Hello, in France
Several readers of this blog are located in France. It would be very nice if someone there who has information of the past or present owners of the Chateau de Launay in Sigournais in Vendee, would contact me. Margaret Vail, who was Madame Robert de Launay, wrote a book called Yours Is the Earth in 1944 and many who appreciated that book, are interested to know what more happened to the family after that book told the story. We know Robert came home from wartime prison camp and later the daughter Rose-Helene lived and worked in Geneva, Switzerland. Do any of you know where Rose-Helene lives today? What happened with regard to the chateau? Did Rose-Helene inherit it and did she ever return there to live?
Many years ago Margaret Vail and I had a correspondence which ended with her health problems. She had a stroke around 1962. Many admirers of Margaret Vail have tried to make connection with someone who has some answers, for 67 years. I do not read French, but you most likely can write English, or you would not be reading this now. Do let me hear from you. Thank you most kindly. Lindsley Rinard ♥♥♥
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Margaret Vail’s Entire Chapter from her Unfinished Book
(Note: At the request of a reader [see one of my Blogs dated August 28] I am copying here Vail’s chapter in its entirety which I only excerpted for you earlier. As some of you know, I hunt and peck at a keyboard (I opted for Latin rather than typing in high school with no regrets). Add to my typing skill my recently worsened eyesight, and the fact that, like Margaret Vail, I have suffered a stroke. However, my stroke was not nearly so severe as hers. It is now 4:18 p. m., and I will tell you that other than doing the necessities, such as eating lunch and walking out in the sunshine to check for mail, I have been at this computer since about 8:30 a. m., checking and rechecking, with a really strong magnifying glass, to make a correct copy for you. I consider it a labor of love for all those who appreciated Margaret Vail. I will read all of this later on its blue background and make corrections if there are any. There must be. I’m only human. Enjoy!) ♥
_____________________
The Complete “Prisoner’s Return” from Margaret Vail’s Unfinished Novel
In early May, we awaited news from Robert, of whom nothing had been heard. Every day, we would learn of the return of one or more of Serigne prisoners of war; those of us who were waiting for news would congratulate the wives and mothers who had their loved ones with them once more; without a trace of resentment in our hearts that others should be favored while we still had no cause for rejoicing.
On the morning of May 16, our telephone rang. “Un telegram, Madame.” And it was read to me: “RETURNED FRANCE GOOD HEALTH WAIT IMMINENT ARRIVAL ROBERT”
Down the two flights of stairs to the kitchen I ran, headlong, to fling myself, into Veronique’s arms. “Oh, Veronique, he is coming, Monsieur Robert; he is alive, he is well, he is in France, he is on his way home, he will soon be here, he . . . I . . . we . . .”
Veronique, hysterical too, began rushing around the kitchen, tears streaming down her cheeks. “We must have all kinds of good things to eat for him,” she sobbed, picking up one thing here, casting it down there, searching frantically for she knew not what.
Rose-Helene, less excited, of course, was happy all the same to know that she would soon have a Papa after living most of her life without one. All the rest of that day we waited for news which did not come. We studied maps and time tables, trying to imagine where he might be at that moment, and at what time, on that day, he could arrive.
No one cared much about eating that day nor about sleep that evening as I discovered when I went up to bed around eleven o’clock. I tried for a while, to read, but soon found that, too, was impossible. I decided then to wash my hair, the great feminine resource in times of stress. That would help the time to pass and I would look more attractive for Robert if he should arrive the next day.
It was 1:00 a. m. I was pinning the last curl – and the telephone rang! Our service is always shut from 7 p. m. until 7 a.m., it can never be used during those hours, so I knew, even before I scrambled to answer the telephone that it was something urgent, something out of the ordinary – something to do with Robert.
The local telephone operator (whose husband, also a war prisoner not yet returned) was calling to say that the Mairie of St. Emilion had telephoned to ask whether Madame deVigney could come to get her husband who had just arrived there.
Could I come! During the past years, long years, lonely years, the conviction that, one day, this moment would arrive was what had given me courage to carry on. How many thousands of times had I asked myself when, when, when would he return? How many times had I wondered where our first meeting would take place? Now I had my answer. When? In the time it would take to tie a gay scarf around my wet head, get the car and drive the eight miles which separated us. Where? St. Emilion where, five years before, I had had my first sight of German troops arriving to occupy our region. Now it was a French officer who awaited me there.
To the severe thunderstorm I gave little heed as I drove towards Montigny, as fast as I dared drive through the torrential rain. The vivid flashes of lightning and sharp claps of thunder would have frightened me, normally, but now the thunder was only the echo of my own heartbeat, and the lightning a mere reflection of the blaze of my excitement.
I had supposed that I was the only person in the village awake at that hour, except the telephone operator, but mine was not the only call she had made, I soon saw for, when I arrived at Montigny, the outline of several figures appeared at the front of my car. One or two of these signaled to me to stop, a command I was tempted not to heed untill I saw M. le Cure was at the head of the group of men.
Slowing down the car, I leaned out of the window to hear what M. le cure was saying: “. . . so I am sending Georges, here, with you to show you where the prisoners are assembled.”
As though I could get lost in a tiny village like St. Emilion! As though I wouldn’t be able to find, without anyone’s help, my husband wherever he might be! And, naturally, I did not want to share with anyone, Robert’s and my first meeting. “You are so kind, M. le Cure, so thoughtful, but, truly, I do not want to impose on Georges. There is no reason for him to take that long drive to St, Emilion in this pouring rain. I assure you that I can find M. Robert by myself.”
But the Cure was insistent; as awkward in his kind intentions as so many well-meaning people too often are. Besides, a Cure could not be expected to understand wives’ and husbands’ wanting to be alone together at such a time. So, to avoid wasting precious minutes in futile argument, I told Georges to hop into the car beside me and off we drove to St. Emilion.
That town, usually so placid and quiet, was in an uproar. The noise and confusion was centered on the Place in front of the Mairie. There, the two big buses, loaded to capacity, had deposited men who had returned from five years’ captivity. Some of them had already been found by wives and mothers; some were holding sleepy, bewildered children who had never known or could not remember the men in whose arms they now were. In a group apart stood those who were still waiting to be called for.
The little square was illuminated only by the lights which shone from the windows of the Mairie and by those of my car, which shimmered through the rain. This gave the scene an unearthly quality, the people were phantoms; shadowy forms without identity. Only the noise – of sobs which were laughter, of laughter which tore at one’s heart, of gay music (to which some were dancing) – only this noise gave evidence that this was, indeed, real, and not a dream or a product of one’s imagination. The scene was sublime, transcending the ghostlike figures moving about in it. One could not fail to realize the deep spiritual significance of the human drama and feel a grateful humility at being privileged to witness and take part in it. Nor could one fail to give thanks to Him who had brought us all to safely to this place, to this moment, Who had made possible all that was happening there that night.
I remained in the car, unable to do more than stare at the scene I knew would remain forever engraved on my memory. Georges had served a useful purpose, after all; he had gone off to find the person I now saw coming towards the car.
It was not necessary to see my husband’s face to know that this was he. The touch of his hand on mine was the same; the voice was his. Of me he could see little, huddled behind the wheel of the car; the dim light revealed only the bright scarf around my head and the fact that my face was wet, whether from the rain or from tears, he could not know.
Georges remained off at a distance until we called to him and told him to squeeze into the little car beside us. He was lucky that we did not forget him, leaving him to spend the rest of the night there in St. Emilion.
It was difficult to concentrate on keeping the tiny car on the slippery road in the face of the torrent of rain and flaws of wind which shook it; what I wanted to do was give all my attention to Robert and what he was saying.
He had been traveling, he said, for eight days and nights in one of those forty-men-and-eight-horses affairs, he told us (us! Poor Georges had not been more de trop in all his life); there had been only a brief stop in Paris where certain formalities had to be gone through before the men could continue their journeys. One of the volunteer workers at the center to which Robert was assigned, had been a friend in those days, oh so many years ago, when young men went to dances and teas in Paris. He told her he had been without news of me for several months, but the last he had heard from me I was living in Washington with our little girl. He wondered whether he might find us at L’Ormeau when he got back—it was with this hope that he had sent me a telegram from the frontier.
Oh no, the lady said, it was not possible that Robert’s wife and child could have returned because Americans were not yet allowed to return to France. The lady feared it might be several months before he would see us.
Robert was inclined to doubt this. “You don’t know Margot,” he told her. “She promised me, you see, if ever she should be obliged to leave France, she would manage to get back in time to welcome me home. Margot usually finds a way to keep her promises.” We smiled at each other there in the darkness of the car. Smiled at the absurdity of his confidence in Margot, at the absurdity of Margot’s promising such a thing. Smiled because he and Margot had been right and the lady was wrong.
I told Robert I was glad he could not see me because I had just put my hair up in pin curls and I looked awful. Robert told me he was glad I could not see him for he had not been able to shave or wash for more than a week and he had never looked nor felt so repellant.
It was nearly two o’clock when we arrived at our little village where we intended to ease Georges out of the car and go on to L’Ormeau. But, in the middle of the road there was a large crowd, obviously waiting for us, waiting to welcome Monsieur Robert back to Montigny—quite unmindful of the rain which had already drenched them. We had to get out of the car, shake hands all around, acknowledge congratulations. Robert answered questions and even made an impromptu speech when he was presented with an enormous bouquet which had been prepared for him while we were in St. Emilion. Bon soir was finally said and we were free to go home. Before the chateau, we found Veronique, Charles and Marie waiting for us. I took the flowers from Robert that Veronique might take their place in his arms. She stood on tiptoe to kiss her beloved master for whose safe return she had prayed night and morning during all these past years. Affectionate greetings for old Charles, Marie was presented and at last we went into the house.
