Pearls My Mother Wore

I’ve never enjoyed reading a book more, that I liked less, than Mildred Pierce.  Written by James M. Cain and published in 1941, this character driven novel portrays unlikable characters but with such skill that I had to take notice.  Akin to the genre referred to as “hardboiled,” Mildred Pierce has enough sex and violence to qualify, but no murder.  Before it started feeling formulaic, what I found most intriguing was the subtle psychological twists and developments that took place on nearly every page.  Unfortunately, it became obvious that when the action was looking bleak, something positive would happen, and vice versa.

The opening scene both did and did not prepare me for what was to follow.  There we observe a gentleman tending to his suburban, Glendale, CA yard in 1931; he’s pruning and bracing avocado trees, mowing the lawn, discarding the trimmings, watering the yard, returning the hose to it’s proper place, and finally surveying his work with pride.  He whistled while he worked, and although his trousers were stained, “he wore them with an air.”  For the unsuspecting, there was every indication that this was going to be a nice story, right?  Wrong!

Inside the house, whistling all the while, the gentleman, Bert Pierce, takes a shower and puts on fresh clothes.  Passing through the kitchen, he encounters his much younger wife, Mildred, who is frosting a cake.  Then wham!  The sniping begins.  And from that point on, there isn’t a happy turn of events that isn’t countered by something heart-sinking.

The kitchen bickering reveals husband and wife had experienced a significant reversal of fortune.  Bert had been a real estate developer when the market fell apart, giving this 80-year old setting a highly contemporary aspect.  Timeless too was Bert’s cheating on Mildred with the less complicated neighbor lady, Mrs. Maggie Biederhof.  Mildred, being nobodies fool, knows exactly what her husband is up to.  We also learn that Bert and Mildred married several years before, not so much for love but because Mildred was pregnant.  Mildred gets in several juicy digs during their row; one I especially enjoyed was when she offered to share a couple of her little cakes with the other woman, “…fat as she is, she must like sweets, and — here, I’ll wrap them up for her.”  Bert’s retort, “How’d you like to go to hell?”

Unfaithful, jobless, and unmotivated, Bert gets the boot.  Mildred is suddenly left with full responsibility to fend for herself and her two daughters — seven-year-old Ray and eleven-year-old Veda.  With zero professional skills, her prospects are limited.  She goes about finding a job with remarkable pluck and determination.  Mildred’s resolve to escape total economic collapse is fierce.  What she’s willing to put herself through, indignity after indignity, is depressing.  The most penetrating agony of all is inflicted time and again by Mildred’s wickedly snide, imperious daughter, Veda.

Mildred’s daughter Ray was a sprightly, lovable, guileless child who, in another example of joy being followed by misery, dies suddenly from an unrelenting infection — years before penicillin.  On the weekend preceding this tragedy, Mildred had allowed herself to be swept off her feet by a customer at the diner where she was working.  With devil-may-care abandon she agreed to run off to his cabin at Lake Arrowhead.  The whole time I was reading that part, I had the prickly feeling that something horrible was going to happen.  She was enjoying herself way too much.  I questioned whether it was my 2011 perspective that caused me to suspect Monte Beragon would turn out to be a sadistic sociopath, or if her trust was reasonable for the day.  Although he was more sexually aggressive than I would be comfortable with, Mildred had no such reservations.  Waiting for the other shoe to drop, it wasn’t until the delicious date was over and Mildred returned home and was confronted by Ray’s illness and subsequent death that it did.

The loss of her child leaves Mildred more subdued than devastated.  Along the way, Mildred had become a homemade pie-selling queen.  She had worked hard and planned well.  Following Ray’s burial, that same week, to much celebration, Mildred opened her first restaurant.  Completely unexpected, in one of the psychological twists, Mildred confessed to herself that she was actually grateful that, if one of her daughters had to be taken from her, it would be Ray.  She knew she could not have survived without Veda.

So much could be said and has been said about the role Veda played in Mildred’s life.  To me, Veda is Mildred’s alter ego.  Mildred tolerates so much from this flip, contemptuous, spiteful, arrogant, manipulative, conniving child (and I could go on with the life sucking adjectives, but I won’t) because in her heart of hearts, she wanted to be her.  The dynamic between mother and child, played out to the nth degree, was nothing more than a parent living vicariously through her kid.

In the end, I thought this novel was in large measure about givers and takers, but it was the author’s brilliant understanding of how self-serving each stance is that made this novel compelling.  I questioned why Veda behaved so ghastly toward her mother, and why I didn’t feel sorrier for Mildred?  I distilled my conclusion down to this: Mildred was all drive and no ambition.  And Veda?  Veda had both drive and ambition.  Veda got what she wanted, while Mildred got what she got.  Even though Mildred was able to achieve much, Veda understood that her mother lacked vision, and she resented it.

To that point, this novel provided me with an illuminating moment.  There’s work, and then there’s hard work.  There’s ambition, and then there’s vaulting ambition.  Between two people, placement along those lines can definitely affect the amount of harmony or disharmony that might exist between them.  I find it fascinating that I should discover a message of acceptance and non-judgment in this highly antagonistic story.

Was cringing through the sickeningly bad behavior worth my ah-ha moment?  I’m not sure.  I had to give the story a lot of thought before coming up with something redeeming.  My first take was thick with judgment.  I was better than all those nasty characters, and yippee for me.  Judgment was easy, and I voted myself winning.  Finding something a little less self-serving took effort.  If you like complex character studies, than this is a recommend.  But if you prefer a little more cosmic justice in your stories, than I’d say stay away from this one.

Have a great week, and I’ll post again next Friday.

