“Tropical Itch” Story Published

Beach At Waikiki

I have another confession magazine story published in TRUE CONFESSIONS in the June 2012 issue. This story was inspired by a wonderful trip to Hawaii a few years ago with Hubby, the (pre)Teen, and my sister-in-law. While I did not have a romantic interlude with a younger man, I DID enjoy Tropical Itch drinks poolside. I so enjoyed revisiting Hawaii in this story; I’m sure you will have fun arm-chair traveling with me!

Look for it in June on newsstands or electronically at Zinio.com

http://www.truerenditionsllc.com/

Lesson Two: Life Is in the Details

In this week’s Teen Writing Class, we talked about using vivid details to bring our stories to life. The scene below was extended from a couple of sentences to a descriptive little section complete with figurative language, inner dialogue, secondary characters, and sensory details. If you want to read the entire lesson, click HERE. Otherwise, hope you enjoy this scene that could be part of a longer young adult story or novel.

DISSECTING DAY

I loiter in the hallway outside Room 15, slipping through the doorway at the last possible second when the bell rings. The sharp chemical stench of formaldehyde hangs heavy in the room, inescapable. When I try breathing through my nose, I can taste the smell on the tip of my tongue. Dissecting day.

‘Larrisa Boucher! Put that knife down before someone gets hurt!’ From her perch behind the desk, Ms. Cameron screeches at a five-foot ten inch basketball player pretending to threaten her teammate, Brandi Ellerby, with the silver dissecting tool. The Lady Hawks goofing off at the corner station snicker and shuffle in a loose clump of sharp elbows, hooded sweatshirts, Amazonian legs. I shoot them a look, eyes narrowed. Mutants.

A feel a nudge at my elbow. ‘Are you okay?’ Angela Greer whispers, breath minty from her gum. ‘You look kinda pale.’ Her long, orange hair brushes my elbow.

Shaking my head, I say, ‘I don’t think I can do this.’

Angela leans closer. ‘You have to. If you don’t bring up your grade in Biology, you won’t be allowed to go to drama camp with me this summer.’

‘I know, I know!’ Holding my breath, I glance down.

There it is. The frog.

Reaching out, I slide a tentative finger along its back. The skin is cold and slimy and weirdly stiff. Not like a real frog. Nothing like.

I remember when I was a kid how my cousin and I would walk down to the stream on summer mornings and catch them–big, green croakers hiding close to the muddy bottom among the cattails. We’d plunge our hands into the cool water and grab one by his leg. They were slimy then, too, but in a live way, wiggly. This frog is dead. And I have to cut him open. It isn’t fair, I think, stomach hollow and queasy. Why do animals have to suffer for us to have this stupid biology class, anyway?

Christmas With Kings

11/22/63

Dear Reader:

I woke up this morning to see snow falling outside, just a few light shards of sleety stuff at first but gradually expanding to big, fluffy flakes gently blurring the landscape and coating the dead leaves and still-greenish grass on my front yard. I plodded downstairs and turned on the coffeepot, wrapped a soft blanket around my shoulders, plugged in the Christmas tree lights, and curled into my favorite corner of the couch to read Stephen King’s new book–11/22/63–a time-travel tome, satisfyingly long and hefty. Reading King’s latest book has become a Christmas tradition for me. (When you are a Really Famous Author, your books get released just in time for the shopping season.)

My mother, God-bless-her, buys the latest Stephen King for me every year there is one, sometimes even stands in line at the bookstore in downtown Bangor to get me an autographed copy. When Joe Hill, King’s son, published his first book, she gifted me with HEART-SHAPED BOX. Another year, she bought Tabitha King’s BOOK OF REUBEN because I absolutely adored her novel of high-school hoops and adolescent angst, ONE-ON-ONE.

For my part, I used to buy Hubby the latest book in King’s DARK TOWER series for Christmas, and last year I found a published collection of “superhero” stories, WHO CAN SAVE US NOW?, to give to The Teen . . . edited by one Owen King (he also has a story in the collection), Stephen and Tabitha’s youngest son.

I guess in our house, it just wouldn’t be Christmas without a King-family book under the tree.

I love Stephen King’s later novels. The earlier works were a bit gory and gross for me (but I read them anyway because once you start reading one of King’s stories, you really cannot put them down). My first was SALEM’S LOT. I borrowed it from my friend, Kara, down the road when I was about thirteen or fourteen. Because I suspected my parents might, for the first time, begin to limit my reading choices if they found out their young, impressionable, Christian-schoolgirl daughter was about to read a horror novel with lots of “swears” in it, I decided the most prudent course of action was to read it at night, in bed, under the covers with a flashlight.

I also had hanging on my wall a black and white poster of Scott Baio in his JOANIE LOVES CHACHI days. He’s not smiling, and he’s wearing a sexy leather jacket, be still my heart. (Kara also had a subscription to Teen Beat, and she liked Ralph Macchio so giving me the Scott Baio centerfold poster was fine with her). Needless to say, I loved Scott Baio, but by the time I was halfway through SALEM’S LOT, I had to take that poster off my wall because he looked like a vampire looming over my bed.

That book scared the bejeezus out of me! Last year I decided to read it again, to see if it really was that freaky or if I’d become hardened over the past thirty years. Guess what? It scared the bejeezus out of me again!

The newer King novels, though with their share of gross and gore and thrills and chills, are more meaty. None have outdone THE STAND, of course, but this new one promises to catapult the reader back to the “earlier, gentler” America of the late 1950′s, early 1960′s. Were things really so great back then, I wonder? I suspect King might put a different twist on it than, say, JOANIE LOVES CHACHI or HAPPY DAYS.

While I’m reading about time travel and JFK and Brill Scream (pun intended), you can catch page 7 of my humble Christmas story under the Fiction Corner tab.

