Artifacts

    A friend from graduate school has been scouring top to bottom her gorgeous antebellum South Carolina home in preparation for putting it on the market.  She and her husband have gone a little OCD about the endeavor, she says, and this morning she’s sent me a note warning of the dangers of overdoing it.

   Many years have passed since she and I could share leisurely lunches at one another’s kitchen tables.  Anyone who spends time with me these days knows there’s very little risk I will “overdo it” when it comes to housecleaning.  Myopia has its benefits.

     But I am on a mission to de-clutter. The basement is so empty it echoes (full disclosure: I hired men to help with this).  And while the loft over the garage remains a terrifying maze of boxes and abused furniture, I am chipping away at closets, going through the large plastic tubs into which much of the detritus of our modern life has fallen.     

     The strategy of tossing junk into stackable containers has worked for the last six years or so, but eventually, one must sort and purge.  Less mucking out than patient mining, the task can yield its unexpected nuggets of gold.

     A folder of papers I’d inherited from my Aunt Ginny turned up in one of those plastic tubs stowed in a spare bedroom closet, along with a potpourri of notebooks, papers, and out of focus drugstore reprints one of my daughters left behind after heading to college.  Inside the folder I found my paternal grandfather’s will and an accounting of his estate; a substantial, glossy photocopy of my father’s discharge papers; and a number of formal portraits. 

     There’s one of my father at age ten or eleven, and several of my aunt as a young woman: smiling broadly after her graduation from nursing school, and lining up against the façade of a stately brick building with three dozen other students all in white.  In another, she’s clearly served as a maid of honor; post-ceremony, she stands beside her good friend, who wears cat-eye glasses and holds a cigarette in her free hand.

     And then, there was an envelope: unaddressed, three inches by seven. Inside, an invitation to my grandparents’ wedding, a tiny card announcing my aunt’s birth, several miniscule newspaper clippings, and what is perhaps the last letter my grandmother, Elsie Buel, ever received, written by her mother, Ada Louise Tyre.

                                                                                                              Monday Eve

                                                                                                                                 8 ³⁰

My dear Elsie,

     Just a few lines, to tell you we arrived home all OK at 7 pm.  Had a cup of tea at Alma’s, all the rest had ice cream, but me. I did not want any.  Mrs. S staid all night with me. She was delighted with her trip or I should say visit; she thinks you are a wonderful hostess and housekeeper, I agree with her. You surely did it all up fine. Everybody was fine, and your dinner was fine! I thank you for all your kindness to us all.

     I will think of the nice time when I am alone here in the eve.  My thoughts will all be happy of all my visits with you all. I have been busy all day, went down town  . . .in the morning then had a lot of work when I came home. My coat came at noon but I have packed it up to send back. We don’t like it, and they did not put the buttons and loops on.  I don’t know where I will get one now. Maybe I will go to Asbury later on, after Mrs. S gets there. This pen will hardly write so guess I will have to hurry along. Well. Willetts forgot the bag with the bread so Alma had to stop in one place and get some rolls. 

     Now I hope John’s cold is better, and that you were none the worse for your work. We all think the kiddies were fine, and I was very proud of you all. Ada V. was a real little lady, and John too was very good. We talked about it going home in the car.  Now I must send a few lines to Mame and Fanny but not tonight.  I am too sleepy, take care don’t get any more cold, dress warm, the children too. I will send those things later. 

    Now will say good night

  lots of love to all,

    again thanking you

          lovingly

               Mother

Excuse this scribbling

  

     A two-cent stamp sent the letter -- posted Tuesday, October 28, 1930 -- on its way to my grandparent’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, from Toms River, New Jersey. Ada V. was my Aunt Ginny, and John is my father. Alma was Elise’s sister; the forgetful Willets was Alma’s husband, and Fanny and Mame were stepsisters. 

     Those undisclosed items promised to follow might have arrived, but were almost certainly not enjoyed or put to use.  Elsie’s brief obituary, a mere 128 words, preserved on one of the yellowed clippings, says she died November 8^th of a brain abscess, “which developed from an abscess of the ear, which started last Sunday.” She was 42 years old.