Photograph by Lutrell Harms

Can I blame my inability to get organized on spring?  It’s like being drunk; I’m full of a bunch of great ideas, but nothing’s getting accomplished.  I look out the window, the sun is shinning, a light breeze is blowing, and I think, “Go out and enjoy the day.”  But then the question is, “How?”  Should I go for a hike, ride my bike, sun bathe, pull weeds and clean up the garden, wash the car, drive to the ocean?  There’s the Sonoma Mission Inn nearby; I could go to the spa and hangout poolside with a book.

But because it’s spring, a dark cloud has now floated overhead, casting an entirely different light on the day.  Maybe staying indoors is the way to go.  I could curl up in my overstuffed chair and watch movies.  I could make several of those phone calls that I’ve been meaning to make.  I could write some e-mails and try to drum up some action for Pearls My Mother Wore.  Oh, that reminds me, I need to invoice the two local bookstores for my book revenues.  Um, that does sound like work.  What else could I do today?  I could rearrange the furniture, but the house is so small that the furniture really only fits in this one configuration.  Maybe I should go buy a bunch of new furniture, better yet, a new house!  Now I am sounding drunk.

Perhaps you’ve noticed.  Not on my list of possibilities is that I could write.  I’m tapping out this blog, and sure, that’s writing, but it’s not fiction writing.  I’m beginning to wonder if I’m avoiding something.

Last Sunday evening I went to San Francisco and the Five Points Arthouse to be part of a supportive audience for several writers and one musician.  The well-attended gathering takes place once a month and is presented by the Portuguese Artists Colony (PAC).  PAC is self-described as “a collection of untrustworthy characters” that write and perform poetry, fiction, plays, screenplays, and music.  Uncivil behavior is encouraged.  Nevertheless, I found the crowd to be entirely civil and discerning in a refreshing and undeniably San Francisco sort of way.  Copy and paste this link into your browser if you’d like to read a most amusing account of how the Portuguese Artist Colony was founded:

http://portugueseartistscolony.blogspot.com/p/origins.html

Part of the evening included a “Live Writing” throw down.  Upon arrival, each of the audience members was encourage to vote, from a short list of choices, on a prompt.  Four invited writers were then given the phrase and ten or so minutes to produce something to read aloud.

Live Writing at PAC

While they wrote, we were fortunate to be entertained by Quinn Deveaux who played guitar and sang a few blues tunes he’d composed.  To learn more about Quinn and his music, search:  www.quinndeveaux.com In August he will be opening for Aaron Neville at Stern Grove, SF.

Quinn Deveaux

The four writers were Matthew James DeCoster, Lauren Eggert-Crowe, Lady Monster, and James Warner.  The prompt was, “Did you feel that?”  James Warner won the write-off with an unexpected short about tables that were bouncing off the walls.  His prize?  An invitation to develop the story and return next month to present a completed version.

The four stories that came out of the writers’ challenge were each fabulous.  I was so impressed by the creativity that was called up on demand.  It made me question my own resistance to creative writing.  I feel pretty safe here with the blog, but plunging back into my imagination has me digging in.  That’s what I’m avoiding.  Maybe I’ll have just one more drink of spring, and tomorrow I’ll write that great American novel…

Enjoy the week, and I’ll post again next Friday.

The weather department said it would be snowing in the Sierra Mountains, and they were right.  Despite predictions of foul weather, Lutrell and I braved the trip because we are two enthusiastic fans of pro cycling.  The Amgen Tour of California was scheduled to begin on Sunday at South Shore Lake Tahoe.  Before leaving Sonoma, we discovered that the race start-time had been postponed from 10:30 to 1:15 due to freezing conditions.  All the better for us because we wouldn’t have to rush the drive.  When we pulled out of Sonoma, the windshield had occasional misting on it.  Outside of Davis the sky was an ominous grey to the east.  North of Sacramento, we had the windshield wiper going full speed.  At Donner Summit we were in stop-and-go traffic, and it was snowing.  I couldn’t imagine anyone, even the pro’s, riding in such a storm.  Forty-five minutes away from South Shore Lake Tahoe, I used my cell-phone to Google “Amgen,” and discovered the the stage had been cancelled.  Mother Nature 1, Amgen 0.

We drove to the Finish line at Northstar Ski Resort anyway, just to see the scene.  There were plenty of people and vendors to make it exciting and worth the effort, but it was seriously cold.  You know it’s cold when your temporary display has ice-sickles hanging from it.

Frozen merchandise at Northstar

That evening we spent the night at Donner Lake because the second stage of the tour was routed up and over Donner Summit.  That would have been a spectacular stage to watch, but, alas, it too was scrapped because of road conditions.  Although the snow prevented the riders from coming through, it was nevertheless stunning to see.

Day two, the tour bypassed the high mountains and started in Nevada City.  We left Donner and headed for Sacramento where the finish line would be.  That had not been part of the plan, so we were a little unsure of where we were going, so we searched for the State Capitol, and we did fine.

California State Capitol in Sacramento

When the riders finally came past, it was thrilling.  They made three laps around the State Capitol and by us.

At home that evening, we watched television coverage of the event.  This next picture is a screenshot from the Versus channel.  It shows us in the crowd; Lutrell has his hands in the air taking pictures, and I’m there clacking blow-up souvenir sticks.

In the crowd

I so admire those athletes, their dedication, determination, and indomitable spirit.  It’s infectious.  All week I’ve been moved to stay positive, try harder, go deeper, and to find strength were maybe I didn’t know it existed.

Those cyclists race for a trophy, sure.  But they’re all such winners in my mind because they give it their all.  That’s my take-home message:  it’s the effort that is the reward.

