Was and Is and Will Be
Seven years ago today, my agent made my first "real" book deal. I was in Ireland researching the Moon guide, so she had to call me at the hostel where I was staying in Connemara. Seven years ago today, the great dream of my childhood came true.
Who are you, once you get the one thing you really really want?
You have to grow into someone else—someone with an even bigger dream.
I know it doesn't look like I'm putting much thought or effort into my blog these days, so BOY will you be surprised when I finally show you what I've been working on. I'm growing, and it's an exhilarating but sometimes-painful process. Some important people in my life aren't going to like the direction I'm headed in, and that's okay. If I had to pick one piece of advice to live my life by, it would be this (from Richard Bach's Illusions):
New dreams are incubating. I'm really, really excited.
'This life I relish, and secure the next.'
Yeah, sorry, I fell off the map again. I was re-revising a novel (and now it's ready to go out!!!) More on that soon, hopefully.And now, without further ado: a proper Hawthornden post.
Hawthornden Castle was the home of the poet William Drummond (1585-1649). (You'd assume these lines are his, but they've actually been attributed to a poet called Young.) Drummond once invited Ben Jonson up for a visit, and he walked all the way from London! The poet laureate's visit is well documented. Apparently he wore out his welcome, but was happily oblivious to the fact that Drummond no longer considered him a friend. Yikes.Hawthornden is splendidly situated on a crag overlooking the River North Esk. The oldest part of the castle is a ruined tower that dates from the 15th century (there's now a small library housed in the ground floor); the greater part of the castle dates from the 17th century, when William Drummond's father acquired it. Thanks to Mrs. Heinz, it's been a writers' retreat since the early 1980s. Residencies last four weeks, and there are six writers there at a time. Hamish, the administrator, is effectively the host, making sure everything (from the ink cartridges in the printer to the happy vegan food on my plate) runs smoothly.
I can't possibly overstate what this residency meant to me. I needed the time, I needed the space, I needed the solitude and the glorious communion with nature, and I got all this "in spades" by the grace of Mrs. Heinz and the Hawthornden admissions panel. They gave me the chance to make my own magic.
The week before my residency began I also thanked William Drummond "in person." This portrait is on display at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.Considering the following item on the application form, I hadn't expected to dine like a queen (and hey, I would have been totally cool with eating only boiled vegetables for dinner, for an opportunity like this!)... 
...so I was delighted to find that the household staff had stocked the fridge with soy mince crumbles, soy cheese and almond milk for my arrival. (I get teary just thinking about it. THEY ARE SO AWESOME.) Ally is a fantastic chef--he cooked amazing vegan versions of every dinner for me: "shepherd's pie," veggie risotto, DIVINE curry, and so on. I always got dessert, too--fresh fruit and lemon sorbet or mango or chocolate soy yogurt. So I ate like a queen after all.I found the castle cozy, not spooky at all, and my fellows were absolutely lovely. I'd said to myself as I was looking ahead to the residency, "everyone there WILL be nice and friendly," and they totally were. I even got to connect with Kirsty (@kirstylogan) ahead of time on Twitter.(Oh, and I was the only American, which was very fun.)
Here was my favorite spot to read and dream--the "summer library" off the drawing room, with a gorgeous view over the ravine. It's cold in there, so I brought in a blanket, hat and scarf and got cozy on the window seat. I loved to come down again around 4:30 and watch the dusk settle over the valley. The trees in that ravine are the most majestic living things I have ever seen (and I have seen sequoias!)
I would get up around 9 and come down for breakfast (porridge with brown sugar and almond or coconut milk, wheat bread with sunflower spread, coffee and orange juice). Tendai and Helena are early (or at least earlier) risers, but I pretty much always got to have breakfast with Melanie, Kirsty, and Colin. I could never manage to get myself up earlier so I could meditate first thing, so I'd come back up to my room and take my twenty minutes of quiet time before I began to work.Oh, and speaking of quiet time--there is absolutely no internet at the castle, so you'd pretty much have to walk to the nearest public library (or the Rosslyn Chapel cafe, which has WiFi) if you wanted to get online. I didn't use the internet for TWO WHOLE WEEKS and it was amazing how much I enjoyed the breather. So much less noise in my head, you know?I reread and I cut and I re-outlined. I wrote HARD and it was so, so satisfying. I didn't really give myself any days off, and yet I always felt totally rested.
Lunch arrived in a Fortnum & Mason basket: some sort of delicious vegetable soup (like pea and mint, lentil, or tomato basil), a peanut butter sandwich on seeded wheat bread, and carrot sticks with hummus. (That's just what I wanted every day--you can order pretty much whatever you want for a sandwich and fruit.) On extra-specially lucky days I got soy cheese cut into sticks! (Mary and Georgina, I love you!)
The 17th-century wellhead just outside the castle gate.I always went for an afternoon walk (saving my peanut butter sandwich to have with tea afterward), though the break time and length depended on how the work was going that day. Most of the time I just did the fifteen-minute loop below the castle because I was anxious to get back to my desk. I went on longer walks in the last two weeks, once I knew I'd be making my goal for the residency (i.e., finishing the draft).In the evenings before dinner, I practiced yoga either with Melanie in the drawing room or on my own in my bedroom. (I'm doing yoga every day now. I feel my arm muscles getting stronger, and I'm more flexible than ever.)We came down for dinner at 7pm, and could always expect a lively conversation along with the meal. (There's a separate dining room for Sundays, with a proper fire in the grate. There used to be open fires in every room, but the fire department nixed that practice.)After dessert Hamish would say, "Shall we go upstairs?" and we'd spend an hour or two in the drawing room chatting, playing a board game, or reading in companionable silence. Then, before bedtime, I might take a nice long soak in the enormous old bathtub on the writers' floor (which, interestingly, was built for servants' quarters in the 19th century).