                                                                Elsie with Ada Virginia

                                                                                  

     Two more clippings were also enclosed in the delicate envelope. In one, a tiny inch of newsprint, a single line describes a bridal luncheon given by her future mother-in-law. In another only slightly larger, a concise report documents the couple’s “quiet wedding” on a Wednesday afternoon in April 1913 at Elsie’s parent’s home.  The unattended bride wore a travelling suit of steel-colored French poplin with a matching hat, and carried white roses.  Following an informal reception where Elsie received “a large number of beautiful gifts,” the newlyweds honeymooned in Atlantic City.

     Time has left this little trove too fragile to handle repeatedly.  The clippings are dry and crumbling as the wings of desiccated insects, and in just a few hours of examination, I’ve aggravated the envelope’s fraying fold. I’m grateful that in my zeal to clean, these misplaced treasures -- the wedding invitation from a century ago, the notices of what constitutes the public moments of our private lives, and that poignant letter – were not lost.

     I knew of Elsie and her early death, of course, and have wondered what effect that might have had on my father, who was only six at her passing. As with all of our beloveds gone too soon, something of a mythology spins about and shapes the sorrow. I do know that the woman who eventually replaced her in the household lacked much of anything resembling human warmth. As a teenager, I found a photo of Elise seated in a wicker chair, and drew her portrait in pencil.  Faded now, the eyes remain impossibly large and dark, her wrist slender as a child’s, as I captured without comprehending a perfected image of what was lost.

     Of all the newly recovered items, it is the letter that stays with me most. I suppose my grandfather kept it and the envelope’s other contents safe among his personal papers.  I find myself imagining what it might have meant to Elsie to receive such loving and appreciative thanks. Maybe too she needed the reassurance her mother gave her that indeed everything “was fine.”

     As in the case of that simple sketch I crafted as a kid, whatever we read – novel, text, the unending stream of e-mail – we interpret in the context of our own pain and joy. It’s not possible for me to read that final letter without thinking about the last conversation with my own mother. She had become ill seven years ago this autumn. Usually, I’d see her during the day, but one evening, something told me to just run over. 

     I’d brought with me an album of photos of the kids, and I sat beside her hospital bed as we looked through it together.  It was an exceptional evening, a few days before Christmas; after long weeks of suffering, she appeared free of both pain and care.  Her smile was as bright and the smooth oval of her face as lovely as I’d ever known them to be. Though I had the privilege of being with her when she passed the next morning, it was the short hour we spent the evening before I hold most dear, when everything seemed, for want of a better word, fine.

     I too will think of the nice time, as did Elsie’s mother, when I am alone here in the eve.

This column appears in the October 2013 issue of  award-winning The North Star Monthly.  Visit their site:  THE NORTH STAR MONTHLY

    

On the Cover of the Rolling Stone

     The ancient Israelites understood the power of the image. While we interpret the second commandment prohibiting the crafting of “graven images” as an ordinance against fashioning objects of worship, several scholars believe that it might have been more far reaching. In some eras and regions, the creation of any sort of likeness seems to have been discouraged.  Furthermore, according to Professor Carl S. Ehrlich, the Greek philosopher Plato opposed “certain artistic pursuits . . . since they distracted from the search for truth.” 

     Today digital photograph is our universal art form of choice; we live in a world awash in images of all sorts. Seeing is believing. We document and share on social media everything from our breakfast cereal to the exchange of wedding vows to appendectomy scars.  Before his most recent self-destruct, half of the city of New York was ready to vote into office a man who’d texted strangers photos of his private parts.

     Bombarded with pictures, we get a rush from the hypnotic onslaught and require more and more.  And having seen it all, we might dismiss the sway of any single one, even something truly gripping and unique. We’re above it.  We’re rational beings, after all.

     That’s what they’re counting on, the media manipulators who grab onto our hearts and minds and wallets through our eyes, that we refuse to acknowledge the influence a powerful image can have on our emotions and perceptions. Consider for a moment how some images become lodged in the mind: the logo for Arm and Hammer, for example, or the font used on a bottle of Febreze, to say nothing of a few unforgettable scenes from Pulp Fiction or The Exorcist.

Lord Byron as a teenager. 

Or perhaps not Lord Byron at all.

