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Lee’s Place

Lee’s Place

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Today is the birthday of Harper Lee, who was born in 1926 and still lives in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. She has written one book,  To Kill a Mockingbird; it won the Pulitzer and has sold more than 300 million copies. 

“I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it,” Lee said in a 2006 issue of Oprah magazine.

The Monroe County Public Library, I wonder, is that the library she searches? Or the library of Alabama Southern Community College, located in Monroeville? I scan the college website and find a notice for the 15th annual Alabama Writer’s Symposium, with its topic “Write Out of Place,” being held (yes) this weekend.

Here’s how the symposium is advertised, first with this quotation from Katherine Mansfield: “How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you — you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences — like rags and shreds of your very life.”

And then with the following: “When Mansfield wrote those lines, she could have been describing the way that Alabama authors often find themselves in relation to their home. Whether they set stories lovingly in Alabama, loathingly in Alabama, or deliberately not in Alabama, place becomes a part of who they are. …  The 2012 Alabama Writers Symposium explores the ways in which Alabama writers are affected by their ‘placehood,’  the ways in which Alabama as a place informs their literary efforts.”

Lee lived in New York for a while, and she spent time away in college and when she was helping her childhood friend, Truman Capote (another native of Monroeville), research In Cold Blood in Kansas. But she has spent most of her life in Monroeville. She has not escaped from her place; she doesn’t seem to have wanted to.


The Face

The Face

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Less than 36 hours before it won “Best picture” I caught “The Artist” at a local cinema. It was, as promised, a paen to old Hollywood and the golden age of film. But more than that it was a testament to the power of the human face.

That I could sit for two hours and hear only two spoken words — yet still be caught up in the drama and pathos of the characters’ lives — speaks to the enormity of emotions that can be conveyed by two eyes, a nose, mouth and a whole lot of facial muscles.

So here’s to twinkles, frowns, smiles and arched eyebrows. No matter how sensitive our instruments and how sophisticated our technology, their power is never lost.


Photo: Wikipedia

McKibben on Place

McKibben on Place

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I just finished Bill McKibben’s short book Wandering Home, his thoughts on environment and place as he walked through Vermont’s Champlain Valley and New York’s Adirondacks.

Here’s one passage, about how it feels to arrive somewhere on foot: “It’s not like arriving in the car for a dinner party. On foot you arrive late or early, without excuse, and settle into whatever conversation is under way. It took you a while to get there, so you’re obviously going to stay awhile. It feels like visiting in an older sense of the word…”

And here’s McKibben on the loss of old codgers: “It’s as if someone came and knocked down a thousand-acre stand of mature timber, as far as I’m concerned.” When these people were alive, McKibben says, “there was a quality of memory that I believe informed the place. It was tangible. It was in the air, it made the place what it was for me.”

In the suburbs, old codgers, or even young ones, are in short supply. Perhaps that is one reason why there’s no “there” here.

Uptown View: An Elegy

Uptown View: An Elegy

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Yesterday I learned that a friend I’d corresponded with for years, the editor who hired me at McCall’s Magazine, passed away in May. I hadn’t seen her in years, but I was always fond of her. She was the second person gone on my Christmas card list this year (the other my old boyfriend Gerry, who I eulogized seven months ago in this blog) and I was so sad to learn of her death. Sad for her family above all, but sad also for the passing of an era that she represents.

Lisel was first an agent and then an editor. She was smart and funny and wore her hair in a simple page boy style. She was the one who called me after I dropped off my resume and clips a few days after finishing up a graduate program in journalism. “Well, you’re sort of old to be an intern,” she said, with an endearing New Yorkish bluntness I was just beginning to understand. “But we’d like to have you for the summer.”

The summer turned into five years, and I went from editorial assistant to articles editor. Lisel became executive editor. She was always the calm heart of the magazine, which (like all the “Seven Sister” publications at that time) was edited by a man. I can still recall her big-looped script and her slightly distracted air. She was an intellectual, as many women’s magazine editors were then, and though we had our share of “Lady Di” covers, inside McCall‘s you could still find splendid fiction, elegant essays and controversial reports.

The magazine offices were housed at 230 Park Avenue, the ornate building which straddles that great thoroughfare. The elevators had painted clouds on their ceiling; they made me feel like I was in heaven. And in so many ways, I was. I’ve thought a lot about that place and those people since hearing the news of Lisel, about the long hall where she and other top editors had their offices. They all had an uptown view of Park Avenue; the whole world was at their feet.

