Intersecting Traditions

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My office has a Christmas or holiday luncheon in early December each year. Besides current employees, we invite retired employees and their families to attend. We eat a meal together, catch up on each other’s lives, joke, and generally have a good time.

For years we put together a pot-luck dinner at the office – cleaning, moving tables, and decorating for days. Eventually as all of us got older, the work involved outweighed the fun. We started going to restaurants for our luncheon. There are not that many to choose from in the area where our field office is located, and none that made the occasion special. We briefly went back to the pot-luck dinner.

One day we discovered, by word-of-mouth, an Amish family who prepared meals for groups. You have to make a reservation several weeks in advance and you have to have a large party. We tried it and enjoyed it so much we’ve done it every year since. Our catered meal at an Amish farm has become a tradition that everyone looks forward to.

For $13 per person, we are served “family-style” roast beef, ham, hot rolls, Tapioca pudding, home canned green beans, corn, mashed potatoes, gravy, slaw, iced tea, coffee, and two kinds of pie. It’s all you can eat and the best food I’ve ever tasted.

We eat in a simple one room building lighted by gas lamps. Hand-made quilts, jams, and food stuffs are displayed for purchase on tables near the open kitchen area. Long tables line the rest of the room. The food is prepared and served by reserved women wearing white muslin bonnets and long aprons. They welcome us with cheerful expressions and a calm manner seldom if ever found in traditional restaurants.

Each year I wonder what our hosts think of our loud, boisterous group comprised of people of many faiths. I wonder if they resent our presence; if they resent the need to feed outsiders in order to supplement their income. They’ve never indicated by word or deed that they are anything but happy to host our luncheon each year. But still, I wonder and feel a little awkward even after all these years.

Today, we’ve chosen a date for this year’s luncheon – December 2. My office manager will call a business where the Amish family receives messages (they don’t have a telephone at their home) and leave a message. In a few days we’ll get a call back, confirming the date and we’ll continue our tradition.

Maybe in some small way our tradition supports our hosts’ tradition.

Evelyn David

The Halloween Post-Mortem

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Today, out of respect to the loser and his constituents, I will assiduously avoid the topic of the election and to stick to something we can all agree on (I hope): Halloween.

We wave goodbye to another Halloween, although if you are like me, you’ve still got pounds and pounds of crappy drugstore chocolate in your houses. (Though I would wrestle you to the death for an Almond Joy.) We had a very successful Halloween around these parts: child #1 dressed as Charlie Brown and went trick or treating with a group of similarly-attired Peanuts characters; child #2 had the “best day ever” because his friend, B., despite being close to four years older than child #2, still trick or treats with him because as his mother says “it’s all about the candy for B.” At nearly 13, he doesn’t care about looking cool, or traveling with a pack of boys armed with shaving cream and silly string, or just being an all-around carouser. He wants to go house to house, charming the pants off of whomever is answering the door, and getting his fair share (or more) of candy. B. and my son know every house that gives out a full-sized candy bar, who gives out the bags of pretzels, and who will provide juice boxes to thirsty trick or treaters. They’ve got it down to a science.

If you’ve been a regular reader of this blog, or if you know me personally, you’ll know that I’m a little neurotic and crazily over protective. Halloween, in particular, brings out the worst in me. It brings back memories of razor blades in apples (which by the way, I’ve never encountered), roaming bands of zombies (again, never seen), and haunted houses (and…never been to one of those either). B.’s mother suggested that the boys hit the Halloween trail on their own, being as they would be in the general vicinity for most of the night. Although I knew in my heart that child #2 would be okay with B. in charge, I felt better when my husband said he’d “ride along.” And I’m glad he did, because he offered more insight into the trick or treating rituals of these two boys, which B.’s mother and I found hilarious. If only the boys brought this kind of intensity and planning to their schoolwork. The boys had a brainstorming session prior to hitting up the first house and decided on a two-pronged approach. The first approach was called the “traditional”: in the “traditional,” you walk calmly up to the door and ring the bell, plastering on your best and cutest smile. When the door is answered, you say, in unison, “trick or treat.” Charmed by your cuteness and good manners, you are handed more than your fair share of candy by the homeowner. “Bowling,” on the other hand, refers to uninhabited houses whose owners leave bowls of candy on the front porch. In “bowling,” you approach the house as quickly as possible and fill your candy bag with as much candy as you can before Jim, your chaperone, reminds you that you are not the only people trick or treating on that street.