     In August, Rolling Stone Magazine published “Jahar’s World,” an in-depth profile by Janet Reitman of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the younger of two brothers accused of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and injured scores, many grievously.  The article attempts to explain how “a charming kid with a bright future” became a “monster.” In soft-focus, Jahar, identified as “The Bomber” and staring guilelessly into the camera, appears on the magazine’s cover.

     It is an arresting photograph, an apparent self-portrait taken from Tsarnaev’s Twitter profile. Whatever toying with shadow and the play of light might have done, the result is affecting and effective.  Its appearance on newsstands brought about an uproar, in Boston and beyond.

     The editors of the Rolling Stone responded, yet failed to address the heart of the controversy. They focused on the content of the article itself, which they rightly declare as falling “within the traditions of journalism and the Rolling Stone’s long standing commitment to serious and thoughtful coverage of the most important political and cultural issues of our day.”

     They continue: “The fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is young, and in the same age group as many of our readers, makes it all the more important for us to examine the complexities of this issue and gain a more complete understanding of how a tragedy like this happens.” 

     However, that isn’t the issue. I read of no objections to the article itself, which seems to this reader very thorough in its coverage if ultimately incomplete in the portrait it provides. This is not the author’s fault; the story of the younger Tsarnaev brother is still unfolding. The anger arose from the art.  The decision to use Jahar’s image on the cover – an exalted, coveted position occupied by celebrities -- was roundly criticized.

     But even more, I think it was the sort of image the editors employed that so inflamed the outrage: indistinct and dreamy, a portrait of visual poetry that lends a tragic, romanticized air to the subject.  The Jahar on the Rolling Stone cover is beautiful and damned. He’s Lord Byron with a bomb – mad, bad, and dangerous to know.  

     What’s taken place with this cover is the crafting of the glamorization we claim to abhor: the potent mingling of taboos – the marriage of sex and violence.  Witness the fanatical young women who attended Jahar’s court appearance and who maintain a number of “Free Jahar” social media sites, one of which claims some 80,000 followers.

     It was disingenuous to suggest, as banter on the airways after the publication did, that the cover art was simply meant to illustrate the article inside.  If that were its primary purpose, it would have appeared along with the text. Its chief function of course was to sell magazines, which indeed it did. The August issue of Rolling Stone sold twice the typical number of copies. Editorially, then, adorning the cover with a dreamy photo of the tousle-haired, beautiful boy was brilliant.  Google “Boston bomber” and that likeness is among the very first to appear.

     The young man who killed my husband had also been a beautiful boy.  His high school yearbook photo accompanied one of the many articles in the Hartford Courant’s Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of the 1998 shootings at the Connecticut Lottery. Even in my anguish, I remember thinking what a handsome kid he had been, with his dark eyes and hair, his unclouded expression, a picture of American promise.  I am the mother of a son. I could imagine another woman’s pride in and love for the adored child still somewhere inside the troubled young adult.

     That yearbook photo was of course genuine; it caught the young man as he was, at one moment in time. At another point, he would have appeared otherwise, captured perhaps on a security camera some years later, with a shaved head, brandishing a bloodied knife or his altogether efficient Glock.

       Both representations could be called accurate. But both are incomplete, and neither is quite the truth.  The cover portrait of the Boston bomber with its softened features in high, flattering contrast is in effect the flipside of a gruesome shot of the carnage he’s accused of committing. The later we would immediately decry.  Stripped of context, the hazy photo is repugnant as well, a different sort of terror porn.

     How many will read the Rolling Stone article and discuss the argument it supports, that young Jahar was at heart a normal kid “failed by his family” and in part society? It’s an excellent piece, and one could contend that number, whatever it is, is too small though clearly far more than might have been, had not the provocative photo been so cleverly utilized. Perhaps his trial  -- and his growing fan base  -- will force us to examine the twists and turns of the path he walked toward the marathon finish line.

     In all likelihood, though, and all too soon, the lessons of “Jahar’s World” will be largely forgotten.  The controversy over the cover photo will, too, fade.  But the striking image of the beautiful boy carries with it all the heartbreak and eroticism it needs to live forever.  

