Ave atque Vale

by Sheila Connolly

I first posted here almost exactly four years ago.  I was honored to be asked to join the blog, because back then I was a relatively new writer (my first book had been published a year and a half earlier), and I was still learning about the universe of writers and readers.  PDD’s writers had always struck me as thoughtful and intelligent and well-informed, and I had learned a lot from their posts.

Being part of the blog forced me to be thoughtful too. Sometimes it’s easy to toss off a quick post about whatever strikes your fancy at a given moment.  You can be cute and glib and make a few people laugh or smile, and then they forget about it.  There’s nothing wrong with entertaining people--isn’t that what fiction writers do?  But making readers take a step back and think is harder.

The world of publishing has changed dramatically in the past four years.  Early fans of Dick Tracy might have seen it coming (remember that wrist device?) but probably the rest of us who yearned to become writers had grown up with a very different model, one that involved sitting in an unheated garret with a quill pen.  No sooner did we think we had learned something than the publishing universe made a 90-degree shift and we had to start all over (more than once).  When we did master a medium, such as one of the social networking sites, it collapsed of its own weight or was taken over by somebody else or its managers decided it should be something different.

I’m sounding like a Luddite, aren’t I?  I embrace technology, and the expanded opportunities to communicate with many people in a timely fashion.  And there’s no stuffing the genie back in the bottle: the Internet is not a flash in the pan, but a part of our daily lives.  But that comes with its own problems, not the least of which is the demands that constant, instant communication place on our time.  We’re afraid we’ll miss something critical or be left out of the loop, so we’re always checking this or that.

And that can be a challenge for bloggers.  Remember when blogs were new? They were a novelty and a curiosity.  Then for a while, everyone believed they had to have a blog, or participate in multiple blogs, often egged on by their agents, editors and peers. Predictably, thousands of blogs popped up, and now it’s very hard to stand out, much less attract new followers. No one person can follow more than a handful—and that includes me.

So we at Poe’s Deadly Daughters are folding our tents and slipping away. (I was thinking of quoting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poignant poem The Day is Done, where this image originated, but since Longfellow tended to be a bit longwinded, it’s better to read the whole thing here. Don’t worry—the Daughters will all be around, just not in this space.

Thank you all for following us.

Listening to Readers

by Sheila Connolly

Never assume you can’t learn something new, even when it’s about something you’ve been doing for years and think you know inside and out.

This past weekend I attended a group signing at a local independent bookstore.  Since I live in an area with plenty of outstanding writers, it was a great bunch of authors, but the event was not heavily attended (could it have been that football game down the highway a piece?).  On the plus side, those readers who did attend were serious about books and happy to talk to us.  From our side it was nice to have time to get into some serious discussion with our readers, when they didn’t feel that they had to hustle along and let the person behind get a signature.

To my surprise, I learned a couple of things.  First I spent some time talking with a local mystery buff, who has done a lot of personal research into the murder of Lizzie Borden’s parents, which took place not far from where we were.  She’s not a ghoul, but she’s been intrigued by the legal case, to the extent that she’s actually read the trial transcripts.  Her take:  based on the evidence presented, there’s no way Lizzie could have done the deeds, but there’s no way anyone else could have either.  I’d like to know more, if I can find the time.

But that wasn’t what struck me.  We got to talking about genre fiction versus what is loosely defined as “literature” and how they differ.  In a broad sense there is much overlap: there is a protagonist, and there are other people surrounding the protagonist, in one or another supporting role.  In mysteries, you add a murder to the mix, which generates a puzzle to be solved.

What was most interesting to me was how she saw the role of those secondary characters in a story.  In literature, they are there as figures who interact with the protagonist, and in doing so tell us something about that protagonist or stand on their own as interesting individuals, which tells us something different.  In genre, particularly in mysteries, and more particularly in cozy mysteries, these secondary characters take a more active part in the story. They are there as part of the local scene, but they have to earn the right to be there in the story by contributing a piece of information, whether it is an eye-witness account or a physical piece of evidence or an alibi for someone else.  They are players in the small drama.