The girls on the other hand, were more of a rag-tag bunch, wandering aimlessly through town with no plan as to where they would go, which houses they would target. Truthfully, I think they spent most of their time talking, a concept that the boys found ludicrous. There’s candy to be had! Suffice it to say that they came back a little lighter in the pillowcase than the boys who sported at least six and seven pound bags of candy, respectively. They looked at the girls’ paltry haul and decided that they needed more guidance next year so that they could maximize their intake.

We didn’t have as many children as we normally do this year, and considering that Halloween was on a Friday, I can only assume that a lot of people had indoor parties. We also have a couple of neighborhoods in town where kids congregate to trick or treat and which were overflowing with costumed ghouls, from what I’ve heard.

How many trick or treaters did you have? Did they seem to have an orchestrated plan of attack? And most importantly, what did you do with your left over candy?

Maggie Barbieri

Need Help Planning a Launch Party

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In January I’ll have a new book out–not one of my Deputy Tempe Crabtree books–this one is in my Rocky Bluff PD crime series. Not a cozy–but not really as edgy as many police procedurals. (I never use bad language or have explicit sex in any of my books.)

It’s difficult juggling two series. No Sanctuary will be published by a small independent press, of course. I want to give this book as much promotion time as my other series. I always have some kind of launch party–but not quite sure what to do for this one.

It’s about two ministers, and two churches and of course murder. A church might be a logical place, but I don’t think my son-in-law who is the pastor of the church I go to, would go along with the idea. I might broach it just to see. By the way, the churches in the book have no realtionship whatsoever to our little church.

I’ve had launches outside our local coffee shop (too cold in January), the local Inn, a recreation center (long gone), a gift shop (gone), used book store (gone), antique store, my house, art gallery (gone). Nothing lasts long in our little town–people start businesses who don’t know anything about running businesses.

Of course I’ll do all the usual Internet promotion, but I always like to give my neighbors and fans a chance to purchase my book first.

Any bright ideas about this? Feel free to post them in the comments.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

Finding Gold among the Dross

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I had a wonderful time last week visiting the Pequannock library. Rose Garwood, the librarian, and her staff, had decorated the room for Halloween – a perfect setting for my talk: How to Commit Murder – A Mystery Writer Offers Some Clues. There was a terrific turnout, delicious refreshments, and a lively discussion.

Knowing the vagaries of the New Jersey Turnpike at rush hour, I arrived at the library about an hour early. It gave me time to wander throught the mystery section. I squealed with delight, earning astonished looks from other patrons, when I discovered a copy of Rest You Merry, the first book by Charlotte MacLeod, in her delightful Peter Shandy series. I think this was the first mystery that I ever read that included humor as part of the storyline. Dame Agatha and Arthur Conan Doyle always presented a first-rate whodunnit, but as might be expected, humor was not their strong suit.

In contrast, I was laughing hysterically when I finished the first chapter of Rest You Merry, perfectly envisioning the scene she’d drawn. There was the sweet curmudgeon, Professor Peter Shandy, exacting delightful revenge against his neighbors who insisted he decorate his home for the holidays. So before stealing away in the middle of the night, he pays for an over-the-top Christmas decoration extravaganza, including flashing lights and a taped recording of I Don’t Care Who You Are Fatty, Get Those Reindeer Off My Roof. Too bad – or maybe too good for us readers – but when poor Professor Shandy slinks home, he discovers a dead body in his over-decorated house.