This column appears in the September 2013 issue of The North Star Monthly, which has won awards for its features and photography. Check out their site:

The North Star Monthly

    

The Tarot of Tiramisu

     As I write this, the month of June is finally disappearing in the rear view mirror. We’re well out of that, boys and girls.  If June were a Tarot card, its images might include a gleaming tower in semi-collapse; a bolt of lightning zigzagging across dark skies; a river overflowing from torrents of rain; and for good measure, perhaps, a jester fumbling with a fiddle. And in the foreground, just off center, a cheery ceramic mixing bowl and a sturdy wire whisk.

     I’ve been baking these past weeks. There’s something reassuring about turning your attention away from your worries and focusing on a recipe for, say, a lemon cream cake loaded with Limoncello or an angel-light chiffon. Of course, the prospect of eating the cake once it’s out of the oven and cooled brightens the mood, but the life-affirming act of creating the treat can be its own reward.   By your own hand, the simplest ingredients – eggs, sugar, flour -- measured accurately, whipped or beaten or folded together then baked according to clear and rational directions are transformed into something beautiful, extraordinary, delectable.

     The scene outside the kitchen window might be in a state of flux and fluster, but at your oven, you regain control. You are invincible. You’ve returned order to the kingdom. Justice again prevails.  The meek shall inherit, and so forth. Somewhere, maybe in the middle of America or a small village in the south of France, after a busy restaurant has closed for the day and the front-of-the-house lights are dimmed, a baker removes his floured apron and begins to write, “The Pastry Chef’s Guide to World Domination.”

(Judgment from the Visconti-Sforza Tarot, 15th Century)

     Which is why you should make tiramisu.

     The ubiquitous Italian delight is trotted out after many a dish of pasta, and often quite badly, occasionally fruited up with in-season berries, desecrated with mounds of tinned cinnamon, or deconstructed across a cocoa-dusted plate the size of a hubcap.  It’s not been one of my favorites (too fattening, too soupy, the flavors too married), and I rarely order it when eating out. But then, June happened. Desserts acquired a food group status and climbed high on the antiquated pyramid.

     Recipes for tiramisu vary, though layering coffee or espresso-soaked ladyfingers with sweetened mascarpone and topping with chocolate are essential. Some incorporate raw egg into the cheese; I wouldn’t do that even on a dare. Some eschew alcohol and opt for rum flavoring in the “pick me up” brew, which seems unnecessarily puritanical.  Others, more traditional perhaps, instruct that one prepare first a zabaglione and also a pastry cream to add to the mascarpone before assembling. I’m exhausted just thinking about that.

     A straight-forward version, with no salmonella worries, lifted out of the ordinary through the use of homemade ladyfingers will do you proud and help lighten the atmosphere on any angst-wrought occasion.

     Recently I became acquainted with a thoughtful, accomplished woman who wields a wicked pack of Tarot cards, and I asked her to do a reading for me.  I know the cards themselves have no power, but if we allow ourselves to meditate upon the layering of images, esoteric and iconic, and what they call to our attention, they can provide snapshots into our lives.

     The final card in my reading was the eight of swords. A woman in a flowing robe, bound loosely and blindfolded, stands in a barren, watery landscape. Eight swords, plunged into the ground, partially fence her in, but the way ahead is clear. The sky is dark and foreboding, but in the distant background appears a castle on a hill.

     The meaning of course lies in the layers, in the depth of their interpretation. Much like a good tiramisu.

(The Queen of Swords, Visconti-Sforza Tarot)

      For a Halloween bash years ago, I fashioned a costume out of black and purple lace, sort of remnant shelf gypsy garb, and brought along my own deck of cards.  I had studied the history and symbolism of the tarot, finding the images beautiful and fascinating.  I could in those days provide a reading adequate for parlor games.

     While it was all in fun for my friend’s party, as I laid out the cards in the Celtic Cross for one guest, she asked, “Will I ever talk to my father again?”

     It seemed unkind to suggest she pick up the phone. As we worked through the cards, her story unfolded. Reaching out was an option. She had a say in the matter.   

     We do have options in life.  More often than not, we have a choice. And while some occurrences are truly beyond our control, dessert is not one of them.