In a different conversation I found myself discussing the place for “issues” in a cozy mystery.  The woman was talking about the time in her life when she was a nurse and had an extremely busy and stressful life, and when she got home at the end of the day all she wanted was entertainment, so she watched a lot of television sitcoms.

I can’t speak for all cozy writers, but I’m going to guess that many of us get frustrated now and then when we’re supposed to write “cute.’  You know what I mean:  nice professional young woman returns to her hometown to start or take over a small business, makes a lot of nice friends, flirts with the nice local detective, and solves a murder or two.  The conventions say we can’t include any sex, violence, or profanity.  Certainly we can’t insert anything like a cause or politics or religion.

But this woman in front of me was saying:  I come home and I don’t want to think.  I want to turn on the TV and be entertained.  She mentioned one example when by accident or design one network with a solid lineup of sitcoms scheduled issue-driven episodes back to back. This made the woman angry (to the extent that she still remembers the event, you’ll note).  She saw “real” problems all day, and she didn’t want to see them onscreen when she got home.  She wanted to forget them. And she buys cozies for the same reason.

Maybe people should stop looking down on cozies (come on, I know some of you do).  They fill a niche; they entertain and amuse people, and take them out of their own lives, just for a while.  And maybe it’s enough of a cause that we insure that whatever crime occurs is solved by the end of the book, and order is restored in the quaint village with all those lovable quirky people.  We cozy writers aren’t going to change the world, but we do make people happy. Isn’t that enough?

A New York Times bestseller!

Digging Up the Past

by Sheila Connolly

I do seem to be wallowing in the past lately, don’t I?  Maybe it’s because it’s fall, which is the ending of another year, despite the glories of the foliage.

This time it’s close to home, and the digging is literal.  We live in a Victorian house built around 1870.  It has a barn that once housed a horse and carriage, with a hayloft above (house and barn and what little lawn that’s left occupy a quarter-acre—not large), which suffered a fire in the 1950s and lost most of its interior, and with that its period charm.  The kitchen and the barn are connected by a ramshackle structure that I’m guessing was either the summer kitchen or the laundry room (or both) in the past.

It’s an odd space, cobbled together with salvaged materials from who knows what.  It has four doors, none of which match each other, and two windows, which also don’t match.  And it has lots of rot.

Since my government-employee husband was furloughed and had some free time, we decided this week would be a good time to rip out the floor in there and fix it.  Of course we found more rot than we expected—doesn’t everyone?  But I also found what to me was a treasure:  the house dump.  In one corner of the space, under the floor, was a heap of discarded, broken household items—and I was thrilled.

 

 

Okay, I may be crazy.  But I’ve done the genealogy of the house—who built it, who owned it, and who lived here before us.  Early in its life the household included as many as eight people—the owners (a young couple), five boarders, and an Irish serving girl.  I’m still trying to figure out where they put everybody (there was only one bathroom!).  Then the wife’s mother moved in:  the boarders left, and some improvements were made, like heat on the second floor.  The family we bought the house from moved in the week they got married in 1943.

I must have been an archeologist in a former life, because I see a heap of trash and I have to start rummaging through it.  What people throw away tells you a lot about how they lived.  The organic waste is long gone, and paper would have been burned, so what remains is mostly glass and china shards (and a lot of women’s shoes, for some reason).  Most of the glass was broken, except for more than fifty bottles that held patent medicines, vanilla extract, and ammonia (others have no labels or stampings in the glass).  Most have their original corks.  More than a dozen of the bottles contained Atwood’s Jaundice Tonic, a popular cure-all that contained a lot of alcohol.

 

 

What I have learned from my dump digging:

--      glass lamp globes were broken with alarming frequency (they’re thin and fragile)—I found many, both plain and fancy.

--      whoever was washing the dishes was pretty clumsy and broke a lot of pieces, both plates and serving dishes, as well as drinking glasses

--      Dinnerware was much smaller back in the day (plates, glasses, serving china), which says something about how our eating habits have changed.

