December 16, 2013 · 6:34 pm

The Man Who Came to Dinner

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 “After all my time on this earth, I was becoming the person I was meant to be.” Donald L. Brown

I am not in the habit of inviting authors on book tour to my home for dinner, but if I were, our life would be more interesting. Nevertheless, I took this step after hearing Donald Brown promote his book, The Morphine Dream, in Seattle a few weeks ago. Having written a memoir of my own, I consider it good form to support other memoirists. And this man’s story is extraordinary.

It is hard to know where to begin with him. As a high school dropout, former Marine, and washed-up professional athlete, Don suffered an on-the-job industrial forklift accident in 1980 that subjected him to multiple surgeries for “severe internal derangement of the knee” and years of confinement to a wheelchair. Clearly his life had changed, and somehow he would have to take matters into his own hands.

Don’s orthopedic surgeon advised him, “Go back to school. You have a fine mind. Put it to work for yourself. It’s time to rely on your intellect, not your body. Put the energy and passion you’ve always had during your athletic career to work for your mind.”

By reading and listening to motivational books and tapes, Don turned his stay at Boston’s New England Baptist Hospital into an opportunity to repurpose his life. “Where do you want to be in five years?” one tape asked him, and Don noted “Harvard Law School” on a pad of paper. Next, the motivational tape asked him where he would like to be in ten years, and despite the fact that physicians had told him he might never walk again, Don wrote down “Walking U.S.A.”

Fueled by morphine for the pain, “I was sky-high,” Brown said. “I was flying.”

“Hospitalization was good for me,” recalls Don. “I had come to realize that my athletic career had been a result of incredibly hard work and focus. I knew I had to get engaged in a new future and work as hard as I did to be a professional athlete.”

In this way Don accomplished each of his goals. From a GED to community college to transfer into Amherst College, Don landed in the Harvard Law School of his dreams. Then in 1997, following graduation, “overweight, over fifty, a diabetic, and…. lucky to be walking at all,” averaging 41 miles per day, Don made the 5,004 mile trek across the continent in 137 days. Starting at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in Copley Square and taking the northern route, he completed his journey by coming over Stevens Pass in Washington, and walking on down the coast through Oregon, Northern California and Big Sur, reaching his destination in San Simeon with the Pacific Ocean before him.

“I didn’t even bother to take off my shoes. I simply walked right in,” writes Don.

His method for turning dreams into actuality was always a carefully formulated plan of execution. While attending community college he distinguished himself by sitting front and center in lecture halls and winning every student award he could. At Amherst—still wheelchair bound—Don moved into a dorm the summer before starting “to figure out how to navigate the hills and dales of the campus, get my syllabi and books, meet my professors, and, most importantly, start reading.” From the start, Don told everyone he met at Amherst of his goal of attending Harvard Law School.

Likewise with the walk, “I knew when I departed Boston that if I could make it through the first two weeks, I would complete the entire journey.” It was a mental challenge as much as anything. Don divided each day’s walk into four ten mile walks in his head, considered crossing state lines a powerful motivator, and basically “realized I must push on, or else the notion of quitting when things got tough would rule the walk.”

Long distance walker Rob Sweetgall had taught him that “if I completed an arduous and lengthy walk one day, and then repeated it the next day without difficulty, I’d be prepared for that distance—regularly.”

Well, what could we say to that? Before us stood a man who in his life had learned so much about himself, tested it, and it held. I’m sure we squirmed a little in our chairs, then made every effort to buy the book.

That is when I invited him to dinner. What I recognized right away was his effectiveness in all things–something he hadn’t even mentioned was the writing of the book and its publication, no easy feat, I know. And at the end of the evening, at his request, Don Brown went off with a copy of my manuscript, the memoir I mentioned.

Shhh…. He is reading it now.

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December 6, 2013 · 9:35 pm

Why We Need Artists

dh-david-hockney-pop-art-paintings

Because I grew up on the East Coast, I still get a kick out of towns, hills, creeks, rivers, and roads with Western names. Raised on enough Westerns for it to be a part of my television DNA,  I don’t think a born Westerner would derive the same pleasure, as I made note on an impossibly long drive the names: Sweet Briar, Tom Cat Hill, Lost Man Creek, Rogue River, Wonder Stump Road, and dozens more. As a writer, I may use them someday.

