Combining Vermont, Love, Loss, and Literary -- It's Been a Big Poetry Month

My short haircut from Dec. 2017, when I didn't know whether breast cancer surgery and treatment might make it too hard to wash and brush my longer (and increasingly silvered) curls.

 

As a person with decades in recovery from alcohol abuse (it's a long time ago now, but I have no intention of picking up a "first drink" even though time has passed), I'm especially impressed with the online literary magazine Anti-Heroin Chic. It's an "anti-drug addiction safe space" where writers can express pain ... and of course, relief. So I'm touched and honored that the winter issue features two of my poems: "From Nails to Screws" reflects part of the journey I've made to set aside my Dad's well-meant but very dangerous instructions for life as a woman. And "In the Very Air" brings you first to Harvey's Lake in Barnet, Vermont, where I finished raising my sons, and then to my front porch "now" -- the place where I can see both the land's beauty and the tragedy of climate change. 

Here's the link to those two poems.

Another online magazine that's become a favorite of mine is Persimmon Tree, which offers space especially to older women writers. You can find my poem "Breast Cancer, 5 Years After," which is pretty fierce -- click here and scroll down quite a ways, browsing other intriguing work along the way.

The winter issue of Persimmon Tree also includes a "likes/dislikes" list of mine, in the fashion launched by Susan Sontag. Because there are a lot of those, they are being rotated day by day, so if you don't see my list when you first click here, take a look at some other time. Or, if you don't have time to visit twice ... here you go, without the attractive graphics of the magazine:

Things I like: hard rain on the roof, new snow, bonfires, fresh cinnamon, pillowcases, signed books, watercolors, chipmunks, Star Wars music, double rainbows, nickels, dark chocolate, globes, rowboats, comb honey, toast.
 
Things I dislike: an empty mailbox, stale mushrooms, herbicides, crumbs in bed, pigs, cheap cheesecake, splinters, garlic before breakfast, collapsed barns, diesel fumes, hammers, nylon petticoats, socks that slide down, malice.

 

**

 

This month also includes publication of "Crossing Over the Moose," as an honorable mention by Raw Earth Ink and therefore included in The 2023 Northwind Treasury, an anthology coming from Alaska. I'll post a photo when my copy arrives!

 

I've also settled into writing about one segment per week for my "story of my life" (aka memoir), on the platform Medium. You should be able to see a few of these chapters when you first visit; after a bit, Medium will ask you to subscribe to the platform. That will give you access to thousands of authors, and you'll recognize many of their names right away -- as well as getting acquainted with rising stars of the literary world.

 

Now I've got to get back to some holiday baking. May your browsing give you a break from your own stresses, and maybe some hope and pleasure as you go. 

 

If Everyone in America (and Specifically, Vermont) CAN Vote Now, Why Don't They?

Alice Stokes Paul (1885-1977), in 1917 -- and a view of today's meeting in Vermont.

In the year 2020, we'll mark 100 years since American women gained the right to vote. For some of us, exercising our vote came as a normal mark of adulthood -- and in Vermont, when we sign up to vote also pledge to do it responsibly, using the Freeman's Oath, which in 2002 became the Voter's Oath and gained inclusive language:

§ 42. Voter's qualifications and oaths
Every person of the full age of eighteen years who is a citizen of the United States, having resided in this State for the period established by the General Assembly and who is of a quiet and peaceable behavior, and will take the following oath or affirmation, shall be entitled to all the privileges of a voter of this state:
You solemnly swear (or affirm) that whenever you give your vote or suffrage, touching any matter that concerns the State of Vermont, you will do it so as in your conscience you shall judge will most conduce to the best good of the same, as established by the Constitution, without fear or favor of any person.

Is voting any different for women than for men? Percentages of voting women suggest there are real effects of gender ... hard to sort out. Even more than gender today, though, access to voting can be blocked or slowed by disability (I have a sibling whose lack of mobility makes it REALLY hard to get registered), low income (who'll watch the kids? what about loss of pay for that hour off to sign up, when every hour of income matters?), and details like skin color, accented English (even if the person is very educated), and obvious personal choices and beliefs can all interfere.

Today's Montpelier meeting of about 18 women (some in person, some phoning in) to collaborate on preparation for marking 2020 included conversation about most of those factors. It also admitted past detours, with resolve for better present and future actions. The interactions, energy, and respect in the conversation promised an effective mission, strong goals, and exciting events and processes ahead. I learned a lot about how active the League of Women Voters is in Vermont, too, with strong effects that can create change.

Consider this set of mission plus goals from 25 years earlier, in Vermont, to mark 75 years of women voting -- where I was surprised to see the economic focus:

I also learned about a Vermont organization called Change the Story -- came home wearing a pin provided via the Vermont Commission on Women, and checked out the website (http://changethestoryvt.org), discovering the group focuses on the economic status of women in Vermont. Makes sense to me ...