On the Fourth Day of (My) Christmas (Story)

This gallery contains 1 photos.

Dear Reader: The Christmas tree is decorated with red bows and white turtle-doves and red and white striped candy-canes and all the special ornaments we’ve collected over the almost twenty years of our marriage. I even started wrapping some presents. … Continue reading →

Town-Love

Baby & Me

Dear Reader:

Spring has brought daffodils to my flower beds, leaves cluttering my lawn, owls hunting for peepers in the boggy places, and a chance for me to bottle feed a baby goat at Downhome Farm (isn’t that the cutest white baby goat?).

Spring also brought me back to 1987, freshman year at the University of Maine at Farmington, the season I took my first (and only) poetry class, ate Gifford’s ice-cream for the first time, took beginner rides on the back of a motorcycle, and began the slow process of falling in love with the man who would eventually become my husband.

And I DID fall in love. With the town. I’m still smitten.

This month, I drove up to UMF to meet my college roommate and two of our friends from down the hall in Scott South, the all-female dormitory where we ended up freshman year–me because my parents wanted to protect me from co-ed distractions and the other three by chance, I think. We lived on the first floor, not a bad set-up, and because we were the only all-female dorm, we also had the only co-ed bathroom on campus (for the visiting boyfriends to use). Oh, the irony.

We were to meet in the Gifford’s Ice Cream parking lot. Arriving early, I grabbed a cup of coffee at a new cafe “overtown” where a pizza place used to be, walked around the block to stretch my legs, admired the gazebo still standing in the tiny park. I drove back past the big, old Main Street houses, now repainted and divided up into apartments, and parked my vehicle in front of Giffords to watch the traffic turning onto the Intervale Road. There were kids playing tennis on the courts beside Hippach Field and a group of Little League players trying out the baseball diamond where my father and uncle played for the Farmington State Teacher’s College team in the mid 1960′s.

(Farmington State became UMF later on, but it still remained primarily a training college for future educators. Now it presents itself as “the liberal arts college of the UMaine System.” Once there were first-generation-to college Mainers wearing sweatpants and L.L. Bean boots to class. Now, it’s topless parades to protest inequality for women. No matter. It’s still UMF. The “Beach” in front of the main dining hall may be called something else now, but it is still the same old hangout. There’s a great athletic center with a pool, indoor tennis courts, weight rooms, and the like. The library has been slightly remodeled. A beautiful education center was constructed where the little white psychology building used to be, and I hear a new art gallery is going in. It’s all good.)

Down to Giffords, I stared, dreamy-eyed, at the yellow Victorian Chester Greenwood mansion high up on the hill overlooking the Sandy River. I gazed at the square, brick campus building, remembering Alice Bloom’s booming musical rendition of a poem by Blake, remembering watching THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY on Sunday movie night in the auditorium there, remembering the buzzing of a lawn mower and the scent of fresh-cut grass while trying to pay attention during Russian history class my final spring at UMF.

I glanced over at the golden arches of the McDonald’s where a bunch of us used to walk after a Wednesday evening children’s lit class. Remembering. Remembering. Remembering and missing the Farmington Diner where my parents met, where my husband-to-be treated me to giant platters of fried clams and french fries loaded with ketchup while we listened to lame eighties hits on the individual jukeboxes situated at every booth. “Lady in Red” and “Lean on Me” and “Maggie May.”

Heart-bursting love for everything.

I rolled down my window and sniffed . . . yes, Farmington has its own scent, probably something to do with the river water but maybe also the farmland surrounding the town and once in awhile, when the wind is right, a whiff of the paper mills in Jay. I recognized this smell. It was the smell of home. Or of a homeplace.

I have family roots deep in Farmington and the surrounding towns. While I was growing up, my grandparents lived here, in a white-sided farmhouse built by my grandfather’s father out on Rt. 4 in West Farmington, on an embankment next to a cornfield beside Temple Stream. My parents took my sister and me to visit often, and for two years of college, I rented a room in the house, sipped camomile tea out on the granite steps, typed up college papers in the old, screen porch office at the front shaded by big old oaks that dropped so many acorns it hurt to run across the lawn in bare feet.

My grandmother’s family tree goes all the way back to some of the first settlers of the area, the Butterfields, who built homesteads up on Porter Hill. My grandfather’s family goes back aways, too, though I don’t know as much about them. My mother grew up here. My parents met here. I met my husband here. I dream of moving back, someday. Maybe.

Bill Roorbach's Book

Mostly, though, I just want to continue to love this town with its human-scale Main Street shops, its steepled churches, its college campus, its river. Others have moved here and felt its magic pull. On our recent visit, my friends and I ducked into Twice Sold Tales, a wonderful used bookshop housed in part of the old Newberry’s five-and-dime store, and I picked up Bill Roorbach’s memoir, TEMPLE STREAM. Professor Roorbach came to UMF to teach just after I graduated, but I enjoyed his first memoir SUMMERS WITH JULIET and wished I could have taken a class taught by him.

With the new book, Roorbach had me at the title, but I was impressed on every single page. Funny, insightful, informative, and warm, TEMPLE STREAM made me fall in love with the area all over again. Thank you, Mr. Roorbach.

The visit, the spring season, the memoir all worked a kind of magic and inspired me to write a new poem. I will leave you with the new, spring-inspired poem plus an old, winter-inspired poem written back when I was in college. Both are about the Sandy River in Farmington, Maine. Happy Spring, Dear Reader!

WINTER WATER (old poem)

It is not black
but deepest blue
piercing the whiteness
of snow crusted over
a somnolent river . . .
Chilled blue
water gurgling beneath
that hardened surface, I imagine . . .
Walking this bridge
from there to there
and wondering how it would be
to be a stone
rolling on an icy current,
opaque whiteness for a sky . . .