Last Class

Last Class

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We gathered for the last time last night. Eighteen people more different than alike, drawn together to explore the special places in our lives, whether real or metaphorical. Whatever lead me to the class — call it grace, serendipity or dumb luck — I am grateful for it. And I will miss these folks; we have come to know each other well these last few months.

I haven’t quite figured out how to tackle the big subject that intrigues and bedevils me. I’m still “in process.” But I’ve had a few epiphanies along the way and the class readings, discussions and blog posts have dug deep furrows, turned soil that will produce something in the future (at the very least the required paper due next week!).

As I made my way home last night, though, it wasn’t place that was on my mind; it was people.

Neighborliness

Neighborliness

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Last night I went to our neighbor Jeanine’s house for an in-home shopping show. The clothes were beautiful, finely cut and tailored, the fabrics a pleasure to touch. At the end you get to try them on. The point of the party is to buy stuff, of course, but I went for neighborliness. For connections.

We chose our neighborhood because of its friendliness, and in large part we have stayed here for the people. In the suburbs you don’t rely on folks the way you do in the country. When we lived in Arkansas we never went “down the mountain” without asking friends what they needed from the store. That happens here only when there’s a snow storm or other natural disaster.

Buying clothes from a shopping consultant isn’t exactly like building a barn or harvesting hay, but it’s what passes for pitching in around here. It doesn’t banish the anonymity of suburban living, but it tries.

Aurora

Aurora

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The sky shimmered last night in response to Tuesday’s solar flare. I missed it, but I heard it was like heat lightening on steroids.

It reminds me of the only time I have seen the northern lights. We lived in Groton then and our friend Kip knocked on the door after 9. “Look,” he said, pointing up. And there, across Martin’s Pond, was a surreal display of greens and purples. It was beautiful and strange and ultimately unsettling. I’ve never forgotten it.

We were about to leave Massachusetts and I took this as further proof that we shouldn’t go. I know that Kip did. He was a native New Englander and not used to having people leave. As it turns out, Kip left us. He died from cancer in 1997. All of Groton mourned. There wasn’t a spot left to stand in the old Congregational Church at his memorial.

Somehow Kip and the aurora borealis have gotten all mixed up in my mind. When the night sky dances, I think of him.


Photo: NASA

For Gerry

For Gerry

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He was graceful on his feet, a runner, a tennis player. He loved to sing Linda Ronstadt songs in a funny falsetto — “I’ve been cheated. Been mistreated. When will I be loved?” He was funny and he was smart. The map of Ireland was on his face.

He was the boyfriend I broke up with two years out of college. The one-sentence reason was that I wanted children and he didn’t. But there was a longer story, the sort of painful lesson you learn in early adulthood, that love is not enough.

When I heard Monday that Gerry passed away, I felt, after the initial shock and sadness, a sort of reflective remorse. We’d only communicated via Christmas cards for decades; could I have been a better friend?

So I pulled out my old journals and read about those days. I laughed and I cried. I learned some things about Gerry that I had forgotten, and I realized that I had worried about him for years. I had done all I could. He was one of those people who never really found himself, a lover of life with skin too thin for this world. I wish him eternal peace.

People Power

People Power

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Yesterday the air had a softness and a fragrance that practically begged me to come outside. And once out, I ran into friends and neighbors. In the city, at work, I met someone new in the courtyard; at home, in the suburbs, I chatted with a neighbor I’ve known for years but hadn’t seen in months.

As I was walking back to the house after that second conversation, it dawned on me that one of the things that puts a spring in my step are these random conversations. Research shows (ah, I love writing “research shows” — I’ve spent so much of my career writing those words!) that interaction with friends and acquaintances bolsters mood.

Yesterday at least I would have to agree with those researchers: Maybe it’s not just the warm weather that makes us feel like we’re coming alive again after the long winter; maybe it’s the people we see when we finally emerge from our cocoons.

A note on the photo: Unable to find a picture of my neighbors, I can only come up with a photo I snapped last November during a walk through Chinatown in New York City. Now there’s a place where people get out and enjoy their friends!

Against the Odds

Against the Odds

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This morning a line from the newspaper caught my eye. Reporting on the crisis in Libya and the improbable victory of “a ragtag team of thousands” that repelled government forces, the Washington Post quotes Suleiman Abdel, a surgeon and now a rebel, as saying this about Libyan leader Gaddafi: “He has the force, but we have the heart.”

I let that one sink in for a moment. I copied it down in my journal. Of all the story lines in all the novels, memoirs, movies, this is the most compelling. It is the story of the underdog, the one who succeeds against all odds. And sometimes it is a sad story, a tale of one who tries but fails. But it is always inspiring.