"The Incredible Depth of Green"

Transatlantic, by Colum McCann, is described as "masterful and profoundly moving," by Kirkus reviews. With skill that transcends life itself, McCann weaves together these threads:

Newfoundland: 1919

Two aviators, Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown set course for Ireland in a Vickers Vimy. Hoping that a transatlantic crossing would help to heal the wounds of the Great War, they fly into the cold and dark in a craft made with wood and linen.

Dublin 1845-46

Fredrick Douglas, visits Dublin while on an International Lecture Tour. He finds support for the Abolitionist cause among Irish Quakers. He sees poverty, starvation, filth and disease the likes of which shocks a former slave. He bears witness to the scourge of famine.

New York 1998

Senator George Mitchell departs for Belfast leaving a young wife and newborn son at home. The son of an Irish American father and a Lebanese mother, he is sent by the request of the President of the United States, to apply his capable hand to the tiller, and to steer the erratic, explosive and fragile peace process to a safe harbor.

How does Colum McCann whose considerable talents won him the National Book Award, for Let the Great World Spin, manage to connect these events? He employes the perspective of generations of women, all descendents of Lily Duggan, an Irish servant in the household hosting Frederick Douglas.

Transatlantic is a tale so beautifully written, it has an hypnotic quality. Here is one passage:

"The north below, is stunned with morning sunlight. Patches of bright yellow on the mud flats. The fields so wide and grassy. Lake and water meadow. A silver estuary and a huge lake. One small cloud, cast out by the herd, limps away to the west. The plane banks and the city of Belfast appears, always smaller than he expects it to be. The high cranes of the shipyards. The maze of the side streets. The soccer pitches. The flats. The fretful desolation. Then out over the fields again, the incredible depth of green. He has never quite seen the lans so bright before: a clear day through the morning clouds. He is used to its gray edges, its laneways, its high walls. They pull in over Lough Neagh. A vague sadness on touchdown, a tensing of the throat.

On the grass below, the shadow of the plane is squeezed down to its own size, then is gone. Welcome to Belfast Interntational. Contents in the overhead bin may have shifted during flight."   P.121

From an interview in NewStatesman, Colum says, "What could be worse than be called an historical novelist? It's the idea of becoming an alternative historian that really interests me: an historian of the smaller moments. It's a privileged position for the fiction writer, one that opens up a lot of pores- and sometimes wounds as well."

Ireland is a nation of story tellers, singers and poets. A scant few stand above all others: Colum McCann is one.

Family Sagas and the Stuff of Legend

 Gone With the Wind,
 Tara

Margaret Mitchell,

1900-1949

Tolstoy wrote: “All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Of all the countless words stemming from Tolstoy's prolific pen, this statement is one of his more famous and oft' quoted lines. 

When I think of this depiction of family life, my mind casts about. Did I come from a happy family? Am I creating a happy family? What constitutes an unhappy family?

When I read Tolstoy's statement the first time, I was still in high school. His words had the ring of truth. I knew some unhappy families, and the sad moniker was more evident in childhood. To this day, I can think of certain houses, walking in, catching my breath and feeling scared. Like a cloak protecting children, the fear was a filmy layer I sensed at once. When I think back to these unlucky homes, I recall the thick silence and an awareness of my beating heart. I felt pity for whomever it was who brought me into this house. There would be an air of tyranny. I would know of an issue too. We had somewhat of an understanding of every marriage in our old neighborhood. I do not know how. I recall that I listened to adult conversations by the hour; I found them fascinating. If I sat very still and remained quiet, I could hear more delicious details. When I heard the phrase, “little pitchers have big ears,” I would sit back on my heels, disappointed to know that I was about to be sent out of the room.

I became aware of family traits at an early age because we were always hearing about whom we took after. I knew the good and the bad from both sides of the family, and where those traits became evident. Life seemed to be a game of genetic ninepins. Good traits were pointed out, and failings all had something to do with ancestry. There was disagreement among the ranks. Nevertheless, with all of our faults combined, we were unabashedly happy. Imperfect, zany, optimistic, risk takers, competitive, generous and compulsive; we seemed to have a never-ending penchant for drama.

