Smell This?

It was Helen Keller who said, "History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas." This was in response to the infamous book burning of 1933. The fires were started by students - Nazi children. It's not difficult to imagine a similar scenario in 2012. Students hurling their textbooks onto a swelling pyre. Not because they necessarily have a problem with literature - an indifference, perhaps. (I nearly had to distribute toothpicks to prevent my students' eyelids from snapping shut while listening to a reading of Percival Everett's "Appropriation of Cultures" - one of the most stimulating pieces of short fiction I have had the privilege to read.) But rather they might be inclined to feed their pages to the flame because books in the flesh have become superfluous. Antiquated. Dangerous, even, when one compares the blood-thirsty, finger-slicing corners of pulp to the cool, smooth edges of an electronic reader.

But indulge me for a moment: Lean forward. Place your nose on the computer screen (or smartphone or ipad or yes, even the Kindle Fire). Really get in there and breathe deeply. What do you smell? Honestly. Nothing, right? Now find the nearest book. Even a phone book will do, although, who has one of those? Run your thumb from spine to spine, shuffle the pages and let the breeze fill your nostrils. See? Books are living things. They breathe out as you breathe in. They have dog-ears for pity's sake. And old books, like people, harbor the most interesting odors. A mixture of leather and Shalimar. Of sweat and dirt and everything and everyone they've ever touched or been touched by. They are the keepers of our collective memory - memory which doesn't require batteries or bytes.

In the business section of yesterday's NY Times, Julie Bosman writes about the future of the bookstore as we know it. In other words - Barnes & Noble. Now that they are the only game in town - publishers have no choice but to ask: "What if all those store shelves vanished, and Barnes & Noble became little more than a cafe and a digital connection point?" Apparently, this is exactly what Jeffery P. Bezos, top executive at Amazon would like to see happen. Mr. Bezos, as the Times refers to him, looks exactly like Dr. Evil. Look him up. In yesterday's paper, he is holding some machination of the Kindle at eye level and staring into the camera with empty eyes. It is his vision to 'eliminate the middle-man' (even when someone is being eliminated, it's a man) and create his own publishing "unit" - isn't that a nice word. If it's too much trouble to heave a book to and fro, when will it be too taxing to visit a restaurant? Why not just take a delicious dinner pill?

And it's not just a dream. The Times reports Bezos has already 'snagged' some guy named Timothy Ferriss and hold onto your hat - James Franco, the spoiled brat best friend of Spider Man turned fiction writer. Holy crap, Batman! The bookshelves are already a bit too polluted with 'novels' supposedly written by the puppets of reality television. Dr. Evil + the son of the Green Goblin = the metaphorical murder of print via 'books' which can only live on a 5x7 screen. And even if you could stomach that - accept it as progress - and You Can't Stop Progress - there's the fact that we'd be stuck with whatever Mr. Evil deems as publishable. Again - say it ain't so, Batman.

So here's what I propose: Stop ordering cheap books from Amazon. Books which are not on display for you to sniff or caress in a well-lit store (albeit B&N which has squeezed out other big-box stores as well as who knows how many independent booksellers and now they're all we've got). Books which are probably treated much like factory livestock - crammed up against one another in dark and dank warehouses down by the river. I implicate myself in this too. I love a good bargain as much as the next gal, but after reading this article, I have vowed to save my cash and buy my books in person - which of course, I do anyway, but in the past, I have also ordered from Amazon and now I will not.

While you are in the bookstore - a.k.a. Barnes & Noble - please check out Jane McCafferty's new novel First You Try Everything. A generous writer and human being, reading her latest effort (which is set in our fair, shared city) is like being transported to Pittsburgh when the Three Rivers Arts Festival is in full swing and the inclines are scaling Mt. Washington on a day when the sun is shining and the humidity is low and the cityscape is in perfect view as you travel west - unimpeded by tunnel traffic on I-279 (or 376) depending on how long you've lived here. It is a story of an unconventional love (aren't all the best books about love? isn't it the common denominator?)yet it's classified as 'women's fiction' if you look it up on Amazon. But you won't do that. You'll find it on the shelf of new fiction - right next to books by Julian Barnes and Stewart O'Nan - (I haven't researched this, but certainly these authors' titles would have to be classified as men's fiction, right?)You'll find this book on foot. Your fingers have done enough walking for today.

Like Helen Keller, I don't believe you can kill ideas, but let's not get so smart that we stop paying attention to the ideas - ideas that could lead to the death of so many old friends - books.

