Saying Good-bye to the Family on My Shelves?

For me the question is no longer "to e-reader or not to e-reader?" but rather "which e-reader?" I am sad, morose even, over this reality. I feel forced to euthanize someone I love. Though I am a loyal lover and my affection for books only increases, I am contemplating, even expecting, to become part of their possible printed demise. Instead of killing by pulling the plug, I will be killing by plugging in.

Printed books are alive in a way books on plastic, metal and glass e-readers never can be.  A tree’s death for a book’s creation is noble. Like organ donors, once-rooted trees live still, despite being declared clinically dead, providing a platform for the transmission of life-transformation. Via paper they give tangible, three-dimensional life to words, while e-readers flatten words, like museum relics, behind glass.

The e-reader question would not have earned prominence for me if not for an apparent impasse between two life passions I am compelled toward: the writing life, which is also the reading life, butts against my passion for writing from wide-ranging locations. Books are heavy travelers.

In my semi-nomadic existence, home is found in coming back to where my library lives. Sans spouse or progeny, my books are the family that makes each move with me and sends representatives along on all my travels, a family that has expanded exponentially as the years have ticked by. My bookshelves are part personal history and family reunion, a history recounted by which books were added when and which subjects have staying power, and part dream board, featuring books on topics I long to dig into and work by writers I long to emulate.

But books are increasingly impractical, while e-readers are more practical than ever. I can’t afford plane tickets for my whole book family when I travel, but an e-reader offers a way to make my library the equivalent of a ticketless, lap-held child.  The impracticality of traveling with printed books becomes even weightier as I begin considering a possible longer-term move abroad. I wonder: Will the new place ever be home if the e-reader goes with me but my books stay behind in storage boxes?  Fleshy though they may be, my books won’t be able to alleviate the pain of separation by Skyping me once an ocean stands between us. It’s nearly enough to cause me to call off considering the cross-Atlantic plan at all.

However, unlike my friends with flesh and blood spouses and offspring who rightly redirect their adventures, I am not being asked by my bound and boxable family members to stay put simply because they can’t go with me. In fact, it is contrary to everything they’ve taught about life and learning for me to remain here solely because parting is too hard and I’m afraid we’ll all change into something unrecognizable before we reunite.

But I am afraid. Greater than the sadness over leaving my books for a while is the fear of never coming back, the fear that once I enter the glass and metal and plastic reading world, I’ll never leave it. The warmth of a home decorated with books might become a nostalgic memory of a former life. The living history presently on display for visitors’ perusal and for reminding me of where I’ve been and where I’m going will be reduced to bits and bytes stored out of sight behind glass, untouchable and no longer alive.

I don’t think I want to live in a world like that, but I’m simultaneously aware that reducing baggage usually opens up new worlds and the best families celebrate launching us into new adventures, even if they’ll miss us. Thus, I’m reluctantly asking, “Which e-reader?”

Book Review: The Help

My apologies for my absence here. Not writing for three months certainly isn't the way to build up blog traffic. As usual when I've not been around these parts for a while, it's because I've been busy writing elsewhere. Visit here to see fruit of my time spent not blogging: My Byline Online.

Writers are often encouraged to write every day, and I sometimes find myself lamenting my inability to do that. Until I realize that I really do write every day. Or nearly. Between my non-stop paid writing assignments, my own I-still-write-it-by-hand journal, emails, my monthly writing group (where I get to do my just-for-fun writing-as-play), and that book proposal I was working on, I write often. So often that as I've become more established as a freelancer my time for blogging has dwindled. Life is a series of exchanges, I suppose. One can never do everything at once. And in this season I'm thankful for work that I love and that grows me as a writer and person.

That said, I've managed enough bits of time away from work this month to read the very delightful The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Over Easter weekend, I decided to give myself a very big treat: I could walk into Borders and buy a book, any book that caught my eye. Typically there's some level of planning around my book purchases. So walking into a bookstore with such freedom is like being a kid in a candy store, as they say, with a $5 dollar bill to spend. In other words, it was heaven. Or was supposed to be. For some reason the tables of books that usually leave me drooling and reconsidering my choice of a low-paying profession that limits my purchases held few drool-worthy options that night. But I picked my way through, hopeful of finding a book that would make my treat to myself a real treat. Time was ticking, as they'd made the announcement that the store was closing in 15 minutes and I still hadn't closed in on a selection.

