhMg0h9QKLRfnDwAEGIqSDRFtKp7VyLH-PBvNVJodWLVAImdJPCAO_u3PgF53a-qXttfTN0EgFbctASZzv6TSKbPCvbI/w104-h134/image.png" width="104" /> (the <i>Hornblower</i> novels are seamanship at its best), </div><div>Nancy Mitford <img height="129" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2JsuITFa4IiTbXF7UecoIN7WZO_gv1K9EpCxnOPl9zajFrKlQnzPbPPe3MHklIqtyI9IzkaudZzzhPL3CxxyFniwNk0VZZtzplkxVsO6ydFjIiAnt8QC_-rRhlUwKpunmbA26Bn6bFANf/w115-h129/image.png" width="115" /> (combining imagination with a great wit), </div><div>H. G. Wells <img height="117" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcwCMJoRoY09VxgzAshp2JQmyhGkLCi9mfEJny7CrKdiJIRRbsReb_MV_F-8u75F70sRC3aDbcnmkA9EgKuy1j-QybpnambA5k84trRhyphenhyphenaI7SntFLCDl6J9svOfVbvBpuOwGLjgswMQ5ri/w117-h117/image.png" width="117" /> (<i>The Invisible Man</i> his best yet), </div><div>William Archer <img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVbF6v4muQMnu7czUd_lqniO1Og66P7PGNaTcp-HWvF8lDcSRxCb_1r2I5wX5z_W0jOS_OmSvb50V2n9cs1Qtszxh8bJgOPjIREtvHkYrI5QnfYdN1q-_qr77PrXdQ7wU36k9FEvzceILN/w103-h130/image.png" /> (a marvelous drama critic and expert on Ibsen), </div><div>a very young Bertolt Brecht <img height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjftXlqsDU3etsvqc8WvsmP18ssNWzJYEa1YbZ1QWCZv3Qj-op0VPBmpYX0GJ0dfWF-GKpIc0MAnW0OWoXic80lzx8ao-dLMEbdgnXAnUrU88SASBdztaZWfTKsvhOoNJbrws-K7QE26V2s/w96-h136/image.png" width="96" /> (the music is of greatness), </div><div>Liam O’Flaherty <img height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrZTU1lXhBOhfIjQM9p86PaOsUWvxFNF8nm-mAVotqyXfVt3RkyLMIsT2fXyftd8BUT-pjUAq9sKybsq4ExJ1GZl33DsQ7DIyhhxoeUhwzcNiqgNQMPH3gtXJJsFleCaaIJ0_FYLa9fgxm/w106-h132/image.png" width="106" /> (his short stories beat all), </div><div>Willa Cather <img height="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6X5kGex6lUS-48TED48R8w0R92P2DGMLcGgWf2BBV6_PQfn9pSjs6ArI4cBX1wedPLcWenbvZOS8RXgxREuI25RnJAVOS45uCGhljwfwYBoAXkTOd2rV29Rxd-YSf5kQgTHqxhjfAnXjt/w125-h125/image.png" width="125" /> (nobody knew more about social order), </div><div>Aldous Huxley <img height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdtEm1LAIMgs8lAsHSTAmQt8z8Dg1YJcGrhYAMW2Jrv9nmEGHurf1Vnyr24E4IZZBdd2q4sQ7hUytPTu8c04D8w-RcCpVT8pQs_qx_pvI7CQn6yDAm0yGj1MSVGue2s88DZLz7fyO7GaDR/w106-h144/image.png" width="106" /> (his futures included many wondrous things), </div><div>Thomas Hardy <img height="129" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqmt-FHQbRe_I4L6ssoLCmCDa0WUkv0EstjHkWGLK31x-AI_Yh1L4_xw56Pyu1fwrB3EQBAQrHQ3NjLh0wZbJnU0BAz7_n4iuJFeamsU9K2tmDwQwJToOHml2ti6zsmOIeIIBBTpROn4aT/w129-h129/image.png" width="129" /> (who wrote about lives of all sorts and the general crookedness of things), </div><div>Sinclair Lewis <img height="115" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0zMUFnHWAUGiqzoSH45wRHHwgAZcV7fneL6faM3OnkJOsvUEFhQ3kCoD5osBwGMtaMLGhJNhj0qxuSMUXhSBfj5dSYH9G_4dgoSlU1gQk6xwVLW9h-ZUWumABX2GrbAOvD2GE7_Bphkf0/w128-h115/image.png" width="128" /> (<i>Elmer Gantry</i> never bested) </div><div>George Oliver Onions <img height="134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT7J3mlwpIc7JziY0aNzkaUt1-9Kdj5QTip7-2IltaWbMXfl9Dsxgg3Q4T7cU9I5-fElwAOYTX6rTKkV4Uo0CHaVfHqQwI6vijmSi3SKdW1d9K7Prvw7w64DqAF0htlE4nhkmv1Gh1NHAk/w94-h134/image.png" width="94" /> (<i>Widdershins</i> features strange tales), </div><div>Gertrude Stein <img height="89" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRRAL3uMbMklRTuUV5wxncTItCYEZmp-acoVooxkmbcTu9s8iQUjn0aQNt9HUFMOXjsKIUQdJn3U7YHCKwhYxULa7EUSIYapiCjvInVafnj46jbSHR7vVtVAfwmP0IxrFf6Qo6q0jXtB8h/w133-h89/image.png" width="133" /> (of rose fame), </div><div>Virginia Woolf <img height="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglID6r8IE8wVi7XXRIEdQo1ld05bHIWaByFkD0PkJkvgSt6tF11Q_IwoNZJSpzkEG7WkvNxP6-MKfxHU9XzYzbbXKMha5kxhgbzRp34ZFxgDAQ2QPfhIqU4ctWVe7dTYYAOC2_3Ndt5H6X/w88-h120/image.png" width="88" /> (who was a master of stream of consciousness) , </div><div>Booth Tarkington <img height="114" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdyaK2mSIF3yGThyphenhyphenYnXcBMWn5DbxAPJbqFYDo2vNZYv3ToX-oWJrpYN8MMa-F9biODQ-UlFolK7f9f0OUMFX4Tq1t0lH3EhGlOgAUv5IC6ZiL1kAExX-Lxhc708kz6COWt-mfxIXl34R4I/w91-h114/image.png" width="91" /> (even Bob Hope made a success of Monsieur Beaucaire), </div><div>Sir Arthur Conan Doyle <img height="115" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgqHJQjdYPC3MrRcRQzvPtq0xr7O5JSYL1SUtRTNJ0JVxB0u_xIGLrtWq3ENVvKgegk5caSPJ74NP6xxO0SPWsT86K8gS4x4-PqTK8BQsUUvNjNG4mgjASgtuf_PCJVfMpL-S7kCzHadfB/w78-h115/image.png" width="78" /> (great novels and a greater detective), </div><div>Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson <img height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMOooeeKrEwsdhrRPsfs8UokO6vdRHyl4Z6UaPtXW-F7SB7iwKQls6zhihs62D7pg2EIjQSI9RoHBL4UtXw4SzGnKZZIP-QQOaGkv2z_FSlh-RPLzEG4fgHlB7RGsfOXsWxWVUnoLrGLvc/w90-h144/image.png" width="90" /> (both there because of Sissinghurst fame), </div><div>Wallace Stevens <img height="106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVEYRkUJm44kDPI-QInRrJ66VkOe_GsYEbj2gcGqdci77QIRDMHFORnMZtXm_IbAA1nBNKa-3DsUj1U0rAdVtY3SgWEMH2CJEq5zKhXWQOP1chUnQK9jKvz3TMhrpkNmvO1PcFvl3C4OZk/w127-h106/image.png" width="127" /> (a lawyer by day and a poet by night), </div><div>and A. A. Milne <img height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWQkze85qT-NsQ56TWgj0IpUlNS21fanLEVNSItxYyJLYP5QAsfl5YPYjyzYhVHeGu4Njre0ZnvIbZsZeVd9ywh_0_db16Ajpl3AmwPUXwyVZjecl6pXhh4jYKHCW4xJOin7okjAlbX8Fl/w100-h140/image.png" width="100" /> (the father of Pooh wrote <i>The Red House Mystery</i>, a "locked room" whodunnit and a fine mystery.</div><div><br /></div><div><i><b>Well Peter, I can certainly see why you would like to hobnob with those guests, what an amazing experience that would be! Perhaps we can also meet at the Ritz someday too!</b></i></div><div><i><b><br /></b></i></div><div><br /></div><div><div>Other books by Peter Loewer: <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSUQ0V12GA35cuKti9VxOxfFcuoPlIviV8-O0Co4DxqXH8PZRYxLzbCGMEB7D_dKo4BMhQ49iSRmteWml0XldJfSth6nMGKlAR_qGgXEKcNF8F0cGIiP3FM06TK6fAC1GH578Psfsdfprt/s0/Peter-Loewer.jpg" /><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>American Gardens</div><div>The Annual Garden</div><div>Container and Fragrant Gardens</div><div>Bringing the Outdoors In</div><div>The Evening Garden Fragrant Gardens</div><div>Evergreens: A guide for Landscape, Lawn, and Garden Gardening for Wildlife</div><div>Gardens by Design</div><div>Gardens of North Carolina</div><div>Hydroponics for Houseplants</div><div>The Inside-out Stomach</div><div>Jefferson’s Garden Loves Me, Loves Me Not</div><div>The Moonflower Native Perennials for the Southeast</div><div>Organic Gardener’s Annuals</div><div>Ornamental Grasses</div><div>Pond Water Zoo</div><div>Rodale’s Annual Garden</div><div>Secrets of the Great Garden</div><div>Seeds: The Definitive Guide</div><div>Small-Space Gardening</div><div>Solving Deer Problems</div><div>Solving Weed Problems</div><div>Step-by-Step Annuals</div><div>Thoreau’s Garden Tough Plants for Tough Places</div><div>The Wild Gardener</div><div>Wildflower Perennials for your Garden</div><div>Wildflowers & Native Plants</div><div>The Winter Garden</div><div>A Year of Flowers</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Merriweather; font-size: 17px; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 13px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></p></div><p></p>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-4483619501796041142021-03-31T08:22:00.002-04:002021-10-04T11:05:19.102-04:00Stephanie Kallos<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSJnIHKzfPXDAFiPFc32BKSlmuxJETK6uToVohUgjMV-ghU6zV0qcWOy4jhNZjyrI6n7i0ZmuZtq_gHwaynNV0Qz7gUCh5o4Ne4kD3Qbyc0bXPHA5GAJIoSwbWiUXHuL1U5L_GsvonG02k/s1093/Stephanie.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Ellen Urbani, Stephanie Kallos, Laura Stanfill" border="0" data-original-height="1030" data-original-width="1093" height="378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSJnIHKzfPXDAFiPFc32BKSlmuxJETK6uToVohUgjMV-ghU6zV0qcWOy4jhNZjyrI6n7i0ZmuZtq_gHwaynNV0Qz7gUCh5o4Ne4kD3Qbyc0bXPHA5GAJIoSwbWiUXHuL1U5L_GsvonG02k/w400-h378/Stephanie.jpg" title="Ellen Urbani, Stephanie Kallos, Laura Stanfill" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Ellen Urbani, Stephanie Kallos, Laura Stanfill</span></div><p></p><p><br /></p><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><u><i>IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME</i></u></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>actually experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all,</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>When would you go?</i></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Where would you go?</i></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Who would you want to meet?</i></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>And most importantly, why do you think you chose this time?</i></b></span></div><p><br /><br /></p><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Resistance</b></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Sitting down to respond at length to Jon’s question, I found myself less interested in writing a work of fiction related to my reply, than in investigating the reasons why that reply sprang so readily to mind. I think my answer surprised me as much as it surprised Jon.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">So what follows is a meditation on where creative obsessions come from, and how it might be true that novelists are always – consciously or unconsciously – writing under the influence of that most unreliable of all first-person narrators: their child selves.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Flannery O'Connor once said that if you survive a Southern childhood, you have enough material to write about for the rest of your life. Surviving a Midwestern childhood has given me a warehouse of inventory to work with as well.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">* * * * *</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">It must have been my parents’ idea – signing me up to take French lessons after school, at a time in the history of American public elementary school education when enrichment programs weren’t necessary, because we had singing classes and art classes and even elective instrumental classes (piano OR Tonette!) as part of the regular curriculum. No foreign language classes, however. This was the Midwest after all, in the mid-1960s.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">By the time I was in 5<sup>th</sup> grade, it’s possible that my father was starting to regret his decision to embrace all things American, thus raising his only child in a staunchly uni-lingual household. No daughter of his would start kindergarten speaking Greek-accented English and be ridiculed and ostracized and called the n-word because of it. (To this day, my Greek vocabulary consists of: How are you? Fine, thank you. Dolmades. Spanikopita. Kiss.) Maybe Dad decided that it wouldn’t be such a bad idea for me to learn another language – just not his language.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 32px;">Or maybe the nudge came from my mother, who was also in her own way engaged in the process of separating from her origins. My grandmother spoke German; so did her younger sisters Clara and Ruth and Alvina and Mildred. When I asked Mom about this, she informed me that there was “low” German (which is what regular, common folks used) and “high” German<b> (</b>which was spoken by educated people and in the bible). I somehow knew not to ask which version was spoken by my grandmother and great-aunts. <b> </b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 32px;">Do </span><span style="line-height: 32px;">you speak German? I asked.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"> A little, she answered.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">This was exactly how she replied to my question about childbirth, which was probably posed around the same time:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Does it hurt?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 32px;">A little</span><span style="line-height: 32px;">.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><span style="font-size: small;"> It was clear in both exchanges that these two words for a little locked door, highly fortified. I either had to storm that barricade, or imagine what was behind it. At eleven years old, already indoctrinated to be compliant and polite, I chose the latter. I shut up and wondered what my mother wasn’t saying. This kind of thing is excellent training for anyone aspiring to a career as a novelist. Say what you will about Parental Transparency in Child Rearing: the truth is, nothing stokes the fires of a child’s imagination like parental taciturnity.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Given all this, it’s logical to assume that my parents encouraged my early study of French – a language that had no familial associations for either of them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">French was the language of kings and high culture. It was exotic. It was beautiful. It was worldly. Although my parents were to travel to France many times in their future lives – as well as to England, China, Russia, Greece, Spain, Holland, and New Zealand, to name a few – at this point the farthest they’d ever ventured from their Midwestern roots (and I’m not talking about miles here but about something less measurable) was when they went to New York City in 1960, to be contestants on “The Price Is Right.” (I still have the black-and-white photo of them flanking Ed McMahon. They look completely star-struck.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Whoever steered me toward my first extracurricular experience (I suppose it’s possible that it was my idea; I truly don’t remember) I soon loved taking French lessons because:</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 32px; margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 32px;">1.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="line-height: 32px;">It made my parents very happy; this meant that peace reigned in our emotionally volatile household, and our three-person country remained – at least for short intervals – a demilitarized zone, and</span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 32px; margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 32px;">2.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="line-height: 32px;">After school French was taught by my school’s prettiest teacher. Her unlikely name, Miss Pardee, could have been an alias, a sly reference that old lyric, how you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Not only was Mlle. Pardee the prettiest teacher at our school; I soon noticed that she became even prettier when speaking French, especially when pronouncing the vowel “u” as in une soeur. I can still see her demonstrating the way to achieve this sound: she would draw her lips wide, into an exaggerated version of the wide-mouthed Nebraska smile, and begin repeating the sound eeeee as she gradually moved her lips forward, into the rounded, kiss-inviting shape of an ooooo: an “e” on the inside, an “oo” on the outside. It’s an inspired way to teach the sound, brilliant really, and thanks to Miss Pardee I’ve never lost my ability to pronounce it like a native.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">I still also have pretty decent French “r”s. I don’t remember how Miss Pardee taught those, but I know I owe that facility to her as well.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">* * * * *</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">I’ve been thinking about the words “courage” and “resistance,” the fact that they’re spelled the same in both English and French. It is only in the voicing, in the placement of the syllabic stress, that they differentiate:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 32px;">COUR-age</span><span style="line-height: 32px;"> becomes cour-AGE; re-SIST-ance becomes re-sist-ANCE.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">I love the way this linguistic flip-flop makes those words conclude with a committed bang instead of a whimper.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">My 1964 College Edition Webster’s defines courage as: “the attitude or response of facing and dealing with anything recognized as dangerous, difficult, or painful, instead of withdrawing from it; a quality of being fearless or brave; valor; pluck.” Among several definitions for the word resistance are “opposition of some force, thing, etc. to another or others” and “the organized movement, often underground, of resistance to a government or occupying power regarded as oppressive and unjust, as in France during the Nazi occupation.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">In any marriage, I suppose, there is the potential for children to become artillery in their parents’ marital wars. As the only child of a mother and father whose relationship swung wildly between two extremes, that of combatants and that of paramours, I experienced a perplexing range of roles within our family, at some times wielding great power, at other times wielding none at all. Generally I chose withdrawal over confrontation, passivity over opposition. My parents’ battles were on a grand scale; there was no way my petty complaints could rival their Sturm und Drang.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">So I laid low, taking the role of wary, watchful civilian instead of soldier, assuming an identity that had the greatest guarantee of contributing to familial peace: I smiled, aspired, excelled, and achieved – becoming in every way I could think of the opposite of rebellious.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Once in awhile I did the one thing that was guaranteed to incite a mild testiness in my fashion-conscious mother, wearing a favorite dress twice in the same week. And I committed at least one act of theft during this era: I still have the Advanced French textbook I filched from school, with phrases like Je suis tres fatigue… and Merci Dieu pour la Vendredi demain! penciled into the margins in big balloon-y letters – the kind we used to make pep club posters.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">But mostly my courage was a paltry thing; whatever resistance I expressed was so muted or muttered that it was barely noticed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">By the time I was sixteen years old and a sophomore in high school, I had established myself as a good girl by anyone’s standards: straight “A” student, classical pianist, fluent in French, junior class president, babysitter, virgin. My best friends were bright, funny, geeky, artistically-inclined and athletically-challenged girls, also beloved by their parents for their goodness. We were glad to have found each other and formed a tribe. None of us defined our eras’ ideals of beauty; none of us got dates to the prom. On Fridays and Saturdays, we had pajama parties. We wore our odd-duck, dateless status as a badge of pride.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Whenever any of my folks’ friends bemoaned their kids’ misdeeds – academic failures, curfew violations, drinking, smoking, drug use, sexual escapades – by parents remarked with pride (and within earshot), “Oh, we never have to worry about Stephanie.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">I may have chafed inwardly at that sentiment – and what it implied about my character – but there were great rewards in abiding by the status quo. One such reward came in April of 1971, when my parents pulled me out of school and took me to Paris.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">For those ten days, I became the unofficial guide and translator for my parents and their traveling companions: a group of University of Nebraska alumnae, all of whom were my folks’ age (forty-something) or older. I helped them order wine and snails, locate the bathrooms, get directions to museums. I taught them all to say “Where is the bar?” and that became a standing joke, the kind of shorthand that fellow travelers rely on in years to come to summon the espirit de corps of a particular shared experience. It was surely during this trip that I began contemplating a future career as a UN interpreter. (If my translation skills made Mom and Dad this happy, imagine how much I could accomplish toward achieving world peace!) It was also during this trip that my parents took me to my first opera.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">The national opera house was closed for renovations, so we went to the Comedie Francaise, a much smaller and more intimate venue, and saw a production of La Boheme. During the curtain call, the actors remained frozen in place – Mimi on a chaise, her eyes open in death; Rudolpho kneeling beside her; a stunningly beautiful stage lighting effect that made it look as if a gentle snowfall was cascading over the scene.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">On our last night in Paris, my mother and father and I had dinner in a dark, cavernous restaurant next to the Sienne. Our waiter told us that this spot had been a covert gathering place for members of the French Resistance.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">I certainly didn’t experience any kind of epiphany at that moment, but as a result of that trip, I did fall in love with France – and, over time, with a corresponding idea (and it was of course a highly romanticized one) of who I might have been had I lived in Paris during the German occupation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Would I have behaved in the setting of a real war the way I behaved in the hostile country that was our family, i.e. with fear, passivity, and compliance? Would I have risked my life to meet in a place where, thirty years later, my mother and father and I enjoyed a meal and reminisced from a safe distance about the sacrifices of the good soldiers of WWII?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">I’m still asking those questions, still wondering if I’d be able to violate the boundaries of the impeccably obedient behavior I cultivated so successfully (and with good reason) throughout my childhood.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">I long ago lost my French fluency – if not my accent, thanks to Miss Pardee – and I haven’t set foot in France since 1978, but my love affair with all things French continues to this day. I sent three characters from my first novel to my adopted country, and for the many years I worked on that book, a map of Paris was tacked up on my office wall so that those characters and I could walk the streets together.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">The echoes of that 1971 trip with my parents are still with me; and I like to think that my father time-traveled back to our night at the opera when he died, while listening to the final strains of a recording of La Boheme, at the exact moment Ruldopho cried, “Mimi!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">I said at the beginning of this essay that my answer to Jon’s question surprised us both; and yet, having examined my enduring love affair with France and French language through the lens of personal family history, my wanting to go back in time to the German occupation of Paris seems almost inevitable.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Anne Tyler once said that one of the joys of writing fiction is the way it allows one to live many lives. To imagine myself in France during the occupation is to imagine a self very far removed from me indeed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">A novel I’ve had in mind for many years and that I hope to write one day will involve a Jewish-American soldier fighting in France during WWII. I don’t know much about him yet, but I do know this: he’ll be brave, and at some point he’ll find himself in a cave next to the Seine River in Paris, among members of the French Resistance.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 48px;">THE END</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 48px;">Thank you Stevie, I have no doubt you would have all the courage you would need. </span></span></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-49469338618626559572021-03-12T09:33:00.006-05:002021-03-14T08:48:10.219-04:00Paraic O'Donnell<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR5JGzxBSWHGaGVtTlF1rppITNy1MKFSoJZoFej-_AR9K-ei1WAwFs2f-yMin_TPP8a1cgsPgGltyvUCSLkkMIx2xegXQfA9wEyh8n2ovHJvxGuwAreEX6X-1apwnLoK7o-_UoIKa0E2HK/s1180/Paraic2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="663" data-original-width="1180" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR5JGzxBSWHGaGVtTlF1rppITNy1MKFSoJZoFej-_AR9K-ei1WAwFs2f-yMin_TPP8a1cgsPgGltyvUCSLkkMIx2xegXQfA9wEyh8n2ovHJvxGuwAreEX6X-1apwnLoK7o-_UoIKa0E2HK/w640-h360/Paraic2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTb9Rh_Z51A4ZkRk2azOTzSL7xoO1LRQhafQiL-8d4yLPZwva7_VI3HKcbUE_fUJfh1K-xL5RBvojg0xnqavKf2GKwpmeGB19rHG80hSvi30aYH2Vao9OuYfpF4v8tCCSoEoX6RwdF9cIq/s425/house-on-vesper-sands-275x425.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="425" data-original-width="275" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTb9Rh_Z51A4ZkRk2azOTzSL7xoO1LRQhafQiL-8d4yLPZwva7_VI3HKcbUE_fUJfh1K-xL5RBvojg0xnqavKf2GKwpmeGB19rHG80hSvi30aYH2Vao9OuYfpF4v8tCCSoEoX6RwdF9cIq/w259-h400/house-on-vesper-sands-275x425.jpg" width="259" /></a></p><br /><div style="text-align: left;">New from <a href="https://tinhouse.com/" target="_blank">Tin House</a>, a book filled with supernatural landscapes, shadowy séances, young innocent love and cold-hearted murder. What's not to love about this ethereal and haunting new book by the phenomenal Irish author, Paraic O'Donnell?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBFm5hrk_A8kOZ7Me5rc6B30rVGsCvowsEiYwkCsn_GdsOzSEDgqh8lTTR_WFEpRE6nSBUtULwRUJgBrrEzH9DgaObA8VLKmhL9bLR6-1hHJIfGBEGaTVYyMja8s2nb_768IbUn0LfEUir/s509/victorian-couple-in-london-snow-storm-lee-avison.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="509" data-original-width="455" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBFm5hrk_A8kOZ7Me5rc6B30rVGsCvowsEiYwkCsn_GdsOzSEDgqh8lTTR_WFEpRE6nSBUtULwRUJgBrrEzH9DgaObA8VLKmhL9bLR6-1hHJIfGBEGaTVYyMja8s2nb_768IbUn0LfEUir/w152-h171/victorian-couple-in-london-snow-storm-lee-avison.jpg" width="152" /></a></div>It is the winter of 1893, and in London, the snow is falling. Gideon Bliss seeks shelter in a Soho church, where he finds Angie Tatton lying before the altar. His one-time love is at death’s door, murmuring about brightness and black air, and about those she calls the Spiriters. In the morning she has disappeared.</div><div>The snow is falling as a seamstress climbs onto a ledge above Mayfair, a mysterious message stitched into her own skin. It continues to fall as she steadies herself and closes her eyes.</div><div>It is falling, too, as her employer, Lord Strythe, vanishes into the night, watched by Octavia Hillingdon, a young, society columnist who longs to uncover a story of real importance.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrh82-TMxWiLSFR70tbFag9Un6AUfNPguiXup5HQafUzgblLaMvSdKw5XKhj-6rmFymd78UywUAwj5JIdmAxqnjDQrNiGDl_ztBRebhun6REfVP7mPwsHqT-PH0xPYmUKW6NoC3vwstR4B/s631/Vesper.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="631" data-original-width="630" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrh82-TMxWiLSFR70tbFag9Un6AUfNPguiXup5HQafUzgblLaMvSdKw5XKhj-6rmFymd78UywUAwj5JIdmAxqnjDQrNiGDl_ztBRebhun6REfVP7mPwsHqT-PH0xPYmUKW6NoC3vwstR4B/w211-h212/Vesper.jpg" width="211" /></a>She and Gideon will soon be drawn into the same mystery, each desperate to save Angie and find out the truth about Lord Strythe. Their paths will cross as the darkness gathers, and lead them at last to what lies hidden at the house on Vesper Sands<i>.</i></div></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>Paraic O’Donnell's first novel, <b><i>Maker of Swans</i></b>, was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards in the Newcomer of the Year category. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8DS_jdYGxO6MOgWigPiNFh1zcUOy1bt9pqXnfoyoeEuZ9YZQ7PNlN0bdrzeM25DJ7XPU8JqNJtccSscWiEQ8MyyslSbfBAOkkj7mE5wRtC6_a3W8RmdvB3qPdUznBNLXFjKoyK7LxWScl/s2048/swans.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1273" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8DS_jdYGxO6MOgWigPiNFh1zcUOy1bt9pqXnfoyoeEuZ9YZQ7PNlN0bdrzeM25DJ7XPU8JqNJtccSscWiEQ8MyyslSbfBAOkkj7mE5wRtC6_a3W8RmdvB3qPdUznBNLXFjKoyK7LxWScl/s320/swans.jpg" /></a></div><br />His latest is a <i>Guardian </i>and <i>Observer</i> book of the year. </div><div>It was also selected by <i>Time, Newsweek</i>, <i>Library Reads</i> and <i>Indie Next</i> for “best of” lists, January 2021, and one of <i>Oprah Magazine</i>‘s most anticipated titles of 2021.</div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal">There were so many memorable lines, here is just a small sampling:</p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>"Upon presenting ourselves at no. 23, it was found that no one could be brought to the door, though Inspector Cutter knocked with considerable energy for two minutes or more.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> A woman emerged from a neighbouring dwelling in a state of some agitation, and demanded to know the cause of the racket. When the officers present identified themselves, said woman's demeanour became coarse and unwelcoming and the officers were invited after a brief exchange to 'fuck off out of it' [sic].</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> Insp. Cutter directed the woman to disclose her name, which she gave as Mrs. Kiss-My-Arse [sic]"</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***********</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Gideon watched Miss Tatton when he could, guardedly and at careful intervals. There were habits of hers, small gestures that he came to recognize. Her way, when she was bored, of swinging her arms in loose arcs, or of raising her wrist-inflected just so-when something moved her to laughter. In all of this there was a strange charge of giddiness. It occurred to him that even this faint intimacy was unfamiliar, that in all his life he had never paid such close attention to another living soul.</i></div><div style="text-align: center;">***********</div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>"Lightning. In the stutter of brightness he saw her, crouched and hawk-still, then she was gone. He felt it as she vaulted clear, her fierce cold quickness. He heard the slicing air, the snap of cotton. He hung there then, stretched above the vacant darkness. For a moment he could not be sure if he had closed his eyes, and in the devouring silence when she was gone, he could not tell at first that he had screamed."</i></div><div style="text-align: center;">**********</div><div style="text-align: left;">And from Paraic's Afterword: </div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>"Passenger carriages with side corridors had been in use since the 1880s, and in March 1892, the Great Western Railway introduced the first complete 'corridor train' (as the </i>Times<i> described it) on its Paddington-to-Birkenhead service. However, trains of this design were not yet in service between London and Kent by February 1893. This minor historical liberty is the only one I have knowingly taken, and by confessing to it openly I hope to escape censure."</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">Doing my research on Paraic I came upon this, must read, article that he recently wrote for the <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/paraic-o-donnell-ms-is-meticulously-destroying-me-i-am-being-unmade-1.4168380" target="_blank">Irish Times</a> about his experience living with MS. Reading it made me admire him and his writing even more, and better understand what his life is like<i>.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><b><br /></b></i></div><div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b>Tell me about where you live and why you love it so much.</b></div><div>I live in Wicklow, Ireland.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv5bJBn31iEBijGQTDriMuB70inCmPq9ENATEHA_zb5j7iQwFBOPejLnn-uCItECS-rAt0kzNWOYzZGChqJrSnWHQ4yVApXqbmF1F-z36bLjhNJibsnliWuEA7b330Rp4IqZP-5cAaf2T5/s500/51i5muXOkWL.