Synchronicity

Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer and Elizabeth Lyon's Manuscript Makeover inspired the word lovers who were at the Idlewyld this past weekend to write more deeply, clearly, and grammatically. Some participants claim they were able to complete projects or take them further because of the heated enthusiasm generated when people who love to write get together and share their passion. I'm blessed to know so many wonderful writers with big hearts.

Amongst the Eagles

I go back to Alaska when walking in the Cuyahoga Valley because we now have eagles in common. The white head of an eagle can be easily spotted amidst the green of spruce and sycamore in Haines, Alaska, or the blue-blue sky of a surprisingly sun-shiny day on the North Coast. In Haines last summer, we listened to local lore told by our Eagle Preserve tour director-radio personality-writer, then floated up a silty river past a native village in the Eagle Preserve, always on the look out for a flying or resting eagle. Back in town after taking off our rubber boots, Haines’ mayor/artist greeted us in his Victorian house surrounded by a white picket fence and spoke grandly about any subject; he even knows the names of Cleveland's westside suburbs. His neighbor, a talented Stanford-educated architect-artist, has taken a log cabin for his gallery and filled it brimful with art he silently carves while his life mate takes care of the customers. Later we drank a Haines Brewery beer at a table in a restaurant owned by a couple from the Grand Canyon area, and try to imagine what it would be like to move from Lake Erie's southern shore to southeastern Alaska. I think we would become part of the menagerie that makes Haines lively.

New York City in Spring

Paintings lined the sidewalks in the Village, jugglers bounced red balls in Washington Square, and a violinist serenaded me when I was seventeen, in New York for the first time. I've been to New York City many times since, but this month, our family became NYC tourists. It fascinates me how even though Manhattan's tall buildings seem endless, I know how to find Times Square and Central Park and St. Patrick's Cathedral as well as if I was in Manhattan every day. It feels like a small city grown up with its ancient cemeteries, 17th-century churches, and historic seaports. And anyone who says not to drive in Manhattan must be talking about the cost of parking, because driving is no worse than Montreal or San Francisco or Chicago--just watch out for opening car doors, double-parked taxis, and pedestrians by the dozens at every corner. It rained, but Macy's was in bloom from floor to ceiling and fruit trees were in blossom. People strolled in Central Park and street dancers performed across from The Plaza. We enjoyed the M&M store on Times Square about as much as anyone can enjoy a store--a must-see. The skyline from Brooklyn's Promenade and the thousands of lights below us at night from the Empire State Building excited us as our ancestors must have been when they landed on Ellis Island and found America.

Cleveland in 1941

I enjoyed Peter Jedick’s The West Tech Terrorist, which is a young adult novel. It takes place in 1941 at the start of World War II during the time when West Tech High was one of the largest high schools in the nation. The brink of war is the backdrop and Cleveland legend Eliot Ness gets involved in solving the mystery of the radio club’s German communications with contacts in Canada. A young Tatler reporter starts probing and looking for answers and becomes the hero of the story. What I liked about the book is the main character’s internal conversations, which told me a bit about Mr. Jedick, who I have to believe is a really good guy. He’s redeemed himself after his book Hippies, which I felt was mostly about how he could get laid during his senior year at Kent State, in 1970, on the brink of the May 4 shootings. Jedick brought in a lot of history with details about places and things that no longer exist in C-town like the cable car out to Lakewood and the bomb factory, and it didn’t feel like a history lesson, yet it was.

Who Says Cleveland Isn't Cool?

Who says Cleveland isn’t cool?

We witnessed The Farnsworth Invention on the main stage of Beck Center for the Arts on Friday evening, and it was an excellent play written by Aaron Sorkin who wrote West Wing. Farnsworth invented the television but died tragically without notice. He lost his soul to a dream that he reached only to have it snatched from him. The play so well written and acted that there was little need for the scant scenery. The texture of the words was rich.

Last night Paul and I went to the Cleveland International Film Festival and saw two films. The first, a documentary called The Last Days of Shishmaref, was disappointing. It was produced in the Netherlands and directed by Jan Louter, who took an hour to point out how the island on the northwest tip of Alaska (north of Nome) is disappearing because of global warming, and did so by playing television coverage. We had no sense of why the culture and homelands of these native villagers should be saved--the people no longer hunt with spears or use their dog sleds, do not partipate in religious ceremonies, and give us no explanation of their white-man styled cemetery with its white crosses jutting up from the ground. Shishmaref will soon be washed away to sea and washed anew.