Speaking of rewards.  Yesterday was my last day before summer vacation at Hanna Boys Center where I tutor reading.  One of the students absolutely made my day when he presented me with a gift.  He had made it and scribed “good times” on it because that is how he feels about our sessions together.  Now that’s a trophy!

Have a great week everybody, and I’ll post again next Friday.

Roseville Library 4-30-2011

Saturday before last, I participated in a four-hour author event at the Roseville Library, just north of Sacramento.  I was one of eight self-published writers, and we each were given twenty-five minutes to present out work.  I thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon and the connections I made.  Many of the presenters are members of the Sacramento Suburban Writers Club, and what a thriving community they appear to have.  Too bad they’re so far away; I’d like to be a member.

I rode up to Roseville with my writing friend, Tami Casias, and her husband, Glen.  Thank you Glen for doing all that driving and dashing out to get me some change for my cash drawer.  Tami has written a young adult novel titled Crystal Bound.  I’m seriously looking forward to July 11th when she and I, a Sonoma duo, will be presenting our work at Book Passage – their San Francisco, Embarcadero Center Store!

In the library audience was a photographer who took this nice picture of me.  His name is Westley Turner.  I told him that I’d be happy to give him a plug here, so he suggested his blog:  ExTerraExpeditions.blogspot.com or his ExTerraExpeditions Facebook page.  See my sidebar for a link.  His blog started in September of 2010.  I couldn’t read all of the posts, but let’s just say that they’re a bit out of this world.  Ex Terra – get it?  If I’ve got it right, the narrator translates into layman’s terms the esoteric experiments of Frank, a quantum physics guy.  Fun reading, and it helped to start at the beginning.  Westley, please feel free to write in the “Comment” box anything you might care to add.

One of the authors at the Roseville event was A. K. Buckroth.  Her presentation was dynamic and unforgettable.  Her book is titled My Diabetic Soul; she’s lived with diabetes for over fifty years.  Buckroth came dressed in, and gave her talk in, full biking attire (helmet too) because she had just that morning ridden in a fundraiser for the cure of Diabetes.  Her networking skills were impressive, and I’m grateful to her for a lead she gave me.  Because of her, on June 5 I’ll be introducing Pearls My Mother Wore to the folks at Atria Covell Gardens in Davis.  Thank you A.K.!

Another Author I met was Cara Weiss Wilson.  Her memoir is titled Dear Cara: Letters From Otto Frank.  She had a lifelong correspondence with Anne Frank’s father, and in her book she shares his wisdom and the inspiration she got from it.  “He taught the importance of tolerance and true spirituality, focusing on the power of love, not revenge,” she writes.

Given our common literary themes of forgiveness, Cara and I really connected.  She told me about her upcoming book that will be a collection of short inspirational stories from individuals who have turned troubles into triumphs.  Casually, I shared with her a life changing moment I had over twenty years ago.  She thought what I had to say was exactly what her forthcoming book was about and asked me to write it up in a short essay.  I did, and after I sent it to her, she replied that she would be “honored” to include it in her next, soon to be published book.

I titled the short essay “On and On,” and here is what I wrote:

It was the mid 1980’s and I was in my mid 20’s.  New Age was still new, and I was spending a late fall weekend at a spiritual retreat center nestled in the coastal mountain range east of Mendocino, CA.  Broken hearted yet again, I was looking for some unknown something to soothe my pain – words of wisdom, direction, higher consciousness…possibly a new boyfriend who possessed a little more sweet and less cheat.

In other areas of my life, I was a success.  I had a thriving hairdressing clientele, I was putting myself through college, I had a nice apartment, drove a nice car, had money in the bank, and plenty of good friends.  But when it came to love, I was a loser.  Regardless of how hard I tried to be sexy, smart, funny, mysterious, tough, hard-to-get, or easy-to-get, the results kept turning out the same; he’d run off with somebody else, and I’d wonder what I’d done wrong, or what I should’ve done differently.  My feelings of abandonment were pervasive and acute.

Now I can’t exactly remember what the retreat seminar was about, and I’m not trying to mock, but I think it had to do with “astral projections,” i.e. channeling energy from outer space.  I remember it involved some “laying on of hand,” and that was when I became a little uncomfortable and excused myself from the afternoon session.

While the group was doing its thing, I went for a long walk into Hendy Woods State Park.  The day was overcast; every plant dripped with foggy dew, and my path was spongy and fragrant from millennia of accumulated forest mulch.  In a melancholy mood, I moved slowly and meditatively, listening to the lively orchestra of breezes and birds in the trees, small streams trickling over stones, squirrels and chipmunks scurrying about in what appeared to be more play than hunt.

At one point, I came upon an enormous fallen redwood.  The giant had been down for many years judging by its crumbling, pulpy decay.  Along its massive trunk ferns had taken root, so had grasses and moss that produce easily missed, teensy white flowers.  Baby timber offshoots were eagerly reaching for the sky.  Clusters of plump, yellow-orange mushrooms found footing where the composting tree was most wet.  I was certain that under the remaining bark must have lived teams of mites, grubs, spiders, and ants.  There before me lay a most noble exchange of life, and in that moment my mind opened up as if it were a bloom in a desert rain.

It dawned on me how polarized my thinking had always been; there was good or bad, right or wrong, yes or no, love or hate, life or death.  On another day, I possibly wouldn’t have even noticed the prone conifer, or if I did, I might have thought, “That tree is dead, how sad.”  But on the afternoon of my somber, late fall walk, when my heart ached desperately for true connection, I suddenly saw life differently.  Instead of sorrow and loss, I saw a magnificent display of continuous life, forward movement, on and on.  Nothing had been abandoned; it had only been changed, transformed.  What I had to do was stop abandoning myself.  I had to stop trying to be something I wasn’t.  Nothing in nature was pretending, and I could follow its lead.

