Posts
By Lonnie Cruse
I've been DVRing and watching the new Agatha Christie Miss Marple mysteries on PBS and enjoying them. Particularly the scenery. The size of those estate homes in England!!! Whew! In these episodes Miss Marple is played by Julia McKenzie who does a good job. I didn't care for the last set of Marple episodes on PBS, meaning not for the actress who played Marple. (Geraldine Fitzgerald? See, I couldn't even register her name in my brain.)
I have seen on discussion lists a HUGE discussion of who is the best ever Miss Marple. I place myself firmly in the Joan Hickson camp, and I'm not alone. Most Marple fans are loyal to Hickson as the best Marple ever. And WHO but David Suchet could ever play Poirot? I mean, really! He IS Poirot. Bless his heart, he is getting older. But he's still Poirot.
Which brings me to my point. I usually have one somewhere. Loyalty to actors who play certain characters. In the early days of movies, meaning the 1930's, actors often got type cast and were forever after stuck in that role. Take Bela Lugosi, for instance. Played Dracula a few times on stage, once on screen, and the dye was cast. He couldn't even BUY a job anywhere else. And yes, many actors have played Dracula since Lugosi. None hold a candle. Really.
I must admit Tony Shalub transferred/translated well from TAXI to MONK. He, in fact, BECAME Monk for many fans. Changing roles today for most actors is MUCH easier than it was at the dawn of movies/television. And it's kinda fun to see an actor stretch and show his/her range from character to character. Like Harrison Ford from Indiana Jones to President of the United States, with lots of different roles in between and since. And who HASN'T Meryl Streep portrayed???
So, dear reader/movie/TV fan how loyal are you to certain actors/actresses in certain roles? Is it difficult for you to watch someone else play a role, such as Miss Marple, when you loved the first actor in that role? Do you grit your teeth, or can you go with the flow? Let us know! And if you are a Marple fan, check out the latest PBS offerings. Well worth it.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Nostalgia for Girl Scout Camp
Elizabeth Zelvin
Since I discovered feminism many years ago, I have met a tremendous number of women who have told me they were Girl Scouts in their childhood. In retrospect, the Girl Scouts, and especially Girl Scout camp, which I attended from the ages of 9 to 13 and later returned to as a counselor, are responsible for a lot of the qualities, skills, and values that have helped me get through life. I don’t mean such skills as building a one-match fire or lashing branches into a shelter or table (though I can still lay a well constructed campfire, and I bet I could build a raft if my life depended on it and I had enough twine). I mean strength, self-reliance, harmony (both social and musical), and an appreciation for the outdoors and for other women.
I must admit I’m not one of the many mystery writers who read Nancy Drew as a child. But Nancy Drew had many of the qualities of a Girl Scout: competence, preparedness (she always had a rope or a flashlight handy if the situation demanded it), and no notion of waiting for men to lead the way. My Girl Scout jackknife was one of my most treasured possessions for years. While the only mysteries we solved were natural ones (How did the raccoon get into the latrine? What were these “berries”? Oops, that was deer scat), Scout camp was a place where I honed my writing skills in voluminous letters home and as the one who could always think up lyrics for my group’s campfire song.
Here are some of my most cherished memories:
Singing. Lots and lots of singing, both around the campfire with the sparks flying and a fading sunset filtering through the pines and in the dining hall while we washed dishes, up to the elbows in suds in a bucket or slapping a pot cover to release and wipe off the last vagrant drops of water.
The magical surprises, like the fairy breakfast and the farewell serenade. My first summer, I was young enough to be mystified when, on an early-morning walk through the woods, we found oranges and donuts hanging from the trees. Eventually the trail led us to a clearing where the oldest campers had made us breakfast. And I never got too old to be moved and enchanted when, lying in our tents on the final night of camp, we heard singing coming gradually closer as the counselors made their way through the entire camp, their flashlights like a bobbing line of fireflies in the dark.
Rest hour. As a kid, I would have laughed in disbelief if I’d been told I’d ever feel nostalgic about rest hour. For the first half-hour, we had to be completely still, lying on our beds in the canvas tent without whispering, reading, or any other activity. The flaps would be rolled up, there would be green and dappled sunshine all around us, and the breeze would toss the leaves and make them sigh and rustle. Put me in a hammock in the back yard on a sunny day, and I’m back there in a second. It’s a great time for meditation and the kind of creative daydreaming that a writer needs.
A number of years ago, I was in the vicinity of my old camp with my husband and a friend, and on an impulse, I suggested we try to find the place. (Children don’t pay attention to directions—at least, they didn’t in my day.) It was summer, and I imagined that if they’d let us look around, we would find a new generation of little girls singing as they did the dishes, swimming in the lake, and making their way up the mountain to the lookout called Bald Rock.
But when we got there, we found the camp had been abandoned. The tents with their wooden platforms were long gone. Of the trading post and the dining hall, only the tumbled ruins of stone fireplaces remained. We found the trail through the pines to the main campfire site. But I was devastated to see that the whole place had been trashed: litter, broken glass, and beer cans were scattered underfoot everywhere we looked.
I sat down on a rock and cried.
Since I discovered feminism many years ago, I have met a tremendous number of women who have told me they were Girl Scouts in their childhood. In retrospect, the Girl Scouts, and especially Girl Scout camp, which I attended from the ages of 9 to 13 and later returned to as a counselor, are responsible for a lot of the qualities, skills, and values that have helped me get through life. I don’t mean such skills as building a one-match fire or lashing branches into a shelter or table (though I can still lay a well constructed campfire, and I bet I could build a raft if my life depended on it and I had enough twine). I mean strength, self-reliance, harmony (both social and musical), and an appreciation for the outdoors and for other women.
I must admit I’m not one of the many mystery writers who read Nancy Drew as a child. But Nancy Drew had many of the qualities of a Girl Scout: competence, preparedness (she always had a rope or a flashlight handy if the situation demanded it), and no notion of waiting for men to lead the way. My Girl Scout jackknife was one of my most treasured possessions for years. While the only mysteries we solved were natural ones (How did the raccoon get into the latrine? What were these “berries”? Oops, that was deer scat), Scout camp was a place where I honed my writing skills in voluminous letters home and as the one who could always think up lyrics for my group’s campfire song.
