GIVING THANKS

We set aside this day each year to give special thanks for all we have: our health, our homes, our friends, our family. I give thanks for my readers too. You make blogging a delight.

The other day, I read that the author Don DeLillo wrote: "Writing is a concentrated form of thinking, I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them." Yes!
A subject will be suggested to me or will pop into mind, and I'm off to learn about it and write an essay. I love to learn and I love to sit down and write about the interesting things I discover. I give thanks for that, and I hope my interest and enthusiasm never wane.

SWEET HOME SWEET

One recent morning, as it happens every once I a while, I was standing and thinking just how much I loved my home and being here in it. Not to pat myself on the back or toot my own horn, but I like what we have as furnishings - the furniture Frank has made, the artwork and treasures we’ve collected or been given over the years, and the way it’s decorated.

I pride myself on being a minimalist. There’s room to spread out in our closets, dresser drawers, pantry, and fridge shelves. I’ve not family pictures all over the place nor too many tchotchkes to dust. But on a lark one morning, I went around and counted all the things we have hanging on the walls. There the minimalism ends. Total count, and a lot of nail holes, 232! (26 of them are needleworks made for us by someone we dearly love.) Sounds like it might be a mishmash, but it all pleases us no end.

Our house is just a suburban box on a relatively small lot, like hundreds of others in this community of “active adults.” We’ve been here ten years, and wouldn’t want to move. We’ll just age in place and enjoy all the lovely things that make our home ours.

NOVEMBER BIRTHDAYS

This morning on The Writer’s Almanac I read a quote from an author, Andrea Barrett, whose birthday is also today: “I want to tell stories about the thing I observe.” Simple as that, simple is that. It struck a note. Born on the same date, I believe she and I share an affinity for passing on what we find. I want to write my essays about the things I learn and, sometimes, the things I learn about myself. Even at the ripe old age of seventy-five, I’m still learning.

The blogger Corey Amaro posts to her Tongue in Cheek every day. Every day.  Some days, like today, she’ll post just an interesting picture. I think I might do that now from time to time. 

NEITHER HARD BOILED NOR COZY

Here's another article I wrote for our community magazine's current issue. I've read many complete mystery series, and none have pleased me more than those of Donna Leon and Louise Penny. I recommend them highly.

Ah, oui! Poirot en Paris

Many mystery and suspense writers invest quite a bit of time and pages in fleshing out their characters. Once established in the minds of their regular readers, they can dispense with a lot of background details. From the beginnings of these types of fiction, many of the main characters have become household names: Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Brother Cadfael, Jason Bourne, George Smiley, Kinsey Millhone, and, of course, James Bond – the list goes on. Readers become great fans of these characters, and most of them have found their way into the big-screen and TV movies.

Two newer characters that can be added to this list, movies included, are Guido Brunetti and Armand Gamache. There are now twenty-six Brunetti novels since the series began in 1992, and thirteen Gamache novels since 2005.

I had Brunetti in my head long before the series started,
and he doesn't look like this - and never as scruffy.

Donn Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti plies his trade in Venice, “La Serenissima.” From the first novel, Death at La Fenice, the opera house, to the most recent, Earthly Remains, published in April 2017, readers know that Brunetti will investigate a murder or two and, usually, some connected nefarious doings in and around the city. He’ll have the help of some on-going, memorable colleagues and characters at the Questura, the police headquarters, and he’ll invariably head home for lunch. Your mouth will water as you read what wonderful things the family is having for lunch. The dishes are so memorable that Leon gathered the recipes into A Taste of Venice: At Table with Brunetti, otherwise known as “Brunetti’s Cookbook.”

The solving of the crimes and the discovery of the several interconnected mysterious situations make for intriguing reading. While reading the books, and they can be read in almost any order, you might want to send for the handy, plastic-coated “Streetwise Venice” map from Amazon, to help you follow Brunetti around the city on foot and by water. Next time you visit there, you can book a tour of “Brunetti’s Venice.”

This is close to the Gamache in my head.

Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is headquartered at la Sûreté du Québec. While Brunetti’s only problem at headquarters is an inept, social-climbing superior, Gamache, while looking into his many cases, is also combating a few back-stabbing, scheming colleagues. His personal and professional problems are a backdrop to the case at hand. Though he travels a bit through Quebec and Montreal, most of his cases take place in and around Three Pines, a very small, mythical hamlet in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. After reading just the first novel in the series, and it is best to read them in order, most readers want to pack up and move to Three Pines. In 2015, St. Martin’s Press, Louise Penny’s publisher, printed a map of Three Pines, and several lucky readers were able to acquire one. Though, like me, they found it to be almost like the map in their heads, it was a case of “almost but not quite.” Like the personalities and quirks of the dozen or so recurring characters, the personality and quirks of Three Pines etch themselves into memory. The first book in the series is Still Life, the most recent, out this past August, is Glass Houses.

Louise Penny's publisher, St. Martin's Press, published a map of Three Pines.
I was lucky enough to receive one. 

You can always tell how widely anticipated are the novels of these two award-winning writers, by the great discounts that mount up at Amazon in preorders in advance of their next publications. The discount usually gets up to at least a third off the publisher’s cover price. Be warned though, you might be up all night: they are not “hard boiled”, neither are they your “cozy” mysteries, but the books are really “page-turners.” 

You may want to read my blog on "The Maps in Our Heads" here, 

or "Mapping an Authoris Landscape" here.

THE GAMES WE PLAYED

This article was published in this month's issue of our community magazine as part of the series "Do you remember...?" It tickles me that the latest group to form here at Sun City Carolina Lakes is the Stickball Club. 

“All grown-ups were once children – although few of them remember it.”

So wrote Antoine Saint-Exupéry, author of the classic The Little Prince, in the dedication of the book, published after his death in 1943.

Many of us seniors are at the point in our lives where we are remembering that we were once children, and we’re enjoying and relishing the memories. Not only are they wonderful topics for conversations among folks of our own age, they’re wonderful stories to pass along to our grandchildren. We can also pass on to them the stories of when their parents were children. (When their parents were young, such stories my not have been thought a wise to pass on at that particular time, or they didn’t want to hear about “when I was young,” or we simply forgot them for the moment.)

The time has come (the walrus said) for us to remember some the things of our childhood - the things you don’t often see these days. In this age of electronic babysitters, from TVs to tablets, it is often a delight to us to remember what kept us amused, passed the time, helped us learn, and made us a part of our neighborhood. We met with our friends after school, or played games like Red Light-Green Light, Red Rover or Hide and Seek in the street after supper on a summer evening when the boys and girls could get together. We were never bored, were we?

Boys’ games were usually played with some kind of ball, and varied, according by names and rules, from place to place. Guys, did you ever play stickball? A broom stick, a pinky, and a car-free street with a handy manhole cover for home base were all that you needed. You can still get a spaldeen, a pink Spalding High Bounce ball. Amazon has them for a “mere” $5.95.

It’s very rare these days, but you might still see girls at jump rope, or double-dutch (and why was it called “Dutch?”), or playing Jacks or the many versions of Hopscotch or Potsy. Are the memories flooding in? Stickball was mainly for the boys, but girls used the pinkies to play games like A My Name is Alice. Did you ever get through the alphabet on that one?

Remember when “heavy metal” meant those great steel roller skates? Do you still have your skate key?

Add to the list: Ringolevio, tag, buck-buck, hide and seek – the names for these games may vary, depending on where you lived as a child. Do you still have your marbles (no, not those marbles) even one or two?

Do you ever take your grandchildren out to a field to fly a kite? You might want to teach them how to make their own kite. There are, of course, how-to guides in the web for making kites and lots of other great things. One excellent resource, for many things both senior- and grandparent-related, is the American Grandparents Association at aga.grandparents.com. Another fun website is gameskidsplay.net. There you’ll find lists of both old and new games, and you might have an “aha moment” when you see the name of one long forgotten from childhood.