When I returned to the retreat center I felt restored.  I had been given wisdom, direction and higher consciousness; it just didn’t come the way I expected.  My all sweet, no cheat arrived many years later; he’s my husband. ______________________________________________________________________________

It was fun revisiting those old memories.  That tree encounter was almost a spiritual experience, or at least it was of the spiritual variety that I can live with.  The timing of all this was interesting in that I had just finished reading a book about another woman’s spiritual journey.  Faith Adiele had been a guest speaker at my Left Coast Writers group.  She’s now one of my Facebook “Friends.”  Here are my thoughts about Faith’s book:

Meeting Faith is an apt title for Faith Adiele’s memoir since it’s as much an introduction to the woman as it is a point of connection between the pious and the profane.  Archetypally suited more for warrior than ascetic, Adiele recounts her unlikely but most relatable year as an ordained Buddhist nun in Thailand.  The events took place over twenty-five years ago, but social ills such as racism, sexism, academic elitism, religious hypocrisy, political strife, deprivation, and excess are hardly yesterday’s news.  Ms Adiele succeeds in bringing the reader into her world and effectively demonstrates why she, a well educated, mixed-race, American, young woman, made the choices she did.  Her observations and insights about life at home as well as in a foreign country are unsettling in their accuracy and candor.  What I appreciate most about Meeting Faith is that it explores the journey rather than the destination.  Adiele is a perceptive student; she’s attempting to make sense of a complicated world, and that’s an endeavor we share.  Part travelog, part spiritual exploration, part social commentary, I enjoyed reading Meeting Faith: The Forest Journals of a Black Buddhist Nun.

Have a great week everybody, and I’ll post again next Friday.

This week has been packed with activities, work being the most demanding.

The Roseville Library event last Saturday provided a terrific opportunity to meet new people, and I’m looking forward to sharing more about it as soon as I can.  One of the attendees was a photographer named Westley Turner.  He took a great picture of me looking like a proud author.  We’ve been trying to get a digital copy of it to me so that I could post it here, and I will as soon as I have it, perhaps tonight.

I’ve got to get dressed for a day in front of a mirror and several hairdressing customers, so I’ll write more, again, as soon as I can.

Monday morning I drove a four-hour dash out to Carson City, NV to check on my 93-year-old friend, Kate.  She seems to be O.K. now, but when I called her on Sunday I could only understand about half of what she was saying; her speech was incomprehensible, and her voice sounded as though she was possessed.

Kate and I have been friends for about 35 years.  Although she’s 43 years my senior, I’ve never thought of her as a grandmother type.  Our match-up is odd, and that’s why it’s especially precious to me.  When I was in high school, Kate was a friend of the parents of two sisters that I was friends with.  Kate is one of those rare individuals who truly loves and admires young people.  She has always been very forward thinking, always interested in new ideas and new attitudes.  She’s always been so alive and engaging; we hit it off right away.

When I bought my first car, I brazenly phoned Kate and asked if I could come visit her at Donner Lake, about a three hours drive from El Cerrito where I lived.  She was delighted by my call and thrilled to have me.  From then on, we’ve been friends independent of my high school girlfriends and their parents.  Until she moved away from Donner, Kate would swim across the lake every day, all year around.  For those of you who don’t know that lake, it’s in the Sierras and freezes in parts during the winter months, but she loved it.

Donner Lake

Kate is German and emigrated to the U.S. in the 1960’s.  She was a young woman while Hitler and the Nazis were in power.  She doesn’t talk about it much and quickly changes the subject when my probing questions awaken nerves she prefers to deaden, but she has made me aware of how Germans suffered horribly under that regime.  Before meeting her, I had assumed that if you were fortunate enough to be among the “master race,” then you were immune.  Not so.  Ravaged by hunger during the war years, Kate lost all of her teeth due to starvation.  The German army commandeered her family home and its contents, rendering she and her husband and their baby daughter homeless.  Known to be anti-Hitler, her husband was conscripted into some of the worst military duty that included sweeping bombsites for dead bodies and body parts.  His only pay was bottles of Vodka.  Carrying jugs of freshly milled acorn oil, the only source of fat available, Kate was molested and robbed by German soldiers.  About that incident, she was relived that she hadn’t been raped, but she feared what her fellow villagers would do to her when she returned home empty handed, everybody had gathered acorns for that oil.  Being ostracized was almost worse than the attack.

She can’t talk about the years that followed WWII.  I know she had her second child, a son, and I know that her husband had an affair.  About all she says is that it was bad.  Whenever we get near those subjects, it’s as if she is pulled into another universe.  She wrenches herself away from the memories, struggling to pull her gaze off of those devastating recollections, and before she can look at me again, she repeats several times, “It was bad.  It was bad, bad.”

The precise details that led up to Kate leaving her husband and daughter and coming to the U.S. with her son are not clear.  But what is clear is that she seized her new life like one drowning seizes a lifeboat, with desperate and exuberant gratitude.  She loved America and Americans.  Not only learning but also mastering English, she found work, then worked her way up to owning her own interior design business, she raised her son, and she even tried a second marriage to a man 16 years younger than she was.  The marriage didn’t last a single minute after he confessed to an infidelity.