Here are some of my most cherished memories:
Singing. Lots and lots of singing, both around the campfire with the sparks flying and a fading sunset filtering through the pines and in the dining hall while we washed dishes, up to the elbows in suds in a bucket or slapping a pot cover to release and wipe off the last vagrant drops of water.
The magical surprises, like the fairy breakfast and the farewell serenade. My first summer, I was young enough to be mystified when, on an early-morning walk through the woods, we found oranges and donuts hanging from the trees. Eventually the trail led us to a clearing where the oldest campers had made us breakfast. And I never got too old to be moved and enchanted when, lying in our tents on the final night of camp, we heard singing coming gradually closer as the counselors made their way through the entire camp, their flashlights like a bobbing line of fireflies in the dark.
Rest hour. As a kid, I would have laughed in disbelief if I’d been told I’d ever feel nostalgic about rest hour. For the first half-hour, we had to be completely still, lying on our beds in the canvas tent without whispering, reading, or any other activity. The flaps would be rolled up, there would be green and dappled sunshine all around us, and the breeze would toss the leaves and make them sigh and rustle. Put me in a hammock in the back yard on a sunny day, and I’m back there in a second. It’s a great time for meditation and the kind of creative daydreaming that a writer needs.
A number of years ago, I was in the vicinity of my old camp with my husband and a friend, and on an impulse, I suggested we try to find the place. (Children don’t pay attention to directions—at least, they didn’t in my day.) It was summer, and I imagined that if they’d let us look around, we would find a new generation of little girls singing as they did the dishes, swimming in the lake, and making their way up the mountain to the lookout called Bald Rock.
But when we got there, we found the camp had been abandoned. The tents with their wooden platforms were long gone. Of the trading post and the dining hall, only the tumbled ruins of stone fireplaces remained. We found the trail through the pines to the main campfire site. But I was devastated to see that the whole place had been trashed: litter, broken glass, and beer cans were scattered underfoot everywhere we looked.
I sat down on a rock and cried.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Grunge
Sandra Parshall
What is it with celebrities who appear in public looking like they just crawled out of a cardboard box under a bridge?
The men are the worst. Most actresses still get spiffed up for movie premieres, but alongside each bejeweled, beautifully coiffed and gowned woman, you’re likely to see a guy with a three-day growth of beard, torn jeans, dirty sneakers, a plaid shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest, and hair that looks like monkeys have been combing through it for fleas.
Charming, right?
It’s possible that the guy is clean and smells like a rose, but I always feel sorry for the woman who has to go out in public with a man who looks as if he stinks.
The facial hair thing has been out of control for years. I don’t recall exactly when it started, but at some point every man in show business suddenly had beard stubble all the time. I kept wondering how they managed to keep it perpetually at that two-day stage, then I learned that razor attachments are made for exactly that purpose. What I’ve never learned is WHY any man wants to look that scruffy. For whatever reason, the old-fashioned close shave every morning is history for many male celebrities.
The bed-hair style took hold hard soon after chin stubble did, and I don’t think any man in show business who’s under 45 has combed his hair since.
What kills me is that they seem to think they look great. Sexy, even. They pose for the cameras with a confidence that says, “Take a look at this, girls. Am I irresistible or what?” All I can think is, why would any woman want to run her fingers through that greasy hair? Do these men not own mirrors?
I give rock musicians a pass. They’re a different species, living in their own little universe. You can’t be a rock musician and look normal. I also don’t mind Johnny Depp’s clothing and hairstyles, which have grown increasingly eccentric as he has aged. He’s Johnny Depp, after all, not a mere man, and besides, he always looks clean. But I have to wonder about actors who work hard to put an impressive performance on film, then go around promoting that film in such disarray that their appearance detracts from anything insightful or appealing they might have to say.
Now I fear the trend toward grunge is invading the world of mystery writers. With each year that passes, I see the appearance of conference attendees slipping ever more rapidly toward that just-got-out-of-bed look, and some writers have decided that being comfortably sloppy is their right, wherever they are, so they dress the same way for panels as they do for playing with their pets at home. I have recently seen jeans and tee shirts at an awards banquet. It wasn’t the Edgars banquet, you can be sure; Mystery Writers of America still knows how to emphasize the specialness of an occasion by asking everyone to look their best.
I realize it’s unseemly for one adult to tell others how to dress in public. I’m just saying that mystery readers who go to conferences to meet writers might appreciate seeing them looking tidy and attractively dressed.
Here are two writers, Jason Pinter and Hank Phillipi Ryan, who sat next to me at the Oakmont Festival of Mystery in May. Don’t they look great? They aren’t overdressed, but they do appear to care about making a good impression on readers.
So how do you feel about grunge? Is your opinion of a show business celebrity or a writer diminished when you see that person looking unkempt or frumpy in public? Are you ready to sign my petition to Angelina Jolie imploring her not to let Brad Pitt out of the house again until he shaves and combs his hair?
What is it with celebrities who appear in public looking like they just crawled out of a cardboard box under a bridge?
The men are the worst. Most actresses still get spiffed up for movie premieres, but alongside each bejeweled, beautifully coiffed and gowned woman, you’re likely to see a guy with a three-day growth of beard, torn jeans, dirty sneakers, a plaid shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest, and hair that looks like monkeys have been combing through it for fleas.
Charming, right?
It’s possible that the guy is clean and smells like a rose, but I always feel sorry for the woman who has to go out in public with a man who looks as if he stinks.
The facial hair thing has been out of control for years. I don’t recall exactly when it started, but at some point every man in show business suddenly had beard stubble all the time. I kept wondering how they managed to keep it perpetually at that two-day stage, then I learned that razor attachments are made for exactly that purpose. What I’ve never learned is WHY any man wants to look that scruffy. For whatever reason, the old-fashioned close shave every morning is history for many male celebrities.The bed-hair style took hold hard soon after chin stubble did, and I don’t think any man in show business who’s under 45 has combed his hair since.