January, 1990.

and

POETRY & FARMING (new poem)

There is something
about this town
that invites
poetry & farming.

Town born of a river
rushing thick in spring
with sticks
& mud & thrown-away
stuff like bottles, rubber tires,
cardboard, rags.

Does the rushing & roaring
of the water seep
into the brain cells?
Permeable membranes susceptible to river notes,
gurgles like syllables,
voice of water whispering
“This and This and Thus” &
“Write it Down! Remember!”

After the floods in spring
the river draws back
gifting the plains
with organic riches, minerals
dredged from the riverbed or scraped
with a scour of deep ice.

This river made
lush green fields shot through
with meandering streams
like fool’s-gold threads. In later Spring,
swaths of pasture grass are dotted
with buttercups & milkweed & vetch.

The dairy cows lie beside
the water, listen
and chew while their udders fill
with sweet, white milk.

April, 2011

Dumpster Diving Part One

This episode fueled by Green Mountain Southern Pecan coffee.

Dear Reader:

I love coffee. I love the smell of it brewing first thing in the morning. I love the steam caressing my face when I lift the cup to my lips for that first, oh-so-delicious sip. I like my coffee bold, dark, intense. I enjoy the way the caffeine zips along my nerves, waking up my sluggish brain. I’ve cut pictures from magazines that feature people drinking coffee. It’s my one true addiction. Giving it up makes me cranky. Once I did give it up when I was following a macrobiotic diet, but I substituted a “grain” coffee instead. I managed to survive, but I felt deprived. A trip to Hawaii and access to that state’s incredible Kona ended my seven-months’ cafe-deprivation period, and I have no regrets. Coffee is one of my greatest pleasures, my strongest of comfort foods, a most dependable beverage because no matter where you go, no matter how bleak and terrible the location, you can usually find a cup of java.

Coffee is egalitarian. Run-down diners on the edges of small towns serve coffee and so do fine restaurants. Elisabeth Ogilvie in her Bennett’s Island books about fishermen and their families is forever referencing the “mug up” of coffee. (If you want a shot of pure Maine literature this summer, I highly recommend Ms. Ogilvie. Click HERE to read a little bit about this author.) Coffee tastes good served in thick, heavy mugs and in thin, delicate bone china. It even tastes good in paper cups, as Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts are well aware. Coffee complements both sedentary and active pursuits–reading, talking, driving. I wouldn’t recommend it while playing tennis or soccer, but celebrating after the game with a large cup? Sure! My family usually heads over to a Dunkin Donuts after the Maine Class A Boys Basketball Tourneys, for example. It is comfort in defeat and celebration in victory, with or without sugar and cream.

So what does all this have to do with Dumpter Diving? Well, yesterday morning I filled my coffee filter with some Green Mountain Southern Pecan, poured in the water to the six cup mark, and pressed the ignition button. The cheery red light came on, the pot began to gurgle and croak and sigh the way it always does, and I went over to the computer to check my emails while the lovely smell of fresh-brewed filled the air . . . except it didn’t.

Investigating the cause of such a wacky turn of events, I discovered that while the unit was ON, it certainly wasn’t working. The machine had, as all coffee makers eventually do, died.

Now, it wasn’t the end of my world because I tend to be rather inventive around the house. I’m pretty good thinking outside the box. The coffee filter was still full of fresh grounds. The glass pot was still intact. All that was needed was a manual application of boiling water. I could do that myself. I grabbed the tea kettle and set the water to boiling, poured the water over the grounds a little at a time, stuck the coffee pot beneath the filter cup, and voila! Not-so-instant coffee!

I couldn’t be too upset by the breakdown of my coffeemaker because, you see, I didn’t pay a penny for the thing. I know what you are thinking, but no, I did not dive headfirst into my neighbor’s trashcan for their old, discarded unit. I did the next best thing, however. I went to the dump.

The call it a transfer station now, but basically our town has a nice little dump where you can sort your recyclables, discard your old tires and furniture, throw your brush onto the community pile to be burned at a later date, and stow your meager bag of excess garbage in the “household trash” bin where I believe it is picked up and taken somewhere for energy-production or possibly a landfill. An attendant greets you from a cute little gardeny-looking cottage as you drive in and directs you to the proper areas. (I’ve noticed a big pile of wood mulch, too. I need to ask if that is free for the taking.) These are all wonderful components for a dump, of course, but the best part by far is the Swap Shack.

The Swap Shack is where you bring stuff that you no longer need/want that someone else may find useful or fun. I like to go in there and poke around. There is usually a halfway decent selection of used paperbacks. I’ve picked up drinking glasses and baskets and a couple of VCR movies. One day, on the back shelves with the old Crock Pots and frying pans, I saw this coffeemaker. My old one was pretty much done, its heating element dying like a red giant star growing cooler and less effective every day. I signed the book at the front of the Shack indicating what I’d taken, and brought the white, Black & Decker twelve-cup capacity coffeemaker home. If it worked, great. If not, I’d just return it. No problem.

And it wasn’t a problem because it worked fine. I’ve had it for a couple of years (my husband says one year, but I’m pretty sure it’s been at least two), and it has been dependable and hardworking. There was one idiosyncrasy–if I failed to push the filter holder cup thingy all the way down, the pot cover wasn’t able to reach the lever that opened the bottom of the cup allowing the coffee to drip down into the pot. This resulted in a bit of a mess a couple of times as the water entered the filter cup and had nowhere to go but over the top, spreading coffee and grounds everywhere. Once I figured out what was going on, I simply took care to make sure everything was lined up and tucked in nice and tight. That Black & Decker worked liked a charm–and it was free.