Let's Begin Again

Have you ever seen Finnegan Begin Again? It's been years since I watched this film starring Mary Tyler Moore, Robert Preston, and Sam Waterson. Robert Preston's character is often singing an old Scottish song about a man named Michael Finnegan, whose whiskers are blown back in-again. But mostly, what I remember is the line: "Well, Finnegan. Let's begin again." I was probably 10 or 11 when I saw it, but that bit of dialogue stuck with me. Goes to show how effective rhyme can be when it comes to memory, and in my case, it was around that age that images from movies became part of my longterm schtick.

And it always feels relevant in January. To gaze wistfully into the middle distance and say, "Let's Begin Again." The people around me - those who know me well, anyway - ignore the obscure theatrical reference, not wanting to invest the time in asking, "How's that?" chalking it up to the aforementioned schtick. But I like living simultaneously in 1985 and 2012. Everything that I am is a result of who I was, which is a product of what I watched and read; how I spoke and listened.

Apparently my New Year will not be much different from my old year, in the sense that what I should be doing is planning a syllabus for next semester (which begins in a week) and what I am doing is procrastinating via philosophical blogging. Good grief.

But here's what I'm hoping: To keep a journal everyday. To write 1,000 words of a new book everyday. To read the 1,000 books waiting for me on crammed shelves of every room in the house. To exaggerate less. To exercise more. Etc.

Last year certainly had its rocky moments. One of which involved the critique of a story. One that meant a lot to me but had not yet found a published home. The very accomplished woman who read it, hated it. Hated me, it seemed, and everything I'd thought to be true to that point went Poof! A few weeks ago, I found out that it had won second place in Clapboard House's Best of the House short story contest. It is called "A Case for Annie" and you can read it by visiting:

Clapboardhouse.wordpress.com


Difficult as it was, I began again with that story. I sent it out. I sent it out and I sent it out. Nine months after the nightmare began, I received the good news. First place would have been sweeter, of course, but that's the great thing about living through a disappointing year. Every piece of news that isn't awful, feels like first place.

Happy New Year!

The Secret of Christmas

It's official. Spring - that is. All signs point to it: the stores have emptied their shelves of stockings and bows and have replaced them with hearts and shamrocks. In western Pennsylvania, the buds on the pussy willows are actually beginning to poke out - confused by the 60 degree weather and the deluge of March-like rain. On December 23rd, it doesn't feel especially 'Christmasy". But that really is a Hallmark conceit - isn't it? Or maybe Norman Rockwell. Snow and such...my mom pointed out how silly it is to presume that everyone envisions Christmas the same way we do just because all of the songs are about cold and snow and conspiring by a fire. The truth is that most of the world probably spends more time perspiring than putting another log on.

Whatever is my point? I suppose it makes me sad to see Christmas go, seemingly even before it arrives. I devote so much time to the business end of things: shopping, wrapping, cleaning, baking, etc., that I don't remember to look around until it's too late. Until I'm confronted by a glitter-glued cupid.

Yesterday I had to have a scan of my leg to make certain that I didn't have a blood clot. The calf was swollen - about half an inch bigger than the other - and the podiatrist I went to see for my aching heel didn't want to take any risks. The test came back negative, but it did take up a considerable chunk of my time. I had so much to do - a big list waiting for me on the kitchen counter - last-minute things I needed to pick-up and do, but when the man said blood clot, I could not remember what one of those things was. All I could think was that I didn't want to be dead for Christmas. And it's funny to me (today) that it took a life-threatening situation for me to appreciate the 60 degree weather. The rain. To remember to love the people around me or I might as well pitch their presents - the ones I stayed up till 2 am to wrap.

My heart, not unlike the Grinch's, feels 10 times bigger today. I wish that for you. Merry Christmas, my friends.

Krauss Rhymes with House

Silence is a difficult thing to capture in a story. How do you create silence when your only tools are words? But it's important to me to keep trying to make my characters be quiet. To show how much 'the nothing' weighs. I say things like: He was most afraid of the deafening nothing. Or: They stood saying nothing. I use the space bar a lot. It's tricky business.

I recently gave a lesson on public speaking to my first-year writing students. "If you stumble," I said. "If you come to a moment where your mind goes blank and you can't recall your phone number let alone what you were going to say next, think of Norm McDonald." Remember that guy? He used to deliver 'the news' on Saturday Night Live, and he was the least funny man I have ever heard on that show. Still, he managed to get quite a few laughs simply by making silence work for him. He could say whatever stupid thing came into his head. For example: Why did the elephant cross the road? When no one laughed, he didn't flinch. Silence accumulating like the national debt, he waited them out. Finally, he'd say: Because it was the chicken's day off. And since he had allowed the quiet to speak for him, permitted the audience members to feel the weight of their own thoughts and in turn, his - they laughed like crazy.