What kills me is that they seem to think they look great. Sexy, even. They pose for the cameras with a confidence that says, “Take a look at this, girls. Am I irresistible or what?” All I can think is, why would any woman want to run her fingers through that greasy hair? Do these men not own mirrors?
I give rock musicians a pass. They’re a different species, living in their own little universe. You can’t be a rock musician and look normal. I also don’t mind Johnny Depp’s clothing and hairstyles, which have grown increasingly eccentric as he has aged. He’s Johnny Depp, after all, not a mere man, and besides, he always looks clean. But I have to wonder about actors who work hard to put an impressive performance on film, then go around promoting that film in such disarray that their appearance detracts from anything insightful or appealing they might have to say.Now I fear the trend toward grunge is invading the world of mystery writers. With each year that passes, I see the appearance of conference attendees slipping ever more rapidly toward that just-got-out-of-bed look, and some writers have decided that being comfortably sloppy is their right, wherever they are, so they dress the same way for panels as they do for playing with their pets at home. I have recently seen jeans and tee shirts at an awards banquet. It wasn’t the Edgars banquet, you can be sure; Mystery Writers of America still knows how to emphasize the specialness of an occasion by asking everyone to look their best.
I realize it’s unseemly for one adult to tell others how to dress in public. I’m just saying that mystery readers who go to conferences to meet writers might appreciate seeing them looking tidy and attractively dressed.
Here are two writers, Jason Pinter and Hank Phillipi Ryan, who sat next to me at the Oakmont Festival of Mystery in May. Don’t they look great? They aren’t overdressed, but they do appear to care about making a good impression on readers.
So how do you feel about grunge? Is your opinion of a show business celebrity or a writer diminished when you see that person looking unkempt or frumpy in public? Are you ready to sign my petition to Angelina Jolie imploring her not to let Brad Pitt out of the house again until he shaves and combs his hair?Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Inspiration in a Bowl of Soup
Sharon Wildwind
Inspiration comes from the strangest places; this week it came from a bowl of soup.
The Cornell University Food and Brand Lab invited test subjects for a free bowl of soup. The summary I read didn’t mention many details about what the participants were told, but it was probably something innocuous, like the lab was testing new soup recipes or wanted to observe people’s table manners as they at soup.
The real research involved a difference in soup bowls. The control group could have as much soup as they wanted, but they had to get refills in the usual ways like asking a staff member for more or serving themselves from a steam table.
In the other group—the real experimental group—sixty-two people ate from bottomless soup bowls that secretly refilled from under the table as they ate.
According to Dr Brian Wansink, the Lab director, those with refillable bowls ate over 70% more soup than the control group, but they didn’t report feeling any more full or satisfied than the group that had to ask for, “More, please.”
When questioned after lunch, the reason most people who had eaten from the refillable bowls gave for why they kept eating was, “How could I feel full when I still had half a bowl of soup left?”
Strangely enough only 2 out of the 62 people with the magic bowls realized that the bowl was being refilled.
Allow me one more soup example before I tell you where all of this is leading. It's a folk tale called “Stone Soup.” You may be familiar with Marcia Brown’s award-winning children’s book of the same name or a more recent telling of the story by Jon J. Muth, but the tale has been around for centuries.
Stone Soup
A man came to a small village. In all the other villages he had visited, he exchanged a day’s work for food in the evening, but in this village no one was willing to feed a stranger, even if he was a good worker. At each house where he stopped, he was sent on his way with, “We have only enough food for ourselves. If we gave you some, we would not have enough left.”
Finally tired, and very hungry, the man built a fire in the middle of the village and set a pot of water to boil. Then he went around the village picking up stones, examining them and setting them down again. People became curious and began to follow him. They asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’m looking for the perfect stone so I can make stone soup?”
Well, the people in the village though this was very strange because they all knew that you could not make soup from stones.
At last the man found a stone to his liking. He washed it carefully in the creek and took it to his campfire, where he lowered it into his pot of boiling water. Then he sat down to wait.
“Is is ready yet?” a woman asked, peering into the pot.
“Not yet,” the man replied. “It would cook much faster if I only had carrots, but since I don’t, I’ll just make do with what I have.”
“I have some carrots,” the woman said, and hurried away to get them.
A few minutes later the conversation was repeated, only this time the traveller insisted that potatoes would be the perfect thing. A man hurried away to get a few potatoes he had at home.
Over time, the man collected many good things, which all went into the soup pot. When the pot was full to the brim, he tasted it and said, “It’s wonderful soup. Everyone get a bowl and you shall all have some.”
Everyone went home and brought back a bowl and they all sat down and shared a very good meal.
Where all of this led me—in addition to the kitchen, where I created bok choy and spinach soup—was to realize how incredibly generous writers and readers are to one other. Okay, yes, there are occasionally less-than-perfect individuals on both sides of the writer/reader line, but those people are in the minority. The rest of us are out there locating obscure verb forms for one another and contributing esoteric knowledge to the common soup pot. It was frightening to find out how much many of my writing buddies know about poisonings. Hmm, maybe that was a bad example.
I’m not convinced that an automatically-refilling soup bowl is a healthy idea, but an automatically-refilling support system sure is. To paraphrase what those research subjects said, "How could I feel empty when I have so many great people filling up my life?"
In case all this talk about soup has given you a hankering for a nice, hot (non-automatically-refillable) bowl, here’s the recipe I concocted while writing this blog.
Bok Choy and Spinach Soup
Boil a pot of water (stones are optional) :-)
Remove the core area from either 1 large or 2 small tomatoes. Dunk the tomatoes in the boiling water long enough to loosen their skins. Run the hot tomatoes under cold water and remove the skins. Chop the tomatoes into hunks and set aside.
Wash a few bok choy leaves. Cut apart bok choy stems and leaves. Chop the leaves into small pieces and set aside. Cut the stems into small pieces, too, along with a celery stalk and some green onions.
Sauté the bok choy stems, celery, and onions in a little olive oil. When tender and transparent, add the chopped tomato, and stir. Add a little water or broth, if needed. Season with oregano, parsley, and a bay leaf.