At the last minute, I committed to The Help. Mostly I wanted a good read that wasn't silly, the kind that's worth losing sleep in order to read, thoughtful but not so thick as to feel like heavy work. I wanted a piece of fiction quality enough that I'd be glad to add it to my library rather than wishing I'd saved the dough and checked it out from the library.  

The Help completely fit the bill. It's an enjoyable, interesting, well-written read. I'm from the South but more from the '80s backwoods, mountain south. Not from the moneyed, deep south, though I've encountered more of that South since I arrived in Nashville. So this book about relationships between black maids and their white employers in 1960s Civil Rights era Jackson, Mississippi, was a glimpse into a culture I've grazed against but never lived in. The characters Stockett has created are complex enough to stay interesting throughout as are the relationships between them. While I've read some critiques of the dialects she gave some of her characters, I found them comforting because I've known people who really talk that way. And while I never wanted to acquire the accent and grammar of the place I was raised in, there's a part of me that hears home in those grammatically-incorrect strings of words and sounds.

So there you go. A review in a flash. Get the book. Read it. Add it to your library. Or borrow it from the public one.

literary community wanted

I wasn't expecting to be so glad I decided to hand-deliver my grant application to the Tennessee Arts Commission today. Paintings I would have been glad for time to gaze at greeted me through TAC's glass doors before I arrived at the front desk just behind another man who had papers in his hands like I did.

He asked me if I was there for the same reason he was. "Are you competition?" he asked affably. ("He" turned out to be Kevin Chopson.)

We worked our way through the options to discover that fortunately we were allowed to talk to each other because he's a poet and I'm a creative non-fiction writer. We could both win a grant. I'm glad we figured that out because it would have been a shame to miss this chance to meet another of Nashville's writers.

You see, we're really quite an under-the-radar bunch it seems. Despite the attention hogged by our cousins gracing the music stages and street corners accompanied by their guitars, there exists a quiet bunch of writers around town who are something more than hobby-ists. We're just either not well-connected to each other, or I'm not connected to the connected ones.

We don't need to rival New York's popularity among the literary crowd; it's nice not to be so crowded (with competition for grants or other attentions) down here in the South. But writing being the often-solitary pursuit that it is, connection with other writers can be life-giving. Which is why my 20 minutes in TAC's office talking with Kevin and Lee, one of the grant coordinators, added some more wind to my writing sails.

In Honor of Winter

Sometime in December when all of the United States except Nashville was getting snow, I read a little news article that explained via learned scientist that many of the snowflake images that are the stuff of winter decorations get it wrong. REAL snowflakes are six-pointed, no more and no fewer points are possible.

The article mentioned that snowflakes are "famously unique," though scientists can't prove that "no two alike have ever fallen to Earth." This got me thinking about learning this wondrous fact as a child. And then I started thinking about how I don't know that I've ever really looked at snowflakes closely enough to see their supposedly distinctive designs. I've seen pictures, of course, but have I with my naked eye observed their dainty artistry?

Last week when all of the United States was again getting snow, Nashville did muster something akin to a heavy dusting. We also had two days of something akin to heavy flurries. Friday night I exited my friend's house surprised to see a bit of accumulation on my windshield from said heavy flurries. One of the home's outside lights shown right onto the glass, and I realized that these big, fluffy flakes just might be big enough to show me their designs.

So I leaned in closer. And marveled. At really being able to distinguish the lines and angles of the art that was not yet melting from my windshield. When I eventually tore myself away from the outside sights (it was really cold...for Nashville), I realized the gallery wasn't yet closed as I slipped behind the steering wheel. And leaned in closer. Enjoying the underbelly of the beautiful, symmetrical display as much as its top side.

Here's hoping this art show will pass back through Nashville again before the winter's over. I highly recommend it.

So THAT's what freelancing is like?