I enjoyed skimming the mystery, but found myself intrigued by the introduction that Charlotte MacLeod had penned for this edition, published by the legendary Otto Penzler fifteen years after the book’s original debut. She described how she originally created the first chapter as a short story which she submitted to Yankee magazine “and waited for my check. What I got was my story, by return post, with a stiffish rejection. Yankee was not amused.”

I had one of those aha moments. Charlotte MacLeod, who at the time of her death had published 30 novels and won countless awards, understood exactly what happens when you send off what you think is prose that would make Willy Shakespeare weep – and get back a rejection that hints that you might instead consider a job in the great outdoors, herding sheep or something.

Ms. Macleod, who died in 2005, is described, in the Wikepedia entry, “as a ‘true lady’and often seen with hat and white gloves.” She had her own rituals for the creative process: She “began writing at 6 a.m., continued through the morning, then used the afternoon for rewrites. She only started new books on Sundays and during writing would stay dressed in a bathrobe to avoid the temptation of leaving the house for an errand.” I too often stay dressed in my bathrobe, but alas, mine is a result of slovenly habits.

In any case, ten years after that original rejection, Ms. MacLeod decided that the short story would make a wonderful first chapter…and Rest You Merry was born.

It made me think that it was time to go through the virtual drawers of my computer and pull out some of those early rejects. I’m not sure I’ll find gold like Ms. MacLeod, but who knows?

Evelyn David

The Ghost of Elizabeth I

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D.S. Dollman has had a life-long fascination with ghosts, poltergeists, shadow people, and other mysterious beings. She blames her obsessions on the cheap burritos she ate as a kid while watching vampire movies in the dark. Dollman received her BA and MFA degrees in creative writing from Colorado State University. She was a member of the English Department faculty at Colorado State University teaching classes in creative writing, composition and literature, and instructor of a variety of writing classes at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley and Front Range Community College in Fort Collins, Colorado. D.S. Dollman lives in Texas, home of the real headless horseman, where the bugs are the size of small children and the natives say, “Hey, if you don’t like the weather here, wait a minute. It will change!”

This is such an honor for me, a ghost story writer, to guest blog at the Stiletto Gang on Halloween, the 3000 year old Celtic celebration honoring the end of harvest and the first days of winter. Later this evening, as the skies grow dark and cold, and the veil that separates the living from the dead grows thin, the spirits of the dead will once again walk among us. There was a day when the thought of ghosts made me nervous. There are some characters in history that should not be allowed to walk this earth again. The ghost of Jack the Ripper creeping through the shadows of my kitchen doesn’t appeal to me, but I guess you can’t choose your ghosts any more than you can choose your family.

If I could choose a ghost to haunt my haunts, I would choose the ghost of Elizabeth I of England. I first read a biography of Elizabeth I when I was ten years old, and I was mesmerized. The thought of a woman prospering, excelling, and conquering a man’s world appealed to me, an abused child, in ways that I could never put into words. “I will never be, by violence, constrained to do anything,” Elizabeth once said. It wasn’t her successful reign as Queen of England as much as her stubborn resistance to gender-based oppression that attracted me, even as a child.

Elizabeth I was born in 1533, the second daughter of the infamous King Henry VIII. Her mother, Anne Boleyn, was beheaded three years later. Anne was Henry’s second wife, and when she failed to provide him with a male heir, he reacted in a manner that was to become his trademark response, exposing Elizabeth at a very young age to the undeniable truth of her times—it was, indeed, a man’s world.

Elizabeth was crowned Queen of England in 1558 when she was twenty-five years old. It was a time of great mystery and intrigue when enemies were poisoned and queens lost their heads. Elizabeth’s remarkable life was fraught with moments of intense fear that she could not outwardly show as it would have weakened her image and placed her in danger. I sometimes wonder if it saddened her to know she could never have a “normal” love relationship with a man. I wonder if it was, as some have speculated, a fear of a power struggle that kept her from making a marital commitment. “I may not be a lion, but I am a lion’s cub and I have a lion’s heart,” Elizabeth once said. She certainly was capable of feeling love, but perhaps she reserved her love for her people and never really longed for marriage as much as one might think.

