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Category Archives: Uncategorized
Book Review: Driving Dad Home
Having dedicated a great deal of time, energy, effort, and money–but mostly dreams and heart–to writing throughout my life, I’ve always longed for close relationships with other writers. People who would “get me” in a way that I didn’t feel “got.”
So it was with great pleasure when I learned that my dear friend Jan married a man who wrote. This was many years ago, and, like mine, John Halter’s career was varied and interesting. In my own case, I would add soul affirming, which is probably the case for John as well, but I have never asked him. Anyway, we both did something other than write to earn our livings, but we both always wrote. I worked in flower shops, and libraries, and taught school, while John was a professional sailor, riverboat pilot, and marine mechanic.
Driving Dad Home is John’s first published book, a memoir. It is published by Nodin Press, LLC out of Minneapolis, MN and is available on Amazon. Bravo, John!
John Halter’s Driving Dad Home is in part the story of John and his father, Russ, and their road trip from Arizona to Wisconsin where Russ’s family has procured a place for him in a memory care facility. That, in itself, provides more than enough to immerse the reader. A 96-year-old father who doesn’t want to leave the home where he chose to live out the remainder of his long life “hoodwinked” by his family, the dying alcoholic second wife they wish to save him from, the terror, anger, and anguish of Russ’s dementia—all told in the author’s particularly engaging style—would be plenty. But Halter gives us more.
In his attempts to placate his agitated father and make it to their destination safely, he learns that getting his dad to talk is the best remedy. As the miles unfurl, so too do Russ’s recollections about everything from his childhood on a South Dakota farm, to his years serving in the Navy in WWII, to his years as a husband and father living in Minneapolis, and to the years that followed, when John and his siblings were all grown, when their mother died, and the life their father made for himself afterward—all of which is as important to the author as it is to his dad. I don’t want to give anything away, but it was an excellent read, and I was left with a renewed appreciation and understanding of the generations before us. And I also came away believing that love is often a silent force swirling around us that we do not know and cannot recognize.
For some of us, thankfully, there comes another chance. This is a story about one of those chances.
Filed under Uncategorized
A Fine Suddenness, or Maybe Never
Thoughts on Writing After a Year of Sending out Queries for my WWII-Era Homefront Historical Fiction Novel Set in Lake Arrowhead, CA… and A Whole Lots of Maybes
Photo from my collection of prints of paintings by Lake Arrowhead artist and friend, Dave Wescott.
I am discouraged. It’s been a long haul, and I’m tired. I wonder if it’s too late—if I’m even a capable writer. Maybe I am a past-prime-nothing-special-mainstream kind of a writer with nothing new to offer in a world crowded with bright-fresh-creatives churning out compelling new stories that I am not equipped to write.
Maybe, more accurately, I wouldn’t write those compelling new stories even if I could, because I truly don’t want to. But that doesn’t mean I never will. Maybe I’m going to want to! With creating, one never knows. Meanwhile, what I write these days is what I feel the magical desire to create. If I were being paid to write, or I were writing an assignment for a course I was taking, it would be different. At least a little bit different, but still really fulfilling. And I have done that successfully.
So I think that means that stubbornness is not the problem. But who among us knows well their own foibles? A self-examined life is not worth living perhaps, but I am not always sure my self-examinations are thorough or astute enough. That is one of the many reasons I need you, my friends!
Writing from my heart for no other reason than I want to create something of my own is a very different task than an assignment or a job, and that is what I’ve been at with A Fine Suddenness, and with many earlier projects. This self-appointed task has been with me for most of my life, with innumerable hours invested outside of my “real” life, most of them happily. Those hours have stretched into a lifetime of practice.
Another beautiful painting of Lake Arrowhead by my dear friend, Dave Wescott.
Pretty great setting for a novel, don’t you think?
I’ve invested a good amount of my limited income into writing as well. There have been many journals, computers, printers, reams and reams of paper, hundreds of pens (and oh how I love those pink, yellow, green, and blue highlighters!) and yes, the multitude of books I’ve purchased on writing, and the subscriptions to writing magazines. Then there’s the cost of attending various writing events—retreats, conferences, special courses, all of them fabulous and expensive.
