On Writing and Music

Last day of 2008--it's snowing, I'm listening to the Classical Countdown on WQXR--#9 "most favorite work" is Verdi's "Requiem"--a very special piece of music for me: oh, so, many years ago, my father shared his passion for it with me. Hearing it takes me back to 1967--my father was engaged in a heroic fight against cancer & had gone to Italy for treatment. But before he had decided to go to Italy, he had bought a ticket to hear singers from La Scala (yes, the opera company in Milan, Italy) perform Verdi's Requiem in New York City ( yes, New York). I remember the ticket was $25.
Determined and dying, my father, who was in Rome, Italy, with his ticket for the NY performance by an Italian opera company of Verdi's "Requiem," debated what to do. Finally he decided to buy a plane ticket back to NYC, attend the performance, return to Italy. His father condemned him for his extravagance. At the time, I was living in Buffalo, NY, and pregnant with my first child. I don't really remember what I thought about my father's decision, but I trust I cheered him on! I do remember that he was totally transported and thrilled by the performance, as I still am.
Those of you, who have heard me talk about how I write every book to music know that it is a mystery to me which music will or won't "work" with a particular manuscript. Verdi's Requiem was 1/2 of the soundtrack for Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts: A History of Burial(named a Best of the Best Books for the 21st Century by the American Library Association). Only half because the writing/music would get too intense & I'd need to switch to of all things the music from a Broadway musical "Falsettos." Strange combination, I know, & I thought so at the time, but what works, works.
After too many holiday distractions, I'm finally back to writing Stirring Up The World: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, a Biography of a Powerful Friendship. Emmylou Harris's CD "All I Intended To Be," has become the "soundtrack."
Happy New Year to all!!!!!

The Season

We're all (except Linda's daughter, son-in-law, and newest grandchild, who will be in Minnesota) gathering in Natick, MA, for Christmas gift-exchange (like many people we drew names) and dinner at the home of Linda's son & family. Like many people we drew names for the adults & agreed to prudent gift-giving for the children.

In thinking about this time of year, here is what a very dear lifelong friend (whose mother was my Girl Scout leader many years ago) wrote via e-mail:
"I love the beauty of the season. Our tree and decorations bring out the nostalgia in me. Since packages are few (we draw names), old toys surround the tree. I find myself doing what Mother did. She took plates of cookies to elderly ladies in North Warren. I have chosen three who feel like gifts to me."

For a historical perspective, here is an excerpt from Elizabeth Cady Stanton's autobiography, Eighty Years & More: Reminiscences 1815-1897.
Note: she grew up in a wealthy family
"As St. Nicholas was supposed to come down the chimney, our stockings were pinned on a broomstick, laid across two chairs in front of the fireplace. We retired on Christmas Eve with the most pleasing anticipations of what would be in our stockings next morning. . . . The boys and girls of 1897 will laugh when they hear of the contents of our stockings in 1823. There was a little paper of candy, one of raisins, another of nuts, a red apple, an olie-koek, and a bright silver quarter of a dollar in the toe. If a child had been guilty of any erratic performances during the year, which was often my case, a long stick would protrude from the stocking. . . . During the day we would take a drive over the snow-clad hills and valleys in a long red lumber sleigh. All the children it could hold made the forests echo with their songs and laughter."

Winter Solstice and The Nutcracker

Happy Winter Solstice!

Today Sophie, Katrin & I had our second annual holiday excursion to see "The Nutcracker." Last year we went to George Balanchine's classic production at Lincoln Center. This year we went to Keith Michael's version performed by the New York Theatre Ballet at the Florence Gould Theater. The Balanchine is quite the spectacular, what with "growing" Christmas trees and all, but this was lovely & fun to compare the two with Sophie and Katrin!

On Thursday, Linda & I went to the 50th anniversary concert of the Shirelles, the first all-girl group to have a number one song on the Billboard (1960). At one point, Beverly Lee, one of the original four singers, performed an over-the-top jitterbug that had us all on our feet. She also talked about the pioneering women of blues & rock & roll--great women's history!

On Reading

Following up on my last post about the urging readers to consider the writer-the what/why/how she/he does in a piece of writing--check out Diana B. Henriques' front page article in today's The New York Times ("Madoff Scheme Kept Rippling Outward, Crossing Borders," 12/20/08). It's a skillfully crafted piece of narrative nonfiction--great example of my 3Cs of writings--Clear, Coherent, Compelling. As you read it, think about/identify--the rhetoric devices/strategies she uses, e.g. her use of repetition in the third paragraph after the subheading "The Scheme Collapses" near the end of the piece.

Another example is Eve Merriam's Independent Voices, a collection of narrative nonfiction poems about Benjamin Franklin, Elizabeth Blackwell, Frederick Douglass, Henry Thoreau, Lucretia Mott, Ida B. Wells, Fiorello H. LaGuardia. In "A Note to the Reader," Merriam writes: "The portraits are in verse, yet no instance has any 'poetic license' been taken. Every incident and description, to the best of my knowledge, is based upon true happenings and not hearsay. But if that is so, if the sketches are in no way fictionalized, then why not have represented them in factual prose? Because I felt that through the condensation and heightened speech of verse, history might come more alive and these actual independent voices might resound once again--lively, familiar, ringing clear." Readers who read her note (although many won't, I have sadly discovered from my teaching), will be in a position to have a dialogue with her about her feeling that "history might come more alive" through "the condensation and heightened speech of verse."