Two of our Sundays at Hawthornden Kirsty, Melanie, and I (plus Colin the first Sunday) attended Sunday service at Rosslyn Chapel (for the architecture, history, and atmosphere, I assure you), then walked back to the castle (Hamish dropped us off). I have photos from the first time I visited the chapel back in February 2011 that I never got around to blogging, so I'll tell you more in a future post. I snapped these icicles as we were walking home.
Mint in the library conservatory.
Drummond was engaged to a young, beautiful and accomplished lady, daughter of Cunninghame of Barnes. The day was fixed for the wedding. She died on its very eve. Such a blow to a tender and loving heart must have been terrible in the extreme. We need not wonder that the disconsolate and bereaved bridegroom left Hawthornden for some years, and travelled to distant climes and amid other scenes...
I browsed through this book. I know you will find this difficult to believe, but it is not as interesting as it looks.According to Reverend Thompson, the well in the courtyard is more than fifty feet deep ('with about 4 ft. of water when I measured it on 31st March, 1892.') Two views, from above...
...and below. (Taken on our tour of the caves and dungeon.)
(An excerpt from Susanna MacIver's Cookery and Pastry, 1789. Once I was finished with my rewrite I got to read interesting old books as research for my NEW novel.)
In the last days of our residency I joked about locking myself in Colin's humongous wardrobe so I wouldn't have to leave. Kirsty made each of us flash fiction zines as a going-away gift. We passed many contented evenings in this drawing room! (Also, each night of our last week, one of us would read from our work in progress. That was such a treat.)
It feels so dramatic to write a shipwreck with rain staticking & wind screaming down the chimney. Hawthornden, how will I write without you?-- Kirsty Logan (@kirstylogan) January 31, 2013
There are so many things I'm leaving out--weird things, wonderful things, things I'm not able to put words around just yet. It really was a magical period in my life, and I'll always be grateful to everyone at Hawthornden for that gift.
I have even more photos I want to share with you, so there will be another post (a "virtual castle walk") after this one!Also, if you are interested in applying to Hawthornden (snail mail only, annual deadline June 30th), leave me a comment with your email address and I'll get back to you with the details. (You could phone or write, the contact details are online, but they do have an email address.)* * *Previous Hawthornden posts:
Flashwrite #10: Make Your Own Ecstasy
The most accurate (and inspiring) definition of the word "ecstasy"...
ecstasy = ek + stasis = 'standing outside oneself'
...snow and more snow, and a bit of reflection on our four-week residency at beautiful Hawthornden Castle with my new friend Tendai Huchu, author of The Hairdresser of Harare. I read a short excerpt from The Essential Donne (now out of print), edited by Amy Clampitt. Proper entry on my Hawthornden experience coming soon!* * *(All Flashwrite episodes here.)
"First I was born; and now this."
(That's my favorite entry in the Hawthornden leaving book.)
I love Mrs. Heinz's bookplate. (Mrs. Heinz is our benefactress.)
The castle courtyard.
My primary workspace.
Two of the four Sundays Kirsty, Melanie and I went to the Rosslyn Chapel and walked home in the snow.
See that gable to the left of the turret? That was my room.
The old Rosslyn Castle station platform.
Down in the dungeon. Hamish looks tempted to lock me in.More soon (including a new video on Monday!)
Fall Squam, part 2
The table o' writing prompts, before my workshop began.(Fall Squam, part 1; recap on the official Squam blog.)This week I've been feeling wonky in a good way, if that makes sense. Marie Manuchehri's Squam workshop changed my life, but not at all in the way I expected it to. Looking back, I went into it Friday morning all blithe and giddy, like la la la, she will give me lots of pretty, shiny insights! (In case you would rather read on than follow Marie's link first, she's a psychic medium and energy healer in the Seattle area--and a tremendously kind and generous human being.)Silly grasshopper. Insights don't always make you feel good—at least not right away—and truly, it isn't much of an insight if it doesn't yank you out of the confines (emotional or otherwise) you've laid out for yourself. Sometimes you have to deal with the ugly stuff first, and the really amazing thing is that once you stop avoiding the ugly stuff and take a good hard look, it doesn't seem so ugly anymore. Fear makes everything look dark and scary.I know I'm being vague here, but you know I'm doing it on purpose, because this is private stuff. Let me just say this: you can always, always be more honest with yourself. Maybe it's time to be brave, or maybe you're not quite there yet, but either way you'll eventually get your hands dirty digging for truth. I made "fortune cards" for my Saturday morning writing workshop, putting them face down on the table, and Crissy (who was in Marie's workshop with me) chose my favorite Flannery O'Connor quote (thank you, Ann Napolitano): The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. In other words: it is what it is, so you might as well face it.Thank you to everyone in that class—you were so patient with me, and helped me in the most surprising ways. And thanks most of all to Elizabeth, who I strongly suspect knew I needed to be there. Elizabeth is magical like that.