Elizabeth I ruled over England for forty-four years, a surprisingly long reign. And it seems as if her familiarity with the daily routine of a ruler has kept her bound to Windsor Castle, the official home of British royalty. According to witnesses, Elizabeth’s spirit, dressed in black, still walks the halls, and occasionally the walls, of the castle. Elizabeth’s ghost has also been spotted at the Tower of London where she was imprisoned by her older, half-sister, Mary. Elizabeth spent many long, painful days in the tower staring out the windows, waiting for the soldiers to lead her to her death.

If I could speak with the ghost of Elizabeth, I would ask her where she found her strength. What was its source–ambition, fear, a love of power, or something deeper, spiritual, and personal? Perhaps it was faith in her self, in her belief that she was destined for something better. In this day and age when we rely on drugs, alcohol and doctors to give us strength and make our world seem brighter, I think we all could use a little faith like Queen Elizabeth’s.

D.S. Dollman
http://www.dsdollman.com/

The 2012 Amazing Political Race

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Political campaigns are too long and we don’t get any real details about what the candidates propose to do until the last few months – if then. Let’s do it differently next time. Each party gets four players. Plus there are “invitation only” slots (determined by an internet poll).

Instead of campaign speeches and rallies – I propose we require the candidates for the highest offices in the land to run…literally “run” a race and more. May the best man or woman win. (Point values would be assigned to each event – winner 5 points, runner up 4, and so on. Points would be cumulative.)


The first month – Endurance
1. Run a 100 yard dash or a 10K marathon – candidates’ choice.
2. The next week we’d move on to bowling or golf.
3. Basketball or tennis next.
4. Balance beam or parallel bars.

The second month – Talent
1. Sing the national anthem in a football stadium.
2. Perform the Rumba and Jitterbug with a professional dancer.
3. Play a medley of Billy Joel songs on the piano, flute, or guitar – candidates’ choice.
4. Whistle the theme from the Sound of Music.


The third month – General Knowledge
1. Jeopardy
2. Trivial Pursuit
3. Do You Know More Than An Average Third Grader?
4. I also propose a few “must pass” multiple choice history, geography, and basic science tests.

The fourth month – Writing, Reading Comprehension, and Truth Telling
1. The candidates must sit quietly in a room, with no handlers, read and then write a 3000 word essay on the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights (extra points for good spelling). Maximum time allowed – twelve hours. Copies of the completed essays would be published for all to review.
2. One live “debate” with hundreds of questions will be conducted. Each candidate will be sequestered in a separate “cone of silence.” Each would be asked the same question, they would respond to that question. If they don’t answer a question, they would be eliminated from the contest immediately by the sounding of a loud gong. If they answer the question, they are returned to their cone. This process would continue until no candidate was left on stage. (Note – points are assigned based on correctness, creativeness, and amusing delivery.)

Points are totaled. Top three get to tour the nation for two weeks, giving speeches, running ads, and slinging mud. Then we vote.

Evelyn David

Control Freak: A Life

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Control Freak

My husband went to Cape Cod last week with his class of seventh graders for a week of whale watching, nature hikes, and science exploration. Me? I was home with the kids, who ate Elio’s pizza every night while I had a bowl of cereal and a glass of chardonnay. There’s a certain freedom in not having to cook a meal every night—not that Jim expects that—and by being able to put your pajamas at six thirty, just in time to see what our presidential nominees have said about each other that goes beyond, “nanny-nanny-poopoo”. (The answer? Not much.) Or what their running mates and constituents have said or done to help either candidate effectively lose the race. Say what you want about either candidate, but it ain’t easy being them.

Anyway, after two days of nighttime cereal and pajama wearing, I got bored. And when I get bored, things can take a seriously dramatic turn around here. And by dramatic turn, I mean furniture gets moved around. All of it. At once. By me. I don’t let anything like a lack of upper-body strength or the absence of professional movers stand in the way of moving any furniture, be it a wing chair or a heavy sideboard. When I decide I want something moved, by golly, it will be moved.