On reading

Recently in my Issues in Children's Literature class, I coined the phrase the "narcissistic reader" in response to the all too common practice of privileging a reader's opinion without considering what the writer was trying to do/create/convey, etc. & why. The same applies to illustrators.
I'll write more about this later.

Nonfiction Writer

Last night, I came home with straw on the back of my black pants & make-up on my face. Why? I was interviewed at a turkey farm in East Windsor, NJ, for a History Channel Holiday Special hosted by Lewis Black that will air in 2009. The set was outside; my seat, a bale of hay; the background, barns with turkeys whose "gobbles" provided the background soundtrack. Interviewed about what, you might be wondering. The producer contacted me after discovering my new book Thanksgiving: The True Story. The actual interview, however, focused on turkeys with question ranging from the history of turkeys to the pressure to cook the "perfect" turkey to a discussion about the gel in the tip of brown feathers that if broken leaves a mark on the turkey's skin that looks like a bruise, thus 90% of all turkeys today are white. Fortunately, although my head is into Stirring Up The World (my forthcoming bio of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony), I had spent the morning prepping for the interview--a day in the life of a nonfiction writer!!

Birthday Celebration

Today Sophie is 5 years old! Depending on extenuating circumstances, we celebrate a "birthday season" instead of a one-day-event. That is what we did this year--on Sat. we hosted a family gathering (picture is Sophie, having just finished frosting the vanilla bunny cake I made for her, with me, my three daughters-in-laws and Linda; for some reason I can't upload the picture of my three sons performing the birthday rap that she had requested??); Sunday was a joint gala with one of her friends at a studio in NYC, and today it's chocolate chip cookies with her kindergarten class & her "special dinner" with her parents. Students in my Issues in Children's Literature class will recognize the "snowflake" hanging in the door & the decorations in the second picture(the unfrosted bunny cake is at the far end and a popcorn bunny cake is at the close end)--yes, I made them & Sophie added decorative touches--Elizabeth's visual instructions stuck!
Tomorrow afternoon I'm being interviewed at a turkey farm for a History Channel special, "Surviving the Holidays with Lewis Black"--meaning I'm needing to get my head back into Thanksgiving, in particular turkeys, & I wondering--What does one wear to be interviewed at a turkey farm?

Odetta

Today in my classes at Queens, I going to talk about Odetta, whose obituary I just read in the New York Times. Why? 1. She's an inspiring role model; 2. I'm hoping to motivate teachers to add the indispensable music of the civil rights movement to their predictable February lessons on Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr.; 3. I'm committed to honoring the panoply of people who were an integral force in the civil rights movement. Here is a link to an interview with Odetta:
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/arts/20081203_odetta.html?hp
I met Odetta twice--once at a New Year's Eve concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. We met in the bathroom--just the two of us. Ever gracious, even upon exiting a toilet stall, she took both my hands as I thanked her for her soul-stirring performance. (No, I didn't worry that she hadn't yet washed her hands, &, yes, I had the impulse to never wash mine again.) The second time was in Washington, DC, at a music workshop with a member of the a cappela group, Sweet Honey in the Rock. A totally unpretentious Odetta sat in a circle with the rest of us. She asked what I did & was pleased to hear about my recently published picture biography of her friend and sister activist, Fannie Lou Hamer. That's when I asked her for her autograph, which she graciously wrote on the only piece of paper we could scrounge up--a receipt for a bank withdrawal.

Sophie, Reading and Writing

This weekend we had a Sophie-Sleep-Over. It is fascinating to observe her progress in reading & writing after a few months in kindergarten--she knows many "sight words," carefully uses her knowledge of phonics to sound out words, and is writing sentences such as "You are good." "You are bad." "You have a bad dog." (No, we don't have a dog.) She wrote the sentences on "tickets" that she gave me & Linda when we played a game Sophie organized--"pool." Sophie was the life guard, I was the swimmer, who periodically needed to be rescued, & Linda sat by the pool reading the Sunday New York Times (her condition for playing). We got the "You are bad." tickets for talking to each other, instead of "swimming" and reading. We celebrate Sophie's 5th birthday on 12/8. It's a cliche, I know, but my, how time flies!
I have no memories of learning how to read, although I'm pretty sure I was never taught phonics. My only school-reading-memory is feeling utterly humiliated when my third grade teacher, Miss Anderson, called out the names for reading groups and I wasn't in the "top" group with all my friends. As for writing, I learned during the days of the Peterson method & was never able to replicate that lovely orderly legible script. (My brain was always ahead of my hand, I suspect.)
On the last day of November & before a very busy week, Linda & I drew great tiles during our nightly Scrabble game--note: my "adenoid" and Linda's "heaven." (as always, click on pic for a larger image). p.s. don't worry about "zone" just missing the "triple word" square--remember we don't keep score. Happy December!