Writing a family saga involves events in the character's lives over time and generations. We get involved in political families, famous families, royal families, and powerful families, loving all that is familiar and unique. We root for them, get exasperated by them and generally want to see the family triumph over all adversity.  When setting out to write such a tale, a lofty ambition indeed, we must first decide if they are a patriarchal, or a matriarchal clan. Did they slip along the way, and climb back up again, or did they devolve into a great mess? Do hurts and stings have a lasting effect? Are they a family who can bounce back from adversity? Can they go from an unhappy family to a happy one? Is there an offshoot? Is there a villain, or a hero? Are they the stuff of legend? Will the third generation squander the efforts of the first? Will predators destroy them? There is no end to the possibilities of a great family saga. 

Pictured above is the desk where Margaret Mitchell wrote Gone with the Wind.

In no particular order, I have supplied a list of  family sagas I have read and loved:

Fall on Your Knees, by Ann-Marie MacDonald, 

http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Your-Knees-Oprahs-Book/dp/0743237188/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381351055&sr=1-1&keywords=fall+on+your+knees

Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott,

 http://www.amazon.com/Little-Bantam-Classics-Louisa-Alcott/dp/0553212753/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381351146&sr=1-1&keywords=little+women+by+louisa+may+alcott#reader_0553212753

Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell,

http://www.amazon.com/Gone-Wind-Anniversary-Margaret-Mitchell/dp/1451635621/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381351406&sr=1-1&keywords=gone+with+the+wind 

One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez,

http://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Solitude-Gabriel-Garcia-Marquez/dp/006112009X/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381351532&sr=1-1&keywords=one+hundred+years+of+solitude 

East of Eden, by John Steinbeck,

 http://www.amazon.com/East-Eden-Oprah-Book-Club/dp/0142000655/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381351609&sr=1-1&keywords=east+of+eden+by+john+steinbeck

House of Spirits, by Isabel Allende,

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=House%20of%20Spirits

The Godfather, by Mario Puzo,

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=The+Godfather&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3AThe+Godfather 

Roots: The Saga of an American Family, by Alex Haley,

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_5?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=roots&sprefix=Roots%2Cstripbooks%2C264&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Aroots 

"The Rough and Often Beautiful Mess"

In the heat of mid summer and through the days of the full moon, I have been absorbed in two events: one being the birth of the future King and the other reading, The Yonahlosse Riding Camp for Girls. Anton Disclafoni's first novel is a breathtaking story. Set amid orange groves in Florida and then at an old riding camp in the hills of North Carolina, this book does what we hope for in our summer reading; it transports us to another time and a well imagined place.

Having been a veteran of both boarding school and summer camp, I know the cloistered worlds where young woman were sent to build friendships, to gain skills, and hopefully, to stay out of trouble. As my camp had horses and a riding ring, I am very familiar with the obsessions that accompany equestrian pursuits. Disclafani, herself a skilled horsewoman who competed nationally, brings an ability to describe riding to a new level. The reader absorbs her fearlessness with admiration and awe. Never have I read a better description of an annual competition then in this debut novel.

Aside from it being a great read for horsey types, it captures something of the Depression, the thirties, the ruin that grabbed the most secure families, as if it had a hand on the back of their necks and pulled them down with tremendous force. Abandoned houses, quiet declines, suicide and peril are woven into this tale. As the Depression haunted the parents of my generation who were children during those frightening years, we are too quick to joke about all the carefully wrapped and preserved little bits of food in the freezer, the grandmothers who still collected rubber bands, the women who washed and saved the tin foil, even the ones who washed and dried plastic bags and hung them on the line; they kept up with these practices because they never lost their fear of the wolf at the door. In this book, the Depression is not depicted in dust bowls and bread lines, but rather stalking the genteel and ordered world of the privileged, where girls are suddenly yanked from their known realities and set out into an uncertain future. Family life seems similarly fragile, as if the precious and beautiful life in the orange groves left them vulnerable, only to be toppled by an unwelcome frost. The mothers were cocooned in their beautiful homes, with all rooms seen as exquisite and in perfect balance and order. Yet one event could destroy all and young women could heap shame on their families by one imprudent night.