 

--      There was no discarded clothing, but there was a surprising number of ladies' shoes.

 

 

I also found the remnants of at least four chamber pots, plus one intact one.  That explains at least part of how they managed with only the one bathroom.

There were also a few interesting objets that are harder to identify or explain.  Plus one fork and the remains of a wooden toothbrush, the bristles long gone.

What intrigues me is how all this ended up where it did, because there’s no outside access to that corner.  The board above it had a hole cut through it, with traces of lead around the edge, so I’m assuming there was a sink or drain there, with some sort of plumbing).  Was there a loose board, where they pitched anything that wouldn’t decay or burn?  Over what period?  Why there?

Not all the broken pieces were utilitarian.  Some were simply pretty things, and I kept finding myself apologizing to them for someone, now long dead, having been careless enough to break them.  A few bits I may be able to salvage, with the help of SuperGlue.

Why would I do that?  Because together they carry a story about how people lived in this house, and that makes me feel more connected to the past here.  And their trash is a lot more interesting than ours will be to future generations?

 

P.S. I did find one clue for dating:  there was a broken glass with "Thomas" etched on it.  The Thomas family lived in the house between 1897 and about 1906, which fits well.

 

One final note (unrelated save that it involves an old house--which will no double reveal a trash dump sometime soon):  my most recent Orchard Mystery, Golden Malicious, was a New York Times Mass Market Bestseller in its week of release.

 

 

 

 

Room for Something New

by Sheila Connolly

Last week I wrote about the obsolescence of things learned in the past. Now I want to look at learning new things.

There seems to be some scientific consensus that exercising one’s brain will keep it healthy and nimble.  I’ll vote for that (note that writing is the most recent of a long line of careers for me).  In addition, I’m interested in learning about skills that people don’t do anymore, because I find myself writing about the past, even though my books are set in the present.

Last weekend I went to Old Sturbridge Village for their annual Apple Days celebration (which of course I consider research for my Orchard Mysteries).  They have a nice collection of heirloom trees there, all untouched by chemicals, and they offer (among many things) a tasting each year, which is fun since most people don’t know these older trees exist, much less have a chance to try them.  I was pleased that I actually have some of the ones they shared this year, and I was so enamored of one variety (“Mother”) that I ordered one, that will arrive in the spring. That makes it my ninth apple tree (I have a very small orchard).

I did pass up the cider molasses making demonstration, because it promised to be a long slow process: build fire, hang cauldron of fresh apple juice over it, boil until thick, skimming off whatever crud floats to the toop.  End of recipe.

However, I was excited to learn how one shoots a musket (ca. 1816), which is useful information.  It involves measuring black powder (which looks more like small gravel than powder) into the barrel, stuffing down a wad of cloth to keep it there and contain the charge for just a bit (if you’re really shooting, you’d put a lead ball in next), then adding a dash of powder to the “pan,” then sharpening your flint so it will produce a spark, and finally you get to shoulder the thing and fire.  It’s very loud.  The process gave me a whole new appreciation of warfare, when each combatant had to go through this laborious process just to shoot a single bullet. (And also deal with misfires and erratic shots that go astray, no matter how good a marksman you were.)

And then I went on to the communal cider making display.  Actually that’s a misnomer:  it was an apple grinding event, powered by an ox, that created the mush that would then be placed between layers of rye grass in a giant press and squished to force out the juice, which was then transferred into barrels to ferment.  At that point the description gets even lovelier:  the biological detritus (like a few mouse carcasses, dead insects, leaves, stems and twigs) gets blown out the top bung-hole by the fermentation process, while the “lees” sink to the bottom of the barrel.  If you want to decant the drinkable part, take it from the middle! 

I learned that cider making really was a communal effort.  One entrepreneur owned the grinder and the press, and the good citizens would bring their apples (and their ox or horse for power) for processing; they would then pay the owner in barrels of cider.