I’ve always known Kate to be feisty, resilient, practicing the power of positive thinking as if it were her religion, and smart.  She’s nobodies fool, for sure.  We share a love for the outdoors.  There was one eventful hike we took to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.  We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, dismissing most of the “Carry Plenty of Water” warnings and assuming a 14-mile round trip could be easily managed within a few hours.   She’s always been a people magnet, and wherever she goes she makes new friends.  So when she sprained her ankle two-thirds of the way down, we became guests of the Grand Canyon National Parks Service.  We were provided gear and a camping spot alongside the Colorado River for our overnight stay,  until a mule could be delivered to carry her out.  I saved myself the mule-ride fee and hiked out.

I could continue on down memory lane, but the whole point of this essay is to tell you about what happened once I arrived in Carson City on Monday.  She was in her polar fleece bathrobe, mobile but shaky, drowsy but far more lucid than she had been on the phone the night before, and she was over the moon that I had arrived.  God it feels good to be loved.  It appears as though she had a major foul-up with her medications (another long story,) but everything is back in order, and she was recovering rapidly.  We talked for hours and caught up on everything I could think of.  I showed her pictures from my laptop.  A few of them were of me presenting Pearls My Mother Wore at various bookstores.  I told her that I wasn’t trying to be vain or show-offy by showing pictures of myself, and she laughed and assured me she had no such thoughts.  She said she loved me and she was proud of me.  I told her I loved her and was proud of her.  I told her that I knew I was flattering myself, but I thought we were kindred spirits.  “Yes we are, Terry.  It’s true,” she said.

As is always the case, our conversation meandered onto current affairs and politics.  She’s disgusted and dismayed by much of what she sees in today’s culture, just as I am.  Politicians, war, mass media and marketing, health care, global warming, crime, corruption, greed, homophobia, racism, bank fraud, mortgage crisis and foreclosures, national obesity, falling education standards, child abuse, etc., there are dozens of places to look where things seem to be getting worse, not better.   For the first time, I heard her say it was a mistake for her to move to this country, to become a citizen, and to vow allegiance.  “This country is losing its middle class, and when you lose your middle class, it’s all over,” she said.  Coming from her, that statement gave me chills.  Loss of a middle class was part of what ushered in the Third Reich.  She’s not just some old lady spouting off about something she doesn’t understand.  She sees trouble, and she’s not optimistic about it turning around.

I am.  My argument to her was that yes, we are at a crossroads, but that before things can get better, they are getting worse.  They are getting worse because we are, for the first time in history, being honest about what’s wrong.  Yes, there was a time when “Made in America” really stood for something, but even in those glory days of the 1950’s there were millions around the globe who paid for our happiness with their own suffering.  Until there is equality for all people, until every person is fed and able to pursue a life of comfort and joy, then we continue on this torturous path of haves and have-nots, criminals and victims.  Before we can change course and create equality for all, we must acknowledge inequality, and that’s the painful and ugly stage we are currently in.

I don’t think the nonsense that drives me up the wall will last.  I do believe that people, especially Americans, can say enough when enough is enough.  We may not be there just yet, but that’s where I think we’re headed.  Time will tell of course, but until then, I’m optimistic that the vast global majority of us will become less divided and more united.  We will have a global middle class; at least that is my hope and prayer.  Kate listened to what I was saying and seemed calmed by my optimism.  I think she was calmed and not just stupefied by my foolishness.

You’d think we wouldn’t have had an appetite after such a heavy discussion, but we did.  Kate’s a sensational cook.  Kate tottered over to the refrigerator and pulled out a bowl of left over ham, potatoes, and green beans.  She opened the oven door and pulled out one of her skillets.  Several were stacked in descending order on the two racks; one was a crust coated heavy iron classic.  Although her kitchen is plenty big enough to store all of her skillets, pots, and pans in the cabinets, she uses the oven.  Kate heated our dinner on the stove top.  I watched every feeble move she made, weak but competent.  She amazes me.

I don’t use the oven to store my frying pans, but my mother did.  Storing skillets in the oven strikes me as extremely middle class; what a beautiful thing.

Have a great week, and I’ll post again next Friday.  Feel free to add a comment or two by using the blue “Comment” link.

P.S. I haven’t heard back from Scribd.com yet, but I have learned that my Kindle version of Pearls My Mother Wore can be read on all e-readers.

This may be a case of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, but I’ve spent more hours than I care to admit trying to figure out how to turn Pearls My Mother Wore into an e-book.  I know, you’d think I’d have this done by now, but nay ( ; )  It is so not as easy as you might think.  Granted, I’m not great when it comes instructions, but those handy drill-down links are about as helpful as tax code.  Oh, how I long for the day when you could just call somebody.

First, I wanted to start by getting Pearls on Scribd.com.  Scribd seems to be the cool alternative to Amazon, plus it makes the document uploadable to several different e-readers, not just the Kindle.  Early on I had doubts about my ability to decipher their friendly website.  On their home page, I clicked on “Guides and Manuals.”  That’s what I needed, a guide for how to precede.  Turns out, that link was to the section that sold guides and manuals for activities such as auto repair, scrap booking, crafts and gadgets.  Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling to the bottom of the page, I discovered more links.  Ah, “Scribd 101.”  A cartoon illustration said “quick and fun.”  The next screen gave me four choices.  Choice one, “Uploading.”  That had twenty-five clicks through descriptions of all the wonderful applications a Scribd account could offer.  Choice two, “Introducing Scribd Readcast.”  Readcast?  That didn’t sound like what I was looking for; I wasn’t going to make an audio book.  I looked anyway.  Readcast had nine pages about all of the various book clubs that are on Scribd.  Choice three, “Scribd Developer Tools and APIs.”  Sounded techy and intimidating but turned out to be more about what the system could do, not how.  Their illustrations of book pages with angle wings flying in the clouds were nice though.  Choice four, “Scribd in HTML5.”  That was sounding even further beyond my grasp, but alas, no.  There were 22 more pages of what the system could do, not how.