As we stood looking at each other in the big hall, a sudden bolt of lightning put out all the lights in the house! Groping, we found candles which lighted our way upstairs to our room. Then I heard a sleepy little voice murmuring, “Mama, what is everybody talking about in the middle of the night?”
I went in to Rose-Helene. “It is papa, darling. He is here, your papa. He has come home.”
Robert stepped forward to take the nightgowned figure (already standing up in bed) in his arms. Quietly, I set the candle on a table and softly went back into our room, letting father and daughter have their moment.
(Note: At the request of a reader [see one of my Blogs dated August 28] I am copying here Vail’s chapter in its entirety which I only excerpted for you earlier. As some of you know, I hunt and peck at a keyboard (I opted for Latin rather than typing in high school with no regrets). Add to my typing skill my recently worsened eyesight, and the fact that, like Margaret Vail, I have suffered a stroke. However, my stroke was not nearly so severe as hers. It is now 4:18 p. m., and I will tell you that other than doing the necessities, such as eating lunch and walking out in the sunshine to check for mail, I have been at this computer since about 8:30 a. m., checking and rechecking, with a really strong magnifying glass, to make a correct copy for you. I consider it a labor of love for all those who appreciated Margaret Vail. I will read all of this later on its blue background and make corrections if there are any. There must be. I’m only human. Enjoy!) ♥
_____________________
The Complete “Prisoner’s Return” from Margaret Vail’s Unfinished Novel
In early May, we awaited news from Robert, of whom nothing had been heard. Every day, we would learn of the return of one or more of Serigne prisoners of war; those of us who were waiting for news would congratulate the wives and mothers who had their loved ones with them once more; without a trace of resentment in our hearts that others should be favored while we still had no cause for rejoicing.
On the morning of May 16, our telephone rang. “Un telegram, Madame.” And it was read to me: “RETURNED FRANCE GOOD HEALTH WAIT IMMINENT ARRIVAL ROBERT”
Down the two flights of stairs to the kitchen I ran, headlong, to fling myself, into Veronique’s arms. “Oh, Veronique, he is coming, Monsieur Robert; he is alive, he is well, he is in France, he is on his way home, he will soon be here, he . . . I . . . we . . .”
Veronique, hysterical too, began rushing around the kitchen, tears streaming down her cheeks. “We must have all kinds of good things to eat for him,” she sobbed, picking up one thing here, casting it down there, searching frantically for she knew not what.
Rose-Helene, less excited, of course, was happy all the same to know that she would soon have a Papa after living most of her life without one. All the rest of that day we waited for news which did not come. We studied maps and time tables, trying to imagine where he might be at that moment, and at what time, on that day, he could arrive.
No one cared much about eating that day nor about sleep that evening as I discovered when I went up to bed around eleven o’clock. I tried for a while, to read, but soon found that, too, was impossible. I decided then to wash my hair, the great feminine resource in times of stress. That would help the time to pass and I would look more attractive for Robert if he should arrive the next day.
It was 1:00 a. m. I was pinning the last curl – and the telephone rang! Our service is always shut from 7 p. m. until 7 a.m., it can never be used during those hours, so I knew, even before I scrambled to answer the telephone that it was something urgent, something out of the ordinary – something to do with Robert.
The local telephone operator (whose husband, also a war prisoner not yet returned) was calling to say that the Mairie of St. Emilion had telephoned to ask whether Madame deVigney could come to get her husband who had just arrived there.
Could I come! During the past years, long years, lonely years, the conviction that, one day, this moment would arrive was what had given me courage to carry on. How many thousands of times had I asked myself when, when, when would he return? How many times had I wondered where our first meeting would take place? Now I had my answer. When? In the time it would take to tie a gay scarf around my wet head, get the car and drive the eight miles which separated us. Where? St. Emilion where, five years before, I had had my first sight of German troops arriving to occupy our region. Now it was a French officer who awaited me there.
To the severe thunderstorm I gave little heed as I drove towards Montigny, as fast as I dared drive through the torrential rain. The vivid flashes of lightning and sharp claps of thunder would have frightened me, normally, but now the thunder was only the echo of my own heartbeat, and the lightning a mere reflection of the blaze of my excitement.
I had supposed that I was the only person in the village awake at that hour, except the telephone operator, but mine was not the only call she had made, I soon saw for, when I arrived at Montigny, the outline of several figures appeared at the front of my car. One or two of these signaled to me to stop, a command I was tempted not to heed untill I saw M. le Cure was at the head of the group of men.
Slowing down the car, I leaned out of the window to hear what M. le cure was saying: “. . . so I am sending Georges, here, with you to show you where the prisoners are assembled.”
As though I could get lost in a tiny village like St. Emilion! As though I wouldn’t be able to find, without anyone’s help, my husband wherever he might be! And, naturally, I did not want to share with anyone, Robert’s and my first meeting. “You are so kind, M. le Cure, so thoughtful, but, truly, I do not want to impose on Georges. There is no reason for him to take that long drive to St, Emilion in this pouring rain. I assure you that I can find M. Robert by myself.”
But the Cure was insistent; as awkward in his kind intentions as so many well-meaning people too often are. Besides, a Cure could not be expected to understand wives’ and husbands’ wanting to be alone together at such a time. So, to avoid wasting precious minutes in futile argument, I told Georges to hop into the car beside me and off we drove to St. Emilion.
That town, usually so placid and quiet, was in an uproar. The noise and confusion was centered on the Place in front of the Mairie. There, the two big buses, loaded to capacity, had deposited men who had returned from five years’ captivity. Some of them had already been found by wives and mothers; some were holding sleepy, bewildered children who had never known or could not remember the men in whose arms they now were. In a group apart stood those who were still waiting to be called for.
The little square was illuminated only by the lights which shone from the windows of the Mairie and by those of my car, which shimmered through the rain. This gave the scene an unearthly quality, the people were phantoms; shadowy forms without identity. Only the noise – of sobs which were laughter, of laughter which tore at one’s heart, of gay music (to which some were dancing) – only this noise gave evidence that this was, indeed, real, and not a dream or a product of one’s imagination. The scene was sublime, transcending the ghostlike figures moving about in it. One could not fail to realize the deep spiritual significance of the human drama and feel a grateful humility at being privileged to witness and take part in it. Nor could one fail to give thanks to Him who had brought us all to safely to this place, to this moment, Who had made possible all that was happening there that night.
I remained in the car, unable to do more than stare at the scene I knew would remain forever engraved on my memory. Georges had served a useful purpose, after all; he had gone off to find the person I now saw coming towards the car.
It was not necessary to see my husband’s face to know that this was he. The touch of his hand on mine was the same; the voice was his. Of me he could see little, huddled behind the wheel of the car; the dim light revealed only the bright scarf around my head and the fact that my face was wet, whether from the rain or from tears, he could not know.
Georges remained off at a distance until we called to him and told him to squeeze into the little car beside us. He was lucky that we did not forget him, leaving him to spend the rest of the night there in St. Emilion.
It was difficult to concentrate on keeping the tiny car on the slippery road in the face of the torrent of rain and flaws of wind which shook it; what I wanted to do was give all my attention to Robert and what he was saying.
He had been traveling, he said, for eight days and nights in one of those forty-men-and-eight-horses affairs, he told us (us! Poor Georges had not been more de trop in all his life); there had been only a brief stop in Paris where certain formalities had to be gone through before the men could continue their journeys. One of the volunteer workers at the center to which Robert was assigned, had been a friend in those days, oh so many years ago, when young men went to dances and teas in Paris. He told her he had been without news of me for several months, but the last he had heard from me I was living in Washington with our little girl. He wondered whether he might find us at L’Ormeau when he got back—it was with this hope that he had sent me a telegram from the frontier.
Oh no, the lady said, it was not possible that Robert’s wife and child could have returned because Americans were not yet allowed to return to France. The lady feared it might be several months before he would see us.
Robert was inclined to doubt this. “You don’t know Margot,” he told her. “She promised me, you see, if ever she should be obliged to leave France, she would manage to get back in time to welcome me home. Margot usually finds a way to keep her promises.” We smiled at each other there in the darkness of the car. Smiled at the absurdity of his confidence in Margot, at the absurdity of Margot’s promising such a thing. Smiled because he and Margot had been right and the lady was wrong.
I told Robert I was glad he could not see me because I had just put my hair up in pin curls and I looked awful. Robert told me he was glad I could not see him for he had not been able to shave or wash for more than a week and he had never looked nor felt so repellant.
It was nearly two o’clock when we arrived at our little village where we intended to ease Georges out of the car and go on to L’Ormeau. But, in the middle of the road there was a large crowd, obviously waiting for us, waiting to welcome Monsieur Robert back to Montigny—quite unmindful of the rain which had already drenched them. We had to get out of the car, shake hands all around, acknowledge congratulations. Robert answered questions and even made an impromptu speech when he was presented with an enormous bouquet which had been prepared for him while we were in St. Emilion. Bon soir was finally said and we were free to go home. Before the chateau, we found Veronique, Charles and Marie waiting for us. I took the flowers from Robert that Veronique might take their place in his arms. She stood on tiptoe to kiss her beloved master for whose safe return she had prayed night and morning during all these past years. Affectionate greetings for old Charles, Marie was presented and at last we went into the house.
As we stood looking at each other in the big hall, a sudden bolt of lightning put out all the lights in the house! Groping, we found candles which lighted our way upstairs to our room. Then I heard a sleepy little voice murmuring, “Mama, what is everybody talking about in the middle of the night?”
I went in to Rose-Helene. “It is papa, darling. He is here, your papa. He has come home.”