The MFA in Creative Writing I earned in 2009 was a big investment that took me years to pay off. I do not regret it. Graduate school was an amazing experience. I loved every moment of being part of a group of writers immersed completely in our projects, all of us in over our heads, happily drowning in words, study, reflection, discussion, research, and ideas, all filled with the satisfying knowledge that no one among us questioned the importance of what we were doing. It often feels as though the rest of the world could care less about poets, screenwriters, non-fiction writers, and novelists, but it didn’t feel that way when we were in school together.
Cheers to all of my creative friends–and all creatives everywhere!
Few parents would encourage their children to enter into any of these fields. I’ve had friends who must have temporarily forgotten what my degrees are in, because they openly laugh at their children’s desires to study any of the humanities while in conversation with me. “Imagine,” they say. “What a waste of tuition.” It’s clear what they mean. Those fields don’t make any money.
I understand that money is necessary, and my life would have been easier if I had more, but I also know my soul would have shriveled had I worked in any field that didn’t allow me to at least exist in close proximity to the world of literature and learning and language that teaching and library work gave me.
It was never about money.
Writing has been my passion for a very long time. And I believe it has been worthwhile, even at this moment, seeing how things stand. I have never developed a writing platform. I don’t have much of a following on my blog (which is admittedly not something I have any technical skill in setting up or growing). Despite regularly studying the publishing field, sending out personalized queries to agents who work with my genre, and working, working, working on improving the queries, the summaries, the comp list, my bio… all the while making my manuscript the best it can possibly be, I haven’t secured an agent.
Maybe I should stop trying. Maybe I should write, but just stop trying to find an agent, or a small publishing house that might consider publishing my work. After all, it’s not about the money. I’ve never expected that.
What is money?
Photo courtesy of Pexels Free Images
Holding a beautifully bound copy of my own work, that’s definitely at least part of what I want, since I so value books, but I understand the process of writing and the joy of finding readers who might enjoy reading what I’ve written are what would move me most.
Maybe I should seriously consider self-publishing, even though I do not want to. Maybe it’s the only way, and maybe it wouldn’t humiliate me in a Willy Loman Death of a Salesman kind of way.
That’s a whole lot of maybes…
What do you think?
I’d love to hear from you!
Filed under Publishing, Uncategorized
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
Filed under Uncategorized
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?
Filed under Cats, Uncategorized
Jiminy Crickets!
Austin is currently crawling with crickets. And they are not named Jiminy. They don’t quite have Jiminy’s charm, his staunch set of personal ethics, nor his spiffy wardrobe. Also, thank goodness, so far none of them have stood on top of my shoulder or given me a good lecture. No, these crickets are definitely not Disney material.
The crickets I speak of swarm the West in various regions all the way from the Rocky Mountains to the High Sierras. They are called Mormon Crickets, though obviously, they are not Mormon. Just to be contrary, these little imposters aren’t even crickets! They are actually shield-backed katydids. And they aren’t little either…sometimes they’re 3 inches long.
I’m not purposely making this confusing. Really!
The story of their naming goes something like this: Way back when, swarms of these critters were eating crops planted by early Mormon settlers in what is now named Utah. It was a tragedy. What would the settlers eat when winter set in? Then, suddenly, like a miracle, a flock of seagulls descended from above. It must have been a very large flock, because the seagulls ate all the insects, thereby saving the crops.
Yay, seagulls!
Mormon crickets travel in large groups, marching along relentlessly, eating everything in their path (including their fallen comrades; this is why I question their ethics). When they cross a busy highway and get run over, their fellow insects stop to eat them. And then they get run over…
In some places the roads become dangerously slick… I know. Ugh. A local man, now retired from the road department, told me yesterday that some years ago his crew had to use a snowplow to clear away the detritus and then many, many gallons of detergent to wash Main Street.
This is our second summer here in Austin, and my husband and I are trying to take the current invasion in stride, but I admit it’s a bit of a challenge what with our yard and the outside walls of our house being covered in an ever-moving mass of large insects. Still, I can not blame the Mormon Crickets for being Mormon Crickets. Their life is no trip to Disneyland.
During moments of quiet contemplation, I fondly remember the seagulls of Kenosha gathered on the shores of Lake Michigan. Always so many. So lovely on the sand, on the waves, and in flight.
And like Elizabeth Warren, I persist.
