Back to School!

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When did it become so complicated to go back to school?

I’m not talking about medical school, college, or even boarding school. I’m talking about fourth and ninth grades, the grades being entered by my children. It should be easy; we’ve done it before. But all things in life have become much more complicated, and going back to school is one of those things.

When you take into account the laundry list of school supplies that must be procured before the little cherubs head back to school, you may be tempted to keep them home and school them yourself with just a little blackboard and an abacus to help educated them. (Just tempted–I haven’t completely lost my mind.) Back in the day, I was given a leather messenger satchel—the likes of which I would kill for right now—with the insignia of St. Catherine’s school on the front, a new box of crayons, a few pencils and I was sent on my way. (Oh, let’s not forget the frozen bologna sandwich and equally-frozen Devil Dog that resided in my paper lunch bag. THAT combo is definitely a blog for another time.) Today’s children—namely, child #2 in the birth order—are sent home with a list of items that includes pencils, markers, highlighters, dry erase markers, pens, calculators, dictionaries, index cards, notebooks by the dozens (spiral AND marble-covered), and loose-leaf paper. AND NO TRAPPER KEEPERS!

Did you hear me? I said NO TRAPPER KEEPERS.

I didn’t even know Trapper Keepers still existed and I am still wondering why the ban. Seems like for your garden-variety disorganized fourth-grade boy this would be the ticket to order and calm. But they’re on the banned list, along with a host of other items that in my day, were considered de rigueur for school. (I think frozen bologna may be on the list, but I’m not 100% sure. Frozen Devil Dogs definitely are; if thrown, they could blind another child.)

I went to a large store yesterday whose logo is a bulls-eye and did hand-to-hand combat with the other harried mothers in the “Back to School” aisles. One mother was talking so loudly to her children (you know the type—she talks loud, trying to either a) show how good a mother she is by buying little Freddie and Flossie everything they want or b) how she is more frazzled than everyone else or c) enlist you in her running monologue on her life) that it occurred to me to scream “Stop talking! I can’t think! I can’t find low-odor dry erase markers with your constant chatter! Can’t you see that?” But I’m way too civilized for that, so instead, I walked through the giant circular area with its giant cardboard storage containers of supplies muttering to myself like a crazy person. Which I suppose I am.

Child #1, who is going into high school, needs fewer supplies. However, she plays field hockey, and Monday was the first practice. She left in the morning after procuring two used mouth guards from her brother for both herself and her best friend, A. (who couldn’t find a previously-used one in her own brother’s room), boiled them to get his cooties off and headed over to practice. She wasn’t gone ten minutes when I received a phone call.

D.: Hi, Mom? I need that medical form and permission slip or else I can’t play.

Me: (Disgusted and exasperated having just gotten to work in her home office) What? What permission slip? Where is it?

D.: In my room.

After doing a complete search of her room and not turning up the form, I called her back.

Me: Not there.

D.: OK. You have to go to the high school, get a new one, fill it out, and bring it to me at the field. Otherwise, I WON’T BE ABLE TO PLAY!

Me: (More disgusted and exasperated than earlier) I’ll be there in ten minutes.

I left my office, went to the high school, tracked down the form and with another exasperated father, began to fill it out on a narrow slice of counter. When I got to the signature part, it all started to look very familiar.

Me: Hey! I already filled this out!

Dad #1: (perusing form more carefully) Me, too!

Me: And I already handed it in!

Dad #1: Me, too!

Me: Then why are we filling it out again?!

Dad #1: Because they said we had to!

I drove over to the field in a fit of pique and confronted 1) several Moms in mini-vans throwing the form out the window at their own daughter, 2) a few dejected field hockey players whose Mom’s hadn’t arrived yet, and 3) two girls who were vacating the field completely because their mothers weren’t home to re-fill out the forms and bring them over to them. To her credit, as I flung the form out the window, my daughter called after me, “I love you!” which unless you’re cruel and cold-hearted, will assuage any feelings of ill will.