Robert stepped forward to take the nightgowned figure (already standing up in bed) in his arms. Quietly, I set the candle on a table and softly went back into our room, letting father and daughter have their moment.
Monday, August 29, 2011
LAST LETTER FROM MARGARET VAIL
July 2, 1963
I must reply very briefly to your letter of June 3, but to write only a few lines requires a greater effort than what my doctor wants me to make. I am and have been very ill, had stroke for nearly a year. My intellectual life, reading, writing, have stopped entirely and I must rest most of the time.
My daughter, Rose-Helene, is living and working in Geneva, Switzerland, where she is very well and very happy. So it will be impossible for you to see her when you are in New York.
I congratulate you for this opportunity that has come your way and am sure you will make the most of it. I am glad to hear your family is well and flourishing, and send you my best wishes for your continued and certainly well deserved well-being and happiness.
Yours very sincerely,
G.[indecipherable] de Launay
_____________
The name too difficult to read seems to begin with a large upper case “P,” but it also could be an upper case “S.” Several strokes of her pen follow, that could be six or seven letters without a “T” crossing or an “I” dotting. Dots serve as both periods and commas. So it seems, Rose-Helene could have been working for the U. N. in its Geneva offices. ♥
.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
A TINY REVIEW
The readers of Yours Is the Earth did not know necessarily why Robert de Launay became a prisoner of the Germans. Perhaps he was just one of a group of soldiers taken together, or it could have been the Nazis knew exactly who he was, a member of the French landed gentry. At one point, Margaret raised the American flag at L’Ormeau, to protect the chateau from takeover for Nazi offices. America, of course, was not in the war at that time.
Vail’s writing in the above chapter, designed to go into her novel, does not show the same quality of writing found in her nonfiction book. Writing a novel demands a different capability—not harder—just different. Her novel had not gone through an editor’s scrutiny while my guess is the published book had quite a busy relationship with the blue pencil. The novel excerpt contains an overabundant use of the Passive Voice, a definite no-no to an editor. But Vail had an exceptionally timely and interesting story to tell and the editor took the gamble. The winner in that gamble included every reader of the story Yours Is the Earth. ♥
The readers of Yours Is the Earth did not know necessarily why Robert de Launay became a prisoner of the Germans. Perhaps he was just one of a group of soldiers taken together, or it could have been the Nazis knew exactly who he was, a member of the French landed gentry. At one point, Margaret raised the American flag at L’Ormeau, to protect the chateau from takeover for Nazi offices. America, of course, was not in the war at that time.
Vail’s writing in the above chapter, designed to go into her novel, does not show the same quality of writing found in her nonfiction book. Writing a novel demands a different capability—not harder—just different. Her novel had not gone through an editor’s scrutiny while my guess is the published book had quite a busy relationship with the blue pencil. The novel excerpt contains an overabundant use of the Passive Voice, a definite no-no to an editor. But Vail had an exceptionally timely and interesting story to tell and the editor took the gamble. The winner in that gamble included every reader of the story Yours Is the Earth. ♥
PRISONER’S RETURN
That is the title of Margaret Vail’s chapter. The first words are “In early May.” D-Day occurred May 6, 1944, the beginning of the end, and so Margaret and her little daughter were back in France early in May of 1945. The formal surrender by Germany occurred on May 9, 1945. Setting the prisoners-of-war free began immediately. Americans could not travel to Europe at that time, but Margaret had a French passport and her husband was French.
Germany had taken one million, eight hundred thousand (1,800,000) French prisoners, while France had taken many less from Germany. It took a while to get the prisoners returned to their respective cities and villages. Robert was not one of the first local prisoners to arrive home. But Margaret knew he could be home in a day or two. She wanted to be pretty for him, so she washed her hair. She had just pinned up the last curl of her wet hair at one o’clock in the morning, when the telephone rang. The chateau’s telephone service was shut off from 7:00 p. m., to 7:00 a. m., so this ring meant “urgent.”
The local telephone operator, whose husband was also a prisoner not returned yet, called to say the Mairie of St. Emilion had called to ask if Margaret could come to get her husband who had just arrived there. Come she could! She had waited long years for this news. She tied a colorful headscarf on her wet head, got the car, and headed for St. Emilion in lightning, thunder, and torrential rain, as she termed it. At Montigny, she had to stop the car to hear M. le Cure tell her to take Georges with her the rest of the way to show her where the prisoners were. Margaret did not like this idea, but the le Cure was insistent. Georges hopped in beside her.
St. Emilion was in an uproar, with illumination only by lights from inside the Mairie and from Margaret’s car lights. A row of men waited to be called.
Margaret wrote: “I remained in the car unable to do more than stare at the scene I knew would remain forever engraved on my memory. Georges had served a useful purpose, after all; he had gone off to find the person I now saw coming towards the car.
“It was not necessary to see my husband’s face to know that this was he. The touch of his hand on mine was the same; the voice was his. Of me he could see little, huddled behind the wheel of the car; the dim light revealed only the bright scarf around my head and the fact that my face was wet, whether from the rain or from tears, he could not know.
“Georges remained off at a distance until we called to him and told him to squeeze into the little car besides us. He was lucky that we did not forget him, leaving him to spend the rest of the night there in St. Emilion.
“It was difficult to concentrate on keeping the tiny car on the slippery road in the face of the torrent of rain and flaws of wind which shook it; what I wanted to do was give all my attention to Robert and what he was saying.
“He had been traveling, he said, for eight days and nights in one of those forty-men-and-eight-horses affairs, he told us . . . there had been only a brief stop in Paris where certain formalities had to be gone through before the men could continue their journeys. . . . the last he had heard from me I was living in Washington with our little girl. He wondered whether he might find us at L’Ormeau when he got back—it was with this hope that he had sent me a telegram from the frontier. . . .
“I told Robert I was glad he could not see me because I had just put my hair up in pin curls and I looked awful. Robert told me he was glad I could not see him for he had not been able to shave or wash for more than a week and he had never looked nor felt so repellant.
“It was nearly two o’clock when we arrived at our little village where we intended to ease Georges out of the car and go on to L’Ormeau. But, in the middle of the road there was a large crowd, obviously waiting for us, waiting to welcome Monsieur Robert back to Montigny—quite unmindful of the rain which had already drenched them. We had to get out of the car, shake hands all around, acknowledge congratulations. Robert answered questions and even made an impromptu speech when he was presented with an enormous bouquet which had been prepared for him while we were in St. Emilion. Bon soir was finally said and we were free to go home. Before the chateau, we found Veronique, Charles and Marie waiting for us. I took the flowers from Robert that Veronique might take their place in his arms. She stood on tiptoe to kiss her beloved master for whose safe return she had prayed night and morning during all these past years. Affectionate greetings for old Charles, Marie was presented and at last we went into the house.
“As we stood looking at each other in the big hall, a sudden bolt of lightning put out all the lights in the house! Groping, we found candles which lighted our way upstairs to our room. Then I heard a sleepy little voice murmuring, ‘Mama, what is everybody talking about in the middle of the night?’
“I went in to Rose-Helene. ‘It is papa, darling. He is here, your papa. He has come home.’
“Robert stepped forward to take the nightgowned figure (already standing up in bed) in his arms. Quietly, I set the candle on a table and softly went back into our room, letting father and daughter have their moment.
.
That is the title of Margaret Vail’s chapter. The first words are “In early May.” D-Day occurred May 6, 1944, the beginning of the end, and so Margaret and her little daughter were back in France early in May of 1945. The formal surrender by Germany occurred on May 9, 1945. Setting the prisoners-of-war free began immediately. Americans could not travel to Europe at that time, but Margaret had a French passport and her husband was French.
Germany had taken one million, eight hundred thousand (1,800,000) French prisoners, while France had taken many less from Germany. It took a while to get the prisoners returned to their respective cities and villages. Robert was not one of the first local prisoners to arrive home. But Margaret knew he could be home in a day or two. She wanted to be pretty for him, so she washed her hair. She had just pinned up the last curl of her wet hair at one o’clock in the morning, when the telephone rang. The chateau’s telephone service was shut off from 7:00 p. m., to 7:00 a. m., so this ring meant “urgent.”
The local telephone operator, whose husband was also a prisoner not returned yet, called to say the Mairie of St. Emilion had called to ask if Margaret could come to get her husband who had just arrived there. Come she could! She had waited long years for this news. She tied a colorful headscarf on her wet head, got the car, and headed for St. Emilion in lightning, thunder, and torrential rain, as she termed it. At Montigny, she had to stop the car to hear M. le Cure tell her to take Georges with her the rest of the way to show her where the prisoners were. Margaret did not like this idea, but the le Cure was insistent. Georges hopped in beside her.
St. Emilion was in an uproar, with illumination only by lights from inside the Mairie and from Margaret’s car lights. A row of men waited to be called.
Margaret wrote: “I remained in the car unable to do more than stare at the scene I knew would remain forever engraved on my memory. Georges had served a useful purpose, after all; he had gone off to find the person I now saw coming towards the car.
“It was not necessary to see my husband’s face to know that this was he. The touch of his hand on mine was the same; the voice was his. Of me he could see little, huddled behind the wheel of the car; the dim light revealed only the bright scarf around my head and the fact that my face was wet, whether from the rain or from tears, he could not know.
“Georges remained off at a distance until we called to him and told him to squeeze into the little car besides us. He was lucky that we did not forget him, leaving him to spend the rest of the night there in St. Emilion.
“It was difficult to concentrate on keeping the tiny car on the slippery road in the face of the torrent of rain and flaws of wind which shook it; what I wanted to do was give all my attention to Robert and what he was saying.
