Research Via Postcards

I was excited to purchase a hand-drawn tinted postcard last week that showed the YMCA Building in St. Johnsbury (Vermont) -- a building I've never seen, because it was destroyed by fire. When I first started paying attention to downtown fires, I thought the downtowns full of brick structures were safe. After all, you can't light a brick very well, can you?

But it turns out that brick buildings burn most often from the inside. After all, they are lined with wooden structures, which in turn are lined with wood and plaster walls. Many of the "stone" structures have the same susceptibility to fire. In the mystery I'm now writing, Cold Midnight, there's a cathedral-like church in town called Notre Dame des Victoires; in the 1900s, that was where the French-Canadian Catholics attended Mass ("Irish" and other "English-speaking" Catholics went to St. Aloysius). Notre Dame des Victoires was set on fire by an altarboy who placed a burning candle inside the wooden wall structure.

The color photo postcard here is taken at the top of Eastern Avenue, and I think the ornate architecture of the YMCA building shows over to the right; the building in the center of the card is the one where a lot of the action in Cold Midnight takes place -- on the roof!

This first black-and-white postcard is the Avenue House, which became the New Avenue House when rebuilt after a fire -- it was the closest hotel to the railroad depot. And now it's called Depot Square Apartments instead.

Last but not least, I was pleased to find today a postcard image of the Woman's Club home on Cherry Street. The St. Johnsbury Woman's Club was the group that invited "Mrs. General Custer" -- that is, Elizabeth (Libbie) Clift Bacon Custer -- to speak in town. A separate research project on the town's habit of inviting exciting speakers (1871-1901 in this case) can be found at http://stjathenaeum-hall.blogspot.com with many more photos from various sources.

Family Stories, Family Stones

I've just reached the first crisis point in the YA history/mystery that I'm writing, Cold Midnight; it's about ten pages earlier than I figure it would happen (I was aiming for page 100, but the characters pushed the plot to erupt at page 87). Well, that's how it goes. Considering that subsequent revisions are likely to add a page here and there, the final version is still likely to see that crisis come around page 100! Feeling the braiding of the families involved in the tale, with the suspense that the teens are handling, seems like a good framework for this crime-and-adventure novel.

With cooler, less humid weather and a great breeze, I wrapped up the writing session around 4:30 this afternoon and took off on a bike ride to a tiny family cemetery on a local farm. Last week the farming family told me I was welcome to visit "The Hill Cemetery." It's named for the family whose lives are marked on the stones in the neatly mowed enclosure. There are some other names as well -- including a Bugbee, a name still common around here. I expected some Civil War veterans -- but not this Revolutionary War soldier, Moses Wright, whose place is marked with honors in both old and new styles. Can't see myself writing a novel set in Vermont's 1770s (especially this far north), but it never hurts to let the images sink in and whisper for a while.

Tomorrow I've got two Big Chapters scheduled. A good night's sleep and a protein-packed breakfast are in the plans. But no encore bike ride just yet -- the chain snapped today. Repairs!

Looking for a Guest Speaker for This Fall?

I've just inked in evenings with two local Vermont historical societies in October and I am excited, knowing that these will lead to great discussions of the history behind The Darkness Under the Water. I still have plenty of dates open for community groups and schools. And since I can see the end of the second draft of Cold Midnight coming by the end of this summer, I'm going to be charged up and eager to hit the road -- not only to talk about the books, but also to learn some of your local history, too.

Teens in your life? Ask me about special programs for schools and youth groups, as well as book and reading clubs.

The Long Road of Research

The photo here is part of the remains of the Ely Copper Mine in central Vermont. I took the back roads home today from the Vermont History Expo, in order to find the site and catch a couple of photos. This adds to information that I already have from a scientific researcher for the site. Look hard and you may spot the remains of a laid dry-stone wall at the rear -- I think perhaps from a rail bed. I stayed on the road to snap the photos, as walking on the land is banned.

And it all is part of the long, slow accumulation of detail for a book that I'll probably start in 2012 -- working title "Crowd Control" but that's just for the file folder. I already know it involves a haunting, and the long consequences of injustice. Will it be for young adults, or older readers? I won't know until the characters start speaking to me.

But for the moment, I'd rather they only whisper. COLD MIDNIGHT and THE FIRE CURSE are occupying about all of the writing brain that I've got!

Just for the fun of it, here's a photo from the History Expo, where I met with readers and history buffs at noon. The Expo takes place every second year and is well worth attending! In the photo are members of the Vermont Civil War Hemlocks (Civil War re-enactors).

Summer in Vermont!

It's cool and rainy today (sweater weather for the evening!), but here's a photo taken on the deck yesterday morning, settling in to re-read Blood of the Wicked, a definitely dark crime novel from Brazilian author Leighton Gage. I also dipped into a Denise Mina (Glasgow) crime novel last night -- but fear not, this evening (if and when I finish writing and editing!), I'm planning to enjoy reviewing a new and very gentle Vermont novel by Laura Stevenson. Take a peek tomorrow morning if you like, at my mysteries (and sometimes poetry) review blog, kingdombks.blogspot.com.

More Stories That Matter: Local News

Here's a photo of the construction team headed to work on the rooftop skylight of the St. Johnsbury (Vermont) Athenaeum today (cell phone photo, so a bit fuzzy!). Problem: Skylight work means the Athenaeum's noted art gallery is closed for the season. Opportunity: Another part of the building, Athenaeum Hall, has a glorious history including visits from President Benjamin Harrison, Henry Stanley ("Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"), receptions for other speakers like "Mrs. General Custer," Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Horace Greeley -- this was a hotbed of discourse in the late 1800s! So a handful of us collaborated this spring in researching these "stories" and an exhibit will open in a week or so, lingering through summer and early fall, giving visitors to the Athenaeum a new set of adventures.

