What do we want from our leaders?

by Sheila Connolly

The other day I was driving somewhere and found myself wondering, “did Napoleon have anxiety attacks?” Don’t ask me why I was thinking of Napoleon—it’s not something I do often. But I asked myself, did he wake up in the middle of the night and ask himself, Am I doing the right thing?

Think about it. Here’s the man who wanted to take over most of the civilized world. But physically he was tiny: I once saw a uniform that had been his, in the chateau of Malmaison in France where he lived with his wife Josephine, and he was far shorter than I am, and slighter (although pudgy in his later years). One source I looked at said he was 5 feet 6½ inches tall. My daughter is taller than that. This man was an emperor and commanded armies. Don’t you ever wonder how he did that?

And what about all those other historical figures that we grew up hearing about (the condensed version, at least). Do you ever find yourself pondering, Was Julius Caesar allergic to grain? Was Joan of Arc afraid of spiders?

We don’t have answers to many thing like this because it clouds our cherished vision of these people as somehow larger than life, or more than merely mortal. They had power; people followed them, and sometimes died for them. How could they be flawed?

There was an interesting article in the Boston Globe recently, titled “The myth of the visionary leader,” by Leon Neyfakh, about whether the public figures who we admire—presidents and the like—are actually the best leaders. We think we want vision and charisma and boldness, which are obvious traits. According to a 1977 paper by Abraham Zaleznik, classically heroic leaders possess imagination and a tendency toward risk-taking. In other words, they are bigger and better than we are.

Charisma may not be a good tool for actually getting things done, although that doesn’t stop us from voting for charm and good looks. But what we really need is someone who can make things happen, who is flexible, who can make effective compromises—not the people who hog the limelight and are in the love with the sound of their own voices.

Curiously, two weeks later in the Globe there was another related article, this one by Joanna Weiss. She was addressing the fact that it was kind of hard to distinguish between the two Boston mayoral candidates, both decent people and accomplished politicians (and both men of Irish background). In order to separate themselves they fell back on their own life stories. Weiss included in her analysis the example of Abraham Lincoln, cited by historian Michael Vorenberg. When Lincoln ran for President in 1860, he perceived that what the people wanted was an independent, self-reliant, strong individual; someone who stood out from the other politicians, who were mainly elite urban lawyers. So Lincoln’s handlers polished up the story of the boy raised in a log cabin, splitting rails and reading by firelight—a story we still repeat in schools today. The reality was that Lincoln was, yes, a smart lawyer in a suit (and without a beard), but that wasn’t what the voters wanted. Lincoln tailored his public image and won.

 

Would you vote for this man?

 

Should we as voters feel cheated? Manipulated? Or are we totally jaded by the endless onslaught of political spin? What do we really want from our leaders, and what does it look like? (By the way, Boston will have a new Irish mayor. Now, which one was he…?)

 

 

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Coming November 22nd

 

Getting Started

by Sheila Connolly

I’m supposed to be starting to write a new book, with a deadline of February 1.  But “starting” is such a slippery term!

This new book will be the third in a series, which means that the setting and characters are already established, although I have the option (and maybe even the need) to introduce a few new ones.

A plot might be helpful. That’s not to say that the plot doesn’t change during the course of the writing, but I need a starting point, a hook, a key, a precipitating idea that starts the story rolling. It doesn’t have to appear in the first chapter, although it should be close to the beginning, else the writer spends a while meandering around admiring the scenery and introducing the characters (for some readers, not for the first time). Note:  the body doesn’t have to be appear in the first chapter either, although that does make a striking start, giving you the opportunity to explore the who and the why immediately.  Who is this person covered with blood, and what’s he doing lying on my floor?  I’ve ever seen him before!

But I do write murder mysteries, therefore there should be a murder. That means I have to decide what concept is worthy of killing someone for. I assume the cast of characters—both official and amateur—will be able to solve it, but I have to give them a crime to solve.

All this sounds as though I know what I’m doing; that I plan ahead and know where a story is going to go when I first open that first file or type “Chapter 1.”  I don’t.

I sent off edits to two books last week, so those books are essential done, save for some proofing.  Sigh of relief.  Now, what do I do with some free time?  Worry—about getting the next book started.  But after writing quite a few books, I’ve discovered something:  if I wait for it, the book starts demanding to be written.  It’s not a conscious process, but if I turn my attention to something else (like polishing the furniture or raking leaves), a scene will start jelling in my head.  I have to work from the beginning, although I do visualize snippets of what will follow, so the first scene is first to emerge, like an (old-fashioned!) photo materializing on the paper in a tray of developer. 