“He had been traveling, he said, for eight days and nights in one of those forty-men-and-eight-horses affairs, he told us . . . there had been only a brief stop in Paris where certain formalities had to be gone through before the men could continue their journeys. . . . the last he had heard from me I was living in Washington with our little girl. He wondered whether he might find us at L’Ormeau when he got back—it was with this hope that he had sent me a telegram from the frontier. . . .
“I told Robert I was glad he could not see me because I had just put my hair up in pin curls and I looked awful. Robert told me he was glad I could not see him for he had not been able to shave or wash for more than a week and he had never looked nor felt so repellant.
“It was nearly two o’clock when we arrived at our little village where we intended to ease Georges out of the car and go on to L’Ormeau. But, in the middle of the road there was a large crowd, obviously waiting for us, waiting to welcome Monsieur Robert back to Montigny—quite unmindful of the rain which had already drenched them. We had to get out of the car, shake hands all around, acknowledge congratulations. Robert answered questions and even made an impromptu speech when he was presented with an enormous bouquet which had been prepared for him while we were in St. Emilion. Bon soir was finally said and we were free to go home. Before the chateau, we found Veronique, Charles and Marie waiting for us. I took the flowers from Robert that Veronique might take their place in his arms. She stood on tiptoe to kiss her beloved master for whose safe return she had prayed night and morning during all these past years. Affectionate greetings for old Charles, Marie was presented and at last we went into the house.
“As we stood looking at each other in the big hall, a sudden bolt of lightning put out all the lights in the house! Groping, we found candles which lighted our way upstairs to our room. Then I heard a sleepy little voice murmuring, ‘Mama, what is everybody talking about in the middle of the night?’
“I went in to Rose-Helene. ‘It is papa, darling. He is here, your papa. He has come home.’
“Robert stepped forward to take the nightgowned figure (already standing up in bed) in his arms. Quietly, I set the candle on a table and softly went back into our room, letting father and daughter have their moment.
.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
AFTER DAYS OF HEAT
After 100-degree heat, we have a respite of sorts. It is balmy here with the breezes. I wonder how the animals are doing. Are they seeking refuge from some impending disaster in this part of the country? The television runs, repeating the same thing most of the time about the eastern part of the country. How sad I am for those people. One of the saddest persons to me was a black woman who said something like, “Well, we have to go sometime; it might as well be now.” She probably had no place to go and reconciled her situation to that dictum. I sincerely hope she relocated herself safely. Thousands must have no place to go. She was on the young side, much to live for, as everyone has.
A day for a little sleep, since I didn’t get much of that last night. I got in bed about three times, and tried two different recliners. It was well after 4:00 before I did sleep and awoke around 6:00. I need to be in the middle of some manuscript moving along. Nothing major going at the moment.
Talking about sleep makes me even sleepier. See you later.
♥
Friday, August 26, 2011
IN THE GAP
I expect today to be a busy one without much opportunity for writing anything, but I do want to add to the current topic a bit more. When there is time, I hope to copy a few paragraphs giving details of Robert de Launay’s actual homecoming, but at this time, a bit more about Rose-Helene’s growing up.
She learned and spoke both English and French from hearing her parents use them. We do not know about her schooling, but at some point, she picked up a third language. It might have been Italian, for we know it was not German or Russian. She wanted to work as an interpreter at the United Nations, but when she applied for such a position, learned she had to master a fourth language for the job. Vail hinted at no great desire of Rose-Helene’s studying Russian. I do not know if she ever did take up a fourth language or if she actually worked for the UN, but she did land in New York, as the above letter from Vail verifies.
I have often wondered if Rose-Helene inherited the family estate, known as L’Ormeau in the book, but really Chateau de Launay. She seems to have been Robert and Margaret’s only child. According to the Internet, some of the chateaus became hotels. Margaret sent me a snapshot of the four-story L’Ormeau set back from the camera position with a vast lawn.
Time now for breakfast.
♥
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
ONE LETTER FROM MARGARET VAIL
The following letter is exactly as MV wrote it. As it is my property, I am free to make such a copy. I could not scan it. I hunted and pecked. I do not know how I can get the chapter into this blog. Perhaps my computer tech can show me how. I have not found the letters she wrote to me before this one, but found her last one. It is in almost indecipherable longhand. Enjoy!
Chateau de Launay
Sigournais
Vendee
France
March 23, 1960
My dear Mrs. Rinard,
I have not forgotten, I never have forgotten that I promised to send you the enclosed excerpt from my book. And, as I said in the article. “Margot usually finds a way to keep her promises.” I have been rather long in keeping this one, but I always intended to do so.
First, I was so very ill, having been stricken with a vascular cerebral hemorrhage which could have been much more serious than it finally proved to be. However, it kept me on a chaise longue for months, unable to use my typewriter, obliged to rest, rest, rest.
Then, in May, (after an unexpected and unnecessary bout with pneumonia) I went to America to spend a few months with Rose Helene, to consult doctors there. I was in New York City, did almost no traveling – only to Baltimore and to Washington to visit friends there; I lived quietly and peacefully with Rose-Helene in an apartment loaned us by friends who went away for the entire summer.
Before I returned to France, in November, I agreed to write a novel for Doubleday’s, not under contract, but at their request. That is to say, they asked me to try my hand at writing a novel for them but they are not obligated to accept it. I have worked very hard ever since my return, spending eight hours every day at my typewriter and I have finished about 300 pages which are now in Doubleday’s hands. It is not certain, it is not at all certain, that they will accept the ms., even with re-writing provisions. They may reject it, and I am prepared for a rejection. I shall finish the book, nevertheless – it is about two thirds done – and my agent will submit the ms., probably, to Lippincott [publisher of YITE] before trying other editors.
That is why I have written no letters this winter, but most of my friends know what I’m doing, and understand that one cannot write letters and a book as well. However, the enclosed chapter will be fitted into my book somewhere so I thought I would get it written, send a copy to you – thus keeping my promise to you while not wasting precious time doing it.
I wonder how you and your nice little family are, what new and absorbing occupations you have found. You sound such an interesting family, so typically American, nice American, and I am very glad you wrote me and gave me a glimpse of your life.
You do forgive me, don’t you, for having taken so long to send you this piece? And for not making this letter any longer? I must get back to work. With kindest thoughts and very best wishes, for you, your husband and babies, I am
Very sincerely yours,
G. [undistinguishable] de Launay
The following letter is exactly as MV wrote it. As it is my property, I am free to make such a copy. I could not scan it. I hunted and pecked. I do not know how I can get the chapter into this blog. Perhaps my computer tech can show me how. I have not found the letters she wrote to me before this one, but found her last one. It is in almost indecipherable longhand. Enjoy!
Chateau de Launay
Sigournais
Vendee
France
March 23, 1960
My dear Mrs. Rinard,
I have not forgotten, I never have forgotten that I promised to send you the enclosed excerpt from my book. And, as I said in the article. “Margot usually finds a way to keep her promises.” I have been rather long in keeping this one, but I always intended to do so.
First, I was so very ill, having been stricken with a vascular cerebral hemorrhage which could have been much more serious than it finally proved to be. However, it kept me on a chaise longue for months, unable to use my typewriter, obliged to rest, rest, rest.
Then, in May, (after an unexpected and unnecessary bout with pneumonia) I went to America to spend a few months with Rose Helene, to consult doctors there. I was in New York City, did almost no traveling – only to Baltimore and to Washington to visit friends there; I lived quietly and peacefully with Rose-Helene in an apartment loaned us by friends who went away for the entire summer.
Before I returned to France, in November, I agreed to write a novel for Doubleday’s, not under contract, but at their request. That is to say, they asked me to try my hand at writing a novel for them but they are not obligated to accept it. I have worked very hard ever since my return, spending eight hours every day at my typewriter and I have finished about 300 pages which are now in Doubleday’s hands. It is not certain, it is not at all certain, that they will accept the ms., even with re-writing provisions. They may reject it, and I am prepared for a rejection. I shall finish the book, nevertheless – it is about two thirds done – and my agent will submit the ms., probably, to Lippincott [publisher of YITE] before trying other editors.
That is why I have written no letters this winter, but most of my friends know what I’m doing, and understand that one cannot write letters and a book as well. However, the enclosed chapter will be fitted into my book somewhere so I thought I would get it written, send a copy to you – thus keeping my promise to you while not wasting precious time doing it.
I wonder how you and your nice little family are, what new and absorbing occupations you have found. You sound such an interesting family, so typically American, nice American, and I am very glad you wrote me and gave me a glimpse of your life.
You do forgive me, don’t you, for having taken so long to send you this piece? And for not making this letter any longer? I must get back to work. With kindest thoughts and very best wishes, for you, your husband and babies, I am
Very sincerely yours,
G. [undistinguishable] de Launay
RETURN TO Yours Is the Earth
For all of you who enjoyed Margaret Vail’s story about her life in occupied France, I have good news. I have located two letters from her and a copy of the chapter about Robert’s homecoming in the unpublished sequel. It will take me awhile to get these items ready for onblog posting. Be patient and it will happen.
♥
For all of you who enjoyed Margaret Vail’s story about her life in occupied France, I have good news. I have located two letters from her and a copy of the chapter about Robert’s homecoming in the unpublished sequel. It will take me awhile to get these items ready for onblog posting. Be patient and it will happen.
♥
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
SOMEONE ASKED ME
My doctor’s nurse tells me I’m still 5 feet, 6 inches tall and weigh 129 pounds. Therefore, the pants I’ve been wearing for a while must have gotten too long because of the weight lost, not height lost. Someone asked me recently how I did it. I’m not really on a diet, but I eat wisely. For example, I eat only one starchy food per meal.