Simmer for about 10 minutes. Add 1/2 of a package of frozen spinach, cut into chunks and the bok choy leaves you set aside earlier. Simmer for another 5 minutes, or until the frozen spinach is heated. Remove the bay leaf before serving.
Tell everyone in the house to get a bowl and they shall all have some.
This soup freezes really well.
____
Quote for the week:
A meal, however simple, is a moment of intersection.
~Elise Boulding, peace activist
Inspiration comes from the strangest places; this week it came from a bowl of soup.
The Cornell University Food and Brand Lab invited test subjects for a free bowl of soup. The summary I read didn’t mention many details about what the participants were told, but it was probably something innocuous, like the lab was testing new soup recipes or wanted to observe people’s table manners as they at soup.
The real research involved a difference in soup bowls. The control group could have as much soup as they wanted, but they had to get refills in the usual ways like asking a staff member for more or serving themselves from a steam table.
In the other group—the real experimental group—sixty-two people ate from bottomless soup bowls that secretly refilled from under the table as they ate.
According to Dr Brian Wansink, the Lab director, those with refillable bowls ate over 70% more soup than the control group, but they didn’t report feeling any more full or satisfied than the group that had to ask for, “More, please.”
When questioned after lunch, the reason most people who had eaten from the refillable bowls gave for why they kept eating was, “How could I feel full when I still had half a bowl of soup left?”
Strangely enough only 2 out of the 62 people with the magic bowls realized that the bowl was being refilled.
Allow me one more soup example before I tell you where all of this is leading. It's a folk tale called “Stone Soup.” You may be familiar with Marcia Brown’s award-winning children’s book of the same name or a more recent telling of the story by Jon J. Muth, but the tale has been around for centuries.
Stone Soup
A man came to a small village. In all the other villages he had visited, he exchanged a day’s work for food in the evening, but in this village no one was willing to feed a stranger, even if he was a good worker. At each house where he stopped, he was sent on his way with, “We have only enough food for ourselves. If we gave you some, we would not have enough left.”
Finally tired, and very hungry, the man built a fire in the middle of the village and set a pot of water to boil. Then he went around the village picking up stones, examining them and setting them down again. People became curious and began to follow him. They asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’m looking for the perfect stone so I can make stone soup?”
Well, the people in the village though this was very strange because they all knew that you could not make soup from stones.
At last the man found a stone to his liking. He washed it carefully in the creek and took it to his campfire, where he lowered it into his pot of boiling water. Then he sat down to wait.
“Is is ready yet?” a woman asked, peering into the pot.
“Not yet,” the man replied. “It would cook much faster if I only had carrots, but since I don’t, I’ll just make do with what I have.”
“I have some carrots,” the woman said, and hurried away to get them.
A few minutes later the conversation was repeated, only this time the traveller insisted that potatoes would be the perfect thing. A man hurried away to get a few potatoes he had at home.
Over time, the man collected many good things, which all went into the soup pot. When the pot was full to the brim, he tasted it and said, “It’s wonderful soup. Everyone get a bowl and you shall all have some.”
Everyone went home and brought back a bowl and they all sat down and shared a very good meal.
Where all of this led me—in addition to the kitchen, where I created bok choy and spinach soup—was to realize how incredibly generous writers and readers are to one other. Okay, yes, there are occasionally less-than-perfect individuals on both sides of the writer/reader line, but those people are in the minority. The rest of us are out there locating obscure verb forms for one another and contributing esoteric knowledge to the common soup pot. It was frightening to find out how much many of my writing buddies know about poisonings. Hmm, maybe that was a bad example.
I’m not convinced that an automatically-refilling soup bowl is a healthy idea, but an automatically-refilling support system sure is. To paraphrase what those research subjects said, "How could I feel empty when I have so many great people filling up my life?"
In case all this talk about soup has given you a hankering for a nice, hot (non-automatically-refillable) bowl, here’s the recipe I concocted while writing this blog.
Bok Choy and Spinach Soup
Boil a pot of water (stones are optional) :-)
Remove the core area from either 1 large or 2 small tomatoes. Dunk the tomatoes in the boiling water long enough to loosen their skins. Run the hot tomatoes under cold water and remove the skins. Chop the tomatoes into hunks and set aside.
Wash a few bok choy leaves. Cut apart bok choy stems and leaves. Chop the leaves into small pieces and set aside. Cut the stems into small pieces, too, along with a celery stalk and some green onions.
Sauté the bok choy stems, celery, and onions in a little olive oil. When tender and transparent, add the chopped tomato, and stir. Add a little water or broth, if needed. Season with oregano, parsley, and a bay leaf.
Simmer for about 10 minutes. Add 1/2 of a package of frozen spinach, cut into chunks and the bok choy leaves you set aside earlier. Simmer for another 5 minutes, or until the frozen spinach is heated. Remove the bay leaf before serving.
Tell everyone in the house to get a bowl and they shall all have some.
This soup freezes really well.
____
Quote for the week:
A meal, however simple, is a moment of intersection.
~Elise Boulding, peace activist
Monday, August 2, 2010
Violence at Home
by Julia Buckley
I live with a man and two boys (but in some ways three boys). Each day they spend a good half hour mimicking scenes of extreme violence just for the fun of it. There are lots of gun sounds (really elaborate ones that I can't make, and couldn't make when I was a kid, either); there are long periods of wrestling on the floor, during which they yell things like, "You're already dead! I killed you when you walked in the room!" and "No way--I deflected it with the pillow" or, alternately, "I jumped out of the way and it ricocheted off the wall!"
Today while I was trying to have a serious adult conversation with my husband Jeff, my ten-year-old ran in the room, touched his father, and then left again, closing the door behind him. Jeff started laughing. "What was that?" I asked, my mind still on the bills.
"He put a grenade in my pocket and locked us in," he said proudly.
We could hear my son giggling in the living room.
Still other times they like to call out movie cliches while they practice their stylized violence. Today my oldest son, grappling with his father, yelled, "Why kill me? It will be pointless once the Wisnewski files come out!"
Their dad tried to escape into the bathroom, but I heard our youngest opening the door of that once-private place. "Graham!" I yelled. "Leave your father alone while he's in there."