We’re almost there, though. I am missing three marble notebooks and one package of multi-colored index cards and then they’ll both be set to go. This morning, I gave child #1 a blank check—which I’ve decided is really my name…hello, my name is Blank. Blank Check—to purchase $93.00 worth of “practice” field hockey gear, which in my day, were called “tee-shirts” and “shorts”.

They couldn’t possibly hit me up for anything else before they go back, could they?

Maggie Barbieri

Amazing Stuff…to me at least

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I’m amazed by what interests some of my fellow bloggers. Shoes. Of course this is the Stiletto Gang, but all I care about in shoes is that they are comfortable and decent looking. Yes, I know, it’s all because I’m the ancient one here.

I had a momentous birthday on Sunday. My great-grandson said, “You look pretty young for 75 and you even walk good.” I reminded him that since he’s a sophmore in high school now, I sort of have to be old. He’s the oldest of my greats–but I have a granddaughter who is the same age. None of this may seem amazing to you, but it does to me. I can hardly believe I’m at this point in my life.

The other day I retired from a job I’ve had for over ten years, being the training chairperson for an organization for residential care providers. Sometimes it seems I’ve lived several lifetimes.

I began working when I was 10, babysitting all sorts of kids and an invalid woman. In high school I did inventory for a department store and worked for a hot-rod store.

Married the fall I graduated from high school, traveling by train all the way across country to do so. Shocked by how it was in the south (this was in the early 50’s) and very glad when hubby and I moved back to California. (We moved back to Virginia again when we had two kids but didn’t stay long.) Experienced a couple of hurricanes.

Back to California, raised our five kids, said goodbye to Seabee hubby three times as he left for Vietnam and greeted him enthusiastically when he made it home in one piece, worked as a telephone operator on and off for years, had a Camp Fire group for 10 years, was a teacher in a school for child development for 10 years, worked in day care centers in the ghetto, planned weddings for my children, greeted grandchildren, moved from our long time home on the coast to the foothills of the Sierra, owned and operated a licensed facility for 6 developmentally disabled women for over 20 years, and all the time I wrote and wrote and wrote, finally getting published.

Now, really retired, I’m putting all my energies into writing and promoting. Well, not quite all, I’m still teaching Sunday School and various other things that I won’t go into. When you have as many kids and grandkids and greats as I do, there are some family things to do also.

Shoes aren’t really top of my priority list though it was fun to read about them in the previous post.

That’s all for now–think I’ll run around barefoot for awhile.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

Shoe-a-Palooza

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I am a shoe whore. I love the smell of soft leather and the look of shiny patent. I worry over the question of open toe or closed like it was a question that involved our national security. I delight in espadrilles and flats; sandals and loafers; and even though my stiletto days never were, I still have a few super-high heels that I bought because…well, just because. My husband can’t fathom why I would ever buy another pair of black shoes since my closet is already bursting at the seams with black footwear. But like a mother with identical sextuplets (oy!), I absolutely can tell them all apart.

So it was with an extremely heavy heart that I discovered that my personal shoe heaven has now been shuttered. May I have a moment of silence for Filene’s Basement.

Fie on you who say: Wait! Filene’s Basement still exists. Sure that’s true if you believe that Cool Whip Lite tastes the same as Whipped Cream made from actual heavy cream. Filene’s Basement, in its present incarnation, is a perfectly nice discount store chain. You can find some good deals, but where’s the sense of adventure – and the educational component – that was part of the original Beantown bargain store?

Let me tell you the sorry tale.

In less than two weeks, my daughter is off to Scotland to spend the semester at The University of Glasgow. (Yes, I know. We all want to come back as our kids.). So, my thought was to grab a few days once her summer jobs ended, and head off to Boston for a weekend of theater, good meals, and shopping. We would bond over my credit card. We landed in Beantown a little after noon, and within fifteen minutes, headed over to Downtown Crossing, the location of Filene’s Basement.