I can hardly wait to see what comes next!

An Update to Eleanor Perry Conwell's Provincetown Story

Research always makes up the background of the Vermont fiction that I write. A few years ago, I pulled out "consumption" statistics for this area in the early 1900s -- that was the final stage of tuberculosis (TB), in general. Last week, I found the death record for 4-great grandmother Eleanor Perry Conwell, whose "portrait" (by William Matthew Prior) goes to auction at Sotheby's this week. What a shock to see the cause listed as consumption. I hope the sale of her portrait will help her story of courage and New England initiative to live on.

 

[More on the portrait here.]

The "Wonder Woman" in My Heart

It's been a busy few months -- I resumed writing short stories, thanks to a crazy Saturday spent reading the stories I wrote in the 1980s that I'd forgotten all about. Still pushing daily for the "handles" of entry into the poems for a collection of "Pleas and Praise/Prays." And, of course, editing (my income-earning task). Hiking the ridgelines. And tending the gardens.

But above all, this season took me back into my newest novel, which Five Star/Cengage will release in April 2018: THE LONG SHADOW. Working with an insightful editor, I didn't just tidy up loose ends (fresh eyes help so much!). I looked into my heart to discover why I wrote this book, in which three teenage girls in 1850 confront Vermont's confusing mixture of attitudes toward abolition ... try to take care of each other ... and suffer the consequences.

As I wrapped up the responses to the editor, the film Wonder Woman arrived at the local theater. By that point, I needed to catch up on editing again, though, and with a sense of loss, I missed the chance to see the movie. (Hope I'll catch it in a few months when it's on a streaming service.) The reviews made it clear to me I'd missed a really good one -- one that asks questions about what it is to be both a woman and a hero. The questions I tackle in every book, story, and even poem that I write.

So when I saw a related list online, "7 Books to Read After Watching Wonder Woman," I figured I'd at least start tucking those books into my evening reading hours. My fabulous local librarian, Jen, tackled getting the books with enthusiasm and power, and I've just finished reading the one I chose for "first": AMERICAN WAR by Omar El Akkad (publisher's author website here; public radio interview, not so great but still interesting, here).

What a novel! Dystopian in the sense that The Hunger Games series is ... featuring a strong and relentless woman ... set in the American South, which I always realize is like another country, for this Yankee woman to visit ... and testing what people will do to each other in the name of politics and manipulation, as well as love.

Most important to me at the moment is also the detail that the woman of interest in AMERICAN WAR, Sarat Chestnut, is dark-skinned, tall, and with frizzy hair, and loved wholeheartedly by her not-identical twin sister, who is shorter, light-skinned, and has the smooth hair that I always envied in my own sister. (It's the little things, it's always the little things. My sister will read this -- her courage astounds and touches me. Meanwhile many Other Big Things sneak up on us, in fiction and in life.)

What will our nation be like after climate change forces the seas to rise above the coastal cities? How will religion-based terrorism ever resolve? Will our nation of 50+ interdependent states remain United? And what do we exchange, for the satisfaction of following through on our own longing to become Wonder Woman within the bounds of our very diverse lives?

AMERICAN WAR spoke insistently to me. I expect some of the echoes to penetrate what I write next: the sequel to THE LONG SHADOW (already underway), the prayer/praise collection, the long work on aging, the very personal novel I'm working on for an editor who trusts my ability to get there in the end. There are things worth crying about. And many, many people worth supporting, as we all struggle to make a good life, one that's honest and deep and caring.

Onward.

Authors Making Hard Choices: CODE NAME VERITY by Elizabeth Wein and More

Prize-winning World War II espionage from the point of view of a young woman working for the Allies and "accidentally" taken prisoner in France, CODE NAME VERITY (2012) is a "young adult" bestseller. It's also one of the most recommended mysteries for adults to read in this genre. I enjoyed it very much and appreciated Elizabeth Wein's care with the history as well as with the emotion veracity of the fiction. Research and writing work together to give a vivid and, I think, trustworthy image of the time.

By coincidence, the same month I got around to reading it, I also read Fannie Flagg's newest novel, The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion -- not in my usual genres, but the very local book group was reading it and invited me to share the process. To my delight, I found it overlapped the historical ground of Elizabeth Wein's book, just on the other side of the Atlantic.  If you're interested in how women slowly but surely moved into flying planes during that war, read both.

Best of all, for those of us wrestling on a daily basis with writing -- or evaluating -- mysteries that rely on other times and other cultures, here's a wonderful piece from Wein on "Authority and Authenticity." Her final line still gives me shivers: "Tell the world. For all the faults and flaws of my telling, I have no choice but to tell this story as best I can."