Graham peeked into my office, all innocence. "I was just shooting a couple of poisoned darts into him," he said, shrugging.
Geez. Why can't a girl understand? My sons think I am a major square with no sense of humor, especially when I call a halt to the violent play. My oldest has already informed me that not only am I not cool, but I am "meaner" than the other mothers he has observed.
Even if I wanted to join in their manly fun, I wouldn't be able to, because I just don't get it. This is a club to which I don't have membership. I'm mostly content to watch them from the sidelines the way I would watch a strange animal behavior at the zoo.
Their need for violent play is entirely separate from violence itself. My sons are still shocked by real violence, but this false stuff is as old as the hills. The reason their fantasies must include elaborate weaponry and faux wrestling might just be wired into their brains, and it's as difficult for them to explain as it is for me to comprehend.
I just think of the way rams slam into each other, locking horns for no apparent reason, and assume that there is a parallel in the human world.
I live with a man and two boys (but in some ways three boys). Each day they spend a good half hour mimicking scenes of extreme violence just for the fun of it. There are lots of gun sounds (really elaborate ones that I can't make, and couldn't make when I was a kid, either); there are long periods of wrestling on the floor, during which they yell things like, "You're already dead! I killed you when you walked in the room!" and "No way--I deflected it with the pillow" or, alternately, "I jumped out of the way and it ricocheted off the wall!"Today while I was trying to have a serious adult conversation with my husband Jeff, my ten-year-old ran in the room, touched his father, and then left again, closing the door behind him. Jeff started laughing. "What was that?" I asked, my mind still on the bills.
"He put a grenade in my pocket and locked us in," he said proudly.
We could hear my son giggling in the living room.
Still other times they like to call out movie cliches while they practice their stylized violence. Today my oldest son, grappling with his father, yelled, "Why kill me? It will be pointless once the Wisnewski files come out!"
Their dad tried to escape into the bathroom, but I heard our youngest opening the door of that once-private place. "Graham!" I yelled. "Leave your father alone while he's in there."
Graham peeked into my office, all innocence. "I was just shooting a couple of poisoned darts into him," he said, shrugging.
Geez. Why can't a girl understand? My sons think I am a major square with no sense of humor, especially when I call a halt to the violent play. My oldest has already informed me that not only am I not cool, but I am "meaner" than the other mothers he has observed.
Even if I wanted to join in their manly fun, I wouldn't be able to, because I just don't get it. This is a club to which I don't have membership. I'm mostly content to watch them from the sidelines the way I would watch a strange animal behavior at the zoo.
Their need for violent play is entirely separate from violence itself. My sons are still shocked by real violence, but this false stuff is as old as the hills. The reason their fantasies must include elaborate weaponry and faux wrestling might just be wired into their brains, and it's as difficult for them to explain as it is for me to comprehend.
I just think of the way rams slam into each other, locking horns for no apparent reason, and assume that there is a parallel in the human world.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Guest Blogger: Douglas Corleone
Douglas Corleone is a former New York City lawyer, who now lives and writes in Hawaii. His Kevin Corvelli series began with One Man’s Paradise. Night on Fire will be published in 2011, and Choice of Evils is due out in 2012.PDD:
What are the up side and the down side of living in Hawaii?
Douglas:
If there's a down side to living here, I haven't discovered it yet. It's a peaceful, relaxing place and that's what I need in order to write.
PDD:
Is there anything special about practicing law in Hawaii?
Douglas:
There are certain issues that are unique to Hawaii. It's a very diverse state that doesn't much look like states on the mainland. Caucasians are a minority. We have American laws but different values. Honolulu is not as cutthroat as many large cities in the U.S. And, of course, lawyers dress much differently here when they are out of court. Less suits, more aloha shirts and shorts.
PDD:
What attracted you to mystery writing?
Douglas:
I enjoy hard-boiled crime fiction filled with flawed characters. My protagonist, Kevin Corvelli, is one of those flawed characters. He's taking on high-profile homicide cases, trying to redeem himself in the press. Kevin's world is gradually getting darker with each novel, but Kevin is also maturing.
PDD:
What are Kevin's flaws?
Douglas:
He’s a heavy drinker. He has commitment issues. He's neurotic, impatient, has a bit of a temper - he's a New Yorker. He's also been mentored in the law by a shady but highly successful defense attorney named Milt Cashman, known in the media as Not Guilty Milty. Kevin's tactics were commonplace in New York courthouses, but they don't fly as well here in Hawaii, where law is more of a "gentleman's game."
Kevin keeps a sense of humor about what he’s learned from Milt in New York, and he's willing to change. A good example of how Kevin sees Milt is when a drug dealer comes to Kevin for help with a possession charge. Kevin is new to Hawaii and isn't quite sure how much to charge, so he has to guess at what the new client is carrying in terms of cash. Finally, Kevin asks for $3,500 and learns the client actually had $5,000.
"Turi lays the money atop the files on my desk. I begin to count it out, unable to hide my disappointment at having lost the other $1,500. Milt can always tell how much a client is carrying down to the nickel. Milt is a truly gifted lawyer."~One Man’s Paradise
PDD:
You’ve said that you like to travel, especially to Europe. Any favorite parts of Europe?
Douglas:
Dublin is easily my favorite city in the world. Very modern yet full of Old World charm. And the people are as much fun to be around as any I ever met. I like them and I like the music.
PDD:
What’s hard about writing for you?
Douglas:
One thing I never dealt well with is a schedule. I work as much as I can, then I stop, whether I’ve put in two hours or twelve hours.
PDD: What’s going well about the writing?
I recently finished my next book, and I’m proud of the work. In Night On Fire, Kevin represents a stunning yet troubled young bride accused of committing murder and arson at a popular Hawaiian beach resort.
For more information about Douglas, or his books, visit his web site. He’s also on Facebook.
Friday, July 30, 2010
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PENGUIN
by Sheila Connolly
We're giving away several Penguin books, classics and new mysteries, to a few lucky readers today. To enter the drawing, leave a comment and give us an e-mail address where you can be reached.