For those who aren’t familiar with this cultural landmark, here’s the basic concept. Filene’s Basement was literally the bottom two floors of Filene’s, a traditional Boston department store. It bought up odd lots of high-end merchandise from manufacturers and other large department stores. But the fun – and that’s what it was – the fun was in the pricing system. The price tag for every item in Filene’s Basement included the date it was first put on sale. The original sale price was usually significantly lower than what you’d pay at most other stores, but there was the promise of even better deals. Fourteen days after the article entered inventory, if it hadn’t sold, the price was reduced by 25%; 14 days after that, the price was reduced by 50%; 14 days after that, the price was 75% of the original sale price. And if it still didn’t sell, then after 14 more days it was donated to charity.

At the age of seven, my daughter learned how to do fractions by calculating the savings on a pair of designer shoes that I could at last afford because they had been stuck on the shelf for 28 days. I still remember the day I found a set of 800-count, queen-sized blue sheets and matching pillow cases (and there will someday be a blog on the luxury of high-count sheets) that were just $20 because they had languished in the Basement for 42 days. Ah, those were the days.

But all good things come to an end, I guess. It was a traffic cop who took us aside to explain the brutal truth. Filene’s Basement had closed last September. The building was undergoing a massive renovation that was to last two years. It’s supposed to reopen in 2009 — but the owners have made it clear that they are under no legal obligation to do so. Sigh.

It took me a little while to figure out what it was I was going to miss. Does this make sense? We all have to shop for the basic essentials in life. Some of us enjoy it; many don’t. I probably fall in the middle and my patience when shopping usually wears thin far sooner than my daughter’s. But Filene’s Basement made it a game. I probably didn’t need the sheets — but the price was too good to pass up. It was a win-win for the store and for me. I won’t say I didn’t need the shoes, because well, just because I always need shoes. That’s the way it is for shoe-a-holics.

But mostly, I think I’ll miss the fun I had rummaging through the piles with my daughter. Calling out to each other when we found an item, even if we hated it, that was 75% off. We might not have bought it, but we enjoyed the hunt.

RIP, Filene’s Basement. We’ll miss you.

Does anyone know of a similar bargain store??

Marian, the Northern half of Evelyn David

Collaboration in the Stygian Swamp

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Marilyn Victor – In her real life, Marilyn is an administrative assistant for a construction company. She started her writing career in grade school, penning Dark Shadows, Man from U.N.C.L.E. and James Bond stories for her friends, none of which she ever finished. It wasn’t until years afterward when she started brainstorming on how she could combine her love of writing and love of animals that she and Michael came up with the Snake Jones mystery series.

Michael Allan Mallory – Michael works with computers in the Information Technology field, which must be amusing to his old college professors because he has a degree in English Literature. He also managed to sneak out a degree in Electronics, much to the consternation of those who tried to peg him as only a liberal arts kind of guy. He studies and teaches wing chun kung fu in Minneapolis and trains in Chen style tai chi. His favorite mysteries come from the classic period of the 1930s and 1940s, although he enjoys a good yarn no matter what era it was written

Marilyn: “Hey, our guest blog is due for the Stiletto Gang. What should we write about?”

Michael: “What? Don’t you have an idea? I’m blank.”

Marilyn: “You can’t be blank. We’re writers. Creativity is supposed to flow from us.”

Michael: “Yeah, well, my flowing days are long gone. I got nothing.”

Marilyn: “Me neither.”

Michael: “We’re so screwed.”

Marilyn: “We should be able to talk about our writing. Like how rich and famous “Death Roll” has made us.

Michael: “Except we’re not famous-well, perhaps less obscure. We’re almost recognizable in the vast stygian swamp of authors. And rich? Let’s not go there. Too depressing.”

Marilyn: “Stygian swamps, huh? You like those murky metaphors. Okay. There is a Nancy Drew thread happening on the site. We could talk about that.”

Michael: “Um. I’ve never read Nancy Drew. Have you?”