Okay, we're done with the woo woo stuff. I don't generally do a play-by-play of everything that happened at the retreat, but there are a few fun things I want to share. I also wanted to tell you that I really lucked out with my travel buddy: Alisha and I met on the Squam Community Board, and we drove up and back together, stopping at a hotel in Merrimack on Tuesday night. She is one of my new very favorite people, and I'm bummed we didn't pause for a photo together. (On the upside, I can see her pretty much any time we like!)
On Thursday I went into Kayte Terry's Color and Composition with zero expectations besides playing around with paper and fabric and having a lot of fun doing it--and I did. Kayte isn't into rules and theory, and that suited me really well; I made friends with my exacto knife, and experimented with echoes and negative space and painting on pages torn out of an old dictionary. I'll be posting a "part three" once I've had a chance to finish the projects I started in her class.
(That's a pic of me and Kayte that Julia took with her nifty neo-Polaroid camera.)
First game of Cards Against Humanity with fellow Squammies - so wrong it's right. #fb-- Kathleen Sweeney (@Sweeneybird) September 14, 2012
I went over to Long House after Thursday evening's entertainment (Maya Stein and Jonatha Brooke) to see if Kath (a.k.a. Sweeneybird) wanted to play some Scrabble. I found her with a bunch of people I didn't know yet playing Cards Against Humanity, and I joined in. It's like Apples to Apples, except completely perverted. (Kelly would have loved it.)
Some of the tamer cards in my hand.I used to be one of those people who is way too easily offended, so now I find myself getting even bigger laughs out of stuff like this to make up for all the time I wasted being prudish. This is no judgment on anyone who finds this game to be in poor taste; I totally see why you feel that way. But I had a LOT of fun.
Easterleigh, where I stayed this time.Friday night Amiee, Jen, Karen and I went for a 'swim' off this dock--I use quotes because we just stood in the water, chatted, and looked up at the stars. That was one of my favorite moments.
The writing prompt table, happily picked over.We only had an hour and fifteen minutes for the Saturday morning writing workshop, so I just gave everyone who showed up a little pep talk (make a beginning! any beginning! it doesn't matter if you're only talking about writing right now; I've been there!), then I showed them my collections of words and images and asked them to run with whichever they felt drawn to.
I also talked a little bit about the "mind mapping" technique and put my examples on display. You can read more about that in my Ideas, Part 2 post.
The lovely lady on the left chose my grandparents' wedding photo outtake (my grandfather's hand is hiding his face and my grandmother has this really odd expression on hers, which I've always found intriguing) and the shadow picture of me and Seanan in the Cotswolds. My photo and art postcard collection feels extremely personal, so I loved seeing which pictures the writers connected with on their own terms. (My friend and cabin-mate Julia, on the right, had just come from a Thai massage. I think we were all a little envious.)
Above and below are Amiee and Jen scribbling away--I feel so blessed they were in my cabin, and that we had plenty of opportunities to support and talk each other through the changes we're looking to make in our lives.
By the way, if you took the workshop on Saturday but forgot to add yourself to my email list (or if you weren't there, but are interested), leave me a comment and I'll forward you the email of fun inspirational links I sent out this morning.On Saturday afternoon, after Marie's book talk, I walked up Rattlesnake on my own. I needed to burn off some excess energy and sit in solitude for a little while. What a view, eh?
I had a mission at the art fair Saturday night--to buy $20 worth of raffle tickets for a Squammie who couldn't be there in person. Guess what? She won! (Third prize, a lovely vase from Gleena.) You know that if I'd bought those tickets for myself, I wouldn't have won--and I say that as in 'isn't that marvelous?,' not 'wishing I were luckier.' I already know I'm very, very lucky.
After the art fair I played Scrabble by the fire with Kath and Karen. I did not, however, get a photo with Karen. Next time!Alisha and I had a great deal to talk about and 'process' aloud on the seven-hour ride home, so much so that we never once stopped talking apart from the occasional navigational stuff.
Slightly disconcerting, no? (The truck cab was being towed.)Thank you to everyone this past week who smiled at me, listened to me, and let me listen. I'm so grateful!
Fall Squam, part 1
The ice house. (The iceboxes in the cabins use ice cut from the lake.)I know I say it every time, but this time it's extra-specially true: Squam changed my life, yet again--thanks to Marie Manuchehri (whose workshop I took on Friday) and a whole crew of wonderful friends, new and old.I also facilitated a really fun writing workshop. Eighteen people showed up and scribbled furiously for a good while. It was great.
No-stress story-telling with @pettymagic @squamlove instagr.am/p/Pmd0FPtCT7/-- Finch (Alexandra) (@LittlestFinch) September 15, 2012
For inspiration.
Exercise #1 in Color and Composition (still in process) with Kayte Terry.
The dock at Easterleigh, 7:30am.More soon.
A Very Primitive Species
Jeff Bridges is an amazing actor. He was robbed of an Oscar for Starman (1984), in which he plays an alien who clones Karen Allen's dead husband and leads her on a three-day road trip from Wisconsin to Arizona to meet his spaceship at the bottom of a crater. I know it sounds nutty, but it's actually a really romantic and thought-provoking movie. For example:
Starman: Dead deer? Why?Jenny: People hunt them, to eat, for food.Starman: Do deer eat people?Jenny: No.Starman: Do people eat people?Jenny: No, no, of course not. What do you think we are?Starman: I think you are a very primitive species.