So I moved a bench from the hallway into the living room (looks great), a chair to a nice corner of the room and away from the television (perfect for reading), rearranged a few odd pieces, and voila—new living room. I was very happy with the way things turned out.

Jim called that night to see how things were going.

Me: Now, if you were me, you would probably have a complete melt down when I tell you this, but because you’re you, I’m hoping you don’t.

Jim (steeling himself on the other end of the phone line): What’s going on?

Me (inhaling deeply): I rearranged the living room.

Jim (exhaling loudly): That’s it?

Me: Yep.

Jim: Well, that’s better than what I thought you were going to say.

See, the thing is, Jim’s not a control freak. But I am. And if he had called me and said that he had rearranged the furniture in my absence, that news would have ruined my trip. I would fret the whole way home, an inner monologue playing out in my twisted brain: where did he put the couch? What about my mirror? Where will the three framed pictures of France go? And will they look good there? God, I bet the whole thing got screwed up! I hate change of any kind but that still doesn’t account for the iron fist that I impose on everything. Once, he had supervised a fence being installed in the back yard while I was a national sales meeting for my company. I kept him on the phone for at least forty-five minutes, hectoring him as he described exactly what the fence guy had done. Years later, I have no idea what it was that seemed so important at the time about the placement of the fence, but back then? It was about as important as one thing can get, and I’ve been through some pretty important life events.

What is it that makes some of us cling to things that really don’t make a difference? What makes us control freaks? I think it is a way to place order on a chaotic life—when I was working full-time out of the house, traveling the equivalent of three months a year, and was away from my family for far longer than I wanted to be, it was my way of imposing order on things or making it seem like I was involved or in control. I was definitely involved, but definitely not in control, which made me way to control things even more.

Things do not go more smoothly because I’m a control freak, and while I know that intuitively, it doesn’t change the fact that I have to have my hand in every single thing that happens in the house. And I also know the breath of fresh air that wafts into a room when I relinquish control of something. So why does the control freak persist?

Dedicated Stiletto readers: who out there is a control freak? Who’s a recovering control freak? And what advice do you have for this work in progress?

Maggie Barbieri

Booksignings and Other Stuff

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Frankly, I thought I’d already done a post for today but couldn’t find it. So here I go.

We just returned home from a weekend trip to Vegas to celebrate our 57th wedding anniversary. Yep, 57 years together–can you imagine? Frankly, I lived it and I can’t.

No, we didn’t go to a show or hit the casinos. We went to my sister’s, she and her hubby took us out to a nice dinner. Afterwards we watched the latest Indiana Jones movie on TV and screamed out in all the exciting parts like we used to when we were kids. We spent the whole weekend with them and did a lot of reminiscing, watched home movies of when we were little, and ate a lot of good meals.

Sis and her hubby along with mine, accompanied me to a book signing at Cheesecake and Crime in Henderson. Though we didn’t have a lot of people, the quality was great. Two of my cop friends from the Public Safety Writers Association came along with one of the wives, who is a fan of my Tempe series and the president of Epic came. These are two writers groups that I’m very active with. We had a great time talking writing and just talking. Oh, and I did sell a couple of books. And yes, I bought some cheesecake for our dessert that night.

While we were driving to Vegas I read David Morrell’s book, Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing, one of the best books I’ve read on the craft of writing.

We also had some white knuckle driving excitement. We took one of our grown grandsons with us who had never been to Vegas to a friend’s for the weekend. (He did do all the things people usually do when visiting Vegas.) This friend lives right off the strip which meant we had to drive in all that traffic to both drop him off and pick him up. Thank goodness for our Magellan or we’d never have made it. The offramp we were supposed to get off on was closed–and people in Vegas are dare devil drivers.

We managed to get there and back unscathed–but it was pretty scary at times. Scarier than ghosts and haunted houses.

That’s it–I’m going to watch Dancing with the Stars and go to bed!

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

The Glory of Grandparents

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“Guess what? We had Coke and biscuits for breakfast.”

