Reading and Signing at the Top of Maine

Fort Kent, Maine 5.15.12– met with Don Chouinard and Joce­lyn Saucier’s classes. A great time was had by all. It’s the cul­mi­na­tion of a two-year string of spec­tac­u­lar vis­its that took me from the inland moun­tains of Maine to the coast, from the river city of Gar­diner to the  Thomp­son Free Library in Dover-Foxcroft. It took me twice to Fort Kent at the top of Maine, first to to Kara Beal’s First Annual Fort Kent Mid­dle School Authors’ Con­fer­ence (I hope there will be many more). And then to meet the great young folks you see in the pic below.

I hate to see it all wind down, but it has to.  Today I vis­ited the Mars Hill Ele­men­tary and High Schools, and tomor­row a full day in Ash­land. Then home.

Very grate­ful to the Maine Arts Com­mis­sion , espe­cially Dar­rell Bul­mer, and to Josh Bod­well at the Maine Writ­ers’ and Pub­lish­ers’ Alliance for steer­ing me towards the Arts Vis­i­bil­ity Grant that made this possible.

Creative Writers All

What was it about meet­ing this merry band of Gar­diner High School cre­ative writ­ers that made the sun shine brighter and turned the world into a great big sea of possibilities?

Here’s what hap­pened. It was 12:20; lunchtime. They could have been over in the cafe­te­ria, clumped up tight around the tables, but here they were, hang­ing out in Christina Benedict’s class­room. A few girls sat around a lap­top, absorbed. A tall young man wrote out word scram­bles on the black­board, and the guesses flew — silly, fumy, hit or miss. “This isn’t a test” was his atti­tude. “It’s fun.”

The bell rang and more cre­ative writ­ers filed in. We began. Their ques­tions were writ­ers’ ques­tions — about the process, about where ideas come from, about what it feels like to have a story take over your mind. The changes in pub­lish­ing. How to make a web­site. What it costs to self-publish. What the main­stream pub­lish­ing world is all about. Where do titles come from? Char­ac­ters’ names? What is the impor­tance of set­ting? Place?

I read from Spring Bear a bit, but I’d lost track of the sec­tion of new work I’d printed out and brought with me. I was really bummed. I wanted to read my new work to these folks. But we talked abut free writ­ing, and I told them how mine gets lost, buried under lay­ers of edit­ing that end up as the final draft. We shared the tricks we all have to escape the fear of the blank page, and con­fided in each other our writ­ing rit­u­als. I for­got to tell mine about hav­ing to have the kitchen tidy before I write, but I did tell them about the long string of mud rooms that has dou­bled as my study.

Now it was 2:30 and school was over but the buses would make it hard for me to get my car out, so I stayed longer. I got to shake hands with two seniors, one headed for U ME Farm­ing­ton and the other for Cham­plain Col­lege in Burling­ton VT, both want­ing to become writ­ers. I wish them well. It isn’t easy, but joy and pos­si­bil­ity were in their eyes, and I know they’ll be fine.

May their gifts inspire oth­ers, just as their teach­ers have inspired them. The gifts of lov­ing to write, of tak­ing joy in what words can do, of giv­ing your­self the free­dom to be your­self on the page — all that shone in their eyes. I saw it in their smiles. May it be with them always.

Quite a Workout

Up at 6 a.m. and dri­ving on snowy roads by 7 to meet Amber Jeskey’s class, which had just read Spring Bear.  She turned out to be a top-notch, no-nonsense Eng­lish teacher with a sharp lit­er­ary mind  and the skills of a drill sergeant.

Her class of thir­teen guys and seven gals, all seniors at Medo­mak Val­ley High School in Wal­doboro, fired ques­tions spot-on for an hour and twenty minutes.

It made for quite a work­out. So when we were done, Bob and I stopped for a late break­fast at Moody’s Diner, down Route 1 a bit.

Here he is, tuck­ing into scram­bled eggs, bacon, and pancakes.

A very won­der­ful morning.

Of Fish, Voice, and Hooked Rugs

There are three rea­sons why I love Wal­doboro and I haven’t even gone there yet.

1. Wal­doboro has an annual fish count. Wal­doboro sits where the Medo­mack River emp­ties into the Atlantic, and it seems that alewives go up the Medo­mack to spawn. They start up the river in May and local vol­un­teers work two-hour shifts count­ing them. Between May 17th and June 12th of 2009 they counted 66,000. Why do this? To track changes in the pop­u­la­tion because alewives are crit­i­cal to the health of the Medo­mak River fish­ery. And the ocean’s food chain.
They care.

2. The poet Robert Cree­ley lived here. There is still a Cree­ley liv­ing here, I’m told, name of Pene­lope. Robert Cree­ley is right square in the line of Amer­i­can poets to give us the mean­ing of “voice.” Voice in poetry, voice as a writer…“Finding my voice.” I’m quot­ing a critic, M. L. Rosen­thal — Cree­ley has a “‘pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with a per­sonal rhythm in the sense that the dis­cov­ery of an exter­nal equiv­a­lent of the speak­ing self is felt to be the true object of poetry.“
The speak­ing self.
Yes.

