Adventures without Sarah Palin

Just thought you'd be interested in my near-brush with celebrity. It wasn't terribly near, but we did happen to be in Richland, Washington, for Thanksgiving, and our visit coincided with Sarah Palin's. There was Sarah Palin in the local paper, having pushed a stroller through the town's Turkey Trot (where some man got a good hug off her--I guess unsuccessful Vice-Presidential candidates do not get Secret Service agents to jujitsu any unwelcome admirers or would-be assassins). There was the much-anticipated book-signing appearance at Hastings (was this why the Richland Bookworm gently rejected my offer to hold a book-signing this weekend?). There was the neighboring restaurant's reader board invitation: "Sarah Palin come on in for a free lunch."

For all that, I didn't catch a glimpse of her. But who we did glimpse this weekend will ever be, for Dudleys, far more exciting. My husband's great-aunt wrote a memoir and sent it to family members for Christmas, capturing in it my husband's grandmother. They really don't make 'em like they used to. This amazing woman raised six children during the Depression with little help and much harm from her no-account husband who eventually disappeared. The family survived, despite poverty, isolation, squalor, abuse.

On this trip we visited a site on the Tucannon River outside Dayton, Washington, where the family lived for several years--no plumbing, no electricity, no running water. We saw the tree which had sheltered a nest of baby birds long ago. The children spotted a snake winding its way up the trunk to attack and frantically called their mother to the rescue because, as daughter Donna remembers, "Mom always saved the day." She did not fail them this time. Sprinting over, hoe in hand, their mother hacked the snake to pieces. The birds were safe.

In contrast, we coddled suburbanites were not coming off so impressively.

Lucy: What are those big piles of black stuff?

Me:    Horse poop.

Lucy:  [pause] I don't want a horse anymore.

(Grandpa points at tree and tells snake/bird story. Also one about a scary flood and one about setting the field behind the outhouse on fire.)

Lucy:  Do ponies poop that much too?

Me:    Yes.

Lucy:  I don't want a pony either.

I had dreams of fictionalizing the Dudley travails at some point. I even started the thing. Look at Jeannette Walls with her THE GLASS CASTLE and HALF-BROKE HORSES. I think mine might come out more JOY-LUCK CLUB--tough older generation and weak younger generation. One day, one day.

Ten Reasons to Be Thankful

According to Robert A. Emmons' THANKS!: HOW THE NEW SCIENCE OF GRATITUDE CAN MAKE YOU HAPPIER, grateful people show measurably more contentment than whiners. Well, duh, you may think, but, like most obvious good advice, it's not something that shapes my life. Witness how I have not done an aerobic workout in about eighteen months now.

So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving I've come up with the following list:

1. Family
2. Friends
3. Health
4. Food
5. Clothing
6. Shelter

Sheesh! Once you list the "freebies," there are really only four more to come up with. Piece of cake.

7. "Sheesh" is on the list of allowed words for writing a Steeple Hill Christian romance.

8. (Gratitude backstory: per helpful advice to budding authors, I'm trying out Twitter, mostly to follow other people parasitically and find blog fodder for UrbanFarmJunkie. Ungrateful sidebar: why is it that the agent who has been sitting on my full manuscript for over two months finds time to tweet all day long???) You can follow A.J. Jacobs on Twitter! He's the hilarious author of my much beloved THE KNOW-IT-ALL and THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY. One day I will work up the nerve to comment.

9. I've been given an honorary degree from Harvard! (It counts if it's from a 7th grader, right? The thank-you note read, "I never knew you had written a book or taught at Harvard University." Neither did I! How wonderful.)

10. I'm back in the financial hole with MOURNING BECOMES CASSANDRA. This is a good problem to have because it means someone out there is reading...

That was so easy that I should add some bonus gratitude:

11. Party City sells TWILIGHT napkins. The perfect gag gift for only $3. And I do mean gag.

12. Eddie Izzard's best stand-up routine DRESSED TO KILL is now available on Netflix Instant Play. If you don't work for Steeple Hill and can stand some f-bombs, he is hilarious. Which is my favorite bit? Mass Murderers? How Engelbert Humperdinck picked his stage name? The Heimlich Maneuver?

There. Now don't I feel better? Happy Thanksgiving to all. Have fun lolling around on the couch, trying to snooze off all that tryptophan.