The next choice was, heaven help me, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs.)  When I discovered that there were 168 documents of FAQs, I decided to e-mail for help.  I asked if the company had any human advisors available.  I sent that email on April 5^th.  My reply came back on April 14^th, saying no.  Apologetically, Jerry at Scribd Customer Support did supply blue links to all the unhelpful pages that I had seen before.  Refusing to be daunted, I persevered on my own.  Long, long story short, what I ended up with was one item for sale that was my book cover, and another item for sale that was the book text.  For the life of me I could not get the two to blend.  I deleted the whole mess, and I’m now awaiting a reply from my second e-mail for help.  To be continued.

Scribd illustration

I then attempted to tackle Amazon and make Pearls My Mother Wore available to Kindle readers.  That was easier but still crazy making.  I’ll spare you the blow by blow, and give you the helpful trick I learned.  When I published the paper book version through Lulu, the printer was given a jpeg file for the book cover picture and a pdf for the book text.  The pdf wouldn’t load properly at Amazon, so I had to use the original Word doc.  Fortunately, Amazon provided a Preview option.  My Word doc was all over the place with alarming gaps, big blank spaces between chapters.  I basically had to reconstruct my entire Word doc, but the nifty trick I learned was to use the “Show Formatting” option.  In Word, I opened my document, I clicked on “Tools,” then “Options,” and in the “View” tab I looked under “Formatting marks,” and I check marked “All.”  That trick showed me why all of that blank space was happening.  I also had to insert “Page Breaks” at the end of each chapter.  After finessing some of the font sizes and bold type, I had a document that seemed to work.  My upload is currently pending a Kindle/Amazon review, and they say it could take twenty-four to forty-eight hours.

One of the reasons why I’m putting myself through this torture is because next Saturday I’ll be participating in an event at the Roseville library, just north of Sacramento.  I wanted to be able to tell the audience that Pearls is available electronically.  The five-hour event will have eight diverse, self-published authors coming together to share about their work and their decision to self-publish.  I’m scheduled to speak at 3:00.  If you happen to know anyone in the Sacramento Area that might me interested, please send them this blog link and have them contact me for details.  It will be free to the public with refreshments and door prizes.  It should be a great time and an opportunity for me to meet many new people.  The other authors include:

My Sonoma pal Tami Casias, presenting her young adult novel “Crystal Bound,” about a girl who inherits metaphysical powers on her 16th birthday but can only use them to do good.

Bryson Kilmer, “Point Hope,” an arctic treasure hunt of the heart.

Bob Quinlan, “Earn It: Empowering Yourself for Love.”

John Marchel, “K.I.S.S. Guide to Gambling.”

Mort Rumberg, “Codename: Snake,” about a Jewish assassin during WWII

Cara Weiss Wilson, “Dear Cara: Letters From Otto Frank,” involving her 20 years of correspondence with Anne Frank’s (Diary of Anne Frank) father.

A.K. Buckroth, “My Diabetic Soul,” a personal testimonial of living with diabetes.

Technically, it’s been a challenging week, but I haven’t given up.  Every time I feel like I’ve accomplished something new in this wild publishing arena, I’m proud of myself, and that feels good.

Have a great week, and I’ll post again next Friday.

A copy of Pearls My Mother Wore is on its way to the Ukraine!  Kaniv, Ukraine to be specific.  On Saturday, once again, I participated in the totally groovy, monthly, local Readers’ Books event called “Random Acts.”  Also participating were four Ukrainians: three high school aged girls and their English teacher.  The four were visiting and being hosted by Sonoma because we’re a “sister city” to Kaniv.  Who knew?  I confess I had little knowledge of Ukraine except for Chernobyl and The Olympics.  These “ambassadors” have forever changed that for me; I now have the faces of real people to connect with.

The teacher and her students had prepared a delightful and informative presentation about Ukraine and its most celebrated poet — Taras Shevchenko who lived from 1840 to 1861, and is buried in Kaniv.  Following the dissolution of the old Soviet Union, Ukraine has been experiencing a cultural renaissance steeped in Shevchenko’s timely message of hope and freedom for all.

During the break at Random Acts, I offered a gift of Pearls My Mother Wore to the English teacher with the extravagant hope that it might be read by her or one of her students.  She blushed deeply and seemed unsure of what to do.  I didn’t let myself over-think her red face, although it did cross my mind that she may have been embarrassed because she simply didn’t want my book but didn’t know how to say so.  When I came back from the car with a copy, she had ready for me three souvenir trinkets from her homeland: a ball-point pen with Kaniv, Ukraine scribed on it in both English and Ukrainian, two small cloisonné styled papier-mâché eggs tasseled with red and gold thread, and a comical figurine of a traditionally dressed couple kissing.  I think we were equally charmed by our take-home gifts.  It will blow my mind if I hear from any of them through the novel’s website.  I hope.

The evening was also a delight because I found “Pearls” prominently displayed at the front of the bookstore.  I wonder if anybody from Sonoma International Film Festival, also going on this weekend, saw it and bought a copy.  Regardless, I love seeing it out there this way.  Thank you Readers’ Books!

Pearls on display at Readers' Books in Sonoma, CA

Shifting gears, I just finished reading Tinkers by Paul Harding.  It was a surprise 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner in part because it came out of a little known publishing house (Bellevue Literary Press) and had received only a few notable and enthusiastic reviews.  Post Pulitzer interviews with the author have him explaining that it was tough getting Tinkers published because most agents and publishers thought it moved too slowly.  Ha!  Another motivating zero to hero story.  Yes!