“It sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it,” David Hockney once explained. We did not know then, on our drive to San Francisco, that we would be attending Hockney’s “A Bigger Exhibition” at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. But that’s just what we did. And it made sense. It made sense of everything.

Having studied at the Royal Academy of Art in London, Hockney moved to Los Angeles in the 1960’s. There, the extraordinarily talented British artist immersed himself in swimming pools, mid-century architecture, palm trees, portraiture, and the Southern Californian sun-drenched light for twenty-five years. Returning to his native Yorkshire, England in 1996, “A Bigger Exhibition” covers the years since his return to England. Hockney’s 21st century art, one might say. More than ever now his subject is light, from the bleakness of winter to the excitement of its return in spring and summer, and throughout the hours in a day.

“People don’t look very hard,” notes Hockey. “I do, and I do something with it.” 300+ works make up this monumental and expansive exhibition in oil, watercolor, charcoal drawings, digital films, and  iPad paintings. A seventy-six year old man today, Hockney is running circles around us and calling our attention to the world.

Stepping out into the park, every which way I turned was a “Hockney.” The sunlight through trees, the trees bereft of leaves, and this sensation continued all the ride up the coast toward home. The Tuscan hillsides of Napa and Sonoma, the cathedral-like presence of redwood forests, the Big Sur experience with rocks, the Pacific as a sheet of mica, and gleaming white towns along its edge. We took the long coastal route back, following the contours of hills and river beds on roads that switched and turned south, then north again. The Old Coast Highway. And I saw it all through David Hockney’s eyes.

This is why we need artists in this world.

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November 27, 2013 · 8:47 pm

Going to the Movies

John WayneThe holidays have me thinking of going to the movies, an occasion that has morphed into many venues, but what has stayed consistent is our desire for escape. When I lived in NYC as a child, going to the movies at Rockefeller Center was a monumental event for which we wore our Sunday best. The film “The Wizard of Oz” played on television every Thanksgiving evening, and we waited all year to see it. Now families own it or stream it to view whenever. 

A member of my writing workshop, Paul Wagoneer recalls a time when he and his friends worked all Saturday morning to scrape together the dime it took to each attend the matinee movie. Paul is ninety now, and I am pleased again to have him as guest writer on my blog. Here is his story:

At The Majestic and The Ritz

by Paul Wagoneer

My home town boasted two theaters, sometimes grandly called cinemas: The Ritz and The Majestic. I didn’t reach the town that I called home in time to see my first movie. I began at The Grand in another county seat, 50 miles north, where I paid the price for a first-grader. Ten cents. sounds like chump change, but earning a dime took as much sweat, tears and ingenuity as a ticket in 2013.

On Saturday morning our gang in Knoxville marshaled their four-wheeled Red Flyers, each about 3 feet long. We scoured alleys for scrap iron. Heavy grates were top-of-the line, followed by bicycle sprockets and fenders and at the bottom, tin cans. Railroad track, fish plates and spikes lay beyond our dreams. About 11:00 AM our troop reached the junk yard. Mr. Gavronsky weighed the junk tottering on our coaster wagons, and if the boy was lucky, swapped his metallic load for Mr. Gavronsky’s ten metallic pennies.

At 1:00 PM the gaggle reached The Grand, to be measured against the height of the teller ticket counter, the small shelf where the clerk took the dimes. If a tall, older kid approached, he owed the astronomical quarter dollar that adults paid. But that was before the Great Depression in 1929.

The show opened with a serial where monkeys pedaled tricycles. A Pathe’ newsreel showed Hitler’s rising brown-shirts goose stepping. In the main feature, a cowboy in a black hat chased a cowboy in a white hat to a precipice, drew his six-shooter and the movie ended, to be continued next Saturday.