Send me an email if you'd like the recipe for tiramisu and homemade lady fingers. This column appears in the the August 2013 issue of The North Star Monthly.  Check out their site:

http://www.northstarmonthly.com

The Real White Queen

For those of us who loved "The Tudors," a new series, "The White Queen," is coming to Starz August 10th. Described thus: "Three different yet equally relentless women will scheme, manipulate, and seduce their way onto the English throne." Which sounds like fine Saturday night entertainment to me.

Interested in a little historical grounding of the story of the women at the heart of "The Cousins War"? Philippa Gregory, author of five novels set during the era, as well as The Other Boleyn Girl and numerous other books that have garnered awards and been adapted to the screen, narrates this excellent two-part BBC Series, "The Real White Queen and Her Rivals."  Click on the links below to watch.


The White Queen and Her Rivals, Part One


The White Queen and Her Rivals, Part Two

Broken for You

   

     He could have been anyone, I thought: a businessman, a salesman, a computer whiz for hire. Any one of the young professionals you might encounter in the course of a day.

     The conference keynote speaker wore a dark suit; a white shirt; a neat, subdued tie. His thick brown hair parted cleanly away from a handsome, all-American face. He towered above the podium, and as he began to speak -- calmly, confidently – a few slides of a boy of five or six appeared on the wide screen behind him.

    The subject was child abuse, or more precisely, the healing journey after.  With hard-won equanimity, the young man on the stage recounted his victimization at the hands of a next-door neighbor and charted the efforts of the organization he directs to help other survivors.

     In truth, it wasn’t a speech I’d looked forward to hearing. In prior years, I had participated in this annual conference on violence, and after sharing my own past in breakout sessions, found it tough to take in any more pain.  But I was intrigued with this speaker, with the friendly though focused manner about him, his ability to both surprise and connect with the audience of some five hundred crime victims, advocates, and social workers.

     From him, I learned not only a few startling facts (one out of five boys suffers abuse; most sexual assaults in the military are committed upon males), but also a new word: kintsukuroi, a Japanese term that means to repair something with a gold or silver lacquer, and in doing so, to understand that the piece is more beautiful because it has been broken.  

   Of course, the speaker wasn’t discussing porcelain repair, but the mending of the spirit, of the soul. It was a concept that resonated with me; it underscored a segment in my own talk about embracing the totality of one’s life, even those tragic “broken” pieces, accepting each part of yourself and your past as a gift, something of a miracle.

     I jotted down the word and definition, as did the friend who sat to my left, and when I returned from the conference, I asked Don Bredes, novelist and, most recently, author of the Hector Bellevance suspense series, if he knew of an English equivalent.  He did not. “What's more,” he added, “I doubt there's even an equivalent concept in Western culture. Westerners understand how age and wear may impart a measure of beauty to all kinds of things, but my sense is that here, generally speaking, broken is broken, and broken is flawed; therefore, any evidence of a repair is best hidden or disguised.”

     Broken is broken.

     We hold this true of things, and even more so of ourselves, going to extremes to mask what’s broken inside and to fix what’s irregular on the outside, perhaps in part because of our culture. But also something more innate is at work: a symmetry of facial features and the body proportions that signal fertility register as profoundly beautiful to us deep in our psyches. As Denis Dutton, philosopher and author of “The Art Instinct,” suggested, we are “hardwired” to seek out beauty of all sorts.

     The French might applaud the odd and interesting qualities of the “jolie laide” -- as one critic put it, “the aesthetic pleasures of the visually off kilter” -- but it’s youth and perfection that win the highest acclaim everywhere. A stroll along the cosmetic corridor of any corner drugstore confirms this.  And how many of us who grew up with “character building” crooked teeth here in the land of plenty would allow our children to suffer the same fate?

     Then there are gashes and gaps within. While we might say, “That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” we don’t rush to equate inner strength with beauty. We acknowledge it in the extraordinary few, in others such as Nelson Mandela or Aung San Suu Kyi, though their appearance would win praise regardless.  When confronted with troubles beyond the expected, with emotional wounds that reach far below the surface, our first instinct might not be to strengthen and heal, but to adeptly conceal. We mistakenly assume a stoic façade is the equal of a more demanding amalgamation.

     Healing is hard work. It takes time and conscious effort. Quicker and easier to camouflage or to patch, as I have done in the past, with bitterness and a dose of nerve. To heal, to achieve something more lasting, more resilient and precious, takes, as  “Wayward Monk” Shozan Jack Haubner puts it, the desire to “turn suffering into love.”