Although the novel won for fiction, it could have won for poetry.  In both prose and style, the novel moved along with some of the unexpected flourishes that I have come to expect from poetry.  That is to say, sometimes I was lost.

The story begins just days and hours before eighty-year-old George Washington Crosby dies, essentially of old age.  Everybody, a steady vigil of bedside visitors and relatives, understands that the man is at the end of his life.  He’s laid out in a hospital bed set up in his living room.  As George’s physical systems collapse, so he imagines this house that he built imploding around him.  His hallucinations include mangled pine framing, capped plumbing, electrical wires, roofing, and once snug windows all crashing in on him, actually crashing through him in his ethereal state.

Externally, the scene is subdued and basically uneventful with a couple of exceptions.  Charlie, George’s grandson, begins reading a fascinating book he found in the attic.  Charlie suspects that George wrote it because the handwritten script is so familiar, but he can’t get a straight answer out of his “Gramp” when he asks.  My sense is that Howard, George’s father, was actually the writer.  The first passage Charlie reads begins, “Cosmos Borealis: Light skin of sky and cloud and mountain on the still pond.  Water body beneath teeming with reeds and silt and trout (sealed in day skin and night skin and ice lids), which we draw out with silk threads, fitted with snags of fur or bright feathers.”  It goes on, but there is just some of that poetic stuff I was talking about.  Excerpts from an antiquated clock repair manual also show up occasionally, obliquely suggesting the workings and passing of time.  The other exception to George’s solemn encampment occurs when his last remaining, cigarette smoking, asthmatic, insensitive sister comes around.  She never hesitates to exclaim how horrible “Georgie” looks.

Beside that, most of the action takes place in George’s silent remembrances and imaginings.  Because of the off-kilter narrative, the shifting first person point of view seems par for the course.  Much of the novel is about Howard, George’s father, the real tinker.  Howard was an itinerant salesman, driving his mule drawn cart, mounted with a chest of drawers filled with everything from bootlaces to baby coffins.  Within a day’s journey, Howard serviced the most remote reaches and backwoods around.  He did his best to provide for his family, but his efforts fell far too short to please his wife.  Not only was Howard a poor provider, he was also epileptic, and the day came when a fit caused him his family.  Following an epileptic episode where Howard severely bit his son’s hand, his wife ended up with a brochure for an insane asylum and intentionally left it out for her husband to see.  Why she did this is unclear to me.  I’d have assumed she needed her breadwinner, meager as it was.  But Howard caught sight of that wicked brochure and ran away from home before anything involving an asylum could take place.

This turn of events slips the story into the previous generation, to Howard’s unnamed father.  One of the most beautiful passages I have ever read comes in the telling of Howard’s father being escorted by his wife and several black coated men, in the dead of winter, into a carriage.  Howard’s father is in the most advanced stages of dementia, and he’s being taken away no doubt to an asylum.  The writing captures something deeply loving and sacrificial on the part of the wife.  Howard’s mother had to send her deranged husband away in order to spare her children.  Young Howard doesn’t understand any of it and runs away in an attempt to reunite with his dad.  His journey is dreamlike and implausible, but the bottom line is that it was during his search that Howard experiences his first epileptic seizure.

On the whole, this story is wonderful because it illustrates the significance of insignificant folk and events.  It validates the ordinary – ordinary people, ordinary places, and ordinary objects.  Within this somber account glows the richness and wonders of life as it is for most people.  There’s no crime, no debauchery, no wizardry, no shock and awe.  There’s love, there’s loss, there’s life, and there’s death.  It’s a short read, but its synergy, like the inner workings of a time piece, accomplishes more than the sum of its parts.  Given the current block buster, best seller atmosphere in publishing,  I respect the Pulitzer Prize committee all the more for having recognized Paul Harding and Tinkers.  Without them, this book may very well have disappeared into obscurity.

Have a great week, and I’ll post again next Friday.

P.S.  You may notice I’ve added a “Subscribe” button to my sidebar.  With it, you can be notified whenever I’ve added something new.  Plus…I’m on Facebook…

Have you ever been inside a casino, pumping nickels, quarters, or dollar bills into a slot machine, initially enthusiastic and focused, but as payouts elude you, you begin to audio wander?  Growing sour, you listen intently to what everybody else is doing.  The tinkle of your own coins tumbling into the belly of some mechanized sorter all but disappear against the effervescent barrage of electronic, multi-note jingles and customer’s winning cackles.  Jackpots seem to be hitting for everyone but you.  You focus less on what you’re doing and more on nearby jubilation and the gush of change filling buckets with cash.  A celebratory mood fills the air while your own guts churn with envy.  That’s how I felt Monday night after an evening at my Left Coast Writers group.

James Scott, a.k.a. Kemble Scott, was our guest speaker.  He is one lucky writer, or so one might think.  Not just once, but twice he was at just the right place at just the right time.  In 2007 he’d completed his first novel, SoMa, when an acquaintance suggested he market the book using short, homemade video clips.  Her start-up company could help him get the clips on the Internet.  He would be the company’s first author customer.  Her company was YouTube!  Then, in 2009, Kemble Scott published his second novel, The Sower.  BTW, James Scott is his non-fiction, real-life name, and Kemble Scott is his fiction name.  He’s a columnist for The Bay Citizen and The New York Times as James Scott.  But anyway, The Sower, its fortuitous launch started the e-publishing company Scribd.com.  Today, according to Wikipedia, Scribd has over 50 million users, and its website gets almost two million inquiries daily.