I recently posted a little ditty (aka: true story) on MediaBistro's user-generated-content blog We the 'Bistro. In addition to said ditty, you might find there some other entertaining tales of woe, intrigue and, of course, feasting. Or maybe just some tips on how to avoid the first (the woe), enjoy the second (intrigue), and arrive at the third (the feasting). Might just be a blog you should check out in all your spare surfing time.

Until then, enjoy the tale of Where's the Nearest Fire Extinguisher?

To whet your appetite (though I'm confident you actually began salivating when I mentioned the word feasting), here are the opening lines of said ditty:

This afternoon I rushed into the small film production office somewhat late even though the gig’s short hours are very flexible. Currently this particular gig involves mailing out daily orders (calling it “fulfillment” makes it sound more impressive), and the Fed-Ex man who dictates my afternoon deadline was due in about 15 minutes.

“Sorry I’m late,” I explained as I stepped inside. “I was putting out fires.” 

“How do you have fires to put out? You’re a writer,” Ian, the production manager guy, quipped a little seriously. 

to be continued here

It's All About Family in NOLA

finally...the last of the New Orleans posts from my July visit there

To meet Chef Leah Chase is to love her. To eat her food is to know she loves those she cooks for.

We first met Leah on Thursday night at a gala in her honor. The Southern Food & Beverage Museum was naming its main gallery after her. As we were each introduced to her, I leaned in to say hello over the sound of the nearby band. Surprising me, she greeted me in grandmotherly fashion with, “You look like a work of art.” It felt like the kind of exchange that could have been followed with her calling some young man over and then shooing us off together, saying, “You kids go have a good time.”

This same gentle yet no-nonsense, welcome-into-the-family quality emanated from her as she welcomed us into the kitchen at Dooky Chase’s on Saturday, greeting us with hugs and kisses before pausing to sign cookbooks for some other guests. Even at 86 and with her 26-year-old grandson, Edgar “Dooky” Chase IV, taking on some of the chef duties, she is clearly the one running the place, as she has been since the ‘40s.

In the steamy kitchen, Dooky, with important input from Grandma Leah (he added more butter to make her happy), prepared shrimp clemenceau, one of the restaurant’s specialty dishes. Though Leah was never classically trained, the current generation is. Dooky recently returned from studying at France’s Le Cordon Bleu. When he added garnish to the finished dish, Leah said that was the Cordon Bleu coming out, improving presentation without changing the traditional food.

After the demonstration we made our way through the buffet that’s used only on especially busy weekends. Of the fare we chowed on while sitting beneath Leah’s saved-from-Katrina art collection (but that’s another story), my favorites were the savory, buttery, perfectly-textured Southern-style mac ‘n cheese; the jambalaya with its spicy tomato flavor; and the fried chicken. It was Creole cuisine at its comfortable, family-flecked best.

Dooky Chase's Shrimp Clemenceau

1 stick butter
2 medium potatoes (peeled and diced small)
2 lb small shrimp (peeled and deveined)
2 cloves garlic (finely chopped)
1/2 cup button mushrooms
1 cup green peas
1/4 tsp chopped fresh parsley
1/3 cup white wine
salt and pepper

Melt butter in 2-quart saucepan. Add potatoes. Cook 5 minutes
Add shrimp, garlic and mushrooms. Cook until shrimp are tender.
Add peas, parsley and wine. Salt and pepper to taste. Cook for 5 minutes.

Yield: 4 servings.

For your further New Orleans pleasure, here are links to some of the other stories produced by our little troupe of journalists:

Soaking Up the Big Easy by Seanan Forbes
Tales from a Culinary Adventure in the Big Easy by Jeanette Valentine
Where the Eating is Easy by Sonia Alleyne
Heritage and History as the Secret Ingredient by Denise A. Campbell
tour photos by Zave Smith

Voting for Pork Chops

a retro-post from my New Orleans tour

Willie Mae’s Scotch House is best known for its secret recipe fried chicken but its pork chops might be the real food gem of this Sixth Ward neighborhood restaurant.