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv5bJBn31iEBijGQTDriMuB70inCmPq9ENATEHA_zb5j7iQwFBOPejLnn-uCItECS-rAt0kzNWOYzZGChqJrSnWHQ4yVApXqbmF1F-z36bLjhNJibsnliWuEA7b330Rp4IqZP-5cAaf2T5/w133-h200/51i5muXOkWL.jpg" width="133" /></a> I love it because I need to be surrounded by natural beauty, and that’s pretty much all this place has. Ancient broadleaf forests, stretches of sleepy farmland, and in the mountains the most incredible Arthurian dreamscapes. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQGUREMtzFmYRne2Uo9X4C-f2ZGo_pe_XEf0tl62vTFsOPsAW2yFGeiyPRV2G6EWfDvrMntdnZ5D8_GLnw_31211JRzZJBMEVUytiLxMuhJPqb3uBLdVFOgucxj06ZgDTNIxlNHkpM4N9w/s1600/Vale-of-Glendalough-County-Wicklow-Ire-Leinster.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQGUREMtzFmYRne2Uo9X4C-f2ZGo_pe_XEf0tl62vTFsOPsAW2yFGeiyPRV2G6EWfDvrMntdnZ5D8_GLnw_31211JRzZJBMEVUytiLxMuhJPqb3uBLdVFOgucxj06ZgDTNIxlNHkpM4N9w/w640-h426/Vale-of-Glendalough-County-Wicklow-Ire-Leinster.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />I used to post a lot of landscape shots online, when I went hiking, and someone once asked me what part of Narnia I lived in. That about sums it up.</div><div><br /></div><div><i><b>Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories?</b></i></div><div>Right here, more or less. I’ve travelled a lot, but this isn’t the kind of place you burn to get away from.</div><div>And yes, they’re fond memories. My childhood was pretty idyllic, I’m afraid, so I didn’t have a reservoir of formative misery to draw on in my writing. The last couple of decades haven’t been quite so cloudless, which may have helped, but I think I’d have got by anyway. My life has been fine, as lives go, but I’ve never been much attracted to it as material. When I’m writing, just like when I’m reading, I want to be elsewhere and otherwise.</div><div style="font-style: italic;"><br /></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b>Did you have a favorite teacher and are you still in touch with him or her?</b></div><div>I did, but no I’m not. I was her favourite, too, in what became a scandalous sense. We don’t look favourably on such things now, and rightly so, but I wasn’t harmed in the minutest way. Plus, my French improved considerably.</div><div style="font-style: italic;"><br /></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b>Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?</b></div><div>Every book does, to a greater or lesser degree. To read is to occupy an altered perspective, almost by definition, but I’m not sure I even like the idea of some singular and epiphanic encounter that changes you irrevocably. The process, at least in my experience, is cumulative and endlessly iterative. What it leaves you with, I think, is a kaleidoscopic availability of perspectives. That seems much more desirable to me than just swapping one lens for another.</div><div style="font-style: italic;"><br /></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b>Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it makes it so?</b></div><div><b>His Dark Materials</b>, almost without hesitation. </div> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx7i6JiZidsRFT_IQTsqtx0T-KTZBUiAY0U2HbDxE7VG8SOaAzkWOdpaO0xJ7XcFKt5dmIpsiU6SSjRJjd1mbaWoKlYAQ8hoZo-dG_bb7zRt5U84W-ivmSe9kv68kMnY3j90YjUcH2OYDo/s320/0_LBtKMP6lIEkn0EIh.jpg" /><br /><div><br /></div><div>Superficially, it’s this fabulously inventive adventure story, so it certainly functions as a more traditional children’s book. But it’s also wildly exigent in what it requires of that notional audience, though maybe it’s fairer to say that simply credits children with possessing the faculties necessary to contemplate questions of immense moral seriousness. </div><div>It shows them an adult world dominated by this baroque machinery of deception and enslavement, and children who are brave and capable enough to resist all that and persevere towards the truth. But that truth turns out to be that loss is inescapable, that the extinction of innocence is inescapable.</div><div>That’s pretty uncompromising, in a children’s book, but it’s also respectful of children and in my view morally dutiful.</div><div><br /></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b>What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?</b></div><div>I’m not sure they’re funny stories, exactly, more stories that marvel at what I was allowed to get away with. Like the time I persuaded my parents, when I was fourteen, that it was fine for me to wander around Paris on my own. I didn’t come to any harm, but I did what any fourteen-year-old would do in those circumstances, which was mainly lounging outside cafés smoking Gitanes <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNEyFIhCPueDwXlD0WK5rjs2dTBpI2RGcuHCEb51U7rxHL8ecGP3_EI_zsNfSQV7cwqxvOm3MunEAlGhZpBDa4Tvrykj9M1uL8L5EiDX7HyRQRy4b7A-Gn0AU7bw3pLsVFLuVIxzesf0ZK/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="200" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNEyFIhCPueDwXlD0WK5rjs2dTBpI2RGcuHCEb51U7rxHL8ecGP3_EI_zsNfSQV7cwqxvOm3MunEAlGhZpBDa4Tvrykj9M1uL8L5EiDX7HyRQRy4b7A-Gn0AU7bw3pLsVFLuVIxzesf0ZK/w132-h132/image.png" width="132" /></a>and conducting a hilariously adolescent performance of louche adulthood. They still kind of berate themselves for all that, but I think on balance they made the right mistakes.</div><div><br /></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b>How did you meet beloved? How did your first date go?</b></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbqajzEoPhSD4QgYqUNHBNiPwsxYJoJVVrCUHBTn4El3kg7sZcS9OCdcgDcONzus3hyphenhyphenIaujbHnW8LUv1sEgMR8EnspDQRwpSDM7dSKcSg2y-xjFF73tjnxTP5XhLGzOUPNehKq-4GD4VHk/s635/Paraic+and+wife.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="635" data-original-width="620" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbqajzEoPhSD4QgYqUNHBNiPwsxYJoJVVrCUHBTn4El3kg7sZcS9OCdcgDcONzus3hyphenhyphenIaujbHnW8LUv1sEgMR8EnspDQRwpSDM7dSKcSg2y-xjFF73tjnxTP5XhLGzOUPNehKq-4GD4VHk/s320/Paraic+and+wife.jpg" /></a></div>We were working at the same bar when I was nineteen and she was seventeen. I was utterly stricken from the start, but apparently I seemed terribly reserved. The truth was that she seemed far too beautiful to be remotely within reach. Well, we ended up in the same club one night after work, and she didn’t waste much time persuading me of my error. It felt like a moment of heavenly alignment, and it has ever since.</div><div><br /></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b>Is there a song or group that you listen to when you are feeling a bit down?</b></div><div>Oh, there are thousands. I mean, that’s my resting state, more or less, so the repertoire needs to be extensive. But for me, music doesn’t have a remedial function in those circumstances. I don’t seek out stuff that will alter my condition, which I wouldn’t want, but music that conforms to it, while also complicating or refracting my experience of it.</div><div>I mean, I’m not allergic to joy, but being drawn to the melancholy just seems to offer more richness of choice. Yesterday, it was Strauss’s "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaAorqR0ICk" target="_blank">Four Last Songs</a>" and today it was "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGv-APcHbT0" target="_blank">Thirteen Beaches</a>" by Lana Del Rey. What’s not to like?</div><div><br /></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b>Is there a question no one has ever asked you that you wish they would? Something, perhaps, that people would be surprised to know about you?</b></div><div>It’s not really in the spirit of these proceedings, but I’d rather people didn’t ask about me at all. I’m not an interesting subject, and there isn’t much to discover that isn’t predictable or disappointing. </div><div><br /></div><div><div><b><i>I looked into Margaret Elise Harkness/John Law and her book </i>In Darkest London<i> that you reference in </i><u>The House on Vesper Sands</u><i>. </i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-style: italic; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDXHt2xtPs41R_DL4x3WsiqbgCW5MyH-kxZitlGtgU5hDDePTcnzdZvkJDjl7oVlXDdjCvsG9u6wJKPUqldQ2zr5vRxMZf58gC1CIheEoqm1SS9x4rSjbdg0JsUpsBq29c013GtKJWPVM6/s378/margaret-harkness.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="378" data-original-width="250" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDXHt2xtPs41R_DL4x3WsiqbgCW5MyH-kxZitlGtgU5hDDePTcnzdZvkJDjl7oVlXDdjCvsG9u6wJKPUqldQ2zr5vRxMZf58gC1CIheEoqm1SS9x4rSjbdg0JsUpsBq29c013GtKJWPVM6/s320/margaret-harkness.jpg" /></a></div><br /><i>What a fascinating woman, have you read much by her? With my interest in ancient Egypt, I was quite surprised that she also wrote about Egyptian life.</i></b></div><div>I’m a novelist, not a historian, so my reading for research tends to wide but shallow. I haven’t read anything else of hers, but she’s a fascinating figure and I’m not at all surprised to learn of her diverse interests. It’s typical of the time, though, when dabbling freely was common among those with education or curiosity. We tend to snicker now at, say, Conan Doyle’s obsession with fairies, but it was a manifestation of what seems to me a virtue of Victorian thinking. The Royal Society had its preening lordlings, then as now, but in general intellectual borders were more open and a social activist could also be an Egyptologist or a naturalist without inviting ridicule.</div><div><br /></div><div><i><b>As I told you earlier, I found that after reading a few chapters, I found myself speaking in the same way as Gideon, one of your lead characters. Did you know already how to write the story in that manner or did you need to do a little research?</b></i></div><div>What novels are to me, ultimately, are occasions of language. You have other obligations to the reader, obviously, and those are relatively elaborate with something like historical fiction, but ultimately what I’m doing is giving myself access to the forms and registers of language that suit my purposes or just please me in some way. Gideon and Cutter have distinct and contrasting modes of speech, and I’ve obviously had fun with the comic potential of those interactions.</div><div>But what they’re also doing is using language to navigate their circumstances, to account for themselves and their actions in their particular moral terms. They seem at odds for much of the time, but in fact those moral visions increasingly converge and that’s as central to the story as anything else.</div><div>You have to be careful with period diction, because it can be alienating or just plain obtrusive if you’re just slathering it around to achieve decorative effects. But equally, there are endless socially and historically specific nuances that would just get irretrievable collapsed if you were flatten all those gradations of speech and thought and write the whole thing like it happened last Tuesday.</div><div>You use the language you need to create a particular experience. It’s like music in that way. Sometimes you can score something sparsely, like a minimal chamber piece, but sometimes you need to go big with the orchestration. Vesper Sands isn’t quite Mahler, but it’s not Philip Glass either.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Will we see Inspector Cutter in any forthcoming books?</i></b></div><div>At this point, that’s a decision that’s pretty much been taken out of my hands. The reaction to this book has been far beyond by expectations, and those who’ve responded positively seem all but unanimous on that question. That’s not an unmixed blessing, for a writer, but it’s not something you can just ignore either. So yeah, that seems highly likely.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Both </i><u>The Maker of Swans</u><i> and </i><u>House on Vesper Sands</u><i> focus on secret societies. Have you always had an interest in them?</i></b></div><div><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></i>Not especially, no. Or not in the sense that I’m fascinated by, say, the largely ridiculous arcana of something like freemasonry, which has never really been dedicated to anything other than nepotism and sectarianism. I’m sure the dressing up is fun for them, though. </div><div>But they’re recognizable structures, and as such they can put to use in fiction in a way that’s emblematic. Because what those societies tend to have in common is their interest in aggrandizing themselves to obscure their purposes. And those purposes are rarely benign, and certainly not exalted. Otherwise there’d be no need to cloak them in all that trumped-up mystique.</div><div>So, they’re not really mysterious in themselves, because their artifices are generally so transparent, but they have a certain dramatic potency. Because in fiction they really can be secret, at least for a while, and you can exploit some of that theatrical apparatus, to sustain a real mystery for just long enough.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Have you ever participated in a séance? </i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdxrkmxNFw6V8BFM_wfJHCuLZ4p77WM0i7qBO8H7z8VJb2dd_COAcEW5z86EMKCVrC9vVK9_kzKw9RmzkbwxaCUpEpVaVm7mVHTi6jX2JrSKtpJREHDy57R4V0QyrwwTBu3N2jo4z0Se0J/s600/Spirit_Hodge_1887_April_2_Frank_Leslies_Illustrated_Seance_Engraving_WM.jpg" style="font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdxrkmxNFw6V8BFM_wfJHCuLZ4p77WM0i7qBO8H7z8VJb2dd_COAcEW5z86EMKCVrC9vVK9_kzKw9RmzkbwxaCUpEpVaVm7mVHTi6jX2JrSKtpJREHDy57R4V0QyrwwTBu3N2jo4z0Se0J/s320/Spirit_Hodge_1887_April_2_Frank_Leslies_Illustrated_Seance_Engraving_WM.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div>Oh, sure, but only of the drunken and shambolic variety. And I’m not much of a mystic in my private capacity, so it’s not something I’d approach with any kind of seriousness. </div><div>I don’t draw stuff like that from life, but that doesn’t mean I take it lightly. The séance scene in <i>Vesper Sands</i> is both closely researched and liberally imagined, like most of what I do. The proceedings are more or less authentic, at a formal level, but it’s an upmarket affair with a corresponding degree of lavish staginess. I also tried hard to calibrate the atmosphere in the right way, to maintain a tension somewhere between flamboyance and something more liminal and unsettling.</div><div>That’s authentic, too, in the sense that the audience would have been as diverse as you’d expect, with varying degrees of susceptibility. It also serves as kind of a centerpiece in the story, which is pervaded by ambiguity about what’s real and what’s illusory. It’s a scene in which everything and nothing is explained, and it’s dense with possible meanings, each one depending on how you interpret what’s being said. Almost everything that subsequently revealed is encoded in those pages, yet you could pass over most of it without noticing.</div><div>I don’t write to any kind of formula, but if I did, that’s what it might sound like.</div><div><br /></div></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><br /></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b>IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME</b></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b>to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,</b></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b>be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,</b></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b>actually experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all,</b></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b>meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them.</b></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b>When would you go?</b></div><div>This is going to sound perverse, coming from a historical novelist, but I’m much more fascinated by prehistory than the relatively brief span we consider recorded. You can argue the fine points about exactly where the horizon lies, but let’s call it 5,500 years or so for convenience. Beyond that, all we have are artefacts and conjecture.</div><div>It’s a vanishingly narrow sliver of time, even just in the context of our species. All those preceding millennia of life and language are almost entirely opaque to us, and that’s both intoxicating and dismal to contemplate.</div><div>So, much as I’d love to spend an evening with Madame de Staël or Cardinal Richelieu or whoever, what would I have to report that might make the slightest difference?</div><div><br /></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b>Where would you go?</b></div><div>That’s the problem with this particular fascination. I have no way of knowing. I suppose I could start out in the caves of Lascaux, 16,000 years ago. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI2QJzSP4MD4yo82xZweXGl3qPnuE3yqmLj7LqUcRwpV5h6gw_1H9Z2DY5ppSJIL0oByMEQVcUBP797p-0OnMNfM0ct2nVwp87x5zeAXD73Jk8lji1_gpm9FSa2-4vlZjMviiQrJpFi0ll/s1200/this-day-in-history-09121940---cave-paintings-discovered.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI2QJzSP4MD4yo82xZweXGl3qPnuE3yqmLj7LqUcRwpV5h6gw_1H9Z2DY5ppSJIL0oByMEQVcUBP797p-0OnMNfM0ct2nVwp87x5zeAXD73Jk8lji1_gpm9FSa2-4vlZjMviiQrJpFi0ll/s320/this-day-in-history-09121940---cave-paintings-discovered.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />I could glimpse the people who created those extraordinary cave paintings, observe a little of the lives and experiences to which those artworks gave expression. But some of those images are as remarkable for where they are as what they are. People crawled incredible distances through barely passable voids to lie on their backs and leave marks that others might see only by going to the same extraordinary lengths.</div><div>Even if I were to witness that, without their language or any meaningful access to their thoughts and beliefs, what could I truly learn about why they did this or what it meant to them?<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b>Who would you want to meet?</b></div><div>Again, I won’t know until I get there, and making introductions might be somewhat fraught. I’ll probably come back thinking I met people called ‘tender prey’ or ‘crazy talk’, because that’s what they’ll shout at me when I’m nearby. I’m fine with that. It’s consistent with what passes for my philosophy. You should take the trip and see all you can, but don’t mistake seeing things for knowing them.</div><div><br /></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><b>And most importantly, why do you think you chose this time?</b></div><div>I don’t think I’ve settled on a time yet, but I think I’d end up pursuing this particular compulsion to its logical extreme. Maybe sitting on something resembling a beach in the deep Precambrian, looking out from the coast of Laurentia over the Paleo-Pacific. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWvgpiUD2Rid2EGi32ipboCgtQzdiJxrmxmvHHf5KaXX3CkR4N47-9X5dYIiBBjeDgNszeD7JLo4XlGBmFFPq2gr5zbwQYOAM7EpujEHjZkjIesG41BvOtCXwg8efRc2JBHgD1_Svgg4mt/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="367" data-original-width="580" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWvgpiUD2Rid2EGi32ipboCgtQzdiJxrmxmvHHf5KaXX3CkR4N47-9X5dYIiBBjeDgNszeD7JLo4XlGBmFFPq2gr5zbwQYOAM7EpujEHjZkjIesG41BvOtCXwg8efRc2JBHgD1_Svgg4mt/" width="320" /></a></div><br />The atmosphere would be breathable by then, but what life there was would be all but invisible. Maybe a few scraps of moss here and there, and some flickerings in the rock pools.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXxj_5sfsMS8Ogy39f9hi-56KtoNXsVkr5RTomwzn-dpOX67UVkNHSTse47QZ0z4pl-XF_eamsagiQWJxD2XaIKrAHGoj6nhyUthO8CPxijpC589eVwrPAvSPDgvhB1tD4uEKXBijTWY1Z/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="174" data-original-width="289" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXxj_5sfsMS8Ogy39f9hi-56KtoNXsVkr5RTomwzn-dpOX67UVkNHSTse47QZ0z4pl-XF_eamsagiQWJxD2XaIKrAHGoj6nhyUthO8CPxijpC589eVwrPAvSPDgvhB1tD4uEKXBijTWY1Z/" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><div>That’s the most enchanting prospect of all to me, the idea of all that empty magnificence. A world still untouched and innocent.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Thank you Paraic, not only for your thoughtful answers to my questions, but also for writing such a marvelous book that took me completely into another world. </i></div><div><br /></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-85159446332262609832021-02-14T12:22:00.000-05:002021-10-04T11:04:12.653-04:00Leif Enger, Back in Time<p> In honor of the birthday of one of my all time favorite authors, Leif Enger, I am posting his brilliant answer to my time travel question. Happy Birthday (and Valentine's Day), Leif.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_Pl7G_i4QsOc52_w2nKGx26HIu60UZ05gS1fpRfci218lLBUJVvD_QQ4LA0E5GgCemtqqr19_EixK57oHLYV6jCFTr8EMwrzPfB8qdHDioMZOH3mmhxnCweWzpzUpZ7dXskX2QsLRHrMH/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="718" data-original-width="1024" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_Pl7G_i4QsOc52_w2nKGx26HIu60UZ05gS1fpRfci218lLBUJVvD_QQ4LA0E5GgCemtqqr19_EixK57oHLYV6jCFTr8EMwrzPfB8qdHDioMZOH3mmhxnCweWzpzUpZ7dXskX2QsLRHrMH/" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <img border="0" height="234" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/23/Peacelikeariver.jpg" width="154" /> <a href="http://bfgb.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/so-brave-young-and-handsome.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="234" id="irc_mi" src="http://bfgb.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/so-brave-young-and-handsome.jpg" style="margin-top: 0px;" width="160" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmMWeewxvLvgiPrWgt3zUlymRfF5ucp7JHJVsklhyphenhyphenemNaGxPh2jm1ilMyLRL9RWLeuQXsBHrkgURS5kV1iLyLMxneO20sgg1a-0cqHOKsvcffi0_86o1mZ0BSs_4NDCv_WlxVivFZASeIU/" style="font-size: large; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="331" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmMWeewxvLvgiPrWgt3zUlymRfF5ucp7JHJVsklhyphenhyphenemNaGxPh2jm1ilMyLRL9RWLeuQXsBHrkgURS5kV1iLyLMxneO20sgg1a-0cqHOKsvcffi0_86o1mZ0BSs_4NDCv_WlxVivFZASeIU/w154-h232/image.png" width="154" /></a><p></p><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><u>IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME</u></b></span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0.9in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;">to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,</span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;">be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,</span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;">actually experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all,</span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;">meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them.</span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>When would you go?</b></span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Where would you go?</b></span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Who would you want to meet?</b></span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>And most importantly, why do you think you chose this time?</b></span></span></div><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
<o:TargetScreenSize>800x600</o:TargetScreenSize>
</o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
</xml><![endif]--></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
</w:Compatibility>
<w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="267">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="//img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" />
<style>
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
</style>
<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}
</style>
<![endif]--></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Lucky</span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It cheers me up every day that Mom and Dad, a pair of North Dakotans with the Great Depression always in the next room, gave me the Christian name of a Norse sailor born a thousand years earlier. From Dust Bowl grit to North Sea spray: how’s that for hope and change? A name, after all, is your parents’ first gift to you – their design for your future, a tacit instruction as to what sort of person you should be. (Not to make too much of this, it’s also true my parents alliterated their children’s names, and by the time I arrived there was a shortage of interesting Ls.) <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_HfmT3jGLxhItgMFfz-V_z1eju1RRJN2S4RQ1dbcg8rg9aKInZPC5WFiUlqvSKIR8WLKCrOvgeC0mldJphf14u_OxLT5S9V9rVdQzdUoWeCvYRO02pcl48khijucxaQT9Re-ume4h30JC/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="900" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_HfmT3jGLxhItgMFfz-V_z1eju1RRJN2S4RQ1dbcg8rg9aKInZPC5WFiUlqvSKIR8WLKCrOvgeC0mldJphf14u_OxLT5S9V9rVdQzdUoWeCvYRO02pcl48khijucxaQT9Re-ume4h30JC/w400-h213/image.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Still, Leif Ericson was one of my first real heroes, and the oldest attic in my brain is lit by the tart and moody lithographs of Ingri and Edgar D’Aulaire, <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPtPFk6i0V5UMnGVAQVEO-yM71-19knojCGjZV8-jMwdMYER2VFKkd3uo1INnN6ritRJbJaBqB_aI-0IKUM7JSkusBzrrksYzVIf6HodP2MexfxQDnWZuW2_Jhr3lb1krK4r_k7EAW527V/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1541" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPtPFk6i0V5UMnGVAQVEO-yM71-19knojCGjZV8-jMwdMYER2VFKkd3uo1INnN6ritRJbJaBqB_aI-0IKUM7JSkusBzrrksYzVIf6HodP2MexfxQDnWZuW2_Jhr3lb1krK4r_k7EAW527V/" width="319" /></a></div><br />whose story-book Leif the Lucky was read aloud to me six hundred times before I could walk. Have you seen that book? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVcRWst5X35sO-wmBGHvfM7mpMpYakp86lIWwVOsMZKxUE8l4dPNDCS6JMj0naul1B_JnQTaL3qTKvUceC8YUbbiaw_CJCmNlovL4xrShHq6Mk2ohcMwNmjoZovvGtbn3xwBvfdFUPmaEZ/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="348" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVcRWst5X35sO-wmBGHvfM7mpMpYakp86lIWwVOsMZKxUE8l4dPNDCS6JMj0naul1B_JnQTaL3qTKvUceC8YUbbiaw_CJCmNlovL4xrShHq6Mk2ohcMwNmjoZovvGtbn3xwBvfdFUPmaEZ/" width="167" /></a></div><br />Here is Leif as a boy: solid and blond in his scarlet wool tunic, feet braced for balance on the deck of his father’s ship, shading his eyes against the Snowstorm Sea. Leif wears a sheath-knife on a lanyard round his neck and the knife and his hair snap in the gale. How at home he looks on his father’s boat – and what a boat, with its curling tail and icy dragon prow. Also, what a father! Straight off we meet the fiery outlaw known as Erik the Red, banished from both Norway and Iceland for his fearsome temper and his “hands as red as his beard.” This is the man Leif must live up to, but guess what: he doesn’t look worried about it. He’s the youngest of three boys, the others being Torstein and Torvald – no doubt they absorbed the worst of Erik’s temper, always the job of elder sons. </span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That we strive to live up to our names is a doubtful proposition -- if that were the case I would’ve done a brave thing by now. But as a young Leif I did lay claim to certain traits that seemed to me a birthright from the great Norseman. For starters, I assumed that as the baby of the family I was much wanted and more or less a commodity to be enjoyed. Just as the other Leif was welcomed into his family (“We will let him live,” Erik the Red is supposed to have said, deeply pleased with the lusty infant) so I was taken everywhere, and read to, and played with, by a father who hit baseballs to his sons every night without fail and a mother who baked rolls three times a week. What better start for a confident Viking? Then there was the nickname: the Lucky. The truth is I didn’t know anyone luckier than me. Do you need an example? I was born on February 14. Every year they threw a party at school, with treats and cards for everyone. Only vaguely did I understand that all those sugar cookies weren’t baked on my account.</span></span></i></div><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If it were handed to me, then, this ticket to anywhere, anytime, I’d leap to the day </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Leif bought the boat that would take him to the New World. He was in Greenland </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">then and feeling restless. Probably he’d been restless for a while. Even today most </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">people understand the thing to do about restlessness is to buy a boat. Happily, </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">there was a good one on the market. </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It belonged to an old friend of Erik’s named Bjarni Herolfsson. </span></span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRm_32KlcIgRp5P4DWqqD18MYrfNhFkF8v9F0vNxx6jZW5GXwaOelPtiqeYSVrpmqY_BPbh8956Kwv_94IbfCjeWjxHwkiV3Plv_1tyhs2LOfYZ75C9LiP8TTCckn-IutS9K-uifekmWNC/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="325" data-original-width="245" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRm_32KlcIgRp5P4DWqqD18MYrfNhFkF8v9F0vNxx6jZW5GXwaOelPtiqeYSVrpmqY_BPbh8956Kwv_94IbfCjeWjxHwkiV3Plv_1tyhs2LOfYZ75C9LiP8TTCckn-IutS9K-uifekmWNC/" width="181" /></a></span></span></i></div><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></i><p></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Ten years earlier, around 990 AD, Bjarni had been voyaging from Iceland to </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Greenland -- apparently he was racing to catch up with his vacationing father </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">who’d sailed to Greenland ahead of him. In any case a storm developed and blew </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Bjarni’s ship off course. Nordic stoicism aside there was absolutely consternation, </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">fear, men muttering in their drenched furs. When the skies lifted days later there </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">rose up a land that didn’t match any description of Greenland Bjarni had ever </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">heard. Trees swayed in the mild winds; luminous hills rose in the distance. His </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">sailors were enchanted and wanted to go ashore, but Bjarni was tetchy and </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">refused. No unscheduled stops for Bjarni! “Dad needs me in Greenland right now,” </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">he may have said, facing down his exasperated crew. “Don’t you know we are late </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">already?”</span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Could Bjarni have guessed that his thanks for this restraint and remarkable sense </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">of familial duty would be years of Viking mockery? Did he want to be called </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Bjarni </span></span></i><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">the Timid? But he was undeterred. Putting temptation astern they set </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">course for </span></span></i><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Greenland. In fairness, even after reaching Greenland and telling his </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">story, no </span></span></i><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">one </span></span></i><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">else ventured out to try completing Bjarni’s discovery for a full ten </span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">years -- during </span></span></i><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">which Leif was growing up as fast as he could manage. </span></span></i></p><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Here’s the thing about buying a boat: on the day you do it, anything is possible. By the time Bjarni decided to sell, Leif had probably heard six hundred times about the luminous hillsides and the swaying trees. He was dreaming of it. He’d grown up sailing with Erik the Red, so not much scared him. He’d had loads of time to make a plan, and his plan was to round up some sailors and head north and west until he found the intoxicating land Bjarni had seen and decided not to explore. The boat had been there already -- it had done everything but land on the beach. I’m picturing the magnetic attraction this little ship and its history had for Erik’s son, Leif. He was writing history already. He was walking the deck of a book that had almost been written, then been thought better of and scratched out. I’d go back if I could and watch the two men watching each other: the one who turned back, and the one aching to go.