Ramblings. As in: Have Words -Will Ramble. As in: Ramble: to write or talk aimlessly or without sequence of ideas, to proceed with turns and twists; meander As In: observances of an everyday life in passing through the spectrum of extraordinary.
Knocking Around in Nashville
Thursday, January 26, 2006
I'm home again. A few days off the road from BookMania in Stuart, Florida hosted by the great folks at the Martin County Library. Connie May Fowler must have hit her blog space from a laptop in route because it was written, posted, - and funny - before my wheels had touched down.
Today's News
The big news of today is that tonight is the kick-off for The Messenger of Magnolia Street in Nashville, TN. You can check out the happenings at www.daviskidd.com for location information. A well written review of the novel is featured today in The Nashville Scene which you can read on-line at www.nashscene.com under front page BOOKS titled Apocalypse in Alabama and an interview with yours truly that runs in today's City Paper - also available on-line at www.nashvillecitypaper.com (Right column under City Seven)
Back to Rambling . . .
People ask me what's it like being in one place and another like, well, lickety-split. Well, for one thing let me just say for the record that my greatest super-power desire is teleportation - Breakfast with Aunt Kate in the back woods of Georgia, lunch in Venice, Camel riding around the pyramids in the afternoon. That's what I call A DAY! But since I don't have that power - yet, I fly the airbuses with the rest of the world, and given the opportunity, get behind the wheel, open the sunroof, put on some favorite tunes, and follow the highway.
It's like this:
You get on a plane coughing in the cool weather of Nashville and look across the aisle from you in 6C is Lindell Cooley, on the same plane, at the same time, sitting in the same aisle, and you just think - Well, cool - this plane isn't gonna crash. And for those of you who don't know Lindell any better than I do, it's like getting on a plane and turning to see Billy Graham sitting next to you. In times of turbulence you just want to point to your seatmate and tell God, "I'm with him!"
You leave Nashville after a busy week with a cough and land in 70 something degrees of sunshine with the palm trees waving hello. And you start a conversation a fellow travel in a restaurant that looks a little, worn - possibly forgotten, someone other people might purposely pass over. Their loss, but not yours. So you meet this character that used to sing opera (soprano) lived in New York, followed her husband to Arizona. He's gone, she says. She stayed. She still lives in the mountains of the desert, anyway. Travels to see family that stays put.
You meet a lot of great people that treat you good. Tell you their stories, their pasts while passing by - while driving the bus, riding the elevator, pouring the coffee.
CMF writes that you had this great panel, "We rocked," she says. www.conniemayfowler.com
And she's so right. You had a blast with her and Lisa See www.lisasee.com and Thrity Umrigar www.thrityumrigar.com And yes, you rocked - which compells you for the good of humanity to you start a campaign to get the lovely people at C-Span Book TV to open their hearts and doors to fiction. (C'mon George, send the video of our panel to C-Span. Show them that we, too, like our non-fiction brother and sisters are witty, intelligent, and fun to hang out with. Show them the 450 plus, plus -standing room only crowd certainly thought so!)
You tell C-Span that you promise to talk about current events and things of social magnitude and significance. Promise to mind your manners and your p's and q's. That you'll answer questions with a serious expression and honest precision. (So Mr. and Ms. Good People at Book TV - we're out here knocking, just go ahead and let us in. We'll bring in such high ratings that'll you'll scratch your heads and wonder, "What took us so long?")
And those good readers who agree - take time to drop a note to that place called -C-SPAN with just one question - "Whenforth will you bring forth fiction?"
(Sidenote: Thank you to Meg and Shirley, the great mother and daughter team that took care of us with such grace and polish, and to Judi Snyder, Susan Opasik, George, and all the wonderful staff of the Martin County Library system - www.library.martin.fl.us What a beautiful well organized event with a great crowd of lovers of the written word! Kudos, kudos! Take a well, deserved bow before you begin again for 2007.)
And, then you fly out of 70 something weather with palm trees waving goodbye and you touch down on a rainy night in Nashville with the words "touched down in the land of the delta blues in the middle of the pouring rain . . . " from Marc Cohen playing in your head. Only your not in Memphis, your in Nashville. and even the cold rain looks friendly. And you wander around in the wet searching for your car in the parking lot still coughing and hearing your mother and grandmother say, "If you don't get out of that cold rain you will catch pneumonia and die!" So you stop by Wild Oats in spite of how late it is and buy some hot soup and Vitamin C powders and you get home and walk the dog trying to explain that if he doesn't hurry you will catch pneumonia and die and eventually you drag in your suitcase, get in bed with a book and hear the Holy Umpire yell, SAFE! Because you are.
And that's the guts, good, and glory of being on the road.