Charlie, my firstborn, was eight. His birthday present from my mother was an airplane trip with her to Smithfield, North Carolina, the small town where her brother lived. The breakfast menu, as astonished Charlie reported to his younger, envious brothers, had been approved by the same woman who had insisted on at least two vegetables at every meal when I was growing up. Years later, Charlie still talks about the magic of that trip, how special and grown up he felt, and how much fun he had with his Grandma.

I thought about that journey last week when Barack Obama left the campaign trail to visit Toot, his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham. He mentioned Mrs. Dunham several times during the campaign, but most poignantly during his nomination acceptance speech in August. “Thank you to my grandmother, who helped raise me and is sitting in Hawaii somewhere right now because she can’t travel, but who poured everything she had into me and who helped me become the man I am today. Tonight is for her.”

None of my grandparents were alive by the time I was born. Three of the four were immigrants and I always wished I’d had the opportunity to talk to them about their experiences coming to this country, leaving behind everything and everyone they had known. The heroism of their decisions is still staggering to me. As a creature of habit, I often have self-doubt that I would have had the courage to leave my parents and family at a young age, in full knowledge that I would never see them again. But of course, their bravery made my life possible.

Barack Obama credits his grandparents for raising him for much of his childhood. His experience is not unique. According to a joint study of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), the Brookdale Foundation Group, Casey Family Programs, Child Welfare League of America, Children’s Defense Fund, and Generations United, “more than six million children – approximately 1 in 12 – are living in households headed by grandparents (4.5 million children) or other relatives (1.5 million children). In many of these homes, grandparents (approximately 2.4 million) and other relatives are taking on primary responsibility for the children’s needs.” It’s a growing problem.

Unconditional love and acceptance is the hallmark of parenting, but most especially of grandparenting. We owe a debt of gratitude to those who assume parenting responsibilities at a time when retirement looms. But to all grandparents, whose love and laughter enrich our children’s lives, we are eternally grateful.

The Hebrew expression, L’dor va Dor, means from one generation to the next. It refers to the generational continuity of traditions and knowledge, just like Madelyn Dunham passed on her values and work ethic to Barack Obama. This is what grandparents have to offer to our children. And for that, we say, Amen.

Please share a favorite story of your own grandparents.

Evelyn David

Writing Like a Woman

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Readers sometimes ask me why I write from a woman’s point of view, the assumption apparently being that it’s an odd choice. To me it’s not odd at all. I grew up on a farm in Mississippi, an only child, with a mother who had four sisters and a father who had two. My paternal grandmother had a sister, and my paternal grandfather had three sisters. Then there are the in-laws… I spent a lot of time in my youth in the presence of these women. Usually I was in the corner reading a book, pretending not to be listening to what they were discussing. I learned a lot that way – particularly about the ways in which women interact with one another, what they talk about, and what is important to them.

When Wanda Nell Culpepper first introduced herself to me, I already knew her well. She’s very much like my late mother – stubborn, feisty, hard-working, loyal to family and friends. And she has a temper. Wanda Nell earns her living as a waitress in a small café, the Kountry Kitchen, and she has another job during the night-time hours at Budget Mart. She has a family to take care of, and since her shiftless ex-husband, Bobby Ray, got murdered in the first book in the series, Flamingo Fatale, she doesn’t expect help from anyone else.

Writing about Wanda Nell, her family and friends, and the small town in Mississippi where she lives is like coming home for me. I grew up with these people, they’re my family, and I never have to stop to ask myself, what would Wanda Nell do in this situation? I just know. I know what my mother and her sisters or my dad’s sisters would do in a situation, or what my grandmothers or my great-aunts would do. You stick by your family, even when they’re dumber than a clod of dirt, and you help anyone who needs it. Those have been the themes of each book in the Trailer Park series. In the fifth book, Leftover Dead, due out in January 2009, Wanda Nell gets the chance to solve a thirty-one-year-old murder and achieve justice for a nameless young woman. I think my mother and all the aunts would approve.

Jimmie Ruth Evans