Marilyn: “Does it have horses?”

Michael: I don’t think so. She had a dog, Togo and a cat, Snowball. They didn’t show up very often.

Marilyn: When other girls were reading Nancy Drew, I was reading Misty of Chincoteaque, King of the Wind and The Black Stallion.

Michael: I bet our own heroine, Snake Jones, grew up reading Nancy Drew. Snake is spunky, resourceful-

Marilyn: And she has a dog.

Michael: We do have one thing in common with Nancy Drew. More than one author wrote the books. The stories were outlined by one person and written by another. Several others as I recall.

Marilyn: Hey, I thought you said you never read Nancy Drew.

Michael: You’ve heard of the Internet?

Marilyn: Ah, instant expertise. Hmm. Does that mean if our Snake Jones mysteries become a huge success, that forty years from now some other author will be writing them and calling themselves Marilyn Victor and Michael Allan Mallory.

Michael: You wish.

Marilyn: Along with a million other authors. Sigh. Ok back to business. Thinking back on all those animal books I read as a kid, it makes me think of how animals have played a part in the genre since the beginning of the modern mystery.

Michel: Good point. Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue featured an orangutan—or ourang-outang as Poe called it. Then we have the title character there’s the horse in the classic Sherlock Holmes tale Silver Blaze. And Toby, a blood-hound, appears in the Holmes stories several times. In the 1920s and 1930s the popular Philo Vance novels by S.S. Van Dine included The Kennel Murder Case and The Canary Murder Case, which leads us to there’s Dashiell Hammett’s masterpiece: The Maltese Falcon. (And will you please stop editing what I’m writing.)

Marilyn: That’s what co-authors are for. Besides, we’re going over the word count. And that wasn’t a real falcon in the story. It was a statue.”

Michael: Still counts. The falcon iconography lends the story intrigue and a sense of danger, like the real bird. Who’d get excited about a book called The Maltese Bunny? The use of animals in the title or as a character helps create a mood.

Marilyn: True, true. (Revenge is not sweet, Michael. Knock it off)

Michael: Hey, you edit me, I edit you, hopefully it makes for better writing.

Marilyn (ignoring him): But things changed in the ‘60s when Dick Francis published Dead Cert, his first horse racing novel. After that, animals often became more than background characters. Stories often centered around them.

Michael: You know what my theory is on that? It coincides with the environmental movement in the late ’60s and ’70s. Since then, people have become more aware of the planet and its wildlife. They care more about animals and what happens to them.

Marilyn: I like that. Which reminds me….

Michael: What?

Marilyn: I have to go feed the dog.

Marilyn Victor and Michael Allan Mallory
http://snakejones.com/

The Sign of the Twisted Candles

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Last night I read my mother’s well-worn copy of The Sign of the Twisted Candles. She’d been given the book as a young girl. The copyright date inside the battered cover is 1933. Coming from a family with limited financial resources and lots of siblings, she didn’t own many books as a child. She’s treasured this one for almost 60 years. I’ll be returning it to her bookshelf this weekend.

My mother introduced me to Nancy Drew when I was in the third grade. Many of the words were strange – commodious, oculist; the phrases unusual – jolly friends; the foods strange – jellied consommé. But I still loved the book.

“Oh, Nancy! I’m afraid to go any farther, and I’m afraid not to. Won’t you speed the car up!”

Nancy Drew smiled grimly to herself, despite the awe-inspiring situation with which she had to battle. (The Sign of the Twisted Candles, Carolyn Keene, 1933).

Teenaged Nancy Drew wasn’t afraid. She seemed to thrive on meeting challenges head-on; her confidence in herself and the power of good to triumph over evil was indeed “awe-inspiring.” An only child of a wealthy criminal lawyer and a deceased mother, Nancy is often on her own or having adventures with her two best friends. She gives free reign to her curiosity when she and her friends take shelter at a crumbling Civil War-era mansion that has been converted into a combination restaurant and inn. There is a mysterious old man in the tower room, an overworked, ill-treated foster child, an evil innkeeper and wife, and strange happenings galore. Asking questions, watching people, and following the clues, Nancy solves the crimes and plays fairy godmother to the foster child.

