Sometimes you meet someone and it's a scene right out of a book. When I write dialogue, I try to stay believable. If I wrote a scene like what happened when I was getting my hair cut yesterday, it would not seem believable.
One of the things I somewhat dislike about getting my hair cut is that the stylists always want to talk to you. I feel for them; I'm sure that if I were in their position I'd be dying to talk to somebody, but I'm not a talkative person at the best of times and hair salons have a sedative effect on me. (The place where I go is not one of those high-energy places, they were playing Roberta Flack when I was in there, and a couple of the stylists were singing along.) I'm sorry I never caught her name, but this is what she said: do I watch "Real Housewives of Atlanta?", you know, they were going to do a reality show about Las Vegas called Trailer Trash, isn't that awful? I think they should do a show like they did in the 70s, did you ever see it, it was called "Vegas" and it had a guy driving his car into his garage below his house, he was a p.i. They should show that again, like on TVLand. I'm going to write a letter...another letter...to TVLand if I can find where I put the address and tell them to bring it back. I'd never want to live in a trailer, though, would you? Actually, you know, what I've always wanted is to live in a log house. They cost a lot of money, though.
There was also something in there somewhere about bowling tournaments and the Showboat Casino being imploded.
My husband said later that he would have liked to have seen my expression while this was going on. But when you are sitting in a chair and the person saying all this is holding scissors and the scissors are right next to your face what you say is: "Yes, I've always wanted to live in a log house, too."
Monday, February 27, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
The Orange Moon
One of my recent reads is Mal Peet's Life: An Exploded Diagram. Like his earlier Tamar, it's a multi-layered book, a story with tentacles that reach back to WWI and forward to 9/11. The heart of the book -- and really the best part, as I thought a lot of the layering was unnecessary -- is the relationship between two small-town teens, deeply in love and lust, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
This, and the current setting on my WIP, brought me to thinking how to convey the atmosphere of the Cold War to teens reading today. The oddest part of it, for me, is the way we dealt the prospect of total nuclear war: we just tried not to think about it. I was well aware that in Europe there were massive protests against missile silos and sit-ins at Army bases, but for me it was just a reality that couldn't be looked at. It had always been there, and it was insane, and it just didn't bear thinking about.
The thing about things that you don't want to think about, however, is that you do think about them, sometimes when you least expect it. One summer when I was in college my mother and sister came up to New York and we took a long car trip up into Canada, through the Maritime Provinces, culminating in a stop in Prince Edward Island. It was a beautiful place, still remote (we had to take the ferry over), green hills, red roads, stormy clouds coming in off the sea and the sun shining through them. We stayed in Cavendish and went to the Green Gables house, walked Lovers Lane and the Haunted Wood. That evening we decided to drive out to "lobster supper", a traditional event held in a basement of a local church. Now, I don't eat lobster and my mother can't eat it, so why we decided this would be a desirable thing to do, and what we did end up eating, have been lost in the mists of time*, but what I do remember is driving back along a lonely, winding PEI road. The moon had come up, and it was orange. I had seen orange or red moons before and I vaguely knew that it was just some atmospheric-type phenomenon involving dust or something, but in the darkness, in that strange place, I began to wonder if maybe it wasn't something worse. What if, while we were on vacation, the nuclear button had been pushed? What if the moon was orange because it was reflecting distant fires burning in the lower parts of North America? (It was easy to believe that the Russians might not bother to bomb PEI.) We'd be trapped up here, forever, everything familiar gone, homeless, stateless, alone. The world gone, the future gone. I mused on and on and worked myself up in to a state of cold terror that not even our arrival back at our rooms in Cavendish could dispel. I don't remember anything else,but I suppose in the light of the next morning everything was normal again, and so we packed up and went on to Nova Scotia.
The strongest feeling from this memory is the feeling that there was no hope. We were slowly, inexorably moving towards the day when everything would end. If it wasn't today, it would nevertheless come. (We always believed it would be very sudden too -- without warning, although the experience of the Cuban Missile Crisis should have proved otherwise.) For me, the end of the Cold War has been a modern miracle. It's something I always try to keep in mind no matter who the enemy is made out to be, and no matter what we are supposed to believe about them.