Today marks the 75th anniversary of Penguin Books, launched in London in 1935. Since I’m published by a current imprint of Penguin (Berkley Prime Crime), I was happy to volunteer to join in the national celebration of the publisher. I’ll admit that it was Penguin Books who suggested this, but they’re sweetening the pot by giving away one of their books.
Penguin’s start is a great lesson in identifying a niche and marketing a product wisely. The firm was founded by Allen Lane, who already had some publishing experience. He invited Edward Young to join him, and it was Young who came up with the signature penguin logo. Penguin isn’t ashamed to tell us that it was Lane’s secretary who came up with the name, and then Lane sent Young off to the London Zoo to sketch penguins. Young is said to have been less than pleased, finding the penguins rather smelly.
However, the logo stuck, and was used on all Penguin books until 1949. But Young’s contribution went beyond a drawing: he was responsible for using easily recognizable and consistent color schemes for all the firm’s book covers; crime and detective novels were green.
We who are surrounded by books these days will be hard-pressed to appreciate the impact that the Penguin imprint had when it was introduced. In the 1930s, the global economy was a mess, and Hitler was gearing up for war. In addition, paperback books in those days were usually trashy novels with lurid covers. Lane chose to offer quality paperbacks with tasteful covers, and in a shrewd move, made them available at railway stations and news stands as well as bookstores. His strategy worked: in the first ten months, Penguin printed one million books, and within a year, the firm had sold three million paperbacks. Penguin offered good books at affordable prices, at a time when reading could have been seen as a luxury, and the company thrived.
While not all of the early books published by Penguin have enjoyed lasting popularity, among the first ten published were Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club and Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles—both still in print. Among books 11 through 20 was Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man. Lane had a good eye.
Penguin was responsible for a lot more notable publishing achievements. In 1941 they established Puffin, a children’s imprint; in 1946, Penguin Classics (and its launch book, The Odyssey, became Penguin’s best selling book).
And there are American connections as well, as you will see as I lay out the “genealogy” of modern-day Penguin:
--1996: The Penguin Group acquired the Putnam Berkley Group, forming Penguin Putnam Inc.
--1965: G. P. Putnam’s Sons acquired Berkley Books, a mass market paperback house
--1866: G. P. Putnam & Sons was created when George Palmer Putnam’s three sons joined him in the business
--1848: Putnam founded G. Putnam Broadway, after dissolving a partnership with John Wiley
--1838: Putnam and Wiley formed the publishing firm of Wiley & Putnam in New York
And why, you ask, have I outlined this (skipping over a whole lot of other mergers and acquisitions)? Because in 1845, Wiley & Putnam published Edgar A. Poe’s Tales, including, among other stories, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Purloined Letter,” and “The Gold Bug,” for which Poe’s Deadly Daughters salute this Penguin progenitor.
I am honored to share a publisher with the likes of Poe, Christie and Sayers, and one which continues to turn out quality books in an increasingly difficult publishing climate. Penguin authors have won 25 Nobel Prizes, 18 National Book Awards, and 12 Pulitzer Prizes. They publish more than 300 books each year in the United States, and they have more than 3,600 Penguin Books and 1,500 Penguin classics in print.
I hope I’m doing as well at 75. Happy birthday, Penguin!
We're giving away several Penguin books, classics and new mysteries, to a few lucky readers today. To enter the drawing, leave a comment and give us an e-mail address where you can be reached.
Today marks the 75th anniversary of Penguin Books, launched in London in 1935. Since I’m published by a current imprint of Penguin (Berkley Prime Crime), I was happy to volunteer to join in the national celebration of the publisher. I’ll admit that it was Penguin Books who suggested this, but they’re sweetening the pot by giving away one of their books.
Penguin’s start is a great lesson in identifying a niche and marketing a product wisely. The firm was founded by Allen Lane, who already had some publishing experience. He invited Edward Young to join him, and it was Young who came up with the signature penguin logo. Penguin isn’t ashamed to tell us that it was Lane’s secretary who came up with the name, and then Lane sent Young off to the London Zoo to sketch penguins. Young is said to have been less than pleased, finding the penguins rather smelly.However, the logo stuck, and was used on all Penguin books until 1949. But Young’s contribution went beyond a drawing: he was responsible for using easily recognizable and consistent color schemes for all the firm’s book covers; crime and detective novels were green.
We who are surrounded by books these days will be hard-pressed to appreciate the impact that the Penguin imprint had when it was introduced. In the 1930s, the global economy was a mess, and Hitler was gearing up for war. In addition, paperback books in those days were usually trashy novels with lurid covers. Lane chose to offer quality paperbacks with tasteful covers, and in a shrewd move, made them available at railway stations and news stands as well as bookstores. His strategy worked: in the first ten months, Penguin printed one million books, and within a year, the firm had sold three million paperbacks. Penguin offered good books at affordable prices, at a time when reading could have been seen as a luxury, and the company thrived.
While not all of the early books published by Penguin have enjoyed lasting popularity, among the first ten published were Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club and Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles—both still in print. Among books 11 through 20 was Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man. Lane had a good eye.
Penguin was responsible for a lot more notable publishing achievements. In 1941 they established Puffin, a children’s imprint; in 1946, Penguin Classics (and its launch book, The Odyssey, became Penguin’s best selling book).
And there are American connections as well, as you will see as I lay out the “genealogy” of modern-day Penguin:
--1996: The Penguin Group acquired the Putnam Berkley Group, forming Penguin Putnam Inc.
--1965: G. P. Putnam’s Sons acquired Berkley Books, a mass market paperback house
--1866: G. P. Putnam & Sons was created when George Palmer Putnam’s three sons joined him in the business
--1848: Putnam founded G. Putnam Broadway, after dissolving a partnership with John Wiley
--1838: Putnam and Wiley formed the publishing firm of Wiley & Putnam in New York
And why, you ask, have I outlined this (skipping over a whole lot of other mergers and acquisitions)? Because in 1845, Wiley & Putnam published Edgar A. Poe’s Tales, including, among other stories, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Purloined Letter,” and “The Gold Bug,” for which Poe’s Deadly Daughters salute this Penguin progenitor.