Last week I read Nevada Barr’s latest book, Winter Study. Anna Pigeon, Barr’s heroine, is a 40-something, National Park Service Ranger. Anna was recently married. But in her words, “They’d been married four months. They’d been together ten days of it.” In Winter Study, Anna is temporarily assigned to the wolf population study at Isle Royale on Lake Superior. The survival of the wolves on the island might be threatened, but it’s the humans who are doing the dying. As usual Anna uses her experience, survival skills, and keen powers of observation and deduction to solve the murders.

When I decided to compare the two books for my blog entry for Nancy Drew week, I ignored the issue that one series is written for children and the other is written for adults. Although Nancy is around 16 or 17 years old, the themes in the Nancy Drew books are ones that a 10-year-old would enjoy most. Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon books are definitely for older teens and adults. Was a comparison of the 1930-heroine with the 2008-counterpart fair? Do they have anything in common?

Freedom for a woman in Nancy’s day (1930s) was accomplished by being upper class, having inherited money or a generous parent, having a supportive yet distant family who gave you time and space to solve mysteries, and an extraordinary inherent confidence in your own beliefs and intellect.

Freedom for a woman in Anna Pigeon’s day (now) is accomplished by hard work and earning your own money, pushing back against stereotypical female roles, having a supportive yet distant family who gives you time and space to solve mysteries, and an well-earned confidence in your own beliefs and intellect.

In both books there is “good versus evil” theme, with “good” winning in the Nancy Drew books and if not winning in the Anna Pigeon books, at least a rough justice is achieved.

Both heroines solve mysteries by using their powers of observation, understanding human nature, and their own personal courage. Both Nancy and Anna walk out into the night alone to confront the unknown. They are both smart, curious, creative and willing to take risks. As my co-author says, “Independent women were revolutionary in the 1930s. And perhaps they still are.”

What do you look for in your favorite “mystery” heroines? When you examine the fine print – are they all versions of Nancy Drew?

Evelyn David

My Literary Best Friend

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Distant father…housekeeper slash surrogate mother…pretty-boy boyfriend (according to the northern half of Evelyn David)…a trio of interesting girl friends, one a tomboy, one an obsessive eater, one a giant fraidy-cat…these are my adult recollections and interpretations of my favorite sleuth and heroine, Nancy Drew.

But when I was a child? She was literary gold. I had received a few of the 1959 editions from my older, goddess-like next-door neighbor, Maureen. If Maureen recommended the Nancy Drew books, then by golly, I was going to read each and every one of them. (And for proof of Maureen’s regalness, you need only know her nickname from her five brothers: “Maureen the Queen.” They shared one bedroom in the small Cape Cod next door; Maureen had the other bedroom, complete with canopy bed. But I digress.) She dropped off the books, now too old to enjoy them, and told me to start with “The Secret of the Old Clock.” I think I was about nine at the time. I finished the book and I was hooked.

A couple of thing struck me about Nancy:

1. Nancy drove a roadster. A what? Figuring out that it was just a sporty car didn’t take too long but I wondered why Carolyn Keene didn’t just call it a car. Then I grew up and became a mystery writer myself and realized that there are just so many ways to say that so-and-so “got in her car and drove away.” I’m trying to figure out a way for Alison Bergeron to refer to her car as a roadster but I haven’t been able to quite work that out yet.

2. Nancy eschewed all things in bad taste. Remember when those irascible Topham sisters were mean to the sales girls at the department store? Or when the aforementioned sales girl gossiped to Nancy about Josiah Crowley? Nancy looked down on both. Me? I am never mean to sales girls but do enjoy idle gossip. Alison Bergeron, for one, wouldn’t be able to solve mysteries without idle gossip, conjecture, or jumping to conclusions. Nancy frowned on all three.