After that I was fascinated to listen to a reenactor describe how to bake in a brick oven (build large fire early in the day, to heat the bricks, then remove the fire, shut the flue, and start adding what you want baked—the stuff that takes longest goes in first, toward the back, and you keep adding more items through the day).  The way to test the heat is to stick your hand in and see how long you can stand it:  10-12 seconds means it’s about 450 degrees. Anybody want to go back to the good old days?

I’ve been visiting OSV since I was a teenager.  I’m not sure what impression it made on me then, but it was enough to keep me coming back over the years, and I introduced my daughter to the place when she was just about the same age I was when I first saw it.  I don’t expect anyone to hand me a musket and tell me to shoot someone (or something), nor am I going to haul bushels of apples to a shared press.  But knowing how these things were done gives me a better understanding of life in earlier centuries. It’s a wonder anybody won a war, when the weaponry was so erratic and slow.  It’s a wonder anyone managed to cook anything (particularly in the summer, when the kitchen must have been blazing hot, not to mention infested with flies, attracted by the livestock just outside the door).  But wars were fought and people ate, so I guess it all worked out.

I love research. And to think I call this work! 

 

AVAILABLE NOW!

What We Think We Know

by Sheila Connolly

Once upon a time, we went to school to learn things.  We learned facts, we took tests about them, we filed them in whatever part of our brain keeps facts, and then we went on about our business.  We figured that once we’d learned something, that was that.

Wrong.

Somebody keeps changing the rules.

Once in another lifetime I was a biology major, so I knew something about science, or so I thought.  But there are a whole lot of things that nobody mentioned, like quarks.  According to Wikipedia (which also did not exist—I grew up with multiple volumes of The Encyclopedia Britannica), “There are six types of quarks, known as flavors: up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top.” I’m pretty sure I would have remembered those, had I ever learned about them, because the names are so funny.  But of course I didn’t, because no one discovered them until after I left high school. Oops.  I guess I haven’t needed them, unless I ever get to appear on Jeopardy.

Which I almost did once, but that’s a different story.  But almost every time I watch that show, I am reminded that whatever geography I once knew is now mostly incorrect.  Somebody keeps renaming countries, sometimes more than once.  And they keep moving the boundaries. (Oh, all right, the U.S. details haven’t changed a lot—I think I’m just geographically challenged.)

I was struck once again by the shifting (or do I mean shifty?) nature of facts while reading a recent publication about Stonehenge: Stonehenge: A New Understanding, by Mike Parker Pearson.  It’s a delightful scholarly book by someone who is intimately familiar with the archeology and really excited about his subject, and who writes well (these don’t always go together).

We’ve all heard of Stonehenge, right?  I’ve been there:  once back in the Dark Ages when one was permitted to wander freely amongst the stones and pat them affectionately (I’ve also visited the larger stone circle at nearby Avebury, close in time to the summer solstice, when people actually hug the stones); and once after all the regulations went into effect and now you can only walk along marked paths at a reverent distance.  This has something to do with preserving the past for the future, which I endorse, but it does change the experience.

We probably all think we know something about Stonehenge. Of course Stonehenge came up when I took Astronomy in college (all those alignments with sun or moon or various stars), and I’ve read a lot of books about the theories of who made Stonehenge and how and why.  The new book turns a whole lot of that on its ear.  While there have been many interesting, even convincing theories put forward, the author revises, redates, reinterprets and reassembles them, with the help of recent technologies.  Did I understand Stonehenge?  Only as well as past research allowed.  Now new research means I have to craft a new understanding.

It ain’t always easy.  It would be nice if there was a way to evaluate the data stored in our brain from time to time and say, “nope, never gonna need that file again” and toss it out so there’s room for something new, like social media vocabulary. But apparently I am unable to unlearn such useful things as song lyrics from the 1960s, for example, which are taking up a ridiculous amount of space in there—and I don’t even recall “learning” those lyrics, because as a serious, studious girl I rarely listened to popular music. 