</span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That ache is something else I claimed, another piece of birthright. It is now September and I’m writing this aboard my own boat on the inland sea of Lake Superior. Mine is a more modest craft than Leif’s, and my ambitions are less than his as well; but on the day we bought it, Robin and I, we looked at each other and said, This one’s tasted salt. This one’s gone a long way already, and could go a long way still. It seems likely Leif uttered something similar the day he and Bjarni made their bargain. Not out loud -- out loud he probably worried about deck rot and the state of the rigging. And then he made his cautious offer. And Bjarni put out his hand. </span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And suppose he hadn’t? Suppose Bjarni Herolfssson had decided at that point to have another go himself? I’m lucky he didn’t. Because then Leif might’ve stayed home, and the Daulaires might’ve done lithos for a book called Bjarni the Bold. And I would be a guy named Louis writing about my wish to go back in time and spend a long evening in the company of the greatest trumpet player of the 20<sup>th</sup> century. </span></i> </span><br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Thanks, Leif, for being a part of this project and for giving such a fantastic answer. </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-24528374529898447182021-01-15T14:43:00.002-05:002021-01-15T15:01:21.282-05:00 The home of Patti Callahan Henry<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglS8ozENTYPWI4qTMNpAbB7A_y2GdgKy6rCsjLrxaJuAqnnomh9jyUrcxun0qkaS8WfDXmzVhMJmhetFUmjmKG14K4qgjrwFqcdTPLc50sqjeKlx4v-P1w6TPq6UNdG0CqAcBdrkvZT2Ft/s569/Patti+in+doorway.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="569" data-original-width="480" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglS8ozENTYPWI4qTMNpAbB7A_y2GdgKy6rCsjLrxaJuAqnnomh9jyUrcxun0qkaS8WfDXmzVhMJmhetFUmjmKG14K4qgjrwFqcdTPLc50sqjeKlx4v-P1w6TPq6UNdG0CqAcBdrkvZT2Ft/w540-h640/Patti+in+doorway.jpg" width="540" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div> <img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn1GxdzJbl9bqcCf3x6KLRO0j-xCTEegeonbHQkuGW_mRdJTmaJjIkeMuGoYt6oEEyRZuI6GYN-xcn4hLz9MLhd73czbILq7OqGG51ZDrPS2m8ttXbNUuUiKUjzT50iCEbrJ912wLSuTA7/w133-h200/image.png" width="133" /> <img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj25U7JhW7KPVVNJEwQjiOvIKttXrbrL6xX0c4Kb61rl_8M-Zxkj17WvE35I_Zj5ne4owTKkIOKRB7WMqIx5dwwrckUNBmy4flVkyZCjcpeLR-rvzxLLoE7OW2lJkbE6sSoGqno_-LPgEaZ/w150-h200/image.png" width="150" /> <img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimTrbd_uuOMtiHFkNJCUV7pOex8rF2FOzEw1h7v076X1GyKz6IOpBdH0TFFYHhP_UQF8zt8OZQUnBh_3HgKnwHhBs_CQeWwh2FJaJ2LC6SGfTq7IOP0Im9l28x4bAVK0Q7WLutuhqqNqso/w136-h200/image.png" width="136" /> <img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAn2ZggrWb_fVbp-8yG9n6DQxll4VGQlrxxrFZEf3LROzi9xr7yT83OVwBT2xv-pfe9qm5KDT_7MmDh-6PDN3A78rEHd_t_6fcsVan_vh72d8q32Fy_BXEOafDHzVoTX4nu0DbpKwsiJQF/w136-h200/image.png" width="136" /><div><br /></div> <img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOp_rF4KiQcwi-rWOYFa5VfO6Icdq6eu0zttWWZlN0rPWDtDpIfpomIeXmLyZV4B8VfUerviUJCX2U0b8MiEEzMPx0y-XzS8wasHMVgDB-ZKQn5OmQz3cKzWaNsGfCF2BJAOL9q-tLzXI9/w128-h200/image.png" width="128" /> <img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPxzVe7YkW3KGYL6GaC6z_b095zrJ5oTE7MhT3cFcuFM3RsxfLT86WEB5z5c3CeEt_6eUbKxtl7RS6iVsT7J90_vYiWj9PSgypkaiad0Y34EjE6wYLDdlNDfw4a98i2B-KTOQpr3BCzYxu/w133-h200/image.png" width="133" /> <img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3Mf67GW7qJPZPX3-ddCQpM_7ENip1gSg6Di6jObQ7QMA8FdvfQqYvy9QczpJvdwbp-JWPabm5L1OSk7xHf-K7Z0HeXbw3-aZiOFMBwnltzfNxfEixGsmoIO62-Hz6vjGaK9UMFo0A0IIe/w122-h200/image.png" width="122" /> <img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMUFLqLLasn5qUt6cEh823k7Pwn40J9rKJbzSwSz_X7mukc_472SIQANdcU9Ub6rssxuYL8wKJdOPWXOBCWVWlK0f3Zhgu4LyJToo_iA4tBzIYHhgwEPLwgL_a_LNxSq31Riwm-iDOrRQq/w132-h200/image.png" width="132" /><br /><br /> <img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh47D3muBlQ2Yxj7RBx0nX0GozPvXlRkO6V3FR9plx53po_-orfNxu4AFZ3Rcw5bzPr9dKM0qI_sJjNAYHRnYz81i4fa4Bq1uLi2KnWmmjYGh-fPuCSB4rTMhHTBYUnDgE0AwoblhjEfePp/w127-h200/image.png" width="127" /> <img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4riDc_2WratN-nOdzonvs1Re753OBcl7cL0vQV-1JhRtQOSMtalHX9QtkUbluuqLgW33wawmBPX336-zTZXC02nkuXMrwcbFPFheL5MdGALF2d9F0PZXEmCtdHqy9wsfag19uqCSYZqh2/w134-h200/image.png" width="134" /> <img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyXu-fvHHJxRu1s_Mxty3ohw3qLHoQSR0jJ6ga3eHL6thjuQds8hi14k27Jl4huk2Bb8YGvCc5weJF5U1q64tdDnpc7qZH4esSldheAqRjVzOuf0tZAG0W9-XUSyxUK3G9q5FPn-Bcpz8s/w133-h200/image.png" width="133" /> <img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLQdmRHeJWXoMj_vMLiIELVafX-fNRukZrnNxSvjxgUN2x7JDrBpA5k0JsNf1PMae9ZuY71sNQXRFT-PsJxfpUSZ0HF8Fzf15CMjgFqPecOTW-UzenNIAENDbR3sZUInktDVozi2VWEDfA/w133-h200/image.png" width="133" /><div><br /></div> <img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQtWZFLvnOVyV5F0TZTSTy1NkMcf3AsqopI69SJBKvjNJh3e-B_2Vk6FOmYOSXI4I2ksHMYdXqFPV8JyUvcBZYAG56PRVy1BwM-89Wp2g8kQIaD5yviE9aF9jMFUrjLvfaJz3DIYRJ8xqh/w133-h200/image.png" width="133" /> <img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7vQ-VziDl5TEdneIBf7jTM-rL1eNrfAW3pnchoQOGnPXqJVp-aPMt4c4CJEoQ3_Wi_eKxgwfDTuKAw8bfyiX0khwKBNF2R_Fc6bNfeF863vH5irnseXKN7JRufXkLfV6231stIyEihAje/w127-h200/image.png" width="127" /> <img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-MI30bSVbY4T42oT67OU9NQM_lRZEPeVJ7F0ryDRZbF3l3goPQFmpVE3Secyy9X9IWgfYn7NGwqK16iCh_6YL2QzD8TpzJtE8ssPoo4PhZTnumsLjWtLoRt3B-5ITmSdoVl0_5zsyMYw1/w133-h200/image.png" width="133" /> <img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtz_V9hiC12EkMWxfOy4BXM-z8JLbyov3Oaq-sO5zdKJRkxnO0CmFezSriij1oDMhRTrrq2NotJt7KwfHZ43bMEXQsSh7RBE0q0yyCcMrm8OYAd3vAEeG1f-uufhuJsxmD6dMWkWnL0P_O/w133-h200/image.png" width="133" /><div>Whew! That's a lot of book jackets to show. Good for you Patti, well done!</div><div><br /></div><div>I first met Patti Callahan Henry at a SIBA (Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance) Trade Show in Daytona Beach, FL in 2010. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglhkovq1of22imQdiYNqA9kTLF71QI6o6cOaANl9Mi9KYQFpHK31ARgQnn2NiZg8fPsgsklkspzKc4A9ffpKS7hnN-3oiYvVNONoYSa7cEH25fP3IzzAfpDnuBcSwZUgiIIMg4v3cvwX_E/s892/SIBA%252C+Daytona+Beach+2010+Patti+Henry+and+Jon%252C2+OkraPicks+%25282%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="776" data-original-width="892" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglhkovq1of22imQdiYNqA9kTLF71QI6o6cOaANl9Mi9KYQFpHK31ARgQnn2NiZg8fPsgsklkspzKc4A9ffpKS7hnN-3oiYvVNONoYSa7cEH25fP3IzzAfpDnuBcSwZUgiIIMg4v3cvwX_E/w320-h278/SIBA%252C+Daytona+Beach+2010+Patti+Henry+and+Jon%252C2+OkraPicks+%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>I represented one of her publishers and we had a magical dinner together at a local Italian restaurant. Since then we occasionally bump into each other at various functions and it's always a delight to see her. Six years ago, in this blog, I highlighted her career and newest book at the time, <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Idea of Love. </i>This is where I found out that if she could go back in time, she would want to have a few glasses of wine with Aristotle! Click here: <a href="https://advancereadingcopy-jon.blogspot.com/2015/03/patti-callahan-henry.html">Patti Callahan Henry (advancereadingcopy-jon.blogspot.com)</a> to read the post. </div><div><br /></div><div>Patti's next book, <i><b>Surviving Savannah</b></i> <img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1C-ntQUX9jTYKai6WJ8j9P3HgnPifUU130pkmdJ7ckpTngJdMd6akI-DqEOU26kdpf_QRJCR09bOolaXyAMieGA7duF-ifpf520Csm7wkl2rhu9-7Ygi5EzJaLICMcicv-K62xLuDVJ0T/w133-h200/image.png" width="133" />, will be published by <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/602269/surviving-savannah-by-patti-callahan/9781984803757">Berkley</a> and releases in March. </div><div>It sounds sooooo good and is described this way. <i>"It was called “The Titanic of the South.” The luxury steamship sank in 1838 with Savannah’s elite on board; through time, their fates were forgotten–until the wreck was found, and now their story is finally being told in this breathtaking novel."<br /> </i> </div><div>As you know, one of the most popular posts I do on authors is to showcase their homes. So, since Patti is in between writing her next international best seller, I thought it would be nice for you all to see where she hangs out. Below are photos and her descriptions of her beautiful Mountain Brook, AL home. We'll get to meet Winnie, and Patti even did the dishes so we could see her kitchen.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHuWal7ssutnTYyq2bnmneIESSZASttx0zzr6xSIy2oKSO0QYEy9YG-ZIaVCl_AuuBCdtgoJ_p4AiEEqFuCckxZU9okFWhpZEm0dcXzTxBHKq1LET2oZY8o7ZhaAaTlgqLysS391HVOEeL/s2048/Patti+house.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1526" data-original-width="2048" height="475" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHuWal7ssutnTYyq2bnmneIESSZASttx0zzr6xSIy2oKSO0QYEy9YG-ZIaVCl_AuuBCdtgoJ_p4AiEEqFuCckxZU9okFWhpZEm0dcXzTxBHKq1LET2oZY8o7ZhaAaTlgqLysS391HVOEeL/w640-h475/Patti+house.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Patti's gorgeous home in Mountain Brook.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg81MTzV9nzH14UWqPj6znaxa45eyl_PoW5LOGnMj8GilT1X1eqR5UNOlqUN6TVAwFRmwxTNXS-vUbKcyheuWLdW-04jGDBqMDrhBJkFY91uOeTcDglT-05hzB5Fgssx6OP-2PHhjGdv5xT/s1280/Patti+1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="821" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg81MTzV9nzH14UWqPj6znaxa45eyl_PoW5LOGnMj8GilT1X1eqR5UNOlqUN6TVAwFRmwxTNXS-vUbKcyheuWLdW-04jGDBqMDrhBJkFY91uOeTcDglT-05hzB5Fgssx6OP-2PHhjGdv5xT/w410-h640/Patti+1.jpg" width="410" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Come right in!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_8GlxBmZzSh7lPl71IwNwNcb9v1uvRPizoSXALb7yS-vNtTEWc-kKjUMw5FuRfM09fLJ21jcQTVG7bidzNawioauDeCwoE0s8R6qGP4Pxm_GW9-8yHDupIA5_a3FjpuBiBrNovE5l16et/s1280/Patti+4.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="863" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_8GlxBmZzSh7lPl71IwNwNcb9v1uvRPizoSXALb7yS-vNtTEWc-kKjUMw5FuRfM09fLJ21jcQTVG7bidzNawioauDeCwoE0s8R6qGP4Pxm_GW9-8yHDupIA5_a3FjpuBiBrNovE5l16et/w432-h640/Patti+4.jpg" width="432" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"One wall of my office. The painting was done by a dear friend, Caryn Crawford, who saw a photo I posted of the May River at dawn in Bluffton, SC. This river, which is actually a bay, is my place of solace and I often post pictures of it. She saw what it meant to me and painted this beautiful piece of art. The mantle was once crowded with loads of photos and artifacts and favorite pieces but when I received this painting I cleaned it all off so it could be centered in my room."</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCMHyudZzOgadMhyphenhyphenVzaWt6ce8xz3XL2n9U2mpO31Cvw0LL1R7_aRSVzC7724-4sNzgF-ijh-66YJeP4gPQeyBaRqY4uQWTkUlcKnxNbsbM8eNnClZzOqpTZ5Vt8gT4BMKPzZQe5KtP_Tgi/s1280/Patti+9.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCMHyudZzOgadMhyphenhyphenVzaWt6ce8xz3XL2n9U2mpO31Cvw0LL1R7_aRSVzC7724-4sNzgF-ijh-66YJeP4gPQeyBaRqY4uQWTkUlcKnxNbsbM8eNnClZzOqpTZ5Vt8gT4BMKPzZQe5KtP_Tgi/w480-h640/Patti+9.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Living Room and Winnie</span></div><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdpRG3wEU_Hd5PyvpC5jyulOm_wB2FnqmpfJdiFpInJ1xVh87SPc9cKWv0GIdfGmCR5iuAdmgLCHAqm4SwhTlQxQ5y7R-Wp6ZChjQHsZZa2DDDl8Ho3qNg4TNSoPmDzCucSZYoREu0mLt9/s1280/Patti+3.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdpRG3wEU_Hd5PyvpC5jyulOm_wB2FnqmpfJdiFpInJ1xVh87SPc9cKWv0GIdfGmCR5iuAdmgLCHAqm4SwhTlQxQ5y7R-Wp6ZChjQHsZZa2DDDl8Ho3qNg4TNSoPmDzCucSZYoREu0mLt9/w480-h640/Patti+3.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"My office looking from my desk, Winnie is anywhere I am! She’s almost four years old, we got her the weekend my youngest graduated from High School!"</span> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbJ7SPE1ed4pUqMBrRnzVJcKjCBXt_82R47x_JH2HiVK70AaunCJiyLW6QIohB07pl47GS9tRfKh_i_EdimNOq_GhizxZoZeOH3Rgje1OHQv9-OQWy3Qjc26SegULIRsKzLYutAk1Glu4j/s1223/Patti+5.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1223" data-original-width="960" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbJ7SPE1ed4pUqMBrRnzVJcKjCBXt_82R47x_JH2HiVK70AaunCJiyLW6QIohB07pl47GS9tRfKh_i_EdimNOq_GhizxZoZeOH3Rgje1OHQv9-OQWy3Qjc26SegULIRsKzLYutAk1Glu4j/w502-h640/Patti+5.jpg" width="502" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"On my table:</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Vintage lettering PCH from a flea market in Paris on my 50th birthday with my daughter. </span></span><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A paper weight with "Courage, Dear Heart" — a quote from Narnia’s Aslan.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A fossil of a feather imprint.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A tiny tray with “our hearts are very old friends” from a dear friend.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A photo of my daughter, Meagan, with me at my very first book signing in 2004.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Two photos of my sons at the beach years ago. </span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A photo of the front door of the small schoolhouse on Daufuskie Island where Pat Conroy once taught, taken by my close friend and photographer <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://sandeeo.com&source=gmail&ust=1610466838478000&usg=AFQjCNHCmJu0ZFU5QNQl_TzdDONQD0X5Wg" href="http://sandeeo.com/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">Sandee O</a>.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A paper weight with three red cardinals (an ode to the beginning of my book <i><b>Coming up for Air</b></i>) </span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A picture of me at my desk with my beloved dog, Hank, who passed about four years ago. He never left my side. </span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Two Wonder Woman figurines given to me by another dear friend.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Antique books on spelling and writing also given to me by Sandee O.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The always present John O’Donohue and <i><b>The Artist’s Way</b></i> to dip into whenever I need them — which is often."</span><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-size: small;"> </span></div></div><div><br style="text-align: start;" /></div></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs77SBzLo207EgeH10VpP0wKwaiHiBC7vFzZQUAFTmLkS58Mj04NVz3WxpZaDUbb8DYaBxAZK8ieqsdmwn2D4jS-i7FOaz_xcNv5SMXe6QxDiWeAZWtYOKy7a4a6JIZmqoGbqrJlEpsnRm/s1280/Patti+6.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs77SBzLo207EgeH10VpP0wKwaiHiBC7vFzZQUAFTmLkS58Mj04NVz3WxpZaDUbb8DYaBxAZK8ieqsdmwn2D4jS-i7FOaz_xcNv5SMXe6QxDiWeAZWtYOKy7a4a6JIZmqoGbqrJlEpsnRm/w640-h480/Patti+6.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"My very, very messy bookshelves. The half angel-half mermaid was given to me by the author <a href="https://draft.blogger.com/u/1/#">Mary Alice Monroe</a> and I love how the angel watches over me. </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The little doll figurine on the bottom right is a handmade replica of <a href="https://draft.blogger.com/u/1/#">Joy Davidman</a>. </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">There are crystals and rocks and feathers that I’ve gathered all through the years scattered about the shelves. </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The awards include the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year and the Christy Award book of the year."</span></div></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV7PYzwvMSFPq5uzrIdtPhcP53DQgffKdTHWcI6VJRT5oGMSmve7gd1JIKpG_m6Z7CkBvPu6uXokBsXvBtRubAXsk8012WCWwIk9ulY4uga2J5PdNFja2eYsGebmU6EiD5_4tDIQ4x9RtG/s808/Patti+8+%25282%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV7PYzwvMSFPq5uzrIdtPhcP53DQgffKdTHWcI6VJRT5oGMSmve7gd1JIKpG_m6Z7CkBvPu6uXokBsXvBtRubAXsk8012WCWwIk9ulY4uga2J5PdNFja2eYsGebmU6EiD5_4tDIQ4x9RtG/w640-h430/Patti+8+%25282%2529.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"My bulletin board that I cleaned up just for you😊! Included: A quote by Jack Kerouac. A photo of me in the Bird and Baby pub in Oxford, England, cheering Jack Lewis. My kids when they were little. A coaster from a pub in Ireland that inspired the pub in The Favorite Daughter. A picture of the luggage name tag found at the bottom of the sea after almost two hundred years that belongs to my character in Surviving Savannah (so crazy — it’s the only luggage tag they’ve found so far, and it’s from the woman I had written about). A poem about trust with a fantastic line “And sometimes you can see how faithfully your life is delivered, even though you can’t read the address.” A photo of my favorite bike path in Bluffton, SC. A photo from a newspaper of Joy Lewis (C S. Lewis wife) and her dog Susie right before her miraculous recovery in in 1957. Postcards from friends. A postcard from Muscle Shoals AL. A postcard from a restaurant in NYC where I made a decision to work on a project I am still working on..."</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"> </div> </div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoInon0cwmrx7OCETw1iXNFBbcSJF_uL6mq0C9rQ1-4hZuqxUHQYb5l0IY6DMK9DjQwlZN2A-AjFYRCPl3Cca3UOSII50enIld2-uoiYmflUxiU3-JvChvKD7nFf6JwDkxMU4V0nCT8ZrZ/s947/Patti10+%25282%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="805" data-original-width="947" height="544" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoInon0cwmrx7OCETw1iXNFBbcSJF_uL6mq0C9rQ1-4hZuqxUHQYb5l0IY6DMK9DjQwlZN2A-AjFYRCPl3Cca3UOSII50enIld2-uoiYmflUxiU3-JvChvKD7nFf6JwDkxMU4V0nCT8ZrZ/w640-h544/Patti10+%25282%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Our winter back garden."</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4bzwiOPK70JJEfAwGXW_ZTfz87365bcMQgvC6M093Jtbk-WooVNVrscCS44kSvljaiB7k6VNiQOTFiVKdOBLqn6k7rwKBvy0kVcLnn04x8v0RZDlnCa4HmtgDie58k-YYoCwV17fAzSlA/s400/SurvivingSavannahBannerAd+%25282%2529.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="125" data-original-width="400" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4bzwiOPK70JJEfAwGXW_ZTfz87365bcMQgvC6M093Jtbk-WooVNVrscCS44kSvljaiB7k6VNiQOTFiVKdOBLqn6k7rwKBvy0kVcLnn04x8v0RZDlnCa4HmtgDie58k-YYoCwV17fAzSlA/w486-h164/SurvivingSavannahBannerAd+%25282%2529.png" width="486" /></a></div><br /> </div></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihRkiP1DbScHi3o4B64myqjFyqqnFqPNwth0YwVnonK6tMiVw5DE-QYPcmXuKoFWkWTR5G9pAiTfSpejHx4YqFYNIa3WqYWRmbtrNoHup1-rdB_QkV1EA6awFOkcy_Gs6ggbgQtMsg_mBt/s1280/Patti+11.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihRkiP1DbScHi3o4B64myqjFyqqnFqPNwth0YwVnonK6tMiVw5DE-QYPcmXuKoFWkWTR5G9pAiTfSpejHx4YqFYNIa3WqYWRmbtrNoHup1-rdB_QkV1EA6awFOkcy_Gs6ggbgQtMsg_mBt/w480-h640/Patti+11.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"The back porch (where I hide sometimes)"</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXnRSSzehXno9yVOzSLl7syd5_4VW7aQs7Dct1-39i5EVmOnv46YwPPuwt5qCOKc5hMk2Y1FOBlK9qloNPjIrGAUL6UYlVTdJH6ji4ES-zy9l0i-yZMxjtRce96cYx487T8spOUAGvdNJh/s1248/Patti+12.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1248" data-original-width="960" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXnRSSzehXno9yVOzSLl7syd5_4VW7aQs7Dct1-39i5EVmOnv46YwPPuwt5qCOKc5hMk2Y1FOBlK9qloNPjIrGAUL6UYlVTdJH6ji4ES-zy9l0i-yZMxjtRce96cYx487T8spOUAGvdNJh/w492-h640/Patti+12.jpg" width="492" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Kitchen in winter morning light." </span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">(Thanks for doing all the dishes just for me, Patti!)</span></div><div> </div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOa_okq_RZA9Fz8A5QdtrM2huLx3Kwqd_8Gklyle7OEGy6SUX8pa7mNPMMNBX2qdq9Pl2UMPN1M5pgM0QxBPs8iiwj7KGSQEKlQXRhF2n8Hvlrl49qqeWWRSGfGFTYKGAAVX-w7egasXKE/s1133/Patti.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1133" data-original-width="961" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOa_okq_RZA9Fz8A5QdtrM2huLx3Kwqd_8Gklyle7OEGy6SUX8pa7mNPMMNBX2qdq9Pl2UMPN1M5pgM0QxBPs8iiwj7KGSQEKlQXRhF2n8Hvlrl49qqeWWRSGfGFTYKGAAVX-w7egasXKE/w542-h640/Patti.jpg" width="542" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Our dining room. I found the mirror in Savannah and had to have it even though I didn’t know where I’d put it. Sometimes we have to trust that something we are attracted to will find its place."</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Thank you Patti, not only for sharing your beautiful home with us, but also for all the wonderful stories you have told and fascinating people you have brought to our hearts and eyes.</span><br /><div><br /></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-14230471843487876772020-12-13T11:44:00.008-05:002020-12-14T16:39:46.035-05:00Peter Van Den Ende<p style="text-align: left;"> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf0monrmbrBdNXgw-mRz45iVHXovRTZKrrbh215D_tG_0lnF9Rj_UN4Wv99JCN_oNTTJCmj13zBtHMkRtejtdhv5q56ebrI4nfwPaMaE37MFlhDgSDzaLqkia51-nRGd1V5VdtCI5N6GyX/s1372/Peter2.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1372" data-original-width="1330" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf0monrmbrBdNXgw-mRz45iVHXovRTZKrrbh215D_tG_0lnF9Rj_UN4Wv99JCN_oNTTJCmj13zBtHMkRtejtdhv5q56ebrI4nfwPaMaE37MFlhDgSDzaLqkia51-nRGd1V5VdtCI5N6GyX/w621-h640/Peter2.JPG" width="621" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG4UUUW7z8rxuTvQ55n-ytwEV5VgTMGu_ovEyglE6yTF2_0Cz9H2jvvdGb-q7tfvzYcztRmfZ8AHTzAy-0gVySHjfNnhuv02ABUv0x0HohYfJxxW3pTSVZ7FfsJA0WQgpWfzjy_TZQH5WY/s962/Wanderer.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="962" data-original-width="768" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG4UUUW7z8rxuTvQ55n-ytwEV5VgTMGu_ovEyglE6yTF2_0Cz9H2jvvdGb-q7tfvzYcztRmfZ8AHTzAy-0gVySHjfNnhuv02ABUv0x0HohYfJxxW3pTSVZ7FfsJA0WQgpWfzjy_TZQH5WY/w510-h640/Wanderer.jpg" width="510" /></a></div><br /><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">New York Times</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> chose </span><b style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Wanderer</i></b><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Peter Van Den Ende (</span><a href="https://www.levinequerido.com/" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;" target="_blank">Levine Querido</a>)<span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as one of the 25 best picture books of 2020!</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">T</span>he instant I opened this magical book, I was captivated. Peter's illustrations are stunning, there is so much detail on every page of this ever evolving story. He describes it this way "<i>Each page represents an emotion, </i></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; text-indent: -0.25in;"><i>each domain (reef, mangroves, artic, pollution, deep-sea…) represents a theme (Diversity of life, curiosity, loneliness, frustration, depression,…)"</i></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #050505;">He doesn't want to tell the reader what the illustrations meant to him when he drew them because he wants the reader to live the story in their own personal way. The paperboat hero is saying </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Don't look at me, look all around me at our world."</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia;">One of the advantages of creating a wordless book is the story can go a million different directions because every reader has a unique perspective on what's going on in each illustration.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia;">Here's the synopsis: <i>A tiny paper boat sets off and begins its very long passage toward its home. To get there it has to travel across many astonishing, beautiful oceans, full to the brim with strange creatures and horrible monsters, swept by harrowing storms and sailing by magical ships. Will the Wanderer pick the safe path through all these deadly hazzards to find its home?</i></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Selznick" target="_blank">Brian Selznick</a> of the <i>NYT</i>'s described Peter's art this way:</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>"The technical aspect of the work is mind-boggling, especially the masterly crosshatching. Staring at the images, I couldn’t stop imagining Van den Ende, pen in hand, drawing each line, one after the other, creating work that seems to defy the passage of time, and all known resources of patience and imagination. Imagine Shaun Tan having an aquatic love child with Edward Gorey, from a family tree that includes Tim Burton, Salvador Dalí and Jacques Cousteau, and you’ll begin to get the idea … but not quite."</i></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ouimet" target="_blank">David Ouimet</a>, well-known author of the prize-winning book <a href="https://advancereadingcopy-jon.blogspot.com/2020/02/david-ouimet.html" target="_blank">I Go Quiet</a>, had this to say:</i> </span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="background-color: white;">"The young Belgian illustrator Peter Van Den Ende has created a truly unique masterpiece of storytelling </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">in his debut picture book, <i>The Wanderer</i> . The unlikely hero of this wordless journey </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">is a paper boat who travels through five oceans to an unknown destination. Van Den Ende's work recalls the intricate </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">line work of M.C. Escher along with the imaginative playfulness of Shaun Tan's work; yet it is a singular vision </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">in its own league. How so much emotion can be conveyed through a folded piece of traveling though wonder, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">danger, and hope is a miraculous achievement." </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi1UmiJnoL0vR4wgDjfnv8rqNjmumtrHLr_NSIZvdzso-SQYns3gpyT1GcvVXj3wrZIYxTugl8fCLwbq-o_m8T499XVwklbxvr5FexaYUYiFcHTzG1oegwzIZb_2OYz26RZNYf5TY7Tq5S/s2048/Zwerveling_Moederschip.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1505" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi1UmiJnoL0vR4wgDjfnv8rqNjmumtrHLr_NSIZvdzso-SQYns3gpyT1GcvVXj3wrZIYxTugl8fCLwbq-o_m8T499XVwklbxvr5FexaYUYiFcHTzG1oegwzIZb_2OYz26RZNYf5TY7Tq5S/w470-h640/Zwerveling_Moederschip.jpg" width="470" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Wanderer Illustration</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVOq35JiVbPadQ9qHlbbcXCyzQPunEsxh50YDUBeEDYfILGZ27zr9EIiL9bHwCOVXNKIK9Gq7koWRq-XVxJoQCQRAWpXG12VuCnCTVwXcL6HZsqWNzce7iayaLlqSOo8S1KaeHaBCaIQCJ/s2048/Zwerveling_Mangroven.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1318" data-original-width="2048" height="412" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVOq35JiVbPadQ9qHlbbcXCyzQPunEsxh50YDUBeEDYfILGZ27zr9EIiL9bHwCOVXNKIK9Gq7koWRq-XVxJoQCQRAWpXG12VuCnCTVwXcL6HZsqWNzce7iayaLlqSOo8S1KaeHaBCaIQCJ/w640-h412/Zwerveling_Mangroven.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Wanderer Illustration</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b style="text-align: left;"><i>Here is my interview:</i></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></b></div><i><b>Peter, tell me about where you live now and why you love it so much.</b></i><div><b><i><br /></i></b><div><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">"I live in an old apartment close to the center
of Antwerp (city in Belgium).</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt_BajBsvaIF5udoWPlDlVKT-q1n0Vmmf82bAgVT4qVzvnnahjlolnOHrXQG3gTmUnxKEr1tz8nQiCmzcm9ylH-dW9tVQeMkVytl92xTAsDVg0yCqxnrLZlzcLUalOn3HGEBIpSh1e_jpd/s1600/BELGIUM+2MAP+%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1130" data-original-width="1600" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt_BajBsvaIF5udoWPlDlVKT-q1n0Vmmf82bAgVT4qVzvnnahjlolnOHrXQG3gTmUnxKEr1tz8nQiCmzcm9ylH-dW9tVQeMkVytl92xTAsDVg0yCqxnrLZlzcLUalOn3HGEBIpSh1e_jpd/w640-h452/BELGIUM+2MAP+%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Sometimes I still miss my life on Grand Cayman
(where I worked for 2 years) but there I would miss the gloominess of Belgium. I
love autumn and winter. Close by my home there is a forest next to the river
Schelde where I love going to empty my brain and escape the busy world.<div> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJfSXphN_CeSuYgpgZYdoaniOM8ZIDSg_iSwZvXiVFDxqaBbVcc3rsUc1k8dIoJ9o1-75n1UNkxE9HZf5o8NlAYAjjmG2liNuJlrJeYw7bl21W3YligNZeBpu7b7S_DOeVZE9Et7XafmpR/s1024/river.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="469" data-original-width="1024" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJfSXphN_CeSuYgpgZYdoaniOM8ZIDSg_iSwZvXiVFDxqaBbVcc3rsUc1k8dIoJ9o1-75n1UNkxE9HZf5o8NlAYAjjmG2liNuJlrJeYw7bl21W3YligNZeBpu7b7S_DOeVZE9Et7XafmpR/w640-h294/river.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">River Schelde</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Unfortunately,
there is not a lot of nature to find here. Homo Sapiens are a greedy species
when it comes to territory.<o:p></o:p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b><i>Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they
fond memories?</i></b> </p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">When I
was seven, I also lived in Antwerp.</span></p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.25in;"></p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4n0V3B3TXOMqbdcenCMyNoeYiAMba2IUhAUcOaPp9Wi8seRxx8UXUj5Mqzh6m0abQvWAIuYoaoCxWhplnR-GInSvkZsZjEbFma9UWtckRE37WostAMItBYN5xfHJDcxmChp7vwHKXeK9t/s1180/Antwerp2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="663" data-original-width="1180" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4n0V3B3TXOMqbdcenCMyNoeYiAMba2IUhAUcOaPp9Wi8seRxx8UXUj5Mqzh6m0abQvWAIuYoaoCxWhplnR-GInSvkZsZjEbFma9UWtckRE37WostAMItBYN5xfHJDcxmChp7vwHKXeK9t/w640-h360/Antwerp2.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />I loved being a child! I loved the
adventure of it. Looking back, some events from childhood can feel like the
stuff of legends now, even if it was just playing together with friends in a
forest. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh09MsOHtDTl-9k8SWq5WMCvZ4mFO4hdkRKgCj7Wxz-a16sVgcK7Shu6C6i7ibVuapDK3bPF3GHamj-u18Qodbw8rLtpORzpUVbmAE1aS22rOEp6JQiGgogwlIG2F51ZTnirsZvniMwmOLe/s682/Small+Peter.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="656" data-original-width="682" height="385" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh09MsOHtDTl-9k8SWq5WMCvZ4mFO4hdkRKgCj7Wxz-a16sVgcK7Shu6C6i7ibVuapDK3bPF3GHamj-u18Qodbw8rLtpORzpUVbmAE1aS22rOEp6JQiGgogwlIG2F51ZTnirsZvniMwmOLe/w400-h385/Small+Peter.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Young Peter</span></td></tr></tbody></table>Imagination can transform reality into a dreamworld. I don’t think I
have changed a lot when I think about this aspect of childhood. <o:p></o:p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Gan0NdCSvsms8c5HkgSZIY27xSFWXpCbdNpQCfLjTcc52fx7TlY-khBbaUJhI-nPBLl4pzPiZDWHZQIMEYYq46BEQcEy5gk2AILGw1MN2fv6GW2SliJPZCU_74OAhCCpjiQklSTQ8GW3/s2048/Zwerveling_Zeehaas.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1509" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Gan0NdCSvsms8c5HkgSZIY27xSFWXpCbdNpQCfLjTcc52fx7TlY-khBbaUJhI-nPBLl4pzPiZDWHZQIMEYYq46BEQcEy5gk2AILGw1MN2fv6GW2SliJPZCU_74OAhCCpjiQklSTQ8GW3/w472-h640/Zwerveling_Zeehaas.jpg" width="472" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">From Wanderer</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: left;"><b><i>Did you have a favorite teacher when you were young and are
you still in touch with her or him?</i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><o:p></o:p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">When I was a teenager, I went to art school. Mr.