 I remember that world; I remember my grandmothers with their dresses, and their silver tea services, their china, and their housekeepers, their luncheons and their stories, often involving one false move that led to ruin. You had to get a good husband at all costs; your house was, as Disclafani states, "both mother and father." Your daughters were kept at a curious distance; sexual awakening was feared and mistrusted. All of this is beautifully captured in this smart and terrific novel. What Disclafani manages to impart is that the camp girls were not delicate flowers- not girls who rode horses anyway. They were made of flesh and blood; they were familiar with the sound of their bones cracking, they took their cues from magnificent creatures whose noble blood they cherished. The barns were full of sweat and muck. They girls were expected to travel from the bold and the beautiful, from the rough and the wild, from the sheer abandon of a mad gallop, to the starched linen and polite conversation of the dinner table. Disclafani writes:

"I took pleasure in how good I was in the saddle, how well I knew my way around a horse. I was good at something in a way most people are never good at anything in their lives. Horses were a gift; how many people have such a constant in their life, separate from the rough and often beautiful mess that is their family?"

If you are heading to the beach or the cottage, if you are boarding a plane, or packing the camper, I would toss the Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls into your weekend, canvas bag. If you know a great horsewoman, or two, or three, give this to them with a five star recommendation.

Love the Idea

When writing about Anna Karenina recently, I remembered a passage from Sophia Tolstoy's diaries. I only had to type a few words into Google, and voila, there it was. I copied it into my blog post, but something else regarding his thoughts stayed with me. What lingered was this:

"Yesterday L.N went to his table, pointed at his notebook and said "Oh how I long to finish this novel (Anna Karenina) and start something new. My ideas are quite clear now. If a work is to be really good there must be one fundamental idea in that one loves. I love the idea of family; in War and Peace I loved the idea of the people because of the 1812 war; and now I see clearly that in my next book I shall love the idea of the Russian peoples powers of expansion."

His great novels had to do with being in love with an idea. Authors are commonly asked this question: How did you come up with the idea for your book? It speaks to the heart of the matter. We all have tons of ideas; we may even have notebooks full of concepts for novels. Once decided upon, our love for the idea must remain in the forefront of our minds for years.

When my father died, I did not want him to go. I didn't want to forget about him either. I wanted to cling to everything I could remember about him and keep it in my mind forever. It is this idea I am currently in love with, bringing my father back to life. Folly? Yes, no doubt. Can a person we loved appear as a character whom the reader can picture? Can I recreate a certain time in my life, 1961 to 1971, to be exact? Can my interpretation of the sixties rekindle memories for others? Can I bring readers into my story? As I have other family members I am missing now who have gone on to join my Dad, I am in love with remembering them too: I am in love with this idea of family, just as Tolstoy was when he wrote Anna Karenina.  Even though I am not in possession of his talent, not within a country mile of it in fact, I still persist. Why? The answer is simple:  love. I have a love for my Dad, for my Mom, for my sister and brother, who are all up in heaven now. I have a love for my old neighborhood, for my old home, for my grandparents and aunts and uncles. I have a love for my city and my country. There is no end to my love. Being in love with an idea, can fill up a lot of pages. The one fundamental idea of my story can be boiled down to the old adage that blood is thicker than water.

Where does it come from, this love? Does it spring from the same wellspring of our most universal emotion, or is it more academic than that?

If you write a novel and get on a talk show, someone will ask you how you came up with the idea for your story. You will have to think back to that first spark and be able to elaborate. If your face lights up and your speech becomes more animated, so much the better. Enthusiasm is infectious: people see it and want to have that same feeling. Readers want to be in love with ideas too. When I gaze at the picture above, knowing I was the baby stuffed into the snowsuit, I see us all as a fun loving, keen and zestful bunch with good times, too numerous to count, just around the corner. When this picture was taken the Queen was beginning her reign and we were part of suburban life, in the post-war years, in Toronto. The future looked bright and rosy back then. We were on the dawn of a new era, marked by hope. We all had our parts to play and we certainly played them.

