I know, every post could have the title of this one, but I do have a collection of random subjects to write about, so today is as good a time as any.

Lions and Tigers and…Panthers? 

My dad’s financial guy extraordinaire, Mike Washer, was telling me that my dad told him that years ago there was a park ranger at Manassas Battlefield Park (about six miles from where we live) who was tired of deer overrunning the place and got some panthers to let loose and control the deer population. Since then there have been panther sightings  around the area, including the Battlefield, Haymarket and Prince William Hospital. If you see a large black kitty cat, do not approach him/her/it. Raise your hands high above your head, back away slowly and intone “Nice kitty, kitty” in a low voice. Be careful. It’s a jungle out there….

Smarty Pants and Other Similar Appellations

I am indebted to Chorale soprano extraordinaire Marcy Pratt for this linguistic invention. Here’s the actual Facebook back-and-forth that we had about a new “pants” expression that Marcy used:

Marcy: Jessica Chastain played the blonde heroine of the Help (not the snotty pants [role]). 🙂
 
Dan: I love the idea of a “snotty pants” role. It’s just intuitively understandable. We had a security guy at school we called “Mr. Grouchy Pants.” Because he was. 

Marcy: Yes, funny to think about now that you mention – “I’d like to audition for the Snotty pants role, please?” :)

Dan: I see it as a role type, kinda like an ingenue role or a best buddy role. “She was best know for playing Snotty Pants roles in a variety of films that spanned decades…”

A few days later, this series:

Dan: Look, Marcy, it’s Miss Snotty Pants’ sister! She has written a book! 

http://www.amazon.com

Marcy: GREAT book, by the way! 🙂 LOVE Tina Fey!

Then, recently I found this passage in an article about a change in editorial leadership at the New Yorker magazine:
 

Who Knew? EZ Pass, i Phones and Automatic Backup

OK, so I’m not an Early Adopter when it comes to technology. We still have VCR’s and had the original NuTone intercom/radio that came with the house in 1967 when it was built, right up until we remodeled the kitchen about three years ago. So we just got EZ Passes for the cars. Incredible! When we drove to New Jersey to catch the Jersey Transit to Manhattan, we used the pass for tolls. Worked like a charm and saved us probably 15 minutes in travel time. We don’t use toll roads much but when we do, it’s EZ Pass all the way. Who knew?

And then daughter Amy’s bf Chris #2 (Macgee) gave me his iPhone 3 when he upgraded to a 4. It’s an incredible piece of technology and came in very handy when we were in New York for determining things like which way to go when we came out of the subway and the location of nearby restaurants. I can also check email on texts on the fly. Who knew these things were so useful?

And then there is my newest friend, Automatic Backup. Blogspot, which I’m using this very second, backs up my work every a couple of minutes or so. This has saved me hours of work when the power goes off or I hit an unknown combination of keys and lock the computer up or clear the post I’m working on. Who knew how useful this was?

In honor of our trip this past week to New York City, this week’s poem is by Walt Whitman, who lived in Brooklyn where he edited The Brooklyn Eagle as a young man. It wasn’t until he moved to Camden, NJ that he acquired the persona of “The Good Gray Poet” although his sometimes explicit verse made him a controversial figure during his time. When the book was first published, Whitman was fired from his job at the Department of the Interior after Secretary of the Interior James Harlan read it and said he found it very offensive. Poet John Greenleaf Whittier was said to have thrown his 1855 edition into the fire. Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Emily Dickinson’s editor) wrote, “It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote ‘Leaves of Grass,’ only that he did not burn it afterwards.”

Some scholars believe Whitman’s signature long-line free verse form was influenced by his habitual wandering of the long north-south avenues of Manhattan where he saw the world come to him. He writes about the island and the people he encountered in his forays in this poem.

Mannahatta

by Walt Whitman

I WAS asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon, lo! upsprang the aboriginal name!
Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient;
I see that the word of my city is that word up there,
Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb, with tall and wonderful
spires,
Rich, hemm’d thick all around with sailships and steamships—an island sixteen
miles
long, solid-founded,
Numberless crowded streets—high growths of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly
uprising toward clear skies;
Tide swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,
The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining islands, the heights, the
villas,
The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the ferry-boats, the black
sea-steamers well-model’d;
The down-town streets, the jobbers’ houses of business—the houses of business of
the
ship-merchants, and money-brokers—the river-streets;
Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week;
The carts hauling goods—the manly race of drivers of horses—the brown-faced
sailors;
The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft;
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells—the broken ice in the river, passing along, up or
down,
with the flood tide or ebb-tide;
The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form’d, beautiful-faced, looking you
straight
in the eyes;
Trottoirs throng’d—vehicles—Broadway—the women—the shops and
shows,
The parades, processions, bugles playing, flags flying, drums beating;
A million people—manners free and superb—open voices—hospitality—the
most
courageous and friendly young men;
The free city! no slaves! no owners of slaves!
The beautiful city, the city of hurried and sparkling waters! the city of spires and
masts!
The city nested in bays! my city!
The city of such women, I am mad to be with them! I will return after death to be with
them!
The city of such young men, I swear I cannot live happy, without I often go talk, walk,
eat,
drink, sleep, with them!