Starman later brings the deer back to life, and the jerk hunter you see in the background (no, he really is a jerk) rounds up a bunch of cronies and they all try to beat him up.Watching this scene reminded me of a little thought experiment I come back to every now and again. We are at the top of the food chain, yes? But what if we weren't? What if some aliens touched down and announced that we were to be, wink wink nudge nudge, the guests of honor at their spaceship dinner party? They'd only be using the same rationale that we're using now.Hold up a second, someone might say to me. WE are a SENTIENT species.Sentient—yeah, okay, so we're sentient. Which means we ought to know better. Who's to say an animal suffers any less than we would, if we were put in the same position?***While we're on the subject, yesterday morning the wonderful vegan cookbook author/podcaster Colleen Patrick-Goudreau was interviewed on KQED (California public radio), and she tackled a lot of common questions and concerns people have about veganism and vegan nutrition; you can listen to the archived program here.***Okay, I have to come clean on one point. In the movie, Starman does eat a hamburger. [EDIT, 2018: I misremembered! Rewatched this movie recently and it's Karen Allen eating the hamburger. Starman just eats a lot of pie.]
The Laughter of Sanity
I have another guest post up on Nova's blog today! I hope you enjoy it. (You can enter to win a copy of Mary Modern, too!)
A very long time ago, when this thing was a mattress, many babies were made upon it.
Twelve Hours in Bangalore
10 May.At a shrine to Hanuman (the monkey-god) in the Bull Temple complex a priest and his boy assistant (who was maybe ten) were attending to an idol (maybe three feet tall, on a slanted platform), made of candy and adorned with garlands. They gave me a coconut sweet, but didn't let me take a picture.
I took an overnight bus from Madurai to Bangalore, made my train reservation for Hampi, and then had a whole day to kill, so I went on a city tour. Above: Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace, built around 1790.And just a few silly photos from the botanical gardens:
It's Disney time! (That's a working clock behind all the Seven Dwarves statues.)
CLASS-AYYYYYYY.
I'm turning Japanees, I think I'm turning Japanees, I really think so!I know, I know, that was pretty terrible. I couldn't resist.
Madurai
Detail from one of the gopurams (monumental towers) at the Meenakshi-Sundareswarar temple.Thanks to layovers, I got to see much more than I had originally planned on. I got to Munnar via Madurai, so on the way back I visited the temple there. I must have arrived too late in the day (10 or 10:30, maybe?), because the temple elephant was nowhere to be seen. (I went back and asked the guy who sold my ticket and he pointed out where I might find her, but I never did.) I wasn't too disappointed because (thanks to tips from my new friend Chris at Sadhana) I knew I'd get to see Lakshmi at Hampi.
I had the best thali meal of my trip in Madurai, at a place called Sree Sabarees. Forty-five rupees (ONE DOLLAR!) for a huge amount of food, including a little cup of the most delicious cardamom rice pudding! (I didn't take a photo in the restaurant because I already felt like a silly tourist as it was, but I did take a photo of another thali plate in Hampi, so I'll show you that later. In real thali restaurants they give you a banana leaf and come by frequently to refill your 'plate' with rice, curries, chutneys, and pappadam or chapathi, but in other restaurants they just bring you the plate and that's that.)
Anyway, back to the temple: it was marvelous, of course, a riot of color and texture and sound (there were loads of market stalls in shopping arcades offering mostly junk, apart from the flower sellers selling their fuchsia and white garlands). You walk into a place like this and realize just how limited and Eurocentric is your grade-school history education. (I felt this times a hundred while I was walking through the ruins at Hampi; but that's for another post.) I really enjoyed walking around (even if going barefoot still squicks me out a bit) and watching people at their devotions.
The two statues above are inside the temple art museum.From Madurai, I took an overnight bus to Bangalore for another layover en route to Hampi. I did a city tour that day, though, so I still have plenty of good pics!
Munnar
At Sadhana, on the taxi ride to dinner one night, I overheard Diva telling someone that a certain place was her favorite in all of India. Right away I wanted to know more about the place she was speaking of, because if Diva loved it then I knew I would too. And Munnar did not disappoint!
Tea leaves. I expected they'd smell like a cuppa, but there's no scent until they're processed.I did have a bit of a rough time getting there, but I'll skip most of the details and just tell you a cool little story. My calf was hurting so it was difficult to walk, and I was contemplating taking a taxi the rest of the way there (instead of standing for who knows how long at a crowded bus station, which I knew I couldn't really handle at the moment), but I balked at the price. I was having lunch at a hotel restaurant and trying to decide what to do (it was the hotel manager who was arranging the ride for me) when suddenly I heard my grandpa Ted's voice in my head. His voice would strain in a certain way when he got exasperated (which was anytime we were talking politics, of course), and I heard him in that tone of voice I remember so well: "For Chrissakes, honey, order the taxi!"It doesn't matter if it was really him or not. That taxi ride was worth every rupee, and I felt much better in the morning.
These photos are from a glorious day trek through tea and spice plantations (established by the British in the 19th century), which we finished off with an utterly delicious vegan-apart-from-the-raita lunch prepared by one of the guys from Green View. Highly, highly recommended.
No matter how beautiful or enjoyable you can find a place on its own, it's even better when you can experience it with new friends. I tagged along with Candice and Sophie, both from England, on the plantation trek, and we got to hang out for a couple days afterward. Sophie shared her knowledge of vegan baking, and Candice gave me loads of travel tips for Turkey (August 8th!!) and elsewhere. We sat on the roof patio at Green View drinking the local teas, eating takeaway samosas and talking for hours. They made me miss Sadhana less.