Now I write books.  That means I’m supposed to remember a whole slew of characters that I’ve created—what they look like, how they think and speak, who they know.  I’m supposed to keep track of what their homes and their towns look like, and which way is north in these fictional places.  And now I have a lot of writer friends, and I’m supposed to remember who their characters are, and their book titles, and their agent’s name, and so on. Sometimes it feels like I’m squishing this into whatever empty corner of my brain that I can find—and sometimes I lose track of that information and can’t access those databases.  My apologies to any friends I have insulted recently by calling them by the wrong name or no name at all.

Is it even possible to “know” anything any more?

 

AVAILABLE NOW!

 

Friends

by Sheila Connolly

I just returned from the mystery mega-conference Bouchercon, which is a rather overwhelming experience—the estimate I heard was that there were 1,200 attendees scattered among multiple hotels in Albany, all trying to find their way through a convention center with little signage.

But I was happily surprised to find how many friends I have made over the past few years.  I think this was the first year I could actually introduce people to each other and remember both their names.  You'd think writers could keep names straight, but maybe we're too busy naming our characters to bother with the real people standing in front of us (if I snubbed anybody, I apologize).  Since writers so often labor alone, the broader writers and readers communities are important to us, and it's a pleasure to have meals or to attend panels with a whole array of people, both familiar and newly met.

But before the event I had been thinking about an advice column from a recent Boston Globe Sunday magazine, titled "Betrayed by a best friend," written by Robin Abrahams (AKA Miss Conduct).  Someone wrote to her to complain that she had been dumped by a friend of over twenty years, who suffers from a mental illness and, to put it kindly, had not been a very good friend at any time.

That's hard enough.  I'm sure we've all had friends who suddenly turned on us for no apparent reason, and there's no way to find out why since that friend is no longer on speaking terms with you.  But the rejectee seemed extraordinarily troubled by this rejection:  five years later she is still haunted by the betrayal, to the extent of having nightmares about the former friend at least once a week. This can't be healthy.

Miss Conduct wisely said: find a therapist.  The writer has to come to terms with what happened before she can move on, which she has so far failed to do (and five years seems like a long time to nurse the hurt). 

But what stuck in my mind was a more general comment Miss Conduct made:

We don't have a cultural bank of stories about friendship gone wrong.  We have stories (and songs and quality cable dramas) about bad parents, bad lovers, bad bosses.  Our culture doesn't offer up many templates for "bad friend" stories or songs about breaking up with your best buddy.

Why is that, I wonder?  In one way we have more "friends" than ever, if we use social media at all.  We've turned "friend" into a verb:  will you friend me?  On the other hand, that friendship is about a quarter of an inch (or 140 characters) deep. We probably know more about our friends' pets than we do about them.

Friendship takes work.  It takes time to meet face to face, and talk, and share.  And listen.  There should be give and take.  There should be sympathy and support in hard times, and applause for the good things that happen.  That kind of durable relationship doesn't happen quickly.

I feel very lucky that I have held on to a few friends for several decades—one from high school, a few from college.  We still get together from time to time, to catch up.  Even if we don't always approve of what they have done with their lives, they still hold shared memories, of the people we were when we met.  We don't want to lose that.

If a friend turns toxic, grieve and move on.  But cherish those who are true friends.

COMING NEXT WEEK!

The Battle of the Sexes

by Sheila Connolly

This week marked the 40^th anniversary of the Battle of the Sexes.  Don't have a clue what I'm talking about?  The event was the tennis match between Billie Jean King and the now-deceased Bobby Riggs.  The commentator was the unforgettable Howard Cosell, who called it a "very, very quaint, unique event."

And ABC news and other sources are telling us that maybe it was rigged—by Riggs.

It is a bit jarring now to remember how important this match seemed in 1973.  Millions of people watched on television.  The Houston Astrodome was packed with spectators.

Billie Jean was 29; Riggs was 55, a former Wimbledon and U.S. Open Champ fallen into comedic shtick, coasting on his former fame. Billie Jean was a crusader for women's rights; Bobby Riggs was a hustler and a tennis has-been. Still, the betting was on Riggs—surely he could beat a mere woman?

