May 12, 2023 · 3:51 pm

The Library

The Library by Jacob Lawrence, 1960

     It is a small library in a small town. It sits on Main Street in a 150-year-old building that also houses a pub. Both the library and the pub are in the process of renewal, endeavoring to revive their historical importance, their usefulness and vibrancy, their centrality to our community. I began working there last week, and immediately felt a satisfying appreciation at the completion of a circle, which joins both my journey and destination…of coming home, of continuing to matter, and also, of an immediate and curious closeness to my deceased father, who I recalled had loved it when I worked in libraries before, and to his mother, my children’s librarian grandmother, Lorene.

     Nonny Lorene died when I was an infant, but I was given her name, a small collection of children’s books, and a legacy of library lore which included the often-told story of how she, a widow, supported her two sons, her spinster sister, and various other relatives throughout the Great Depression, the only one left with a steady income during those hard years. Her library job saved the family, I was told. There could be no better job. For that reason, and many others, I believe that, and so even though Dad and Nonny have been gone from this earth for many, many years, I feel their presence in my little library, and know that they are pleased.

     It feels right. I love every minute I spend there—reading the shelves, looking up classification numbers, typing up spine labels, adding genre stickers, covering books—touching them, reading them, smelling them, discovering new titles and authors, revisiting the old. Planning a new computer corner, training soon on our newly purchased county-wide circulation system, looking forward to story times and book signings, all that and so much more. There is nothing like a library.

      I’ll end with the wisdom of Carl Sagan:

     “Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.”   ― Cosmos

      And E. B. White:

      “A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people – people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.”

Quotes from Hooked to Books, hookedtobooks.com. “50 Inspiring Quotes About Libraries and Librarians”

by Grace Plant, accessed 5/12/2023.

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March 27, 2023 · 1:53 pm

Today

     Have you ever stood on the edge of a precipice, and feared it, but also looked about, spinning in all directions like Maria in The Sound of Music, dizzy, joyous, and completely awestruck? The view! The accomplishment!

I believe this is Long’s Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Sometimes I forget to label my photos, but I never forget the wonderment.

Or, maybe you were so tired that all you wanted was to do was teleport through time and space, and find yourself, your old self,

whole and hopeful, somewhere and sometime else. I certainly have. And sometimes we can do that for a time. Close our eyes and

dream it. But we always wake up.

     So you stand on the top of this particular mountain, and you don’t know whether to fall, or to fly, or to trudge back down the

same way you came up, erasing the missteps, retreating to safety—but you know you must do something.

Or perhaps, arriving there was the only point. The destination and not the journey. A place to reflect, and perhaps take a

photograph. Plant a flag.

     It’s funny that no one ever really knows if what they experience is natural or common to others, but still, some of us wish to

find out. For many of us, it’s reassuring to think that we aren’t alone in our displacement, or instability, or lack of perspective. For

others, it’s the individual experience that matters, the thing that only that person can learn in exactly that way. It’s their chance at

epiphany.

     I believe writers seek their epiphanies through their craft, and cherish the selfishness of the pursuit, but also need to believe in

the possibility of finding connections, heart, mind, and soul, whether that be with themselves, their readers, or something much

more ephemeral. For me, there is also an urge to understand the natural world.

     So here I am today, in the bright hours between storms, standing on the precipice of an unknown future. Knowing that nothing

is certain, and big changes are ahead. I think I’ll call it Today.

Photo provided by Pexels

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January 29, 2023 · 2:17 pm

Catherine Baab-Muguira on Getting Published with the Help of Edgar Allan Poe

I hope you enjoy this fun and helpful article for Poe lovers, Writers, and most especially Writers who Love Poe! The author’s newsletters can be found on the Substack email newsletter platform: “Poe Can Save Your Life, Darkly inspired self-help for writers and other creators.” She is the also the author of the book, Poe for Your Problems: Uncommon Advice from History’s Least Likely Self-Help Guru.

Click this link:

https://poecansaveyourlife.substack.com/p/how-to-get-a-book-deal-when-youre

This is just a moody shot from a trip to Lake Itaska, Minnesota from a few years back, but I think it has a nice Poe vibe!

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January 17, 2023 · 2:17 pm

Annabelle Lee: Editor, Writer, Usurper (and so much more)

Last month I gave my office a fresh coat of paint. It’s a small room with a pretty window, a desk, an electric fireplace, and during writing hours, a cat. Sounds nice, right?

My Blue Office

Having “A Room of Ones Own” is a joy for a writer. I enjoy writing in different settings, too, such as in pubs, coffee shops, airports, or gardens, but these days, the bulk of my writing takes place in my little blue office.

Enter Annabelle, our newest family member. She came to us this past October. You can see an earlier post about her miraculous appearance here:

Early Annabelle

Since then, we’ve been in training.