Stremes must have been one of my favorite art-teachers. He wasn’t very popular
with my classmates because he was difficult to convince with our work. But
that’s what I love about him! Art is not easy; you can’t expect to get an
applause for everything you make during your learning process. He taught me to
look at my own stuff with a critical eye. Learning is about falling many times,
and getting back up to do it better.</span></p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.25in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b><i>Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?</i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><o:p></o:p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span lang="NL-BE" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><i>Paradise Lost</i> by John Milton!</span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span lang="NL-BE"></span></p><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijfcdwGcAj0B83R05XOfgGredDOA3Ov7JZsmg11LDGp5TR8K9LVV00WNa1vpOoFfxUVEGFeHK9eczTFYih6Ut9mrfsm6pCicGe2KDykgeQCImaDeZaQq6X_MgCjxRAkLDtN9reuzq1XuoI/w125-h200/Paradise-Lost-book-cover.jpg" width="125" /> When I was writing my letter of resignation from my job as a nature
guide on the Cayman Islands, I was doubting about it very much. After all, I
earned good money, life was easy and I lived in paradise. I loved my job there; it was an absolute joy to do. But there is a difference between having fun and
feeling gratification. I had to come back to Belgium and try to become an
illustrator. By following this path I would lose a lot of certainty in life (I also
didn’t have a portfolio or a publisher yet) so life would become a lot harder
than living in paradise. But, I would be free! When sending my letter of
resignation I thought about the famous quote in Satan’s speech in Book 1 from <i>Paradise Lost</i>. “Better
to reign in Hell, then serve in Heaven." Isn’t it
better to lead a difficult life doing what gives you a deep sense of gratification,
than leading an easy life of superficial joy under the roof of a big company?
Sometimes when this job gets hard, for whatever reason, I go back to the
seemingly heroic Satan from <i>Paradise Lost</i>. In fact, the book lies here on my
desk.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuoKlEK_shBm9nNPWr8WIAKlRrSh_gH6HQFCJTu4lsdlF0jEN3ESZAhDJIPD8YGIBOJrzPbNVvl-Oc4czyZuWjxaFA7hTti-x-IeO-ZLGz37pKvyo3wUI7Afs9AcnefEl1FoU_sCkTjemf/s1392/Zwerveling-2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1392" data-original-width="1011" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuoKlEK_shBm9nNPWr8WIAKlRrSh_gH6HQFCJTu4lsdlF0jEN3ESZAhDJIPD8YGIBOJrzPbNVvl-Oc4czyZuWjxaFA7hTti-x-IeO-ZLGz37pKvyo3wUI7Afs9AcnefEl1FoU_sCkTjemf/w464-h640/Zwerveling-2.jpg" width="464" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">From Wanderer</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: left;"><i><b>Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it
makes it so?</b></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><o:p></o:p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Difficult question because the answer changes. Right
now, it would be <i>De Schepping,</i>written by Bart Moeyaert. It was first published in 2003, and is brilliantly illustrated by Wolf Erlbruch.</span><span style="text-align: right;"> </span></p><div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;"><span><div style="text-align: center;"> <img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-BLCYUc-P8xpF29gGyO3tMWkDBOjXMqLPUBERfwiPIu1CMGQAeg_qm5hAJw7p4wU5j9N1BcAJZGx7ML-zYe9aLwe5pJNKI3Wj678BWJHBWQ_RhYgFBsZmmSSCmtheMzu_cL1ERngptR-S/w266-h320/book.jpg" width="266" /> </div></span></div><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: left;">It’s the first part of a trilogy and can be read by both children and adults. In this first part, Bart retells
the story of God who creates the universe while a man stands/sits beside him to
behold everything in awe. At the same time the man is questioning God’s
creation and wonders what his place between everything else might be.
It’s written in a very poetic style and makes me question my own desires in
life. <o:p></o:p></p><p style="text-align: left;">This year I had the privilege to re-illustrate
the three parts together in one book, </p><p style="text-align: left;">(<i>Het Hele Leven</i> by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_Moeyaert" target="_blank">Bart Moeyaert</a>) in a more adult style.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-8UzPwLFZDTlun09p1aCVDaUSibwrTZA4QdjotiSM6AzUt0CxOmD6fDu2qgAMgqX1QmWJNaT_s6fVfmBEXIODmmGqHF4A_S-LroVkRO4-W-rrLSq0vBfiPSTj19bYUalm9IEuktJ3q0eX/s900/Het+hele+Leven.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="563" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-8UzPwLFZDTlun09p1aCVDaUSibwrTZA4QdjotiSM6AzUt0CxOmD6fDu2qgAMgqX1QmWJNaT_s6fVfmBEXIODmmGqHF4A_S-LroVkRO4-W-rrLSq0vBfiPSTj19bYUalm9IEuktJ3q0eX/w125-h200/Het+hele+Leven.jpg" width="125" /></a></p>So, I
read it many times, and found different meanings in it.<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc0doD-zlHgSj0K7eT8F72sslBqpWCG02zYqpt6pWaut6YTym7M_oSeTfsEJRgsycjo7bxiH_XSIBfHkA6f0I-cv1DAnLX-9Jy7x-gjDVHRqcfq7GLITWrKfQmG0OriJzhqlX0CKG0F3c6/s2048/Zwerveling_Robot.jpg"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1500" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc0doD-zlHgSj0K7eT8F72sslBqpWCG02zYqpt6pWaut6YTym7M_oSeTfsEJRgsycjo7bxiH_XSIBfHkA6f0I-cv1DAnLX-9Jy7x-gjDVHRqcfq7GLITWrKfQmG0OriJzhqlX0CKG0F3c6/w468-h640/Zwerveling_Robot.jpg" width="468" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: georgia; font-size: xx-small; white-space: pre-wrap;">From Wanderer</span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqrZlgGOqgKuaGfr4qZxlIGoFnFHTbgb3aEcySCa_cUXUhssaworZqquKaaP2Pw0vg6or82ppUZy5gb3E461lWe6moymL_hkd6xSx558_wkNN_uMBcabEN-Vj5UJeypQVmjiOPyyp3jJpP/s600/Little+Fox+600x160.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="160" data-original-width="600" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqrZlgGOqgKuaGfr4qZxlIGoFnFHTbgb3aEcySCa_cUXUhssaworZqquKaaP2Pw0vg6or82ppUZy5gb3E461lWe6moymL_hkd6xSx558_wkNN_uMBcabEN-Vj5UJeypQVmjiOPyyp3jJpP/w640-h170/Little+Fox+600x160.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table></span><p class="MsoNormal"><i><b>Is there a song, singer, or group that you listen to when you
are feeling a bit down?</b></i></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span>Alexander Scriabin. I love his ‘<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X--eLCd07yU" target="_blank">Mysterium</a>’ because it helps me to see my problems for the tiny things they often are.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzE_fW4agYZvVogkMOR6sGbhxgD02oVl2MJ18AUK0l4AniEZv_OpyJ1KWDsnBzbQD6hSp9HNkMM247V7KR5KB_dxpvZ-7XxbQmWhR6jKgcXQExjDrGnSTXo5F1gmxj_hFDYmkkTp8yVxmM/s918/alexander-nikolayevich-scriabin.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="918" data-original-width="763" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzE_fW4agYZvVogkMOR6sGbhxgD02oVl2MJ18AUK0l4AniEZv_OpyJ1KWDsnBzbQD6hSp9HNkMM247V7KR5KB_dxpvZ-7XxbQmWhR6jKgcXQExjDrGnSTXo5F1gmxj_hFDYmkkTp8yVxmM/s320/alexander-nikolayevich-scriabin.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Alexander Scriabin</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />When
listening to this three-part orchestral work, it feels like you are being launched naked
into space. I imagine going much faster than light, passing planets, stars, and
whole galaxies. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNYQ3wBYjq4GNz5IRGk2A7JkT710JENJ-P4Sqp0jnlaqqOXqoCdtEFI1vObY5j1RucIAf5OcqxLC9vb9DtCFG-O2mBnJE1PRQ8TzFI0yJq1aymAAKVuLwAKT8ovUwttHf2kHLPwdn2rqbS/s1057/Beyond-the-horizon-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="532" data-original-width="1057" height="322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNYQ3wBYjq4GNz5IRGk2A7JkT710JENJ-P4Sqp0jnlaqqOXqoCdtEFI1vObY5j1RucIAf5OcqxLC9vb9DtCFG-O2mBnJE1PRQ8TzFI0yJq1aymAAKVuLwAKT8ovUwttHf2kHLPwdn2rqbS/w640-h322/Beyond-the-horizon-1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />After a while your imagination takes you so far that you can imagine
the fabrics of the universe. Maybe when seeing infinity, or everything that
exits, from a distance I could understand it a little bit.<o:p></o:p><p></p><p>It doesn’t always help, sometimes the desires
of the heart ask for a more practical solution.</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"><o:p></o:p></p><p><b><i>How would you say you are different now than you were in
your teens?</i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">I have more worries now. But that’s normal, I
think.</span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p>When I was a teen, I led a carefree life. I
didn’t really have much of a social life back then and I was completely fine
with that. So, I spent a lot of time exploring the things that fascinated me
and developed my imagination. In my twenties I met one of my best friends and
that made me look at my life in a different way. Having good friends became
really important.</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast">I’m grateful that my grown-up worries didn’t
take the place of my imagination. That part is still very much alive. I
always felt that my imagination was a big part of my identity. Making books
feels like I am making a clone of myself. <i><b>The Wanderer</b></i> is just one aspect of
it. Hopefully I can make many more books addressing other aspects, including
the bad ones (because otherwise it would be an incomplete clone).<o:p></o:p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoZg9qVBp9MVs2255Iy1dbcdtmCKu4MdfPKlIE2TGKCn6W5eb0tSPLZCClFFrWyN-dVvI7OP1o-sl4epwEqXWazspL36wtEfLVOjBYhgJPnfLcanCPu1IRk2BQ9v79LVsrJFBEvYtp1mQf/s2048/Zwerveling-1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1318" data-original-width="2048" height="412" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoZg9qVBp9MVs2255Iy1dbcdtmCKu4MdfPKlIE2TGKCn6W5eb0tSPLZCClFFrWyN-dVvI7OP1o-sl4epwEqXWazspL36wtEfLVOjBYhgJPnfLcanCPu1IRk2BQ9v79LVsrJFBEvYtp1mQf/w640-h412/Zwerveling-1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">From Wanderer</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiarTo4DBLGCGqqsfQ2J3t2gye65jqSCPXBsB1rA004ubVqQz3YWYchu1ikfcIyw1z8IFuszqRkHYd-1P9LOW4fYiOs1nYXGbF7U0zv2dhRs0FR1GH8WOjeEgUy818aT3Thikwks-KfxE4f/s458/Peter%252Bvan%252Bden%252BEnde%252B%25281%2529.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="458" data-original-width="446" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiarTo4DBLGCGqqsfQ2J3t2gye65jqSCPXBsB1rA004ubVqQz3YWYchu1ikfcIyw1z8IFuszqRkHYd-1P9LOW4fYiOs1nYXGbF7U0zv2dhRs0FR1GH8WOjeEgUy818aT3Thikwks-KfxE4f/s320/Peter%252Bvan%252Bden%252BEnde%252B%25281%2529.png" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Peter Van Den Ende</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast">And in a short essay…………………………</p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><u>IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN
TIME</u><o:p></o:p></i></b></p><p><b><i>to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,</i></b></p><p><b><i>be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if
appropriate to your choice,</i></b></p><p><b><i>actually experience what it was like to live in that time,
anywhere at all,</i></b></p><p><b><i>meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them,
be with them.</i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">This
answer always changes! It could be somewhere in the Middle Ages or ancient
Egypt. Right now I would go back to the Carboniferous period, between 298 and 358 million
years ago.</span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSfem2eEDHn_HLbYEylCRqHZU3dvDdj8EUbUjbsz7ILh1pz_8K0Ju2O5cHpLDR6_0kgYB5RwKt8o5bksmvppnfF_S_RuXN632wokGqi5CiEg-QJ2yCx2zrpnZXxvA9re-GfY-NZ_M7qH74/s1000/Carboniferous-Period.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="617" data-original-width="1000" height="394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSfem2eEDHn_HLbYEylCRqHZU3dvDdj8EUbUjbsz7ILh1pz_8K0Ju2O5cHpLDR6_0kgYB5RwKt8o5bksmvppnfF_S_RuXN632wokGqi5CiEg-QJ2yCx2zrpnZXxvA9re-GfY-NZ_M7qH74/w640-h394/Carboniferous-Period.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />It is a time long before the first dinosaurs, when the world was full
of strange animals on land and under water. In that aspect I would also want to
go back further in time, all the way to the Cambrium. <p></p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-outline-level: 1;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->I would explore both the underwater world and
forests back then. Plant life was very different (prehistoric scale
trees, ferns, conifers, and cycads).</p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-outline-level: 1;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGqPmKWgDLcbvZy0xsVeKizkbkVeuGlk4VgtQ-4w1oh2z3raRl_NnYLxpXucoOwlXTejkpHTlzBWZMtM9Mg1GF_LyKaBETBQNxetRc_9DFPUYJn6Cgo2DmkdWYR0RHY2OVRi9dVIr6TVv_/w640-h480/carboniferous+.jpg" /></p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-outline-level: 1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -0.25in;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">I would have to do a lot of research first.
Under water I would want a general impression of the life forms there. </span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Prehistoric cephalopods (orthocones and ammonites) would interest me the most
since they are my favorite group of animals today. On land I would love to see
arthropods. Back then they where a lot bigger then they are now.</span></p> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnLVO6VVc9DsBIolij4SBoJErCsoaJEEtaKIh9jZpRXiMEFUbPpRRC7_2FwxATkuAgTVDnnTO6xaVDgSahYglpXWaoODdgiN8NwCGwvOcX42WROnepupHBcnzYTkNMHzJ0YRuQ2zeygsrY/w480-h640/carboniferous+shark.jpg" /><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">It’s a
strange old world without any humans and full of unseen plants and animals. It
seems like a great place to empty my mind and refill it with something new."</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Thank you Peter, for allowing us to peek into your life and for sharing your extraordinary talent and imagination. I totally agree with you about childhood legends. I would explore orange groves, eucalyptus groves, and river beds, and sit high up in walnut trees amongst flocks of crows. We made up our own fables then.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Oh Peter, you stay well away from those arthropods, you hear?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Readers, be sure to pick up Peter's book at your local, independently owned bookstore.</span></p></div></div></div></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-59533619702391775832020-11-21T16:28:00.002-05:002020-11-21T17:47:30.878-05:00The Home of Wiley and Mallory Cash<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDxvv9XjAxk2beeBbm3QxUydbuEhR7KgbwYOP5PjzV2mh-SqP0Gh8-MurU6OmGM26awrkMKou7RX47t0o7WU8YO5DD5WonXsFb-TTDi-O6Bml_rzYKRdDQWW1Kl4yYygEjqHp6TR_5P4f9/s2048/Wiley+and+Mallory.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1360" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDxvv9XjAxk2beeBbm3QxUydbuEhR7KgbwYOP5PjzV2mh-SqP0Gh8-MurU6OmGM26awrkMKou7RX47t0o7WU8YO5DD5WonXsFb-TTDi-O6Bml_rzYKRdDQWW1Kl4yYygEjqHp6TR_5P4f9/w424-h640/Wiley+and+Mallory.jpg" width="424" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2Oihv_H_fbuEY8W4rj9bAp56De1eg-_CADNE8aXUz5P_gakmkXws1oWVhem-xbWMNx_GInsDK2GKUy1vNtoROJ1EsEPh9M83305wtIYkU_jYnTYvGF_S7UcyZVlpo5ORcsvqAyCeZO-sh/w133-h200/cash+book+1.jpg" width="133" /> <img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCuHmJqKo9YWs7YhlFMqbrdIbG_vZQzLSfYctFAgqxzbicGpt0U9vf8jpk-Eg5IlgRmfJpvr8vrfqHlKrcFekIJvWdK8Cs0-pCWeN6h53GdTmlcIx4dJGh-wXywBZxolkA8v__mt-9VLDG/w150-h200/cash+book+2.jpg" width="150" /> <img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT00emPWms5QP1PXNx-NytQTvahc3yp45u-clg-Z1FTVyXQyDOxZ3e0CzekawpMY6HgfUDp37DOISJT8GuFOUS2zpAA5MPU7t8tKn0G752yebaqGR_kTj4xMQWlRSzjo8xgRQNpm_dSUt6/w133-h200/cash+book+3.jpg" width="133" /></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Wiley Cash is the <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of the novels <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Last Ballad, A Land More Kind than Home, </i>and<i style="font-weight: bold;"> This Dark Road to Mercy. </i>The founder of the Open Canon Book Club and co-founder of the Land More Kind Appalachian Artists Residency, he has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Weymouth Center. He serves as the writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina-Asheville and lives in North Carolina with his wife, photographer Mallory Cash, and their two daughters.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here is the official description of my blog: <b>"<i>ARC looks behind the book jacket description of what the book is about to find out more of who the author really is. You'll discover fascinating personality traits about the writer and sometimes get a tour of their homes!</i>"</b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Every once in a while I feel the urge to fulfill that second half of the description. After all, of all my posts, the tour of Nevada Barr's home is still the most popular! </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Wiley happily agreed to show us around his beautiful new home that he shares with his amazing professional photographer wife <a href="https://mallorycashphoto.com/">Mallory Cash</a> and their two beloved daughters. We also get to see some of their extraordinary collection of artwork.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here's what the man had to say:</span></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"About a year ago, my family of four downsized from a 3,000
sq. ft. 4 bedroom/3 bath house to a 1,200 sq. ft. 3 bedroom/1 bath cottage. Our
lives had become too sprawling and cluttered, and we weren’t making good use of
our space or our time together. My wife and I decided that we needed a major
change. We couldn’t seem to control the amount of stuff – toys, books, clothes
– that we were taking in, so we figured that in downsizing our space we would
be forced to downsize our things. A year later, it’s the best decision we’ve
made as a family, but making the decision was the easy part. Parting with the
stuff – even the stuff with no emotional attachment – was cumbersome and time
consuming. To be honest, it was embarrassing to confront how many yard
implements were in the garage and how many redundant tools were stacked on
shelves by the hot water heater; how many old books we owned that we’d already
read and how many toys and kids’ clothes were sitting around that our daughters
did not need. Downsizing allowed us to see our stuff – the stuff that actually
matters to us (namely art and books) – and one another so much more clearly. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">When Jon asked me to share photos of our new home, I was
hesitant at first because we’re still in the process of renovating it. The
house was built in 1948, and we refinished the original hardwood floors,
replaced all the windows, painted, and completely rewired the electrical.
There’s more to do (especially with only one bathroom!), but we’ve settled in.
We know where stuff goes. We literally have one junk drawer, and it’s not even
that junky. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">Living Room</span></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHOB3-7MErCpX4GBRHXXKl-RZFPFzQYEk4qc2xFc2fPf3sKVIEs11R9UxiCAVW5gqegrWu2p_XSQQf1PFQEVXuxRQYUfpdxDWkyRpBTzJkLYfHWm7px7p9pMZvoxscxsCJsKBIV_Xbv2J2/s2048/LR+1.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHOB3-7MErCpX4GBRHXXKl-RZFPFzQYEk4qc2xFc2fPf3sKVIEs11R9UxiCAVW5gqegrWu2p_XSQQf1PFQEVXuxRQYUfpdxDWkyRpBTzJkLYfHWm7px7p9pMZvoxscxsCJsKBIV_Xbv2J2/w480-h640/LR+1.HEIC" width="480" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">People have gushed over the books in the fireplace. Before
anyone does that here, please know that those are all children’s books and we’d
much rather have a working fireplace. The fireplace was built to burn coal, and
it’s not deep enough for wood. We’ve considered installing gas logs, but that’s
down the road. For now, it’s a good place to keep the books, and they’re well
within the reach of our 6 and 4-year-old. The painting above the mantle is by a
woman I’ve known since kindergarten back in my hometown of Gastonia, North
Carolina. Her name is Kyle Robinson, and we have two of her paintings. </span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje6d9vdgom_4jRY84YxN9YlytrLV4F-M1AVmhpnQQ0ZvErbgEkDUJ5T8htKUqReY94J9EnZUiR6O6nRq0HmzLVP4lFP974_A0l-RFK_v4OMJ2jy-VFb7D28fdwce_oPpeqUWJUh5r3zSzr/s2048/LR+2.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje6d9vdgom_4jRY84YxN9YlytrLV4F-M1AVmhpnQQ0ZvErbgEkDUJ5T8htKUqReY94J9EnZUiR6O6nRq0HmzLVP4lFP974_A0l-RFK_v4OMJ2jy-VFb7D28fdwce_oPpeqUWJUh5r3zSzr/w640-h480/LR+2.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Another one hangs above the long table on the wall opposite the front door. In this picture you can see the door to our 6-year-old’s bedroom. She’s drawn all over it, as has her sister on the door to the right.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Loft</span></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRU4X19wsPwxV-DZb5nUmZpjYhQoW0E_cF4FA6yEZEEpqYbVYXJATTt9gGX81oLNER-qOl05xLiPtEHYj6uc0BZkFwRCw0uLnsaO4pjw4gAjWhzrYr1ClSpzP9S9nbPWaVMaT5V8B44OF9/s2048/Loft.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRU4X19wsPwxV-DZb5nUmZpjYhQoW0E_cF4FA6yEZEEpqYbVYXJATTt9gGX81oLNER-qOl05xLiPtEHYj6uc0BZkFwRCw0uLnsaO4pjw4gAjWhzrYr1ClSpzP9S9nbPWaVMaT5V8B44OF9/w480-h640/Loft.HEIC" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Speaking of our 6-year-old, she wasn’t very excited
about moving to our new home. It didn’t have stairs or a playroom, and there
was only one bathroom, and she had been the first baby born in our previous
neighborhood (our home was the fifth house built after the neighborhood was
developed). I promised her that if we moved, I would build a loft in her
closet. That is literally the first thing I did before we moved in. It’s her
secret space. Don’t worry, her little sister wasn’t left out. She’s a little
too young for a loft, but she has a teepee style tent that hangs from the
ceiling. We took the mattress out of her old crib and put it through the tent’s
doorway, and now she sleeps inside the tent every night.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">Kitchen</span></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvaxWtmL5JMz7DuF9IGYbibkvBnkr7JpyRm1h9JXz5xPwA2yaERMNPEKYTXUwDSWV_FZhSa55mReOwsRUwi4nM1ExW7L8F4G1-YeoMqvYhTeXYCUKse7mey59BF_bUW6CNZuKYb34_QIqU/s2048/Kitchen.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvaxWtmL5JMz7DuF9IGYbibkvBnkr7JpyRm1h9JXz5xPwA2yaERMNPEKYTXUwDSWV_FZhSa55mReOwsRUwi4nM1ExW7L8F4G1-YeoMqvYhTeXYCUKse7mey59BF_bUW6CNZuKYb34_QIqU/w480-h640/Kitchen.HEIC" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">From this vantage point, you’d be standing in the
middle of our dining room and looking into the kitchen. The kitchen had been
renovated just before we purchased the house. The two paintings on either side
of the window are by Brevard, North Carolina’s <a href="https://www.shannonwhitworth.com/our-story">Shannon Whitworth</a>, who’s also an
incredible singer/songwriter. The rug under the barstools (and most of the rugs
in the house) is from a local antique store called <a href="https://www.zartiques.com/">Zartiques</a>.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; text-align: start;"><b>Connie Logan Painting</b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXdc5nEiHOHrrhUBOZ2c7EPrZ10j3edy6sQO3hGhuU11qjMoUB6AauCkQpJGBT1kpD2p3qJYkOYxSABzhoMY4rM85wbp4zeiCqOdpUc75zZiYAzR574iIlodhHLGjTMxO2VUZkQghG-dfc/s2048/Connie+Logan.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXdc5nEiHOHrrhUBOZ2c7EPrZ10j3edy6sQO3hGhuU11qjMoUB6AauCkQpJGBT1kpD2p3qJYkOYxSABzhoMY4rM85wbp4zeiCqOdpUc75zZiYAzR574iIlodhHLGjTMxO2VUZkQghG-dfc/w640-h480/Connie+Logan.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This painting also hangs on a wall in our dining
room. It is by a Greensboro, North Carolina, painter named <a href="https://cplogan.com/">Connie Logan</a>. My
brother-in-law and his now-wife had their engagement party in Logan’s studio,
and all night my wife and I were eyeing this painting because it reminded us of
West Virginia, where we were living at the time. At the end of the evening, we
asked Logan about the painting, and she told us she had painted a small town in
West Virginia that she spotted once while driving north. It seemed made to be,
so we purchased the painting and hung in our home in West Virginia until we
moved back to North Carolina. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; text-align: start;"><b>Todd Carignan Painting</b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4Gcskq98FRpU6mk-0gw9DDB5pm7Aw1ExLURPL0e5jbpx3wC7OsSWXzOHxP4tNfqXR1djD9LUo4TtPalWZv1QZgCG33jh6Y74luEaPgc7_sVeDGjT2WROkhAFBbIs3KhuqD8qeTBI_na6O/s2048/Todd+Carignan.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4Gcskq98FRpU6mk-0gw9DDB5pm7Aw1ExLURPL0e5jbpx3wC7OsSWXzOHxP4tNfqXR1djD9LUo4TtPalWZv1QZgCG33jh6Y74luEaPgc7_sVeDGjT2WROkhAFBbIs3KhuqD8qeTBI_na6O/w480-h640/Todd+Carignan.HEIC" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> This painting also hangs in our dining room.