I hadn't thought about the event in years, but when I saw the segment on the news I immediately remembered where I was, who I was with—having dinner with a bunch of Cambridge friends who had gathered to watch the match on a small black and white television.  It was a mixed crowd (men and woman), and I don't remember how we reacted at the outcome. But the record shows that King won in straight sets, making Riggs look winded and out of shape and pathetic.

And now someone claims that Riggs threw the match, to settle his gambling debts with the Mob.  King disputes it, but then, she would, wouldn't she? She worked hard for her win.

The whole thing makes me sad.  Okay, it was a hokey event, more prime-time entertainment than sport. But it said something about the status of women in 1973.  In an ESPN article by Don Van Natta Jr. from August 25^th, the author points out that in 1973 a married woman couldn't get a credit card without her husband's signature. Ah, yes, those were the days. (Guess what, ladies—we're still earning less than men for the same jobs.)

I was part of an art history graduate school program then where the numbers of men and women were more or less equal—but the men got the elephant's share of financial aid.  Heaven forbid one of the woman should get married during her studies, or (gasp) have a baby!  A number of the women did drop out.  What was the point of racking up big debts if you weren't going to find a job anyway, because your (male) professors were pushing their (male) favorites?  Maybe it's better now.  I don't know because after several years of trying to find a job in art history, I moved on to other things.

But just for a moment, in September 1973, it felt good to see a woman—a smart, well-trained woman—beat a man.  And it makes me sad now to have that little victory, however flawed, taken away from us.

GOLDEN MALICIOUS(Orchard Mystery #7)Coming October 1st!

Touching the Past

by Sheila Connolly

A few weeks ago I bought a huge lot of antique cookware at a local auction.  When I walked into the preview, I saw the table full of implements, some familiar, some still unexplained, and I said, "I want that." I bid and I won, and I've been working my way through them ever since.

The biggest surprise has been the dozen or so choppers.  Today those of us who cook at home use knives almost exclusively.  Even forty-odd years ago, through today, chefs such as Julia Child have been instructing us on proper knife handling.  Just watch Iron Chef sometime.  I admit that, done well, that style of chopping is fast and efficient.  But what happened to the old ways?

My chopper collection presumes the use of a wooden bowl (how handy I got one of those at the auction too).  The curve of the choppers (all different, but all somewhat curved) fits nicely with the curve of the bowl; the wood helps hold the material to be chopped so it doesn't slide out of the way.  It's a peculiarly satisfying was to chop (once you've found your favorite chopper, and believe me, they all feel different). And one source I read said that women used to sit cradling the bowl on their lap while they chopped—given the size of my bowl, I can believe it.

But I think there is more to cooking implements than fads or fashions.  I think it's safe to say that home cooks (or their "help") no longer cook the way they did in 1900. 

In the Orchard Mysteries, I write about a colonial house in western Massachusetts, and the historical society in the real town owns a series of diaries written by the woman of the house, Olive Barton Warner (to whom I'm related through the Barton family), starting in 1880.  I have transcriptions of the first two, and they make fascinating reading because they capture the nature of farm life in the day.  Olive simply reports what she did from day to day, both chore and socializing.  Hers was a small family:  husband Eugene, and two daughters, Lula and Nettie.  Olive was forty when she started the series in 1880, and her daughters were young teenagers, still in school.  Eugene handled all the outside work; the women took care of the house. It's not clear whether they had any additional farm help—no one is ever mentioned—but there is a lot of sharing of work among neighbors.

What is relevant here is what Olive writes about cooking.  Just a few examples:

(January 13, 1880) I baked thirteen pies 7 pumpkin, 6 apple, made a quart apple sauce.  Eugene peared (sic) all my apples.

(February 13) I baked bread, and fourteen pies apple five, pumpkin five, & four mince. 

(February 26) Baked 13 pies, mince apple & pumpkin.  My last pumpkin.

(March 20) I and girls baked 6 pies, some bread, and two kinds of cake. 