If every over-weight person in this country ate by only this rule for reducing weight, what a lot of tonnage we would rid ourselves of. Here’s a partial list of foods not to mix in the same meal: bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, green peas, dried beans (as in chili), oatmeal. There are others, but these are foods we eat regularly. Skip the “rice and beans” and “peas and potatoes” dishes and try turkey bacon with your oatmeal.
As exercise, I ride a stationary bike in two 15-minute segments a day. In addition, I’m always reaching for something on the top shelf. I mean often. And then I keep two 3-pound weights beside the chair I watch television from and “work out” with them on the commercials. I exercise my legs and arms before I get out of bed in the morning, and occasionally when doing kitchen work. Now I need a whole new wardrobe.
♥
My doctor’s nurse tells me I’m still 5 feet, 6 inches tall and weigh 129 pounds. Therefore, the pants I’ve been wearing for a while must have gotten too long because of the weight lost, not height lost. Someone asked me recently how I did it. I’m not really on a diet, but I eat wisely. For example, I eat only one starchy food per meal.
If every over-weight person in this country ate by only this rule for reducing weight, what a lot of tonnage we would rid ourselves of. Here’s a partial list of foods not to mix in the same meal: bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, green peas, dried beans (as in chili), oatmeal. There are others, but these are foods we eat regularly. Skip the “rice and beans” and “peas and potatoes” dishes and try turkey bacon with your oatmeal.
As exercise, I ride a stationary bike in two 15-minute segments a day. In addition, I’m always reaching for something on the top shelf. I mean often. And then I keep two 3-pound weights beside the chair I watch television from and “work out” with them on the commercials. I exercise my legs and arms before I get out of bed in the morning, and occasionally when doing kitchen work. Now I need a whole new wardrobe.
♥
CONFIRMATION OF A GUESS
A few days ago, I began writing a story that I assumed would be book-length eventually. But it got hardly more than a difficult first paragraph on paper when I sacrificed it to delete control. It took another day for me to remember when I experienced writing from the point of view of an anticipated murderer once before that it too did not work. How did Dostoevsky accomplish it?
The whole book was not to be from such a point of view, only just the first chapter. It was a device to keep the reader guessing whodunit. I suppose it’s a good sign when an author cannot think just the way a would-be murderer thinks. However, since other innocent souls have managed it, no one knows when or in what given work I might succeed. (It was not to be a story about murder, but about betrayal, repentance, and forgiveness. The murder was the vehicle to lead to the three more important elements. Remember this is fiction.)
♥
A few days ago, I began writing a story that I assumed would be book-length eventually. But it got hardly more than a difficult first paragraph on paper when I sacrificed it to delete control. It took another day for me to remember when I experienced writing from the point of view of an anticipated murderer once before that it too did not work. How did Dostoevsky accomplish it?
The whole book was not to be from such a point of view, only just the first chapter. It was a device to keep the reader guessing whodunit. I suppose it’s a good sign when an author cannot think just the way a would-be murderer thinks. However, since other innocent souls have managed it, no one knows when or in what given work I might succeed. (It was not to be a story about murder, but about betrayal, repentance, and forgiveness. The murder was the vehicle to lead to the three more important elements. Remember this is fiction.)
♥
THIS CAME AS AN E-MAIL TODAY
Disgusted with NBC
On the Today Show, Matt Lauer interviewed one of the wives of one of the Navy Seals killed in the recent helicopter tragedy. He asked her what she would say to her children about their dad and how she would want them to remember him. She said, (and I quote) "His love for Christ," and then continued with a few other things. Throughout the day and on the MSN homepage, when the story was replayed, they had edited the "Love of Christ" part out.
Why? Because using the word “Christ” might offend someone? Well, I am a Christian and I am offended. Offended that they would edit it out. Offended that we as Christians are asked to tread lightly so as not to offend someone of another religion!
I think anyone who missed the original broadcast should know what NBC has done. This man loved his country and loved his God and gave his life for both, just as Christ gave His life for him.
Please feel free to copy this and forward it to everyone on your e-mail list. There are e-mails that go around saying "If you believe in God," then forward this. Well, I am starting one right here, right now. I am not ashamed of God but I am becoming more ashamed of my country. It is time to take a stand.
The will of GOD will never take you where the grace of God will not protect you.
"Our task everyday is to learn how to love better."
IMAGINE THREE HEARTS HERE.
Disgusted with NBC
On the Today Show, Matt Lauer interviewed one of the wives of one of the Navy Seals killed in the recent helicopter tragedy. He asked her what she would say to her children about their dad and how she would want them to remember him. She said, (and I quote) "His love for Christ," and then continued with a few other things. Throughout the day and on the MSN homepage, when the story was replayed, they had edited the "Love of Christ" part out.
Why? Because using the word “Christ” might offend someone? Well, I am a Christian and I am offended. Offended that they would edit it out. Offended that we as Christians are asked to tread lightly so as not to offend someone of another religion!
I think anyone who missed the original broadcast should know what NBC has done. This man loved his country and loved his God and gave his life for both, just as Christ gave His life for him.
Please feel free to copy this and forward it to everyone on your e-mail list. There are e-mails that go around saying "If you believe in God," then forward this. Well, I am starting one right here, right now. I am not ashamed of God but I am becoming more ashamed of my country. It is time to take a stand.
The will of GOD will never take you where the grace of God will not protect you.
"Our task everyday is to learn how to love better."
IMAGINE THREE HEARTS HERE.
PINK and YELLOW
In just a few days, I am going to have a birthday, my 30th again, I think. Unusual for me to hint for a gift, I am going to hint or even beg for one now from my readers, especially some of my best friends. I know you are reading me, but hey, why not do me the favor and sign up for my blog. You know, you can use any sort of picture—or even just a head—and any name you wish. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Now something you may find surprising and quite unimportant to you: my study is branching out, taking up two rooms instead of one. However, it will take some weeks for the job to be completed. When it’s time to read a manuscript, I will leave the yellow room and go into the pink room to read in a more comfortable chair with an ottoman. Yellow and pink, someone might question. Yes, historically, these colors together, from every shade of true pale pink to true red, with true yellow have been the most popular combination in interior design. I do not care about current trends in decorating a room or a house. And neither room has television capability. Isn’t that wonderful?
♥
In just a few days, I am going to have a birthday, my 30th again, I think. Unusual for me to hint for a gift, I am going to hint or even beg for one now from my readers, especially some of my best friends. I know you are reading me, but hey, why not do me the favor and sign up for my blog. You know, you can use any sort of picture—or even just a head—and any name you wish. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Now something you may find surprising and quite unimportant to you: my study is branching out, taking up two rooms instead of one. However, it will take some weeks for the job to be completed. When it’s time to read a manuscript, I will leave the yellow room and go into the pink room to read in a more comfortable chair with an ottoman. Yellow and pink, someone might question. Yes, historically, these colors together, from every shade of true pale pink to true red, with true yellow have been the most popular combination in interior design. I do not care about current trends in decorating a room or a house. And neither room has television capability. Isn’t that wonderful?
♥
Saturday, August 20, 2011
THE DOCTOR”S ASSISTANT
During the eye examination on Tuesday, Dr. Harf spoke in soft terms, naming what he found concerning my eye. The assistant wrote it all down. After he left the room, she told me she had been my student in humanities. What a lovely surprise. She was a beautiful girl and I asked if she were married. She had been and, a greater surprise, she had a 21-year-old son and was herself a grandmother. She appeared college age. How old I felt, thinking most of the time I am running around a campus myself.
She told about visiting an art museum in Amsterdam, where a large painting of a seascape she had seen a picture of in my class made quite an impression on her. She thought the artist’s name might have begun with an “R.” I did not think it was Renoir. The only artist’s name for a seascape that I recalled showing the class was one by Winslow Homer. At least, his name ends with an “R.”
Then she told my driver, who was with me, that I had been a good teacher and added, “She was hard.” That is about the best compliment a high school English teacher can hear, that she was hard.
♥
During the eye examination on Tuesday, Dr. Harf spoke in soft terms, naming what he found concerning my eye. The assistant wrote it all down. After he left the room, she told me she had been my student in humanities. What a lovely surprise. She was a beautiful girl and I asked if she were married. She had been and, a greater surprise, she had a 21-year-old son and was herself a grandmother. She appeared college age. How old I felt, thinking most of the time I am running around a campus myself.
She told about visiting an art museum in Amsterdam, where a large painting of a seascape she had seen a picture of in my class made quite an impression on her. She thought the artist’s name might have begun with an “R.” I did not think it was Renoir. The only artist’s name for a seascape that I recalled showing the class was one by Winslow Homer. At least, his name ends with an “R.”
Then she told my driver, who was with me, that I had been a good teacher and added, “She was hard.” That is about the best compliment a high school English teacher can hear, that she was hard.
♥
Friday, August 19, 2011
For You Beginning Writers
Recently I wrote a paper about meeting my fictional characters, not creating them. Afterwards, I had an additional thought that should have introduced the article. Here is its essence in case anyone out there s having trouble trying to create their own characters: fix your mind on the fact that the world all around you is full of imaginary characters. Don’t waste time trying to look them over for they aren’t there. Just instantly see the one you are going to write about. Let him show up, without your knowing anything about him and get acquainted with him as you write. Perhaps he arrives on the scene by opening a door and there he is. Learn about him gradually.
And by all means, don’t be guilty of saying “him or her.” Writers should know “political correctness” is not good taste. Write for future generations, not for a whim. It will sink you. Stick to tradition.
♥
Recently I wrote a paper about meeting my fictional characters, not creating them. Afterwards, I had an additional thought that should have introduced the article. Here is its essence in case anyone out there s having trouble trying to create their own characters: fix your mind on the fact that the world all around you is full of imaginary characters. Don’t waste time trying to look them over for they aren’t there. Just instantly see the one you are going to write about. Let him show up, without your knowing anything about him and get acquainted with him as you write. Perhaps he arrives on the scene by opening a door and there he is. Learn about him gradually.