James knows a good story when he hears it, and he tells them even better.  After he concluded his presentation and joined us during the social portion of the evening, I was sure to shake his hand and rub his arm for good luck.  Whatever he has, I want.

But wait a minute.  Is luck what he has?  Is he a success simply because he broke the odds…twice?  Sure, he hit it big, but not because of random luck.  He was ready when opportunity knocked, and that’s what I want to be.  James, the storyteller, left out the boring details of honing craft along the way, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t and don’t exist.  I keep writing because it’s good practice.  Not a lot’s happening, but I’m working on it.  That’s all I need to worry about.  If I let myself believe that publishing success comes as the result of fluke or good fortune then what’s the use in trying?  It either will or it won’t show up, so I might as well kick back and wait, right?  Wrong.

I need to keep writing for two reasons.  One is because I enjoy pulling together a sentence that comes as close to what I’m thinking as is possible, and two, because I get a thrill whenever somebody tells me that they liked what I wrote.  I don’t need to start tripping off of what’s going on around me, regardless of how dazzling it may appear.  I’ll play my hand, and others can play theirs.

As always, have a great week, and I’ll do the same.  I’ll post again next Friday.

Woo hoo!  I now get to consider myself among those who have actually read, cover to cover, all 817 pages of Anna Karenina.

I guess I’m more 21st century than I ever thought.  The pacing of that tome was, at times, a real struggle despite the fact that the story was told with incredible precision.   I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I almost couldn’t slow down enough to comprehend the stunning nuances of scene, character, and action that filled every page.  I fought mightily against powerful urges to skim over parts just so that I could get the thing finished, but why?  What’s my hurry?  Quick, quick, quick!  Is that me?  I don’t want to be a rapid sound bites kind of person, but maybe I am.  Maybe I’m not that bad, but I’m certainly not wired like the 19^th century audience that Anna Karenina was writen for.

Well, to summarize: Part Seven’s ending was so powerful; it caused me to have an almost sleepless night.  But before I get to the ending, the beginning was a drag.  I mean it dragged.  It dragged because it was supposed to.  Kitty and Levin had temporarily relocated to Moscow so that Kitty would have all the help she needed when it came time to deliver her baby.  They were in that interminable phase of pregnancy when waiting is all that can be done.  Kitty, or somebody, miscalculated the due date by a couple of months, so Levin was going out of his mind trying to find things to do with himself in the city while Kitty and her family stayed busy preparing for the birth.  Levin, so use to full days on his farm, had to dig deep to find worthwhile activities.  Like a fish out of water, he made the best of outings to “the club,” a sanctuary of bourgeois privilege.

The day before his son was born, Levin found himself at the club, overly intoxicated, chatting-up his self-perceived archrival, Vronsky.  In a mood of drunken passivity, Levin is swayed to go with his rascally brother-in-law Stepan Oblonsky to visit Kitty’s nemesis, the infamous Anna.  Anna poured on the charm and was captivating as ever.  Levin all but fell in love with her.

When he returned home, Levin confessed to the meeting.  He had the good sense not to go on about how enchanted he was by Anna.  Kitty, practically immobilized by her pregnancy, was infuriated by such a betrayal.  To visit such a shameful woman was a direct affront to her integrity.  But then she goes into a twenty-two hour labor.  The risk of death during birth is very real, and Levin is beside himself with anxiety.  During this trial, Levin surprises himself by casting up a plea for mercy from a God he’s never believed in.  The baby boy arrives in perfect health, and Kitty emerges radiant with motherhood.

The second half of part seven portrays the passionate yet volatile struggles between Anna and Vronsky.  Anna is wretchedly trapped.  She’s trapped in a marriage that she cannot get out of.  She’s trapped by a society that either pities or despises her.  She is trapped by an all-consuming jealousy over Vronsky’s blithe freedom to come and go as he pleases.  She is trapped by her own pride.  But above it all, I believe she is trapped by toxic perfectionism.  She, to my way of thinking, has it all: beauty, wealth, brains, and Vronsky’s repeated declarations of love.  But she’s not satisfied.  Walking that fine line, Tolstoy obscures the matter because Anna does have plenty to be dissatisfied with, but for the perfectionist, there is never satisfaction.  There will never be enough adulation to satisfy the perfectionist, and such is the pathetic case for Anna.

Eager to get to the end of part seven, I stayed up late to finish the chapter.  It was a mistake because, in the end, Anna, imagining Vronsky’s agonizing grief, throws herself in front of an oncoming train.  I felt sick.  It was so sad.  It was so wrong.  It was so unnecessary, but she couldn’t see it.  She couldn’t see beyond her own perfectionistic construct of how her life was supposed to be.  It was so tragic.

How was the master going to conclude this ultimate tale of woe?  Dissatisfied as I was, Tolstoy concluded with life going on.  I wanted to spend more time with Anna, post mortem, but that didn’t happen.  Instead, the story goes down a tangent about Levin’s brother and the book he published with unmet high hopes.  Vronsky, a shattered man, goes off to war.  And, at the very end, Levin, having entertained suicidal thoughts of his own, has a spiritual conversion.

Really?  Is that it?  I guess so.

I’m sure I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time.  I’m glad to have read it.  It was work, but should the subject ever come up, I’ll probably have something to say, and that’s a good thing.

Yesterday I went on a three-hour hike to clear my head of Anna, Vronsky, Karenin, Levin, Kitty, Dolly and Stepan, and it worked to a certain extent.  I’m loving it that spring is finally here with birds, blue sky, flowers and numerous flowing creeks and streams.

Have a great week, and I’ll post again next Friday.