This is just a random sample. Nowhere does Olive mention selling or giving away any of her baked goods (although she does talk about Eugene going into town to sell apples or potatoes), so I have to assume that these quantities were for household consumption.  I don't know how long any of these would keep, without refrigeration.  I did peek ahead, and she's still baking come summer. (And I couldn't resist sharing this note:  on May 10^th she and Eugene "took off their flannels".)

My point is, back in the day cooking involved a lot of chopping (I'm assuming some of the choppers, particularly the two-bladed ones, would have been used to "cut in" pastry for all those pie crusts). No fast foods, no short-cuts: it was all done by hand. I don't even want to think about how you cooked all those pies and bread in an oven back then, particularly in summer (early in the day, I presume!).

But what is so wonderful is that holding and using these implements puts me back in that time, and I can picture Olive and her girls busy in the kitchen (which I've seen more than once), and now I know how they did it.  To my mind, this is the best kind of research—the details that make things real.

And I think I'm going to keep using some of the choppers—they work really well.

Coming October 1

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?

Why is Betty White Wearing My Clothes?

by Sheila Connolly

Earlier this week I was sitting in a doctor's office waiting for my appointment.  The ubiquitous large-screen television was on, tuned to a morning talk show.  Normally I don't watch these, because my brain works best in the morning so that's when I write.  But in this case I was a captive audience. 

Betty White was one of the guests.  I admire Betty White:  she's smart, she's funny, and she just keeps on going at 90 (her 91^st birthday is next week).  But what I realized was that she was wearing my clothes. My public uniform, my go-to outfit for conferences, dinners, public appearances, etc.  Black pants, black top, colorful tailored jacket, low-heeled black shoes.  Did I mention that she was 90?  I'm not.

So how did I get it stuck in my head that this was how to dress "nicely"?  I grew up in an era where there were clothing rules for everything.  Things had to match (shoes and purse, for instance).  Underwear was never supposed to show ("ahem, it's snowing down south"), except in some rather bizarre Maidenform ads.   

In my childhood, going to visit my grandmother in New York meant a frilly dress with petticoat, black patent leather shoes (always too small) and socks with lace trim, and white gloves (don't ask me why).  Ladies who lunched wore hats at the table, and applying lipstick in public was considered crude.

I also lived through the seventies when all those rules blew up, but we got past that. And then I lived through the professional "power suit" for women era—you remember, the ones with shoulder pads?  And the blouse with the bow at the neck?

I never saw my grandmother wearing a pair of pants.  She wore a girdle and stockings to take out her trash (down the hall within her residence hotel).  My mother wore pants:  double knit polyester with elastic waistbands.  I still have flashbacks when I walk into the Women's department at a big department store, because my mother is everywhere there. I wear blue jeans, often. It is beyond my imagination to picture either my grandmother or my mother in blue jeans.

What does this have to do with writing?  Well, for one thing, we're supposed to describe our characters, so we as writers have to make decisions:  would our protagonist wear blue jeans to this event?  If she's going out to a nice dinner, what does she wear?  How does she judge someone she sees, based on their clothing? And what do those choices tell us about the character?

Industry studies show that most genre readers are women forty or older.  I'm making a wild guess that most cozy protagonists are slightly younger, in their thirties.  My operating theory is that that age is ideal: old enough to have some life experience, young enough to have options for the future. And while the clothing rules may be more relaxed these days, I think I can still describe how a thirty-something woman would dress.

I'm going out on a limb with my new series, where my protagonist is in her mid-twenties.  And she's blue-collar.  She's been raised by an immigrant grandmother, and she's had to work most of her life, after school and now that she's graduated from high school.  She has no life plan beyond getting by.  When her grandmother dies, she's completely unmoored—no family, no home, no clue.  (Don't worry—her life improves quickly, I promise.) And so far, she wears mainly blue jeans, with one slightly better pair of pants for funerals and such.