3. Nancy loved a bargain. When one of those infernal Topham sisters ripped one of the dresses in the department store, Nancy asked for a discount. And got it! 50% off the retail price! That girl had some shopping cojones.

4. Nancy pretended that her father was fascinating. Sure, it was one way to get the information she so needed to solve the case but, boy, could this girl massage a man’s ego or what? Just read one passage of her dining with good old Carson Drew and you can see why he was putty in her hands. And why he gave her access to everything she needed to solve her cases.

5. Nancy was multi-talented. She possessed basic first aid skills, was a strong swimmer, could sail, and considered herself a “dog tender” (see The Bungalow Mystery). Nancy had an impressive intellect and a sharp wit. Was it the function of hanging around her widowed father and middle-aged housekeeper or was she just born that way? I never could figure that out.

6. Nancy is true to her friends. She never tells her female friend, George Fayne, to knock it off and go by her given name, Georgia, nor does she tell plump friend, Bess Marvin, to lay off Hannah’s scones and jam. Helen Corning, who appears in the first book in the series and then, later on, takes an extended jaunt to Europe, doesn’t have the stomach for sleuthing but Nancy never brings it up. Just imagine those girls on “The Hills” being so accepting of their compadres. Nancy is the alpha girl but never lets it show, never lauds it over her posse. She’s the smartest, the hippest, and wears all of these characteristics with grace and class.

Maureen the Queen and I discussed every Nancy Drew that she had given me after I had read them once. And when I was done, I read them again, because this was in the days before the ubiquitous Barnes and Noble or the easy access that Amazon affords us modern-day folk. My 1959 editions are dog-eared, a little water-logged (the flood of ’73 that soaked everything in our basement saw to that), and yellowed from age. But the memories that I get when I crack open one of the three that are left on my bookshelf cannot be described, even by me, the writer. It’s memories of my older and cooler friend, Maureen, it’s memories of finding a girl to whom I could relate, it’s memories of a time gone by when we played outside from dusk ‘til dawn, when we read books over and over again and committed them to memory.

So her father was distant, she was raised by a housekeeper, and she had a curious gaggle of friends. Didn’t matter and never will. Nancy Drew was and always will be my literary best friend.

Maggie Barbieri

Nancy Drew in the Dark Ages

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Believe it or not, even though I am the ancient member of the Stiletto Gang, Nancy Drew was popular when I was a girl. I received Nancy Drew mysteries every birthday and Christmas and had them read before the days were over.

Like many others, I imagined myself doing all the things Nancy did on her adventures. Her tales fueled my imagination, causing me to suspect our neighbors of all sorts of suspicious doings, from being spies to kidnappers.

I babysat for a police officers two children and the foolish man left a loaded gun in a drawer in case I had to protect his kids from bad guys. Once I was sitting and someone actually tried to get into the house. The person shook the doorknob and rattled the door. I grabbed the gun (I was all of eleven being a seasoned sitter since the age of 10) and went to the door. “I have a loaded gun and I’m pointing it right at you.” Whoever it was must have believed me, because it became quiet.

I put the gun away, called my dad who lived two doors away. He was in bed so had to get dressed before he came up to look around the property. It took him so long, of course no one was to be found.

WWII was going on when I was a kid. Every house in the neighborhood was different. Back in those days, kids were allowed to roam without adult supervision. I loved to ride my bike to new places. Once I discovered a multi-turreted three story home built into the side of a hill. I imagined someone being held hostage inside or at the very least, it was filled with a bevy of ghostly beings.

I often pictured myself as the heroine who would come to the rescue or sound the alarm. I knew if we were invaded by the enemy I’d be recruited as a spy. After all, who would suspect a kid of being a spy?

Back in those days, I wrote my own mystery stories. By the time I’d outgrown Nancy and moved on to adult mysteries (often ones my mother told me not to read), I was putting out my own magazine reproduced on a jelly pad. (It had another name beginning with an h which I can’t remember, but it had a resemblance to hard jelly.) Since I wrote all the content, there was always at least one short mystery starring a young female sleuth.