Filed under Nature, Uncategorized
I Brake for Ghosts
I Brake for Ghosts
I admit it. Moving to a ghost town during the height of the Covid pandemic may not have been the best choice. It certainly wasn’t the obvious choice. It was one of those decisions cooked up out of hope and desperation, a recipe for survival with a sprinkle of hope thrown in. A very small sprinkle.
Within the space of a few months, most of our income was gone, along with our health insurance. What wasn’t gone was the mortgage… If we didn’t do something quickly, we imagined complete disaster.
What to do. What to do.
How about sell our house and use the profit to move all of our belongings across the country to a tiny town with a lot of history and no place to spend the money we didn’t have?
Our grandchildren lived out West, and I’d been frantic to see them. If we lived closer, I could visit them a lot more (once the pandemic subsided). With this in mind, we started scouring the Internet for affordable homes. Affordable for us meant that we could come up with the down payment and the monthly mortgage would be low.
We couldn’t get as close to the family as we hoped; they lived in areas where real estate had exploded. I know you’re thinking that real estate exploded everywhere. You’re mostly right. But at the beginning of the pandemic there were still a few places within a day’s drive of the kids where the fuse may have been lit, but hadn’t quite caught. These were in small towns, and they were mostly in the desert. Often they were mobile homes or condominiums with HOA’s that would drive our monthly expenses up too high, so most of these were eliminated. There were a few houses. All of them were small and in need of repair, but we weren’t afraid of the work.
We decided to take the leap. We chose the most remote of the locations, mostly because we loved old homes, and this was an old brick home, and the altitude was high, so we would still have snow (yes, to us this was a good thing!). The house was originally built as a parsonage for the handsome Methodist church adjacent to it.
The town was very quiet. It would make an excellent place to write.
And here we are.
It’s been an adjustment. For the first year we probably only spoke to a total of five other people in town. When we had to drive the 112 miles to the nearest town where we could get supplies, it was quite overwhelming to encounter people on the streets, in the stores. In Austin, the only people you saw were in the post office. You might imagine that was because of pandemic precautions, but I don’t think that was it. This is not a town that follows protocol. It is a town, however, that leaves you alone.
A local woman told one of our movers that our house had a ghost. “But don’t tell them,” she said. “They’ll find out soon enough.” I don’t know if anyone else in town thinks we have a ghost. If so, I suppose that could explain the lack of neighborly visits with casseroles in the early days we were here. The ghost lady is known locally, I’ve since learned, for her flights of fancy, so I don’t really think our house has a ghostly reputation. If we do have a ghost, I haven’t met him/her yet. To us, the house has a very serene vibe. Perhaps our ghost is a parson, or one of the parson’s family members. Perhaps he or she is a writer.
No problem. We were busy using up the remainder of the profit from our old house (a 1950-something cottage that we had renovated after we had renovated a 1920-something cottage… there was a 1940-something house in between that only needed a few tweaks) renovating our 1866 parsonage. These things always cost more than expected, even when you are doing the work yourself.
There were unexpected plumbing issues, for example. Do you have any idea how expensive a snake is? Not the slithery kind, you know, the kind the plumber brings to clean out your sewer pipes? They cost a lot. Plus, there was no plumber, at least not within 100 miles.
Then there’s the digging up of old pipes and putting in new ones… There’s the stripping of the drywall, which isn’t really drywall. It’s layers of wood and wallpaper, and even newspaper, which has been covering the brick walls since the house was built. There’s the painting. There’s knocking down the wood structure that was added in front of the house at some point in the last century, presumably to house automobiles. The one that blocked every ray of sunlight from entering the house.
Anyway, lots to do.
And then, gradually, during our second year here, we started venturing out of the house. I joined the church across the road. The Methodist church next door to us is being used for a community center these days, but the Episcopal church has continuously held worship services since its opening in 1878. My husband and I volunteered to paint the doors red, something the priest had been longing to have done and that we were more than well equipped to do, what with all of our home improvement practice. The effect was stunning.
We increased our walking distance each day, seeing a neighbor here and there, experiencing beautiful wild views, wildlife sightings, even stumbling upon a pet cemetery high up in the forest above town. The streets are still quiet and there are only a couple of businesses open, but we appreciate what we have. We’ve found that we love our route to visit the kids, long as it is, because it takes us through parts of the Eastern Sierra. Hopefully, some day soon, we will take the turn that leads to Yosemite.