Here is the Steeple

Yesterday I was looking over my 3rd grade son's homework, and there was the time-honored assignment: use the following vocabulary words in a sentence. For "countries," my boy had really turned on the creative juices and come up with "I love countries."

"That's ridiculous," I said. "You can't even tell what the word means from context."

I would love to see what sentences he could come up with for the following list of Banned Vocabulary in Harlequin's Steeple Hill Christian romance line (which I paste from a Ted Dekker post forwarded to me):

***********

Love Inspired Guidelines

Terms that cannot be used in a Steeple Hill novel:

Arousal
Bastard
Bet/betting
Bishop
Bra
Breast (except for breast cancer if necessary)
Buttocks or butt (alternatively, you can say derriere or backside)
Crap
Damn (try "blast" instead)
Darn
Dern/durn
Devil (except in the religious sense, but the circumstances would be rare)
Dang or Dagnabbit
Doody
Father (when used to describe a religious official)
Fiend
For heaven's sake (can use "for goodness' sake" instead)
For the love of Mike
For Pete's sake
Gee
Geez/jeez (but "sheesh" is acceptable)
Gosh
Golly
Halloween
Harlot
Heat (when used to describe kisses)
Heck
Hell (except in the religious sense, but this would be rare)
Holy cow
Hot/hottie
Hunk
Need/hunger (when used to describe non-food-focused state of being)
Pee
Poop
Panties
Passion
Priest
Sexy
Sex
Sexual attraction
Tempting (as applied to the opposite sex)
St. [name of saint]
Swear, as in "I swear..." - Christian characters are not supposed to swear.
Undergarments - of any kind
Whore

The following are allowed only in the context mentioned:

Angel - only when used in a Biblical context
Miracle - only when used in a Biblical context
Oh my God/Oh, God - ONLY allowed when it's clearly part of a prayer
Heavenly - only when used in a Biblical context
Although you can say “He cursed” or mention cursing, do not overuse. Furthermore, only non-Christian characters can curse.
Situations to be avoided:
Kissing below the neck
Visible signs or discussions of arousal or sexual attraction or being out of control
Double entendre
Nudity - people changing clothes "on screen" or any character clad only in a towel
Hero and heroine sleeping in the same house without a third party, even if they're not sleeping together or in the same room

Also, Christian characters should not smoke, drink, gamble, play cards or dance (except in historical novels they may dance but please limit to square dances and balls, no “sexy” dancing like waltzing cheek to cheek), and terms associated with these activities should only be used in connection with bad guys or disapproving of them or such.

Bodily functions, like going to the bathroom, should be mentioned as little as possible and some euphemism may be necessary but we don't want to sound quaint or absurd.

***************
It's just too tempting, isn't it? If any of you would like to forward me one-page screenplays, based entirely on the vocab list, I would not be averse to reading them. They're like automatic plot generators!

(Slade enters the square dance hall, needing very badly to pee. Then his attention is arrested by Sloe Blossom as she allemandes right, her harlot breasts nearly popping from her undergarments.)

Slade: Howdy Doody! That is some hot looking mama! I bet even the priests and bishops have a tough time keeping their minds on heavenly matters when that little angel promenades by.

(Sloe catches sight of Slade.)

Sloe: (to her sq. dance partner) For the love of Mike--I swear, if you don't tell me the name of that fiend staring at me in the doorway I'll abandon this life of virtue and return to my career dealing cards in Vegas.

Pardner: Durn, if that bastard isn't Slade Boulder. I ain't seen him since last Halloween when I was in line behind him for the outhouse 'cause I needed to poop. That devil left superglue on the seat, and my butt was stuck to it from here to eternity. It was a miracle Father Fran happened by and heard me hollering. Heck if I didn't swear to Saint Nicholas that if I ever saw that trickster again I'd rip the same size hunk outta him.

etc. etc.

Forget NaNoWriMo--let's see your Steeple Hill entries!

Cake or Death?

For those of you who can stand a few f-words mixed in with your stand-up comedy (and by "a few" I mean QUITE a few), check out Eddie Izzard's DRESSED TO KILL. Parts of it are cannibalized for YouTube, but it's worth watching in its entirety. But if you haven't got as much time to laugh, he does do one segment on the Church of England with the tagline "Cake or Death?"

