Things I'm Grateful For, 2009

This list is in no particular order.

• Onions, and whoever decided growing them would be a Good Idea.
• Tom Stern, for introducing me to bread machines.
• Kathleen Willems, for turning me on to Montreal food seasonings.
• Tom Eiland, for proving that healthy is not synonymous with boring.
• Tom Whitmore, for sharing the tradition of phoning people I'm thankful for on Thanksgiving. For being someone with whom I never, but never, have to turn on the inner censor.
• Glenn Glazer, whose sense of humor is rivaled only by God's. (And whose sense of humor is far more palatable than God's.)
• Lydia Marano and Art Cover. I don't think I could ever begin to express how deeply Dangerous Visions is rooted in who I am.
• The patio of my grandparents' house, where I watched hummingbirds drink, hydrangeas flourish, and listened to Vin Scully's sportscasts of Dodger games.
• Garbo and Cellophane, for sharing my life for 16 years (and counting).
• Curtis Salgado, whose music saved my life. No joke.
• Tyler Sperry, who knows me so well it's scary. For introducing me to NLP.
• Martina Baker, the coolest and bestest sister in the universe.
• The inventor of the VCR.
• The guy who repaired my car when I was 19. I had nothing to put down but my word, and he took it.
• John Hertz, dance teacher and conversationalist extraordinaire. For teaching me patience; that anything worth doing is worth doing badly at first; for teaching me about learning, standards, and patience. Oh, and did I mention patience?
• Brad Linaweaver. It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. The pendulum swings. Ten lifetimes of friendship wouldn't be enough.
• Bill Ritch's glorious voice and incomparable presence.
• Anthony Bourdain. There's no better travel show. Or food show. And what a great voice.
• Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. I love my Mac.
• St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church, for walking alongside me when my path coincided with theirs.
• Waterfront Foursquare Church, for being the oasis after long wandering in the desert.

Revisiting Ariel, awaiting Elegy Beach

I've been in autumn clean-up mode, and to make more efficient space in our apartment, I've been boxing up books I can't bear to part with but don't reread frequently. The books still on the shelves are, by and large, those I return to again and again, rereading them annually: Laurie R. King's Mary Russell series (Beekeeper's Apprentice is my favorite, but I usually end up rereading the whole series), Obsidian Butterfly (the only novel in the Anita Blake series I go back to again and again), and nonfiction reference books for hypnosis, writing, religion, and marketing.

A very few books remain on the shelves that I seldom read. Like lighthouses on a rock, they mark the contours of my life. Who I was. Why I am who I am.

So when Tyler Sperry alerted me that Steven R. Boyett's Ariel had ben reprinted, I had mixed emotions. First, I was thrilled. Steve is a terrific writer, Ariel is a terrific book, and to have it reprinted 20 years after its publication - well, that's incredible and wonderful. I felt disappointed, because I was sure I'd have to dig it out of a box. Why couldn't I have gotten the news just a little sooner?

It was right there on the bookshelf. I pulled it down and turned it over, wondering why I didn't box it. I don't think I've read it but once, when it was first published. Just touching again it awakened the emotions it carved into my heart all those years ago: wonder, love, and pain.

I wondered how it would hold up. I wondered if I dared read it again.

I did. It holds. It's a classic.

The language still takes my breath away. The smell of sweat and smoke, grass and peppermint, rise from the pages. Nothing is harder to write (or easier for me to skip) than a fight scene, and Ariel has a lot of them. Each reveals character and moves the story forward emotionally. I didn't skip a single one. The faerie-meets-mundane is one of my favorite fantasy sub-genres, and 20 years later, Boyett's vision remains fresh. I'd forgotten the humor. I'd forgotten George. I'd not forgotten how emotionally solid and true the book felt.

So why do I reread Ariel so seldom, when it's such a timeless, beautiful book? Why not pull it down every year or two, like Emma Bull's War for the Oaks?

It's those last couple of chapters. On my first reading, they seemed out of place, as though they belonged to a different book. They simply didn't seem to fit. Today, I feel less of that old disbelief than a melancholy resonance with my own endings - friends lost, loves dead, homes left behind. I read it now and whisper, "Of course; it couldn't have happened any other way," instead of, "Are you kidding me????"

