Social Networking

by Sheila Connolly

We're all very connected electronically these days, almost to the point of obsession.  Well, at least a lot of us are.  My sister hasn't quite caught the bug, but at least she has a new computer now, and I keep promising her that she'll hear from me a lot more often by email than she ever has by phone.

But we writers are online all the time—not only emails, but blogs (see, you're looking at one), loops, lists, Facebook, Twitter, and more.  Walk down any street anywhere these days and you find half the people staring at their cell phone, texting someone.  As a dinosaur, I keep wondering what is so important that it can't wait a few minutes, but apparently I'm in the minority.

But all this has started me thinking about how people did it in the Olden Days.  You know, pre-electricity.  Pre-post office.  How did people communicate?

As I may have mentioned, I've done a lot of genealogy over the past couple of decades, so I can point to a couple of noteworthy examples.

Take, for instance, an event that most Americans are probably familiar with:  the battle of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, that served as a catalyst for the Revolutionary War.  I've spent a lot of time in the area, and I know where those towns lie in relation to Boston, where the Redcoats began their march, and also their relation to the Massachusetts towns that mustered their militias to head for the battle. 

We've all heard of Paul Revere's ride, triggered by the signal in the tower of the Old North Church, as described by the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  You know, "one if by land, and two if by sea"?  When Revere saw the signal, he rowed across the Charles River, and, according to Longfellow, reached Medford at midnight, Lexington by one, and Concord by two. The distance between Medford and Lexington is maybe nine miles, between Lexington and Concord, another seven.  The redcoats arrived at Lexington at sunrise. The word spread surprisingly fast: the alarm went out late on April 18th (Patriots' Day, a Massachusetts state holiday), and the colonial militias were in place, armed and ready to fight, on the morning of the 19th.

It was a network that accomplished this: as Revere rode along, avoiding British patrols, he alerted other riders who fanned out to tell other towns. Longfellow kind of skips over the part where Revere and his colleagues William Dawes and Samuel Prescott were stopped by one of those patrols in Lincoln, on the way to Concord—and took Revere's horse, so he walked back to Lexington. But in any case, my point is that there was a system in place for spreading the word, and it worked.  Who needs Twitter?

I can cite another case of early communications from one of my ancestors:  Phineas Pratt, who arrived in the colonies in 1622 and settled in Wessagusset (now Weymouth, Massachusetts).  Phineas is perhaps best known for his account of rescuing the Plymouth Colony from an Indian attack—which he wrote himself (which might account for a few of the heroic details).  The document survives and was summarized by William Bradford (Of Plymouth Plantation 1620-1647, published by Samuel Eliot Morrison in 1952).

According to Bradford, "In ye meane time, came one of them [that would be Phineas] from ye Massachucts with a small pack at his back, and though he knew not a foot of ye way yet he got safe hither, but lost his way, which was well for him for he was pursued, and so was mist. He could them hear, how all things stood amongst them, and that he durst stay no longer, he apprehended they would be all knokt in ye head shortly."

In other words, Phineas overheard some Indians plotting against the Plymouth settlement, and set out to warn them.  He left about three o'clock in the afternoon, running through unfamiliar woods, in the snow, chased by wolves.  He stopped after dark and built a fire, then resumed the next morning and arrived in Plymouth in time to warn the settlers there (who immediately headed north to attack the Indians at Wessagussett).  Distance between modern day Weymouth and Plymouth? About 30 miles. He may not have taken the most direct route:  as Bradford points out, Phineas got lost along the way, which is why the Indians didn't stop him.

The Plymouth Colony survived because one man overheard something and took it upon himself to tell the colonists.  If he hadn't done that, things could have ended quite differently for our colonial settlements. How do we compare this with our obsession with communicating to hundreds of "friends" every tiny detail of our lives? Does the important stuff get lost in the blizzard of posts and tweets?  Or is that important stuff still communicated face to face? And can we tell the difference?

Chameleon

by Sheila Connolly

 

 

Recently I was invited to be the speaker at a private literary club in Philadelphia.  Since I write the Museum Mysteries series based in Philadelphia (in the very neighborhood where the club is located), I was happy to do it.  I've also been going back and forth with the library in the town that is the model for my fictional Granford from the Orchard Mysteries series:  they want to hold an apple festival event next month—with me as the main speaker.

 

I sat down to put together a talk for the Philadelphia event, and realized that for each series I present myself as a different person. When I talk about my writing to others, I'm three different people—DAR member with a family tree that goes back to 1620; former fundraising professional in the big city; daughter of Erin.  I don't have to make anything up, but they're all different.

 

Some of you may remember that I began writing under the pen name Sarah Atwell, with the Glassblowing Mysteries.  This was a work-for-hire series, a three-book contract offered by Berkley Prime Crime, and I am grateful to them.  However, I told them that I had never blown glass and had never seen Tucson, where they wanted to set the series.  They didn't mind—they liked my writing.  The first book in the series, Through a Glass, Deadly, was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Book, but that wasn't enough to save the series, which ended with the third book.  Was that because it didn't feel "true" to readers?  I don't suppose I'll ever know.  What I do know is that it's hard to convey the sense of light and air in the desert environment of the Southwest when you've never been there.

 

Now I write three series:  the Orchard Mysteries, set in western Massachusetts; the Museum Mysteries, set in Philadelphia; and the County Cork Mysteries, set in Ireland.  And I have direct personal ties with all of those.  So when I set out to talk about writing the Museum Mysteries, I could point to my more than twenty years of living in Pennsylvania, first with my parents, then as an adult; I can spin anecdotes about working for Philadelphia's financial advisory firm, at a time when the city faced imminent bankruptcy; and I can refer to my various jobs at Philadelphia non-profit institutions, and what they're really like behind the scenes. 

 

 

Choose Column A, the Orchard Mysteries, and I'll tell you about my hundreds of New England ancestors, and distant relatives such as Johnny Appleseed and Ethan Allen and Emily Dickinson; if I'm in "Granford" I can point to the 1790 census, where I'm related to at least a third of the Heads of Household.  The house I use in that series is a real one, built by an ancestor.  I've been inside it several times, from basement to attic, and I've laid hands of timbers that I know were cut cut 250 years ago by people I can identify and I'm related to.  While I may have moved a road or two in the series, other features, such as the Great Meadow, are real.

 

Column C? My grandfather John Connolly was born in County Cork, but regrettably I never knew him.  I first traveled there more than a decade ago, hoping to understand him better, and to learn about Ireland, which is as large a part of my heritage as all those New England Yankees.  I immediately fell in love with the place and have been back several times since.  As for writing the series, I came to realize that a small Irish town in a rural part of the country is as ideal a setting for a cozy mystery series as is a small Massachusetts town (or an equally small cultural community within a big city like Philadelphia).  Cheers had it right:  it's a place where everybody knows your name—and your grandparents', and when your great-uncle Denis emigrated to New Zealand a century ago and who attended the send-off party.

 

Some writers say that the setting is as important to any book as the human characters, and I tend to agree.  Sure, we writers can all do research online these day, including accessing 360-degree views of many places from street level.  But it's not the same as being there and observing.  There are too many small but significant details that you will not notice on a computer screen.  Like all the gum stuck to Philadelphia sidewalks, or the (to us) amusing names of Irish products such as Fairy Liquid (a cleaning solution), or the fact that half the street names in "Granford" came from farms that belonged to my ancestors.

 

What do you think?  Can you sense when an author is making things up and has no real connection to the place?  What details make it come alive to you?