It’s by a local artist named <a href="https://www.toddcarignan.com/">Todd Carignan</a>. We saw it when he had a show at the
gallery at WHQR, our local NPR station. Carignan painted it and many others
during a long trip to India. When I saw the man’s face and posture, it reminded
me of how I felt at the time: overworked and weary, but also proud of the work
I was doing. I’ve never mentioned my initial response to the painting to our
daughters, but for some reason they think the painting is of me. I wish my
beard and hair were still that dark.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; text-align: start;"><b>Jennifer Smith Painting</b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3nPcyGsnh74uIOMiBn7jBN2Be1I-Xni_5szeIpImwd3JR6nGwoMuD9LloTrUhSnEhRQNBvh3H8tllpEkxMCQpGkuQ8dJROTwqjXxNq8X2yF65FjLZ7LNShL8OTrIH27StFfQ-DAt-7Tuf/s2048/Jennifer+Smith.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3nPcyGsnh74uIOMiBn7jBN2Be1I-Xni_5szeIpImwd3JR6nGwoMuD9LloTrUhSnEhRQNBvh3H8tllpEkxMCQpGkuQ8dJROTwqjXxNq8X2yF65FjLZ7LNShL8OTrIH27StFfQ-DAt-7Tuf/w480-h640/Jennifer+Smith.HEIC" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This painting hangs on the wall in our
bedroom. It’s by an Irish painter named <a href="http://jennifersmith.nl/">Jennifer Smith</a>, who actually lives in
Scandinavia. My wife was pregnant with our first daughter when she saw it, and
she fell in love with it immediately. I love how the mother’s arms curl around
the baby and how the baby nestles into the mother’s body. I see the baby’s left
hand reaching out toward the mother, but my wife sees that as the mother’s
other arm encircling the child. I’ve seen our children reach for my wife a
million times in just this way, so that’s probably what I’m reading into the
painting</span>. </p><p class="MsoNormal"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY1UZoJNBy2ARIXnph5UVpRYxjzyExV2afO3grnxv2KVSPUV7edLT1700eNw8PWSFnnlVX8-HbZsr9yeIuPRRa3675HWd5eYlWpkaq7eMnQBIxE5FQnKcaXv7fJBYM0OW81QhyHgnlbuMT/s559/wiley.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="559" data-original-width="408" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY1UZoJNBy2ARIXnph5UVpRYxjzyExV2afO3grnxv2KVSPUV7edLT1700eNw8PWSFnnlVX8-HbZsr9yeIuPRRa3675HWd5eYlWpkaq7eMnQBIxE5FQnKcaXv7fJBYM0OW81QhyHgnlbuMT/w293-h400/wiley.jpg" width="293" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; text-align: start;"><b>Wiley's "To Be Read" Pile</b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1itR0O8GVLDcIFBt2OctOARNRzeAd8bHZq0DIrOuRw_2ncIquYxH19MkDM73R-ZWT0hi_2NoYmL2NOaZpL0uw5clQ5RjlJAq_Osob8dzC_Phz9LHwz-DqpDzbzGwroJc_dXvETCJmracC/s2048/TBR+pile.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1itR0O8GVLDcIFBt2OctOARNRzeAd8bHZq0DIrOuRw_2ncIquYxH19MkDM73R-ZWT0hi_2NoYmL2NOaZpL0uw5clQ5RjlJAq_Osob8dzC_Phz9LHwz-DqpDzbzGwroJc_dXvETCJmracC/w480-h640/TBR+pile.HEIC" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">How could I not include this? The books are never
stacked this way. They’re usually much more cluttered or hidden beneath the
bedside table on the floor. Starting at the top, my former president and
personal hero released a new book today, so I’ll be beginning Barack Obama’s <i>A
Promised Land </i>tonight. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Beneath that is Alex Soojung-Kim Pang’s <i>Rest</i>,
a book that argues that resting is the other – and perhaps more important –
half of working. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I’m rereading the beloved <i>The Birds of Opulence</i> by my
friend Crystal Wilkinson because, to my great honor, the Kentucky Humanities
has chosen the novel for the 2021 Kentucky Reads selection, and they’ve asked
me to write an essay and formulate discussion questions for the book. <i>Birds </i>was
the inaugural selection of the Open Canon Book Club way back in August 2018,
and it’s one of the most pitch-perfect and resonant books I’ve ever read. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Danielle Evans’s new book <i>The Office of Historical Corrections</i> just
arrived in the mail, and I’m looking forward to rereading a few of the stories
that stood out to me when I read the book to offer a blurb last year. I love
Danielle. Everyone who knows her loves her. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Beneath that is a gorgeous art book
by David Opdyke titled <i>This Land</i>. In it, Opdyke uses vintage postcards
to show us the realities that await us if climate change is not addressed. He
alters the postcards with painting, collage and other methods: fires burn the
ridges in bucolic mountain scenes; oceanside highways full of beautiful people
in cars are underwater. It’s beautiful, terrifying work. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The next several books
are all research for the novel I am about to begin, so I can’t really talk
about that or those. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>This Close to Okay</i> is a galley by Leese-Cross
Smith, another Kentucky writer whose work I really admire. I’m honored to have
been asked to contribute a blurb. Beneath that is <i>Bluebird, Bluebird </i>by
Attica Locke. It’s fantastic, and it’s also the October selection of Open
Canon. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Finally, on the bottom, is my friend Jess Walter’s new novel <i>The Cold
Millions</i>. Jess is a generous, imaginative, and powerful writer, and he’s
also an incredibly fine human being. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeEobyjsMGxeZb-rRsBJbMSEahTRBQNHUtOCQcJdewxbtLnsFbpU_kvNAL37xMUMI9X7hBxDVBV8VrNahe_qen433z5ckBGTEHJd3AHmBLluYQfIdZvXiId7TOv_syEVTQ35pTgYHfRw5V/s2048/Thing+at+Foot.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeEobyjsMGxeZb-rRsBJbMSEahTRBQNHUtOCQcJdewxbtLnsFbpU_kvNAL37xMUMI9X7hBxDVBV8VrNahe_qen433z5ckBGTEHJd3AHmBLluYQfIdZvXiId7TOv_syEVTQ35pTgYHfRw5V/w480-h640/Thing+at+Foot.HEIC" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><i>The Thing at the Foot of the Bed</i></b>: Do y’all remember this
book? I can remember buying it at a book fair in elementary school. This is
actually my original copy. Sometimes our daughters will pile into bed, and I’ll
read a couple of the stories. Some of them are funny; some of them are scary;
all of them are just as good as I remember them being when I was a kid." </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Thanks Wiley for letting us take a peek into your home and thoughts, you certainly do have a beautiful home. I also love your taste in reading, too! </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Oh, do you make those closet lofts for friends? I'd love to have one.😊</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p><br /></p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-89526249635134343822020-11-08T14:56:00.009-05:002020-11-10T17:44:20.950-05:00Helen Macdonald<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxL8u9gV3ZhEn1EGHXlkX0h0w85iXLny8LZT4JxCUB8AnMf9cLUpJ7nfGqFBsf8wI_a7xSLnIOlOt7erlJliShbbaivU8oaMpB6-uJEhwnDFYnd3D450G6WrqQ_zWF_RasKQoDWwl5qKfT/s480/Helen.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="353" data-original-width="480" height="470" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxL8u9gV3ZhEn1EGHXlkX0h0w85iXLny8LZT4JxCUB8AnMf9cLUpJ7nfGqFBsf8wI_a7xSLnIOlOt7erlJliShbbaivU8oaMpB6-uJEhwnDFYnd3D450G6WrqQ_zWF_RasKQoDWwl5qKfT/w640-h470/Helen.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0SdgsBFFFfOP7r5P1ooLV8zg7RwfJZ5Hk9JvV8VfAqQTwaQ-MINREIcL4RlTDTmTWILmOv5B3UmZp_0SpuWLjSI2E-S_Jdi2f9HM4lHumXaD0TI7ooHSanrwtQWh-kLdKDib_Ce1zbFYh/s320/h-is-for-hawk.jpg" /> <img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXXLR_xzpJam0BkDp0nEzz5XWppBM4AgUj84xh5CDOf4Vbz4_dyhkt79_KW9QLsFE1vcC6CLWxhodDqoRm4k5xfd2kT9hJ9yz5LnNyLEIUU_q7y_DkKJudnDaXGfCldctWsxuYbmOX52KX/w211-h320/Vesper.jpg" width="211" /><br /><br /><p>One of the things that most endeared me to the wonderful Helen Macdonald was finding out how much we share a love of the countryside, especially the English countryside. She knows my birthplace village of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintbury">Kintbury</a> in Berkshire and even understands my love of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Bear">Rupert Bear</a>.</p><p>I also love these thoughts from Helen's childhood at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekels_Park">Tekels Park</a> in her new book, <i><a href="https://groveatlantic.com/book/vesper-flights/">Vesper Flights</a>, </i>published by <a href="https://groveatlantic.com/">Grove/Atlantic</a> "So many of our stories about nature are about testing ourselves against it, setting ourselves against it, defining our humanity against it. But this was nothing like that at all. It was a child's way of looking at nature: one seeking intimacy and companionship. When I learned the names of these creatures from field guides it was because I needed to know them the same way I had to know the names of my classmates at school. Their diverse lives expanded what I considered as home way beyond the walls of my house. They made the natural world seem a place of complex and beautiful safety. They felt like family."</p><p>This is the overriding theme of this beautifully moving and thoughtful book: All of our planet's creatures and their habitat are our "family." And we are are hurting and killing our family in a way that is disastrous not just for them, but also for us. To quote Helen again, "The rarer animals become, the fewer the opportunities we have to see or interact with them, and as a consequence thier ability to generate meanings for us slowly shrinks away; eventually all they come to stand for is the notion of our moral failings in our relationship to the natural world. The world has lost half its wildlife in my own lifetime."</p><p>These essays are not just about how badly we have done with our home world though. There are uplifting ones, funny ones and all are so compelling. I loved them all, and not only because I totally agree with her thoughts and sentiments. Her descriptions capture the wonder of our fellow creatures with reverence, celebration, and awe. </p><p>In a starred review, <i>Booklist</i> praises <i>Vesper Flights</i> as “Gorgeously composed, complexly affecting, and stunningly revelatory. Macdonald is both exacting and enthralled… There is abundant wonder and beauty here. Best-selling Macdonald’s fans will rush to embrace this, as should all readers passionate about nature.”</p><p>Now read more about her fascinating life and learn about Birdoole, Frederick II of Hohenstaufen and the Goat in my interview with Helen.</p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Helen, tell me about where you live now and why you love it so
much.</i></b> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My house sits on a hill in a small village in the east of
England. It’s a very rural place. Barn owls float around the foggy field
margins in the evening, there’s a Norman church with medieval stained glass,
and this morning I waved to Tim the farmer, who lives with his wife in a dusty
pink-painted house at the bottom of the hill, as he rattled past on his
tractor. Moving to a village is always a bit of a lottery. I’ve been incredibly
lucky with this one. It’s a hugely warm, friendly community and even in this
time of Covid and lockdown, I’ve not once felt isolated or alone. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they
fond memories?</i></b> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Very fond memories! Two years earlier my parents had bought
a house set on a fifty-acre wooded estate in Surrey owned by the <a href="https://theosophicalsociety.org.uk/#:~:text=Home%20-%20Theosophical%20Society%20in%20England.%20The%20Theosophical,affiliation%20%28if%20any%29%2C%20social%20status%2C%20gender%20or%20ethnicity.">Theosophical Society</a>. It was full of the most gloriously eccentric souls, mostly elderly
ladies, who taught me an early, valuable lesson in how women need not conform
to the roles society has laid out for them. I ran wild in this place across
fading formal gardens, woods and fields, catching snakes, frogs, newts, and
grasshoppers and watching birds through a pair of small, elderly East German
binoculars. It was such a safe place my parents were happy to let me wander
unattended in it for hours. Without this species-rich environment, and the
freedom I was lucky enough to have had exploring it, I doubt I’d have become so
deeply in love with the natural world. <o:p></o:p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkYTSsZEurnDpaS8WssSur4omtnUFYzUjNG_SBaJxDCPA6fb_O6-7q7IMnXq7yPaHbkWYtQZGzHZ6PrtbDKwv6boB1FetqywIxkDkaddh34zt8lnfssq7jw7H6ko6b_33Fu4QRGUKumdXk/s2048/Helen%2527s+photo.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkYTSsZEurnDpaS8WssSur4omtnUFYzUjNG_SBaJxDCPA6fb_O6-7q7IMnXq7yPaHbkWYtQZGzHZ6PrtbDKwv6boB1FetqywIxkDkaddh34zt8lnfssq7jw7H6ko6b_33Fu4QRGUKumdXk/w480-h640/Helen%2527s+photo.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Helen visiting Dinosaur Isle theme park on the Isle of Wight. I'm glad Triceritops are vegetarians!<br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><b><i>Did you have a favorite teacher when you were young and are
you still in touch with her or him?</i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>Oh, Absolutely. I was very young. Mrs. Baylis. Pat Baylis.
She was a marvel. The most astonishing human. Dark hair, warm eyes, a mouth
that seemed always set in an expression of pride at her class, or delighted
amusement at our antics. I still remember the stories she improvised for
us—one, about a small boy with a pet stoat, I adored so much I wrote what I
could remember down after school and stapled it into a book, illustrated it
with wonky line drawings. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDbTdQGNgbO0ADrryyFc1FiKBHWwLdb8J2kMUjKh0U6eNIDKiU0eO3lkIvNtRtQxRuVSNxiX2i84WhEC0gj5_Mjz0mUcVcrujwdoqAoem7joN-08RJpFN5sevtBEnvO_98aDUfDyi3O490/s1600/Ravenscote.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1066" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDbTdQGNgbO0ADrryyFc1FiKBHWwLdb8J2kMUjKh0U6eNIDKiU0eO3lkIvNtRtQxRuVSNxiX2i84WhEC0gj5_Mjz0mUcVcrujwdoqAoem7joN-08RJpFN5sevtBEnvO_98aDUfDyi3O490/w640-h426/Ravenscote.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Helen's Ravenscote School, Surrey</td></tr></tbody></table><br />She was an exceptionally gifted teacher able to
communicate a proper love for learning, and she was also that very rare thing
in a child’s mind, someone who felt like a real person rather than just a
teacher. I’m not in touch with her now, but she was such a nurturing and
inspiring person in my life that I thanked her in the acknowledgements to <i>H is
for Hawk</i>. Thank you again, Mrs. Baylis. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?</i></b> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Oof. That’s a hard question to answer. Not one, certainly.
There have definitely been books which have changed me, intellectually,
emotionally, or both. For example, William Cronon’s fabulous collection of
essays <b><i>Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature</i></b> first revealed to
me how the natural world is not, as we are led to believe, a place free of
human meaning; that in fact we load it with our political and social assumptions.
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Li0CIVY1JKOFGTigFtG_kB4B3Ie3hv-3Vi6O7zj_C6_hduU5OSZFCmMtmBfgsAZNWvQEGkiTS2h5DxCRjvVxlwG7s82wX7LO_XaxnS-I8fLPoDheUKP9Ga24Ie5GSzAlF21AKjWnHD_A/s630/Uncommon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="411" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Li0CIVY1JKOFGTigFtG_kB4B3Ie3hv-3Vi6O7zj_C6_hduU5OSZFCmMtmBfgsAZNWvQEGkiTS2h5DxCRjvVxlwG7s82wX7LO_XaxnS-I8fLPoDheUKP9Ga24Ie5GSzAlF21AKjWnHD_A/s320/Uncommon.jpg" /></a></div><br />Emotionally, the poetry of Frank O’Hara blew me away when I was an
undergraduate: it made me want to write poetry, seriously, for the first time.<div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigG-H7VGpjBrp1IbU-mxDGGQiCxYCqwt7_D5JGynTNq1z1Ws2K5PHXcPw4OF3qGzLrq-3-HyL_e7LFH-xbbKFtWZtNWlVfyD2lYtD5dggL2YEd28zdfr-cVgL2rI4FegtdEs-fnCz6QVxl/s400/Frank+O%2527Hara.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="266" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigG-H7VGpjBrp1IbU-mxDGGQiCxYCqwt7_D5JGynTNq1z1Ws2K5PHXcPw4OF3qGzLrq-3-HyL_e7LFH-xbbKFtWZtNWlVfyD2lYtD5dggL2YEd28zdfr-cVgL2rI4FegtdEs-fnCz6QVxl/s320/Frank+O%2527Hara.jpg" /></a></div><br />His voice was so many things at once: wry, delighted, queer, playful, full of
love and at the same time deeply literary and serious. Lines from his poems
still fall into my head all the time; they went very deep. <p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it
makes it so?</i></b> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s a little vertiginous to look back on the books I loved
as a child. Some of them I’m not sure I want to re-read; I’m sure they contain
all sorts of dubiousnesses. I had quite an obsession with two books: <b><i>Brendon
Chase</i></b> by the English author Denys Watkyns-Pitchford was the story of public
schoolboys who ran away from home to live off the land in an English forest.
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiogvrQtlN1xGrxpXBQqY5UYdIMIfpRJS8uAdDAmY05Dkb_HyzDe9FPBRhcSMn3bzpHeqGfrrREOg5KnKzBAQCXl6fK0NBPKygPxtR-OCebffLLqAv8Qg8BokxYv-7F_phqnFYApDdYuewx/s500/Brendon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="382" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiogvrQtlN1xGrxpXBQqY5UYdIMIfpRJS8uAdDAmY05Dkb_HyzDe9FPBRhcSMn3bzpHeqGfrrREOg5KnKzBAQCXl6fK0NBPKygPxtR-OCebffLLqAv8Qg8BokxYv-7F_phqnFYApDdYuewx/s320/Brendon.jpg" /></a></div><br />The other was <b><i>My Side of the Mountain</i></b> by Jean Craighead George, another story
about a boy who ran away from home to live in the woods, this time in the
Catskills.</div><div><br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW8efQ9BJAwkI3teol-ar834BHKBF0Nk-2LO2bQIG-fw_vin1D2jVbwgYBPYq-FL5q543-svA4KPwsplJr-OyssmER0YKrRQ1x1pUF_-ZNtOvN-aQLprO8S3QZnzflxW8LPpvxN7w04Woy/s1500/My+Side.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1031" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW8efQ9BJAwkI3teol-ar834BHKBF0Nk-2LO2bQIG-fw_vin1D2jVbwgYBPYq-FL5q543-svA4KPwsplJr-OyssmER0YKrRQ1x1pUF_-ZNtOvN-aQLprO8S3QZnzflxW8LPpvxN7w04Woy/s320/My+Side.jpg" /></a></div><br />Both of them were crammed with wonderful natural-historical
facts—but mostly I loved them because in both of them the natural world was a
benevolent, kindly place, just as it always felt to me when I was outside
climbing trees or turning over rocks to look for bugs. <p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your
family tells about you?</i></b> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’m never been a fan of telling embarrassing stories about
loved ones. Seems mean to me, even if it’s done fondly. I guess most of the
stories my family could tell about me would be about how incredibly absent-minded
and messy I was as a child, though I’m pretty sure those aspects of my
personality were symptoms of undiagnosed childhood ADHD. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>In that case I must insist on printing this story "Goats" from your book:</i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">"As a child I discovered a simple game that's good to play with goats. You lay your hand flat on a billygoat's forehead and push, just a little. You push, it pushes back, and you push harder, and it does too, and it's a little like arm wrestling, but much more fun, and the goat always wins.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCiCY9-rqxwHPI7Pr1dpqwaLgrYjgyRZI9M3D8-fBqH-74WsChDNhbvbE5-AZLFuRsPZqgqAs6jprQBN4hhlZ52HmtYkHykKhqKxDfSUIjtnTIlNxTc-9TzjhU_n5Nud1E4ameA9VKLORi/s1600/goat.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1067" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCiCY9-rqxwHPI7Pr1dpqwaLgrYjgyRZI9M3D8-fBqH-74WsChDNhbvbE5-AZLFuRsPZqgqAs6jprQBN4hhlZ52HmtYkHykKhqKxDfSUIjtnTIlNxTc-9TzjhU_n5Nud1E4ameA9VKLORi/s320/goat.JPG" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">I told Dad about my love of pushing goats, once, just an aside while we were talking about something else. He must have filed this information away, because about a year later, he came home very crossly, and he was cross with <i>me</i>, and that was a very rare thing. In his capacity as a press photographer, he'd spent the day at a London Zoo taking photographs for their Annual Animal Census, and at one point he happened to be standing with the rest of the press pack in the petting zoo.</p><p class="MsoNormal">And there he sees a goat.</p><p class="MsoNormal">And he says to everyone, <i>watch this.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal">I hadn't explained the activity very well. Because he puts his hand against the goat's forehead, with everyone watching. Then he pushes.</p><p class="MsoNormal">He pushes really hard.</p><p class="MsoNormal">And the goat falls over.</p><p class="MsoNormal">There's a long silence broken only by the sound of photographers and journalists saying, "<i>Jesus,</i>Mac!" and "What the <i>fuck?</i>"</p><p class="MsoNormal">The goat gets up, stares at him, and runs away. And the press pack never let him forget the time he pushed a goat over in front of all of them and it was all my fault."</p><br /><o:p><br /></o:p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid4P0kKL2xc8pSvU0JI4egyHsf85K9PuN9DibZj3OI6PydPktWTitUuHXfPipkSdNH8JZHxWtD2htPkzJseAM-Kf32Ti_bvKseVXTKdQ-xRnnMtLk5iKg_8IpWjhxiusW2VQJCli1OZI2d/s600/MILK+BLOOD+HEATShelfAwarenessIndieNext600x150.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="600" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid4P0kKL2xc8pSvU0JI4egyHsf85K9PuN9DibZj3OI6PydPktWTitUuHXfPipkSdNH8JZHxWtD2htPkzJseAM-Kf32Ti_bvKseVXTKdQ-xRnnMtLk5iKg_8IpWjhxiusW2VQJCli1OZI2d/w640-h160/MILK+BLOOD+HEATShelfAwarenessIndieNext600x150.gif" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Is there a song or person that you listen to when you are
feeling a bit down?</i></b> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">People? Yes, two in particular. They know who they are.
Songs? Depends on why I’m feeling low, but a bit of gravely beautiful baroque
music or something that is sad enough to chime with my mood often helps.