I was reminded of this favorite routine of mine because I'm slogging through THOSE WHO SAVE US by Jenna Blum, which might be aptly subtitled LOTS OF NAZI SEX or even CAKE OR DEATH? Because the mother character Anna literally works in a bakery and becomes the local Oberstuermfuehrer's mistress in order to survive WWII. Flashbacks to Anna's endlessly symbolic, endlessly demeaning sex life alternate with her earnest daughter's present-day life as a German History prof in Minnesota specializing in--wait for it--German women who collaborated with the Third Reich to survive! Everyone stumbles around choking on their secret shame, and so on.

Call me practical. Or practically free of morals. But I forgave mom by about chapter four, if not page four, so this is reminding me of Anthony Trollope's CAN YOU FORGIVE HER? In which I found, I could, in fact, forgive her, so I got very tired of everyone else not forgiving her. A girl's gotta live!

Maybe the contrast is too sharp because the other book I'm reading is Edith Wharton's THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY. Now her heroine, dear Undine Spragg, doesn't have a moral fiber in her. She rampages through New York society, leaving heartbreak and decimation in her wake, without a backward glance or twinge of guilt. Years of sleeping with the Oberstuermfuehrer might not even have warranted a journal entry with the amazing Undine. Ms. Wharton must have known all about Freud because other characters in the book call Undine "Undie" at times, and whenever I type the title, I always accidentally come out with THE CUSTOMER OF THE COUNTRY.

Both protagonists prefer cake to death, and I'm just fine with that. I just wish Anna would hold off on the second helpings of guilt.

Three Movie Reviews for Literary Night

Forgive the frequent blogging this week, but with Literary Night coming up I have things on the brain. Scott and I brainstormed on potential Coming of Age movie clips, and yesterday the job fell to me to choose the movie excerpts themselves. Ironically, the two movies I was watching were not child-appropriate, so off my kids went to play Twister at the neighbors' during SAINT RALPH and to read in the other room during TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.

Firstly, SAINT RALPH is a wonderful, wonderful movie, even when I had to watch certain scenes over and over and skim to the ending. The story of a 14-year-old fatherless boy whose mother is in the hospital, Ralph gets the nutty idea that, if he can win the Boston Marathon (he's never run before), it will be the miracle that gets his mother to come out of her coma. In his way are the head priest of his Catholic school and his own misadventures on and off the track. Set in the '50s, you wouldn't think it would garner a PG-13 rating, but Ralph is, after all, fourteen, and he's plagued by problems that plague adolescent boys (you figure it out).

MOCKINGBIRD needs no introduction or review here. Gregory Peck as Atticus is so very admirable that you wonder why no single lady in his Alabama town swooped in to snatch him up after his wife died, kids or no kids. I did wonder how many takes they had to do of Scout rolling in the tire because, had I been her, I would have thrown up.

And finally, you'll see no JANE EYRE on Friday night because we couldn't find the version I wanted on short notice. All we came up with was the Franco Zeffirelli one with William Hurt and Charlotte Gainsbourg. What needs to be said, to capture its awfulness, besides a blond Rochester??? A Jane with a French accent????? As if that weren't insult enough, they cut out half the story (mostly to do with Jane's time with the Rivers'), so that her separation from Rochester lasts about ten minutes. It reminded me of the time in LAST OF THE MOHICANS where Daniel Day-Lewis says dramatically to Madeline Stowe, "Wherever you go, I will follow!" only to have him run up one hill through some brush before they're back together. In our family under those circumstances, Scott would be more likely to say, "Be back in five."

No, skip this JANE EYRE unless you're dying to see Fiona Shaw (Mrs. Dursley in HARRY POTTER) or that fellow who played Mr. Elliot in PERSUASION. Instead, see if you can get your hands on the Toby Stephens BBC version. Much more faithful to the book, and at least his Rochester has brownish hair. Probably the Rochester who looked most like the book description was George C. Scott, but--let's be honest--no one wanted George C. Scott as a love interest, not even his Jane, Susannah York.

What Color Is Your Toothbrush?

Once a year my husband visits the youth group at our church for a Meet-the-Pastor Q&A session, and this year he got asked, "Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot he couldn't eat it?" (If you wonder about the answer, you may want to sit in on this session next year.)

Not to be outdone, I was invited  to visit 7th and 8th graders at Eastside Christian School in Bellevue, to talk about writing and publishing and Being an Author, and these students had also prepared questions ahead of time. Some I was ready for, having done adult book events: What inspired you to write the story? How long did it take you? Was it hard to get published? Did you revise and edit?