By 1935 the Waggoners had detoured through South Dakota, deflation and hard times to reach my home town. Centerville, Iowa was another county seat that boasted two move theatres. The Ritz for whoop-and-holler entertainment and The Majestic, where I enacted the climax of my story.

The price was still 10 or 25 cents. By then I hunkered down, vainly trying to win classification for the 10 cent ticket. I raised my money by working for dad in his new store. The program had become: coming attractions, the news, and the Shepherd of the Hills set in the Ozark Mountains and starring John Wayne, starting his ascendance to immortality.

Then as in 2013, I sat with friends and talked at the wrong time. A large man in a three piece-suit, erect in front of us, turned and said with authority, “Be quiet.” He was Mr. Bradley, the town banker. Quiet reined.

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November 21, 2013 · 12:01 am

“Batkid Saves City”

I feel bad about the fact that in my efforts to raise extraordinary children, I fell short of being a good mom. By this I mean, in my mind costume items were kept in a costume trunk for dressing up at home or going out on Halloween. Otherwise, when we went out I wanted them well-dressed, well put-together. Now, who was I doing that for but for myself and maybe other moms?

Looking back, my daughters must have been turning their heads with awe at the girls who got to wear tutus over their pants if they felt like it, or boys of summer dressed as Spider Man, or all the children who put together the most interesting, outlandish combinations of clothes, themselves, every day. They are probably the most creative people today, including fashion designers. And many of them, I would imagine, live in San Francisco. A city that knows how to celebrate life in costume.

Witness the Batkid event in San Francisco on Friday, November 15th. No matter what one’s week was like, it had to be uplifted by a city that transformed itself into Gotham City, and the thousands of volunteers and onlookers who turned out see one little boy’s wish come true.

Miles Scott, age 5, dreamed of being Batkid. As a child battling cancer, he believed in Batman as only a child can. And Batman licked the cancer as only Batman can. In any case, superheros helped pull him through, and superheros always win. So when Miles’ treatments were finished and the leukemia went into remission, Make-A-Wish Foundation pulled out all the stops to make his wish come true.

By many accounts, the event was more phenomenal to the city than when the Giants won the World Series in 2010.

Miles came to the city with his family under the guise of picking up a Batkid costume. Everyone was in on it but Miles. In the family’s hotel room in the morning, “Breaking News” interrupted television programming with SF Police Chief Greg Suhr calling on Batkid with “We need your help!” Dressed in his new costume, Batkid scurried down to the lobby and, accompanied by an adult Batman, sped off in a black Lamborghini Batmobile—all major roads having been cleared for the event. Throughout the day the two of them sprung into action from one staged event to another: rescuing a damsel in distress tied to cable car tracks on Union Square, thwarting the Riddler’s attempted robbery of a bank vault and seeing him off in a paddy wagon, and onward to AT & T park to rescue Lou Seal, the Giant’s mascot, who had been kidnapped by the Penguin.

One long ambitious day with flash mobs and cheering crowds everywhere. A special edition of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper read “BATKID SAVES CITY” on the front page. And the day ended with Mayor Ed Lee presenting Miles with the keys to the city. Throughout it all, the five year old boy struck the pose and the poise of the superhero that he truly is.

The story that went around the world. And as one twitter user wrote, “Sometimes humans get it right.”

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November 13, 2013 · 9:23 pm

Gray Matters

Winter is here. Dressed in a dark, wet overcoat like an old crow, rapping on the door.

In my first winter in Seattle, I found myself browsing garden shops wherever I could find them. At City People’s Mercantile on Sand Point Way I was somewhere between contemplating a root grubbing tool and musing over a new kneeling pad when suddenly, an announcement came over the store’s loud-speaker.

“We’re having a sun break,” the voice on the intercom cried. “Everyone step out, staff included!”

And we all ran out to raise our serotonin levels.

So where am I going with this?

I find it interesting that the Pacific Northwest and Scandinavia, both modern and progressive regions of significant light deprivation for well over half the year, deal with the phenomena so differently.

