writewrite

My brother has a new post on his blog about reforming, or as he puts it “rebranding” the rather worn and dowdy peace aesthetic. See what you think: LINK. And if, like me, you’re a shoe afficionado? Well, peace be with you.

*******

Observed in KMart yesterday in the paper goods aisle:

An older woman, riding a motorized wheelchair down the aisle, checking out the prices on paper towels. A man she seems to be with shuffles ahead of her. She stops at the Bounty display: “Shoo-ee! Them are expensive!” She shakes her head. “Herbert? It’s time for you and me to go to McDonald’s, steal some napkins.”

Herbert ignores her, keeps walking down the aisle.

*******

Yesterday afternoon, on my way home from errands, I deliver some popsicles to a friend who is feeling poorly. A thick fluffy snow is falling. The streets are slick and in my little car with little traction I am driving very carefully. I turn into my friend’s street. The mailman’s truck is across the street from her house. I come up behind him, then carefully begin to make the turn into her driveway. Just then, the mail truck veers out into the street, right in front of me.

Holy Crap! I tap the brakes, do a slow motion skid away from him, slide into my friend’s driveway. The mailman gives me a very dirty look, then drives on. The snow continues to fall, silent and very white.

*****

I have a snow globe with a Basho haiku on it, sitting on my desk. It bothers me that the final line is four syllables, not five:

Winter solitude:
in a world of one color
the sound of wind

I rewrite it often in my head. Sound becomes noises; wind gets adjectives appended to it: cold, white, pale; sound gets them too: old, clear, bright.

It occurs to me that the best adjectives are those which perform acts of synesthesia. That might require more syllables. Or not. “The blue sound of wind.” or “The sound of blue wind.” Cool.

*****
I’m procrastinating on a piece of writing. My play. It’s inching along, and I am making progress on it, so the only complaint I have is with myself. I’m feeling lazy. Today, there is writing grunt work to do: transcribing onto the computer the handwritten notes I’ve been making all week. 83 pages of notes.

Hmm. I have a three hour meeting tomorrow afternoon. Maybe I can do it then.

I first saw the headline for this story in the Indianapolis Star a week or so ago. A 68-year-old Indiana woman, married twenty-three times. The news peg for the story was simply that she had just made the Guinness Book of World Records. At the time, I thought: I must write a novel about this. I mean, it’s a breeze. About 23 chapters. Okay, maybe 24. (She’s single now.) Still, oh, the details. The drama. The romance. The tragi-comic potential. Heck, it could be a musical.

At any rate,read all about it here: LINK

And if you’re not living in Indiana? Well, just kick yourself with disappointment. There is so very much to write about here!

Saturday was the final production of the play Fahrenheit 451. The work leading up to this spanned almost three months, and an interesting three months it was: I met some wonderful people, learned a little about many things theatre: acting, directing, blocking, costumes, set construction and design. My biggest “part” was to be one of the mighty set crew, which I must say was more fun than I would have imagined. I do like physical challenges; although, to be fully honest, if it weren’t for my set crew partner — who more often than I would like to admit growled politely, sotto voce: GO! — if it weren’t for that, I would have missed half the cues.

Now all this is receding into the memory bank, and what I have left are notes in my journal, scraps of paper with scribbled ideas I jammed into my pockets backstage, a smattering of photographs, and some strong mental images. Among those, oddly enough, is what I learned about makeup. Right. That. If you know me at all, or have seen me in person, you know without a doubt I’m not much of a makeup girl. It has its place, certainly. When I have a zit? Makeup is cool. When I have to be filmed for something, or photographed? Oh, okay. I think there’s some eyeliner/blush/etc around here somewhere.

During the final weeks of rehearsal, we did what you do in theatre-land: we had dress rehearsals, in various incarnations. Costumes. Tech. And makeup. Costumes were no problem. I love to play dress up. But the makeup? First of all, theatre makeup is disgusting stuff. Pancake-batter-thick flesh-colored goo goes on your face. Then layers of other things: wonky bright red blush, eyeshadow thick as spackling compound. And you have to use something horrid called “bronzer” to make the hollows of your cheeks stick out; or, in, I suppose. And then eyebrow pencil, to make your eyebrows appear darker, more apparent.

What I quickly learned is that of the women in the group dressing room, I was and am probably the only one who does not pluck, shave, or wax her eyebrows, or seek out a professional eyebrow person to do the same. I’ve thought about eyebrow-taming, upon occasion, admiring the sleek sinuous lines of pretty women’s eyebrows. I’ve tried it once or twice, gingerly removing one or two eyebrow hairs. But then I got busy with other things. Like, um, writing. Reading a book. Cleaning up muddy dog prints in my kitchen. You know. Life.

Still. Sitting in that dressing room, watching the women around me apply makeup with a sure hand, transforming themselves from ordinary to super glamorous, trading tips on many things, including the art of shaping the perfect eyebrow, I found myself pondering what began to feel like an existential question: Should I, Jean Harper, consider the state of my eyebrows? I gazed into the bright theatre mirror, the one framed by bright bulbs. My eyebrows, there they were. Sort of a light brownish mousy color, kind of furry and unkempt. A bit like pale caterpillars. Not unattractive. But not sleek, or svelte, or glamorous.