But some caught me off guard, though not to the Jesus-burrito extent. Consider: What was your favorite book as a child? Do you have a pet? What was your favorite pet? What is your favorite Halloween candy? What color is your toothbrush? And then, at last, to stump me--Do you like pie?

I so like pie.

The teacher also invited me to read a passage, "age appropriate, of course." Easier said than done! I spent the morning stressing over this and flipping through the entire book only to realize that there was not one age-appropriate paragraph in the entire thing. However, it turned out a good 1/3 of the class had read the TWILIGHT series, so maybe I was getting anxious about nothing. What's a cuss word here and there, compared to sneaking your vampire boyfriend into your bedroom every night and begging him to bite you?

In any case, I ended up excerpting Chapter 2, In Which the Heroine Goes to Church. And the classes paid me the highest compliment--no one fell asleep.

Literary Night 2009

This is your heads-up if you live in Western Washington and you're looking for a wild party activity this Friday night. Scott and I will be hosting our church's 7th Annual Literary Night at 7:00p.m. And, heads up to the heads-up--if you need childcare, you have to reserve by Tues 11/9.

Our theme this year is Coming of Age, and we're focusing on THE ODYSSEY, GREAT EXPECTATIONS, HUCKLEBERRY FINN, and JANE EYRE. Mostly 19th century, but we can't talk about HARRY POTTER every year, for Pete's sake. There might also be a film clip or two. If you've never come before, Scott and I do some reading, some talking, some Q&A.

Beware, you will be hit up for a freewill donation to support the church library because our copies of LEFT BEHIND are wearing out--har har.

Dumb Dumb Da Dumb

The title makes more sense if I tell you I was just catching up on some of literary agent Nathan Bransford's posts, and he had a completely random link to a Darth Vadar video that made me laugh laugh laugh. Even harder the second time I saw it.

But I also happen to be reading a book that makes me feel dumb. Dumb in a different way than the book that made me wish I had a glossary handy. This particular book, Leonard Mlodinow's THE DRUNKARD'S WALK: HOW RANDOMNESS RULES OUR LIVES concerns chance and probability theory, applying it to all sorts of things like World Series odds and roulette wheels and tax return cheating. And I'm loving the book, but I'm not sure I'm getting it. It's not, for instance, the kind of book you can read while you tear your hair out watching the Phillies take on the Yankees, which is what I was doing. In fact, Mlodinow, before he gets into a lengthy explanation about why Marilyn vos Savant got it right in the '90s and thousands of mathematicians got it wrong on a probability question, specifically counsels that you NOT try to read the book while watching TV, lest you not get it. I ignored him (as well as ignoring John Medina's claim in BRAIN RULES that we actually can't multi-task), and was subsequently mystified. But even when I pay strict attention I'm not sure I'm following. I keep going, however, because it's full of delicious factoids that I would share with you if only I understood.

In lieu of a factoid, I offer this pointless anecdote, under If Only They Had Kindles in the 16th Century:
Gerolamo Cardano, who first studied dice games in the 16th century shares this fond memory of his father: "from time to time as we walked the streets my father would command me to stop while he opened a book and, using my head as a table, read some long passage, prodding me the while with his foot to keep still if I wearied of the great weight" (p.48).

Maybe this explains why Cardano got a few things wrong in his Books on Games of Chance. I should ask my mother if she ever used me as a reading stand for the encyclopedia or OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY.

10,000 Hours, Here I Come

Just finished Malcolm Gladwell's OUTLIERS: THE STORY OF SUCCESS--I know, I know, I might be the last person on the planet to do so, but I tend to be an outlier when it comes to readings books on the front curve of the bestselling wave.

Every book should be boiled down to a couple points which may or may not accurately reflect what the author intended. For OUTLIERS, I gleaned the following:
1) It takes 10,000 hours of devoted work at something to become great at it. Looking back over my life, I now recognize why I am unequalled at (a) eating; (b) daydreaming; and, (c) thinking about myself. Just try and take me on in any of those categories--I dare you.

2) My occasional lapses in math wizardry can be traced to my lifelong preference for noodles over rice.

3) The reason the FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS, Season Two, episode featuring the Prime Minister of New Zealand is so hilarious is because New Zealand is a culture with a low Power Distance Index.

And finally, I wish there were two of me (see point 1). It would be fun to have someone with whom to discuss such a great book. As it is, I send this off into the blogosphere...read this book! Send me a comment when you do! Don't you wonder why Malcolm Gladwell looks so ethnically unplaceable? He explains in this book!