Willie Mae Seaton, the restaurant’s founder, still lives next door but finally retired two years ago—at the young age of 92—when the restaurant re-opened post-Katrina. She handed over the reins and the secret recipes to her great-granddaughter, Chef Kerry Seaton, who grew up doing a little bit of everything around the restaurant. Kerry, 29, appears to have inherited some savvy-businesswoman genes in addition to the culinary ones. She’s been confidently improving some of her great-grandma’s business practices, adding to the menu, and dreaming of expanding the restaurant.

We arrived as the lunch crowd was departing (Willie Mae’s only serves lunch), and Kerry invited us to crowd into the small kitchen while she revealed a few tricks of her trade: the secret to good catfish is the cast iron skillet it’s cooked in. After the catfish was done, the rest of the media crew followed the food to the home-spun charm of the dining room, but I hung back in the kitchen while Kerry made more catfish for her grandpa (it’s his favorite).

Tall, slightly-stooped Grandpa Charles Seaton helps out in the kitchen and had been hovering quietly in the background while we all crowded around Kerry. Once the frenzy was gone, he became more vocal, easily confessing that Kerry’s his favorite grandkid and he doesn’t try to hide that.

Once I finally made it to the dining room, I discovered that my favorite is the pork chops. They’re just regular fried pork chops flavored with salt, pepper and Cajun seasoning, but they were delicious. My pork chop meal was rounded out with red beans and rice, green beans, and bread pudding for dessert. It’s a meal that begs me to return to New Orleans again as soon as possible.

Stay tuned for another post from a must-visit New Orleans restaurant.

And while you're waiting, check out my other New Orleans write-ups:
Dinner at Rambla (Nashville Scene, Bites blog, July 9)
Breakfast at Li'l Dizzy's (Bites blog, July 15)
Two Sisters Kitchen's Shrimp & Okra (Bites blog, July 17)
Funk and Flambé at Brennan's Restaurant (Bites blog, July 22)

Meeting with our Congressman

Last week two friends and I met with our congressman, Jim Cooper, to discuss some questions about the healthcare bills before Congress. He's a nice man, and we were glad to have met him. It was a pleasant experience, but as we walked out of his office, I found myself commenting, "Is it just me or was that thoroughly disappointing?"

You see, I think on one hand we so didn't want to be lumped in with all of the vitriolic voices arguing over this issue that we went too soft. Additionally, we were only notified a day ahead of time that the congressman had an open spot in his schedule, so we didn't have much time to do enough research to be fully prepared.

Most disappointing for me was that I had hoped that by speaking in person we could have a discussion, a conversation, that would shed light on it all in ways that most of the media reports do not. I wasn't there to get soundbites. I can get that from the news. But I also got that in my congressman's office. I got generalities and pleasantries but very little real information. And, maybe he's already listened to a lot of people as he's formed his stance on this issue (maybe he's listened out?), but I didn't really get the impression that he was trying to listen to us in a deep, really listening kind of way.

All that said, the fault isn't only his. It's partly ours. We allowed the conversation to veer off track and struggled to bring it back to the reason we'd taken the time to come to his office in the first place. We weren't prepared with as many specific, direct questions as we should have been. Ben, one of the friends at the meeting, wrote this blog post summarizing some of what we learned about having an effective meeting with an elected official.

Additionally, we learned that Congressman Cooper isn't in favor of the healthcare bill we've heard the most about in the media. Instead, he favors The Healthy Americans Act, HR 1321. He says this bill solves the problem the Democrats say must be solved (providing all Americans with health insurance) the way Republicans say it must be done (via a free market solution). It also does this without all the debt that accompanies HR 3200, America's Affordable Health Choices Act. However, he says the media hasn't covered this or other alternative bills much. The media person in me finds myself asking why his communications person just now added a section on this bill to the congressman's website, as we were told in our meeting that that portion had just gone live. This issue has been so huge that I'm wondering why they waited until the end of recess to put that up on his website. But that's really neither here nor there.

What is here and there is that it's important to keep trying to engage these issues in ways that are about cooperation instead of anger. At least we succeeded on that point.

blogging fiend

I get a tiny breather in my writing schedule and apparently turn into a blogging fiend. Not only here but also over on my travel blog. Click here for a beginning conversation on how to tell stories and take photos in developing countries without exploiting the subjects of those stories and photos. I'd be glad to hear your thoughts on this! (That means comments are welcome!)