The Swap Shack isn’t all take and no give. I’ve donated outgrown Halloween costumes, paperbacks, toys, and even a couple pots and pans over the years. It’s a means of exchange among neighbors, and it saves us time and money. It fulfills the “reuse” portion of the Three R’s: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. The less stuff that goes into the landfills, the better. Plus, it’s fun. You never know what treasure you’ll dig up in there.

Take this table, for example. There is not a thing wrong with it except the handle needs tightening. It tends to spin around like a mad whirligig if I hit is just right. It caught my eye at the Swap Shack because it looked as if it perfectly matched my computer desk. I thought the little table could go in my upstairs office with the desk, but it ended up at the end of my upstairs hallway near the clothes hamper, instead. Inside I’ve placed a bunch of Harlequin Superromance novels I won in a writing contest. The short shelves inside are the perfect height for the little books. It could be used to store stationery supplies, cd’s, dvd’s, maybe even jars of jam. Decorating philosophy #1: You can’t have too many small tables. Decorating philosophy #2: You can’t have too many bookshelves. This cute thing fulfills both at the same time. Lovely!

According to some, every woman, especially every woman writer, needs a room of her own. I have a tiny office upstairs where I store my books, my photo albums, my writing files, and other inspiring items. (Ironically, I do the bulk of my writing downstairs on the laptop these days . . . it’s closer to where the coffee lives.) Without quite meaning too, I’ve pretty much furnished my office with free stuff. The reading lamp beside the bookcase was another Swap Shack find. It works perfectly well, and I like the brass finish. Someday I’ll replace the lampshade. Maybe. Although I have good interior design intentions, I’m not very ambitious with the follow-through when it comes to refinishing my finds.

Take this file cabinet, for instance.

I dragged this home from the dump last summer. My plan was to buy some bright pink spray paint and make it pretty. Well, here it is, still gray and sitting beside my computer desk. This find was a bit disappointing as the top drawer likes to slip off the little plastic wheels and drop down in one corner if I try to open it too fast. However, I don’t need to get into the top drawer all that often, and when I do, I simply remember to apply a little upward pressure when I slide it out toward me.

I understand that there is an element of the ridiculous in all this. We are a family with two college-educated people, one of whom has a very decent job. What am I doing “shopping” at the dump?

I could go on about the recycling aspect, the staying out of the box stores aspect, even the saving money aspect, but I suspect that to get closer to the truth I’d have to say I simply like the idea of getting something for nothing. I don’t think this makes me a terrible person. After all, I give many hours of my time away in volunteer activities, doing for nothing. Perhaps on some level I consider getting something for nothing is a just reward. Mostly, though, I think I love the idea of cutting out the middle man, the money, the means of exchange. This way there is just plain exchange. This works for used items, and it also works for new goods as well as services when people engage in a barter system. Economics in this century is complex, convoluted, and dare I say twisted? Bartering and trading cut to the chase. I give you something in exchange for something. It’s the oldest kind of trade there is. What could be simpler?

In recent years, perhaps due to the economic downturn (recession? depression?) I’ve noticed that people are turning to barter, swapping, and trading. One local business,Nurturing Tranquility Salon & Spa , holds regular Swap Parties for clients. A local “Mothers” group organized a clothing swap in the clubhouse of our neighborhood association. An artist friend of mine, Sandra Waugh, swaps artist trading cards (ATC’s) with other artists around the country and the world. (Check out her art at http://waughtercolors.deviantart.com/gallery/)

None of what I’ve described so far fits the literal definition of Dumpster Diving. So far. But I do have in my possession at least one piece of furniture rescued from an actual dumpster. Stay tuned later this week for Dumpster Diving Part Two . . . Outside the Box.

The Great Book Debate–Ayn Rand, Ron Paul, and Judith Levine

Dear Reader:

Can you believe the size of this amaryllis? Four huge blooms burst open on a thick, green stem over the course of a week. When the last of the four reached its fullest I heard a SNAP! and looked over to see the poor stem broken under the weight of such beauty. I was sad, but placed the flower in a pitcher of water where it brightened my late-winter days for another week. What is more surprising and magical than a tropical flower blooming in the middle of winter?

As winter makes way for a surprisingly early spring here in the great State of Maine, I find myself drawn to opposites: salty and sweet foods, hot drinks and sitting in the cool air on my front step, bursts of activity followed by periods of curling up on the couch with blanket and good book. In the spirit of this month that comes “in like a lion and out like a lamb,” I’ve decided that my reading material should be a study in contrasts.

For months now, storms have raged on Capitol Hill regarding health care, bailouts, the role of government in our lives. We hear on one hand that the American people are mostly satisfied with their insurance plans; on the other hand, we learn of outrage over insurance price hikes in the double digits planned for next year. We know our national debt is so hugemongous there is really no way to comprehend the depth of the hole we’ve dug ourselves into. We also know the two biggest entitlement programs–Medicare and Social Security–are ones no one wants to cut. I’ve watched all this with growing alarm, wondering what is the best way out of the mess we seem to be in, wondering if there IS a way out. Wondering what steps my family and I should take as citizens of our town, our state, and our country. I want to be an active citizen, but I want to be sure I’m acting in a positive, helpful way.

So, small steps. First, before you can try to fix a national economy, it is important to take care of your home economy. This month, in an effort to conserve our personal resources, my family decided to relinquish cable television. The kind of programming I wanted to see wasn’t found on cable anyway. Here’s what I’d like: a daily, two-hour program featuring debate on world and national issues or round-table discussions on said issues. I don’t want to hear party propaganda, so no political party chairmen would be invited. Legislators, yes. Party poobah’s, no. It seems to me that the problems we face today are so vast, so important that partisan politics has no place at the discussion table. Next year’s elections are not as important as next year’s employment figures. I want some straight talk from people who have made it their life’s work to study economics, Contitutional law, sociology, world affairs, energy, natural resources, and history.