I have been told that I am not funny. I have also been told that I am funny. I have been asked to Stop making words with my mouth and Why would you write about that? And I have been asked to Say more and Please write more about that. And in truth, I believe the greenhouse effect is in part a result of a layer in the atmosphere where all the wrong words we've ever spoken or written rise and collect, choking out the clean air. Many times 'in real life' I wish I had just kept quiet, so it's no wonder that I want to gift my characters with this quality. This ability to not talk a thing to death. And, unlike Norm McDonald, I don't want to use silence to get a laugh. I want to peel back the padding words provide like barriers between us and show the tender spots. The bruised fruit beneath the skin. I want to look at what hurts. Analyze it like a scab.

On the other hand, sometimes I don't say enough. Sometimes I keep too quiet. I don't stay on top of emails to people I care about. Or out of fear of confrontation (which I am getting better at as I age) I retreat. Wave the white flag and say nothing when a situation clearly calls for the opposite. Even this blog goes stale for weeks at a time, waiting for the 'right' words to fill my fingers. Perhaps I should ponder what Mr. Myiagi might say: "Balance, Daniel Son."

The last thing is this: I often dream about people who are long gone from my life. Those who have died or departed in other ways. I wonder why their faces appear in my unconscious thoughts. I like to think it means they are are thinking of me at the same time. That our words sleep walk and venture into a world we can't travel by foot. A place where we meet and hold hands. Sing songs and say all the things we didn't say when we had the chance. Probably a bunch of baloney - but who doesn't like a little balogna from time to time? White bread and a squirt of ketchup and Voila. Happiness.

Here is a great song by Allison Krauss and the Union Station. It came into my head last night and so I send it on to you.

Happy New Year

No, I am not operating from the calendar of an alternate universe. I realize that January 1st is a ways off, but aren't calendars man-made devices? Don't the trees see this as the end of their year? Thus, the beginning of another? And trees, like chickens, have strength in numbers, so who am I to argue? Therefore, I have decided to acknowledge November 1st as New Year's Day.

Since last October, I have felt as though I have been walking around with a sign that reads "Kick Me" taped to my forehead, and although my family and I have been spared serious illness and catastrophic loss, I am a little sore. But now that Halloween has passed, I am ready to approach the new year, armed with the lessons I have learned over the course of the past 12 months. I share them now in the form of a numerated Note to Self:

1. Inspect your bank statements. Don't allow them to pile up in a laundry basket. Open them, for the love of Mike. Or better yet, join the information age and enroll in online banking. Make certain that $4.99 is not being deducted from your savings account each month as a result of carrying a balance less than $300. Do this before your account dwindles to $14.99. Before the bank manager tries to sell you a low-interest rate mortgage when tasked with closing said savings account. When she tells you she is trying to do you a favor, offering you a great deal on a home-equity loan because you seem to be experiencing 'cash-flow' problems, speak to her as you would the dog: "Shame on you. Deep shame."

2. Do not assume it is safe to cross the parking lot of a grocery store, even after looking both ways. Remember that demons drive at the speed of sound. You will not hear them until after they've almost flattened you. Until they've unfurled their forked tongues. Shouted "You're a little too fat to be running out in front of traffic," in your general direction. In the future, park your car next to the cart return, thereby avoiding the crossing of any lanes on foot. Or better yet - stand in the middle of the road and wait for that woman to return. Wait through rain and sleet. Drive to the same store every damn day, and wait.

3. When someone in a position of power offers you 'the opportunity of a lifetime', say, "No. Back to the depths with ye!" Worship no one but the Hero upstairs.

4. Write thank you notes to guest editors who give sage advice to aspiring authors in the forewords of yearly anthologies. Be grateful for gems like these:

Go see the world. Stay there for as long as you can - maybe then, after you've shaken off the stink of your own living room - your preoccupation with food allergies and infidelity - when you've taken on the odour of foreign living rooms and become sickened by foods native to far-off lands - sickness which is inherently more interesting because it is co-opted - you will become a real writer.

Rush to the nearest travel agent. But, alas, remember that you are experiencing cash-flow problems, and a plane ticket to the world probably costs more than $14.99. Try not to despair. Eudora Welty said, "Write what you don't know about what you know." Remember that Alice Monro (hailed as the greatest short story writer since Chekov) writes almost exclusively about her native Canada. And Chekov, for that matter, was a Russian writer who wrote about Russian people. Russian babies and a Russian Lady with a Dog who runs off with a Russian man - not, by the way - her Russian husband.

5. Trust that despite the kicks to the head, the year will provide many wonderful surprises as well. Gracious, gifted writers who share their time and stories with you. Goodness in the form of unexpected emails from editorial assistants at large commerical magazines. People will like you. Really like you - you (and Sally Fields) for exactly who you are.