(As my friend Rich reminded me last night, life is a series of calculated risks, and this one was so worth it. You can get a better sense of the drop in this photo.)
Coming upon a bunch of guys building treehouses was another highlight. I want to live there SO BAD.
More Munnar photos soon--too many good ones to fit in one post!
Sadhana Forest
You'll never find a warmer welcome (and I'm not just talking about the signage).Why India? Why not? I learned and grew so much through my time in Vermont last summer that I wanted to volunteer farther afield. I was perusing the WWOOF* India boards, read glowing reports about a reforestation project-slash-eco-community in southern India called Sadhana Forest, filled out the volunteer form, got a wonderfully friendly reply from Sadhana founders Aviram and Yorit, and suddenly I was all set.(*WWOOF stands for Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms. It's a program through which you trade your labor for room and board. I've heard some people have had less positive experiences, but my time at Harmony Homestead Farm was truly life-changing. Also, I should note that Sadhana Forest isn't actually affiliated with WWOOF--accommodation is always free, but since they have no income they aren't able to pay for volunteers' food, so you contribute about $4 a day for your upkeep.)
Baby forest.Short-term volunteers are coming and going on a daily basis, but Sadhana Forest is a happy and loving place at any given time, the kind of place that will change you if you want it to--and I did. Through several conversations with my new friend Jamey (who is also from Jersey--funny how you travel so far to meet people who only live an hour away) and reading The China Study, I decided to cut all animal products from my diet. Sadhana Forest is 100% vegan, so the transition couldn't have been easier (even when I left the Forest, I didn't have any trouble finding ghee-free meals. Yay for Hindu cooking!) So yeah, that's the biggest change, and I'm hoping to blog regularly about veganism from now on (yummy recipes, clearing up misconceptions, all that sor of thing). I've also given up my morning coffee--having to get up at 5:30 every weekday morning and be productive without any caffeine whatsoever, well, that'll do it!(As for the work schedule, they do two two-hour shifts in the morning, with breakfast in between, and then you typically pick up a couple more shifts during the afternoons and weekends. Somebody's got to work during down time--otherwise nobody eats! I arrived during the dry season, which means there was no tree-planting going on, but I did get to do plenty of watering.)
Tobias, my swale-watering and kitchen buddy, zonked after first work.
Jamey giving an introductory talk about the history and mission of Sadhana Forest to visitors before Eco Film Club and free vegan dinner for all.On our excursions through nearby villages I saw plenty of scenes of everyday life. It isn't really possible to snap photos when you're riding your bike down a concrete lane all a-buzz with children playing (and jubilantly shouting hello, and wanting to shake your hand), women pumping water or hanging up laundry, chickens and dogs and cattle and lambs wandering about, so I can't show you all that I would typically see on a bike ride. I can tell you, though, that much of what I saw you would have categorized as abject poverty--and yet everyone I passed seemed perfectly content. So strange, at first, to see women looking like queens in exquisite saris passing in and out of mud-floor huts. Goes to show you how little a person actually needs to be well and happy, right? Turns out all I needed was a good cup of tea and a new dear friend; some of my very favorite Sadhana memories are going with Diva to the nearest chai shop, where the hard-working owner bears an uncanny resemblance to Clark Gable (it's just the moustache, but it still makes me giggle). We sat on wooden boxes behind a blue tarp, with a view of the local temple if we pulled back the plastic, savoring our chai (mine sans milk) and talking about wanting to be better people and how we proposed to go about it.
We always leave our shoes at the door.
The view from my pillow.More photos and stories in my next post. (Please feel free to ask me questions too--sometimes I'm not sure which aspects of life at Sadhana Forest are most interesting to people who haven't been there yet.)
My kind of church
The south chapel murals depict the first part of the parable of the ten virgins (i.e., the wise and foolish virgins).On Sunday, thanks to my new friend Kate ('blessed by Kates', as I like to say), I was able to visit the Mansfield Traquair Centre, a deconsecrated church full of the most wonderful murals I've seen outside of Italy. (This building is actually called 'Edinburgh's Sistine Chapel', although tourists don't generally hear about it; it seems like they have sufficient income through space rental that they don't need to push for tourism.) It's only open to the public one Sunday afternoon per month, so I was very fortunate to be able to go!
The neo-Romanesque chancel arch, featuring the first set of murals (1895-1897). The worship of heaven as given in the Books of Ezekiel and Revelation.Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852-1936) was the foremost artist of the Arts and Crafts movement in Scotland. She spent eight years on these murals, doing hardly any preparatory drawings before sketching the figures right onto the walls. This is a particularly stunning achievement given the curved surfaces of the chapel ceiling.
I wasn't surprised to hear that she took a holiday to Italy before returning to start the south chapel murals, because the virgins all have Botticelli coifs!
Two of the four angels symbolizing the ministries of the Catholic Apostolic Church: the Prophet in blue and the Pastor in silver (the other two are the Evangelist in scarlet and the Apostle in gold).
The north aisle features the conclusion of the parable of the ten virgins. The ornamentation on the walls and sloped ceiling are reminiscent of both William Morris and medieval illuminated manuscripts.
The happiest Judgment Day you will ever see.
So if you are coming to Edinburgh and are a huge art history nerd like I am, it's worth planning your visit around the opening days! I believe it's open daily during the theatre festival in August.