Lena Dunham of Girls

But I'll admit it's a stretch for me to write about someone the age of my daughter (who has opted for a kind of classic retro style—button down shirts, cashmere cardigans, pencil skirts and the like).  But I look at something like the popular HBO series Girls and what the protagonist there is wearing, and I go, huh?  Is this fashionable, or is the young woman supposed to appear clueless?  I have no idea.

Are there consistent basic standards for appearance?  Is there some timeless dress code that transcends generations? 

And why are Betty White and I wearing the same clothes??

There and Back Again

by Sheila Connolly

Recently I found myself browsing in a used bookstore in Brooklyn.  I was with friends, and we were waiting for a table at the restaurant next door, and of course I spotted the bookstore before the car even stopped moving. And of course I bought something.

 

What I found and fell in love with was a thick and yellowed volume titled Scarborough's Official Tour Book for New York, New Jersey, Canada and the East, copyright 1917, issued under the aegis of the New York State Automobile Association.  Since I had great-grandparents and grandparents who lived in New York, New Jersey and New England about that time, and I grew up in New Jersey (and learned to drive there), I had to have it. 

 

Consider it the Google Maps or MapQuest of its day, because the book provides step by step directions from getting from here to there—when the world was a very different place.

 

The entries are arranged by trip.  Let us say we wish to travel from Atlantic City to Philadelphia in 1917, some 61 miles. The details appear on p. 138, and begin by informing us that there is a very good gravel road as far as Berlin, then macadam thereafter.  I won't give you the entire itinerary, but it includes such details as "go south on Atlantic Ave., following trolleys," followed by "bridge."  At 9.3 miles you pass a cemetery on the right; in Elm, at 34.9 miles, you go under a viaduct, then over two viaducts in short order.  At 41.1 miles, "Danger.  Turn left under viaduct, then curve right, and cross railroad."  When you arrive at the Pennsylvania Railroad Station in Camden, you take a ferry across the Delaware River to arrive in Philadelphia.

 

Or say we wish to voyage from Morristown, New Jersey to New York City, a trip I made with my family countless times when I was young.  Start at the east corner of the park (what park? Where?) in Morristown.  Go under the railroad—Washington's Headquarters will be on the left (yes!).  Go straight at the four corners, then follow the stone road to a bridge.  At Florham Park (just down the road from my high school), go straight, "soon leaving macadam (for what?)." A school will be on the right.  Go over the bridge, and the macadam reappears.

 

Then we wend our way through South Orange, Newark (cross a couple of bridges there, then "turn sharp left at open space into park…bear right at fountain), Jersey City, and Weehauken, where you have to take the 42^nd St. ferry.  Apparently you arrive in New York only when you reach Columbus Circle.

 

These trips take place in fairly well settled areas (relatively speaking). How about taking a trip from New York to the Hamptons on Long Island?  When we arrive at Amagansett, after 109 miles, we are warned of a mile of "sandy dirt road" and then at 113.5 miles we find this:

 

From here … you will have very poor road of deep sand.  Follow directions of the occasional white pointed boards.  The red pointed boards point out the worst ways. (These board pointers are changed occasionally owing to the trails becoming cut too deep in sand.) After reaching mileage 18.9 you have mostly dirt road with occasional sandy places.

 

If you survive that, there's a large summer residence on the hill at the left at 113.6 miles.  There is also a saloon one block to the left at mile 115.1 (are the authors suggesting you may need one by then?).  And BTW, look out for the large rock on sharp curve at mile 127.9.

 

Travel must have been a real adventure in those days! No highways, no bridges over the big rivers; no guarantee you'd ever find a paved road where you were going. Most of the navigational benchmarks were viaducts, bridges, trolleys and cemeteries.  You'd better travel with a companion to read the directions out load, since if you stop, you might end up sinking into the sand or mired in mud on an unpaved road.

The book is also sprinkled with illustrated advertisements for hotels ($1.00 to $3.50 per day), plus ads for garages (some of which promise "NEVER CLOSED"—those unpaved roads must have been hard on cars, not to mention the people bouncing around in them. 

 

P.S. If anyone wants to know how to get from Point A to Point B in the eastern US in 1917, let me know.