The Black Sea (Mar Nero in Italian), directed by Federico Bondi, was introduced by the editor of the US Italian-American newspaper who made it her cause to get more Italian films on the CIFF's list. The film was extremely well acted and the photography had an Old World feel that lent beauty to the scenery of Italy and a Romanian world where people travel by waterways and haul goods in wagons drawn by horses. A young Romanian woman who wants a better life for her children goes to Italy to make money by caring for an older Italian woman to make money she cannot make at home. The women get off to a shaky start, but the older woman mellows and comes to love and respect the patient and caring younger woman who, in turn, learns that life isn't as simple as she thinks it is.

Yes, Cleveland is cool.

OF CLEVELAND AND ALASKA

When people ask me about our trip to Alaska this summer, I tell them the land is big, beautiful, and wild, and the people are resilient. With 600,000 people in a territory 2.3 times the size of Texas, Alaska is mostly wilderness. The Alaska Highway traverses through Anchorage and Fairbanks and up to Prudhoe Bay, but 40% of Alaskans have no access to roadways and must use dog sleds, bush planes and boats to travel; no roads go in or out of Juneau or many of the other towns in Alaska. Native American and Russian cultures permeate a place slow to change in a place where permafrost lies below the surface, glacier-spread mountains cover vast expanses of the land, and fish remains a major food source in a place almost surrounded by water.

In 1796, the swampy floodplain at the mouth of the Cuyahoga was the frontier. By the time of the 1832 cholera epidemic, only 600 people lived in Cleveland—it was a frontier because it was remote, much as Alaska is today. General Moses Cleaveland oversaw the settlement on part of the Western Reserve tract of the Northwest Territory granted to the State of Connecticut, which was populated by Native Americans. The first settler in Cleveland was Lorenzo Carter, who built a log cabin on the banks of the Cuyahoga River; we saw log cabins all along the Chena River and in downtown Fairbanks. Native American populations and culture were obliterated by epidemic diseases, violence, displacement and intermarriage, and the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783 without informing the Native Americans. Native Alaskans experienced the same catastrophic hardships as the native population living near Cleveland did.

Thus I reported to the readers of Cool Cleveland in the fall of 2008: http://www.coolcleveland.com/index.php?n=Main.TheAlaskanFrontier.

Big Night - a Movie of Great Wisdom and Delight

In the movie Big Night, recently-mmigrated Italian brothers struggle to revive their floundering restaurant. The business-end brother falls into a trap set by a competitor and make a “big night” effort for a visiting celebrity, which should revive the place. The party comes off well—the food is exquisite and the guests have fun—but the celebrity doesn’t show, which means the brothers have no money left in their bank account and no shot-in-the arm publicity. They’re angry with each other, knowing they’re finished, but in the end they’re buddies again. Their lives could have gone in several directions--either those who came to the party will spread the word about how good the food is or the business will end. And if the restaurant thrives, they can learn from it, or not, but I prefer to hope they learned that it’s not enough to make good food, you have to have atmosphere. Ebert said it was a movie of “great wisdom and delight,” and that was a surprise I only knew when the movie ended.

Independent Films

We recently saw films about following one’s passion. One, Purple Violets, was about writing and going for your dreams and allowing love to blossom. The other, The Red Violin, was a literary film. The movie focused on the history of a violin, from its conception to its sale at an auction and the affect of the violin on its owners. The violin is the protagonist and its red because its grief-stricken master craftsman painted it with his dead wife’s blood. When these authentic non-commercial movies were over, we had something to talk about. I appreciated the film making because the movies felt like the work of an artist, not the work of a major film company’s hired guns.

Ketchikan and Haines

We hiked 1,500 feet up Deer Mountain in the rainforest of Ketchikan, with the sound of dripping water in the background and moss hanging from the trees while we kept a close look out for bears on our climb—at the top we were rewarded with a misty view of the harbor below. We stopped by the Totem Heritage Center, Deer Mountain Salmon Hatchery, and Eagle Center run by Native Americans who are proud of their culture. The peoples of Southeast Alaska are the Tlingits, and when explorers first came upon the shores, they were spooked by the totem poles that rose from the ground like spectors. We enjoyed learning about the totem pole raisings and what the animal carvings represent. The story of the Raven is strong. While wandering the boardwalks of Creek Street, the old red light district (for the sailors and fisherman away from home), a river otter scrambled across our path.

We chose an itinerary that included Haines, and many ships are too large to dock at that port. Haines is reminiscent of Sicily, Alaska, in Northern Exposure, a small town with quirky residents who like to talk a bit. Formerly occupied by Fort Seward, the officer’s quarters are now occupied by restaurants, salmon retailers, B&B’s, and artists. We rode up the Chilkat River through the Bald Eagle Preserve and spotted the white-headed eagles and native clan houses around every bend from our rafts. Our river guide is the local writer and radio personality who could tell some amusing stories. The artist-mayor owns a pretty little house surrounded by the only picket fence in town where his wife works in the massive perennial garden and he sells his art. Just up from the docks is the log cabin gallery occupied by an architecture graduate of Stanford whose talent is displayed in every medium from wood carvings to T-shirts; native dances take place in front of the place in the afternoon. We tried the beer produced by the Haines Brewery, which was served in a Mexican restaurant who used to have a restaurant at the Grand Canyon.