The Big Sixty
Today is my grandparents' sixtieth wedding anniversary. We threw them a surprise party on Labor Day weekend at their favorite restaurant, and my dad made a nice little speech about how they'd met while working at a dairy, and the unlikeliness of the daughter of Irish immigrants and the son of Italian immigrants getting together.
But my grandfather had decided very early on that she was the one for him, and kept asking her out until she relented. They dated for three years, and towards the end of that time my grandmother's father was dying in the hospital. My grandfather used to shave him. Maybe she knew before that she wanted to marry him, but that kindness really sealed it for her.
I can't imagine being with somebody for sixty years, but I hope someday I'll be lucky enough to find out.
Memorial Day
Memorial Day means more to me this year.
The Navy Hymn is printed on the reverse.Gosh, do I miss him.(Home is the Sailor, part 1; Home is the Sailor, part 2.)
Home is the Sailor, part 2
We were really tickled when a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer wanted to do a write-up on my grandfather and his accomplishments. The article is online, but in case the article gets taken down at any point, I'm going to repost it. [Edit, 2013: no longer online, sure enough.]
* * *
Published May 22, 2010.
Theodore Colangelo, 90, defense-mapping official
By Claudia Vargas
Inquirer Staff Writer
Theodore Colangelo, 90, of Cinnaminson, a sailor during World War II who went on to be director of the Defense Mapping Agency distribution center in Philadelphia, died of prostate cancer and multiple system atrophy Monday, May 17, at the Masonic Home of New Jersey.
When Mr. Colangelo was transferred from a Defense Mapping Agency office in New York state to the Philadelphia distribution center in 1959, he was a supply clerk. By the mid-1970s, he had risen to director, managing more than 120 employees, said former colleague Gerald Bonner of Cinnaminson.
Mr. Colangelo was known as a firm leader whom employees respected for his openness to new ideas, such as having an evaluation panel for promotions. But his biggest accomplishment was coordinating the military branches working within the distribution center.
When Mr. Colangelo first arrived, Bonner said, the Air Force and Navy foremen "were all trying to operate in their own ways."
Bonner, who was hired in 1975 as the personnel officer, found himself dealing with minor issues. Mr. Colangelo reorganized the joint operation to flow smoothly, he said.
"It was humming. I got bored," he said, adding that he left in 1980.
Mr. Colangelo retired in the early 1990s after 45 years of working with military mapping systems and distribution.
Mr. Colangelo had come to the United States as a 10-year-old from his native city of Pietragalla, Italy, with his seven siblings and widower father. Arriving in 1930, Mr. Colangelo and his family settled in Schenectady, N.Y.
When he was 16, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and a year later the Navy, where he was a seaman aboard the Erie.
After serving for three years, he returned to Schenectady. But a year later, Pearl Harbor was attacked, and he rushed back to the Navy, his daughter Eileen DiLullo said.
As a machinist mate on the Samuel N. Moore, Mr. Colangelo, during at least one typhoon, worked frantically to keep the destroyer's engines running, his daughter said.
Shortly before being discharged in 1947, Mr. Colangelo was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. While recovering at the VA Medical Center in Brooklyn, he fell in love with Dorothy Smelz, a social worker assigned to him. Six months later, they married.
Mr. Colangelo started working for the Defense Mapping Agency in 1948.
When Mr. Colangelo was transferred to Philadelphia in 1959, he wanted a single-family home, so he settled in Cinnaminson, where he lived in the same house until he died.
He aimed to always be home by 5 p.m. to be with his family, his daughter said. But Mr. Colangelo sometimes had to work 20-hour days - and that's when Dorothy Colangelo knew something unusual was going on in the world.
In the days leading up to President John F. Kennedy's public announcement of the Cuban missile crisis, Mr. Colangelo had been holed up in the distribution center for many hours, his daughter said.
In addition to his daughter, he is survived by a son, Daniel; daughters Susan D. Grant and Mary Ann McWilliams; four grandchildren; and a sister. His wife died in 1996.
A funeral was held Friday, May 21, at Snover/Givnish Funeral Home, Cinnaminson. Interment was at Lakeview Memorial Park, Cinnaminson.
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Grandpa would have been so pleased to see this in the paper. I knew next to nothing about his career at the Defense Mapping Agency, and it was strange (in a good way) to be hearing about it for the first time in the newspaper.
Thanks to everyone who left kind messages on the blog, Facebook, or by email (I'm sitting down with a cup of coffee to catch up on my correspondence right now). I'll get back to my regularly scheduled blogging topics soon, I promise. It's just that I feel odd writing about anything else right now, you know?
'Home is the sailor, home from the sea.'
My grandpa Ted passed away this afternoon. He was ninety, and hadn't been well in quite awhile, but it still came as a bit of a shock. You know how, when you're little, you think your parents are invincible? That's how I'd always felt about Grandpa Ted.
(With his father and four of his six sisters. Thanks to our cousin Paula for this picture.)During the war my grandfather was a petty officer aboard a destroyer in the South Pacific. He went for more than a year without setting foot on land, and that was the easy part--he'd survived kamikazes and two typhoons, during which the temperature in the engine room reached 180º F. When he got back to the States, he spent nearly a year convalescing in naval hospitals; for the rest of his life he dealt with some serious medical problems as a result of war-related injuries, and yet he always seemed to defy everybody's expectations. (Just to give you an idea, today he received Last Rites for the fifth time.) He never thought he'd live to see ninety; I sometimes joked he'd outlive us all.