I want to devote Thursdays to advice for writers, so to kick it off, here’s a post by Elizabeth Hagen, the pastor of Washington Plaza Baptist Church, on Lake Anne in Reston, VA, used with her permission. Elizabeth’s blog is called Preacher on the Plaza and is worth reading, with wonderful insights, trenchant commentary and a warm inclusive tone. It’s also well-written. You can check it out at http://preacherontheplaza.wordpress.com/.

In a recent post, Elizabeth wrote, 

Recently I have found myself being asked more about writing. Such as: “How do I find time to do so much of it?”  ”How do I decide what to write about?” “Why write a blog when you don’t know if anyone out there is really reading?”
I giggle a little to think that someone would ask me such questions because only in the past six months have I been able to confidently say that I am a writer as much as I am a pastor among other things.  Yet, the truth of the matter is that I’ve been steady at the discipline of blogging since 2006– back before it was  cool– and have loved every minute of it.  If you want to make me smile, let’s have a conversation about writing.
If you want to know why I blog, check out the “About Elizabeth page.”  For the rest, here’s my in the process of learning list for today:
1. You must write and write a lot to get better at it. Sounds un-profound, but it’s true. There is no magic formula to being a writer.  As much as you might have a natural inclination for words, you have to learn the craft. Blessed be the friends who read you stuff even when it is bad and don’t tell you how bad it really is– these are the people you need in your life cheering you on believing in the fact that it will get better. They’ll be plenty of editors or critical blog commenters who will tell you the truth!
2. If you are going to be a writer, you need to know when is your time of day when ideas come. For me this is annoyingly the moment I put my head on my pillow at night. I lay there and my head floods with topics for new blogs or ideas for how I want to arrange the chapters of my upcoming book project. I try to fight it, telling myself to forget until morning. But, usually such a declaration doesn’t work. So, I say, if creativity calls, run with it. (Just don’t publish a blog after 11 pm. Most I know are usually sorry for this in the am).
3. Write with heart. Again, not profound. But often, I’ve found readers forgiving me for a multitude of grammar sins if they know I believe and am passionate about what I am trying to say.  Especially in persuasive writing (which is what I mostly do– sermons and op ed type pieces), readers need to know you personally care about what you describe. There’s nothing worse to read, I think, than a journalistic type writer trying to give you the facts and then expecting you to care when you have no idea if the writer cares first! Caring of course don’t have to explicit. People know if you do or don’t implicitly.
4. Make friends with other writers.  Non-writers just don’t see prose they way a writer does.  My mom or my husband, for example, will read my stuff and will often comments in helpful ways, but their feedback is never as a good as that of my writing friends. Fellow writers will tell me that I had “a nice turn of phrase” or “this theme connection really made the essay work” or “I didn’t start liking you as a character until half way through the chapter.” Other writers speak your langauge and so you always need to stick close to them.
5. Do not be afraid of the delete button. In the beginning of my weekly writing career, especially with sermons, I was really anxious about cutting large chunks of the piece out.  I had worked so hard! It was so sad to see a paragraph go that I would cut and paste it into another word document hoping to come back to it later. The funny thing is that I NEVER would need it.  Sometimes the delete button can be your writing project’s very best friend. Though a tear may be shed, the best thing is to just go with it. Tear the band-aid quickly though and you’ll feel better for it.
And, most of all read about writing. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is one of my favorites.

We’ve known Sheila Lamb since she was a small child, and it has been a pleasure to watch her grow up into a smart, talented and literary woman.

Sheila is currently an MFA candidate at Queens University of Charlotte. Her stories have appeared in Steel Toe Review, Soundzine, Referential Magazine, Santa Fe Writers Project, and elsewhere. Her short story “Swim” has been nominated for the 2011 Pushcart prize.

