Fascinating Fascinators

Forgive me in advance if I make no sense this morning – it is morning, isn’t it? – but I was up at 2 a.m. to watch the Royal Wedding. No one made me, I wanted to. I became a bit of an anglophile two decades ago when I lived in the UK during my Air Force husband’s tour of duty there. One of our sons was born just outside Oxford. I’ve a bunch of fruity dinner plates from Stoke-on-Trent I use every chance I get. And I keep a British pound in my dress-up purse just because it never left that purse when we moved away when the three-year-tour was up.

I loved the wedding. I did. I loved the trees in the Abbey, Kate’s dress, the heavenly tones of the choir, the Archbishop’s groomed and tamed eyebrows, the lovely reading of Romans 12, the stirring message by the Bishop Richard Chartres, and of course, the hats.

Oh, the hats.

As I lounged in my pjs in the dark, sipping tea and eating an English muffin, I wondered what was it about those audacious hats that so intrigued me. I figured it out sometime around 3:30 a.m. They are characters in a story. They want to tell a story. From the tops of their prim and proper British heads, they are shouting a story. Everything else about this day’s activities in London were all pompy and circumstancy – even the public’s dignified and polite march down the mall to Buckingham Palace – but the hats trumpeted their audacious audacity. Beautiful incongruence. I do believe I shall write a children’s book – dibs, everyone – about British wedding hats that talk. I mean, really, what do you think Princess Beatrice’s hat would say if given lips to speak?? I shall get to work straightaway.

In the meantime, I so would like your opinion on your favorite hat from this gallery of hopefuls. Tell me, which is favorite. And why?

And hey, while you’re at it, suggest a name for it. . .

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/sns-royal-wedding-hats-pictures,0,2465632.photogallery

There’s a good lass and lad. . .

Three Cups of Disappointment

On my lofty, tottering pile of To Be Read books is a copy of Three Cups of Tea, loved by so many when it came out a few years ago and which called to me sweetly whenever I would run my fingers on the spines of the Towering Titles to pull out a new book to read.

I don’t know now that I will bother to pull it out. I love the idea that there are schools where girls are learning to read and write, and I am glad that my reading or not reading this book won’t change that. But I am quite disenchanted with the news of late that the author wasn’t telling us the truth about how he made those schools a reality. Call it fabrication, call it embellishment – at the end of the day, it’s still deception. And I don’t have the inclination or the time to peek past the facade to see what is true about this book and what is not.

If you’re not in the know, it has been discovered that author Greg Mortenson told his story with his fingers crossed. 60 Minutes revealed the subtle ruse not too many days ago. Mortenson told his story of building schools in Afghanistan as an invitation to view his life in rewind. This is what a memoir should be, right? Here is my life as it happened, and here is how it changed me. A memoir is the retelling of the events that gave us our memories not a repackaging of the events to manufacture memories we wish we had.

That would be fiction. Nice stuff, fiction. I love it, of course. But everyone knows my books are the stuff of my imagination. I didn’t write them with my fingers crossed.

As I have said before, life is short and there are too many books. I don’t know that I will carve out the time to read Mortenson’s book now. But I do hope all this chatter over his deceptive cups of tea won’t spoil the notion that there are Afghan girls in school as I write this, learning to read. . .

Thoughts, anyone?

Stages of the cross

In the fall of 1989, my husband and I took a trip to the bit of earth and air where our faith begins. We boarded a plane at Heathrow and flew as far East as I have ever been – to Israel. Over the next nine days we stood on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, broke bread on an ancient hilltop, touched the gilded floor where it is said a manger once rested, pondered the gnarled – nearly pained -olive trees in a garden still called Gethsemane and walked the Way of Suffering. Some call a trip like that a pilgrimage. But to be honest, I didn’t feel like a pilgrim, especially on that day we walked the Via Dolorosa. I felt more like the inquisitive child desperate to know how the magician can make a white dove appear out of nowhere.

The child is mesmerized, transfixed by the notion that something can appear in a blink of of an eye where nothing was. It defies what she knows of the world. She wants to know how it can be done. She is a child learning about her world and this is how she learns, by exposure to truth. It is how she learned the stove is hot, knives are sharp, and what goes up comes down.