3. There is a Wal­doboro style of rug hook­ing. It’s a sculp­tured style. The ladies who devel­oped it called it “raised work.” The yarn is raised so the top of each stitch forms an even curve with the tops of the other ones near it, and the style devel­oped right here in the homes of Wal­doboro women who got together and taught each other. They hooked bright pat­terns with flow­ers and birds. A rug in the Wal­doboro style is highly prized. One hangs in the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Museum of Art in New York City.

And of course, there’s Moody’s Diner.

More on that tomorrow.

Gloomy day yesterday but Waldoboro visit is next Friday!

Last night I went out, turned on the deck light, and there it was, just a bit, float­ing down. Then this morn­ing, from my green­house — voila! Snow drip­ping off the branches, a thick, heavy one, and the light is stunning. 

Get this. Yes­ter­day was bad, bad bad. Got not a lot done. All my under­tak­ings were not work­ing out. Noth­ing I did meant a whole lot, except that I was get­ting a lit­tle used to the idea of hav­ing become, truly, one who is in the process of break­ing down. Aging. Yuk.

But then today came! Things turn on a dime here in Maine. It’s the weather. It’s the major con­trol­ling fac­tor in every­thing, actu­ally. I love it.

So! Have an author visit to Wal­doboro a week from today. I will talk to Amber Jeskey’s class. Bob’s dri­ving. He some­how came by a paper copy of a Maine Atlas so we won’t have those infer­nal con­ver­sa­tions about whether or not the GPS device is wrong.

Book Tour Planned for Spring

We’ve had great response from an e-mail sent to high school Eng­lish teach­ers around the state, and we’re putting together a Spring Bear class­room tour. Thanks to a gen­er­ous grant from the Maine Arts Com­mis­sion, I can look for­ward to meet­ing the stu­dents and get­ting their take on the tough issues fac­ing the book’s char­ac­ters. If you’d like to be included on the tour, drop me a note.

Thoughts from the Greenhouse

I Write in the Green­house is Maine poet Car­ole Bachofner’s title.

But I am steal­ing it!  I write in a green­house, too, and here it is. It’s warm inside, even in the mid­dle of a Maine win­ter. I can be near my plants. It’s where lis­ten to the singers of the ‘six­ties, my for­ma­tive years — Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and of course Bob Dylan. Their spir­i­tual father was Woody Guthrie. Guthrie, born seven years after my father, trav­eled the Dust Bowl trail while my old Dad was learn­ing to be a Bohemian in Green­wich Vil­lage, slowly shak­ing off his “rich man’s son” ways. He did, too, because I can remem­ber him putting a gift — a record — on our record player. It played “This Land is Your Land.” I was still a small girl. That song brings tears to my eyes all these years since.

I’m writ­ing about his life in Truth Teller and Trai­tor to His Class, which I hope Potomac Books will put out. Am wait­ing for their edi­tor to read it, and then there will be revi­sions and if all goes well, the process will begin. It was quite a big day when I finally sent off the final ver­sion of that puppy. Took me almost four years; always on my mind.

Potomac will be the pub­lisher of Dad’s World War II mem­oir Back from Tobruk, com­ing out this Fall. I’ll be post­ing on it, too. After his Green­wich Vil­lage years, Dad signed up with the Amer­i­can Field Ser­vice, who headed him towards the British Army in North Africa. His unit of vol­un­teer ambu­lance dri­vers served through Rommel’s bomb­ing of Tobruk, but Dad was a war casu­alty. He got home via stretcher lines and hos­pi­tal trains and finally a ship from Dur­ban to New York. He came back a changed man, deter­mined to make mean­ing out of all the suf­fer­ing he had seen.

Class Trip

SPRING BEAR found its audi­ence one warm spring day in in this high school Eng­lish class in Winthrop ME . It was one of the hap­pi­est days of my life. (I’m the lady on the left in the pur­ple blouse, sit­ting on a desk). Those spec­tac­u­lar teenagers seated to the right either know some­one like — or could them­selves have been — my Evvie Mal­low or Rich Parker. Con­nect­ing with them over a world I’d imag­ined and they’d come to know through the book was –um — sorry, I just can’t find words for it.

But they did. They wrote me let­ters. Here is some of what they said.
Read more →

A Trailer in the Making

Day dawned cloudy and rain­ing. Just what we wanted. Up at first light. Fetched Dave Bubier, hold­ing down the lead role of Lester Dar­row. He brought the guns. Drove to Roberta and David Man­ter, gra­cious providers of the per­fect loca­tion. Met up with pro­ducer Dean Gyorgy (dgmediaarts.com) and his wife Mar­got, play­ing the lady from Mass­a­chu­setts. Dean scouted out the the best cam­era angles, called for Lester Dar­row to come on set. Mounted his Canon 5D Mark II on his Man­frotto mono­pod and began shooting.