What a gift! To find that a book I once loved and feared has grown with me. It's a testament to Boyett's mastery of craft that I fear Ariel less and love it more, that the laughter is still genuine and the pain walks hand-in-hand with wisdom. The promise of the sequel is tantalizing, because I never felt Pete and Ariel's story was finished. I'm eager for Elegy Beach.

Children's books banned in USA

I keep telling myself this is a nightmare and I'll wake up soon.

Under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), products for children age 12 and under that contain lead cannot be distributed in the USA (sold, loaned, given - shared in any way). Books printed before 1985 may contain lead in the ink. Therefore, those books must be destroyed. Even libraries may have to comply (the Consumer Protection Agency has asked libraries to remove the books from circulation until the final ruling on libraries next year).

I am not making this up.

Read the Article in The New Atlantis. Or go to
Overlawyered and follow the progress of the Act.

Or just Google: children's books prior to 1985 lead ink.

The Act passed in August 2008 and went into effect in February this year. How could it have flown under the radar for so long? Why didn't I see an alert in the county library newsletter? in Willamette Week? the Oregonian? from Powell's? From my publisher or writer friends? Did Wordstock put people up in arms about this?

I think about the books I read and loved as a child; they helped shape my values, my character, my sense of humor... Many are probably still in print, but even so - to think that every copy printed before 1985 will be removed from bookshelves, tossed in a dumpster... and that this has already been going on for months... And what about those that are no longer in print?

Write your members of Congress. Donate to organizations that are fighting this.

Unbelievable.

Perfectionism

Martha Cilley, the Flylady (author of Sink Reflections), teaches crazy-busy people to gain control of their cluttered homes. She says perfectionism is one of the biggest obstacles. If we can't do something in a way that meets our high standards, we put it off until we can do it right. But often, that time never seems to come, and the work piles up.

Cilley teaches baby steps. No matter where you are, you can do a little bit. You don't have to catch up. Just start where you are.

By chunking big jobs down into little steps, procrastination ceases and you start making progress. You get more done. And the more you do something, the better you get at it. The better you get, the faster the job goes. It's a "virtuous cycle." It's a great feeling.

Someone once said, "If at first you don't succeed, pick a smaller goal." My friend Lisa-Marie says, "Lower expectation, higher satisfaction."

Does this mean I shouldn't shoot for the stars? No way! Some goals are so big that to tackle them without breaking them into smaller chunks leads to frustration and discouragement. If I set mini-goals along the way and celebrate those achievements, I'm more likely to stay engaged and keep moving forward.

Boo!

My sister and I were having dinner when she said, "Did you know the house we lived in was haunted?"

"The one on Hitchcock?" I asked.

"No, the one on Sierra Vista."

I laughed. That house was the stereotypical suburban 3-bedroom-2-kids-and-a-dog house with a spider plant in a macrame planter on the front porch. The creepiest thing I'd ever seen there were the Vincent Price movies I liked to watch on weekends. Haunted? Right.

"It was," she insisted. "Do you remember the remodel?"

My sister and I shared a bedroom until she was 7 or 8, and then my parents converted the playroom into her bedroom. I knew the playroom wasn't original to the house, but I don't remember it being added on.

My sister says remodeling increases paranormal activity. "The original owner was blind, and I used to see this man staggering around like he was drunk. He bumped into things because he didn't know where things were anymore. And he used to bumble into my room at night and grab my feet."

I stared at her. One night when I was about 10 or 11, I woke up screaming because someone had grabbed my feet. Hard. That experience became the mother of all nightmares - the one by which all others are measured. I've had some bad dreams in my life, but none but that one ever ended with the vivid physical sensation of being grabbed.

I told her about it. "But it was a dream," I said. "Mom told me it was just a bad dream."

"It wasn't," she said, delighted. "It was the ghost."

"But it never happened again," I said. "Just that one time."

"Did you believe her?"

I was silent. I hadn't, at first. But Mom kept repeating, "It was just a dream; go back to sleep." I argued tearfully, because I couldn't block out the memory of those hard hands clenched around my feet. It was so real. But mom said it was just a dream, the room was clearly empty, except for me, and the house was empty, except for my family. All the evidence pointed to "No one could have grabbed me." I decided dreams could be that vivid and seem that real.

My sister nodded, seeing the answer in my expression. "That's why it only happened once. You closed it out. That's probably why you've never had any paranormal experiences. You don't believe them and you don't want them."