And every day, I write.
Filed under Uncategorized, Writing
A Christmas Card Kind of View
I owe it all to Rachel. I’ve written about this before, the way she made her kids believe in magic—the way that, for a time when we were very young, she glowed with humor and energy and wonder and beauty in everything she did, and the way that all came together at Christmas time. As I sit writing this, a few days before Christmas 2016, my 60th Christmas, it’s natural to look back upon other Christmases: childhood Christmases, falling-in-love Christmases, new-parent Christmases, teenage Christmases, grandparent Christmases, lonely Christmases…Christmases filled with family and friends—all of them precious in some way.
This year Mike and I will be in California and then Arizona visiting our kids and grandkids. We are so excited to be going together this Christmas, though our visits will be shorter than we’d like! (I have plans in the works for springtime…)
Every Christmas, since my first in 1956, when I was a six-month-old infant with a beautiful and entrancing mother—yes, Rachel, not to mention a kind and loving father, and a brother who loved me so much he called me “his present”—every December since, whether happy and relatively carefree, or saddened as I was while enduring hard times and loss, has left a lasting impact on my view of life. A Christmas card kind of view, Rachel Style.
The card is part Norman Rockwell, all homey and twinkly and smelling like home-baked Swedish spritz and candied oranges, but there’s a liberal dose of boozy smoke haze wafting over the rooftops and a neon tavern light or two blinking on and off in the distance just like Rudolf’s shiny nose. 
The house on Sheridan Road had a fireplace the length of the entire living room. One memorable Christmas Eve, Billy and I were sitting on the rug in front of the fire, drinking cocoa and talking excitedly about Santa already being on his way to Wisconsin from the North Pole.
“That sucker is going get a big surprise when he drops down the chimney into that fire,” Mom said, taking a long sip of egg nog.
“Don’t scare the kids, Rachel.” Dad’s voice was always mild, and he assured us that the fire, which was blazing in a newly menacing way, would be out long before Santa and the reindeer arrived. Dad was an excellent camper and he knew how to put a fire out.
We knew Mom was just making “a funny” about Santa. Mom loved Santa. We knew that. After all, she’d taken us to Dickleman’s Toy Store to meet him, spent hours helping us prepare his favorite cookies, and, other than this one slip, she spoke of him in glowing terms, as if he were probably almost as magic as she was.
“He knows everything, and he loves you both more than anything in the world,” Mom had said, which pretty much made Santa her chubby, white-bearded twin or something, because that description fit her like my Barbie’s velvet gloves fit her tiny stiff hands, easy to put on, easy to take off. Magic.
Of course, Billy explained, Mom didn’t really want Santa to burn up in our fireplace. Still, it was unsettling. Later, she tucked us both in bed, nuzzled us, told us stories about Santa’s big night, and about the times she’d glimpsed him in the past. She’d once caught him bringing Rudolf right in on her clean carpet, she said, and another time Santa was rolling around on the floor playing with our dog, Duchess.
“Duchess loves Santa.” She patted Duchess, who was on the bed with us. “Don’t you, girl?”
Duchess wagged her tail and stretched. Billy and I drifted off to sleep. In the morning, there were presents under the tree and Santa’s cookies were gone.
Mom and Dad looked happy.
Magic.
Billy caught the magic too, and no one else I’ve ever known has come so close to capturing Rachel’s spirit, style, grace, or humor.
“He’s a lot like me,” Mom often said, and she was absolutely right.
Billy didn’t just love people, he became their most loving and loyal supporter—celebrating with them and letting them take what they would, whether his love, money, home, possessions, or heart. For many years, on the day he cut down his Christmas tree, Billy jumped (I’m quite sure, naked), into a freezing stream in the High Sierras of Northern California. That night, wearing warm jammies and cozy socks, with the tree lit and decorated, and the fireplace burning, he would pile up loads of pillows and sleep underneath his tree. It was part of his magic, I guess.
So many memories. There are a lot more, but it’s getting late. Anyway, I know you have your own Christmas memories, your own pictures of the people who shaped your view of this truly magical time of year.
May you be at peace, in your heart and in your life. May you recognize the true gifts and hold them dear. And may you be blessed with abundant and unconditional love.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Year to All!
LakeArrowheadLadyWriter 
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