<a href="https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Jean-Baptiste+Lully%e2%80%99s+Prelude+de+la+Nuit&&view=detail&mid=B3E2E4DFCA1B7C14F0BEB3E2E4DFCA1B7C14F0BE&&FORM=VDRVSR" target="_blank">Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Prelude de la Nuit</a> is a favourite. <a href="https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Elliot+Smith%e2%80%99s+True+Love&view=detail&mid=FC87845B06CF83A1C660FC87845B06CF83A1C660&FORM=VIRE0&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3dElliot%2bSmith%25E2%2580%2599s%2bTrue%2bLove%26form%3dANNTH1%26refig%3d6eb84b948d23428e950bb3d3930e528d%26sp%3d-1%26pq%3delliot%2bsmith%25E2%2580%2599s%2btrue%2blove%26sc%3d1-24%26qs%3dn%26sk%3d%26cvid%3d6eb84b948d23428e950bb3d3930e528d" target="_blank">Elliot Smith’s TrueLove</a> or <a href="https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Elliot+Smith%e2%80%99s+Independence+Day&ru=%2fvideos%2fsearch%3fq%3dElliot%2520Smith%25E2%2580%2599s%2520Independence%2520Day%26qs%3dn%26form%3dQBVDMH%26sp%3d-1%26pq%3delliot%2520smith%25E2%2580%2599s%2520independence%2520day%26sc%3d0-31%26sk%3d%26cvid%3d361788E2D1214A6B805D34676CB39C07&view=detail&mid=04CB8FD00273EC47CA0104CB8FD00273EC47CA01&rvsmid=5EF782EAFB20D966B1E95EF782EAFB20D966B1E9&FORM=VDRVRV" target="_blank">Independence Day </a>definitely hit the spot. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Can you remind me of your parrot friend's name?</i></b> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Birdoole! Properly speaking, he’s a green-cheeked conure. He started off being called, simply, “bird” which mutated into “Birdle” in the way pet names do, and at some point in the first couple of years of his life (he’s 17 now!) that became “Birdoole.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZWfuxfJRPZIitdPdj_DqzD5yjgpb6qhY4k-Mq051D7z-9UNigk6evBtx8nDQQK56TtpiyjPtEYsLFwM4PaXkUOc-znDzMN53xTsfclwRaY3Z0sb8uklNJRFPmgTSXazQlMyIkiGCif1az/s320/Helen+and+bird.jpeg" /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTzoIXpm6FxjWDOxCM7zS8BVZSQWhutDsI6K00eEFoZfkoveeEKOdoTCO8eM83N-41pMeRYqZIqL6Hv_ZTdLQRHZ3cbCiCoYYW5Km5UN3tuwDIhXzur_OTF3QncPzFL3Lfb_qboUy4VFcR/s2048/Helen+2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTzoIXpm6FxjWDOxCM7zS8BVZSQWhutDsI6K00eEFoZfkoveeEKOdoTCO8eM83N-41pMeRYqZIqL6Hv_ZTdLQRHZ3cbCiCoYYW5Km5UN3tuwDIhXzur_OTF3QncPzFL3Lfb_qboUy4VFcR/w200-h200/Helen+2.jpg" width="200" /></a><br /> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>How would you say you are different now than you were in
your 20’s?</i></b> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’m far less self-absorbed and far less worried about what
other people think of me—some of the happier consequences of getting older. I
think I’m a lot softer these days, too. Happier, certainly. I love humanity a
hell of a lot more than I did when I was in my twenties, when I am sad to say I
had a bit of a misanthropic streak. Touring with <b><i>H is for Hawk</i></b> helped change
that. I met so many astonishing people, readers who shared their own
experiences of loss and sadness with me. Talking with them quietly shifted the
way I felt about us and our place in the world. It’s an obvious conclusion in
retrospect, but we all go through dark times, we all struggle, we all lose
people we love, we all get hurt. We’re such fragile, precious creatures. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><b>Is there a question no one has ever asked you that you wish
they would? Something, perhaps, that people would be surprised to know about
you?</b></i> </p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal">Actually, yes! But I like to think it’s not too surprising a
revelation. Perhaps it’s because I’ve only mentioned boyfriends in my books
(because they were a part of my life in the times I’ve written about) but
no-one has ever asked me about my orientation—I’ve been bisexual for as long as
I can remember. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME </i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>to any period from before recorded history to yesterday, </i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if
appropriate to your choice, </i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>actually experience what it was like to live in that time,
anywhere at all, </i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them,
be with them. </i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>When would you go? </i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Where would you go? </i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Who would you want to meet? </i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>And most importantly, why do you think you chose this time?</i></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So many possible answers to this one. I think it has to be
the answer I’d have given you back when I was about twelve or thirteen, and was
working my way through the English translation of a huge work on falconry
called De arte venandi cum avibus by Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, Holy Roman
Emperor.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifBlO3WkjrxriRJVv1crQbUjNvDGFl4iBOojIYEC7b0WcMYccEK-eQNStaXGmwjjE9TeFBJmONsJohlxpbr5BzYGgBmkOBL0oCljMLMjtsk9mClkZXTZ7vHju-vgI_b2zQAAJ3krzOfRkU/s400/art.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="306" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifBlO3WkjrxriRJVv1crQbUjNvDGFl4iBOojIYEC7b0WcMYccEK-eQNStaXGmwjjE9TeFBJmONsJohlxpbr5BzYGgBmkOBL0oCljMLMjtsk9mClkZXTZ7vHju-vgI_b2zQAAJ3krzOfRkU/w245-h320/art.jpg" width="245" /></a></div><br /> It is an amazing volume, beautifully illustrated, from which one can
still garner useful hints on how to tame and train birds of prey. Frederick is
an astonishing historical figure. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMlcpbh4gLFIqlddwmyzbhMoGW0jMdcWX8VVSlT_T_79jx-WbzcngpvRbFZjD9GQRaKfmJ7X0RojMCQL1iDUt2bUnjBFjnvnIHaGTQ5_pDnj1CTyqwauDbOt1piIh6dQ17M5zqoMDxkqg8/s401/tarker-frederick-ii-hohenstaufen-1194-1250-holy-roman-emperor.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="213" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMlcpbh4gLFIqlddwmyzbhMoGW0jMdcWX8VVSlT_T_79jx-WbzcngpvRbFZjD9GQRaKfmJ7X0RojMCQL1iDUt2bUnjBFjnvnIHaGTQ5_pDnj1CTyqwauDbOt1piIh6dQ17M5zqoMDxkqg8/w340-h640/tarker-frederick-ii-hohenstaufen-1194-1250-holy-roman-emperor.jpg" width="340" /></a></div><br />Look him up on the internet and you’ll see
why he was known as Stupor mundi, the wonder of the world. I always wished I
could meet him when I was small because he was a falconer, but now I don’t
really want to meet him: I would like to visit, just for a while, his court. I
spent years working as a historian of science at the University of Cambridge,
and while I didn’t specialize in early-modern natural philosophy (my specialism
was the history of natural history in the twentieth century), what I came to
know about it made me understand the importance of places like his court, and
how more generally cross-cultural meetings have been so crucial in the
development of what we call, today, science. It was full of learned people he’d
brought from all over, experts from the Arab world and the West: astronomers,
poets, natural philosophers, translators, mathematicians. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhht0uqr97XAkjtKVXSTMHKickCy_cqpS2bH448dzfHIpvoqU4fYZOGwbxc1XCAv6r3ovpGdIikmVj4yuypXSf_fktDXBVu67zlKFPw27MXwACCi2alxsyYeBWw21HUKBQ1k6GoRF46mqpl/s1206/Frederick+II.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="882" data-original-width="1206" height="468" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhht0uqr97XAkjtKVXSTMHKickCy_cqpS2bH448dzfHIpvoqU4fYZOGwbxc1XCAv6r3ovpGdIikmVj4yuypXSf_fktDXBVu67zlKFPw27MXwACCi2alxsyYeBWw21HUKBQ1k6GoRF46mqpl/w640-h468/Frederick+II.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />It’s their voices I’d
like to hear.<div><br /></div><div><b><i>Thank you Helen, not just for writing such a remarkable book and answering my questions, but also for describing our shared world with such compassion and empathy for ALL its inhabitants. We need so many more of you.</i></b><br /> <o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><br /><p></p></div></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-79499340707882590752020-10-08T17:06:00.000-04:002020-10-08T17:06:59.783-04:00Susan Cerulean<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnuC8JmXcRyCrQhLpGKgYclncD9BAhqJGDNwLbNl9o6cORCfneHV0ell48Fgs5movnKH1tv22aHp2RVH6xbQYlDFIq-Yz7QKIsrLbQfM-OsmKH5-1IPxUrqMQRK_sL8yVzqnoY_L7tA8p3/s900/Susan+Cerulean-4.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="900" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnuC8JmXcRyCrQhLpGKgYclncD9BAhqJGDNwLbNl9o6cORCfneHV0ell48Fgs5movnKH1tv22aHp2RVH6xbQYlDFIq-Yz7QKIsrLbQfM-OsmKH5-1IPxUrqMQRK_sL8yVzqnoY_L7tA8p3/w640-h426/Susan+Cerulean-4.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghbGSR-AbcVzAA8_u66NaKuI9BTvZ9k-ECYyaGc4gXAs8G3So1DwcWc7jAvmbYXkpn7hKgV1Mtdy553z-wM0QcUn9Z8ld4nEVKDxoMr5k7C9IIPBzDAHQUgCAmb9GANyUNRtWNVBDRIvMD/s500/31xB4nqFz0L.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="345" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghbGSR-AbcVzAA8_u66NaKuI9BTvZ9k-ECYyaGc4gXAs8G3So1DwcWc7jAvmbYXkpn7hKgV1Mtdy553z-wM0QcUn9Z8ld4nEVKDxoMr5k7C9IIPBzDAHQUgCAmb9GANyUNRtWNVBDRIvMD/w276-h400/31xB4nqFz0L.jpg" width="276" /></a></div><p>Susan Cerulean's memoir, <b><i>I Have Been Assigned the Single Bird</i></b>, moved me deeply. The way she combined and intertwined her father's long journey into dementia with our earth's similar long journey into ecological disaster is so exquisitely achieved. </p><p>Susan is an Environmental Educator who lives near beautiful Apalachicola on the northern coast of Florida. She is a volunteer steward of wild birds near her home and sees first hand how the human race is decimating not only our birds but so many of all of our planet's other species. "I was left alone with the little birds tracks, the creature carried so little weight. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx2hezN7FKs6PYQr5niNQVY6_mOo6KXRPKEx48jAV5ToF40YHzLEiUT_tybBt_ef8hrbNvD362YPQ6zHfl0CUnWe6YPF4t5YOtV7x1qruj9DOZDci0G-eDLxjGoLQNyujaxXtJFtCuIrQ8/s718/Plover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="718" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx2hezN7FKs6PYQr5niNQVY6_mOo6KXRPKEx48jAV5ToF40YHzLEiUT_tybBt_ef8hrbNvD362YPQ6zHfl0CUnWe6YPF4t5YOtV7x1qruj9DOZDci0G-eDLxjGoLQNyujaxXtJFtCuIrQ8/s320/Plover.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />Its prints were whispers in the sand. I felt deeply happy to experience a short window into a plover's life and to sit quietly near the rare birds I loved so much. To witness, be present. This is my sacred profession: to be with the birds and then tell their stories."<p></p><p>"I'm looking for ways not to despair," Susan's dear father tells her as his mind starts to desert him and he tries to deal with his new reality, his new life. </p><p>These two stories are both filled with joy and sadness, humor and tragedy but most of all, they are filled with love. A daughter's love for her father and for our world and how she tries so desperately to make things right, for each.</p><p>Author Terry Tempest Williams praises, "<b><i>I Have Been Assigned the Single Bird</i></b> is an elegant memoir of devotion and imagination inviting us, with graceful determination, to extend our compassion and sense of family, to all species on this beautiful, broken planet we call home. This book is an awakening."</p><p>Below I ask Susan about who she is, then about her book. In the end is her not surprising take on my time travel question. And if she wouldn't mind, I'd like to accompany her:</p><p><b><i>Tell me about where you live and why you love it so much.</i></b></p><p>I have written and edited half a shelf of books based in the Red Hills and Gulf Coastal Lowlands bioregions in north Florida, where I’ve lived for four decades.<i> </i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjow1hQKo3v4KYFSYo5VUyf0f_XWMULeQ9R8SndJ134i5is_UwbW4tdB8Eg5apuznWS5x2v5FUgoPAdJOnCb0bQH6VgUacpR9a9PJGuUf89k0aXXrcaNm2QZ-hc2OJX3p1IGRGgtPPcNblR/s334/map-of-panhandle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="301" data-original-width="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjow1hQKo3v4KYFSYo5VUyf0f_XWMULeQ9R8SndJ134i5is_UwbW4tdB8Eg5apuznWS5x2v5FUgoPAdJOnCb0bQH6VgUacpR9a9PJGuUf89k0aXXrcaNm2QZ-hc2OJX3p1IGRGgtPPcNblR/s320/map-of-panhandle.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></div><br />The movement of shared water unites these two diverse bioregions. On and in the springs, freshwater lakes and rivers, and the seagrass beds and salt marshes of the Gulf of Mexico, that’s where I immerse myself as often as I can. The watersheds of the Aucilla River to the east <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyxeLMLtUt9MfDmUHc5pSrQmznqrIcWU_gHFWvPcZqN7RJkD6-Wftu6P1pznCQ3Rr1GghQS_k7WQBRU-bdfk4KQUVKukObOR7xSDKX1u5ZiaqF8Hm_nRAFK8rnvPTiVEMi27yhrK8RV_h1/s2048/Aucilla-River-reflections-by-Doug-Alderson.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyxeLMLtUt9MfDmUHc5pSrQmznqrIcWU_gHFWvPcZqN7RJkD6-Wftu6P1pznCQ3Rr1GghQS_k7WQBRU-bdfk4KQUVKukObOR7xSDKX1u5ZiaqF8Hm_nRAFK8rnvPTiVEMi27yhrK8RV_h1/w400-h300/Aucilla-River-reflections-by-Doug-Alderson.jpg" width="400" /></a></i></div><br />and the Apalachicola to the west embrace both bioregions; we know these creeks and rivers from years of exploring by kayak. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-style: italic; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv39dRD6vNWN3gMNcbtQrjHYgnkB80ANaGoMuODvzrd51ss07smDKBCY-7cjc5_5H8vlZxsLV-YTK-b080Bz3IvQznhNi2vTtT-NFGB20Y5cllYkqaw2OwEkiXpTDv41pEw8mpdjBevuym/s2048/3-27-10-Apalachicola-River.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1532" data-original-width="2048" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv39dRD6vNWN3gMNcbtQrjHYgnkB80ANaGoMuODvzrd51ss07smDKBCY-7cjc5_5H8vlZxsLV-YTK-b080Bz3IvQznhNi2vTtT-NFGB20Y5cllYkqaw2OwEkiXpTDv41pEw8mpdjBevuym/w400-h299/3-27-10-Apalachicola-River.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p>I adore the subtle geographies of the land between the rivers, as well. I like to ride my old bike off road on the north-south boundary between the two bioregions, an ancient shoreline where the land drops from 215 feet above sea level to less than 100 feet. </p><p>My husband Jeff and I (and our cat Oakie) divide our time between Tallahassee to the north, and Indian Pass/St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge to the south. St. Vincent is a large uninhabited coastal island, owned by eagles, red wolves and shorebirds. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrlPpG1Rjmx9otTPSaMDu375u5YjmzZGyN852_5jW04oiIAPYhq6XgsybDoFLbU2eSOGFbSSA3dx-gE7KAofFACxZ7lz8BCeABCMNQgLMew3wWVxh83VqfFVBhtyXbM4nFY-LpSmN61ZUl/s512/St.+Vincent.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="219" data-original-width="512" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrlPpG1Rjmx9otTPSaMDu375u5YjmzZGyN852_5jW04oiIAPYhq6XgsybDoFLbU2eSOGFbSSA3dx-gE7KAofFACxZ7lz8BCeABCMNQgLMew3wWVxh83VqfFVBhtyXbM4nFY-LpSmN61ZUl/w640-h274/St.+Vincent.jpg" width="640" /></a></i></div><br />What’s not to love?<p><b><i>Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories?</i></b></p><p>When I was seven years old, our family of six had just settled into a ranch-style home in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. The setting was so typically 1950s. I loved the seasons (there were four of them then, back before climate change), and the rituals my family established within the turn of the year were so precious. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhld0-OLRYvwFG9KIyYgDOCCefLV_0Cgpdh2fVx2PDtr5bV5P1lHGpTZ50U4amRrrExHUFVuOOQ6tAa3Gj7Zo2RnN_9wcGwEvmKQZnvjjLwwCe5bXwtuMWCfSR6axxJZj3rnXXjhl_-IShk/s640/Berkeley.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhld0-OLRYvwFG9KIyYgDOCCefLV_0Cgpdh2fVx2PDtr5bV5P1lHGpTZ50U4amRrrExHUFVuOOQ6tAa3Gj7Zo2RnN_9wcGwEvmKQZnvjjLwwCe5bXwtuMWCfSR6axxJZj3rnXXjhl_-IShk/w640-h320/Berkeley.gif" width="640" /></a></i></div><br />Visiting apple orchards and cider mills, and raking leaves in the fall. Ever-so-traditional winter family holidays with aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandmother, and snow days in January. An abundance of birds, daffodils, and forsythia marked spring. And in summer, we children were encouraged to disappear into our own outside play, and to walk to the public library and school.<p></p><p>Everything wasn’t always wonderful. Adults in our lives drank and smoked, partied and fought, and never explained or interpreted their complicated emotional lives.</p><p><b><i>Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?</i></b></p><p>Susan Griffin’s <i>Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her</i>. She demonstrated how to speak from the body, from turbulence, and from rage. From passion and from the personal. To be unflinching in one’s gaze. And to take command of language and form.</p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI8iDJVVsm0pA0u224a5YCOLOG7jqKc-rAQaC91kBHPKYlN2g_iRQDx27WhB9a5DxnujHPwmd8B2bVWXdGWI6qaT5wLK1MA9wjOPs2uDuhkbB5ElGLh9dRadv5s0yy1IvDGT-2U88LCoa5/s300/womanandnaturegriffin-200x300.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI8iDJVVsm0pA0u224a5YCOLOG7jqKc-rAQaC91kBHPKYlN2g_iRQDx27WhB9a5DxnujHPwmd8B2bVWXdGWI6qaT5wLK1MA9wjOPs2uDuhkbB5ElGLh9dRadv5s0yy1IvDGT-2U88LCoa5/w267-h400/womanandnaturegriffin-200x300.jpg" width="267" /></a></div><p></p><p><b><i>Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it makes it so?</i></b></p><p><i>The Wolves of Willoughby Chase</i> by Joan Aiken (1962). I loved the bond between the two young protagonist cousins –bold Bonnie and timid Sylvia, the one protecting the other when the “grown-ups were out of the room.” That spoke to me.</p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj577LuNnGzT4JWMXcufMrd5k-2_FlAsIZ7up_D8kMimmaQ56BulPGSb4H07ms7-jMA9Cj0_HzHiSvahukLZTY-QtCNBV3xLU8LaCeRRrQqIN_Slb-8hthTVWjEt6EfGQQ3YHObeMFimHrf/s560/the-wolves-of-willoughby-chase-by-joan-aiken.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="560" data-original-width="382" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj577LuNnGzT4JWMXcufMrd5k-2_FlAsIZ7up_D8kMimmaQ56BulPGSb4H07ms7-jMA9Cj0_HzHiSvahukLZTY-QtCNBV3xLU8LaCeRRrQqIN_Slb-8hthTVWjEt6EfGQQ3YHObeMFimHrf/w273-h400/the-wolves-of-willoughby-chase-by-joan-aiken.jpg" width="273" /></a></div><p></p><p>It was hard to find literary girl heroines in the early 60s. This novel combined elements of cozy and adventure and satisfying girl power. The wolves were portrayed as wild and unreasonably ferocious creatures in the story, but you knew they were not the real villains.</p><p><b><i>Did you have a favorite teacher and are you still in touch with him or her?</i></b></p><p>I’m grateful for classes I took with Dr. Sheila Ortiz-Taylor (the first Chicana lesbian novelist) at Florida State University. </p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhczeqrqa6yCi4LIaQ4lyOWai0g1pkMZXkP58hJJWRf_x5vKVZgjAIlXqlIFSmt-PHciktuUJaO2lpQO5ZrgsKsOv9Qs6VPlhxnIHWUXBCW5oD8DyKOkxdZRhhUPpWtAlDA7JngRb7txfO9/s230/Shiela.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="230" data-original-width="156" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhczeqrqa6yCi4LIaQ4lyOWai0g1pkMZXkP58hJJWRf_x5vKVZgjAIlXqlIFSmt-PHciktuUJaO2lpQO5ZrgsKsOv9Qs6VPlhxnIHWUXBCW5oD8DyKOkxdZRhhUPpWtAlDA7JngRb7txfO9/w271-h400/Shiela.jpg" width="271" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://">Sheila Ortiz-Taylor</a></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>She taught us the art of keeping commonplace books; for 20 years they have been the basis for my work. </p><p>Sheila pushed me to write beyond what I knew. To have a commitment to my private truths. I was late coming to a study of feminist writing. Sheila introduced me to Tillie Olsen, Adrienne Rich, Irena Klepfisz, Muriel Rukeyser and others. </p><p>I’ve lost touch with Sheila, but she informs my work every day.</p><p><b><i>What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?</i></b></p><p>A story told about me is tender, funny and humiliating all at the same time. One day, in kindergarten, entranced by and wanting something that was not mine, I slipped a bit of furniture from the classroom doll house into my coat pocket. As my father walked me home from school that day, he noticed the toy I had taken. Immediately, he walked back with me to the school and had me place it directly into the hands of the teacher (and probably apologize). All done very kindly, but I remember the shame.</p><p><b><i>How did you meet your beloved Jeff?</i></b></p><p>I met my husband Jeff at a parent/teacher gathering at the very tiny alternative school that his two children and my son attended. He didn’t impress me. I thought he was rude and a bit arrogant--smacking his hand on the table and insisting to the kind-hearted director of the school that the children needed more structured math. But I also noticed he was self-deprecating. He’d introduce himself simply, saying “I work at FSU.” For a couple years I figured he was a janitor on campus. He’d never tell you he’s an award-winning geochemist.</p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKQX0tlxrZfwE3Kgu0lwIqd08UNX_kYjSjGis502sjN1JQEtmJdlLsMnqUm1m9hk1I6gO9eGJ8cG35FApBbIo8HWrBp9Ge-UcZKexKn-8ey8Fv8XyFrcW3Jyx0xQr4m9-XGzsKawzFIntK/s495/me+jeff+oak.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="410" data-original-width="495" height="331" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKQX0tlxrZfwE3Kgu0lwIqd08UNX_kYjSjGis502sjN1JQEtmJdlLsMnqUm1m9hk1I6gO9eGJ8cG35FApBbIo8HWrBp9Ge-UcZKexKn-8ey8Fv8XyFrcW3Jyx0xQr4m9-XGzsKawzFIntK/w400-h331/me+jeff+oak.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Susan, Jeff and Oakie</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>We’ve been great partners in work and life for 23 years. We love hiking, kayaking and trying to understand the processes of nature, especially in the wildernesses of Montana, Utah, and North Florida. His left brain complements my right.</p><p><b><i>Is there a song that you listen to when you are feeling a bit down?</i></b></p><p><i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4rEPh9wz-o&list=OLAK5uy_kUKoK1RZmS7QqcbhF3UH5T28dWCQeoJFg">Take Heart by Velma Frye</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3HM_3xXNoQ">Eve’s Longing by Becky Reardon </a>can lift me up on a hard day.</i></p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGdMeTzn8pBIldAt8tXRP64dJ0VZ4YRCnXsMCzOWFHbfo5EH7CqQ4-RvbhjJ5DImLwb4b92qtk1OaW4zPeGjh_1KQi9qPik6oBvIWLGyaS-CIjK_VbTSV3TGTSAA7ZghyphenhyphenCPTMio7MEkJqc/s1000/primary-Velma-Frye-s-Last-Happy-Hour-----until-fall--1493665339.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="1000" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGdMeTzn8pBIldAt8tXRP64dJ0VZ4YRCnXsMCzOWFHbfo5EH7CqQ4-RvbhjJ5DImLwb4b92qtk1OaW4zPeGjh_1KQi9qPik6oBvIWLGyaS-CIjK_VbTSV3TGTSAA7ZghyphenhyphenCPTMio7MEkJqc/w200-h133/primary-Velma-Frye-s-Last-Happy-Hour-----until-fall--1493665339.jpeg" width="200" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb3SbDPedlGtEKVQCQPpXE2va87LRKdvSPFOppzWKx-QciACqhCFFEQnI_tbIO7XwrL2TECjkV7ELpa7B1hy3ZGatWKccNNaN6ga0lnVFCV1MR5a7hTDsIViQX_2BV8im-6sLAjWjNX_9u/s1180/becky-portrait-lores-artist-246-0-39470.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1180" data-original-width="940" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb3SbDPedlGtEKVQCQPpXE2va87LRKdvSPFOppzWKx-QciACqhCFFEQnI_tbIO7XwrL2TECjkV7ELpa7B1hy3ZGatWKccNNaN6ga0lnVFCV1MR5a7hTDsIViQX_2BV8im-6sLAjWjNX_9u/w159-h200/becky-portrait-lores-artist-246-0-39470.jpg" width="159" /></a><br /><br /><p><b><i>How are you different now than you were in your 20’s?</i></b></p><p>In my early 20s, I was untethered and emotionally undone by the sudden death of my mother, who had suffered from depression for many years. After college, I was lucky to fall in with a group of naturalists; we all worked at the Savannah River Ecology Lab in South Carolina. Together we immersed in the wild places of the southeastern United States. I studied bird and botany books; fished and netted shrimp in salt creeks; and processed the venison my boyfriend harvested. I became wild in every sense of the word.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-rKryLCNBTTlaVjHotCwWVCHs9I7oJogmKNNDqgbyjxbmR_UzI3ZmnF1XI0xcyETcC4QqRXcl-Th-iPUQPgrq1HDiaHUgeIlQIB2pJmRvTCafrzb0zzZKf8W-FVE46Y1JaFviYp2w6IcP/s1736/1976+Edisto+R..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1736" data-original-width="1139" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-rKryLCNBTTlaVjHotCwWVCHs9I7oJogmKNNDqgbyjxbmR_UzI3ZmnF1XI0xcyETcC4QqRXcl-Th-iPUQPgrq1HDiaHUgeIlQIB2pJmRvTCafrzb0zzZKf8W-FVE46Y1JaFviYp2w6IcP/s320/1976+Edisto+R..jpg" /></a></div>I distracted myself from the unprocessed pain of losing a mother so young by creating the things I needed but couldn’t afford on my small salary as a biological technician. A makeshift family was one of them. Also I ordered Frostline kits and fashioned sleeping bags, down jackets and vests, flannel shirts and rain ponchos for the wilderness adventures I craved.<p></p><p></p><p>I didn’t have my own voice yet. I hadn’t found therapy or a spirituality that I could name yet. That’s the difference between me in my 20s and me in my sixties. But even as a young woman, I learned that the wild places mothered me.</p><div><div><b><i>I know you are friends with the brilliant Janisse Ray. How did you two meet?</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div>Janisse Ray and I met at a poetry reading in Tallahassee about 1986.</div><div style="text-align: left;">One of the first ways we supported each other was in a writing group we created with two other women when our children were small. We called it the Hungry Mothers’ Writing Circle. We burned to learn the craft of nature writing.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmTWbtX-Jz05y5TFe55rqyuzCnF_biaPDe01f_h0AgsO6azhkxLxzWALg_pE84x-MT1e2y85Y3-0pVK8IcwEyVFajL8V6M2FuFBtHglNeZ7spXO9WJdaEU8AtKRyNq6qtZBK8rI0r5B0rp/s960/Susan+and+Janisse.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmTWbtX-Jz05y5TFe55rqyuzCnF_biaPDe01f_h0AgsO6azhkxLxzWALg_pE84x-MT1e2y85Y3-0pVK8IcwEyVFajL8V6M2FuFBtHglNeZ7spXO9WJdaEU8AtKRyNq6qtZBK8rI0r5B0rp/s320/Susan+and+Janisse.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Susan and Janisse</span><br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span><div><b><i>What inspired you to write this book?</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div>I want so fervently to help reverse the course of extinction of wild birds, of all wildness, from the planet. That’s my deepest prayer and life purpose. What will make that even remotely possible is if WE the humans, adopt this as essential, all of us. It has to be more important than wealth or power or any of the material things we believe we must have. We have to be willing to overturn the corporations and crooked politicians. We can’t wait any longer to restore our relationship with the earth because right now the earth and everyone on it is in real danger. When a society is overcome by greed and pride, there is violence and unnecessary devastation. </div><div><br /></div><div>When we know how to protect all beings, we will be protecting ourselves. A spiritual revolution is needed if we’re going to confront the environmental challenges that face us. To exclude, consciously or unconsciously, any species from the continuum of existence is to deny a part of ourselves.</div><div><br /></div><div>Since I’ve been working and writing toward that end all of my adult life, I needed to try a different approach than just writing about the natural world. I needed to help people see through my experiences (which are the same as everyone else’s—with aging parents, especially those with dementia). That is, truly see that we are all one. So my Dad and I agreed to tell our story. How I hope it helps.</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><b> <i>How is the dementia of our culture similar to/different from the dementing diseases that affect individual human brains?</i></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>Obviously, that’s the story of the whole book! But in addition: they are similar to me in that cognitive abilities that dwindle in the middle stages of this human neurological disease include: memory erasure, the ability to plan for the future, and the capacity for awareness and compassion. Same is true for cultural dementia. Individual dementias are experienced alone, and they are incurable.</div><div><br /></div><div>Cultural dementia—we have a choice to engage in it, or not. It can be summed up by these words addressed in an open letter to the European Union this summer by Greta Thunberg and fellow climate strikers: “You must stop pretending that we can solve the climate and ecological crisis without treating it as a crisis." </div><div><br /></div><div>We ourselves feel crazy: we know we are in crisis as a planet, and that our “leaders” are driving us to believe otherwise.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is the very real possibility that our president is mad--at the very least he represents the pinnacle of narcissism--the focus on the I, me, mine. I need, I want to, I know, I must be worshiped. He and his minions and handlers are completely gutting the regulations that protect our air, water, lands, wildlife and ourselves and our children. If we are paying attention right now, we are observing the playing out of the colonial takeover that began in the 1500s. </div><div><br /></div><div>Surely, that’s cultural dementia, and it is the absolute opposite of the indigenous mind that inhabited this continent long before our European ancestors appears.</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><b><i>What have you learned about end-of-life care?</i></b><i> </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>How tedious and boring it can be, and how rewarding. Just like the first months of a baby’s life—every task is essential and also seems endless. </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS74JVX6p6B3mCn-y33GKqcshILXEx9w5Uu98e9WM-Rl0gpf6g5mhCaT2itcA5cCgSen13MmvSSOqxM1csTjmsqbQmb5YyGlV2AvWdnJA2fAr_B-r6NZ5otjMbVw1VLIgIxeJVMTUkXasB/s2048/Susan+and+Dad2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1256" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS74JVX6p6B3mCn-y33GKqcshILXEx9w5Uu98e9WM-Rl0gpf6g5mhCaT2itcA5cCgSen13MmvSSOqxM1csTjmsqbQmb5YyGlV2AvWdnJA2fAr_B-r6NZ5otjMbVw1VLIgIxeJVMTUkXasB/w123-h200/Susan+and+Dad2.jpeg" width="123" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI_bVSBbyU8pr3BL4fYvCcN7q7kG7RJftNpWlU5VoXm3D5W852sNwrRMo8Et1etDxz3kaHqSJIPRRHKQVohorldg5nAEZrdqx6fPy6sImVe7pjOigCAylMOtXdAccRX-VEBKjshF3yZsmC/s2048/Susan+and+Dad.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI_bVSBbyU8pr3BL4fYvCcN7q7kG7RJftNpWlU5VoXm3D5W852sNwrRMo8Et1etDxz3kaHqSJIPRRHKQVohorldg5nAEZrdqx6fPy6sImVe7pjOigCAylMOtXdAccRX-VEBKjshF3yZsmC/w200-h150/Susan+and+Dad.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div></div></div><br /><div>And that to be with a person you love as they transition is a great privilege. </div><div><br /></div><div>And that it’s a health care crisis. Right now, nearly 6 million people are afflicted with Alzheimer’s; by 2050, it’s estimated that number will more than double. Like millions of other American families, my siblings and I were basically plugging the huge holes in the safety net of our health care system—and the absurdly high cost of meaningful care facilities. </div><div><br /></div><div>And that we should honor health care and hospice workers with dignity and appropriate pay.</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://ugapress.org/book/9780820357829/a-curious-garden-of-herbs/"><img border="0" data-original-height="163" data-original-width="576" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Yk2RxgHF65bxY9IQCeXFPw3AO-vUW8ud6hQhgEFYFVg1xuLE3cyrXj6fXKwWWf7pirprdmEsMRNMAwi2n558p2E1dq0V6wMWfPlsAMuY6v21BONKR7pzT3EFYU9O3qhXLM9Eew9kPVNX/w640-h182/ad.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="font-style: italic;"><br /></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><p class="MsoNormal"><i>And finally, in a short essay…………………………<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><b><u>IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME</u></b> </i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if
