Another day in paradise

Now I get it. As a kid, I never did. Except for snowstorms and sunny, bright days--depending on which, it meant a fun day of sledding or splashing at the beach--I never paid much mind to what was going on with the weather. I don't remember it affecting me. Never understood my grandparents and parents lament about the dreariness of winter and the sogginess of spring. Who cared what was going on outside?
   Now I do. Like most of my friends, the first thing I do each morning is check on what the weather is going to do. These long transitional days of early spring now grind on my nerves like tinfoil on mercury fillings. The overhang of low-lying clouds and lack of warmth is just plain unattractive. And though I know how lovely Mother Nature is when lush with green and speckled with color, right now, she is looking pretty haggard and worn out. And if I let it, she can mirror how I feel.
   But enough of that. It's just so ironic how one's perceptions change the older one gets. Seeing the sun, though taken for granted on so many summer days, would be a miracle. I guess I'll just snuggle up to my space heater, keep a watchful eye from my window and be comforted by the truth that the sun is there. It's just hiding.

PS If you would be so kind, please click on the Facebook badge and hit like. It helps that page grow and I will be posting upcoming speaking events on it for the summer and fall.

My new website is up and running

Yes, as of 5:00 p.m. we are live. Well, the website is now official, which you most likely know if you are reading this right now. Thanks for stopping by. Drop a comment if you like and let me know how you are. Even better become a fan and follow me. And click on Facebook badge and hit the like button if you want to find out about my upcoming events on Facebook.
  Not that I am technologically savvy, but I am trying. Thanks for stopping by.

Spring, the biggest tease of all

My father used to say, "A sunny day doesn't make a summer." To take that literally, might I add it doesn't make a spring either?
   Warmer temperatures these days don't fool me. It's around this time of year that I am reminded of a young man that used to rent our attic back in the days when my then-husband and I were newlyweds and in need of offsetting the mortgage. Living in a large house in a Ivy League college town with a teaching hospital, we found no shortage of nice, brainy grad and medical students who wanted a little space in a quiet, safe neighborhood to dump their belongings. One of these young men was from Florida.
   After suffering through his first New England winter, he was more than ready to chuck his parka, don some shorts and ride to school on his bicycle. It was mid-March when the first tease of Spring erupted in unseasonably warm balmy breezes. Against all of my warnings, confident that he knew best and I was off my nut, he aired out his room by throwing open the windows and did a massive Spring cleaning. He packed away his down comforter, warm boots and heavy coat and fleeces. Tossing on his riding shorts and helmet, he lit off to school with sunshine on his back, assured that Spring had arrived.
   I felt sorry for him two days later, when the temperatures plunged back into the 30s and snow fell on Easter. Pride wouldn't allow him to admit he was freezing. Allowing him that, I left a few extra blankets at the attic door.
   Moral of the story? Reread the opening sentence.

Laziness, not necessity, is the mother of invention

Contrary to the popular saying, I have found in most cases, it has been my own laziness that has prompted me to create some new way of doing something. This has evidenced itself in my kitchen, when lacking several ingredients for a recipe, I have improvised because I simply didn't want to make the effort to get in my car and drive the two miles to the grocery story. I have also noticed this tendency when I sew, often using blunt needles or off-colored thread to mend pants and socks, arguing to myself that no one sees the hemline of a pair of pants, anyway.
   Today, I discovered that my inherent laziness could very well revolutionize the way I iron my clothes. Granted, ironing is the one domestic chore I don't despise, but in order to do it right, I have to get out my board, haul out all the necessities, including the iron, starch, spray bottle, stain remover and then clear the space to set up shop.
   Noticing the dress pants I pulled out my closet had an annoying, off-center crease and a couple of obvious wrinkles thanks in part to my overstuffed closet which collapses all my clothes into a small cramped space, I sighed. I didn't want to have to go through my ironing ordeal just for a 30 second job. Walking into the bathroom, I spied my flattening iron, plugged in and ready to roll. I use it to flatten my bangs, dutifully following instructions from my hairdresser and striving to be hip
   "Hmm. I bet I could use this to re-crease my pant legs," I thought, patting myself on the back for being so clever. And guess what? It worked. A few prolonged moments pinched in between the hot prods of the hair flattening iron, and viola! The old crinkles were pressed sharp and crisp. A rare genius moment for me. And it has got me thinking of how I can use it to iron my husband dress shirts.

Time change woes

Why is it everyone gets so tired when we have to change the clock forward? I can vouch for myself--I feel like someone let the air out of me today. Maybe it is in part because of the letdown from yesterday's talk. Even with the low turnout, I feel it was a success. Sadly, not many folks turned out to hear about our beloved Emma Lazarus. The discussion we all had afterward dissected the reasons, all speculative, of course. The time change, the lack of interest in life of Emma Lazarus, the lack of interest in me, the weather and overcast skies--you name it, we discussed it. We human love to know why. Why our expectations have not been met.
   But I went into the talk with no expectations. Let me correct myself. I went in with only one expectation that I would do my best to convey to whomever wanted to hear, the importance of this woman to history--our collective American history as well as her impact as a female, a poet and a Jew.
   Her story is actually everyone's story. Her short life (she died at 38) was a continual discovery into her own identity--coming to terms with the sometimes disparate aspects of her personhood in a time yet to break free from the oppressive reins of Victorianism.
   Hopefully there will be another opportunity for me to talk about her. It's one way I can contribute to making sure her memory helps secure her a place in our current conversation.  
  