Once A Goddess, the first in her  trilogy about Brigid of Ireland, is an historical fantasy about Irish mythology that works even for people who aren’t familiar with the genre, as I was not. The  novel features well-drawn characters, compelling conflicts and evocative descriptions. It’s a winner, as is this long-time friend.

The book is available in paperback or ebook on Amazon.com,  Barnes and Noble or for order through your local independent bookstore. 

I hope we will have many more books like this one from Ms. Lamb!

This past week we took ourselves to New York City for one of our Broadway musical/shopping/museum/urban vibe trips. We had been in the city last September 11 to be part of a chorus that sang Rene Clausen’s Memorial at the Lincoln Center. We had rehearsals and the performance but managed to squeeze in some B/S/M/UV time. This time it was all about that.

We had a good discount on a nice hotel and so off we went last Thursday with Becky driving (as usual–I’m the navigator) to Somerville, New Jersey where we left the car and caught the New Jersey Transit into the city. We’ve found this to be a fast and relatively inexpensive way to get to Manhattan. We arrived at the hotel about 6, checked in using a spiffy electronic kiosk and set off for the TKTS booth at Times Square, which sells half-price same-day tickets to Broadway shows. Ducats (don’t you love the outdated show biz vocabulary?) for Mama Mia were available, so we snapped some up and made our way to Bubba Gump’s Shrimp Factory restaurant at Times Square, the largest of that chain. We like to eat there–the service is fast and friendly and the food is good. By the time we ate it was time to make it to the Winter Garden Theater (where Becky saw her first Broadway musical) and Mama Mia!

To tell the truth, although we had heard good things about this musical, I thought it was going to be extremely lame. I had seen the movie version and it was an embarrassment to watch a fine actress like Meryl Streep in such a horrid production. I wasn’t expecting much, but it was a case of “Wrong again, Lt. Dan!” I think it was a critic who called the play “dance at your seat exuberant” but that was exactly right. I am not a dance-at-your-seat kind of guy normally, but i made an exception for this. I did keep some of my best moves back for the series of disco nights I will be attending in the near future. As if.

 The next morning we had planned to go stand in the crowd outside The Today Show a few blocks from our hotel but sub-freezing temperatures and winds of 40+ mph had us watching the proceedings from the hotel room. Then we were off to the Metropolitan Museum where the incredible number of priceless artifacts blew me away as always. After lunch we went back to room and rested, then saw Wicked that evening, a wonderfully nuanced show that I recommend highly.

Saturday, we got some tickets for a Mary Poppins matinee that afternoon and went to the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Discovery Museum at Times Square. If you have a chance to see it, please go. The antiquities are on loan from the state of Israel and gave me a case of goose bumps the whole time we were in the display.
After lunch we were off to Mary Poppins, which proved to be an unfortunate experience for me. Our seats in the nose bleed section were so cramped that my legs from the mid-calf down to my toes went numb by intermission. Not wanting to entertain a clot from DVT, I bailed out of the show (which I found annoying…sorry, Julie Andrews fans) and sat in a coffee shop and made notes for this post. Becky soldiered on inside and I met her after the show.

We went out to dinner and then back to the hotel for a quiet evening of TV and catching up on emails and Facebook.

The next morning we got underway and had an exceptionally smooth trip under clear if cold skies.

We’ll be back after an interval to recover. This sort of journey suits us well and it is expensive but we believe it to be well worth the price. The title is from a Gordon Lightfoot (who else?) song from the 60’s in which he sings about what a cold and lonely place the city is. In the 60’s when I visited it in college, I found it to be dirty, dangerous, expensive and filled with nasty people. All that has changed. The city still has its problems, but there’s no other place like it. It is clean, safe and filled with nice people, but still expensive. New York might have cold hands, but it now also has a warm heart.

I noted with sadness the passing of Bill Trumbull on Tuesday at Prince William Hospital, about a mile from where we live. I wasn’t aware he and his wife lived in the area, in Bristow. Bill was part of the ambiance of the Washington area during a 36-year run on WMAL-AM.

During the years when ‘MAL ruled the airwaves, they had a lineup that that ran all day and all night with memorable personalities and, yes, good music on the AM band. FM radio was not established in the area at that time. People set their clocks and checked their schedule against the shennanigans of Harden and Weaver in the morning, followed by Tom Gauger, then Bill with partner Chris Core in what was called at first “Two for the Road” and soon changed to “Trumbull and Core” and Felix Grant with his cool jazz program and Bill Mayhugh overnight. John Lyons was an incredible weekend guy and fill-in.