    “We’re worth more broken,” a character asserts in Stephanie Kallos’s bestseller, “Broken for You,” a novel that explores how a shattered heart can heal, and at a pivotal point, describes the destruction of a great deal of costly porcelain. As a collector who takes delight in setting the holiday table with Rose Medallion China or hand-painted Bavarian pieces, I nearly shouted, “Oh, c’mon! Nobody would do that!”  But I’m reminded here of an aunt and uncle who, during arguments early in their 50-year marriage, seemed to toss a quite a bit of their wedding china at one another. Luckily, they were both bad shots.

     Kallos’s heroine turns the shards into glorious mosaics. My relatives probably just swept up the pieces and tossed them. But they fashioned a long and genuinely happy life together.

    

The ancient art of kintsukuroi is a worthy meditation. Whether we make a medley of our past and our imperfections, or are able to mend the breaks with a curative essence that both binds and illuminates the cracks, the key lies in embracing what is -- not hiding or obscuring, not cementing in haste, but accepting each part of the whole.

     The young man standing tall at the podium, who held out his hand to the image of the vulnerable boy with his back against the broad trunk of a tree, displayed another slide: one with his wife, the couple smiling broadly, dressed for a mountain hike under a bright sun.  He showed those of us at the conference that even the most grievous fissures can be joined with the precious metals of love and compassion, show not only to others, but to ourselves as well.  

 This "Big Crazy Life" column appeared in the July 2013 issue of  The North Star Monthly.  Visit the website:

 The North Star Monthly

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Gustav

Gustav is my 110-pound Tamaskan, a relatively new breed, a mix of Husky, 

Eskimo Dog, and German Shepherd bred to look like wolves. 

Convincing, don't you think?

He has a fine disposition, Gustav. 

Just the right mix of goofy friendliness with family, aloofness with strangers, 

and ferocity when such a demeanor is helpful. 

But he is not generous in spirit with other creatures. 

He fails entirely to see the point of cats.

 Wildlife hasn't much of a chance with him.

Isn't this raccoon who visited our feeders cute? 

Over the winter, not one but two raccoons -- and a skunk --

made the mistake of crossing paths with Gustav.

Poor raccoons. Poor skunk. 

Lately Gustav has taken to climbing up on this Victorian settee and peering out the window. 

Occasionally, he naps there or just sits, as if waiting for tea to be served.

 It's odd. 

Gustav spends much of his mornings as my personal writing coach, 

working exclusively on plot innovation.

"What should Charlene do now?" I ask. 

Almost any scene can be improved by barking, growling, romping, 

and the occasional shredding of dish towels. 

He helps as he can, but deep down I fear he finds 

my literary pursuits derivative and pretentious 

and wishes he were Margaret Atwood's dog instead.

This is Gustav's little brother, Hugo, who was lost the day after Christmas, 2011. 

The story is too sad to relate here.

For weeks and weeks, Gustav searched the house and yard, 

and howled through the night for Hugo. 

Eventually, our hearts healed.

Hugo, I'm convinced, is busy having adventures, solving mysteries, 

and chasing bad guys with his great friend, Tatiana. 

He will live on in books for children. 

Now Gustav only howls when the train lumbers by. 

Quite something to hear, though it can be difficult to explain 

when you're in the middle of a conversation on the phone. 

As you might have guessed, English is not Gustav's native tongue.

Even so, he has does have a useful vocabulary at his command:

As you can see, certain expected words and phrases

  -- such as sit; stay; come; here, boy: heel; and please do not eat my favorite stilettos -- 

are absent from Gustav's word cloud.

 Suffice it to say Rosetta Stone is not for him.

Gustav is his own dog.

He votes his conscience, buys local and organic when possible, and invests responsibly.

He exercises and watches his weight, though last winter he did pack on a few.

Still, his self-esteem was not diminished. 

He didn't ask, "Does this fur make me look fat?"

Now that I think about it, not once has he turned down a glazed donut 

or a second helping of pasta carbonara. 

Nor has he suggested that I need to do so.  

This makes up for never offering to do the dishes.