Since we can’t always get what we want (and apparently I’m in a minority as the television media tends to give the majority what they want and what we are getting is polito-entertainment masking itself as serious commentary), I decided that if I can’t watch a debate, I’ll create my own . . . with books. I’m embarking on a series of print-debates in the privacy of my own home.

So, last week I invited three thinkers (one of whom is dead) into my home via the magic of the printed page. With Big Government having its day in the sun, so to speak, I decided to give ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand another look-see. In Rand’s hefty tome, we see an America that is at once familiar and alien. The economy is failing. Innovative thinkers are either hobbled by government regulations or quietly disappear, leaving chaos and crumbling infrastructure behind. A few stubborn, heroic industrialists hang on. They can’t quite wrap their heads around the “lack of reason” being displayed by their fellow man.

Ron Paul would agree with Ms. Rand on many points. His book THE REVOLUTION outlines Paul’s philosophy of a weaker federal government, less regulation, a free market Austrian economic system based on a gold standard, and more freedom in general. He postulates that government social programs have hurt more than they’ve helped. He wants to audit (and then end) the Federal Reserve, our central banking system. He’s for free trade, but not necessarily for free trade agreements. Thank you, Mr. Paul. And now, Judith Levine. What do you have to say?

Judith Levine is a freelance journalist who, along with her husband, decided to go an entire year without buying anything other than basic needs. No gifts. No movies. No books. No clothes. The idea was to use what they had, make do, or go without. She wanted to experiment with being a non-consumer. She didn’t really get into her politics much, but reading the resulting book, NOT BUYING IT, you get the idea that she’s liberal. Here is the interesting part for me: Levine and Paul have much in common even though they land on opposite sides of the political spectrum. While Paul says, “let the market regulate itself via supply and demand of consumers and producers,” Levine says, “stop mindlessly consuming and start realizing that your choices count.” Ayn Rand, from the great beyond, chimes in with her “Work so that you may consume, otherwise you are looting from those who produce.”

I listened to all of them with great interest and am deliberately refraining from coming to any hard and fast conclusions about the role of the federal government. There are many considerations, many questions. But on one thing, all three of these authors agreed: Individuals need to take responsibility for themselves and their choices. We need to take responsibility for what we value. Most importantly, if we are to continue to be a viable society, we need produce and not simply consume

I encourage you to click on the links provided and give these three authors at least a cursory glance. Everyone–liberals, conservatives, and those of us in-between–will find their ideas challenged by each of these books.

Have you read anything thought-provoking lately? Any ideas of two authors you might read who have wildily diverging views? Stop in and share. Perhaps I’ll chose them for my next great book debate . . . Outside the Box.

The Confession Issue

Ripe On The Vine

PART ONE

Forgive me, Reader, for I have sinned:

Last weekend I had the overwhelming urge to go shopping and buy some new clothes.

It really isn’t all that complicated. I had broken my foot at the beginning of July, I had lazed around on my butt all summer while the foot healed, and I had gained weight. I simply wanted some pants that fit. And maybe a nice, bright, stylish top to go with. And some pretty earrings. I was in full-blown consumer mode for the first time in months, and I didn’t even try to fight it. I stumbled. Hard.

To cut myself a small break, I did try to find a Mardens (a Maine-person owned company, not a conglomerate-owned company) on my way to the mall. I heard there was one going in on the site of the old Wal-Mart in South Portland. Apparently, Wal-Mart had deserted one cement-block box and built a new one a few hundred yards down the road. Someone told me they were selling the old building to Mardens, but the site was still and bleak as only empty, big-box retail buildings can be, devoid of personality or charm.

Even a ghost-town would have more interesting architecture.

Okay, I may be projecting my guilt onto the Wal-Mart’s of the world rather than owning up to my complicity with them. For one thing, last month the school sent home a list of supplies my daughter is supposed to take with her to the middle school. She needed folders, pens, dry-erase markers, colored pencils, book covers (whatever happened to covering books with paper bags from the grocery store–and what do the kids do with dry-erase markers, anyway? Do they get their own white boards?), and a three-ring binder plus reams of paper to go into said binder. I bought what I could at the Sanford Mardens (pens, loose paper, sticky notes, tape, gluestick), but Dear Daughter had specific requirements when it came to the design of folders and notebooks, i.e. they couldn’t be plain and ordinary. They had to be cool and colorful and funky.

Off to the new Sanford Super Wal-Mart we went. Dear Daughter found what she wanted . . . and I came home with a bunch of spiral-bound and marble-top notebooks for me. How could I resist twenty-cent and fifty-cent notebooks? My conscience screamed at me all the way home, but I kept thinking about how in a post-oil future I’d be happy for a supply of paper. Uh-huh. Justification. Self-delusion. The Wages of Sin.

Maybe I was infected right then by the back-to-school virus that makes one long for new clothes, new shoes, and the latest shade of lipstick advertised in the September VOGUE. Or maybe one sin leads to another. In any case, I didn’t have the strength to resist temptation. One Friday night, despite thunderstorm (and tornado!)warnings, I headed to Macy’s women’s department and checked out the sales racks where a pretty fushia top jumped into my hand. No sooner did I think “khaki pants” did the perfect pair present itself . . . in the right size . . . on the other side of the rack. On the way to the dressing room, I spied a blue, ruffled top on clearance. And wouldn’t you know it? They all fit. If I were superstitious, I’d have thought a devil was aiding and abetting.

Here’s the worst part: It felt so good to be in an air-conditioned store with a smorgasboard of clothing options, soothing music pumping through the sound system, and an attentive saleswoman eager to carry my three sale items to the register, where, with a quick swipe of the credit card, I bought myself a big, warm slice of American Consumerism. After six months of local buying and doing-without, that twenty minutes in Macy’s felt like coming home.