*The mists of time have no power against my old diaries, which reveal that the church was called St. Ann's and I had potato salad while Mom had filet of sole, and that my opinion of the cuisine was uncomplimentary. Of my nighttime terror I simply wrote, "lonely drive home in the dark."
This, and the current setting on my WIP, brought me to thinking how to convey the atmosphere of the Cold War to teens reading today. The oddest part of it, for me, is the way we dealt the prospect of total nuclear war: we just tried not to think about it. I was well aware that in Europe there were massive protests against missile silos and sit-ins at Army bases, but for me it was just a reality that couldn't be looked at. It had always been there, and it was insane, and it just didn't bear thinking about.
The thing about things that you don't want to think about, however, is that you do think about them, sometimes when you least expect it. One summer when I was in college my mother and sister came up to New York and we took a long car trip up into Canada, through the Maritime Provinces, culminating in a stop in Prince Edward Island. It was a beautiful place, still remote (we had to take the ferry over), green hills, red roads, stormy clouds coming in off the sea and the sun shining through them. We stayed in Cavendish and went to the Green Gables house, walked Lovers Lane and the Haunted Wood. That evening we decided to drive out to "lobster supper", a traditional event held in a basement of a local church. Now, I don't eat lobster and my mother can't eat it, so why we decided this would be a desirable thing to do, and what we did end up eating, have been lost in the mists of time*, but what I do remember is driving back along a lonely, winding PEI road. The moon had come up, and it was orange. I had seen orange or red moons before and I vaguely knew that it was just some atmospheric-type phenomenon involving dust or something, but in the darkness, in that strange place, I began to wonder if maybe it wasn't something worse. What if, while we were on vacation, the nuclear button had been pushed? What if the moon was orange because it was reflecting distant fires burning in the lower parts of North America? (It was easy to believe that the Russians might not bother to bomb PEI.) We'd be trapped up here, forever, everything familiar gone, homeless, stateless, alone. The world gone, the future gone. I mused on and on and worked myself up in to a state of cold terror that not even our arrival back at our rooms in Cavendish could dispel. I don't remember anything else,but I suppose in the light of the next morning everything was normal again, and so we packed up and went on to Nova Scotia.
The strongest feeling from this memory is the feeling that there was no hope. We were slowly, inexorably moving towards the day when everything would end. If it wasn't today, it would nevertheless come. (We always believed it would be very sudden too -- without warning, although the experience of the Cuban Missile Crisis should have proved otherwise.) For me, the end of the Cold War has been a modern miracle. It's something I always try to keep in mind no matter who the enemy is made out to be, and no matter what we are supposed to believe about them.
*The mists of time have no power against my old diaries, which reveal that the church was called St. Ann's and I had potato salad while Mom had filet of sole, and that my opinion of the cuisine was uncomplimentary. Of my nighttime terror I simply wrote, "lonely drive home in the dark."
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Las Vegas gets a Research Library
I've written here a little about how difficult it can be to find much about Las Vegas history. Well, I will whine no more. Las Vegas now has a research library, part of the Nevada State Museum, which recently re-opened at the Springs Preserve. (If anyone out there ever visits Vegas, I highly recommend going to the Springs Preserve, which is sort of a natural history museum and has extensive grounds and gardens. It's easy to get to and gives you a glimpse of a different Vegas.) I spent the last two Fridays there, looking at old photos and high school yearbooks, reading newspaper clippings and school guides for parents and historic preservation district applications.
It's always interesting to me to see who else uses a research library, besides an eccentric novelist. On my first visit a man was reading about a political scandal long ago in North Las Vegas. Later there was a woman looking at obituaries, perhaps doing geneological research. Then a man looking for the early history of Red Rock Canyon. Finally a group of high school students came in, researching a project on Helen J. Stewart, who was one half of the first couple to settle here in the late 1800s. The library is only open 3 days a week (Friday-Monday) so far, but it seems to be doing very well. And I plan on making many return visits.