To see the work of creating this exhibit, check out our "workspace" at http://stjathenaeum-hall.blogspot.com.

I am so excited as I tell people about "Libbie" Custer and her powerful effect in redirecting history around her husband's disastrous battle; about how Stanley pandered to Victorian taste in his narratives (that are now strongly in doubt in several portions); about President Harrison's light-bulb moment that resulted in flags in public schools; about Lincoln's argument with Horace Greeley. If people can be seen as plants, our roots are in these stories, and our blossoms and fruit are shaped by them, whether for good or ill.

Chinatown, Boston: Today and 1921

How can I walk back through time to discover Boston's Chinatown in 1921?

One way is through the Chinese Historical Society of New England, which graciously allowed me to join a group tour earlier this month in order to hear about the district and how it has changed, along with the memories of CHSNE members and details from their studying and collecting. Thank you, Caroline, Nancy, and more.

Most important details learned in terms of 1921: no New Year's parade or festivities outside the home at that time, and VERY few women, due to the harsh conditions set by the (US) Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which by 1921 had widened into the Asian Exclusion Act.

History Sleuthing

When I'm working on an action novel or mystery set in another time period -- like THE LONG SHADOW, set in 1850 during the Underground Railroad in Vermont -- I'm in full detective mode. I carry a small pocket notebook, file cards, pens, camera, and sometimes even a magnifying glass. And I hit the road for almost as many hours as I'm at the desk.

Most critical in triggering THE LONG SHADOW was a visit to Rokeby, the best documented Underground Railroad station in Vermont. If you'd like to visit, the site is open in summer, or drop in at the website: http://www.rokeby.org/home.html. At Rokeby are photos, letters, furnishings ... all the reality of life lived fully, more than a hundred and fifty years ago. And Director Jane Williamson's research on what "really happened" in Vermont at that time -- I can say absolutely that this was key to the adventures and view of events that unfold in the novel.

Also important, as any story takes shape, are the details of clothing, food, roadways, forests, wildlife. The Vermont Fish and Wildlife team helped me pin down the presence of wolves in 1850; a friend at the Smithsonian Institution provided resources for the "how" of 19th-century dishwashing, which I needed to know about in order to get enough detail into some family scenes. And I used early photos and drawings of the village of North Danville, Vermont, found mostly in a graduate thesis by Gerald LaMothe.

It takes more than a village to research a book properly!

This week I'm excited about visiting Chinatown in Boston, for a tense scene in the novel now unfolding at my computer: COLD MIDNIGHT. I need to know what Chinatown looked like, felt like, smelled like, in 1921. I'll fill you in on some of the discoveries next week.

Summer Afternoon

Photo: Our strawberry bed, last week of May. In the middle, an apple tree -- produced by grafting, during a Ken Parr workshop at the Fairbanks Museum.

Mixed Motives: American Eugenics and Women's Campaigns

Discussions with Vermont librarians about the Vermont Eugenics Project -- the bitter historical reality underlying The Darkness Under the Water -- often come, with sorrow, to Vermont author Dorothy Canfield Fisher. Author of Understood Betsy and many other well-loved children's books, Fisher also wrote abundantly for adults. She campaigned for sensible future plans for her adopted home state (like many another "flatlander" turned Vermont taxpayer). In the early 1900s she saw the potential for tourism as a major revenue source for Vermont and urged a program of preparation, including tidying the landscape. Her thinking led her to approve of a Vermont peopled by camera-ready Yankee farmers, making do, polishing kitchens, and speaking in similar dialects. And her influence in the political and social world of her day contributed to the mood in which Vermont legislators finally passed a law that allowed invasive surgery of women who "shouldn't have more children." The point was, to clean up the people -- that's what eugenics means.

With hindsight, we can see what a terrible law this was. And we can see the errors in thinking that led to it. But at the time, many "good people" were clueless about the evil that it authorized.

Today's Boston Globe includes a review of the book America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation by Elaine Tyler May. Reviewer Kate Tuttle points to the book's discussion of Margaret Sanger. Sanger campaigned for teaching "sex education" and for making birth control available to women. She saw it as a way to free women from repeated unplanned pregnancies, with all the serious health effects and limits of life choices that came with those. But like Fisher, Sanger also saw birth control as something to be imposed on the poor, the uneducated, and in a wider vision, on people she saw as undesirable. Although she didn't have a direct role in what happened in Vermont, she worked hard to make sure eugenics laws were discussed and passed in many states. Thirty-one states eventually had some version of eugenics laws.

As I think about these women who worked so hard for social change -- and who also helped make possible laws that are now seen clearly as unjust, creating terror and pain -- I think also about the power of women and their capacity to keep trying. Clearly, we all need to listen to each other, and keep widening our own vision and understanding. Let's resolve to do our best to test our ideas not just among our friends, but out in the wide world of difference. The Internet makes this possible in ways that couldn't have been imagined a hundred years ago.

Photo: Margaret Sanger.

Poem from "Mud Season at the Castle" (by me when I was E. L. Dugger)

Initiation

Across the heat of June hayfields
the clouds rolled up all black and silver
flashing forth ancient tongues
and came the rain:
Gray slaps and sluices sweeping down hillsides
stealing vistas
pounding the earth into puddle holes
and whipping the rutted road.
It was the longest day of summer,
yet the green ridges shivered purple
and the birds hid.
Late afternoon the wind arose
tore off the sky's low sagging veil
and spread blue innocence
from hill to gleaming hill.
To the mountaintop I scrambled
drawing the charged and trembling air
into my secret places.
And the places where my wings might grow
rustled feathery soft inside me.