A sense of geographic isolation pervades both regions as well. “Geographically Scandinavia is a cul de sac, on the road to nowhere but the old enemy, Russia, across the Baltic Sea,” notes Jocasta Innes, author of Scandinavian Painted Décor. And I think we feel much that way, like a half way point to Alaska, in Seattle. But because of that isolation, each region has had the opportunity to create a highly developed style.

“All this green means that we take more rain than any but the most dreary of souls could find tolerable,” writes Ann Wall Frank, in her intro to Northwest Style. “Rain dulls the color of the skies. Rain seems endless. Rain soaks our psyches. When the Gods are spoon-feeding you rain, you deal with it, sometimes by creating the perfect shelter,” she continues.

In The Pacific Northwest we muddle through long rainy winters and much of spring and fall in rooms painted in somber colors, taking our color palatte “from the bark of a single Douglas fir,” notes Frank. We find warmth in full-toned woods and heavy textiles. Even our coffee shops are dark, like pubs. We tend to dress in darks or drab, and are easily startled by bright color.

And although the temperature is moderate, the architecture of our homes in the Pacific Northwest is designed with overhanging roof lines protecting us from the elements: rain, snow, pine needles, and I might add, light. What little light there is.

Whereas Scandinavians endure sub-zero temperatures and months of near total darkness, yet embrace the light by painting their interiors in shades of white, keeping their wood blond or painted light, and their fabrics lightweight, such as linen. It’s counterintuitive to our way of thinking, but Scandinavian interiors draw from a cool color palatte of pale muted blues and grays. Their rooms speak of summer houses, cottages, boathouses and such.

Remarkably different approaches to lack of light. One region is wet, the other, snowy. And therein lies the difference. It turns out to be not about the light. It’s the dampness, and that makes all the difference in the world.

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November 6, 2013 · 7:51 pm

Ghosts, the Sequel

Apparently I am not done with my blog post of last week (https://alittleelbowroom.com/2013/10/30/the-ghost-in-my-computer/) in which I lamented personal loss of writing time due to addiction to the internet. For no sooner had I posted it, when I turned around and realized yet another victim: my reading time. And by that I mean books, not comments and articles online.

Anyone who knows me, or knows who I was until recently, knows my home to be my personal library. Literature has long been considered sacred in this house. In graduate school we were required to read a book each week, and following graduation I continued the ritual in earnest for a couple of years. Until just recently, in fact.

The only danger, I had thought, would be the house imploding under the weight of books. Being a bibliophile at a time when so many others are unloading has been a delight second to none.

I read because I felt I must. I’m talking close reading. Carnivorously, with a yellow highlighter in hand like a fork. Because, as all readers know, literature can be so much better than life. And literature makes us better people. Also, as a writer I knew that the very best thing I could be doing, if not writing, was reading.

And that was my life. I missed films to maintain it, became an introvert to maintain it. And whether under the sun, on the sofa before the fireplace, seated a city bus or in a waiting room, I loved my solitary time spent with books. For that matter, I found my tribe by our mutual investment in time spent reading, as well as writing. And the fact that online addiction is infringing on this too….

Well, this is war!

For the past three weeks my husband has been in Napal on a trek in the Himalayas. Living alone and a little lonelier, I turned to the internet like never before. This is when, I think, I got into serious trouble. Or could it be that as he climbed the Himalayas, I realized how much trouble I was in?

Prayer flags there, falling leaves here….

I have kept a thick anthology of poetry at Copper Canyon Press in the back of my car for as long as I’ve owned the car (many years). “Poetry for emergencies,” I called it, should I ever break down and get stranded. Well maybe that moment is now.

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” Mary Oliver

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October 30, 2013 · 6:13 pm

The Ghost in My Computer

Every year now I get more into Halloween. I don’t know what that says about me. Second childhood coming around perhaps? Now that’s scary.

When my daughters were young– and Halloween was always their favorite–I hobbled through it with eyes on what I considered more important upcoming holidays, namely Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I feel bad about that.

Sure I helped them with their costumes, but didn’t stay up nights like some moms with felt, tulle, shears, super glue and sewing machines. I like to think that because the girls essentially did it themselves, they became the creative women they are today.