As you can tell, Nancy Drew had a huge influence on me. When the movie came out I could hardly wait to take a couple of great-granddaughters. I enjoyed it much more than they did.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

Girl Power

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I wanted a little blue roadster – even before I knew what a roadster was. I knew for sure that it was cooler than my Dad’s Plymouth.

I didn’t want Ned Nickerson. He seemed like a vain pretty boy who just got in the way of the real star of the show.

I did want a friend named George who wasn’t embarrassed to be a tomboy, but still went to all the dances. My best friend was Myrtle (and while she was great at hopscotch, she didn’t have the curiosity of a hedgehog.)

But most of all, I wanted to be the heroine who was smarter than all the grownups in town and had thrilling adventures where she rescued herself from danger. Who didn’t want to be Nancy Drew?

My childhood library didn’t stock Nancy Drew mysteries, although for some reason, you could find student nurse Cherry Ames who also solved mysteries. Still I managed to accumulate my own shelf of the blue and yellow mystery books, anxiously determined each time to crack the case before Nancy revealed the answer to the whodunit in the last ten pages.

My daughter, on the other hand, had zero interest in Nancy Drew. She loved the Alanna series by Tamora Pierce, that featured a fierce young woman who disguised herself as a boy to enter training as a knight. She found this fantasy series far more exciting, but also more realistic than the Nancy Drew mysteries. “Alanna got her period, had trouble with boys, stuff that happened to me even if I wasn’t a knight-in-training.”

So why my personal fondness for Nancy Drew? Was she my inspiration to write mysteries? Probably. I recently re-read The Secret of the Old Clock, the first book in the series. It had been reissued in 1959, cleaned up of any of its original racist references. The mystery is slight, at best. But even as an adult, I’m struck by the creation of a young girl heroine who is resourceful enough to rescue herself from a locked closet – look out Macgyver. I am delighted that her father Carson Drew doesn’t try and stop her from investigating the mystery, but instead encourages her independence and declares, “I’m glad you have the courage of your convictions.”

But if Nancy Drew was the spark, it was Mary Stewart, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Rex Stout who fanned the flames of my early interest in mysteries. I quickly realized that their protagonists were more layered, their mysteries far more challenging, and their storytelling more sophisticated and intriguing.

Still, let me raise a toast to Nancy Drew. She filled a void in my childhood for a female adventurer who didn’t need a boy to give her the answers. She taught me that the search for solutions could be as much fun as the end result. And she gave me the confidence to say that I too could solve mysteries – or even better, create them!

Marian the Northern half of Evelyn David

Desperately Seeking

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Peggy Ehrhart is a former English professor who now writes mysteries and plays blues guitar. Sweet Man Is Gone, featuring sexy blues-singer sleuth Maxx Maxwell, is just out from Five Star/Gale/Cengage. Visit her at www.PeggyEhrhart.com .

Agatha Christie was in her thirties when she hatched Miss Marple. But other than Christie, I doubt whether any female mystery writer has created a female sleuth who is older than the writer herself. My sleuth is thinner, blonder, and younger than I am, and I like it that way.

Sure, writing can be an exercise in vicarious living–and genre fiction more than most. Robin Hathaway once said that she loves writing her Jo Banks novels because when else can she be a thirty-something again, and a motorcycle-rider at that?

My sleuth, Maxx Maxwell, is a thirty-five-year old singer in a blues band. She lives in a funky apartment in Hackensack, New Jersey, modeled on my first apartment, one room and a kitchen in San Francisco. She rehearses and plays gigs with her band in scruffy rehearsal studios and sleazy bars in New York City. And she has a hopeless weakness for guitar players, especially her unfaithful ex, Sandy.