I walked out into the humidity of the parking lot with its circles of brightness cast from the sodium-light streetlamps and wondered if maybe I should simply give in and live the life I was born to, this energy-sucking, high-speed, overabundant, luxurious American middle-class life. It’s an old issue for me, this tug-of-war between the world that is and the world as it used to be and might be again. I never felt totally comfortable with modernity, didn’t trust that it could last or even progress much further, and yet for my forty-one years it has continued and it has progressed.

I like to read fashion and shelter magazines, romance novels, and chick lit. I watched the entire run of SEX AND THE CITY, and I just ordered the movie from Netflix and hope to watch it this week. This part of me appreciates our instamatic lifestyle–music at the touch of a button, movies at the click of a mouse, travel at the turn of an ignition key. It’s magic, this life we have here at the edge of the century, and I wonder how many of us actually stop to admire the sheer audacity and brilliance of our modern life even as we ponder the possibility of its ultimate demise.

I’d never heard of personal computer when I was my daughter’s age. The internet hadn’t been developed. A mouse was a little rodent you hoped not to find in your cupboard. Talking to someone on a screen was something from the cartoon The Jetsons, and I remember watching the cartoon and thinking “that will never happen.”

As I type this on my laptop, the little eye of my web cam stares at me, accusingly, like the eye of some techno-god irritated by my lack of faith. Maybe technology will save us, after all, as our oil supplies diminish and we continue on with our consumerish ways. Delusion. Self-deception. Sin?

Is it a sin to want the comforts we’ve enjoyed for so long? I just don’t know for sure. It’s easy to plunk down that credit card and walk out of the mall with new clothes when you don’t stop to think of the third-world worker who made them. When you don’t stop to think about your fellow Americans who lost their jobs when the manufacturing sector closed shop here in the U.S. and moved to those third-world sweat-shop hives. When you refuse to think how those dollars could have been spent supporting a local business struggling to make it in a “flat and crowded” world. (See Thomas Friedman’s book.)

Unfortunately, I thought about those things and suffered pangs of guilt.

Farmer's Market Fare

As penance, I headed off to the brand new farmer’s market in Newfield the next morning. The market was set up at Willowbrook, a historical village and museum. At nine in the morning, the vendors were just setting up, and I was charmed by the setting, the goods on display, and the nice people. I came away with a loaf of Anadama Bread from the Brother’s Bakery in Alfred, a bouquet of curly, green kale, some cookies from the Boy Scout troop, and a pair of earrings.

Earrings From Farmer's Market

For those of you in the neighborhood, the market is open at Willowbrook on Saturdays at nine am. There is also a new farmer’s market that has opened up in South Waterboro, just up the street from the Milk Room. This one is also on Saturdays. I checked it out a few weekends ago, on it’s opening day. Vendors were offerering local produce, homemade charcoal for the grill, ice-cream, pottery, and some hot food items. The Shaker Valley Farmer’s Market even had a band on site to celebrate the day. See this write-up about it in the Waterboro Reporter–our local newspaper.

Rockin' out at the farmer's market

What have I learned from all this? The obvious lesson, of course, is that we aren’t perfect. All we can do is try to do the right thing . . . whatever we think is the right thing . . . as often as we can. For me, this means putting on my new clothes and acknowledging the sheer luck of having been born in this place at this time. It means regretting an impulsive and possibly selfish decision to do what came easiest rather than suck it up and wear the old clothes until I found a local option. It means vowing to do better in the weeks and months ahead.

While out and about, I picked up a book of sewing patterns which included a pattern for a pretty, wrap skirt. That’s one step in the right direction. The book is called WEEKEND SEWING: More than 40 Projects and Ideas for Inspired Stitching by Heather Ross. Click here to see the book. Ms. Ross has compiled a lovely bunch of sewing projects including table napkins, an apron, a tunic, kids clothes, and even slippers! She has included patterns that can be traced onto transfer paper. I’ve never done that before, but I’m looking forward to trying. It’s definitely time to get out my dusty sewing machine. Back in college, I used to make some of my own dresses, but then clothes just seemed to get cheaper and cheaper in the stores. The cost of materials was more than buying something premade. Not stopping to think about the reasons why this might be, I simply put away the sewing machine and got on with my role as a Great American Consumer.

But if I’m going to be serious about staying out of the Boxes, I need to start making my own clothes again. Wish me luck!

PART TWO

Fiction. It’s been awhile since I’ve tried it, but in keeping with today’s theme I thought it was only right that I tell you about my latest project. I’m writing a confession magazine story. And I’m having a blast doing so. If you don’t know what a confession magazine is, I’ll fill you in. You know those thin magazines with titles like TRUE STORY and TRUE CONFESSIONS you see in the grocery store next to the teen magazine and crossword puzzle books? Those are confessions mags. Each issue has six or seven stories of varying lengths, all in first person, most following a formula that goes something like: heroine makes a bad decision, heroine digs herself in even deeper, heroine suffers, heroine repents, heroine is redeemed.

These stories aren’t as bad as they sound, actually. They may not be what they purport to be–true–but they can be true to life. Since I haven’t had much drama in my own life, I’m forced to take smidgeons of personal stories I’ve heard over the years and to try to morph them into a story resembling truth. And isn’t that what all fiction is–even the most literary of fiction?

I was thinking about the power of story the other day. Here’s a confession: I listen to Christmas music in the summer. Just the instrumental stuff, but still. I don’t quite know why I get the urge to hear O Holy Night in the middle of August, but there it is. So I was thinking about Christmas and the Christmas story, Jesus’ birth, the angels, the star, the whole deal. I’m not a true believer as I once was, but I have to admit there is something powerful about the story, something that speaks to me even though I think the “truth” of the story is about on par with those of the “true” confession stories. A little bit of reality mixed with alot of desire for order out of chaos.