The Veendam - Days Two and Three

We boarded The Veendam on June 13. It was our first cruise and the easiest way to get to the ports in the Tongass rainforest in southeast Alaska. Our ports of call were Ketchikan, Juneau, Sitka, and Haines, with a stop at Hubbard Glacier in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park before disembarkation at Seward. But first, we were at sea for a day and a half.

Vancouver Island is much larger than I imagined it. We coasted along between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia for an entire day until we passed its northernmost rocks and were on open waters. On our second day we entered the Inside Passage and cruised with snow-capped mountains on either side of the ship. The navigator reported that we passed Lions Gate Bridge leaving Vancouver, then sailed through the Straits of Georgia to Seymour Narrows, which can only be transied during "slack tide." We then sailed through Discovery Passage and Johnstone Strait. We liked to watch the scenery pass by the windows in one of the beautiful lounges while sipping wine. Once in a while, we saw a whale and birds flew past. We felt mesmerized. Outside temperatures were cool with the wet air and ocassional rain, so it was not comfortable to be on deck.

We became acquainted with our ship while we were shipbound. Our room was in the middle of Deck 4, and at night it was wonderfully dark and quiet as we listened to the engine humming against a gentle rocking of the ship. Above us were four more decks of sleeping quarters--1100 passengers were on board. On Decks 7 and 8, glitzy Ruben's Lounge took over space at the bow and the many-windowed Rotterdam Dining Room rested at the stern. In between were shops, a casino, the library, piano bars, and comfortable lounges with live music.

The captain was amusing with his Dutch accent and the crew was Indonesian and extremely pleasant. Our first night we enjoyed complimentary champagne at the casine after Janine Gardner's comedy show. We avoided gambling and shopping on the ship and were astounded when our second-day program about ports of call was about shopping the jewelry stores at the ports in Ketchikan and Juneau.

We started having room service for breakfast after the second day, but ate lunch at the buffet on the Lido Deck (if we were on the ship), and enjoyed dinner in the dining room. Since we chose "as you wish" dining, we could choose when to eat and generally we were seated with other guests. At the Rotterdam Dining Room, the menus were varied, choices were exceptional, and the food was delicious. One evening I had shrimp cocktail followed by an Alaskan Fishermen's Pot, filet mignon paired with a lobster tail, and Baked Alaska.

We liked being pampered, but by the end of our second day at sea we were looking forward to seeing Ketchikan.

Vancouver - The First Part of Our Adventure

Many people believe Vancouver to be one of the most beautiful North American cities. With the way the mountains rise above the water that surrounds the city, the city is not just beautiful, it's soothing to the soul. Even in mid-June, the humid, misty air keeps it cool in temperate Vancouver.

En route to Alaska, we found Vancouver to be a vibrant city with great natural assets. We stayed at the Ramada Express, which was formerly the Niagara Hotel and built in 1918. The hotel resides in the renovated Gastown district with its lovely shops, galleries, and restaurants; it's a great place for strolling. We were especially intrigued by one shop's carved-wood facade and fascinating menagerie of museum-quality Native Tlingit (pronounced "klin kit") art. The historic clock proudly reminds visitors that the Gastown district near the docks was a bustling part of the city in the Victorian era.

From Gastown, we wandered over to Chinatown. Vancouver's Chinatown is supposed to be the second largest Chinese settlement in North America, so I believe we only saw a slice of it. It wasn't as pleasant as San Francisco's welcoming community and we had no sense of elegant white-linen restaurants. But Dr. Sun Yat-Sen's Chinese gardens with its exotic bamboo forests, picturesque waterlily pond, pagoda-roofed hut, and bridges was a tranquil jewel. The Gardens are modeled after a 15th century scholar's garden. The shopkeepers in the adjacent shop graciously introduced us to the Chinese characters for Peace, Love, Happiness, and Wealth, and we sensed the deep commitment in the Chinese culture to living well.

As we do, we walked for a couple of hours before we decided to ride the elevator up into the observation deck above the city. It was worth the money. We could see the whole city and surrounding area from the circle of windows. Captions at our fingertips introduced us to what we saw--the West End, Stanley Park, Georgian Bay, the University of British Columbia, the harbor, and English Bay.