 How does this story end? Stay tuned...

Love is All

If I were to pick one word from the vast lexicon we know as the English language, if I could choose one idea I hold in the greatest esteem, if the whole language were to be boiled down to the most powerful word I know, that word would be love.

In taking a look at the definition, the tradition and the boundaries of love, I found that all explanations are inadequate. I once pushed a moving car, a vehicle in which a man had his foot on the accelerator in reverse, yet I managed to shove it forward. Why? How? The man would have hit my three year old son whom he did not see. I told my children that I thought I knew all about love; I thought I knew the size, the scope and the borders of the territory, until I had them and discovered the maternal dimension.

From as far back as I can remember, I have believed in love. The hymn we used to sing at church as children, “Jesus loves me,” always carried a ring of truth. I knew of it in my home. I knew my Gramma loved me without question. I knew it from my dog as well. There was always a certainty.

As my dreamy childhood turned into the teen years, I poured over love comics and plotted and schemed as to how to stow away on a ship bound for Liverpool. I imagined that once I arrived on Paul McCartney's doorstep, he would take it from there. I had perhaps what can safely be described as the worst crush in the history of the world. My parent's feared for me. To this end, my mother sent me off to a girl's school, a strict establishment where I would wear a uniform, a tie, have order and discipline hammered into my head and be forbidden from wearing make-up. Veterans of Catholic schools know of what I speak, but this establishment had been drawn up on the English and Anglican model. Through my years there, marked by rebellion and me failing to distinguish myself, I found one beautiful form of escape. A movie theater near the school played Romeo and Juliet for years and years. When out of the clutches of my school, usually due to a forged note, and a ficticous dental appointment, I would hop the bus, buy a ticket, take a seat in the darkened theater. I would  live in Shakespeare's words and in Franco Zeffirelli's beautiful Verona.  If called upon, I daresay, I could recite whole passages from this masterpiece.

While I managed not to die for love, I had my ups and downs, until the fortuitous day when I walked into a ski lodge, in the town of Aspen, Colorado, and met my future husband. What an impossible and unlikely match it was too. I was from a different country, had a fledgling career in real estate, and yet I managed to throw it all away for a surfer from Southern California who had dropped out of college and was living as a ski bum at the time. He had virtually nothing to his name, and no immediate plans. Somehow we managed to find a way to be together and then marry. Thirty four years later, I still give thanks for my fate and for the day I walked into that lodge. Yes, I believe in love. For all the sorry, miserable failings of the human race, for all of our inhumanity to others, and all the suffering that exists in the world, we do have this one quality that we can point to with pride, as the very best part of us of all. It is love: resplendent, glorious, complete, immortal and ethereal love. What else do we really need?

Google has a great bordered statement regarding Valentine's Day, as it is the most oft' searched word. People ask this question: What day does it fall on? Lists of great films, great books, and great gift ideas are everywhere, but all pressure aside, what people seek is to love and be loved. While we drape ourselves in red, look for some way to celebrate the day, with chocolates and flowers, I, for one, bask in the simple words, "I love you." Happy Valentine's Day on the 14th.

Poetry 101

 Late last fall, I had a fun shopping experience. [To be noted: fun + shopping are never in my realm of existence.] But, this day in Asheville, NC, my son-in-law, three-year old grandson and I went to Bins of Treasure, a huge resale store of Goodwill Industries. It is a last stop before the recycle plant for items that have not sold in the regular Goodwill store. Sounds like it would be terrible? Not so. In the past my son-in-law picked up a well-used Barbie car, refurbished it with paint, decals and imagination for the brand new miniature Land Rover for his son, just like daddy’s car. He has found like new items and interesting cast offs like fishing waders, hundreds of Legos and camping equipment no one else wanted. Items are in waist high, five foot long, plastic bins on tables, mostly sorted by categories such as toys, clothing, books, outdoor equipment, etc. You pay by the pound, $.50/pound except for books which are bargain priced at $.75/pound. The items are clean, “interesting” and a definite bargain.