It struck me that we humans have a deepseated need for story, for the order of story, and if we could only realize that the various religions are all attempting to create that order, telling of a universal truth if not an exact historical one, we might be able to tolerate or even celebrate our religious differences. How many religious stories speak of the god being born, usually under mysterious and magical circumstances, growing, and eventually dying . . . and then being reborn. It’s an old, old story found in many cultures and religions, Christianity obviously included. One could argue that the pre-Christian religious stories were only there to prepare the way for the One True Religion and all those that came after are mere peversions of the same, I suppose, but that’s a stretch for me.

So, the big question. Can we fulfull our human need for spirituality, for order out of chaos, if we lack unquestioning faith in one religion? Or can the story itself be enough?

It seems to me that as adults, we are able to filter what we learn of religion. We take what we need from it and let the more disturbing elements go a little fuzzy and bleary along the edges. Kids don’t have that filter. If they hear it, and if a trusted adult tells them it is The Truth, they’ll believe it. Concretely. Think about the kids being taught in the madrassas in the Middle East right now. Think they have a filter for what they are being taught?

I was taught that one of these days Jesus Christ was going to blow a trumpet, dead Christians would rise out of their graves, live Christians would disappear into the heavens, and all hell was going to break loose here on earth. No filter. For years I lived in fear that my salvation “didn’t take” and that I’d have to live through said hell on earth before being thrown into a fiery pit. Lovely stuff for a bedtime story, right?

Now I have to think that the adults in my life just didn’t realize they were using a filter. They were not going to worry about the supernatural stuff. Not really. There was a mortgage to pay and jobs to do and, well, church to go to. Those prosaic concerns filtered out the usuable stuff like the Ten Commandments from the less usuable stuff like lion-headed locusts in the story.

But what about the kids? I wrote a story about this about six years ago. It’s called Second Coming. I’ll post it under my Fiction Corner, but with a warning for those of you who are strong in your Christian faith. It isn’t pretty. There’s stuff in there that will disturb you. In other words, Read At Your Own Risk, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Since writing that story (and, man, it was cathartic!) I’ve come to a more tolerant view of my Christian upbringing. I can see the beauty and power of the Christian story, so wonderfully encapsulated in the music. Birth, life, death, rebirth. Good stuff.

Fiction Outside the Box

Dear Reader:

Yesterday my daughter decided to spend her Border’s gift card.

Yes, Borders–one of those mega-chains that can and do out-price and out-stock small independent businesses making it harder or even impossible for them to survive. I have to admit, Borders is one of my favorite places to shop. Just the smell of the place–the heady aroma of books mixed with the scent of good coffee from the cafe area–makes me happy. And the selection! Aisle upon aisle of every kind of book on every subject one could wish to explore.

It’s a book-lover’s paradise, and I love books. Not just reading them, but holding them, turning the pages, looking at them on my bookshelves and remembering all the quiet, comforting hours spent with my nose buried in them. Given enough resources, I’d fill my house with them, every room. As it is, my lovely husband built a whole wall of shelves for me in my tiny office. I’ve already resorted to shelving my books two rows deep and laying others flat when I couldn’t squeeze them in.

I can spend hours in a Borders bookstore, wandering from travel to romance to history to religion to nutrition. The workers keep an eye on me, suspecting foul play, but I just smile at them and continue browsing. It’s a rare day I leave without dropping fifty bucks.

But those days are over. This year, I’m shopping locally.

Once upon a time, I worked in a small, independent bookstore in Oxford, Maine. I know first-hand how the big book chains and Amazon.com cut into these little jewelboxes of literary treasure found in fewer and fewer of our small towns. The store in which I worked, Books ‘n Things, was owned and operated by Katie Whitehead. With a seven-month-old baby on my hip and trepidation in my heart, I went into the store and inquired about work. I was handed an application. Katie interviewed me a week or so later and offered me a few hours during the week plus Saturday mornings–a perfect schedule for a new, stay-at-home mom.

It was a dream job for someone who loves books. I had a discount. I had access to the newest fiction. Katie had a subscription to the New York Times Review of Books. The salary didn’t matter so much as the stimulation, the chance to get out of the house, the opportunity to use my baby-numbed brain a little.

Katie worked hard, she expected her employees to work hard, and I learned alot from her. I learned about Books In Print and publisher catalogs and how to “front” books on the shelf. As she insisted her employees count back change rather than depend on the calculator, even my math skills improved.

The best part, though, was the personal relationship with the customers. The regulars would come in week after week, and I got to know their preferences. We’d chat about our favorite authors or just about life in general. At Christmastime, people would come in to buy books for everyone in their family, and we’d wrap the selections in heavy, purple wrapping paper.

The store was small enough that I knew our inventory and could usually get a requested book into someone’s hand in less than a minute. If we didn’t carry the book, ordering was a simple process, and we would call the customer when their book arrived, most of the time within a week.

Katie advertised in the local paper every week, supporting the local economy. She donated books for school fundraisers, supporting local education. She gave many a teenager their first job. She hired teachers looking for part-time income to supplement their salaries.

Katie and her bookstore were an integral part of the Oxford Hills community, as independent bookstores are important to communities all across America. Dollars spent at a local business are much more likely to stay in the region. Studies have been done to show this. Read this study done in mid-coast Maine about the positive effects of local business on communities. Case Study.

Unfortunately, the survival of these small, literary havens is threatened every day by competition from the big-box and online book retailers like Walmart, Amazon, Borders, and Barnes and Noble. However, even the big chains admit that independents do a better job in some areas. Read this article about an independent bookstore in Illinois.