And that’s where I am right now.  I “see” the opening scene, and I see how it leads to the one that follows and the one after that.  No body yet, although I think I know who dies, and the new character that will lead us to the murder appears up front.  That first chapter is a tricky one, because I have to fill in just the right amount of backstory (who are these people and why should I care? sez the reader) and also kick off the action so the story moves forward.  I have to make sure that I don’t depart from the personalities of the existing characters—a person can’t have been morose for the entire last book and suddenly become cheerful, or not without a good reason, which would probably be a clue to something.  I have to remind readers why they liked the last book in the series enough to pick up this next one.

I know the scene in my head is the place to start because it won’t go away. I have to set it down.  It’s almost a physical itch, to put my fingers on the keys and get started, and writing anything but that chapter just won’t do.

So, in the third County Cork book (still nameless), Maura Donovan is sitting at the well-worn kitchen table in the century-old cottage in Ireland that she inherited, trying to figure out how she can possibly afford to keep her pub running on the paltry profits she’s been making over the past few months—and she doesn’t know that the answer is sitting on a barstool at the pub waiting for her.

Coming November 22

The End of the Trash Saga

by Sheila Connolly

I know you’re all waiting with bated breath for updates on my trash trove (that’s a joke, folks—I don’t know too many people who care about antique junk, especially when it’s reduced to small pieces).  But it would be nice to get the floor back in place in that connected shed, and I really do think I’ve salvaged all the good stuff.  Maybe.

There have been a few interesting finds, like the skeleton of an umbrella, and a cannonball.  Yes, a cannonball.  This house was built after the Civil War, and to the best of my knowledge, no battles took place on this site during that war (King Phillip’s War might be a different story, since this was a Wampanoag neighborhood—but I’ve never found so much as an arrowhead here.)

I mentioned the piles of broken china and glass, and the old shoes (which I still need to sort out and see if they were tossed out in pairs or as singletons—but who loses one shoe?).  And of course, there are the bottles, now numbering more than fifty.  Curiously, the last couple I pulled out were made in Paris, unlike any others.  Perfume?  I’m still trying to figure out what to do with my instant bottle collection.

But being a good archeologist, I wanted to know whose dump it was, and why it was there. And I think I’ve solved that mystery.

The first clue was a unique item:  a coffin plate, which though damaged could still be read.  In case you don’t know, coffin plates were medallions, usually metal (though not necessarily of high quality) that could be attached to a wooden coffin.  Some were specific to the deceased, with name and death date, while others were generic and said something like “Beloved” or “Darling Child” or “At Rest.” Later in the nineteenth century they became souvenirs, and the attendees at the funeral would take them home as a memento.

This coffin plate reads “Nancy Thomas,” and she died in 1863, at the age of 88.  1863 was before this house was built, so the plate must have been saved by a family member.  Of course I wanted to know who Nancy was, and as it turns out, she came from this town, and she was the grandmother of George B. Thomas, who lived in this house from 1897 to about 1906, when his son (also George) sold the house and built himself a new one next door.

I came across two fragments of drinking glasses amidst the trash that bore the name “Thomas,” which confirms my working hypothesis.  A third piece of evidence is that there was legislation enacted in 1906 that limited the use of over-the-counter patent medicines, so presumably all those bottles of mine date to the very early twentieth century.

How the coffin plate ended up in the trash, mangled, is still a mystery, but I have a theory. George junior (a plumber by trade) decided for some reason to sell the “big” house and build himself something slightly smaller and more modern on the adjoining property.  Dad George was getting on in years (he was born in 1841 and fought in the Civil War, so that cannonball may have been his souvenir), and might not have been in full possession of his faculties—so he didn’t protest when young George, in the haste of moving, discarded a lot of useless bric-a-brac that wasn’t to his (or his wife’s) taste.  Much of the trove under the floor fits the era, and I didn’t find anything much from earlier or later. It could have been the Thomas tradition for disposing of their indestructible trash, or it could have been a single deposit (for some reason I can picture someone in the family having a wild time smashing all the bits and bobs they’d hated for years and didn’t want in their shiny new home).

I’m leaving some of the trash where I found it, because it’s too much work to haul it out from there and dispose of it.  I’ve retrieved enough to work out which china patterns were popular (mainly English ironstone).  I want to reassemble of few pieces, mainly as a tribute to the Thomas’s, whose lives have now touched mine.  I’m particularly fond of one decorative plate that has an apple on it—it took me several tries to locate most of the pieces for it. Even though it seems a bit odd to resurrect pieces that were broken over a century ago and discarded, in most of my books I write about the intersection of the past and the present.  I thought I should try it in my own life.

 

 

 

 

And something new: Coming November, from Beyond the Page Press