I have many things to do in my life, as usual. I may or may not undertake the taming of my eyebrows. Yet I find that I now can’t help but notice eyebrows. I find myself drawn to examining the perfected eyebrows of women around me: friends, acquaintances, students in my classes, strangers in the grocery store. The intentional eyebrow is more prevalent than I realized. So I look. And I wonder whose hand perfected that eyebrow on that woman, what time this act took from other things, and what unexpected — or perhaps, expected — gifts the beautiful eyebrow gives its bearer.

I’m probably in the vast minority here, but I am quite disappointed that the weather has turned yummy and all the snow is melted and just gone. I mean, really. It’s still February. It’s just not right to have blue skies, and balmy weather, and — what the heck is this, sunshine? Please. Bring back winter!

Oh, okay. Thanks. There’s a slight possiblity of that happening. Forecast, herewith:

Indianapolis Area
Tonight: mostly cloudy. A 50 percent chance of rain and snow after midnight. Lows in the lower 30s. East winds 5 to 10 mph.
Saturday: mostly cloudy. A 40 percent chance of snow and rain until midday. Highs in the upper 30s. North winds 5 to 15 mph.

Good news.

Why I persist in bothering to read the Palladium-Item is beyond me. But I do. Maybe it’s for the joy of finding those dipsy dangling modifiers. Some day, when I have time, I’m going to read an entire Sunday issue and COUNT them. For now, I’ll just offer up today’s yummy morsel:

In 1923, it was remodeled and renamed Nicholson School after Timothy Nicholson, founder of a bookstore and printing business, a trustee at Earlham College and a community and religious leader.

Okay, so it’s not as delicious as some danglers can be, but there it is:

…Timothy Nicholson, founder of a bookstore and printing business, a trustee at Earlham College and a community and religious leader.

Woweezow. Founder of all those things? It kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it. How indeed does a man found a trustee, and a community and religious leader? I mean, kind of creepy, no?

Oh, I know, I know. English professors can be soooooooooooo annoying. Yeah, well, so can a poorly written newspaper. Get me REWRITE!

My brother Dan, who lives about 1,000 miles from here in the small port city of New Bedford, Massachusetts, posted an interesting comment about his frustration with his own town’s local newspaper. It too is thin on content, shallow on quality, and shabbily written. It too blames “the internet” for the continuing decline of quality and quantity of news in the newspaper. Both Dan and I agree that this causal link is bunk. The internet made newspapers get shoddy? Um, not likely. There are other causes. Greed tops my list. You know. That burning desire for more profit and less expenditure.

Well. As my students say: whatever. The causes of the death of local print newspapers are not what this post is about. The Palladium-Item and the New Bedford Standard Times and many more small newspapers that have been swallowed up by large conglomerates will die slow, self-righteous, deaths, full of excuses and rationalizations and finger-pointing editorials. I mourn that. But we must move on.

So where do we go?

The J-schools (journalism schools) would like us to believe that only journalists can do the job of providing useful news. They scorn the notion of “citizen journalists”; that is, people like you and me who are intelligent, can string sentences together in a coherent fashion, know bullshit when we see it, and are not afraid to say so. For some reason, we aren’t as smart or ethical or noble as journalists. I beg to differ. We are entering — hell, we are right in the middle of — a new era of news gathering and dissemination. Journalists have skills and talents we can appreciate and emulate; citizen journalists have something else entirely to add: a passion for their own community. Does that mean we might be a little subjective? Sure it does. Does subjectivity negate the possibility of providing accurate, true, and useful information? Nope. Sure doesn’t.

So, here we are. Mere mortals, looking for news. If we say the local newspaper isn’t providing it, who shall? And how? And what exactly is news, while we’re at it? Should it be objective? Does that exist? Must it be written in a sort of bullet inverted pyramid style? Is there another way? When you go looking for news, what do you want? Announcements, editorials, exposes, court news, behind the scenes features, club news, gossip, reporting on meetings…what, exactly? Should it all be in one spot? Would a posse of news gatherers do the work? Would they commit to it? Should there be an editor?

What other questions are there about news? What answers might we find?

And where shall we go from here….?

Apparently, my recent biased review of a review hit a nerve. Perhaps several nerves. The bad writing nerve; the dammit-this-is-community-theatre-not-Broadway nerve; the they-call-themselves-a-newspaper nerve. Probably a few more too, some of which shall go unremarked upon.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that what got me most about the review is something I think about a lot: a local newspaper is like a canary in a coal mine. You know how that goes. Of course you do. And so does Wikipedia:

…coal miners in England and the US brought canaries into coal mines as an ‘early warning signal’ for toxic gases including methane and carbon monoxide. The birds, being more sensitive, would become sick before the miners, who would then have a chance to escape or put on protective respirators.