And by all means, don’t be guilty of saying “him or her.” Writers should know “political correctness” is not good taste. Write for future generations, not for a whim. It will sink you. Stick to tradition.
♥
Friday, August 12, 2011
The Latest Event Here
About four years ago, my right eye, the better one, hemorrhaged. Since then, the left eye has been doing my writing, including these blogs. Then on Wednesday, two days ago, I awoke with seeing a rosy glow in the lower left corner of any window of sunshine and on the stainless steel flatware as I removed it from the dishwasher. (The spoons looked like Christmas ornaments.) My retina specialist just happens to be in Boise on Thursday afternoons and had a spot for me late in the day. The bad news is that my writing eye has hemorrhaged too. The good news is that on Tuesday he will give me a shot right into the eye, that he says will let me continue my writing. Don’t worry, the area will be numb for this procedure. He has done thousands of these treatments.
However, my vision is better this morning. I am typing with font size 16 (on the processor), rather than 20 bold needed yesterday. I tested that then, but did not really write anything. But there’s a great blog coming up soon, about Dr. Harf’s assistant who is filling in this summer, while the regular assistant took the summer off. The new girl (not new to the clinic, of course) turned out to be a former student of mine in humanities, as well as sophomore English. Two years of me! There’s more about her soon. But today the window-cleaning man is to come out at 11:00 and this afternoon, the new pantry is to be installed. I must ride my bicycle before they show up.
♥
About four years ago, my right eye, the better one, hemorrhaged. Since then, the left eye has been doing my writing, including these blogs. Then on Wednesday, two days ago, I awoke with seeing a rosy glow in the lower left corner of any window of sunshine and on the stainless steel flatware as I removed it from the dishwasher. (The spoons looked like Christmas ornaments.) My retina specialist just happens to be in Boise on Thursday afternoons and had a spot for me late in the day. The bad news is that my writing eye has hemorrhaged too. The good news is that on Tuesday he will give me a shot right into the eye, that he says will let me continue my writing. Don’t worry, the area will be numb for this procedure. He has done thousands of these treatments.
However, my vision is better this morning. I am typing with font size 16 (on the processor), rather than 20 bold needed yesterday. I tested that then, but did not really write anything. But there’s a great blog coming up soon, about Dr. Harf’s assistant who is filling in this summer, while the regular assistant took the summer off. The new girl (not new to the clinic, of course) turned out to be a former student of mine in humanities, as well as sophomore English. Two years of me! There’s more about her soon. But today the window-cleaning man is to come out at 11:00 and this afternoon, the new pantry is to be installed. I must ride my bicycle before they show up.
♥
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Ann Coulter
The brilliant and controversial Ann Coulter is the guest author on the three-hour interview on Book TV on C-SPAN today. The program will likely air again tonight. I recommend it strongly. Most of the callers were male, and men do seem to like her, perhaps for her long blond hair, perhaps for her talking sense.
All of her books, eight or nine in number, have been bestsellers. How many writers can you say that about? We have met a few here onblog: Dick Francis and P. D. James, for example. But theirs were fiction. Coulter’s writing is nonfiction with numerous footnotes. She does a great deal of research. You can read about her on the Net and you can watch the show, but I want to point out one thing she said [not verbatim]: if you are a Christian, you are not afraid to speak out about what is wrong. She and her two older brothers grew up in a Christian family and she is grateful for that. She is a lawyer but now writes full time, books and a weekly column. She has a condo in New York and a house in Florida. She has never married, but has been engaged a few times. She is the classic example of a woman too smart for almost any man. Give her a listen.
♥
The brilliant and controversial Ann Coulter is the guest author on the three-hour interview on Book TV on C-SPAN today. The program will likely air again tonight. I recommend it strongly. Most of the callers were male, and men do seem to like her, perhaps for her long blond hair, perhaps for her talking sense.
All of her books, eight or nine in number, have been bestsellers. How many writers can you say that about? We have met a few here onblog: Dick Francis and P. D. James, for example. But theirs were fiction. Coulter’s writing is nonfiction with numerous footnotes. She does a great deal of research. You can read about her on the Net and you can watch the show, but I want to point out one thing she said [not verbatim]: if you are a Christian, you are not afraid to speak out about what is wrong. She and her two older brothers grew up in a Christian family and she is grateful for that. She is a lawyer but now writes full time, books and a weekly column. She has a condo in New York and a house in Florida. She has never married, but has been engaged a few times. She is the classic example of a woman too smart for almost any man. Give her a listen.
♥
Saturday, August 6, 2011
EARLIEST MEMORIES AND WHAT THEY MEAN
When the late Vincent Price introduces the “Mystery” Channel movie “Sleeping Murder” based on the thriller by Agatha Christie, he explains that the author’s earliest childhood memory is that of her third birthday party. An unexpected guest joins the celebration, a huge spider hovering over the tea table adorned with flowers and cake. Price says Christie’s fiction is like this, evil popping up among pleasant surroundings. Christie also showed an emphasis in houses in her stories, and Price says the one in this film is much like the house little Agatha grew up in. I always delight in hearing Price describe these characteristics of Christie’s writing for they are also prominent in most of my writings, not that I compare myself with her or with any other writer. I do not even consider her a good writer, but she proves herself an excellent plotter. We can easily forget the stories, except those we see on film repeatedly, which make excellent entertainment. However, earliest childhood memories have become such a special interest of mine, I want to know everyone’s first memory and tell what I have learned about the phenomenon.
After years of its standing on my bookshelf, unread, I finally got around to the volume called Unlocking the Secrets of Your Childhood Memories by Dr. Kevin Leman and Randy Carlson, published in 1989. The authors are psychologists and if there is any field fiction writers should be knowledgeable in, it is psychology. We need to know why our characters act as they do.
Leman and Carlson maintain—and they have proved so to me—that the earliest memories of a person’s life, and especially the accompanying emotion, dominate the rest of that person’s life. Here is a hypothetical example of such a dominating emotion that may possibly prevail a lifetime. That is, if law enforcement does not apprehend the one with the memory who is repeating that memory. However, a psychologist such as Leman or Carlson may become first responders.
This man, Tim let us say, is twenty-eight years old, married, and has a three-year-old son named Joey. Tim has begun to beat Joey and gradually more harshly as time goes by. Then he hears Dr. Leman on a talk show explaining that men beat their children for their fathers beat them when they were little. Tim recalls his own father’s beating him from an early age, as Joey at his age now. However, he turns off the set and delays doing anything about his problem. In fact, he may not call it a problem. Most of us probably have not met any real case as serious as Tim’s but occasionally we hear of such situations in the news, usually when the police get into the picture. I will leave such stories for the television and concentrate on some actual ones.
As I research this subject on a small scale, I explain that the memory must be one that the person shares with no one else; it must be his own. I usually start by asking what the memory was and then ask the person’s age when he experienced it. Although I did not ask this particular person but only read about her memory, the late famed artist Georgia O’Keeffe claimed a memory dating back to age two. She remembered bright colors on her coverlet. Perhaps that amounted to emotion that guided her life for she certainly painted her oversize flower masterpieces in brilliant colors.
If you can believe a child remembers something she saw at age two, you can believe another child can remember something that happened at twenty months, another at eighteen months, then one year, even six months, younger—really? Unbelievably, someone has written he remembers being born. When you understand his possibly high I.Q., you may believe that has something to do with it. Some experts say I. Q. has nothing to do with it, for he has not developed one yet. Could he not have been learning during those prior nine months? This subject says he saw the big light overhead and he felt the pain of actually being born. I read this from Ray Bradbury who was not writing science fiction at the time. You can find this information on the Internet.
Age three seems to be a popular time for waking up to memory; however, many children’s first memory occurs when they start first grade, an event that must be traumatic for them. Leman and Carlson tell about a girl who admitted she remembered nothing before her senior prom. Such a memory lack must indicate she suffered trauma of the greatest severity.
Sometimes a person fakes a younger age for his first memory apparently to practice one-upmanship. The key to that is the lack of emotion. If someone regales us with a funny or scary tale and then shows no emotion and the telling is like a recitation, I do not believe him. Not only should emotion figure in the telling, but also some hesitation in at least the first telling.
A female, aged a young sixty-four years of age, told this story. She was three years old when she saw her mother leaving the house and she wondered if her mother would return. She did, but not soon, I gather. Eventually I asked what emotional effect that had upon her. She thought a minute and then said, “It left me with an insecurity that has always been with me.” Perhaps because of that, she has had four marriages and divorces, and several affairs. She may be seeking security and never finding it.
Another woman had a more positive memory, she remembers sitting on her grandfather’s lap and smelling peppermints. She seems today a happy, well-adjusted personality with her life right on track to wherever she is going.
One amused herself when she was possibly not yet three, by lifting the eye patches the doctor had placed over her eyes and looking at cartoons. She is a fun-loving person today.
One man amused his audience with his earliest memory of his watching a worker at a building site who checked the electric power with a short cord and witnessed a light bulb turn on. As the man hurried away to the next checkpoint, the little boy, age three, picked up a nail and stuck it into the wall socket, to see if it would turn on a light bulb. He found out, all right, got a good shock, and grew up with reasonable fear of electricity. He did not choose to become an electrical engineer but opted for civil engineering.
Another man offered to tell his earliest memory, but I did not expect much, for it was obvious he did not understand what a single event just for him consisted of. While shrugging his shoulders, he told only about playing with his friends and being happy without demonstrating any emotion or any example of fun at play. I wonder what sort of bedtime story he heard at age three. Even a Bible story could resound with a sky of angels as they flew about rescuing the tiny child from danger as he went to sleep. But I suppose that sort of thing takes imagination.