If you've got nothing to do Sunday

Come to my next speaking engagement at the Temple Anshe Hesed at 930 Liberty St. in Erie, Pa. While it's snowing outside, it will be warm with intellectual and inspirational exchanges inside. The talk starts at 10:30 a.m., but make note that this is the spring forward day of Daylight's Savings Time, so that will be 9:30 a.m. our time.
   I am speaking on the topic of Emma Lazarus, who is best known for writing the sonnet the accompanied the Statue of Liberty, entitled "The New Colossus." The words, "give me your tired your poor" have been indelibly linked with the spirit of freedom that the statue has come to stand for, especially with the waves of immigration it welcomed for over a century. But Emma Lazarus was much more than just that sonnet. She was an intellectual who was befriended by Ralph Waldo Emerson and other aesthetes of her time, being heralded as one of the foremost poets of her ear. She sadly has been lost to history like so many other prominent women of her time, and many do not even know who she is today. She was also Jewish, and had to balance her multiple identities as a woman, American, Jews and poet--something she would be straddled with her entire life and finally made some sense of before she died.
  Hope to see you there!

Here's to Dr. Seuss

If you have a chance to read this week's column, which will be posted on Thursday at goerie.com, please do so. I delve into my own admiration of Dr. Seuss and share some of the reasons why his works have become classics. It's enormously difficult to become successful in the world of children's books. Just ask any aspiring writer and illustrator. Writing for children, especially for beginning readers, is so much more than just picking a clever theme, inventing a cute character and stringing together monosyllabic words for a few pages. It's an art, a science, and an academic challenge and one pioneered to a large degree by Theodor Seuss Geisel.
   All of that aside, Geisel also wrote with his heart as well as his head. His beliefs about the world and humanity translated into much of the work that has been published and tops the list of beloved children's classics.
  It was his birthday last week, and in homage, Read Across America day was named for him. It doesn't get much better than that.

Music soothes the savage beast and feeds the muse

There is a running joke around here that if it weren't for my son's participation in something known as District Chorus and Regional Chorus, I would have have written nothing of any worth in the past 10 years.
   When tackling book projects, I am fond of listening to music as a backdrop to my writing. No music connoisseur I, the stuff usually comes from whatever I have hanging around that seems to fit the nature and theme of the topic. But thanks to my son, I have drawn from his vocal performances to keep me on task.
   A musical kid, my son participated in these vocal opportunities during his years in high school. And as an ever generous mother, I purchased not just the laminated photos of the full choruses, but the accompanying CDs from the concerts as well.
   This has been standard operating procedure for me since my son started performing in public arenas with  the regional youth orchestra at the tender age of 10. But the one difference between me and perhaps other parents who paid their obligatory financial homage to the orchestra, I listened to the CDs. And when he transitioned into singing and the above state competitions, I became faithful to those musical tracks as well.
   But what sealed the deal was downloading those CDs into my computer's music library, which makes it easy to listen to the music by just clicking on an icon. My last two novels were written completely to the sounds created by these now-defunct, one-time choruses.
   If these kids only knew how they inspired me, well, I doubt they would believe it. I have become so familiar with these tracks because according to my music library, I have listened to some of them hundreds of times. I can pick out specific voices, including my son's.
   And at least just for a little while, I am transported back to another time, sitting in the audience before a stage of robed young choral singers who look and sound like angels.

The antithesis of writer's block

As all professional writers can attest, some projects, articles, essays, books, do write themselves. And those are wonderful, wonderful moments. It's as if everything just falls into place and the words flow from fingertip to keyboard without the normal frustration, self editing and nagging self judgement. I love it when this happens. It is the antithesis of writer's block.
  I have been experimenting with intention-setting. You know, setting a goal in my mind and then just leaving it alone to unfold. Now, when I come to a difficult story or article, column or other piece of work that needs to be done and I can't seem to get it to flow, I am now stating to myself and the universe, 'this will write itself." I did that this morning because a particular article with a looming deadline doesn't enthuse me. I have been hitting dead ends for sources and I just dislike the whole assignment. I have been doing this long enough to know that likes and dislikes don't have a place in my working world, so I have enough discipline to put that aside, and like a lawyer defending a scallywag, will devote myself and my skills to doing my best.
   Once I told my husband that I had determined this story would write itself, the dam broke and the flood of help met me. Two informative sources literally fell out of the sky, and helped shape this heretofore shapeless mess of a story. I hope against hope that I have discovered a new way of tackling this kind of writer's block.

White Winter Hymnal

One of the many perks of having kids is that you are forced to stay hip with not just pop culture but with music. And if your kid is anything like mine, it means lots and lots of music, since he is a musician. It's a perk because it appeals to my sense of wanting to stay connected to the generation that comes behind me and will ultimately shape the world I will live in. There is a group called Fleet Foxes, which even if you haven't listened to much since 1980, like me, you will no doubt enjoy them. The lyrics to my favorite song, White Winter Hymnal, are a bit cryptic, but the music and harmonies are uplifting. Thanks to youtube you can access it and feel inspired. This song reminds me of the happy memories from the last summer of my son's time living here at home, when he and his girlfriend were fixtures in our lives and there was so much laughter. It makes me smile just remembering them. Here's to memories.