It's always interesting to me to see who else uses a research library, besides an eccentric novelist. On my first visit a man was reading about a political scandal long ago in North Las Vegas. Later there was a woman looking at obituaries, perhaps doing geneological research. Then a man looking for the early history of Red Rock Canyon. Finally a group of high school students came in, researching a project on Helen J. Stewart, who was one half of the first couple to settle here in the late 1800s. The library is only open 3 days a week (Friday-Monday) so far, but it seems to be doing very well. And I plan on making many return visits.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Nevada is dotted with small towns and many of them, like Roslyn, are mining towns. Mining towns are not your midwestern small town, settled by pioneers and immigrants looking for land. Mining towns flare up and die out. Some of them barely last a decade. They were inspired by greed, particularly out here in Nevada, where the land looks so unpromising for any kind of life. They were a deliberate effort by people to to pit themselves against nature, to take as much wealth as they could, no matter how, come what may. The effort failed, of course. Money was made, and spent, but it was spent elsewhere, and then the mines closed, and the towns were left behind, broken buildings on the sides of a mountain.
But while that effort at wealth went on, something else was happening, and that's what you see in museums like the one in Tonopah. High school graduation day, with everyone standing in front of the school. Sunday school picnics, the priests long figures in black. A open-air boxing match. High school bands, Elks, Odd Fellows, Women's leagues. Saturday night dances.
In towns like Tonopah, or Goldfield, or Austin, I try not to think, here is a place that failed. I try to think, here, civilization was planted.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Early January always means upheaval in my life, and the name of that upheaval is basketball. Middle-school basketball: shoes squeaking on the floor, wild throws, the boys self-conscious in baggy shorts, the girls faster, taller, more aggressive. Late dinners, homework not done, and driving across town to some brand-new middle school in an unfinished neighborhood. UNLV games: sitting high in the upper balcony, watching the cheerleaders jump around, the lights dim, fireworks shoot up, the players run across a red carpet onto the floor and everyone shouts as if it isn't just another weeknight.
With me, basketball is definitely a childhood thing. It's long dark winter nights, listening to Kentucky game on the radio, drawn into an unmapped, virtual world of reputation, gossip ("good squad this year") and rival schools ("after that the 'Cats'll be up in South Bend to face Notre Dame"), learning about working off the clock and drawing a charge and that'll be two from the charity strike. (No one says "charity strike" -- a.k.a. free throw line -- anymore but it was a favorite of Cawood Ledford, the UK announcer.)
It's been said that baseball, because its not played on a clock, is a sport which stops time. Basketball is nothing but clock. It's a sport of the individual moment, the moment you're living in, the bobbing wave, to borrow F. Scott Fitzgerald's image, which always seems about to bring you forward, the moment when it seems everything can change.
With me, basketball is definitely a childhood thing. It's long dark winter nights, listening to Kentucky game on the radio, drawn into an unmapped, virtual world of reputation, gossip ("good squad this year") and rival schools ("after that the 'Cats'll be up in South Bend to face Notre Dame"), learning about working off the clock and drawing a charge and that'll be two from the charity strike. (No one says "charity strike" -- a.k.a. free throw line -- anymore but it was a favorite of Cawood Ledford, the UK announcer.)
It's been said that baseball, because its not played on a clock, is a sport which stops time. Basketball is nothing but clock. It's a sport of the individual moment, the moment you're living in, the bobbing wave, to borrow F. Scott Fitzgerald's image, which always seems about to bring you forward, the moment when it seems everything can change.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Merry Christmas from the girls
Years ago when I lived in New York I found two sets of ornaments in an art supply store around the corner from where I worked in Midtown. One was Dickens' characters. The other -- and why this is Christmas-associated I don't know and don't care -- was Golden Age Hollywood actresses.
Alice Faye, Bette Davis, Hedy Lamarr
This is Sonja Henie, who made ice-skating movies and was also a three-time Olympic champion. (If you ever watched M*A*S*H, you may remember that Colonel Potter was a fan of her films.)
Merry Christmas to all! Have a happy and healthy set of holidays!
Alice Faye, Bette Davis, Hedy Lamarr
This is Sonja Henie, who made ice-skating movies and was also a three-time Olympic champion. (If you ever watched M*A*S*H, you may remember that Colonel Potter was a fan of her films.)