One of her quirks is that she does not like to drink from the bowl in the kitchen that Jack and London (our long-haired brother cats) use. Since she was a newcomer, some might say interloper, in the beginning we understood her wariness to drink alongside two much larger male cats who had been living with us for years, and so it was understandable that we accommodate her desire. Which is: we are to give her fresh water from the bathroom faucet, and only the bathroom faucet, on an on-demand basis. She does not like stale water, not even if it’s only been a couple of hours. She will stand or sit next to the sink, silent, yet powerful, until one of us goes in to wash and refill her little faux crystal goblet. I believe it’s some kind of extra sensory mind control. Somehow, we just know.

Additionally, she sleeps until 9 or 10 am and doesn’t care to be disturbed with bed-making attempts. So what if it we think of it as our bed? We’re welcome to continue to sleep in it; she’s not stopping us. We just need to understand that she is not a morning cat. Later, when she’s up, she’s happy to join in on the fun of bedmaking, hopping about and attacking the sheet, burrowing under the comforter, playing hide and seek. I would never call her a poor sport. And to be fair, London is just as often the sleepyhead that I can’t bear to disturb.

London

Then there is the insistence Annabelle accompany us on our daily walks. I mentioned this in the Early Annabelle post, so if you read that, you can skip down a few paragraphs.

Since we live in a sparsely inhabited town, there is very little danger to the local cats. Dogs are seldom allowed to roam freely here, but we have a goodly number of local mule deer and cats who come and go as they please. Needless to say, because of the deer, we don’t have any backyard gardens, but that is a story for another day. As it turns out, mule deer and cats get along well. There are no coyotes or badgers or mountain lions in town, no cat predators, so, other than the one road that goes through the town, it’s a pretty safe cat and deer haven.

We had never allowed our cats outside until we moved here. They were often perched on the windowsills gazing out, but they never actually went out. They never even attempted to get out until the neighborhood cats started coming around and sitting on the outside of our windowsills gazing in. It wasn’t long after that Jack and London rebelled.

Jack and Buck

London ready to leap

They wailed, “Sparky’s mom lets him play outside! You’re so mean!” or “Fluffball says you guys are stupid, and her mom thinks so, too.”

You know, the usual.

It was inevitable that the struggle would continue until they escaped. When it comes to me and pets, I accepted a long time ago that I was not the boss. So, there came a day when I had my hands full coming in and they were ready and waiting. Before I could stop them, they shot out the door.

Annabelle The Great

This means that if they like, they can follow us on our daily walks. They have their own door. Jack and London don’t go beyond the yard, but Annabelle Lee, well, she enjoys a nice walk with her humans, so she often tags along. This makes me nervous and curtails many a walk. I’ve taken to sneaking out during her catnaps.

I know. I know.

The last thing is her increasing interest in sleeping in my writing chair, and in attempting to add content to my stories. I’ve given her a basket to sleep in, but she prefers my chair. So I brought in another chair. Problem half solved. But, if I get up and leave the room without closing down the laptop, she gets up and types a bit, and then returns to her nap before I return. I have proof of this!

The empty basket

Annabelle the usurper

She meddled while I was in the kitchen and then feigned sleep when I returned! Evidently I misspelled klutz, and she wanted to insert more description.

Am I the only writer dealing with this? Please tell me that I’m not alone, and happy writing!

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January 1, 2023 · 5:39 pm

In Memoriam, [Ring out, wild bells] by Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Poems | poets.org

american – The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and…
— Read on poets.org/poem/memoriam-ring-out-wild-bells

This poem popped into my head as I was ringing the bell at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Austin, Nevada this morning. It’s a gothic revival style historic church and we ring the bell by pulling a thick, knotted rope. It takes a surprising amount of effort to get it started, but there’s something very satisfying about it. Some of my students from the class of 1999-2000 may remember a poetry project we did that December–Ring Out Wild Bells for a new millennium. Lovely memories.

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November 11, 2022 · 4:10 pm

Annabelle Lee

Six fateful weeks ago, a little calico Manx cat showed up in our house. The “in” is not a typo. She was in the kitchen, and she was demanding food. Loudly. And with gusto!

Jack and London, heretofore our only cats, were horrified. Who was this intruder? What happened to her tail? What was with all the haphazard markings and the oddball colors? Who did she think she was?

This is our house!

Make her go away!

We did not, of course. I mean, could you really expect that a person incapable of stepping on a bug or eating a hamburger would be able to throw a little Manx kitty out into the cold? Not gonna happen. And it wasn’t only me. Mike quickly came to believe that she was heaven sent, filled, in fact, with special pain relieving and angst reducing powers. She cozied up to him, doing that warm, fuzzy, purring thing against his neck that only cats can do, and he felt immediate relief, as if he had been “touched by an angel.”

His words, not mine.

I posted her picture online, but no one has claimed her. I guess if she is from heaven, no one would.

So, she stayed, and we are all adjusting to her being around, though Jack and London are still a little miffed. There has been a tiny bit of hissing, but no open warfare.

Annabelle is a good kitty with legs shorter in the front, rabbit-like in the back. She is very bouncy. Her tail is about an inch long, which I think makes her a Stubby Manx. There are apparently many different types of Manx cats, dependent on the length, or lack thereof, of their tails. Due to their unmatched leg lengths, front to back, Manx cats have an unusual gait. Annabelle Lee walks like she just got off a horse, a little bit stalky and bow-legged, which makes her a good fit for our little Western town.