This day I found the book 100 Best-Loved Poems edited by Philip Smith, 1995 Dover Publications, Inc and previously owned by Sarah. Sarah seems to have been about 12 when she owned the book, not a good speller but an excellent student with a good English teacher. The book is underlined with her personal Cliff Notes written in the white spaces. What a treasure I had found!

Young Sarah had underlined all the alliterations and similes in poems they studied. She noted personifications and defined words or allusions to words she did not understand. Written were explanations that Dylan Thomas did not want his father to die when he wrote the last lines of "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night." "The Lamb" by William Blake reintroduced me to to personification. Sometimes I would read "i dont unerstand" and wonder if the teacher explained it to her. I also learned that "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman was about Abraham Lincoln; I don't think I ever knew that. This little gem of a book with 100 well chosen poems will never be recycled but it will remain with me, Sarah's fun, education comments and all. It is Poetry 101.

To quote Winston Churchill (he was talking about Russia), poetry to me is “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Enigma defined is a person or thing that is mysterious, puzzling or difficult to understand. In my world poetry = enigma. Thanks to Sarah, her teacher, some studying and a blog with no author’s name anywhere with a stamp date of 169 visitors to the site since June 28, 2009 (http://www.firesides.ca/poemtips.htm), I began a journey to better understand the lure of poetry. Re-reading Writing North Idaho’s frequent informed and eloquent guest blogger, Liz Mastin, after reading this book and blog, has given me a refined appreciation of poetry. I still do not have any extended ability to write poetry but I do understand it better.

From the poetry blog site here are some explanations that may help you on your road to discovering poetry too.

“In short, poetry is bones, prose is flesh. Prose is a smooth ride, with all of the threads tied up neatly in an adventure, with the reader often left in midair after the last and largest bump. Whereas prose fills in all of the cracks, poetry covers just enough potholes to make the road navigable and get the reader to a destination. Indeed, the bumps along the way are half the fun of poetry.” The author goes on to say that prose has subplots and red herrings while poetry contains only the necessary to delineate the theme.

_____ From the poetry blog one helpful view of the basic elements of poetry may be the five "S's":

Aspect	Also known as	Explanation
Sonics	Sound	Alliteration, assonance, consonance, etc.
Senses	Imagery	Concrete images, not abstractions.
Sense	Clarity	Precision, focus and theme.
The Succinct	Brevity	Economy of language.
The Sempervirent	Fresh	New, as opposed to clichéd.

       To 

To further our understanding of poetry on an elemental level, check out this informative power point teaching presentation.

Introduction to Reading and Understanding Poetry

www.mjsd.k12.wi.us/mhs/.../IntroductiontotheAspectsofPoetry.ppt

File Format: Microsoft Powerpoint - Quick View

This PowerPoint is designed to help you understand what makes poetry such a creative and wonderful form of self-expression.

“Poets must seek “complex” thoughts and feelings and compress such complexity into a single moment.” –Ezra Pound

Writing Strong Sentences

Stephen King says he works to make his writing better. True, he hasn’t as far to go to achieve near perfect status as some of the rest of us. All writers should strive to improve their craft. If your main character is in an ongoing series (Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum for instance or Lee Child’s Jack Reacher), the writing can become formulaic and uninteresting. Improving one’s writing skills at the pinnacle of publishing success keeps the characters fresh and the story interesting.

We know that to write, write, write is a formula for improving writing. It amazes me how imperfect my writing is when I go back and critique the first draft that was heretofore perfect in my mind. After having the article sit for a few days or weeks, it makes my errors jump with unnerving clarity to my eyes. It is like my red pencil has direction from an unseen force. Erase, delete, substitute, throw out, recalculate, reword, try again, all are measures I must take to improve my writing. Sometimes it looks like I wrote the first draft in red with a few black corrections instead of the other way around.

I stumbled on to an intriguing exercise that you may want to incorporate to make your sentences clearer and stronger.

1.                 Buy copies of the New York Times, Washington Post or L.A. Times or print out articles from any high-grade world newspaper or magazine.

2.               With two colored markers, use one color to underline the subjects of each sentence; the other color use to underline the main verbs.