appropriate to your choice,<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>actually experience what it was like to live in that time,
anywhere at all,<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them,
be with them.<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p> </o:p><b>When would you go?</b></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><b>Where would you go?</b><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><b>Who would you want to meet?</b><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>And most importantly, why do you think you chose this
time?</i></b><o:p></o:p></p></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;">First Woman</div><div><br /></div><div>Some years ago, I dreamed about a woman dressed in a ceremonial cape pieced together from the feathers, skins, and bones of wild animals. Her garment was a crazy quilt, fashioned of white beach mouse fur, the plumes of an oystercatcher, the pelage of a fox squirrel, and the bony skull and long bill of a brown pelican, like a helmet. A buffalo skin formed the back of the cloak. Woven throughout were tiny flowers of an endangered plant called butterwort. Bits of ancient clay pottery served as fastening buttons. </div><div><br /></div><div>I call her First Woman.</div><div><br /></div><div>I want to travel back to the time and place where she lived, and either be her, live her life, or, learn everything she knows and bring it back here to the present, where God knows, we need it so badly. Specifically, I want to learn how to to respond to our present time with the powerful mind of an uncolonized indigenous elder woman.</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTN10OzasiO2rCt4isSGfw0rz_zrpfVnsuL3IMt3y9ln7FPdac3rt-Jgl3SHIUqeX5uJGkMhbV18sRPPnnRYycojlxsnJ4GPAt7usmSEP9HhCE1hTfsOLx82oBN5C_KaNXfGSE-5_5pSwg/s231/Indians8.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="206" data-original-width="231" height="357" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTN10OzasiO2rCt4isSGfw0rz_zrpfVnsuL3IMt3y9ln7FPdac3rt-Jgl3SHIUqeX5uJGkMhbV18sRPPnnRYycojlxsnJ4GPAt7usmSEP9HhCE1hTfsOLx82oBN5C_KaNXfGSE-5_5pSwg/w400-h357/Indians8.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /></div><div>First Woman lived two thousand years before the present, when the islands along my north Florida coast were close to their modern positions in Apalachicola Bay: high, wide St. Vincent Island, and to the east, narrow St. George and Dog, swimming like serpents in the sea. Pine forests, scrubby sand ridges, jungley live-oak hammocks, and freshwater ponds, marshes and sloughs covered islands, and sheltered their wildlife. </div><div><br /></div><div>An abundance of protein—oysters, fish, and shrimp--attracted the Indians of the late Archaic Period (in which First Woman lived), to build camps at the edge of St. Joe and Apalachicola bays. For as long as these islands have existed, people navigated the shellfish-studded lagoons and bays.</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj__HtmHZhUpsDkGWgzKgCYlEKxQYtLpq9W-vTy_J2ZM8R4wxXV31-xp_S67JlMyhB9HIoJbnuNKpHxgn3cj2_nqGUffWZTrIxdHOg6umA8V65mzZ-AX2_l0ybSX8PRiA97FSvA18TYrWLM/s913/Indians7.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="913" data-original-width="600" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj__HtmHZhUpsDkGWgzKgCYlEKxQYtLpq9W-vTy_J2ZM8R4wxXV31-xp_S67JlMyhB9HIoJbnuNKpHxgn3cj2_nqGUffWZTrIxdHOg6umA8V65mzZ-AX2_l0ybSX8PRiA97FSvA18TYrWLM/w263-h400/Indians7.jpg" width="263" /></a></div><br />I find First Woman and her people at an encampment on the northern shore of St. Joe Bay. I follow her as she forges through the woods. Soft branchlets of southern red cedar brush our faces. We scramble down a 3-foot drop to the edge of the bay. My eyes squint, adjusting to the sudden bright sunlight and the blue gem brilliance of the water, transparent and aglitter in the late morning sun.</div><div><i> </i></div><div> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlozvg9ZRuJ1X3rLQtLHOBtpQ47Mi_DyRDiypXRxt8qWFKGAP4e6qjGfUPd0R4Z_8141whyUiCZi8_9He0knxU6rzCHQYV1rkMjhJY26ljz9o0CRzI2mHWq6ckRNjhbsJTTDqerb1MlHR4/s253/Indians2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="166" data-original-width="253" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlozvg9ZRuJ1X3rLQtLHOBtpQ47Mi_DyRDiypXRxt8qWFKGAP4e6qjGfUPd0R4Z_8141whyUiCZi8_9He0knxU6rzCHQYV1rkMjhJY26ljz9o0CRzI2mHWq6ckRNjhbsJTTDqerb1MlHR4/w400-h262/Indians2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>People wade with their children in the shallow water to collect horse conches, lightening whelk shells and dozens of other kinds of mollusk. Family members on the beach bash open the shells, and pick out the meat. The shell remains are tossed onto small shell mountains, what we call middens in modern times. Intermingled among the shells that spill from the mound into the bay were deer bones and angular shards of broken pottery. First Woman told me that her people worked only three or four days a week gathering wild foods. The rest of the time was for play, art, exploring, storytelling, and devotion to spiritual practices that kept the ancient stories of the people intact, and kept them connected to the land, each other, and their ancestors. I watched a group of women were teaching their daughters to pray, clustering sunray Venus clamshells in a carefully nested circle.</div><div><br /></div><div>Meanwhile, men and boys were preparing a set of long dugout cypress canoes for journeying north. First Woman explained that her tribe never stayed near the coast during hurricane season. They’d move back up the rivers and creeks, and some would journey far up the Apalachicola, stopping often to feast and commune with relatives who lived along the river’s corridor.</div><div><br /></div><div>First Woman’s tribe belonged to a host of aboriginal groups--the Apalachicoli (who gave their name to the River), the Chisca, the Sawokli, the Chatot, the Amacano, the Chine, and the Pacara--remnants of unnamed prehistoric ancestors. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-style: italic; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2Sh08e1hgfWikT5v0XJUy4rt_BNsDfala5tRgvBpgH7_DmeFQF_nvif6ViHxwVbHFT-i3VBB2OKjtvoqdaX-YjiOnzXSFoqMKdPnPEmq1wkgZ1i54SOfVZlx32SlPQQCDtNRXC_2hp7fM/s789/Indians6.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="789" data-original-width="663" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2Sh08e1hgfWikT5v0XJUy4rt_BNsDfala5tRgvBpgH7_DmeFQF_nvif6ViHxwVbHFT-i3VBB2OKjtvoqdaX-YjiOnzXSFoqMKdPnPEmq1wkgZ1i54SOfVZlx32SlPQQCDtNRXC_2hp7fM/w538-h640/Indians6.jpg" width="538" /></a></div><br />All told, the tenure of the original Floridians familiar with this ground dates back more than 12,000 years on the mainland, 4000 years on the islands--many hundreds of generations. European colonization annihilated the original names, the wisdom and culture, the history and languages of many centuries of vibrant peoples native to our coast have vanished forever. </div><div><br /></div><div>Still we know that for the first people on this landscape, the coastal terrain was a commons, and movement was on foot or by canoe. Prior to the introduction of agriculture, people shifted between favorite productive locations, harvesting seeds, nuts and fruit during the spring and fall; hunting in the spring and fall. People living almost entirely from wild foods could not—and knew not--to over collect.</div><div><br /></div><div>First Woman explained the powerful, very particular sense of identity of her people, including how they knew themselves to belong to a very specific, bounded space. The meander of a river, the shine of an island, the drop of a scarp, the sparkle of a large spring--these were territorial markers, signposts of home--during the first 12,000 years of human tenure here. How much different your perspective of a place would be if you knew you lived between an island and the mainland, or between two rivers that you must ford if you wished to leave home. You are here on this side of the water, and through the physical effort of your own body paddling a hollowed-out cypress canoe or even swimming, you cross over and arrive on the opposite shore. Your body participates in the definition of its place.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuy7FdEBdkZBVZFkI0PijhKZ48VvJsPlbWxBNfn67d6xRO8unCaMHrAUOrnDaZqOyIf5FWWc27F0FEoGnDcdE0I6lHFBnVYgJSbrLBxjToDGDK5NAEdA3zSP-POvR8uxNnKkl5qFjng5O6/s1061/Indians3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1061" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuy7FdEBdkZBVZFkI0PijhKZ48VvJsPlbWxBNfn67d6xRO8unCaMHrAUOrnDaZqOyIf5FWWc27F0FEoGnDcdE0I6lHFBnVYgJSbrLBxjToDGDK5NAEdA3zSP-POvR8uxNnKkl5qFjng5O6/w400-h301/Indians3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /></div><div>There was a fire lit in the center of the campsite. Deer meat sizzled in an earthen pan. Around the site I saw reed baskets that contained maize and pumpkin seeds; a variety of pemmican; baskets containing fibrous water lily roots; numerous pots and pans with gourd dippers; and pelts of foxes, otters, and many deer, in various stages of curing.</div><div><br /></div><div>In one of the huts, I saw little buckskin bags filled with the hair of beaver, soft white feathers, wooden combs, leather shoes, claws of birds and animals, and a thousand other small objects; earth and pigments for body-painting; feather headdresses placed for safekeeping between carefully tied pieces of tree bark, made from feathers of turkeys, cardinals and various other birds. I especially admired hanging baskets of little shells of mother-of-pearl, fish scales, animal bones, and tufts of hair.</div><div>These native peoples had created lives from their place, and they knew they belonged there in a way that only indigenous people truly can. They were comprised directly and intimately, cell by cell, of the generosity of land and sea. They lived consciously within an exquisite balance that included human beings. To become animal, not have that division--that's why they wore the skins in ceremony. </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIdtV-tcbsi3TpSkXmpU_Qi6SaFX21dWvYd4wLX_Tkacq4YpiU0dzu0S1WtW6RMN7S5FmjuX_0dwDl1n6kTt1eidmU0vfIu1eWUYDzKMTUG3Q3OHICRNeAatlUDBMwle43Ab9ipAZ8RZWp/s1033/Indians4.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1033" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIdtV-tcbsi3TpSkXmpU_Qi6SaFX21dWvYd4wLX_Tkacq4YpiU0dzu0S1WtW6RMN7S5FmjuX_0dwDl1n6kTt1eidmU0vfIu1eWUYDzKMTUG3Q3OHICRNeAatlUDBMwle43Ab9ipAZ8RZWp/w400-h310/Indians4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />As long as humans inhabited this coast, First Woman told me, there was always someone squatting, sitting or walking, paying close attention to the edge. Someone who saw new sand bars emerging, and the nuptials of the herons, and the north and south passages of migratory birds. And eventually, tragically, someone who saw the European sails come tracking over the horizon. I thought of contemporary artist <a href="https://www.blogger.com/u/1/#">Theodore Morris</a>, who has created pictorial renderings of Florida's vanished tribes—First Woman and her people. In their expressions, I see their grave concern, knowing that one day the beautiful world they knew would collapse.</div><div><br /></div><div>I take no comfort as I return to the tumultuous 21st century. But as I think about the long past of our coastline and its uncertain future, First Woman and her cape remind me that in each fragment is the shape of the whole. She also reminds me that my task is to unearth and stitch together what stories and teachings I can. Some of the tales are of impending extinction of land, climate and beings, others simply reflect the beauty and wonder I have seen. The stories may seem fragmented, not smooth and unbroken like the surface of the sea. But maybe this is a true thing, how we live in this time, trying to find our way back to wholeness.</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><b><i>I leave you with one of my favorite passages near the end of this remarkable book: </i></b></div><div>"As the sun began to angle into the sea, I thought about how our planet and our sun had created such palettes on uncounted nightfalls, long before these plovers or I had come to be. Earth has turned in far lonelier eons, without bird or human. I staggered under a gratitude so weighty that I had to sink to my heels, for I had the privilege to share this time with the creatures I loved."</div><div><i><b><br /></b></i></div><div>Thank you Susan for an exquisite book.</div><div><i><br /></i></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div><br /></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-73046541235786173302020-09-16T10:36:00.003-04:002020-09-16T17:00:18.082-04:00John Brandon<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqkc1DbJAdM-zbK_E_uukGBeSYCt4W5Kg0_jsCl6h3La0G1CgUmN3xdrTp0PMcGSUBzSCuNhQ-X5U9i4L9ytcSN_3FiqK2r2FFZXbfp_WYQekBQquCTZsHFcEsxU8medCJKGRN8MeN0xVB/s371/John+Brandon.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="315" data-original-width="371" height="531" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqkc1DbJAdM-zbK_E_uukGBeSYCt4W5Kg0_jsCl6h3La0G1CgUmN3xdrTp0PMcGSUBzSCuNhQ-X5U9i4L9ytcSN_3FiqK2r2FFZXbfp_WYQekBQquCTZsHFcEsxU8medCJKGRN8MeN0xVB/w625-h531/John+Brandon.png" width="625" /></a></div><br /> This is one of the most imaginative answers to my Time Travel question ever, from one of my favorite writers, John Brandon. Instead of telling me when and where <i><b>he</b></i> would want to go, he created a whole new short story about a hapless student sent back in time to help build Noah's Ark. So worth reading.<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> Look for more particularly memorable time travel answers from previous issues coming up in the future.<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "inherit",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The WINDOWS of HEAVEN</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">John Brandon, </span><o:p style="text-align: left;"></o:p><span style="text-align: left;">July 24, 2014</span></div><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4UsTl7Fqk5sFoK3hOJT_gjc4L_cyoF4w1KvYx-ZMwMOIdqRQcrwM1qLqfEwWKC8FXBhXUT6v7-1VIfzhzy8oP_BrPudTvL4TLPlkQIzHkJfkF4V79TckLjdgpYcWMXgZeedzoZtXnCzDX/s945/noahs-ark.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="945" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4UsTl7Fqk5sFoK3hOJT_gjc4L_cyoF4w1KvYx-ZMwMOIdqRQcrwM1qLqfEwWKC8FXBhXUT6v7-1VIfzhzy8oP_BrPudTvL4TLPlkQIzHkJfkF4V79TckLjdgpYcWMXgZeedzoZtXnCzDX/w640-h203/noahs-ark.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
<!--[endif]--></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 200%;"> Dwyer was stuck in what he would call a ravine, reclining in the
shade of trees that seemed like they would bear fruit in certain seasons.
The terrain was dry like the desert but full of vegetation, like parts of
California, a state he had driven through once years ago. Now he lived in
Chattanooga, Tennessee. Well, <i>right now</i> he lived in this ravine,
in some dusty and mild Biblical land, a trickle of cool water but nothing to
eat. He had started to grow hungry but the feeling had dissipated.
His stomach wasn’t growling anymore. Through the branches of the fruit
trees, the sky above seemed like a small detail in a long, long story—a tired
blue, the clouds still incidental. Back in Tennessee, nobody would notice
he was gone. He had every intention of returning but he felt profoundly
stuck, possibly abandoned. Maybe the couple in the other side of the
duplex would wonder what had happened to him, if it turned out he never made it
back, but they wouldn’t wonder strongly enough to make inquiries, even casual
ones like coming over and knocking on his door. He worked odd jobs and
temporary factory gigs, so it wasn’t like he’d be missed around the office
Monday morning. There was a to-do list pinned to his refrigerator; he
hoped there was nothing embarrassing on it. </span><span style="color: black; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Before being brought to the ravine, Dwyer had observed the vast
yet tidy construction site. Workmen and tradesmen had been called, he
could tell, from near and far. There was an area where pitch would be
warmed, an area where wood was treated and another where it was measured and
cut. A cluster of tents stood at one end on a bank of high ground.
There was even a sort of cafeteria where mutton and carrots were stewed in
caldrons day and night. Mealtimes were not observed; a workman strode by
and was handed a steaming bowl and took it with him, to slurp down on the way
to his next task. Honestly, there were no breaks at all. The
urgency of the assignment, of course, but Dwyer wondered how much the absence
of cigarettes played into the work rate. He remembered, back when he
smoked, being out on jobs and forgetting to bring cigarettes and feeling not
merely uninterested in breaks but annoyed by the idea of them. Sometimes
he had a partner for the day, and the partner might be out of smokes too, and
Dwyer would find himself angry with the man, like the man had cheated him at
cards or something. </span></span><span style="font-size: 18pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimOSyGmLIICOggE6VLeM-hny7s3AS6-b3t5rvoVBn5mFI4EvTtbd7cWSWrmaU4VemhSPZ6sFTGT5CoKLZAiwCKLN9SSUKzQE4hu16q0iE8OyM9qWVUnQk12a7c_6CBQ6QeWIuCioyl6PHr/s400/framework.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="400" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimOSyGmLIICOggE6VLeM-hny7s3AS6-b3t5rvoVBn5mFI4EvTtbd7cWSWrmaU4VemhSPZ6sFTGT5CoKLZAiwCKLN9SSUKzQE4hu16q0iE8OyM9qWVUnQk12a7c_6CBQ6QeWIuCioyl6PHr/w640-h480/framework.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-size: 18pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">It had seemed to him, on the site, that the workmen had not been aware that a
sea vessel was being built. They were content to toil blindly. They
were being paid quite a bit, he suspected, and good pay had a way of trumping
curiosity. He didn’t notice anyone making fun of Noah, as the Bible
suggested, but good pay could take care of that too, could cause a man to do
his boss-mocking in private. And in truth, Noah seemed more a
figurehead. There was another guy, one of these guys born to be an
assistant, one of these guys who soared in the role of right-hand man.
Dwyer saw this guy all over the site. He was smaller than the workers but
wasn’t a bit afraid of them. His hair wasn’t wild and he had little red
hands that hung like meat from the sleeves of his garment. Because of
this man, no one got near Noah. He hadn’t even heard Noah’s voice.
This assistant negotiated pay and acted as a translator. Dwyer had
noticed that the assistant only ate the carrots, not the mutton. He had
tried to stay close to this man without being obvious about it. He had
blended himself in with this work crew and then that one, general bustle and a
language barrier as his cloak, and no one had seemed bothered by him. As
was stated in the rules, he’d arrived with the correct clothing. From his
life back home, he’d brought calluses and muscled
shoulders. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: black;">
<!--[endif]--></span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 200%;">
The famous practical problems of the ark, which Professor Blakely had discussed
with Dwyer before he had embarked, seemed trivial in the context of the buzzing
construction site. The waste disposal, the feed for all those
beasts. Of course, there was always something to nitpick and always an
answer to be found in response to picked nits, but when you heard the grunts
and smelled the sweat, fussing about practicality seemed moot. The labor
was the fact. The ark was less than half built, hadn’t looked at all like
a ship yet, and Dwyer could not begin to fathom whether it could house a pair
of every animal, but of course it would. It would be as big as it needed
to be. He was aware of the reported numbers of cubits, but when you saw
the skeleton in front of you, it was like standing in front of a stadium; you
knew it was big because it was a stadium, but was it huge? It occurred to
Dwyer that many things that happened in centuries distant from one’s own might
seem outlandish. Earth being round. Automobiles. Power
tools. That a man could work and work for years, nearly a decade, making
other men rich and richer, and end up with, for himself, only a few thousand
dollars to his name.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: black;">
<!--[endif]--></span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 200%;">
Suddenly, in the ravine, the sky the same inscrutable blue though the day was
getting late, he worried that if there was a God, He would get the wrong idea
about Dwyer. He would think Dwyer had traveled here for some other reason
than for money, like because Dwyer was skeptical, like because Dwyer didn’t
trust Him and wanted to poke holes in his legends. Really, he just longed
for a fair shake. That was all. He wanted to be appreciated in
small ways. Clapped on the back. Given a bonus once in his
life. He wanted girls to start being sweet to him again. These were
reasonable things to ask of God. Whatever tall tales God wanted him to
swallow in return, he could swallow them.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
<!--[endif]--></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh97hSSCPd6zVRCW2vC9vcGghdroPKREGaVF_Fc6yG5FoonCbrnQo578xu5TMHJllK8nt6q6Vg_2b9ue93UT1qrCfNB_UbsDv7AJAjU0Veeq59F9bXkWzfsJbVuYJ7HSV13dwHndqtoEjhf/s800/1393551103000-ark-plaza-design.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="342" data-original-width="800" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh97hSSCPd6zVRCW2vC9vcGghdroPKREGaVF_Fc6yG5FoonCbrnQo578xu5TMHJllK8nt6q6Vg_2b9ue93UT1qrCfNB_UbsDv7AJAjU0Veeq59F9bXkWzfsJbVuYJ7HSV13dwHndqtoEjhf/w640-h274/1393551103000-ark-plaza-design.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Dwyer was getting hungry after all. He thought of the
leftover Indian food in his refrigerator back in Chattanooga, how he would’ve
scraped it out into a bowl and warmed it in the microwave and scarfed it down
with a Coke. Maybe he still would. Night was falling. The
best thing he could do was sleep. He thought of pleasant things. He
thought of going fishing as a kid in a neighborhood pond, walking though empty
lots with his little brother, standing on the mud bank. They’d chop up
hot dog and tug sunfish after sunfish up into the light. One day they’d
snagged a hognose turtle. It was like dislodging a motorcycle from the
depths of the pond. He thought of that drive he’d taken, whizzing through
California with his shirt off, munching on beef jerky. The money the trip
had cost him had been well blown. He still believed that. He
thought of when he’d been very young and his father had taken him to the Navy
Yards to watch a new ship dropped into the bay. The ship had submerged
almost fully, lost to the world, sending waves lapping up over the docks and
splashing into a nearby playground. There was a frozen moment and then,
patiently, like it enjoyed worrying the onlookers, the ship righted
itself. Of course, it did. It wobbled and sloshed, great rivulets
of heavy saltwater pouring down its sides, cannons glistening. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZJo6e1tgzEiXLfrAWecTwITdGElPe-JxDATOjAWZyELqeHUV_VwHF8XtbayHL_9NCBdjF1FicbgfawRM-BFLvfcZfD9UmVLz992nauw08A7KBXsBAwqa3a9NMc6RwybfkL6OlplWWHv4b/s700/arc5.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="700" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZJo6e1tgzEiXLfrAWecTwITdGElPe-JxDATOjAWZyELqeHUV_VwHF8XtbayHL_9NCBdjF1FicbgfawRM-BFLvfcZfD9UmVLz992nauw08A7KBXsBAwqa3a9NMc6RwybfkL6OlplWWHv4b/s320/arc5.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> The night had been the
perfect temperature for sleeping. He had been dealt plenty of bum cards
in his day, but he wasn’t going to be the type of person who refused to
acknowledge when something nice came his way. He liked to be cool when he
slept, liked to get under a blanket, and that’s sort of what he’d done.
He’d taken off his garment of animal hide and huddled beneath it and slept
hard. That was one of the rules—when you arrived at your destination in
history, you would be clothed appropriately. Another rule was that you were
supposed to be able to comprehend the language, but evidently he hadn’t read
the fine print on that one. He could only understand Noah’s assistant and
a few others who seemed closely connected to Noah—the three sons maybe.
The problem was that most of the workmen hailed from far off regions where
foreign dialects were spoken. You couldn’t understand every language, he
now saw, just the important one, the one you’d need to know to gather
information. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 200%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></o:p></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> The main rule was that you would be safe. No harm would come to him; that
was a part of the contract he’d actually read, or at least dutifully
skimmed. And strictly this rule had not yet been broken, but he had been
manhandled, had been dragged from camp and thrown into a ravine, and he was hungry.
Occasionally the wind would carry him the scent of the stewing mutton and by
now it was all but driving him crazy. The hunger wasn’t in his stomach
any longer. His head was light and limbs heavy. The main thing, he
knew, was to stay calm—not to think too much. He couldn’t afford to get
down on himself for agreeing to this. </span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6HF8ZE1yQdBzGvuR4HMixwUqstGT7dg_2hVUJ3XXNTs3W3S7mWMX8ROxLY5V5ca8JLA5TjHKhjTNb4NMPBEt1_yz-S976Q5t7WD-H2KMSt_taOvBflS4x3ItGfGtCuUPhidEZa-6XtwiC/s1200/arc2.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6HF8ZE1yQdBzGvuR4HMixwUqstGT7dg_2hVUJ3XXNTs3W3S7mWMX8ROxLY5V5ca8JLA5TjHKhjTNb4NMPBEt1_yz-S976Q5t7WD-H2KMSt_taOvBflS4x3ItGfGtCuUPhidEZa-6XtwiC/w640-h320/arc2.png" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> I</span>t was a
job and he needed money; since when was he picky about jobs? But he <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> wished
he’d asked Professor Blakely some pointed questions, wished he’d</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> taken the
contract home and picked through it. The truth was he hadn’t</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> wanted to
know the details. He hadn’t wanted to discover something that </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> would’ve
kept him from signing on. And now he was entertaining notions he</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">didn’t
want to entertain. He was thinking Professor Blakely was too nerdy a <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> professor.
He’d been wearing a bow tie. He’d been wearing a jacket with</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> patches
on the sleeves in ninety-degree weather. He’d been remarkably</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> awkward;
he had even botched their handshake. Dwyer didn’t know where</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> this line
of thought had started or where it led, but he was now giving credence</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> to the
idea that Professor Blakely could have been an actor, a front man,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> meant to
seem innocuous and consumed with scientific endeavor. Professor</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> Blakely’s
name could’ve been Steve Simpson or Ben Cole and he could’ve had a</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> couple
regional commercials in his credits, a slimy agent, a stack of headshots.</p></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div></span><div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">If he was going to keep
thinking about it, which now seemed the case, Noah’s assistant also didn’t seem
real. He seemed like a person from Dwyer’s era, not from Chattanooga but
from a city somewhere, a mean uptown kiss-ass. He seemed like someone who
could do well in Washington DC. If whoever was behind Professor Blakely
could send Dwyer back in time, then other parties could send other
people. Competing interests. No, he hadn’t thought this through at
all. He could hardly remember now what the other choices had been,
besides Noah. The loaves and fishes’ thing. That was one. And
Lazarus. Noah had been the first on the list, so Dwyer had chosen
him. He hadn’t wanted to weigh options; he’d wanted an assignment. </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbQbqeN5MBf0dgqZc3XZXttSu3e7hab3spxYo4FeWjnKZu8WpUXulUyQuYdiQxcSaWM-KAmxGydTwGYPjU9eh7gbs0h6S19cWbjunhelyGhV0itsWnf2Td-VbxDqW-c-KU1hfOOQFyNCRu/s960/arc3.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbQbqeN5MBf0dgqZc3XZXttSu3e7hab3spxYo4FeWjnKZu8WpUXulUyQuYdiQxcSaWM-KAmxGydTwGYPjU9eh7gbs0h6S19cWbjunhelyGhV0itsWnf2Td-VbxDqW-c-KU1hfOOQFyNCRu/w640-h360/arc3.png" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">High noon. The sun
white and silent above him. Dwyer had scoured the ravine for berries or
nuts or mushrooms, and had come up empty. He was thinking again. No
use trying not to. He was thinking about the fact that God had promised
never to flood the world again not because he felt sorry about it, but because
he’d realized humans were beyond help. Humans were broken and deaf.
“The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth,” is the way God put
it. Dwyer remembered that from Bible school. That part had stuck
with him. </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
He stared upward. No clouds. Something was up there, though.
There had to be something hiding up there, for it to look so plain.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ1Kn96P1DFM3DTFuxKSEfrWp637NgZBMkgUAOtvBUBR4M11M5F2ic1gzFho5g9nkVE1BpMwKaYw1vsuyMrU6nCBhrAhIfuyMNERGvkoJMH-ShpEHl7Vx11a6-S_2hYWuvlcrgHmoELYJ6/s640/arc1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ1Kn96P1DFM3DTFuxKSEfrWp637NgZBMkgUAOtvBUBR4M11M5F2ic1gzFho5g9nkVE1BpMwKaYw1vsuyMrU6nCBhrAhIfuyMNERGvkoJMH-ShpEHl7Vx11a6-S_2hYWuvlcrgHmoELYJ6/w640-h360/arc1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">There was nothing
special about the two men who had thrown him into the ravine. They’d been
drunk, which was against the rules of the site. They hadn’t been angry
with Dwyer. They’d roused him out of his tent in the night and dragged him
what he estimated was less than a mile to this makeshift prison and he hadn’t
seen them since. No abuse. No threats, even. They hadn’t
tried to rob him. The possibilities: They had forgotten altogether
about putting Dwyer in here, had gotten up the next morning and gone back to
work none the wiser and would never know a thing about this deed they’d
committed one night in a drunken reverie. Or, with colossal hangovers,
they’d been assaulted by the morning sun and their own bowels and had been
unable to work and were shown the door by Noah’s assistant. He had seen
that happen dozens of times in Chattanooga, dudes throwing up all morning and
finally getting shit-canned at lunch. The two guys hadn’t even seemed to
enjoy dragging him to the ravine. They hadn’t laughed. They hadn’t
argued. They’d said a few things, in one of the countless languages Dwyer
couldn’t understand. He was having a hard time picturing the pair
now. They had looked mostly alike—that he remembered. Maybe that
was why he couldn’t picture them. One spoke in an eager ramble, and the
other cautiously and without inflection. It seemed the fast-talking one
was foolhardy and the other wise, but that may not have been the case.