So as I walked the Way of Suffering, the closest one can get to the physical truth of the Cross of Christ, I was the child desperate to know how it works. Was there no other way to save me? Really? No other way?

A pilgrim probably does not ask a question like that. But a child does.

And the simple answer – that is not simple at all – is, no there wasn’t. Jesus asked the same question in that grove of hideously twisted olive trees. Is there another way?

No.

And so He went the way of the Cross.

The child in me still ponders this. Not that there was no other way but that He went. This is what makes a Friday like today, good. It doesn’t seem good, not to the child. She wants to wrap her mind around it. But there are some things a child cannot fully understand. She cannot explain why the stove is hot, but she simply must accept that it is. There are stages to her understanding. There always will be. . .

“We may say that on the first Good Friday afternoon was completed that great act by which light conquered darkness and goodness conquered sin. That is the wonder of our Saviour’s crucifixion. There have been victories all over the world, but wherever we look for the victor we expect to find him with his heel upon the neck of the vanquished. The wonder of Good Friday is that the victor lies vanquished by the vanquished one. We have to look deeper into the very heart and essence of things before we can see how real the victory is that thus hides itself under the guise of defeat.”

Phillips Brooks

Tribute to a Good Dog

Today I share a few photos of our dog, Luke, who passed away on Tuesday at the age of 14½. He was what many dogs spend their lives being – supremely devoted, unwilling to carry a grudge, happy to see you at any moment of the day or night, uncritical of your faults, content to lie at your feet at the end of the day, ready at a moment’s notice to go Outside.

He was there for the lion’s share of the parenting years, he played a lot of Frisbee, barked at a lot of snow shovels, sniffed many a tree, claimed even more, opened Christmas presents – his own and those belonging to other “people” – with reckless abandon. He deftly played a game we called Mysterious Banana (if you insist on an explanation, I will give you one), he chased lizards and squirrels (obviously undaunted by the knowledge that in his lifetime he never caught one), loved apples and carrots, and stole the cat’s food whenever we weren’t looking. He stepped in paint once and left his paw print in the driveway and it is there still, dear to me now. He loved to chase and chew empty milk jugs and he once tried to stuff three tennis balls in his mouth. If you threw a dirt clod he’d retrieve it. His paws twitched when he dreamed and his ears felt like velvet. No matter what I had done or didn’t do – he always wagged his tail at my approach. Always.

The only fault good dogs have is they don’t live long enough, though I suppose this is one reason it is forgivable that they don’t; so that we would be reminded of how wonderful they are and how we should aim to be a little more like them: Loyal, nonjudgmental, forgiving, compassionate, ready to drop everything and just go Outside . . .

“Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, and all the Virtues of Man, without his Vices. This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery if inscribed over human ashes is but a just tribute to the Memory of Boatswain, a Dog.
~ Lord Byron

Monday Marvels

If you are one to be mindful of dates and anniversaries then you will no doubt be aware that 2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.

As you may recall from your junior year American History class, the first shots were fired before dawn upon Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.

From Eyewitness to History: “The firing of the mortar woke the echoes from every nook and corner of the harbor, and in this the dead hour of the night, before dawn, that shot was a sound of alarm that brought every soldier in the harbor to his feet, and every man, woman and child in the city of Charleston from their beds. A thrill went through the whole city. It was felt that the Rubicon was passed. No one thought of going home; unused as their ears were to the appalling sounds, or the vivid flashes from the batteries, they stood for hours fascinated with horror.”

Having just finished the fourth rounds of edits on my next book, A Sound Among the Trees – which has its historical thread this terrible War Between the States – this anniversary is especially haunting to me. If I had $125 to toss around, I’d buy hese bookends, pictured above – the Monday Marvel for this week.

Look for more musings on the Civil War throughout this year, especially as the release date for A Sound Among the Trees draws near.

And for a great article on the subject, check out this week’s Time Magazine and this thoughtful piece by David Von Drehle. The photographs created for this article need to be seen to be appreciated. Using reenactors in period uniforms and contemporary city scapes, the photographer captured an eerie sense of what it must’ve been like to be in a war in your own backyard.

“History is not just about the past. It also reveals the present.” – David Von Drehle

If you’re a writer or screenwriter. . .