One man refused to reveal his earliest memory, which he did remember. Of course, many others probably would not want to tell their first memory. They may relate their second or third memory. Of course, that does not define what we are talking about here.
I expect to meet many more first memories, but I would enjoy more detail like the one I am about to relate now but if details are not there, one should not fabricate them. Those fabrications could go into fiction; one must remember truth is stranger and stronger than fiction. I have not heard a memory with such details, perhaps because I have not plumbed the memories of another writer. Around the age of twelve, I recognized my earliest memory at age three as the day I became a writer, not that I began writing at three, but I began watching life at three with discriminating attention. On several occasions, as a young college girl working at a department store, I could not explain why I knew something, such as detecting shoplifters before they stole the merchandise. I became more valuable as a “detective” rather than a salesperson. Later I knew a student in my class was cheating on a test without my watching the class. When he returned for his first holiday from college, he asked how I knew he cheated. All I could say was, “The bells in my head rang.” I believe such knowledge resulted from studying life from an early age. This still goes on.
Occasionally a memory can occur in episodes, even days apart. Such was mine. It was a time when mothers stayed home and, among many other duties, ironed every garment the family wore, especially starched dresses for my big sister and me, and seven or more white starched shirts a week for Father. In addition, babies popped out about one every two years.
As the memory begins, I was aware of several details: I must have been sitting in a highchair, not eating, but perhaps it kept me in harness so that Mother could iron and not have to keep up with me as I played over the house. I thought of the highchair because my head was at the same level as my little sister Ruby Lee’s head, as she stood in her crib. The three of us formed somewhat of a triangle, though I did not know what a triangle was. Mother moved the ironing board close to the crib. The highchair was the inverted base of the triangle. I seemed to do absolutely nothing except observe. The walls had light wallpaper with dark woodwork (I later gave all happy rooms in my writing white woodwork). I remember being utterly still as I watched the baby’s face. She wore two round red spots on her cheeks, redder than the 17th century Pierrette’s famous red spots as she hangs in a large needlepoint over my bed today. I wondered why the spots were so red but I did not know Pierrette at that age. However, I sensed a definite sadness in the room and did not know why.
The second episode appeared possibly only a couple of days later. A man, who must have been Father, lifted me up so that I could see into the tiny casket in our living room. I saw the white box and its soft interior but I did not see a baby in it. Ruby Lee was there, of course, as all those visitors attested. I looked all around the casket, as if I did not want to see the baby there. Perhaps I did not welcome my first look at death, for I sensed somehow that Ruby Lee would not be with us anymore.
How did that earliest memory affect my life? In music, I am likely to prefer the minor key to the major; my pleasure reading is more likely on the sober side, a murder mystery rather than a comedy; but other reading is mainly inspiring biography. Perhaps the loss of a baby sister helped me much later understand the deaths of two of my own children. I cry for the suffering of another. I have sat before television and cried for a tragedy shown there, and have cried for a whole nation in a moment’s time. If I do not shed tears because of my wording in my own writing, I expect what I write will not touch the reader. On the other hand, I believe I experience a deeper happiness than others do for the ability to go a deeper depth in sorrow. The more one experiences, the more one can enjoy, yet the more he can suffer. I have never known what it really means to be lonely, though two other persons make a crowd for me, but I can handle hundreds at a time from a speaker’s platform. That is not personal. First, not last, of major importance, I have my religious faith to which all else is connected.
Perhaps many people have manifold blessings from their early memories, but I claim what may be a distinction: an unusual observation of humankind, beginning at age three. Agatha Christie had a spider crashing her third birthday party; I met death that brought insights with an ever-widening base. Although I have had my share of travel, a successful career, and great pride and happiness in family—with Isaac Asimov I can say—I have not needed to go anywhere for I was already there.
♥
When the late Vincent Price introduces the “Mystery” Channel movie “Sleeping Murder” based on the thriller by Agatha Christie, he explains that the author’s earliest childhood memory is that of her third birthday party. An unexpected guest joins the celebration, a huge spider hovering over the tea table adorned with flowers and cake. Price says Christie’s fiction is like this, evil popping up among pleasant surroundings. Christie also showed an emphasis in houses in her stories, and Price says the one in this film is much like the house little Agatha grew up in. I always delight in hearing Price describe these characteristics of Christie’s writing for they are also prominent in most of my writings, not that I compare myself with her or with any other writer. I do not even consider her a good writer, but she proves herself an excellent plotter. We can easily forget the stories, except those we see on film repeatedly, which make excellent entertainment. However, earliest childhood memories have become such a special interest of mine, I want to know everyone’s first memory and tell what I have learned about the phenomenon.
After years of its standing on my bookshelf, unread, I finally got around to the volume called Unlocking the Secrets of Your Childhood Memories by Dr. Kevin Leman and Randy Carlson, published in 1989. The authors are psychologists and if there is any field fiction writers should be knowledgeable in, it is psychology. We need to know why our characters act as they do.
Leman and Carlson maintain—and they have proved so to me—that the earliest memories of a person’s life, and especially the accompanying emotion, dominate the rest of that person’s life. Here is a hypothetical example of such a dominating emotion that may possibly prevail a lifetime. That is, if law enforcement does not apprehend the one with the memory who is repeating that memory. However, a psychologist such as Leman or Carlson may become first responders.
This man, Tim let us say, is twenty-eight years old, married, and has a three-year-old son named Joey. Tim has begun to beat Joey and gradually more harshly as time goes by. Then he hears Dr. Leman on a talk show explaining that men beat their children for their fathers beat them when they were little. Tim recalls his own father’s beating him from an early age, as Joey at his age now. However, he turns off the set and delays doing anything about his problem. In fact, he may not call it a problem. Most of us probably have not met any real case as serious as Tim’s but occasionally we hear of such situations in the news, usually when the police get into the picture. I will leave such stories for the television and concentrate on some actual ones.
As I research this subject on a small scale, I explain that the memory must be one that the person shares with no one else; it must be his own. I usually start by asking what the memory was and then ask the person’s age when he experienced it. Although I did not ask this particular person but only read about her memory, the late famed artist Georgia O’Keeffe claimed a memory dating back to age two. She remembered bright colors on her coverlet. Perhaps that amounted to emotion that guided her life for she certainly painted her oversize flower masterpieces in brilliant colors.
If you can believe a child remembers something she saw at age two, you can believe another child can remember something that happened at twenty months, another at eighteen months, then one year, even six months, younger—really? Unbelievably, someone has written he remembers being born. When you understand his possibly high I.Q., you may believe that has something to do with it. Some experts say I. Q. has nothing to do with it, for he has not developed one yet. Could he not have been learning during those prior nine months? This subject says he saw the big light overhead and he felt the pain of actually being born. I read this from Ray Bradbury who was not writing science fiction at the time. You can find this information on the Internet.
Age three seems to be a popular time for waking up to memory; however, many children’s first memory occurs when they start first grade, an event that must be traumatic for them. Leman and Carlson tell about a girl who admitted she remembered nothing before her senior prom. Such a memory lack must indicate she suffered trauma of the greatest severity.
Sometimes a person fakes a younger age for his first memory apparently to practice one-upmanship. The key to that is the lack of emotion. If someone regales us with a funny or scary tale and then shows no emotion and the telling is like a recitation, I do not believe him. Not only should emotion figure in the telling, but also some hesitation in at least the first telling.
A female, aged a young sixty-four years of age, told this story. She was three years old when she saw her mother leaving the house and she wondered if her mother would return. She did, but not soon, I gather. Eventually I asked what emotional effect that had upon her. She thought a minute and then said, “It left me with an insecurity that has always been with me.” Perhaps because of that, she has had four marriages and divorces, and several affairs. She may be seeking security and never finding it.
Another woman had a more positive memory, she remembers sitting on her grandfather’s lap and smelling peppermints. She seems today a happy, well-adjusted personality with her life right on track to wherever she is going.
One amused herself when she was possibly not yet three, by lifting the eye patches the doctor had placed over her eyes and looking at cartoons. She is a fun-loving person today.
One man amused his audience with his earliest memory of his watching a worker at a building site who checked the electric power with a short cord and witnessed a light bulb turn on. As the man hurried away to the next checkpoint, the little boy, age three, picked up a nail and stuck it into the wall socket, to see if it would turn on a light bulb. He found out, all right, got a good shock, and grew up with reasonable fear of electricity. He did not choose to become an electrical engineer but opted for civil engineering.
Another man offered to tell his earliest memory, but I did not expect much, for it was obvious he did not understand what a single event just for him consisted of. While shrugging his shoulders, he told only about playing with his friends and being happy without demonstrating any emotion or any example of fun at play. I wonder what sort of bedtime story he heard at age three. Even a Bible story could resound with a sky of angels as they flew about rescuing the tiny child from danger as he went to sleep. But I suppose that sort of thing takes imagination.
One man refused to reveal his earliest memory, which he did remember. Of course, many others probably would not want to tell their first memory. They may relate their second or third memory. Of course, that does not define what we are talking about here.
I expect to meet many more first memories, but I would enjoy more detail like the one I am about to relate now but if details are not there, one should not fabricate them. Those fabrications could go into fiction; one must remember truth is stranger and stronger than fiction. I have not heard a memory with such details, perhaps because I have not plumbed the memories of another writer. Around the age of twelve, I recognized my earliest memory at age three as the day I became a writer, not that I began writing at three, but I began watching life at three with discriminating attention. On several occasions, as a young college girl working at a department store, I could not explain why I knew something, such as detecting shoplifters before they stole the merchandise. I became more valuable as a “detective” rather than a salesperson. Later I knew a student in my class was cheating on a test without my watching the class. When he returned for his first holiday from college, he asked how I knew he cheated. All I could say was, “The bells in my head rang.” I believe such knowledge resulted from studying life from an early age. This still goes on.
