Trembling . . . Vietnam is still too close

When I finally read The Year That Trembled by Scott Lax, I found out what I needed to know about how young men felt on the eve of the 1971 draft for Vietnam. No one wanted to go to Vietnam, and by that time, Vietnam seemed pretty stupid. The Year That Trembled was about five guys, one of whom was drafted and killed during the war. The main character had fallen in love with the wife of the guy who died, even slept with her during the before-the-draft party, but they didn’t end up together. That mistake would haunt him. There were some really good people in the book and Lax did a great job at conveying their goodness in the midst of a messed up world.

Are Poets Selfish or Do They Have the Right Idea?

“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard. Renounce that and you get your own voice automatically. Try to become a saint of your own province and your own consciousness, and you don’t worry about being heard in The New York Times.” Allen Ginsburg

Lakeside in the Spring

Haiku from my Brown Bear Diary after hosting the Word Lovers Retreat at the Idlewyld:

Lavender, tall blue,
Black cats lounge, see gold-eyed.
Stay right spirited.

Seagulls plunge, drop, spray,
Tumble into waves, glide forth.
Damp mood ascends high.

Big-branched tree hides
upstairs porch above rockers.
Create words freely.

Julia Child . . . In France

The book My Life in France by Julia Child was an inspiration to all of us to follow our passions and a tribute to her because she did just that. Her efforts were monumental and she was a perfectionist when she was writing her two-volume Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I enjoyed the retelling of the process she went through to cook and perfect recipes and write about them, her tales of living the good life in Paris, Marseilles, and Provence, and her autobiographical notes on her life with Paul and friends and family.

'Nuff Said

“I write in a very conversational way, because to me it’s so exciting and fun. There’s nothing funnier on earth than our humanness and our monkeyness. There’s nothing more touching, and it’s what I love to come upon when I’m reading; someone who’s gotten really down and dirty, and they’re taking the dross of life and doing alchemy, turning it into magic, tenderness and compassion and hilarity. So I tell my students that if they really love something, pay attention to it. Try to write something that they would love to come upon.” Anne Lamott

JOIN ME AT WORD LOVERS THIS SPRING

Les Roberts, who has written 24 novels, close to a dozen short stories, eight screenplays and countless newspaper articles and reviews, will be the writer-in-residence at the Word Lover's Retreat this spring. Join Les and other writers in Lakeside, Ohio, during the weekend of April 30, May 1 and 2, for another weekend of listening to and playing with words, creating poetry, exploring the elements of story, and participating in satisfying conversation with other writers during endless walks on the meandering paths of Lakeside. Pack up your writing materials and immerse yourself in writing, for a weekend you deserve. The porches of the Idlewyld B&B in the heart of Ohio’s Chautauqua on Lake Erie’s Shore, await you. Stay the entire weekend or just spend the day with us on Saturday, May 1. Friday supper, Saturday breakfast and lunch, and Sunday breakfast will be served. Cookies and chocolates available all weekend long! Contact Claudia Taller at ctallerwrites@wowway.com for more information.

I Remember Paris

Tatiana de Rosnay's Sarah’s Key was tragic and redemptive. Set in WWII Paris and in modern-day Paris, de Rosnay wove the tales of two women, a young Jewish girl who innocently locked her brother in the closet on the day of the 1942 roundup and a middle-aged woman married to an insensitive Frenchman. The stories are told in alternating short chapters--hats off to de Rosnay for seamless stories told in alternating chapters. I liked the intrigue of a modern-day ex-patriot in Paris trying to find the woman whose brother was locked in a closet and who escaped the death camp amidst Parisians' denial that the arrests of 1942 took place. Both women were triumphant and found redemption.

I read the novel on the heels of reading Julia Child's memoir My Life in Paris. I enjoyed experiencing Child's experiments with recipes in her apartment on the Left Bank and the trials and tribulations of collaboration, publishing, and television production. Unfortunately, I read the book after seeing the movie Julie and Julia, which portrayed Child as insensitive. Apparently the way Julia treated Julie in the movie was a fabrication. The movie was unkind to Julia Child.

I haven't been to Paris in seven years. Its energy and verve came back to me because I recognized many of the sites in these books. I was strolling the shady Tuileries, the streets bustling with restaurants, and the Left Bank where artists line up to sell their paintings with the Seine below them. I remember eating escargot while watching Notre Dame become a beacon in the darkening sky. These books highlight the tendency of Parisians to ignore the unpleasant and their fervent love for their city and their food.

Loving Ohio's Wine Trails

Ohio’s in the midst of a grape-growing, wine-making revival, and its wines are winning wine competitions on a national level. East of Cleveland, Ashtabula County has more wineries per square mile than any other region of the state and is home to over half of the wine grape acreage in Ohio. Ohio was the first state to cultivate grapes and was the leading producer of wine in the United States during the early part of the 19th century when Nicholas Longworth of Cincinnati planted his grapes in the Ohio River Valley.

Grape growing on the Lake Erie Islands--Kelley’s Island, South Bass, Middle Bass, and North Bass--as well as in Danbury Township on Marblehead Peninsula and in Sandusky, was well established by German immigrants by the mid-1800s. Immigrants from France, Italy, and Hungary followed. Mon Ami Winery in Port Clinton produced some of the countries best Champagnes by 1870.

Prohibition destroyed the wine industry in Ohio, but the farms along Lake Erie’s moderate shore continued to grow grapes. Grapes were sold at the Welch’s depot on Route 83 and other depots along the train route from Erie to Toledo. During the 1920s, many vineyards sold their juice with sly instructions on how to make wine, and families served their own wine on their tables at dinner.