Like many other people, my car pool buddy Mike Bartlett and I listened to Trumbull and Core on our drive home. They made taking the traffic a lot easier. The show featured an eclectic mix of music and comedy. Trumbull’s self-deprecating humor was laugh-out-loud funny and the fellow always seemed to be suffering some disaster. By all accounts, he was a nice man, a rarity, I understand, in the radio business.

Chris Core did a touching tribute to his friend and partner yesterday on his “Core Values” feature on WTOP-FM. You can follow this link to listen to it: http://www.wtop.com/?nid=200&sid=2702914

I remember the fun and the silliness, but I also remember that terrible day thirty years ago tomorrow when Air Florida Flight 90 slammed into the 14th Street Bridge. We had had an early dismissal from school because of the snowstorm and it took Mike and me three hours to drive from Fairfax. Trumbull and Core kept us company the whole way. As we were coming down Barnett Street to Mike’s house (we did not move to the neighborhood until 1988), Chris Core came on and announced that an airplane had hit the bridge and gone into the Potomac. It was a chilling and memorable moment, part of the dark matter of life in the Washington area.

My condolences to Bill’s family and friends. Somehow, that friends category includes all his listeners. Rest in peace, Bill Trumbull.

Each week I want to feature a local writer, so Biscuit City’s first Writer of the Week is Woodbridge author Nancy Kyme. I met Nancy about a month ago at a book signing at a fair at Mayfield School. She published her first book, Memory Lake, last year and is at work on a sequel. Nancy is witty, warm, wise and unusual as a writer in that she is a C.P.A. and taught herself to write without benefit of a literature degree or an M.F.A. I’m cutting in the review of her book that I wrote for Amazon.com. I urge you to read Nancy’s book. You won’t regret it.

Mother, daughter, military wife, C. P. A. and first-time author Nancy Kyme has penned a luminous literary non-fiction piece about her experiences at a summer camp on the shores of Lake Michigan in the 1970’s. This finely measured, clearly remembered and richly imagined work cycles in a complex recursive arc from the adult Nancy taking her daughter and the daughter’s friends to Nancy’s reunion at the camp back and forth through time by means of a sophisticated intermittent narrative of the teenaged Nancy who spent seven summers at the camp. All the classic camp story elements are there: the bunks, the cabins, the dining hall, the counselors, lessons and activities of all sorts, the smelly and somewhat brutish boy campers, the awards, encounters with nature, pranks, conflicts between girls (although minor and understated) songs, ceremonies, special trips and a sense of Edenic isolation.

And yet, like the lake at the camp’s edge, much more lurks beneath the surface. The first half of the story resonates with elements of myth, romance (in the literary sense), tragedy (loss) and a struggle to create meaning and find peace in the aftermath of a heartfelt tragedy. This is no summer beach read or even a notch or two above a summer beach read: it is a full-on resonant example of the coming of age genre told from a point of mature wisdom. I believe it is destined to become a classic if there is any justice in this world.

Memory Lake, while focusing on the difficult straits of the passage into adulthood and coming to terms with the past, lies close in imagination to Never-Never Land, the planets of Star Wars, , the wizarding world of Harry Potter, Narnia, the emerald towers of the City of Oz and the Louisiana of Steel Magnolias. With its complex but clearly presented structure, characters and setting , the book evokes not only a richly remembered past but also a calm present whose serenity has been gained only by great sacrifice. Well drawn, identifiable characters (whom we like and wish the best for), authentic dialogue, exact and evocative word choice, beautifully detailed description and poetry worked into the prose at every turn of the page create a world apart we have either experienced or wish we could have.

The second part of the story drops into a post-modern recounting of the culmination of the trip to the reunion at the camp and resonant flashbacks to a mythical wounding and its healing aftermath. We also learn the true nature of the informing tragedy of the book . The resulting philosophical and theological insights lift the narrative into the realm of the universal archeytpe while remaining firmly rooted in everyday events and miraculous epiphanies.

With this book, Kyme joins the ranks of authors like Alice Sebold, A. S. Byatt, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Munro, Laurie Colwin and Anne Tyler, who write about ordinary life and its implications and who illuminate matters of the heart with skill, insight and subtlety. I pray that she has many, many more stories in her heart and mind for all of us who need to remember, to hope, to be unafraid, to move on and to love.

I am a rapid reader, and normally I could have read the 400-plus pages of a book like this in two days at the least, and four days at the most. This book took me three weeks of solid reading because I crawled through it. There was so much to see along the way–I don’t regret the time I spent reading at all. It was time and effort well spent.