This year, I’m pleased to say, I ushered in the holiday at the “Hallows in the Cathedral” concert performed by The Seattle Women’s Chorus at St. Mark’s Cathedral. Chanting, singing classical, showtunes, and pop in powdered white faces with dark red lips, capes and hoods, in a cathedral dark and remarkably unembellished, it was heavenly in a pagan sort of way.

So here is what is really haunting me lately: internet addiction. Call it an obsession, call it possession, it is coming to get me. I can feel it. It’s an addiction that crept up slowly over the years, and suddenly, can pull one under.

Once upon a time, I could go to my laptop and write. Now I have to clear all the email and check facebook, which sends me listening to Ted Talks, reading blogs of interest, newspaper articles of interest, signing petitions, and circulating petitions. Seeing where my daughters are, and what my husband is up to. Catching up on everyone’s photo album, travels and endeavors, hearing new music, old music, viewing U Tube videos. Browsing my favorite stores, browsing One King’s Lane, Joss & Main, Gilt and Haute. Off on tangents I never would have anticipated, and couldn’t begin to retrace.

And this happens every day.

All this before I’ve written one word.

Even my Morning Pages practice of nearly two decades is under assault. Although I write in another room, I hop up and down at every opportunity to log on. Sneaking and peeking, the obsessive-compulsive checking of email and facebook.

Can’t take ten steps without turning around and going back “to check.”

Can’t be in the same room and get into anything else. See what I mean?

Even as I write this, I am checking my email & facebook messages and posts. Thank god I don’t carry a smart phone. Thank god I don’t text or tweet too.

Sometimes instead of logging out, I have to shut it down and pretend that it needs its sleep. And go for a walk.

Oh get me out of here (writing at home)! I need a job. A job that isn’t wired. Something in the wilderness. Something like a park ranger.

My friend Teri Clifford has a sticker system. Using little gummy stars on her calendar each day, she gives herself one color for having exercised, and another color for journaling. I should adopt this. With the color green for staying off the internet one whole day.

For only nature can save me now.

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October 23, 2013 · 4:35 pm

Blogging in an Alternate Universe

It was a rough week for blogging. Everything I thought I would write about turned out to be, well, nothing.

When my daughters and I and their yellow lab named Charlie set out for an evening of dining under the stars at Zazie Restaurant in San Francisco, I was certain I would write that up. Weather permitting, monday nights are open to dogs on the patio at Zazie, one of our favorite eating places in town. For her part, Charlie (Charlie is a girl) behaved with perfect aplomb (she’s done this before), sitting demurely by our table, waiting for someone to pass the treats. I looked around the patio and all of the dining dogs were on best behavior. Small dogs sat placidly on people’s laps. Nobody barked. No one had an accident. It was all so darn civil that I forgot all about mining material for my blog, as there was nothing to write. Dining with dogs was as normal as, well, dining at home.

San Francisco is like that. An alternate universe that actually functions better than the other.

Terminal 2 at SFO (San Francisco International Airport) offers a yoga room. Is this not a first? Now there’s my blog, I thought, and after clearing security, hastened to it. Free of charge and furnished with mats, mirrors, and a floating blue wall. Softly lit, calm, quiet, a mobile phone-free zone for meditation and stretching out–before having to fold one’s self up like an origami crane on the plane.

Everything surprisingly natural there too, in the yoga room. And no good for blogging.

Back in Seattle, I recalled writer Isabel Allende here on a book tour, telling the attending crowd that if she didn’t live in The Bay Area, Seattle is where she would like to live. For I feel the same way, the other way around.

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October 16, 2013 · 4:34 pm

A Wedding in Mendocino

“Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace.” Paul Theroux

There is nothing like a destination wedding, for it is a gift to all. Last weekend we attended a Hawaiian themed wedding in Mendocino, California. Driving one hundred and fifty miles north of San Francisco, a stunningly beautiful and varied terrain unfolded. Sunny and dry Sonoma with fall colored grape leaves turned into Redwood forests deep and dark, and came out on the Pacific Coast Highway. There, with hawks circling on high over land that has done everything in its power to keep from development, perched the white shingled town of Mendocino on a headland jetting out into the ocean. How it glistened! We were fortunate, they said, for it is often foggy.