Here's a teaser:
Sure, writing has limits too. There's never space to tell everything. And some photographers do an amazing job telling stories through their lenses. But though a picture may be worth 1000 words, as the saying goes, there are 1000 other words the picture misses. And I think it's those words, composed thoughtfully, that protect a photo subject's humanity and ward off exploitation of the poor people the world loves to photograph.

Join the discussion today! ;-)

On Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl and other things

another retro-post is finally making its way to the big screen

August 1, 2009

It's a good sign if a book's preface is inspirational, as this one is, in the makes-me-want-to-play-with-words version of inspiration. There's energy in this preface. That's a very good thing as books go. This is clearly the work of a good writer. If the preface is this good, what wonders can the rest of the book hold?

I sort of won this book. Which is a novel (almost-pun is, of course, fully intended) event in its own right. I'm not one of those people who win things, so doing so merits a blog entry to celebrate. More novel is that I sort-of-won the book via Twitter. That tips my I'm-not-sure-I-love-Twitter meter in the direction of love. Because I do love books and anything that gets me free books claims a rather large corner of my heart.

So, anyway, getting to the real point, the book is called Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl. Good work on the title, Mr. Author (and/or publishing committee). Points for you. Interesting cover. Good work, Graphic Designer/Marketing/Editor People. More points and we haven't even opened the book yet. But now we have: Engaging preface that makes me mostly want to keep reading (except that I'm in the middle--or first fourth, truth be told--of The Count of Monte Cristo, and Dantes has just started treasure hunting on the Isle of Monte Cristo, and I must keep going with him while the momentum is there). More points for Tilt-A-Whirl author guy. So good so far, Mr. N.D. Wilson. You've made me want to read the rest of what you have to say.

Mr. Thomas Nelson CEO (that would be Michael Hyatt) tweeted about how great this author is, how funny he is, and how he compares to Donald Miller. First, to you, Donald Miller, good work for becoming an author who has written something novel enough that people are now compared to you. That's something one could feel smug about if one chose. But you don't seem too smug so you, too, can have some points. Second, alas, it's the whole comparison thing that makes me unsure I want to keep reading past the Tilt-A-Whirl preface, even once Dantes finds his treasure and ties up all his big vengeful loose ends.

The hesitation has nothing to do with Donald Miller and everything to do with the whole find-the-next-Christian-celebrity thing we Christians do. I don't like it. It makes me uneasy and even sometimes angry because it's no good. Pedestals are not helpful for anyone, from the people on them to the people gazing at the people on them. People stop thinking and start admiring when pedestals come into play. Bleck. It's a recipe for downfall for someone or everyone. Or at the very least a recipe for food poisoning or something equally sinister.

The whole celebrity thing is one of those symptoms of human nature, the ones that remind us that the church is peopled by fallen humans just like outside-the-church is. But as true as that is, do we really have to do the celebrity thing? Alas, the necessity of selling products and the current culture of branding and marketing and so on almost certainly require a yes, but perhaps we can do it differently?

As it stands, it seems like we're always looking for the next person who will make us feel less uncool, who will help us feel confident as we walk into a world that supposedly doesn't like us, who will help our still-living-in-insecure-adolescence selves tell ourselves that we're better than all the cool kids say we are. This all begs the question: Is Christian celebrity really about Jesus at all? or just about how we feel about ourselves?

It's one thing to respect a person's use of the giftedness God's wired them with and to appreciate the things they teach or do or create. It's another unhealthier thing to do what we do: pedestalize them and find some shoring up of our identity as we hang on their every word.

Anyway, I hope Mr. N.D. Wilson proves to have written a book that lives up to its preface and all the points I've already given him, whether or not he ever becomes another of our Christian celebrities. And don't hold it against him that his book and the events surrounding my acquiring it just happened to give opportunity for expressing one of my concerns about how we "do" Christianity. Rather, perhaps I'm actually agreeing with what the book's all about. Once Dantes exacts his revenge (instead of letting God do it for him ;-) ) I'm looking forward to jumping past Wilson's entertaining preface and riding the rest of the Tilt-A-Whirl.