3.              Assess those sentences. The stronger sentences should have the subjects and verbs toward the front of the sentence.

4.             The tense should be active not passive.

Expand your vocabulary. After all, words are the real tools of our trade. The wider your vocabulary, the better writer you can be. A “Word A Day” calendar is an author’s best friend. You learn a new word and because an explanation of origin is often included, the new word sticks in your mind. Keep track of your new words and try to use some of them in your writing in the next two weeks. Along with this, look up synonyms for words you use often. These synonyms offer freshness to your writing.

Remember your audience. Use words they will understand and relate to.

Exclude: “very,” “much,” “really,” “actually,” “already, “you can,” “try to,” “seems to,” “it appears,” “to be.” Use active, strong verbs.  NOT: It seems to be that the building is very tall.” INSTEAD: “The towering building …”

Learn to edit revise separately for content (information) and structure (mechanics, grammar).

Express only one idea per sentence. Simplify points for the reader.

Make sure the ideas or thoughts you are expressing are good ones. Nobody likes to read trash or waste time.

A standard rule is to limit one sentence to no more than 22 words or two lines of type.

Vary the length of your sentences. Long sentences are boring. Short sentences keep the reader interested and focused.

“That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time. “

Charles Caleb Colton

Straight A's Week

When I open my email each Monday morning and read a letter by Tim Cork, I am off to a great start.  A leader in business training, a noted author, and fantastic speaker, Tim is in the business of providing inspiration. His steadfast words of wisdom never fail to shore up my confidence and help me focus on my goals.

I chose to share this particular message as it arrived at a fortuitous time for me. As we turn the corner into fall, and the softness of summer brings us into close contact with a mounting  list of impending chores, coupled with a kind of primeval fear familiar to those of us who live in northern climes, I found myself in need of a good coach.  A positive attitude is a treasure and a quality I seek in friendship. In writing, it is easy to have days of profound discouragement where a major pep talk is desperately needed. After reading Tim's email, I thought about how my own enthusiasm for a project, or novel, years in the making, must tend to ebb and flow.

From Tim Cork:

“Enthusiasm glows, radiates, permeates and immediately captures everyone's interest.”
                                                                                                      – Paul J. Meyer 

You must believe in what you are selling, promoting, managing, or doing and transfer this belief to the buyer at work and at home. This is especially true when “the product” you are selling is you and the buyer is your spouse, child or friend. In fact, you are always selling yourself. Regardless of what your product or service is, people are really buying you. Through your enthusiasm, you can be effective. If you are feeling good about yourself and your product, you will be successful. However, showing excessive enthusiasm or false enthusiasm is a quick way to turn people off. Enthusiasm must be sincere. When it is, real energy will be released. Your motive will be apparent.

Genuine enthusiasm … it’s contagious

Enthusiasm is derived from the Greek word enthousiasmos, which means inspiration. People perceive it in a flash if you don’t mean what you say or your body language isn’t in harmony with your words. Most of us are open books. It’s easy for people to detect whether we really mean what we say. Anyone with genuine enthusiasm definitely inspires us. It’s the genuine that is contagious. Children’s enthusiasm is almost always genuine. They can turn it on immediately. They don’t have to be prompted or pretend. We adults tend to hesitate because we feel silly or it just doesn’t feel natural. We need to keep it in mind that we don’t get that second chance to create a great first impression.

The key ingredient

Enthusiasm is the key to all winning teams and successful businesses. Enthusiasm attracts us like a magnet. It creates motivation, helping us overcome fear, rejection, and failure. It is a big part of courage and burning desire, the fire in the gut that drives us. Enthusiasm is a big part of attitude and getting straight A’s in life. Without this crucial ingredient, you will never achieve the success you desire.

Make it A Straight A’s Week ! 


Tim Cork
President, Straight A’s Inc.

Last week I saw a little boy standing at the curb with a backpack in place, and cap on his head, looking anxiously up the street. When I asked him if he was headed to school and he nodded, I practically jumped up and down with excitement and told him how lucky he was. I know he was a bit puzzled; he said he was worried about the bus coming. I told him it would be here soon, and I was so happy to think of him getting on the bus and starting the whole adventure lying ahead. "I bet you'll be really good at school," I told him.