I am honored to share a publisher with the likes of Poe, Christie and Sayers, and one which continues to turn out quality books in an increasingly difficult publishing climate. Penguin authors have won 25 Nobel Prizes, 18 National Book Awards, and 12 Pulitzer Prizes. They publish more than 300 books each year in the United States, and they have more than 3,600 Penguin Books and 1,500 Penguin classics in print.
I hope I’m doing as well at 75. Happy birthday, Penguin!
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Doing Nothing
Elizabeth Zelvin
Among the tchachkes on my mother’s shelves was a tiny ceramic pitcher that she brought back from a trip to Italy in the 1930s. It was hand painted and hardly big enough for a dolls’ tea party. Written on it was an Italian proverb: Dolce far niente. “It is sweet to do nothing.” It was an inappropriate motto for my mother, who was always on the move and doing something new. Her response to the “empty nest” when her children went off to college was to go back to school herself and get a doctorate. At every dinner party, she bustled between dining room and kitchen, refusing help and ignoring her guests’ perennial chorus: “Judy, why don’t you sit down?”
Measured by this standard, I had a hard time believing I ever did enough. But somehow the message that doing nothing would be sweet if only I could get away with it burrowed into my soul. It took me many years to discover that not everybody thought doing nothing was a reprehensible, even shameful failure to act. For creative artists, including writers, far niente is not niente at all, but an essential element in the creative process: the incubation period necessary to produce art. And writers are not the only ones.
This topic first occurred to me when I read on Simon Wood’s blog that his father doesn’t get baseball. Simon is a transplanted Brit, and I gathered that the comment was in response to Americans saying that they don’t get cricket. I have always heard that cricket is the most boring spectator sport there is. It goes on for hours and hours, long enough for everybody to break for tea. But I can understand Simon’s dad’s reciprocal bewilderment. In baseball, the perfect game is one in which nothing whatsoever happens. They call it pitching a no-hitter. That must be boring not only for the spectators, but for the players—except the pitcher, I assume.
But swatting a ball with a bat is not the only sport that encourages and even cherishes idleness. Look at fishing. Yes, yes, there’s plenty of action in battling a giant tuna or a supple trout. There are dramatic stories of the one that got away and homely tasks like gutting and scaling the catch and cooking it for supper. But fishing also seems to be a meditational art. And that means it’s not always about catching the fish. The recent movie Crazy Heart caught the mood perfectly, in the scene in which Robert Duvall takes Jeff Bridges fishing. The lake is still, the small boat motionless, sky and water a brilliant blue bowl, and the desired catch not bass but serenity for the Bridges character, who needs to stop running and make peace with himself.
To get back to writers, what may look like doing nothing to the observer (especially when they want us to listen to their stories, cook dinner, or get a real job) is in fact a vital part of our work. Our bodies may be idle, but we’re thinking, stretching our imaginations, letting our characters roam free in our heads and talk to us at will. How could we write fiction if we didn’t dream? We need a spaciousness, a lack of clutter, however temporary, in order to bring our imaginary but vivid characters and their settings and adventures to life.
Among the tchachkes on my mother’s shelves was a tiny ceramic pitcher that she brought back from a trip to Italy in the 1930s. It was hand painted and hardly big enough for a dolls’ tea party. Written on it was an Italian proverb: Dolce far niente. “It is sweet to do nothing.” It was an inappropriate motto for my mother, who was always on the move and doing something new. Her response to the “empty nest” when her children went off to college was to go back to school herself and get a doctorate. At every dinner party, she bustled between dining room and kitchen, refusing help and ignoring her guests’ perennial chorus: “Judy, why don’t you sit down?”
Measured by this standard, I had a hard time believing I ever did enough. But somehow the message that doing nothing would be sweet if only I could get away with it burrowed into my soul. It took me many years to discover that not everybody thought doing nothing was a reprehensible, even shameful failure to act. For creative artists, including writers, far niente is not niente at all, but an essential element in the creative process: the incubation period necessary to produce art. And writers are not the only ones.
This topic first occurred to me when I read on Simon Wood’s blog that his father doesn’t get baseball. Simon is a transplanted Brit, and I gathered that the comment was in response to Americans saying that they don’t get cricket. I have always heard that cricket is the most boring spectator sport there is. It goes on for hours and hours, long enough for everybody to break for tea. But I can understand Simon’s dad’s reciprocal bewilderment. In baseball, the perfect game is one in which nothing whatsoever happens. They call it pitching a no-hitter. That must be boring not only for the spectators, but for the players—except the pitcher, I assume.
But swatting a ball with a bat is not the only sport that encourages and even cherishes idleness. Look at fishing. Yes, yes, there’s plenty of action in battling a giant tuna or a supple trout. There are dramatic stories of the one that got away and homely tasks like gutting and scaling the catch and cooking it for supper. But fishing also seems to be a meditational art. And that means it’s not always about catching the fish. The recent movie Crazy Heart caught the mood perfectly, in the scene in which Robert Duvall takes Jeff Bridges fishing. The lake is still, the small boat motionless, sky and water a brilliant blue bowl, and the desired catch not bass but serenity for the Bridges character, who needs to stop running and make peace with himself.
To get back to writers, what may look like doing nothing to the observer (especially when they want us to listen to their stories, cook dinner, or get a real job) is in fact a vital part of our work. Our bodies may be idle, but we’re thinking, stretching our imaginations, letting our characters roam free in our heads and talk to us at will. How could we write fiction if we didn’t dream? We need a spaciousness, a lack of clutter, however temporary, in order to bring our imaginary but vivid characters and their settings and adventures to life.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Color me blue... or red or yellow or...
Sandra Parshall
What’s your favorite color? What do you think that says about you?
Is your opinion of a fictional character affected by the colors the author dresses the character in?
Color fills our world, and the colors we wear or live with can define us to onlookers. Yet for the average person, an affinity for a color is instinctive. Most of us don’t give it a lot of thought – we know what we like when we see it. If our favorite colors change over the years, we’re not likely to analyze what that means about the way we have changed. Some writers dress their characters haphazardly, perhaps not even mentioning color of clothing because it doesn’t seem important. When we do that, we’re overlooking a powerful characterization tool.