And I've completely forgotten who this is. My best guess is Irene Dunne.
When we first moved to the house I hung the girls up on the staircase as Christmas decorations and somehow I never took them down. This year I finally moved them back to the tree, to join Mr. Micawber, Tiny Tim, David Copperfield, Little Nell and....Mrs. Gamp?
Merry Christmas to all! Have a happy and healthy set of holidays!
Monday, December 12, 2011
End of the year reading
The end of the year is well-known as the time that all the big Oscar-type movies come out. There's kind of a similar effect in books, with blogs and publishing industry magazines talking up the big books and potential prize-winners. So here's my list. Probably not all prize winners but well worth seeking out and keeping in mind for that after-Christmas shopping.
Most recent read: The Returning. Published in Australia originally as Bloodflower (truthfully, I would probably never read a novel called Bloodflower, so this is one time the US title is an improvement.) The Returning is hard to characterize. It's set in a unnamed country whose culture is at times vaguely English, at other times vaguely feudal Japanese. A civil war has unsettled everything. The main character, Cam, returns to his village, but soon leaves again because of the resentment everyone bears him (he was the only one, of all the men who went, who returned.) The narrative follows Cam but also the other inhabitants of the village: an orphan boy, a refugee girl, Cam's sister, his former fiancee. It's at this point that I break off and say, just read the darn book. It's very well done, one of the most thoughtful and interesting books I've read on the YA side in a long time.
Potential Newbery(s): Bigger than a Bread Box. I don't read a lot of middle-grade or contemporary novels but I read this feeling I had fallen into the hands of a master. The plot works, the problems are realistic, and best of all, not only is there magic, but there are consequences to the magic. The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making. This is one of those books that winks at adults, and might even be aimed at them for all I know. (I did wonder, while I read it, how many children would really get into it, but then I remembered that at age 10 I read all the Oz books I could find, and they do much the same thing.)
Obligatory Mentions: Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Chime.
Overlooked: Fly Trap. Frances Hardinge in the only writer I can think of fit to inherit Diana Wynne-Jone's mantle. She just comes up with stuff that makes other YA fantasy seem pallid.
And one other mention, since I'm only 3/4 of the way through: Life: An Exploded Diagram. Love and the Cuban Missile Crisis and do I get the feeling that Mal Peet still doesn't quite know what kind of a writer he is? Yes, but worth reading.
Most recent read: The Returning. Published in Australia originally as Bloodflower (truthfully, I would probably never read a novel called Bloodflower, so this is one time the US title is an improvement.) The Returning is hard to characterize. It's set in a unnamed country whose culture is at times vaguely English, at other times vaguely feudal Japanese. A civil war has unsettled everything. The main character, Cam, returns to his village, but soon leaves again because of the resentment everyone bears him (he was the only one, of all the men who went, who returned.) The narrative follows Cam but also the other inhabitants of the village: an orphan boy, a refugee girl, Cam's sister, his former fiancee. It's at this point that I break off and say, just read the darn book. It's very well done, one of the most thoughtful and interesting books I've read on the YA side in a long time.
Potential Newbery(s): Bigger than a Bread Box. I don't read a lot of middle-grade or contemporary novels but I read this feeling I had fallen into the hands of a master. The plot works, the problems are realistic, and best of all, not only is there magic, but there are consequences to the magic. The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making. This is one of those books that winks at adults, and might even be aimed at them for all I know. (I did wonder, while I read it, how many children would really get into it, but then I remembered that at age 10 I read all the Oz books I could find, and they do much the same thing.)
Obligatory Mentions: Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Chime.
Overlooked: Fly Trap. Frances Hardinge in the only writer I can think of fit to inherit Diana Wynne-Jone's mantle. She just comes up with stuff that makes other YA fantasy seem pallid.
And one other mention, since I'm only 3/4 of the way through: Life: An Exploded Diagram. Love and the Cuban Missile Crisis and do I get the feeling that Mal Peet still doesn't quite know what kind of a writer he is? Yes, but worth reading.
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