I wouldn’t trade my comfortable house in suburban New Jersey or my sweet, loyal husband for anything–not even to be thirty-five again. And I certainly wouldn’t want to be the broken-hearted relic of a failed romance. So what, aside from the vicarious thrill of feeling young again, leads us to lop decades off the ages of our sleuths?

Young people are at a stage of life when the big questions are still to be answered, the questions about love and work, and the all-important “Who am I?” Questions like this can provide rich and interesting subplots in our stories–and even explain how our sleuths happen to find themselves in crime-solving situations in the first place.

One of my favorite movies of all time is Desperately Seeking Susan. I think I had it in mind subliminally as I wrote Sweet Man Is Gone.

The NPR program “What’s the Word?” featured an interesting commentary on Desperately Seeking Susan the other night. The speaker, a professor of film studies, pointed to the contrasting worlds in the film: stodgy northern New Jersey and hip lower Manhattan. And she saw desperation as a key theme. But, she said, there’s desperation and then there’s desperation. The desperation of the Rosanna Arquette character, the New Jersey housewife, was the desperation that comes from fearing one has made all the choices one is going to make in life. The result might be settled middle-class comfort, but if something seems missing, it may be too late to rectify the lack.

The desperation experienced by the young is a different kind, no less painful, in fact maybe more so. It’s the desperation of knowing one is in the very act of making the choices that will shape one’s future, the sense that one is standing at a crossroads; once one path is chosen the other will forever be left behind. Sometimes the necessity of making crucial choices like this results in paralysis–or a frantic and even self-destructive lifestyle designed to distract one from the ever-present nagging voice that demands commitment to something.

But all this is great fodder for the novelist–and a good reason to ignore the passing of time and keep one’s sleuth young forever.

Peggy Ehrhart

Save My Show

/in /by

He had a boyish charm, a sweet smile, and a terrible sense of fashion. Some found him boring.

Me? I fell in love with Fred Rogers the first time I met him in the neighborhood.

Which is why I was so upset when I heard that PBS will stop transmitting Mister Rogers Neighborhood as part of its daily syndicated lineup beginning in September. Local public television stations can still choose to broadcast the program daily, but they are less likely to do so without the program being included in PBS’s syndicated feed.

Kids lose.

Unlike Sesame Street which never captured the attention of any of my children, low-tech Mister Rogers with his trolley and hand puppets was must-see tv for years. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like PBS was the only station that was programmed on our television. My kids watched the same crap that everyone else, including Mister Rogers, decried. Violent cartoons? Sure. Stupid sitcoms. Bring ‘em on. World Wrestling Federation? Sigh, yes. I confess, I even took two of my kids to a rumble at the County Center (and boy, was I the coolest Mom for at least three days).

But Mister Rogers was the perfect counterpoint. With his familiar routines and comforting songs, he spoke to my children and taught them more than all the clever 30-second educational scenes that flashed on Sesame Street. Mister Rogers reassured them that “the very same people who are good sometimes; are the very same people who are bad sometimes.” He taught them that make-believe is a land you should visit everyday. He made it clear to each child, “It’s you I like; It’s not the things you wear. It’s not the way you do your hair, But it’s you I like.” He wanted children to love themselves and others.

Son number two adored Fred Rogers. For his fourth birthday he wanted nothing more than a zip-up sweater like Mister Rogers wore every day. Well, that’s a slight exaggeration. He also wanted wrestling action figures, a new baseball mitt, a bike, and an assortment of other toys that had zero educational value. But, he did desperately want that sweater. I searched high and low for a mini-Rogers sweater and the look of sheer delight on my son’s face when he opened that present is still vivid all these years later. He promptly ran to get his dress shoes and faithfully re-enacted the shoe swap that Fred Rogers did at the start of each show, then zipped up his new sweater with a flourish.

Without bells and whistles, Mister Rogers dealt thoughtfully, gently, and age-appropriately with the fundamental themes of childhood. Write to PBS and tell them that Mister Rogers Neighborhood belongs in all our homes.

For more information, check out: http://savemisterrogers.com/

Evelyn David