When a Walmart opens up shop down the road and offers steep discounts for the new release hardcover books, that cuts into one of the most profitable area of sales for independent sellers. You’ve probably seen the movie YOU’VE GOT MAIL, starring Meg Ryan as a children’s bookstore owner and Tom Hanks as a mega-book retailer whose newest store drives the little place out of business. That’s what happens to independents when Borders or Barnes and Noble rolls into town. Amazon.com offers the convenience of home shopping, and that, too, can eat into profits. It’s amazing to me that any of these independent bookstores have survived at all–but they have.

They have fought back with online shopping from their websites. They have fought back with a program called Booksense, which has now evolved into a program called IndieBound developed by the American Booksellers Association. One of the most exciting aspects of the program is the giftcard program which allows booksellers to accept each other’s giftcards. An IndieBound giftcard bought in Maine will be honored at a participating independent bookstore in Ohio.

Independents have also fought back by highlighting their uniqueness, their customer-service orientation, their ability to find new voices in literature that the big chains might miss. Because of these independents, smaller publishers and new authors get a chance to reach readers. Regional authors are often showcased at smaller stores. The booksellers at independents are often more knowledgeable than your average cashier at the big-box store.

We can help them survive by voting with our shopping dollars.

Katie sold her bookstore back around the year 2000, but Books n Things is still alive and well, now housed on Main Street in Norway. If you’re ever up that way, stop in and check out the selection. I’m sure the new owner will appreciate the interest and the business.

My town doesn’t have a bookstore. Neither does the town next door. Or the town next door to that. Even the city of Sanford lacks an independent bookstore. The town of Alfred has a nice antique bookstore, and Sanford does have a used bookstore run by a nonprofit organization, but for new books I’ve resorted to shopping at the Borders in South Portland and on Amazon. However, with the need for local-shopping pressing down on me, I’ve done a little research and discovered a locally-owned shop in Saco called Nonesuch Books. There is also a South Portland Nonesuch Books, so there really is no excuse anymore for shopping at Borders . . . or Amazon, as I can order the books online from Nonesuch or simply make a quick call to a helpful bookseller.

Which brings me back to yesterday. My daughter isn’t participating in my experiment, and she had this giftcard from a generous great-Aunt and Uncle. (Thanks Aunt Sandy and Uncle Niles!) I went into Borders with her, and that familiar smell of books and coffee hit my nostrils. I resolutely ignored the piles of discounted fiction calling to me and followed my daughter to the children’s section. Addiction takes many forms, and it just didn’t feel right to walk up to that checkout counter with no books in hand. They called to me as we wound our way from the back of the store where the smart spacial engineers stuck the children’s section knowing the parents would have to pass by tempting displays all the way to Harry Potter and back.

I’m happy to report that I resisted. Danielle spent the gift-card that was burning a hole in her pocketbook and happily read all the way home. Feeling slightly depressed, I promised myself a trip to Saco very soon, and dreamed of the day when some enterprising (and independently wealthy) soul opens a bookstore here in my hometown. In the meantime, I have library books and my bulging shelves to keep me satisfied.

For those of you who would like a little reading today, I’ve posted a short story on my Fiction Corner page. I can’t promise you it’s any good, but it is free!

Why local?

Dear Reader:

A few contemporary writer-philosophers have influenced my current obsession with local living, peak oil, sustainability, and the future of civilization (such lofty topics reduced down to homey essentials like eggs, raw milk, yarn, and wild pickerel!) One of these is writers is James Howard Kunstler who has written non-fiction books such as THE LONG EMERGENCY, a contemplation of what will happen as our oil-based economy begins to run out of juice, and a novel entitled WORLD MADE BY HAND–a futuristic fiction about an upstate New York town after civilization has come to a screeching halt.

Granted, Kunstler is on the fringe when it comes to predicting where our society is headed. He’s an alarmist of the first order. It’s my deepest wish that what he thinks will happen, and soon, will not. However, sometimes I find it instructive to take a long look at a “worst case scenario.” People like Kunstler predicted the recent economic collapse (though I think they saw the collapse coming from an energy-supply issue rather than a real estate debacle), and for that alone, they deserve a hearing. If you are interested, take a peek at Kunstler’s blog. 

Perhaps civilization won’t crash and burn to the extent Kunstler postulates, but we do need to consider how deeply dependent we are on that black liquid that bubbles up from ancient, underground beds. 

Oil. We live on it. Our food is grown with it. Commercial fertilizers are derived from oil products. Farm machinery is run on it. Our food and other necessities like clothing and shoes and blankets and housing materials are shipped to our communities on fleets of boats and eighteen-wheelers run on diesel fuel. Oil heats our homes. Everything from cookware to clothing to car parts are made of plastic which is an oil-derived product. We travel by plane, train, and automobile–all run on oil.

Up until this moment, we’ve managed to get more and more of the stuff out of the ground, which worked superbly for an economy based on the concept of continual growth. Though there is some debate about whether or not we have reached peak oil production, there is much evidence to suggest we are now on the downward slope. The following artlicle by Colin Campbell for ASPO International explains the theory quite concisely. “Understanding Peak Oil.”

As oil becomes harder and harder to harvest and refine, the cost will go up, the economy will react, and things will change . . . how much they will change is the big question. Perhaps we will find alternative sources of energy and will transition before too much chaos descends. Perhaps not.

I ask, why wait? We can begin to transition ourselves and our local communities now by producing more of our own necessities right in our backyards. Let’s build an infrastructure that will be local and flexible enough to withstand whatever happens in the larger world. Maybe there will be some new oil-field discoveries that will last us for the next hundred years. Great! Maybe we will figure out cold-fusion technology and never need to worry about energy again. Fabulous! Strenthening our communities is a valuable endeavor even in a BEST-case scenario. In a worst-case scenario, it could mean the difference between life and death.