When dealing with children, my enthusiasm flows like a river. I will keep this in mind as I write. If I lose my way, there is always that Monday morning email to get me back in the game.

To learn more about Tim Cork and his work, click here: www.timcork.com

Yiddish? Hebrew? Oy vey!

We all know that the English language is changing at a faster pace due to the Internet. As more people around the world connect, we pick up words from other languages and soon they become an accepted part of whatever language we speak.

Spanish is most quickly assimilated language in the United States but Yiddish terms have been a part of American English for decades. Being an American English speaking Methodist, I was always confused about the difference between Yiddish and Hebrew.

Hebrew is an ancient Semitic language along with Arabic, Amharic and other sub-African groups. It is from ancient Canaan and spoken and written by various people regionally. It has its own alphabet with no written vowels. The reader supplies the vowels. It has strict rules and is slow to change. It died down but it has emerged especially since the formation of Israel in 1948 and the end of the Holocaust. What is used now, mainly by Jews, is Modern Hebrew and spoken and written in Israel with pockets in the United States.

Yiddish is a non-territorial, High Germanic language originating with Ashkenazi Jews in the 10^th century. It is spoken around the world but mainly by Jews in Germany and the United States. It uses a modified Hebrew alphabet with many more casual rules than Hebrew. Both Hebrew and Yiddish are considered official languages of Israel. Hebrew is the designated language for government, education, signs and official speak. More and more signs are being printed in Hebrew, Yiddish and English in Israel but use of Yiddish is dying down in other parts of the world as fewer people speak it.

“Hebrew is not Yiddish just because they use the same letter system. English, Spanish & French all share the same alphabet system yet no one would argue that these three languages are one and the same! The same is the case for Hebrew and Yiddish, they use the same alphabet system but they are two different languages." (http://amarthenazarene.com/uploads/lessons/Yiddish%20Or%20Hebrew.pdf)

Adaptations of terms from other languages present a problem for the well educated and writers, educated or not. As writers, we need to know how to use them correctly. Here are some Yiddish and Hebrew words and phrases often used or heard by English speaking people.

Aleichem shalom—to you be peace

Shalom (Hebrew), sholom (Yiddish) means completeness, peace, hello or good-bye. The meaning is based on the Jewish belief that we want the best health for people so we wish them that in greeting or closure.

L’chaim—To life!

Zel Gesund—To your health!

Drek—worthless material

Ess—Eat! Eat!

Goyisher maze—good luck

Glick—a piece of good luck

Mensch—decent person

Hamish—down to earth person

Mitzvah—blessing or congratulations

Bobbemyseh—old wives’ tale; nonsense

Kvetch—complain

Nebbish—inadequate or insignificant person

Fe! or Fey!—expression of disgust

Goy—used to mean “nation” in ancient times but now means gentile; can be used disparagingly or with respect

Ganif—thief

Nudnik—a persistent pest

Bupkes—worth nothing

Handle—to bargain

Kibitz—to offer unwanted advice, especially in a group or game situation

Yutz—a fool

Zaftig—pleasingly plump, buxom woman

Oy! or Oy vey!—exclamation of pain, grief or horror

Shemiel, Schmazel—idiot, jerk; one with consistent bad luck. The difference between a shlemiel and a shlimazl is described through the aphorism, "A shlemiel is somebody who often spills his soup; a shlimazl is the person the soup lands on."

Bubbe, bubbeh—grandmother

Chutpah—daring, audacity, both positive and negative connotations

P. S. Remember that our Can You Haiku? contest starts tomorrow, May 1! 

Food and Fiction

When faced with the enormous task of writing fiction, of describing an experience through the senses, food can be a terrific resource. The relationship between food and fiction has a rich and satisfying past.