Many recommended restaurants are in Yorktown, a gentrified warehouse neighborhood of bricked and terraced streets. Because raised eight-foot-high docking ports lined one side of each street, one was required to climb steps to reach the patioed elegant restaurants above. A smorgasbord of cuisines and proprietors urged us to join them, but when we spotted the Yorktown Brewing Company on a street-corner directoroy, we chose that less expensive option. The Yorktown Brewing Company satisfied our thirst for some good local brew and hunger for simple pub food before we embarked a cruise ship where we would be served elegant evening meals--my teriyaki-wasabe salmon sandwich served with a caesar salad tasted good after an adventurous day.

The next morning we walked the Sea Wall (a planned urban walkway) through Coal Harbor and Burrey's Inlet along the waterfront until we arrived at Stanley Park. The inlet was lovely with the docked boats and seaplanes landing agaisnt the backdrop of the wooded peninsula, and when we turned around, we saw the magnificent Vancouver skyline to the right and the mountains on the other side of the water to our left. We had a good walk in the park past the lagoon and enjoyed azaleas, rhododendrum, and dogwood, yellow iris and cattails. We ended up on the beach in English Bay before traversing the forest again to walk through the city and back to our hotel.

We're glad we took an extra day before the cruise-tour to see Vancouver.

Word Lover's Retreat in Lakeside

Word Lover’s Retreat participants felt right at home at the Idlewyld Bed and Breakfast, built in 1888 on Walnut Street in Lakeside. A private gated community founded as an independent Chautauqua on Lake Erie’s shores in 1873, Lakeside is one of the few remnants of the adult education movement popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Innkeepers Dan and Joan Barris ran the kitchen while cooking me, the weekend hostess, who used Joan’s tried-and-true recipes for the event.

True writers write, and many of us spent several hours writing on the front porch on Friday afternoon. After a walking tour of Lakeside and a soup and salad supper, Donna Wilson’s writing-prompt boxes came out and we wrote memories stirred by postcards, linked random words together in essays, and dug deeply by completing phrases like, “A secret dream of mine is to . . .” Surely the results were part of Julia Cameron’s goals when she wrote The Artist’s Way: those who wrote explored their potential for possibilities and what they have to share with the world.

Freelance Writer and Writing Coach John Ettorre shared tips from his book-in-progress during his “Flex Those Writing Muscles” session on Saturday morning. John focused on the craft of writing and the habits and disciplines that produce good writing. The weekend’s mantra became “less is more” as we talked about tight sentences, perfect word choices, listening for cadence and flow, editing, and rewriting. The other theme that emerged is how important it is for a writer to read widely.

John's session segued into the afternoon session entitled “The Book Loving Soul.” Gustave Flaubert said, “Read in order to live,” and that sums up how most writers feel about reading. Most of us became avid readers in childhood, stealing reading moments in the backseat of the family car or on a tree roost or in our beds at night with flashlights. We discussed keeping a writing journal, tracking the books we read, studying good writing to become better writers, listening to books on tape, and taking part in book discussion groups.

Journals, like Katherine Mansfield’s, are a writer’s notebook, a journal of inner life, a spiritual autobiography, and she said her journal was a way “to lose all that is superficial and acquired in me and to become a conscious, direct human being.” Our personal journals can be culled for memoir, stories, novels, personal essays, articles, or poetry, or can be worth reading on its own. A journal helps us make connections. The afternoon workshop “Leaving a Trace” was inspired by Alexandra Johnson’s book by the same name and the writing exercises delved into how to cull our life experiences for use in our writing.

Haiku, one breath poetry, is a form of poetry available to everyone. In the Haiku workshop we learned how experimenting with Haiku can teach us how to write succinctly. It also shows us how to show without telling, thereby enriching our writing by allowing the reader to bring his or her experience to the moment encapsulated in the poem. We vowed to write haiku on our own when we returned to the world.

As shadows lengthened in the afternoon, we rocked in bentwood rockers on the front porch of the Idlewyld and discussed Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun. Mayes and her husband embraced Italy when they bought Bramasole, an abandoned villa in the Tuscan countryside. Roman roads and wells, ancient vineyards, hidden frescoes, vibrant markets, simple food, and big hearts--the book’s a celebration of Italy. The memoir and armchair travel book presents poetic cadence and a lyrical quality worth study. Although we agreed that Mayes challenges us to “surprise” our own lives and not resist the impulse to live fully, the consensus of the group was that the book's language is rich, but meandering, and the author is too reserved and self-centered.

Following after-dinner sunset walks, we returned to the Idlewyld for storytelling and spent a good deal of time laughing before retiring to our Victorian sleeping quarters. Refreshed from a good night’s sleep, we spent Sunday morning in a circle around the big meeting room critiquing each other’s work. We were productive.

When we took leave of Lakeside with great hesitation, but basked in new friendships and refreshed spirits. The weekend encapsulated my image of what an Igniting Possibilities Event is meant to be.