The quiet one may have been quiet because he was dull-witted.</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 200%;">
Dwyer was dull-witted. That wasn’t in question. He was stuck in a
ravine. He was stuck in a ravine and the worst storm in all of history
was brewing out over the sea somewhere, headed for him. He took some deep
breaths of the thin air. He could’ve used a cigarette. He hadn’t
lit up in the sober light of day for many months, but if offered a cigarette at
this moment he’d have gratefully accepted. It was getting to the hottest
part of the day and he was trapped in the shade of trees that in another part
of the year might produce juicy, sweet sustenance. </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyt4t0IwNwIdoZB0iL5wu65dH8BMo4vWPkPracHUPVZbmA515VTgS-i_IZNCdO5G51xGCoU_o3uNm53VkhZJRYn_PQ3QHvK90zdjtSDl-g1ypS2wbHa9sbnRrlIBhLtEHlfhxejJgHvfHO/s600/arc6.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="301" data-original-width="600" height="322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyt4t0IwNwIdoZB0iL5wu65dH8BMo4vWPkPracHUPVZbmA515VTgS-i_IZNCdO5G51xGCoU_o3uNm53VkhZJRYn_PQ3QHvK90zdjtSDl-g1ypS2wbHa9sbnRrlIBhLtEHlfhxejJgHvfHO/w640-h322/arc6.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 200%;">His patience was fraying
fast. He was not meant to be cooped up. He kept thinking of that
damned assistant, and now the two workmen who’d thrown him in the ravine didn’t
seem credible, either. They seemed like movie ruffians, like goons produced
in order to advance a plot. He was a pawn but maybe God had his pawns as
well. Dwyer wanted to gaze skyward but he wasn’t going to indulge in that
anymore. He put his feet up on a big rock that seemed to be ticking with
warmth. He looked at his hands. They were familiar. He wanted
to be home in his duplex. He wanted to appreciate what he had. He
wanted to be young, and maybe he was. He looked at the sky, ignoring its
static, smirking hue, trying to imagine a wonderful rainbow.</span><span style="color: black; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Also by John Brandon from McSweeney's:</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p><img height="163" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/512AaPLTQZL._SX351_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="116" /> <img alt="Arkansas by [John Brandon]" height="164" src="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51T9IRpGB-L.jpg" width="107" /> <img height="163" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/519jQPEMKzL._SX348_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="114" /> <img height="163" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51E3muoxUxL._SX351_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="116" /></p><h1 class="a-spacing-none a-text-normal" id="title" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0px !important; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><span class="a-size-extra-large" id="productTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.2 !important; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">and soon:</span><span style="font-family: Amazon Ember, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 28px;"> Ivory Shoals </span></span><span class="a-size-large a-color-secondary" id="productSubtitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(86, 89, 89) !important; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 21px !important; line-height: 1.3 !important; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Hardcover – June 15, 2021!</span></h1><p></p></div></div>Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2016075670235224326.post-55760558611627478562020-08-28T16:15:00.000-04:002020-08-29T10:36:09.991-04:00Gil Adamson<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhswXt-H5sB0w8SZH94yGgXtelcdtttn1N6qMF42j_g_esLlfe9SW_P0FzRpZcP_DHbX0qMERHwIhUTxYQvSILLCq-gZUZfLPgSfOeZWL3PLgPJ8KUuZfOhxdq2FACwNBcPj1bjJ4IKf3iv/s1600/Gil+Adamson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="346" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhswXt-H5sB0w8SZH94yGgXtelcdtttn1N6qMF42j_g_esLlfe9SW_P0FzRpZcP_DHbX0qMERHwIhUTxYQvSILLCq-gZUZfLPgSfOeZWL3PLgPJ8KUuZfOhxdq2FACwNBcPj1bjJ4IKf3iv/s320/Gil+Adamson.jpg" width="316" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8PiRttXrynRcMWYPTRpL7gTfwJA-qlw728Cib5L6QmU-fWJcd9UgIBN7zngkNNbi1bbTuK4QHHKqzQ10UgwGamZmg-gPMQwh1NcSHr_u90mdf8rpzVqe-tckKHe815jQG-o2RmHzA3mjm/s1600/Ridgerunner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="417" data-original-width="273" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8PiRttXrynRcMWYPTRpL7gTfwJA-qlw728Cib5L6QmU-fWJcd9UgIBN7zngkNNbi1bbTuK4QHHKqzQ10UgwGamZmg-gPMQwh1NcSHr_u90mdf8rpzVqe-tckKHe815jQG-o2RmHzA3mjm/s400/Ridgerunner.jpg" width="260" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">People who love to read fiction, especially historical fiction, experience a little bit of heaven when the storyline and characters are so good you just don't want it to end. That was my situation as Gil Adamson's <b style="font-style: italic;">Ridgerunner </b>was coming to a close. "NO!" I called out to the Gods, as I turned the page to find the word "Acknowledgements" printed on one of the last pages. I didn't want to leave these new friends I'd made as I read chapter after chapter, page after page. They are so real, the time and place so convincing, and most importantly, the story captivating to the core.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><i>Ridgerunner</i></b> is the sequel to Gil's previous book, <b><i>Outlander</i></b>. That it reads like a stand-alone speaks volumes about the author's skill and talent. The time is 1917 and WWI is still raging, the place is the Canadian Rocky Mountains. A father and son, who love each other deeply and live in the wilderness, have just lost their, oh, so beloved, wife and mother to a mysterious illness. How they cope will reach deep into your hearts.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Michael Redhill, Scotiabank Giller Prize winning author said this: </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic;">“In Gil Adamson’s </span><span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #666666; font-size: 15px;">Ridgerunner</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic;"> we meet thirteen-year-old Jack Boulton, whose quest — perhaps foolish, certainly dangerous — is to be reunited with his only living family member, his father. A beautiful and moving novel about the durability of family ties, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-size: 15px;">Ridgerunner</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic;"> is a brilliant literary achievement, and in Jack Boulton, Adamson has created one of the most vividly rendered children you will ever encounter in fiction. I loved every page of it.”</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 15px;"><b><i>Ridgerunner</i></b> is published by Canadian publisher <a href="https://houseofanansi.com/pages/about-us-1">House of Anansi Press</a>, one of my favorites from my earlier incarnation as a Publisher's Rep. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Two of many memorable lines from the story:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">"He sucked in a single breath and saw the vast country in which he had always lived without being part of it, and above that, Canada, left by the cartographer entirely blank and unnamed. He looked at that great vacancy for a long time, the way one looks out to sea, and it calmed him. In some irrational way he imagined he would leave this town, this state, leave America, leave himself behind, head north where surely it was quiet and uninhabited, and he'd just..... cease to be. Wink out and be gone."</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">"It had taken Sampson four tries to step inside. When, finally, he crossed the threshold, he had braced himself for her presence, her anger or sorrow, something that might blow over him and cling, like sand in his hair. Instead, very clearly, he'd felt nothing. Nothing." </span></i><br />
<i><br /></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
Here are Gil's fascinating answers to my interview questions:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Tell
me about where you live and why you love it so much.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve
lived</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">other places (Australia, Japan), and my novels are set in wilderness, but the fact is I grew up in a very big city; Toronto has more people than Chicago.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhImg_eN8b5dYKcHam1YN_PDVXTDEGpB01VNrX9baEkG-pZ_rap9No0BwXtFrcoPq41kd8wCrFCZ8hqJKFl_UYbWIHVh3JfP8CNrPeXXX4raOF4Q7li1cK73JMSFfQl_VEMDGQ0dcx6O1yZ/s1600/toronto-skyline-AP-TRAVEL-xlarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="847" data-original-width="1280" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhImg_eN8b5dYKcHam1YN_PDVXTDEGpB01VNrX9baEkG-pZ_rap9No0BwXtFrcoPq41kd8wCrFCZ8hqJKFl_UYbWIHVh3JfP8CNrPeXXX4raOF4Q7li1cK73JMSFfQl_VEMDGQ0dcx6O1yZ/s400/toronto-skyline-AP-TRAVEL-xlarge.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>We live in a small cottagey house on a leafy street full of kids, with schools
and parks all around. Halloween is wonderful thanks to all the children. You go
broke buying enough candy. </i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I complemented one tiny girl on being a lovely
princess, which was the wrong thing to say because she shrieked, “I’m an </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">evil</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> princess!” She’d had to explain it
all night and was deeply pissed off. A couple of impossibly leggy Vietnamese
kids came dressed as the Blues Brothers—gold star, kids. The ref was so old I
couldn’t believe it. One girl came dressed as a full leaf bag. You gave her
candy, she gave you leaves.</span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If I love Toronto, the city itself, it’s for the food.
You can find almost any world cuisine here, and within each cuisine you can
likely find the exact region you prefer. My husband is a talented home cook,
and he likes being able to find any ingredient he wants. Galangal root, kaffir
lime leaf, fresh tamarind, callalou greens, on choy. I recall my brother,
however, being tormented by the fact he couldn’t find okonomiyaki that tasted quite authentic.</span></i></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm1vnNMUiZbbJttPLqE8mIYJRaDHCZPQp4jzgus1ltbxAqx2BZzMiWFp9mw9MJ-zBUColjH3kdnnPFVmMghwMGH40M9hqgr69bphbIlJaCLNUPf4jiNq9qCsydqIbqP6PQAErLGhz7p04I/s1600/okonomiyaki-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="600" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm1vnNMUiZbbJttPLqE8mIYJRaDHCZPQp4jzgus1ltbxAqx2BZzMiWFp9mw9MJ-zBUColjH3kdnnPFVmMghwMGH40M9hqgr69bphbIlJaCLNUPf4jiNq9qCsydqIbqP6PQAErLGhz7p04I/s200/okonomiyaki-5.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Obonomiyaki</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: right; text-indent: 0.5in;">Better than chow mein
and chicken balls, I guess. You can get that here, too.</i><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; text-align: right; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Where were you
living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories?<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>Rathnelly
Avenue, in a quirky little neighborhood about a mile from the centre of
downtown. There was a municipal water pumping station across the street with a
wide green space that was eventually made into a park and playground.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwYIJ0P4xRlV4rMRg9frXVPASk9SUm2rva89e8-zObkAuScV3K_p_4KJS3ng3Fdc05KErwkxCaW7gQMVk-AvkHqG9UwL0XRMK408wmPUY4Le8t5a8SuGTMs2iLDBWmjW9urGvWggZKh3bR/s1600/Screenshot+%25282%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="760" data-original-width="1579" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwYIJ0P4xRlV4rMRg9frXVPASk9SUm2rva89e8-zObkAuScV3K_p_4KJS3ng3Fdc05KErwkxCaW7gQMVk-AvkHqG9UwL0XRMK408wmPUY4Le8t5a8SuGTMs2iLDBWmjW9urGvWggZKh3bR/s640/Screenshot+%25282%2529.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i><br /></i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH1YLZeIK827R9n_UeLQ7jaFoIyB4W9Fg0_waa9Yirxnr83KjdIwjjW52__0RyU4SdeLwIeRSLIzkMInVuWjr7UV75qZftAbHTfrv26KccCRrUwBNwn2VJ-zlx_T1rlJ9mGZrNNRCr1xzv/s1600/Gil+Adamson+photo+1+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1345" data-original-width="711" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH1YLZeIK827R9n_UeLQ7jaFoIyB4W9Fg0_waa9Yirxnr83KjdIwjjW52__0RyU4SdeLwIeRSLIzkMInVuWjr7UV75qZftAbHTfrv26KccCRrUwBNwn2VJ-zlx_T1rlJ9mGZrNNRCr1xzv/s320/Gil+Adamson+photo+1+%25282%2529.jpg" width="169" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gil</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The adults all decided one summer to form “the
Republic of Rathnelly,” to have a yearly street festival, to print out
passports for every household, and they even wrote to the prime minister of
Canada (father of our current guy, as it turns out) informing him that the
Republic was going to “secede from the nation.”</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></i></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxlH-KSBuWkFKEFMP-_QFXiJYGoKUHw9Rdkqgi7T32iupPNQkByn9TYRPmH8q5Uj_-Sh7HmTVGcIlTFVmL9w51yV8MFd8a5ayLlaWKxF0lNwAKQis9jggATPZ_039j0dt6_a7cwzosbS8j/s1600/blob.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="467" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxlH-KSBuWkFKEFMP-_QFXiJYGoKUHw9Rdkqgi7T32iupPNQkByn9TYRPmH8q5Uj_-Sh7HmTVGcIlTFVmL9w51yV8MFd8a5ayLlaWKxF0lNwAKQis9jggATPZ_039j0dt6_a7cwzosbS8j/s320/blob.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>He wrote back, amused, and said
basically, “You can’t do that.” During the street festival, events included the
egg toss, the slow-bicycle race (last one across the finish line wins), a mock
battle in cardboard canoes with legs sticking out the bottom, and the
dog-and-owner lookalike contest (very likely proposed by someone who knew they
would win). It was a perfect place for a kid to grow up, and I miss it very
much. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The other place I spent time was at my grandparent’s house
outside the city, right on Lake Ontario, surrounded by trees. While the adults
were busy failing to relate to one another my brother and I used to run around
in the woods. One summer (I was about 7) there was a moon landing about to
happen. </span></i><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNHIRvphjQfU9WvlkFB9EBO5CSVL4vGgvU7nNqmBpRe811qfFmfgatbakdu22HZzkKK3UqMyUGvVPT7sgZIpH80vbBzb9jeWCuXx1zRgkiWGd1vPzW5Z8acMr_ZcMODcCOmX1gdxWE9mi6/s1600/Gil+Adamson+photo+1+%25283%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1138" data-original-width="579" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNHIRvphjQfU9WvlkFB9EBO5CSVL4vGgvU7nNqmBpRe811qfFmfgatbakdu22HZzkKK3UqMyUGvVPT7sgZIpH80vbBzb9jeWCuXx1zRgkiWGd1vPzW5Z8acMr_ZcMODcCOmX1gdxWE9mi6/s320/Gil+Adamson+photo+1+%25283%2529.jpg" width="162" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">7 year old Gil</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">No one wanted to go back inside, so someone found several extension
cords and brought the portable TV out onto the lawn. I stood in my bathing suit
eating a sandwich, watched a man in white step onto the moon, but I didn’t
think much of it at the time.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Is there a book
that changed the way you look at life?<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>No.
Not at life. But there have been books that utterly changed my understanding of
what was possible in fiction and poetry. I remember the feeling of reading such
books. It’s almost a physical lightening, a joy: You can do that? You can do that?
</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Do you have a
favorite children’s book and what about it makes it so?<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>By
children’s book I am assuming you mean things like Dr. Seuss. We loved all of
them. We read comic books like Asterix, in English and French. The French puns
were better. But my father was a natural educator, and he read to each of us,
separately because of our different ages and bedtimes, every night of our lives
until we told him to stop. He’d lie on the bed, a child’s head on his bicep,
and hold the book over us so we could read,too. </i></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1jz2TMvKxQU-4wvAKp0-PRN9j0Ld7XnXGd1f4mujSQEpqyJFirfTTAUN8n7m5WPgD_8qTKjCYRRb77zT-_aWnEpG-AUMBX4GOoVFhMa3vIvruIj6yGroRCD1NaPADtjzM-9qYMCBZAHj-/s1600/father+reading.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="592" data-original-width="612" height="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1jz2TMvKxQU-4wvAKp0-PRN9j0Ld7XnXGd1f4mujSQEpqyJFirfTTAUN8n7m5WPgD_8qTKjCYRRb77zT-_aWnEpG-AUMBX4GOoVFhMa3vIvruIj6yGroRCD1NaPADtjzM-9qYMCBZAHj-/s320/father+reading.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Which we didn’t; we flipped
through comic books and simply listened to his voice. Sometimes he’d say “Are
you bored?” and we’d jump up and say “No I’m not, don’t stop.” He read books
that were just above our “level,” adult books as well as kids’ fare. </i>Huck Finn<i>,
</i>Treasure Island<i>, </i>Charlotte’s Webb, Ferdinand
the Bull, Wind in the Willows<i>. He
allowed the Narnia books but we had a talk about religion and the authors' intentions as we went along. He read books like </i>Animal Farm<i> which, from a child’s perspective, was about unfairness
and made perfect sense. Sometimes, it backfired on Dad. I was so terrified by
the drunk father scene in </i>Huck Finn<i> that he gently slipped over that part years
later when he read it to my brother. As an adult I re-purposed that awful
drunken scene and put it in </i><b>Ridgerunner</b><i>.
So, you see where things end up sometimes. </i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><br /></i></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://bookshop.org/books/frying-plantain/9781487005344"><img border="0" data-original-height="125" data-original-width="400" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI9M4viXpnRmcjBYVTZC_jbdjZj-rvu7PwnHtjMBF8wco2pmCgxeY-peuUkqMDvG9ATJPeV_aZW0UZ-ceMHWGaHPd6zrBT9rgc-o7oTWDRJGKGUUrCoTEzJpoV0u1qyGmTzOoc-4TQ-Zqx/s640/Anansi+ad+2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">What are the
funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>I
used to capture snakes, just pretty little garters and ribbon snakes, and I’d
keep them for an afternoon. I tried to kiss one once and it bit me on the
cheek. It probably thought I was about to eat it. </i></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2s0iY9UI2uf1Fbp1HXvvzI_5zY0xRAeTe44p1j8EJBUxyLBmMHLwmd5dFlu2CHVpUmXJFvm_lPxuy4brDNtjAXDY7zJXOy6BNZewRu_k-flTMRRv3ky2qpqn5q8pi64qgL-m-4lZefGsX/s1600/gettyimages-71101999-1024x1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="609" data-original-width="561" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2s0iY9UI2uf1Fbp1HXvvzI_5zY0xRAeTe44p1j8EJBUxyLBmMHLwmd5dFlu2CHVpUmXJFvm_lPxuy4brDNtjAXDY7zJXOy6BNZewRu_k-flTMRRv3ky2qpqn5q8pi64qgL-m-4lZefGsX/s320/gettyimages-71101999-1024x1024.jpg" width="294" /></a></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><br /></i></span></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>My family never stopped
razzing me for kissing a snake. </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Is there a song
that you listen to when you are feeling a bit down?<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If
I have a delicious desire to feel even sadder, <a href="https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Hope+Sandoval%e2%80%99s+%e2%80%9cDrop.%e2%80%9d+You+Tube%2c+live&docid=608036020503907192&mid=1A24DDB96E061F0D84C81A24DDB96E061F0D84C8&view=detail&FORM=VIRE">Hope Sandoval’s “Drop.” </a></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0in 28.35pt; text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJRs9PeKmgHuz8a4Gj64wZ_mrk5YepdixRqbHsbdItFoEt8eNEKCJtMw4DC6SmMH9KfOCQ2gYcPVA7c7_v1LU35CYuUf2iDGNTDIw0kjkEdg4P_gxHfTdvEcNG-jECTtmPBCZE1AJBh4j0/s1600/Hope+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="849" data-original-width="1280" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJRs9PeKmgHuz8a4Gj64wZ_mrk5YepdixRqbHsbdItFoEt8eNEKCJtMw4DC6SmMH9KfOCQ2gYcPVA7c7_v1LU35CYuUf2iDGNTDIw0kjkEdg4P_gxHfTdvEcNG-jECTtmPBCZE1AJBh4j0/s320/Hope+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0in 28.35pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>The way you drop <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0in 28.35pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>is like a stone<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0in 28.35pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>make like you're
flying<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0in 28.35pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>but you've just
been thrown. <o:p></o:p></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>Sandoval’s
voice makes me crazy. But mostly I reach for <a href="https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Rodrigo+y+Gabriela%e2%80%99s+%e2%80%9cDiablo+Rojo%e2%80%9d&ru=%2fvideos%2fsearch%3fq%3dRodrigo%2by%2bGabriela%25E2%2580%2599s%2b%25E2%2580%259CDiablo%2bRojo%25E2%2580%259D%26go%3dSearch%26qs%3dds%26form%3dQBVDMH&view=detail&mid=D0A0F2549865CF001020D0A0F2549865CF001020&&FORM=VDRVSR">Rodrigo y Gabriela’s “Diablo Rojo”</a> </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">f</span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">or the sheer joyful energy of the guitars</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">.</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span><img alt="See the source image" height="179" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PT9hvyDvKHA/maxresdefault.jpg" width="320" /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>That album got me through grief
after my father’s loss. Gabriela uses her guitar as a percussion instrument,
and there is something very cool about her.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">How are you
different now than you were in your 20’s?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <i>I was a complete idiot. Now I’m only half an
idiot.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In <i>Ridgerunner,</i>
Charles Hyndman's whiskey plays a part, have you ever had any?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>I
named drinks in this book after various people. When casting about for a name
(of a horse or a whiskey or a street) I often shout to my husband “Give me a
name for a horse!” And he does. But sometimes I actually solve the problem
myself. My grandfather’s name was Charles Hyndman; not much of a drinker
himself, but I think he would have liked the idea of his name on something so
expensive and fine, even if it is fictional. Bratty’s Special Old, which
appears earlier in the book, was named after a big real estate developer here
in Toronto who won the right to have some author (me) name a character after
him, thanks to a fundraiser. I had mixed feelings about the whole endeavor, and
that’s why the whiskey in question burns on the way down.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Also, Jack’s love
of books is clear. <i>Brehm's Life of Animals</i> is such a beautiful book, how
did you hear about it? </span></b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSgikgCMp0cEmuYRknKJCrBVjUPjygBaQn_h0OJpXFBPJkHHvUSTVwgaeUng4oXKrSYf4UEaW_usOyWE8FSPvGvOShh3q4ax1al7ZarfaYC_CgswkV32FmYctv-dUb_Kx6V7ro8LyLnyRD/s1600/animals.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="302" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSgikgCMp0cEmuYRknKJCrBVjUPjygBaQn_h0OJpXFBPJkHHvUSTVwgaeUng4oXKrSYf4UEaW_usOyWE8FSPvGvOShh3q4ax1al7ZarfaYC_CgswkV32FmYctv-dUb_Kx6V7ro8LyLnyRD/s320/animals.jpg" width="213" /></a></span></b></div>
<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Isn’t
research funny? The exact moment when you found something seminal often
vanishes in time, and the book itself seems to have been with you forever. It
may be as simple as me searching for “books for children pre-1900.” Brehm’s </i>Tierleben<i>, in German, is one of the most
beautiful books I’ve never seen. </i></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfQ4NCc2ZXqXLcIWMIDXt8stUIKO6u6cHnhWil1vfNOIAZo1_J1-50QcvIPPbtICQPgUKCEbdyxZ6JeH-7NWESJnsr9Josj6Gzix5AX8Cg4rTtYb33AU58mvUAYWehE6NUbdYhsl-pJeAW/s1600/Brehms-tierleben-frontispiece.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1047" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfQ4NCc2ZXqXLcIWMIDXt8stUIKO6u6cHnhWil1vfNOIAZo1_J1-50QcvIPPbtICQPgUKCEbdyxZ6JeH-7NWESJnsr9Josj6Gzix5AX8Cg4rTtYb33AU58mvUAYWehE6NUbdYhsl-pJeAW/s320/Brehms-tierleben-frontispiece.jpg" width="209" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>It’s hard to find a copy, but you can see
scanned versions online. The gorgeous depictions of wild animals, the sheer
range of zoological information, is stunning. As a child I would have slept
with this book in my arms.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Plus I loved that he was so intrigued by the line “Gunnison manifested himself before the girl, to her obvious shock and delight,” by William Le Queux. Loved that.</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">From the sublime to the ridiculous: the whole story of
William Le Queux is a hoot. He was a prolific hack. Death rays, espionage, sex
and more sex. The prose is so bad it worked on me like pepper spray. I felt
like crying. I didn’t feel well. And yet not only did his plucky secret agent
(with the ridiculous name of Duckworth Drew) inspire a young Ian Fleming to
write xenophobic and exciting 007 stories of his own, but Le Queux’s tales of
German spies infiltrating British society and government (way before that was
even a thing) actually inspired the creation of the British Secret Service. All
thanks to a paranoia created by Le Queux himself. </span></i><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXUVpD6tLju4KorrXPjFuCiMo2NgrkJGjZAm-TDETI9jSzmpd867kETW6e130TGoM2-ZsvKDaAC9FTuXksdGcemY0W1JZ2b5PKR8sRBBHB3YXCQwjP3B-zJQ0x9_BlCC-jbvBr3JRuvMBI/s1600/william.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="383" data-original-width="386" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXUVpD6tLju4KorrXPjFuCiMo2NgrkJGjZAm-TDETI9jSzmpd867kETW6e130TGoM2-ZsvKDaAC9FTuXksdGcemY0W1JZ2b5PKR8sRBBHB3YXCQwjP3B-zJQ0x9_BlCC-jbvBr3JRuvMBI/s320/william.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">William Le Queux</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>What a hornswaggler. I loved
picturing what a bright but innocent young boy might make of the sexual
innuendo in such books. What would “manifested” mean to him? (I actually wrote
that line myself.) I do remember hearing people “talk around” something sexual
in front of me when I was young, and man, the weird things you picture because
you don’t understand things yet. </i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Is there something
special or interesting about you that very few people know about?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Well,
I was hit by lightning. Not smack-bang on the head, of course, or I wouldn’t be
here. And I wasn’t harmed at all. There’s a word for the discharge that flows
through the earth, seeking lower ground—that’s what went through me.</i></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpQ4ai1O6g6KnUK5icmgGuZcFe3zw5DErv-otl286QH9aqGgHoMCqEHuRvxgpkg8Rdwws-U7zj7lw-5cxws3wYsoG1Ev5e4u48SKqgrERP5kRpOmeCcFt2fUSxlGRwRy7xOGtj41in2uGj/s1600/lightning.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="993" data-original-width="1023" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpQ4ai1O6g6KnUK5icmgGuZcFe3zw5DErv-otl286QH9aqGgHoMCqEHuRvxgpkg8Rdwws-U7zj7lw-5cxws3wYsoG1Ev5e4u48SKqgrERP5kRpOmeCcFt2fUSxlGRwRy7xOGtj41in2uGj/s320/lightning.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">"If a genie came to me today and said I could do it again, I would."</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><br />
<div style="font-size: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I can’t say I remember it clearly, nor do I recall that awful moment when the lightning and thunder are no longer separate but simultaneous. I was on a camping trip in Quetico Park. Lake Superior is known for sudden, violent storms, and that’s what we got. It was short-lived and absolutely shocking. Anyway, I was fine. But I feel I should tell you how much better I felt afterward. Perhaps I was just glad it was over and the sunset was happening, but I don’t think so. I think electricity reset my brain somehow. That’s my way of understanding it. I found myself calm, content, and totally without fear—not a normal state of mind for me. What a relief to feel no sense of anxious self-preservation, no need to worry about my complex teenaged life, my family, my mother, was the car still in the parking lot after 2 weeks, what if it wouldn’t start … nothing was really important enough to worry about. The earth, with me on it, was doing its thing. The feeling lasted for about 12 hours and then began to fade. I very much regretted slipping back into the granular, quotidian, bearable pain of existence. If a genie came to me today and said I could do it again, I would.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
in a short essay…………………………<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<b><u><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">IF
YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME</span></u></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to
any period from before recorded history to yesterday,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">be
safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">actually
experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">meet
anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">When
would you go?</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Where
would you go?</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Who
would you want to meet?</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">And
most importantly, why do you think you chose this time?</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>I
keep trying to concoct something dignified and literary, but the truth is I
would like to go back and see dinosaurs. You know, from a safe distance, and
not touch anything. </i></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSNDXB3D9bV3J_SnGeInpa3B8jxMPuJ2PVR3iGrxcng207bNhE2xdJnRUQR7qIETG_PvwEhLAh8HNUeQ8CKUCtRqr2SCIiI_7Cls2kZ8UNMAZ3PJaxMGL5c1Ox5aK-0RucO2i1QM32-3pk/s1600/jurassic_world_fallen_kingdom_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="433" data-original-width="768" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSNDXB3D9bV3J_SnGeInpa3B8jxMPuJ2PVR3iGrxcng207bNhE2xdJnRUQR7qIETG_PvwEhLAh8HNUeQ8CKUCtRqr2SCIiI_7Cls2kZ8UNMAZ3PJaxMGL5c1Ox5aK-0RucO2i1QM32-3pk/s400/jurassic_world_fallen_kingdom_0.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>That reminds me of a Bradbury story, something involving a
butterfly, and fascism. I saw a cardinal up close the other day, its head
cocked, eyes looking into mine—it was real and there. It’s frustrating that we
don’t know how a pterodactyl sounded or
moved, how it arranged its body to sleep. And about color, we know nothing. We
now think dinosaurs had feathers, but when I was a kid they were assumed to be
butt naked. Artists’ renditions often annoy me. There’s a term, I’m sure, for
creating a theory from partial information that will look dumb later. Piltdown
Man was a hoax, but boy did they believe it for 40 years. </i></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMCQxFsXbLe1AiVZvAvTO7zVv6E9YKvnD5NCGX2QRWhbYaVAnXTFcE7BpIpuEmvDbcEjoiM3FXOE10CliOWYbu9HNkhlAf1PL6ebua_PxRK3FSEwrepIyRbdgIS-v_eBw3guCWgaEAR-KE/s1600/Piltdown_gang_%2528dark%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1169" data-original-width="1600" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMCQxFsXbLe1AiVZvAvTO7zVv6E9YKvnD5NCGX2QRWhbYaVAnXTFcE7BpIpuEmvDbcEjoiM3FXOE10CliOWYbu9HNkhlAf1PL6ebua_PxRK3FSEwrepIyRbdgIS-v_eBw3guCWgaEAR-KE/s400/Piltdown_gang_%2528dark%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i><br /></i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
We’ve only just
realized the Easter Island heads have bodies and legs down there under the soil.
That’s a head-slap moment. </span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="See the source image" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbf6Ut_khggxG_a5UnLlKFe2ap3ULJlc_oBL30mAL-ABE1Kz4MXsRUMru2zDcNBFfvKAZ-D-528nw-F2BSb5U94pUa_me9-9u22L-VCm_3Oj0G51LxEPYX_vYtcJJuUWk_tcJTZF9qPkkb/s400/easter+island+1.png" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 16px;" width="281" /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: 10.0pt; mso-margin-top-alt: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>Then
again, I might like to go back and have a word with Virginia and Leonard Woolf.
Assure them both that her work will still matter for some time and she will
inspire untold numbers of other writers. But I’d really be there to give them shit
about trying to cancel Robert Louis Stevenson and keep him out of “the canon,” trying
to mark him as a writer of no account, because even if she didn’t like his
writing style, what’s it to her? It’s hard enough being a writer without your
colleagues ill wishing you. And by the way, it didn’t work.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Well Gil, you are the first ever to finagle multiple time trips from me, very clever! I'll see what I can do.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Thank you so much for the insights and stories of who Gil Adamson is; I feel I know you better now.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Readers, <i><b>Ridgerunner</b></i> won't be available in the US for a a few more months but you should definitely order it now from your local independent bookstore. They will let you know when it arrives and hold it for you.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Gil is also the author of :</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<img alt="See the source image" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51mxA0cwguL._SY346_.jpg" width="125" /> <img alt="See the source image" height="200" src="https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/vmUAAOSwR9NeDSYK/s-l640.jpg" width="131" /> <img height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51A1zEB9yAL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="129" /> <img alt="1127175. sy475 " height="200" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1550066168l/1127175._SY475_.jpg" width="122" /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Please feel free to "like" Advance Reading Copy, on Facebook, thanks!</div>
</div>
Jon Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10466441450350414518noreply@blogger.com1