Valentin Louis Georges Eugene Marcel Proust was born on July 10, 1871 and lived until November 18, 1922. Coming of age in the era of the Third Republic in France, he lived in southern Paris, in an age when the aristocracy was beginning its decline, in favor a rising middle class. While he had a prolific career, he was beset by grief following the death of his beloved mother. In Remembrance of Things Past, he described a momentous event involving a simple little delicacy. This is an excerpt from the famous passage:

The Cookie

“Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the theater and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, on my return home, my mother seeing that I was cold offered me some tea, a thing which I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, I changed my mind. She sent me one of those squat, plump little cakes called 'petites madelines,' which though they had been molded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised my lips to a spoonful of tea in which I had soaked a morsel of cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no sensation of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disastrous innocuous, its brevity illusory- this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had now ceased to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savors, could, not, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? How could I seize and apprehend it?”

Proust's thoughts on the experience continue on for another two pages. At the end, he speaks of the taste of a madeline dipped in tea, bringing him back in his mind's eye to the house in Combray, to the garden, to the village and to the county and with that memory, to the emotion of being exquisitely happy. The skill with which Proust describes that cookie has been talked and written about for almost one hundred years. It is unarguably the greatest passage about food in all of our vast library of literature.

Lest I give Proust all the credit I can name others whose talent lingered in my mind, and may have more than once sent me in the direction of the kitchen, or a restaurant with the hope of recreating the experience for myself. Ernest Hemingway used a very simple and direct method, in keeping with his personal style that would have me scurrying to recreate the same dish. In A Moveable Feast, he writes:

“Wine is the most civilized thing in the world. In Europe we thought of wine as something as healthy and normal as food and also a great giver of happiness and well being and delight. Drinking wine was not snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary.”

As a young woman I craved the cakes and feasts of the Maritime Provinces described in turn of the century Canada, where as Lucy Maude Montgomery stated, “if you have not set your table with three kinds of cake, you have not done your family proud.”

When I wrote My American Eden, I took on the challenge of discovering what the diet consisted of in seventeenth century New England. I learned that the sky turned black with the plethora of ptarmigan overhead, that streams seamed to boil with the plenitude of fish, and that shooting game was as easy as walking out the door with musket in hand. Flour, on the other hand being scarce and precious, could not be spared for two pie crusts. Only the bottom of the plate would be lined, excepted in the finest houses, where the 'upper crust' found a home.

In my memoir in progress, now called Four Stanley Cups and a Funeral, I sometimes find my mouth watering describing the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding of my youth. If I recall picking apples from the trees in our orchard, I suddenly feel the brisk wind; I can bring to mind my jeans and cowboy boots, and I can hear the sound of the crisp bite into the first, newly ripe, Northern Spy, grown in the hardscrabble soil of Caledon, Ontario. From there, the smell of the barn comes squarely back to me, and I hear the steadying breaths of the horses lined up in their stalls, with inquisitive and friendly heads poking out the top.

Cultures are defined by their various dishes. You only need to let the reader know what your protagonist had for lunch and they will know something of who they are. How they start their day, what they have for breakfast and how they feel about it, will set the stage. Is the main dish fried, boiled, or grilled? Do they cherish fresh fish, or never eat it? Do they have Oysters for lunch on Boxing Day? Is there a large table set outside, or under an arbor, or do they eat in a dining room with starched and spotless linen. Who serves the food? Who prepares it? Do they eat in restaurants, and if so what kind?

More from Proust:

"Undoubtedly what it is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, is trying to follow it into my conscious mind. But its struggles are too far off, too confused and chaotic; scarcely can I perceive the neutral glow into which the elusive whirling medley of stirred up colors is fused, and I cannot distinguish its form, cannot invite it, as the one possible interpreter to translate for me the evidence of its contemporary, its inseparable paramour, the taste, cannot ask it to inform me what special circumstance is in question, from what period in my past life."

Run, don't walk, to your nearest bakery. I should have included a word of warning at the beginning. Writing will make you very hungry, diets impossible, and cooking the ultimate distraction.

Links: http://www.amazon.com/Remembrance-Things-Past-Volumes-1-3/dp/0394712439/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333487019&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Moveable-Feast-The-Restored-Edition/dp/143918271X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333487110&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/My-American-Eden-Martyr-Freedom/dp/1572493488/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333487179&sr=1-1