Wine making in Ohio took a dramatic turn in the 1960s when Arnie Esterer of Markko Winery in Conneaut started experimenting with European varietals and French-American hybrids, including Chambourcin, Vidal Blanc and Seyval, as well as ice wines from Vidal Blanc grapes. Property owners with family farms followed course and Chardonnays and Cabernets became as common as Concords with help from the Ohio State University Research Center.

Today, award-winning Pinot Noirs from St. Joseph share the stage with Emerine Estates, which produces fruit wines, like blueberry and country apple wines, among others. Quarry Hill Winery sells its wines in an apple barn and Mon Ami serves its wine in elegant dining rooms. The wine trails along Lake Erie's lakeshore provide an afternoon or weekend adventure with sweeping views of Lake Erie along scenic byways. A great selection of wine can be enjoyed in cozy tasting rooms or fresh-air patios. Serenading accordion music and oven-fresh bread lull into Old World siestas, Lake Erie style. Check out the industry at http://www.ohiowines.org/.

Enrique's Journey

Sonia Nazario took risks to write an authentic account of what Enrique, a youth from Honduras, and thousands like him experience when they try to reach the United States by traveling through Mexico. Imagine riding on top of a train while constantly concerned about bandits robbing you of your mother's telephone number in North Carolina or the police catching you to bribe you for your freedom or beat you before deporting you. Imagine being raped and left without clothes by the train tracks hundreds of miles from home. Imagine begging for scraps of food or searching through garbage for other people's leftovers. Imagine trying to keep clean and trying to be unnoticed while sleeping in a cemetery. Imagine losing a leg or a hand or your life when you're pulled under the train while trying to board it. Imagine a desire to see your mother that is so strong, you try to reach her three, four, eight or more times, boarding the train again and again to make the serpentine journey that leads to El Norte. And Sonia Nazario experienced as much of Enrique's hardship as she could to tell the story. With over 40,000 children immigrating across the border into the United States, having endured what Enrique did, it's a story we should all hear and be changed by.

The Tongass

The beauty of Alaska is found in the Tongass National Forest along the coast north of British Columbia, where the forest drips with moisture and moss hangs from the trees. I still dream about Alaska all these months later. From Mount Roberts in Juneau, the morning sun glows on a waterway as smooth as a backyard pond. We biked to a log-cabin chapel in the woods and around Mendenhall Glacier before tasting a variety of beer at the Alaska Brewing Company, whose tale of successful entrepreneurial drive is a tribute to everyman capitalism. Alaska's natural beauty is complemented by the frontier spirit of the people who have lived there for centuries and those who have made it their new home.

Writing in the Cuyahoga Valley and on Lake Erie's Shores

One of the highlights of my year is spending time in the Cuyahoga Valley with fellow writers in August. Skyline Writers has made Hines Hill Conference Center its home-away-from-home for several years, and my memories include dappled sun through tall trees, walks along the Tow Path, deer grazing on the lawn, and trading ideas with other writers at the picnic tables outside the weathered estate. This year I'm looking forward to hearing what the speakers have to say. The workshops include Thomas Sigert on book proposals, Kristin Ohlson on memoir, Sandra Gurvis on story crafting, Kelly Boyer Sagert on successful freelancing, and Barbara Snow on motivation.

Now that the Word Lover's Retreats are underway, I also look forward with great pleasure to spending time in Lakeside. Travel writer Doris Larson will be joining me and other writers for a weekend of writing immersion with focus on travel writing and personal essays. Prolific travel writer Doris Larson reports that her recent publications include a July 5 PLAIN DEALER article on Andrew Wyeth--CHADDS FORD HOLDS A WEALTH OF WYETHS; THE WINE BUZZ July/August 2009 article on Spain's Basque Wine Country--TRIPPING THROUGH BASQUE WINE COUNTRY; and LAKE ERIE LIVING, April/May article on butterfly houses--SPREADING THEIR WINGS. I'd like to know how she does it. I'll spend time on the rockers of the Idlewyld and on the streets of Lakeside talking with word lovers about writing, and life--it's the best.

Summer Solstice

We saw two sunsets last night.

We started in Lakewood where the sun created yellow-peach tattered and rolling clouds, then drove to Huntington when we realized the Summer Solstice is almost upon us and we had another hour until sunset. At Huntington, we found seats on a rock and watched the red orb we know as the sun melt into Lake Erie. It was after nine o'clock.

Last year we spent the longest day of the year in Denali. The sky never darkened beyond a dusky gray and The Alaskan Salmon Bake partied until well past midnight. People teed off on golf courses at eleven at night. It was wild and different up there close to the Arctic Circle.

While in Denali, we spent time with the National Park Service’s sled dogs who provide the favored mode of transportation during long winter when snow always blankets the ground. On our 9-hour Tundra Wilderness Tour, we encountered grizzly, moose, fox, caribou, dall sheep, and hare, and saw Mt. McKinley in all its great white glory against a deep blue sky on a cleared afternoon. Alone on the remote trails the next day, our footprints followed moose tracks and remembered the park ranger's advice--when you see a moose with its ears down, run, but when you see a bear or a wolf, stand up to it.

No bear or moose here in Cleveland-town, but the ride on the Tow Path today was deliciously tiring. The only wildlife we saw were birds--blue heron, hawk, red-winged black birds--white butterflies, hanging caterpillars, and frogs. But down near the water, the animal prints were unmistakable.