She never would have gotten in, of course, if Mike hadn’t put in a kitty door. At least not as easily. But he had good reason to install it (too much to go into here). By install it, I mean only that he cut a hole through the kitchen door and tacked leather flaps over it on each side. (Kind of makes you wonder what the rest of the house looks like I bet.) We live in an unusual town, one with fewer people than cats, fewer dogs than deer, and fewer cars than crickets, so it was only a matter of time before something came in through that hole.

So, I have a new writing companion. And oh yes, also a walking companion!

Here she is following us a couple of hours ago. We tried to sneak out, not wanting her to think it was okay to walk along the road, or worse, to cross the highway, which is not too far away, but there was no evading her. We had to cut our walk short and devise another escape route.

Do you think we could get her to accept a leash?

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July 30, 2022 · 3:05 pm

On Writing

I love all of this lovely quote from Sharon Olds on writing, but especially the last sentence :

“I think that whenever we give our pen some free will, we may surprise ourselves. All that wanting to seem normal in regular life, all that fitting in falls away in the face of one’s own strange self on the page……

Reminding myself that no one else would ever see what I wrote—with my ballpoint pen in my wide-ruled spiral notebook—helped me be less censored and less afraid. Later, I could decide to show or not, because whether anyone ever read it was not the most important thing.

Writing or making anything—a poem, a bird feeder, a chocolate cake—has self-respect in it. You’re working. You’re trying. You’re not lying down on the ground, having given up.

And one thing I love about writing is that we can speak to the absent, the dead, the estranged and the longed-for—all the people we’re separated from. We can see them again, understand them more, even say goodbye.”

– Sharon Olds

Writing in Paris

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July 19, 2022 · 12:22 pm

Literature Alive

July 2022 at our home in Nevada
     Jack and London, our pampered house cats, couldn't ignore The Call of the Wild any longer, and broke loose this summer. This is London meeting one of our regular visitors, a young buck that we call, you guessed it, Buck. You can take the teacher out of the classroom, but you can't take 17 years of sharing the work of Jack London out of the teacher!

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July 2, 2022 · 3:43 pm

Transitions

Photo by Caleb Oquendo on Pexels.com

The last three weeks have been busy with travel, family, grandkids, new friends, and the sudden summer blossoming of our quiet little town. I know a writer needs to live a life in order to write about life, and it’s nothing to feel guilty about. Slacking off a bit can be a good thing. That’s why people go on holiday, right?

But there comes a time…

The blank page usually doesn’t intimidate me much, but today, it did a bit. Perhaps this is because I’m still working on editing my 300+ page manuscript. Shifting from the manuscript to short pieces, often unrelated to the world I’ve been immersed in there, somehow makes me feel as though I’ve stepped off a solid granite mountain and found my feet negotiating the shifting sands of the desert.

I miss my characters, the forest where they live, all of their mistakes and longings—their journey! I miss the routine of our daily time together. It’s sort of like when you were a kid and school let out for the summer. There was the initial lift of spirit, the release from the multitudinous details of navigating between the academic aspects and the social ones, the waking up to a beautiful June morning, knowing it was yours. There’s nothing that quite compared.

At some point though, there may have come nostalgia for the kids who had populated your classroom, the lunchroom, the playground, the sports field, or the band room. Some of them were crushes, past, present, and maybe future. The wheel of time spun like the one on Wheel of Fortune; you never knew where your destiny lay.

There would be some kids you wouldn’t see all summer, some you would never see again (hopefully, those would be the bullies). If you had a teacher you loved, she/he would be getting a whole new class. You would no doubt be replaced by strangers who would occupy all of your teacher’s thoughts, and possibly, heaven forbid, even her heart.

And then would come the nervous excitement of the year to come. Part dread, part eagerness. Close at hand was the tantalizing possibility of meeting someone altogether new, maybe someone cute, or funny, or someone just meant to be your lifetime friend. That’s what wrapping up a long writing project feels like to me. It’s all of that and more.

Hoping all of your milestones, old and new, bring you joy and satisfaction. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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June 27, 2022 · 3:53 pm

Looking for Comps

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

     Hello, Readers! I’m putting together my summer reading list, and getting my historical fiction manuscript ready for submission. One part of this process is to read recent books (published within the last few years) that are in some way comparable to mine, so that I can better describe my own manuscript to potential agents, publishers, and booksellers.

     Have you read any recently published fiction set during the 1930s or 1940s? Have you read a novel about a war widow, or a strong woman struggling and coming to grips with some other loss? If so, I’d love to hear about it. My manuscript is set in Lake Arrowhead, California, and the place is integral to the plot, so I’m also interested in any fiction that transports the reader to a specific city, town, or region.

     If any titles come to mind, I’d greatly appreciate your sharing them here. I welcome any and all suggestions. Many thanks!

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