Safe journey on all your fights and flights in life - See you soon.
River Jordan
posted by River Jordan at 7:49 AM
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A Christmas Postcard
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Well, The Christmas Tree is still up. Yes, it is. Mom's tree is up, too. It's not procrastination thing but it is putting off the inevitable. We like things that sparkle in the night. And a tree is a wonderful thing. The same yet different every year. My mother has drug out the same ornaments for over forty years - and added more with each passing Christmas. They are now antiques and collectively and what a serious NUMBER of them we've memorized. And when we visit and look at the tree she asks us if we saw this one, and that one, and did we notice. I called Mom tonight.
"Is your tree still up?"
"Yes," she says with a tinge of guilt, "but tomorrow, I'm thinking tomorrow it's coming down."
I don't have the guilt anymore. I'd leave it up until July if I wanted. But I'm thinking tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. July is not a possibility. Mine is a living (hmmm, or was) Scotch Pine. I tested the needles this morning. Deadly. I'm going to need a snow suit to get the decorations off. Or maybe I'll trim them out with sissors.
But it's been a joy to behold this year. Somehow, casting that magic glow that reminds me of everything good that I love about Christmas in America. Not just the faith of the night but the season. It's the memory. It's the story of growing up in a small town that still had Christmas shopping on a Main Street. Of stores open at night and people juggling bags and babies, of men holding doors open, of neighbors everywhere running into one another and stopping to to talk right there on the sidewalk while your holding your mother's hand and they start talking about how fast the time goes, again! and you're wishing it would go a little faster at the moment so you could get to the diner like your mother promised for hot chocolate and something to eat.
This year in Nashville I caught some of that. Just a smidgin here and smidgin there. I was standing at the Kroger Deli when the man next to me began whistling Christmas tunes and I said - "You're whistling Christmas," And he grins and says, "Yeah, it's everywhere." And we laughed, strangers at the meat counter though we were because we were full of Christmas and glow and good wishes.
It's what I wish we held onto all year round but there comes a day, sometimes the day after, sometimes a little later, when you can smell business as usual in the air. IT just does. And you know the stardust and the magic and the wonder have been packed away for a few months. Maybe that's what brings on the wonder. The knowledge that it only happens once a year. Or maybe it's because we are giving things away. And if we don't get trapped by the Need TO GIVE someone anything we can grab and wrap and be done with it, then maybe we'll take time to really think about them, top to bottom, inside/out, and remember who they are and what they are about, and what they really mean to us and then find something precious somewhere between Goodwill and Good Grief$$$- or even give a goat in their name to a village sans http://worldvision.org
I watched It's A Wonderful Life at home but I missed the Belcourt opportunity. I full screen run of the classic every year in an old-fashioned theatre. And you know, the premise still holds as far as I'm concerned. The amazing this is we don't know what it would have been like if we were never born. Of all the people we have met/passed/touched/twirled in our lifetime, when the count is finally in, it's a multitude.
And again I watched A Christmas Story. Mine and husbands vote for one of the perfect movies of all time. Perfectly written, perfectly acted, perfectly narrated. And, there is that moment after all that crazy kid stuff, and the dogs and the Chinese turkey, where the Mom and Dad finally sit down on Christmas night before the tree, speaking softly and watching the lights glimmer and then it begins to snow outside and it's the Christmas of my childhood. (Okay, so we didn't have snow in Florida - I'm telling you it captures the essence of what was there. And essence is a very good thing.)
Ahhhhh yes, and with the opening of a new year, The Messenger of Magnolia Street Debuted on January 3rd, 2006. And a gem of a novel it is I promise you. I didn't go out to dinner or uncork the bubbly -I guess it was a day that was just business as usual. But then I discovered that the writer's almanac http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/ that shows up in my 'in' box everyday reported that it was J.R.R. Tolkien's birthday. Well, now - I'm a bit of Tolkien fan. Read the books in my teens and re-read them again and loved every movie. That's just the way it is. And if you don't feel that way, it's okay, we'll discuss it all at first opportunity. Then I began thinking of the similarities: The classic fight between Good and Evil, a small band of companions pitted against the dark forces, the courage to protect and fight for the simple things in life - for the hobbits the Shire and all the 'precious' things it represents. For our trio and town– Shibboleth and all the ‘precious' things it represents. Okay, not a scholorly dissertation just a loose observation. What? Oh, certainly. We'll discuss it at the first available opportunity. (I tell you, It's like a great wink from the Master Storyteller.)
IN the meantime, I'm wishing you and yours a gloriously Happy New Year. May all that you do and all you aspire to, receive incredible winds of grace and goodness this coming year.
Safe Journey,
River Jordan
posted by River Jordan at 8:52 PM
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