East, West, Home's Best -- For Writing, Too

My favorite from this winter.

"Think globally, act locally." I liked the expression when I first heard it. Today, it means a lot more -- because I apply it to what I'm researching, learning, writing ... and to conversations with readers (that means YOU!).

I can see a lot of the past winter in the photos I've taken: Many of them show the deep blue skies that a Vermont winter offers (Gail Pison Montany says they come that way in Colorado, too), but there are also simple homey moments with, say, a dozen lovely eggs from my neighbor Marsha's hens.

Here at the computer, I've reached back to the 1920s in recording oral history with Mrs. Irene Dolgin Goldstein, out across the oceans learning about Syrian migration to Vermont around that same time period and earlier, and into universities, asking very knowledgeable professors for help with, say, geology or archaeology or the stories of place names. And then there was the very nice person in New Jersey who provided permission to use a photo (shown here: Martin Turner, of Barnet, VT, and Monroe, NH).

One novel starts ... right here.

Although a lot of my writing time this past season has been revision for the three novels I wrote on most recently, I found two new ones starting for me -- each one beginning very close to my own home, and including research that reaches Russia and Kansas, as well as Boston and Lyndonville (VT) and St. Johnsbury (VT).

Although most authors dream of reaching readers across the country, I'm enjoying especially being in touch with my "neighbors" -- that is, people who live within an hour's drive of the back road where I walk most mornings. It's an honor to have a historical article on Martin Turner and his "very modern" 1929 house in Vermont's Northland Journal (check out this regional treasure on Facebook), and a deep and lasting pleasure to share my poems in the Green Mountain Trading Post, the little northeastern Vermont paper that's meant so much to me for 37 years (yep, that long; anyone recall the writing of Georgeanne Poe, who moved to Maine? -- her work gave me the courage to write from my own life and window).

Now spring's around the corner, and I know I'll be on the road a bit more often, listen to more people in different places, extend research, look for publishers. But I'm a hometown gal at the end of the day, and here is where I want to be. Glad to be able to share it, with you.