And here’s my extension of the simile: The newspaper, the Palladium-Item is the canary; Richmond is the coal mine; we are the coal miners. And the toxic gases? Unemployment. Businesses closing. School dropout rates. Drugs. Crime. etc. You know what the toxic gases are. These are the things that poison the heart of the city of Richmond, the things that are killing us slowly. The decline and shrinkage of the local newspaper is merely one of many early warning signs. There are others too. Watch for them wherever you go in Richmond. The line at the Coinstar machine near the end of the month as people turn pennies into grocery money; the overheard news that KFC is laying off workers (right, KFC: fast food); the parade of families moving house to house at the end of the month. I once got nosy and asked a neighbor who was loading a battered pickup: Where are you going? The answer: we’re moving to a cheaper place — I lost my job, my husband’s on disability, we can’t do it no more, we just keep falling behind.

It is not for me to say how Richmond got where it is today, nor can I imagine how we might turn things around. Yet it’s clear we are not doing well. I am not alone in my point of view. If you saw the film 1:47 (disclaimer, yes, my little film), you heard local businessman Pete Bartel say “Richmond has gone downhill.” You heard Joe Kirkland say, ruefully: “Richmond? It’s hard to describe to people how it used to be.” And you heard historian George Blakey deliver a broader perspective: Richmond is no different than many other Midwestern cities. We have fallen on hard times.

So, when I read that poorly written theatre review, and felt myself going slightly mad in response, this was more than a wacko English professor working overtime. This was me, seeing another canary. This is me, someone who lives in and rather loves Richmond, Indiana, a strange little city in the middle of nowhere, a city filled with talented, hardworking, decent people. This is me, and probably you too, wincing at the heartbreaking presence of yet another sign that our beloved city is slowly dying.

*****

I tell my students it’s usually not a good idea to end an essay with someone else’s words. Leave the reader with your voice, I tell them. Still. These words — the rest of the canary in the coal mine simile — will resonate in my head for quite awhile as I think about what they might mean for the people of Richmond, Indiana:

…the miners, who would then have a chance to escape or put on protective respirators.

I’m wandering through a local drugstore, doing a mundane errand. I watch a woman rearrange a shelf of cosmetics, little pots of blush and eyeshadow and other multi colored spangly things. I think: Gosh. Wouldn’t that be a fun job?

I’m noodling around on the internet, killing some time I should not be killing. I come across a summer job posting at the Indianapolis Zoo. There is a picture of a smiling woman in khaki shorts watering beautiful trees. The job has a fancy title, something like Assistant Horticultural Engineer. I think: Gee. Wouldn’t that be a fun job?

I’m driving to work on US 27. Lots of construction. Big equipment, front end loaders, a huge drill, lots of dirt and noise. Men in hard hats and carhaart coveralls standing around, pointing, yelling directions to each other over the huge noise. One guy is operating a big machine, moving dirt from one place to another. I think: Holy moly. Wouldn’t that be a wicked fun job?

Two guys come to my house yesterday to pick up an elderly mattress I am donating to charity. The guys, burly and ruddy from the cold, are driving a big truck. They are cheerful, greet my nutty dogs with enthusiasm, heft the mattress out the door, and then they are gone. I watch them drive away and think — wistfully — and wouldn’t that be a fun job too?

I need a vacation.

More snow today in Indiana. Six to eight inches expected by the time the storm is done. Blowing and drifting expected along county roads, those north south roads that always get drifted over. Ah. I wish I still had my cross country skis.

I’ve got 2 minutes and 49 minutes of fame, right here. Fortunately, I don’t look at all like this currently. Oh, okay, maybe a little. Still. Enough not like this that I can kind of go incognito if I need to. Which I don’t.

Owen beat up Baxter yesterday, some kind of tussle over a rolled up pig skin treat. Baxter is now worried that Owen might beat him up again, and has told me he isn’t coming out from under the coffee table until Owen gets hooked up with some serious doggie chill pills.

Every time I listen to the news on the radio, and hear an announcer say, “Today President Obama said…” I can’t help myself: I feel a genuine thrill. President Obama. He is only one man, and can’t work miracles, but my god how great it is not to hear “…President Bush said.” Just great.

This week I re-read, or maybe it’s just read because I don’t remember any of it, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. It’s a quiet gem of a play, the drama understated and perhaps easy to miss. Rather like life.

Friday night is opening night of Fahrenheit 451, the latest production for Richmond Civic Theatre. I have a miniscule little part, and am bumbling around as part of the set crew. Is this play a quiet gem? Well, not really. Ray Bradbury is not much of a playwright. However. It has been a lot of fun being part of this production, learning some things about theater, dramaturgy, set design, acting (oh, only a little about that), and working with some delightful high school and college kids who are part of all this. Which may be the point of Civic Theatre:the people in it, the civic nature of it. This production is part of a community wide event called The Ripple Effect. You can read more about both the play and the community project HERE.

And now, thanks to the snow, I am home, not teaching, not practicing for the play, not running errands, not doing anything but being home. Thank you, snow.