Our bride was elegant in elbow length gloves and vintage Hawaiian. The groom wore shorts and a Tommy Bahama shirt. Their guests went to all lengths to wear tropical prints.

Floral arrangements blazed in brilliant oranges, reds and purples: bird of paradise, lobster claw, halaconia, torch ginger, and liatris. Orchids poised throughout. People mingled with leis and kukui nut beads strung around their necks. The surf, the pop of champagne corks, and clink of toasting glasses.

And Hawaii was in the feast. Pork with pear sauce, prawns, scallops. Pate, duck confit, ahi with sesame and soy ginger sauce. Fresh cut papaya, pineapple, kiwi, and mango. Banana cream pies in lieu of a wedding cake.

Did I mention the wine? Did I mention they married?

When I love a place I start to see my life there. How else to live multiple lives? Three weeks ago I was practically house hunting in Laguna Beach, but my first impression of Mendocino is one I may never get over.

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October 9, 2013 · 3:41 pm

Confession of an Arsonist

For a few years now I’ve been conducting a writing workshop at Queen Anne Manor, a retirement home in Seattle. What had begun as a six-week teaching practicum requirement for my MFA, shows no signs of ever letting up. “Confession of an Arsonist” by Paul E. Waggoner is an example of the stories we create each week  from the material of our lives.

Paul began at The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in 1951 and worked as director for 36 years until his retirement. He then continued research, often with a colleague from Rockefeller University, and in 2012 they published that global cropland would reach a peak expanse in the 21st century, a sequel of their “How Much Land Can Ten Billion People Spare for Nature.”

Crossing the continent at ninety to live closer to his family, Paul joined our writing workshop. It is with his permission of course, that I publish this piece. 

Confession of an Arsonist 

by Paul E. Waggoner

Once upon a time in Iowa in a town called Centerville, celebrating Independence Day ranked up there with Christmas. Firecrackers ranked with stuffed stockings, candy canes and spicy stuffing.

For the Fourth of July, Centervillans planned for weeks. For weeks, the tall, lanky sheriff of Appanoose County grew a beard like Honest Abe’s. The man who wore the star awed youngsters and persuaded voters to keep him in office. The sheriff wore a top hat, just as Lincoln did when he delivered the Gettysburg address. The personification of law and order was awesome as he strode the courthouse Square.  Waggoner Pic

Although Centerville was still the county seat and celebrated the Fourth in style, it had seen better times. In the 1890s, coal miners opened mines. Immigrants from Central Europe and Italy swelled the population. They dug coal and hauled it behind ponies that never came up the mine shaft to sunshine. But after World War I, hard times struck.

Nevertheless during the mining boom, men had become rich enough to build and then abandon what seemed like mansions to farm boys. Never mind that windows were shattered and plaster falling. The wealthy passed, but their mansions survived into the 1930s.

On the Fourth of July, boys from another neighborhood trespassed on our turf, the territory of the Maple StreetGang. We were prepared.

First, the Gang tried infantry tactics learned on the flickering screen of black-and-white Saturday matinees. Those maneuvers drove the invaders across the boundaries of the Maple Street Gang. Heavy artillery followed.

Other boys might carry lady fingers, sparklers and cones-of-fire. But we had Cherry Bombs, red but larger than a cherry. Our heavy artillery, they were nearly as large as golf balls.

After infantry tactic drove the trespassers back acros our boundaries, they retreated to a decaying mansion. No grand palace, but big enough to shelter small-town boys. In their dilapidated stronghold the fugitives scrabbled up broken plaster and pitched shards out missing windows.

You guessed what happened. Through windows our pursuing force lobbed our heavy artillery of Cherry Bombs. Smoke appeared at windows, closely followed by hotfooting, retreating invaders. The town’sfire siren wailed. We heard the roar of the fire engine approaching. The Maple Street Gang fled to its turf.

Now, safe beyond Iowa jurisdiction and shielded behind the statute of limitation, an apprentice arsonist confesses.

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