Occasionally a memory can occur in episodes, even days apart. Such was mine. It was a time when mothers stayed home and, among many other duties, ironed every garment the family wore, especially starched dresses for my big sister and me, and seven or more white starched shirts a week for Father. In addition, babies popped out about one every two years.
As the memory begins, I was aware of several details: I must have been sitting in a highchair, not eating, but perhaps it kept me in harness so that Mother could iron and not have to keep up with me as I played over the house. I thought of the highchair because my head was at the same level as my little sister Ruby Lee’s head, as she stood in her crib. The three of us formed somewhat of a triangle, though I did not know what a triangle was. Mother moved the ironing board close to the crib. The highchair was the inverted base of the triangle. I seemed to do absolutely nothing except observe. The walls had light wallpaper with dark woodwork (I later gave all happy rooms in my writing white woodwork). I remember being utterly still as I watched the baby’s face. She wore two round red spots on her cheeks, redder than the 17th century Pierrette’s famous red spots as she hangs in a large needlepoint over my bed today. I wondered why the spots were so red but I did not know Pierrette at that age. However, I sensed a definite sadness in the room and did not know why.
The second episode appeared possibly only a couple of days later. A man, who must have been Father, lifted me up so that I could see into the tiny casket in our living room. I saw the white box and its soft interior but I did not see a baby in it. Ruby Lee was there, of course, as all those visitors attested. I looked all around the casket, as if I did not want to see the baby there. Perhaps I did not welcome my first look at death, for I sensed somehow that Ruby Lee would not be with us anymore.
How did that earliest memory affect my life? In music, I am likely to prefer the minor key to the major; my pleasure reading is more likely on the sober side, a murder mystery rather than a comedy; but other reading is mainly inspiring biography. Perhaps the loss of a baby sister helped me much later understand the deaths of two of my own children. I cry for the suffering of another. I have sat before television and cried for a tragedy shown there, and have cried for a whole nation in a moment’s time. If I do not shed tears because of my wording in my own writing, I expect what I write will not touch the reader. On the other hand, I believe I experience a deeper happiness than others do for the ability to go a deeper depth in sorrow. The more one experiences, the more one can enjoy, yet the more he can suffer. I have never known what it really means to be lonely, though two other persons make a crowd for me, but I can handle hundreds at a time from a speaker’s platform. That is not personal. First, not last, of major importance, I have my religious faith to which all else is connected.
Perhaps many people have manifold blessings from their early memories, but I claim what may be a distinction: an unusual observation of humankind, beginning at age three. Agatha Christie had a spider crashing her third birthday party; I met death that brought insights with an ever-widening base. Although I have had my share of travel, a successful career, and great pride and happiness in family—with Isaac Asimov I can say—I have not needed to go anywhere for I was already there.
♥
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Meeting My Characters
I would like to offer my views on the subject of characterization in my writing. It is a subject that repeatedly comes up for discussion in writing circles. First, let me point out that books of instruction abound on this particular topic, with two schools of thought: know all about your characters before you start writing, or let the characters introduce themselves to you when you first see them on the page. The Paris Interviews of our most famous authors indicate they wrote/write with the latter method. Katherine Anne Porter claimed she began writing Flowering Judas at 7:30 one night and was dropping it into a mailbox in the early dawn in a snowstorm. I have tried both methods and have chosen the latter. Let me give an example.
When I first read a contest theme “footprints on the ceiling,” I thought I could never write on such a subject. A day or so later, I asked myself, “Where would one be if he saw footprints on a ceiling?” Instantly, the answer came from somewhere in my gray cells: on a psychiatrist’s couch. That was all I needed to know. Hurrying to my computer, I began writing with “Dr. Heringshaw . . . ,” using a name familiar to me. After every word I typed, the next word or phrase came without hesitation. In one sitting, I wrote the 1,942-word story and did not revise it. I revise as I go. No one edits for me. Perhaps I have lost big in the contest—I have no idea about that yet—but all I knew about the protagonist was what he acted out and thought while in the doctor’s consulting room. I did not know his name till the doctor called him “Henry.” I did not know his age, income, family except his saying, “Maggie buys bananas every week.” She had to be his wife. I did not dream the story would have a cheetah in it till it did. That gave me the story’s title: “Steady Date with a Cheetah.” (I rarely name the baby till it’s born, usually about midway through the story.) Henry and the doctor are the only characters, and I tell only what Henry thinks about the doctor: I do not describe him. I do not even describe Henry. We do not need to know the color of his hair or eyes, his height or weight, or his hobbies or ancestry. However, we sense he is not skinny, but the doctor may be, for Henry thinks, “I bet he never eats pizza, the best food in the world.” That is how we know about the size of both of them. By being in Henry’s head for about ninety minutes, I learned to know him well, just as the reader might.
For the contest with no assigned theme, it was much the same thing. I had just finished reading two books, one a novel with a World War II setting in France, and the other nonfiction about France at that same historic time. Immediately I fled to my computer and wrote the fiction part of the story (not at one sitting, but more like a week), with a twelve-year-old heroine, and then dug into my files about the Allied Invasion on Normandy beach. My 3,206-word story, “To Save a Bridge,” even factually mentions General Eisenhower. I also checked with two friends to get my French correct for “Mama,” but I already knew the German perfectly.
What a thrill to write this way. If you have not tried this method of introducing your characters, why not try it. It makes writing fun. The hard work comes in all those prior years when you trained yourself to write, such as learning grammar in the fifth grade. A writer never lacks subjects to write about, the job is to select which one. I trust these two stories will win at least Honorable Mentions.
♥
I would like to offer my views on the subject of characterization in my writing. It is a subject that repeatedly comes up for discussion in writing circles. First, let me point out that books of instruction abound on this particular topic, with two schools of thought: know all about your characters before you start writing, or let the characters introduce themselves to you when you first see them on the page. The Paris Interviews of our most famous authors indicate they wrote/write with the latter method. Katherine Anne Porter claimed she began writing Flowering Judas at 7:30 one night and was dropping it into a mailbox in the early dawn in a snowstorm. I have tried both methods and have chosen the latter. Let me give an example.
When I first read a contest theme “footprints on the ceiling,” I thought I could never write on such a subject. A day or so later, I asked myself, “Where would one be if he saw footprints on a ceiling?” Instantly, the answer came from somewhere in my gray cells: on a psychiatrist’s couch. That was all I needed to know. Hurrying to my computer, I began writing with “Dr. Heringshaw . . . ,” using a name familiar to me. After every word I typed, the next word or phrase came without hesitation. In one sitting, I wrote the 1,942-word story and did not revise it. I revise as I go. No one edits for me. Perhaps I have lost big in the contest—I have no idea about that yet—but all I knew about the protagonist was what he acted out and thought while in the doctor’s consulting room. I did not know his name till the doctor called him “Henry.” I did not know his age, income, family except his saying, “Maggie buys bananas every week.” She had to be his wife. I did not dream the story would have a cheetah in it till it did. That gave me the story’s title: “Steady Date with a Cheetah.” (I rarely name the baby till it’s born, usually about midway through the story.) Henry and the doctor are the only characters, and I tell only what Henry thinks about the doctor: I do not describe him. I do not even describe Henry. We do not need to know the color of his hair or eyes, his height or weight, or his hobbies or ancestry. However, we sense he is not skinny, but the doctor may be, for Henry thinks, “I bet he never eats pizza, the best food in the world.” That is how we know about the size of both of them. By being in Henry’s head for about ninety minutes, I learned to know him well, just as the reader might.
For the contest with no assigned theme, it was much the same thing. I had just finished reading two books, one a novel with a World War II setting in France, and the other nonfiction about France at that same historic time. Immediately I fled to my computer and wrote the fiction part of the story (not at one sitting, but more like a week), with a twelve-year-old heroine, and then dug into my files about the Allied Invasion on Normandy beach. My 3,206-word story, “To Save a Bridge,” even factually mentions General Eisenhower. I also checked with two friends to get my French correct for “Mama,” but I already knew the German perfectly.
What a thrill to write this way. If you have not tried this method of introducing your characters, why not try it. It makes writing fun. The hard work comes in all those prior years when you trained yourself to write, such as learning grammar in the fifth grade. A writer never lacks subjects to write about, the job is to select which one. I trust these two stories will win at least Honorable Mentions.
♥
Monday, August 1, 2011
Congress (or anyone else) Is Silly to Say These Things More Than Once
At the end of the day, having said that, to come together, at this point in time, . . .
Can you think of any other over-worked Washington phrases like these? I get so tired of them and one is usually bad grammar when the politicians posture with it. Having said that, I need to add the subject of the sentence right after saying that beginning phrase. Such as, “Having sad that, I” or “we” perhaps, it depends on who did the saying. Now that I’ve pointed out this error to you, perhaps by this time, the Congressmen’s secretaries will have taught them the right way. But listen for it and see if you can catch them in the offense. Neil Cavuto says it right. His English is good. Maybe I’ll vote for him.
At the end of the day, having said that, to come together, at this point in time, . . .
Can you think of any other over-worked Washington phrases like these? I get so tired of them and one is usually bad grammar when the politicians posture with it. Having said that, I need to add the subject of the sentence right after saying that beginning phrase. Such as, “Having sad that, I” or “we” perhaps, it depends on who did the saying. Now that I’ve pointed out this error to you, perhaps by this time, the Congressmen’s secretaries will have taught them the right way. But listen for it and see if you can catch them in the offense. Neil Cavuto says it right. His English is good. Maybe I’ll vote for him.
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