Clarity, Brevity, Simplicity, Humanity

For most of my adolescence, I idolized Barbra Streisand. Long before the talented young actors on Glee began popularizing songs from Funny Girl and Yentl, I was the Greatest Gtar...I was Second-Hand Rose...I was singing to Papa by candlelight and Nobody, No Nobody was gonna Rain on my Parade. In this way, I was sort of a weird kid. I can't explain exactly why I felt such a kinship with Babs, except for maybe I recognized that I, too, have a nose of distinction. But that isn't all. It was her strength that I admired. Her ability to entertain and her sense of the world. Even now, I can't help but weep when I watch her sing. It's involuntary. Like love. And I realize the real reason I related to Barbara is that she gave voice to every feeling I had - even as a small girl. She made it okay to be a clown. To laugh at yourself and at the same time to be a strong woman. To say what you want and expect to get it. And most of all, to speak out against injustice. To not apologize for your convictions.

I used to say I wanted to be the first 'woman' President of the United States, and amazingly, at age 9, I believed in earnest that this was possible. Even when another girl - a friend of mine, who was ever so slightly thinner and therefore more popular announced that she also planned to one day throw her hat into the ring, I wasn't deterred. Such was the power of my fantasy that when Geraldine Ferraro ran for Vice-President, I secretly rooted against her. I saw myself at a podium. Reasoning with Gaddafi, whose bombs I spent many many hours worrying over. World War III, we were told in elementary school, would be the last War. The nuclear war from which only the cockroaches would be left to write about. But on my watch, there would be no war. On my watch, there would be peace. Peace the way Barbra described it in her 1986 ONE VOICE concert.

Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro - who started out as a school teacher in Queens - lost by a landslide to Ronald Reagan, but upon accepting her nomination, addressed a crowd of cheering, tearing supporters with these words: "I stand before you to proclaim tonight: America is the land where dreams can come true for all of us." Indeed, she went on to do great things. As the Ambassador to the United Nations Humans Rights Commission in 1993, she condemned (for the first time) anti-semitism as a human rights violation. After suffering with an extended illness, Geraldine Ferraro died last March. She was only 75, and I wonder what she would have to say about Alabama's new immigration laws. Laws which permit police to "Stop and Ask" individuals within its borders to produce their 'papers'. Legislation which gives the green light to racial profiling and feels eerily like a movie set in Nazi-occupied Europe. Except it's real, and it's happening here - in the Land of the Free.

Today, I get to stand at a podium. I get to talk about human rights and raise awareness about social issues. I get paid to read and write, and maybe I don't have the qualifications - the Ivy League education or the bank account to run for President, but ironically, I am doing exactly what I envisioned. My dream, though in disguise, came true. And I never forget, despite my outrage, that because I live in America, I am allowed to question the leaders of my country. To run my classroom on the following platform: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity. A fortune cookie's description of the basic premises of writing and not too shabby a mantra for life.

Here is a video from Barbra's 1986 concert. I dare you not to cry.

Fowl Mood

I'm feeling a little bit better today; thanks for asking. My head doesn't feel like an excavated mine this morning, which is nice. Although, a bit of the ugly mood - the residual funk that accompanies phlegm - remains. Which is not so nice or I'm not so nice. And while I'm thinking about it - Please stop inserting commas before the conjunction in a sentence consisting of one independent and one dependent clause! You know who you are: you newspaper columnists, novelists and other so-called 'famous' writers. You seriously undermine my work as an educator when you whip those commas around like so many boomerangs. As if grammar were some kind of horseshoe match - as if being close counts. I'll tell you what I tell my students: Read the damn handbook. How hard is it, really? If the parts of the sentence that come before and after the comma can each stand alone - by all means, plop that comma down in there. Otherwise, keep your unwieldly punctuation to yourself.

And another thing: When visiting a bookstore near you, take note of the numerous jacket covers prominently featuring chickens. As I wandered through my local Barnes & Noble last evening, waiting for my daughter to finish with her dance lesson, I couldn't help but feel a bit of hope at the sight of so many books about these plucky birds. I thought - I have a story about a chicken. Maybe I've finally done it - written a literary short story about something people might pay money to read - I mean just look (I thought to myself) look at all these stinking chickens! Free-range, cartoon, vintage...certainly there's room for one more feather among the flock? But then I remembered that there are more chickens than humans walking the earth, so they can afford to be choosy.

For all I know, chickens are running the publishing houses. Chickens scratching behind the desk at the New Yorker. Chickens gathered around a table, discussing my story. "What does this chicken want? Has this chicken earned that cliche? This chicken has not been fully realized..."

Can't you just see the rejection letter? "Dear Fowl Writer:..."

Oh well. Cover your mouth when you cough. Keep your hands clean, and don't forget to say God Bless You.