In retrospect, I'm glad I closed out that particular belief: "Our house is haunted by a blind guy who wakes you up out of a sound sleep by grabbing your feet." Who needs that kind of thing when there's a math test in Mrs. Dunlop's class the next morning? Maybe I can attribute my good grades to good study habits, but maybe my good study habits were a result of being immune to spooky distractions!

My sister has always been sensitive to weird things, and I have typically been oblivious to them. But then, because of my copyediting experience, I can spot an italicized comma or a boldfaced period where most people can't. You find what you look for, and over time, you become more sensitive to certain types of information. Which means you notice it more often. Which means you're likely to believe there's more evidence for it than there actually is.

Do it badly!

I once knew a sociologist who told me most innovations (scientific, creative, business) were made by people under age 30. What a sad statistic, I thought. Why? What happens to our brains as we age?

I think it's less about what happens to our brains and ore about what happens to our beliefs. As we get older, I think we tend to specialize. We get good at certain things and excel. We prize efficiency and become impatient with bumbling. Because trying new things means making mistakes, we try fewer new things. Most people don't like to make mistakes.

My dance teacher in Los Angeles, John Hertz, used to say, "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." His words have resonated with me over the years. It took me five years of dancing once a month to learn to waltz without stepping on my own feet. I learned most from the better dancers: the ones who took the time to coach, and the ones who led by example and gave me something to strive for. I'm so grateful to the patient men who were willing to dance with a rank beginner. I know I slowed them down. My stumbling kept them from dancing at their highest level... at least, when they were dancing with me. But their examples inspire me to pass it on. When I'm paired with someone who doesn't have my experience, I remember their model of patience and kindness and do my best to come from that place.

As a rank beginner at dancing, my head sometimes filled with self-criticism. "I should be learning faster; I shouldn't be making those same mistakes by now; I should be more careful; I should concentrate more; I should relax more." At other times, I let go of the need to live up to anyone's expectations, and I found that place of persistence, curiosity, and experimentation that Richard Bandler describes as the attitude of a magician learning a trick: "That wasn't quite right; let me try it again."

Mistakes are part of learning. Good teachers support their students with patience and encouragement. Of course, there's also the challenge to improve, but correction is tempered by confidence in the student's ability. Where do we get the idea that we must do everything perfectly the first time, or if we don't get it right, we weren't meant to do it? That seems to me to be a discouraging approach.

Rewriting history

I went to the library recently to pick up some books on hold for my sweetie. Among them was The Mote in God's Eye, a first-contact novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. I sat reading in the car for a bit, to see if I'd like it. I couldn't remember reading a Niven/Pournelle novel. They tend to write hard science fiction, and while I love hard science, I generally like to get it in short nonfiction articles rather than book-length works, and I haven't often found hard sf captivating.

The first few chapters kept me going, but I never reached that level of absorption where time seems suspended. Mote was interesting, but not impossible to put down. Maybe there were more characters than I could track; maybe I had trouble conjuring a mental image of the aliens; maybe I tried too hard to puzzle out the backstory (which I hadn't read); perhaps I was feeling impatient for the payoff of what seemed to me an overlong setup. Maybe a combination. I got halfway through the book before resorting to the Web for a synopsis.

Once I read the synopsis and knew how the story turned out, I was eager to get back to the book and finish reading it. (And, having finished it, I'm looking forward to reading the sequel.)

This started me thinking about "spoilers," the cheat sheets of popular media. You can find spoiler pages for TV shows, movies, books, games, you name it. Sometimes I don't want to be "spoiled." I want to come to a work fresh and open. I want the suspense to last for as long as the author can draw it out. I want to take my time as it unfolds.

At other times, spoilers renew my interest when it starts to flag. And once I've read a book, or seen a movie, what then? Well, I've read Pride & Prejudice and Atlas Shrugged and War for the Oaks and The Beekeeper's Apprentice about a bazillion times each, and each time, I love them more. Something new opens up, even in that familiar experience.

Life can be like that. Retrospect can reveal patterns imperceptible when I was in the thick of things. Imagining the ultimate results ahead can help me re-engage and can carry me forward.

And there's power in retelling the past, or telling it differently. If history is written by the victors, I possess the privilege of rewriting my own history. I can go back with a new perspective, emphasize different details, come to different conclusions, and change the lessons I learn to more empowering or entertaining ones.