. . .or if you know someone who is, you will want to make note of a great seminar coming up the first weekend in June in Los Angeles. It’s the Novel and Screenwriting Intensive, taught by writer and teacher extraordinaire, James Scott Bell. Jim is a gifted writer and writer’s mentor- and a good friend. And I can’t wait to go.

The thing about writing is, you never stop learning how to pull it off better. There’s a lot to putting a great story down on paper. And I am finding that the more times I do it, the harder it gets, not easier. Each time I write a book, I set the bar higher for the next one and yet I still start at the same place when I begin it. A blank screen and whole lot of nothin’. A daunting place to start from, actually. Plus, the market for stories is always in a state of flux. While I am writing I have to be aware that I am not just telling a story, I am telling a story that needs to sell so that I can write the next one! There is an art to writing a story (or screenplay) that is irresistible. My friend Jim is going to share his paintbrushes and tell us how it’s done.

Here are just a few things Jim says (right from the website, folks) we will learn:

• The single most important secret to selling your work to Hollywood or big publishers.

• The one plot element most writers miss, dooming their chances of selling. (Note: this applies to every genre, from comedy to tragedy and everything in between).

• How a misunderstanding of “character arc” might actually be hurting your story . . . and what you can do about it.

• Why “inciting incident” is confusing, and the more powerful concept that replaces it.

• An actual process for mining irresistible stories out of your writer’s mind.

• Why dialogue is the fastest way to improve your story instantly, and specific tools to take yours to the highest level of conflict and tension.

Writing seminars are wonderful investments into your writer’s toolbox, especially when you consider they are far more intimate than conferences. The experience is much more individualized. Even after writing a dozen novels, I can’t wait to be refreshed and re-energized to write the next one.

Check it out here: http://novelandscreenplayintensive.wordpress.com/the-seminar/
Hope to see you there. . .

If we could talk to the animals

Earlier this week while watching the Today show I learned about the now famous Bronx Zoo cobra who’d gone missing from his warm abode in the reptile house. Newsworthy though that was, that wasn’t what was making the headlines that morning. Instead it was the Bronx Zoo’s Cobra’s tweets.

Someone with audacious brilliance realized this snake on the loose was the perfect writer for a Twitter account. Said genius opened an account for the roving reptile and began posting the snake’s daily treks as she explored New York City, with just the right amount of quirky class and cleverness. If animals could write, this is definitely how they would write. Intelligent, smartly satirical, insightful and savvy. Nothing that smacked of elephant jokes – and I definitely intend no pun.

After the Today show spot, I considered becoming a follower of the Bronx Zoo’s Cobra but when Random House, the parent company of my publisher, tweeted not long after that that the Bronx Zoo Cobra had been sighted in their lobby reading one of their books, I jumped right in. The BZC’s tweets for the next couple days were the highlight of my day. I laughed out loud when she tweeted that she sure did love the poem engraved on the Statue of Liberty -‘ your coiled masses yearning to be free.’ – and “Indiana Jones! Why did it have to be Indiana Jones!” And from the top of the Empire State Building, tweeting that the people on the ground below looked like tiny mice. Delicious tiny mice. And this one yesterday: “Got a bagel at H & H Bagels on upper west side. When I ordered I said, “I’ll have the snakes on a PLAIN.” He did not laugh. Tough crowd.”

I had tweeted right after that: “I don’t want the Bronx Zoo’s Cobra to be found and sent back to the reptile house where there is no Wifi. Hisss possssts amusssse me ssssso…” (Didn’t know at the time she was a girl. . . my apologies)

So you can imagine my sadness when one of my kids told me the snake had been found that afternoon – in a dark corner of the the reptile house – and the fun was over. Or so I thought. I should have guessed the clever writer behind the snake would find a way to keep writing from within the glass confines of the reptile house.

Her Twitter geographical location, which had until yesterday read “Not at the Bronx Zoo” now reads “I’m at the Bronx Zoo – For now.” And there is a new hashtag for her tweets – #freethebronxzooscobra.

So the muse of the ruse of will continue to enlighten and entertain, and that makes me smile. In a world where there is much that is sad and disappointing, it is nice to have a literate nonhuman providing colorful commentary on life among humans.

Makes me want to read the amazing The Art of Racing in the Rain a second time. . .