(Summer 2005. This is how I want to remember him--robust, striding around the block in his Abercrombie & Fitch ballcap and t-shirt.)
(At the Mary Modern launch party with Grandpa Ted, Grandmom Kass, and Grandpop Mike, July 2007.)We didn't always agree--heck, that feels like an understatement, given our diametrical political beliefs--but he was a good man, and I loved him very much.
(Two pics from summer '06, with kids and grandkids.)I want to tell you the story of how my grandparents met. At the naval hospital in San Diego, they told him they were sending him home to New York for his big operation, and gave him a choice between hospitals in Queens (St. Albans) and Brooklyn. He knew that St. Albans was the newer hospital, and naturally he wanted to be treated at the best facility available. He opened his mouth fully intending to say "St. Albans," but "Brooklyn" is what came out. If he'd chosen the hospital in Queens he would never have met my grandmother.She was a lovely 23-year-old volunteer social worker, midway through an M.S.W. she would never complete. Sitting up in bed, he'd strain for a glimpse of her as she passed by his room. So he could speak to her, he kept asking for another pack of playing cards, and she asked him tartly how he could possibly lose so many decks. He wore her down, of course, and they married seven months later.I've always been fascinated with this story for that one inexplicable slip of the tongue. Thank you, thank you, thank you for choosing Brooklyn, Nonno.(What's even more uncanny is that she wasn't supposed to be in Brooklyn either--she'd been assigned to a hospital in Trenton, but another volunteer, who'd been assigned to Brooklyn, asked my grandmother to switch so she could be close to her family. My grandmother agreed, even though Trenton offered free housing and Brooklyn did not. She was that nice.)
I'm so glad I got the chance to sit down with Grandpa Ted while he was still in good health and ask him about his childhood in Italy and his life during the war. I've been meaning to edit the raw audio and put all the stories on CD. Now would be a good time, eh?
(Outside the Brooklyn Naval Hospital, sometime in 1947.)Home is the sailor, home from the sea. (I think I like the A.E. Housman version better than Stevenson's.)[Note on 19th May: I have made a few edits to the above for historical accuracy--after talking to my aunt Eileen and listening to the stories we recorded in 2007, I realized I'd made a few mistakes.]
We pray for those we have loved, and see no more.
While I was in Rye I entered St. Mary's Church during the daily service, and decided to sit down in the back and pay attention just for curiosity's sake (I'd never been to an Anglican service before). This line from the prayers of the faithful has stuck with me--we pray for those we have loved, and see no more.Today would have been my grandmother's 87th birthday. She's been gone nearly fourteen years but I still miss her every day, and every time I pass the cemetery I think about the day they bought the plot, how she told my parents they could wave whenever they drove by on Route 130. Then, according to my dad, she started laughing hysterically, which kind of weirded him out; but if I'd been there, I know I would have laughed too.
Anyway, every so often doesn't it feel good to celebrate the people who have helped make us who we are? My grandmother was kind and smart and patient and wise. She was selfless to a fault. She made the best meatloaf (and I say that as someone who hasn't eaten meat in almost ten years). She was one of the few adults who would play games with us--Old Maid, Go Fish, Trouble, and swimming races. She always let me win.And she was, of course, a voracious reader.
Now this portrait looks over my writing desk.
Waterford retroblog
Last week I got my tickets to Shannon for Shelley's wedding in Westport (and general catch-up in Galway), plus Ryanair tickets from Knock to London to hang out with Seanan over New Years. This got me thinking about the little road trip he and I took two years ago, when we spent a couple nights in the guesthouse at Mount Melleray Abbey outside Cappoquin, County Waterford.I'd got the notion of a monastic retreat from H.V. Morton's In Search of Ireland, published in 1930. (At the time I was working on a story idea, and though that story's on the back burner now my experience there was still very worthwhile.) The English travel-writer outlines the history of Mount Melleray like this:
In 1830 a band of Trappist monks expelled from France arrived on the slopes of the barren Knockmealdown Mountains with 1s. 10d. between them! They made some kind of shelter and a little oratory. The peasants came from the hills to do a day's work for them. Their farm-lands grew. They became known for their good works. Rich men made wills in their favour, and so, gradually and within one hundred years, the penniless settlement has grown into a large, prosperous, and obviously wealthy community. Their farm-lands are a tribute to their energy and their knowledge. They have made what was once a wilderness a place of corn and fruit; and grass, where fat cattle graze...We went out into the garden and into the grounds. There are rows of open graves. At first the visitor does not understand what they are. He has to be told that it is part of a Trappist's duty to dig his own grave...
(I hope that, like the vow of silence, this excessively morbid practice has been discontinued. At any rate, we walked the grounds and didn't see any ominous holes in the ground.)Long after Morton's visit to the abbey, in August 1985, three local children claimed that the Virgin Mary appeared to them in a grotto just down the road. We took a walk down there too, where there's a sheltered area for masses and all the usual religious bits and bobs, candles and prayer-cards and suchlike.The whole time we were at the monastery I only took pictures of the splendid old windows in my room. I wanted to document our visit, but not at the risk of offending the monks; after all, we were meant to be pilgrims, not tourists.
The first night we got up at 4am to hear the vigils sung in the chapel. I think it was more of a chant, but at any rate it was a rather surreal experience to be rising at the sound of church-bells in the middle of the night. I was too lazy to get up the following night, although I'd wanted to.In H.V. Morton's time, the monastery offered more than just a quiet retreat; the writer describes being woken in the middle of the night by another guest gone delirious for want of a drink.
Father Brendan, the guestmaster, I have been told, is one of the greatest living experts in the treatment of dipsomania. I believe that when a drunkard goes to Melleray he is given the amount of liquor to which he is accustomed, but in reduced quantities every day until, at the end of the cure, he is drinking water. But it is the moral influence of the monastery which pulls him through.The voice whimpered on for half an hour or so and ended in silly babbling laughter.
The monks we met--those few who were delegated to interact with the guests--were such lovely old men, warm and welcoming, with a great sense of humor. We had simple, filling meals in the guesthouse dining room, and at the end of our stay we just slipped an envelope into a box on the guestmaster's door.
After Mount Melleray we drove to Ardmore, where we'd planned to spend the night, but it turns out absolutely nobody (save us) visits Ardmore in the low season. The lovely B&B I'd stayed at in May 2006 wasn't open, nor was the old hotel. But we visited St. Declan's and did the cliff walk before leaving, of course. Ardmore is far and away my favorite spot in County Waterford.
So we spent the night in Dungarvan, where we had a delicious dinner at The Tannery (the portions were rather dainty though), and the next day we drove to Glendalough.
Seanan had never been to Glendalough, which surprised me--I figured it was the sort of place you'd visit on a school field trip even if your parents never took you. It's one of those rare tourist destinations that somehow manages to feel completely unspoiled; but that probably has much to do with it being so near Dublin, so most people only come for the afternoon.
Anyway, we had very nice eating and sleeping there too, at the Wicklow Heather (a great meal every time I've been there) and at Heather House, which is owned by the same folks. The village of Laragh is only a kilometer away, and that's where most of the accommodation is, plus a convenience store and petrol station. I've never been to the pub in Laragh, but I've heard the grub isn't very good. Eating at the Wicklow Heather is a no-brainer. And we got to have breakfast there too!
(I'll post better Glendalough photos at some point. The foliage was really pretty--we were there at the beginning of November--but my pics from this trip don't do it justice.)
Ghost Hunters
Deborah Blum's Ghost Hunters is quite deceptively named--the subtitle, William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death, is more apt. The book follows the life's work of the founding members of the Society for Psychical Research--Frederic Myers, Edmund Gurney, and Henry Sidgwick--along with their American colleague, Harvard psychologist William James (brother of Henry). These scholars were caught between the charlatans of Lily Dale and the hardboiled skeptics of the scientific establishment, whose knee-jerk ridicule of psychical research seems just as dogmatic as those religious leaders who had pooh-poohed the theory of evolution only a few decades before.There are poignant stories aplenty here: images from a dream used to locate the body of a missing teenager; the sad cases of mediums whose early promise dissolved into fakery and alcoholism; and a man obsessed with contacting his long-dead lover, whose golden memory eclipses the presence of his living wife. But the reader finds the scarcity of concrete 'proof' downright frustrating, so just imagine how those tireless researchers of the British and American Psychical Societies must have felt. It's all too fitting that these scholars should ultimately provide the most compelling evidence in the book--that is to say, their own after-death communication.After the extraordinarily dedicated Australian researcher Richard Hodgson died of a heart attack on the handball court, he spoke to his old friend William James via the Boston medium Leonora Piper:
I am happy exceedingly difficult to come very. I understand why Myers came seldom. I must leave. I cannot stay. I cannot remain today.
The spirits of Gurney and Myers expressed this frustration in the cross correspondences experiment, which is the only one I found truly convincing. Several mediums separated by hundreds (or thousands) of miles, with no contact at all between them, came up with the eeriest corresponding messages using automatic writing. This "unlikely kind of chain letter from the dead" seems way too eerie for coincidence, really fascinating stuff. Anyway, I found it amusing how the spirits of the former psychical researchers sometimes took on the tone of short-tempered schoolmasters when talking to the mediums:
"Back in the old despondency," read one passage, taken down by Alice Fleming and signed 'Edmund Gurney.' "Why don't you write daily? You seem to form habits only to break them."Mrs. Fleming told Alice Johnson that the complaint spilled out after she had been too busy to spare time for automatic writing. "If you don't care to try every day for a short period of time, better drop it all together. It's like making appointments and not keeping them," the Gurney message continued. 'You endanger your own powers of sensitiveness and annoy us bitterly."Some of the messages signed by Myers seethed with frustration: "Yet another attempt to run the blockade--to strive to get a message through--how can I make your hand docile enough--how can I convince them?"The nearest simile I can find to express the difficulties of sending a message is that I appear to be standing behind a sheet of frosted glass--which blurs sight and deadens sound--dictating feebly--to a reluctant and somewhat obtuse secretary."A terrible feeling of impotence burdens me."
Ghost Hunters reinforced for me Jim Harold's belief that the paranormal of today is merely the science of tomorrow--or, put another way: "the unbelief of the educated classes...will be found by succeeding ages, to have been nothing better than unreasoning and unreasonable prejudice." That's from a Mr. Joshua Proctor, one of the correspondents quoted in Catherine Crowe's The Night-Side of Nature--a bestselling collection of supposedly-true ghost stories first published in 1848. I'll be blogging about that book next.