Many writers, though, recognize the importance of color to the image a reader forms of a character. When Janet Evanovich dresses Ranger all in black, she knows what she’s doing. This guy is dangerous. There’s something dark and unknowable about him. Yet he is wildly alluring, even before we hear him speak or see him in action. Yes, a lot more goes into the image – his handsome face and buff body can’t be discounted – but the black outfit speaks reams all by itself. Would you feel the same way about Ranger if he showed up in brown and green plaid?
Jacqueline Winspear uses color to define Maisie Dobbs’s moods and self-image. On occasion Maisie flirts with bright colors, especially when her friend Priscilla is around to prod her or to whip a stunning dress from her own closet and insist that Maisie wear it. But Maisie always returns to her plain suits in drab colors. Prim and businesslike. The clothes of a woman who does little but work.
An entire field of research is devoted to understanding why individuals love certain colors and shun others. To professionals who concoct dyes for house and car paint, fabric and carpet, color is big business, and it’s not surprising that journals like Color, Research and Application exist. (“Color Harmony Revisited” is a recent article topic.) Our choices are endless. Think of the thousands of little paint cards on display in stores, showing variations that are sometimes barely discernable. Human beings spent years of their lives formulating those thousands of hues. Why? Because people are individuals, and what one person loves, another may hate.
Psychologists have studied the meaning of color preferences for decades, and we’ve reached the point where some employers test job applicants to find out what colors they like.
According to psychologists, blue represents calm and balance. People who love blue are often creative, with a highly developed aesthetic sense. They crave peace and don’t like discord.
Red is exciting and has been proven by brain scans to arouse emotional areas of the human brain. A “red personality” is enthusiastic, intense, competitive, and talkative.
People who like green are said to be persistent, decisive, assertive, and... well, stubborn. They like work that involves detail.
Those who favor gold are described as good organizers, loyal and responsible.
If you like orange, you may be energetic, a fierce competitor who loves to win.
My question is... what does it mean if I like different colors at different times? Do I have a split personality?
Back to the original questions, though: What does your favorite color say about you? And is your opinion of a fictional character affected by the colors he or she wears?
What’s your favorite color? What do you think that says about you?
Is your opinion of a fictional character affected by the colors the author dresses the character in?
Color fills our world, and the colors we wear or live with can define us to onlookers. Yet for the average person, an affinity for a color is instinctive. Most of us don’t give it a lot of thought – we know what we like when we see it. If our favorite colors change over the years, we’re not likely to analyze what that means about the way we have changed. Some writers dress their characters haphazardly, perhaps not even mentioning color of clothing because it doesn’t seem important. When we do that, we’re overlooking a powerful characterization tool.
Many writers, though, recognize the importance of color to the image a reader forms of a character. When Janet Evanovich dresses Ranger all in black, she knows what she’s doing. This guy is dangerous. There’s something dark and unknowable about him. Yet he is wildly alluring, even before we hear him speak or see him in action. Yes, a lot more goes into the image – his handsome face and buff body can’t be discounted – but the black outfit speaks reams all by itself. Would you feel the same way about Ranger if he showed up in brown and green plaid?
Jacqueline Winspear uses color to define Maisie Dobbs’s moods and self-image. On occasion Maisie flirts with bright colors, especially when her friend Priscilla is around to prod her or to whip a stunning dress from her own closet and insist that Maisie wear it. But Maisie always returns to her plain suits in drab colors. Prim and businesslike. The clothes of a woman who does little but work.
An entire field of research is devoted to understanding why individuals love certain colors and shun others. To professionals who concoct dyes for house and car paint, fabric and carpet, color is big business, and it’s not surprising that journals like Color, Research and Application exist. (“Color Harmony Revisited” is a recent article topic.) Our choices are endless. Think of the thousands of little paint cards on display in stores, showing variations that are sometimes barely discernable. Human beings spent years of their lives formulating those thousands of hues. Why? Because people are individuals, and what one person loves, another may hate.
Psychologists have studied the meaning of color preferences for decades, and we’ve reached the point where some employers test job applicants to find out what colors they like.
According to psychologists, blue represents calm and balance. People who love blue are often creative, with a highly developed aesthetic sense. They crave peace and don’t like discord.
Red is exciting and has been proven by brain scans to arouse emotional areas of the human brain. A “red personality” is enthusiastic, intense, competitive, and talkative.
People who like green are said to be persistent, decisive, assertive, and... well, stubborn. They like work that involves detail.
Those who favor gold are described as good organizers, loyal and responsible.
If you like orange, you may be energetic, a fierce competitor who loves to win.
My question is... what does it mean if I like different colors at different times? Do I have a split personality?
Back to the original questions, though: What does your favorite color say about you? And is your opinion of a fictional character affected by the colors he or she wears?
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
I will or will I?
Sharon Wildwind
I’ve heard tell that mystery writers are very fortunate.
In comparison to stories told by non-mystery writers, the mystery community is more supportive than others groups. There are the occasional you-said/no-I-didn’t/yes-you-did spats, but in general we seem not only to get along well, but to actually like and root for one another.
This past week I’ve had a kumquat-week related to encouragement.
A kumquat-week?
You know, your friend invites you to an avant-garde play called, “Under the Kumquat Tree.” As you’re sitting in the audience, you realize that other than a vague impression that kumquat is a fruit you know nothing about it.
For the rest of the week, you’re inundated with kumquats. They’re for sale in your grocery. A woman at work goes on about her kumquat salsa recipe. The magazine you pick up in the dentist’s waiting room has an article, “The Tonic Properties of Kumquats.” You seem to be surrounded by tiny orange fruit.
The past week I’ve been surrounded by stories about encouragement traps. People give what they think is positive advice, but if the recipient is discouraged, depressed, or has a low self-concept, they are likely to become more, not less, discouraged.
The Everyone-Goes-Through-This Trap
“Everyone goes through this. I certainly have.”
What the speaker intends:
This is not the end of the world, and you are not alone.
How the listener may react:
My problem isn’t important. Other people are smarter and more together than I am, so they sail through it. People are mad at me because I’m such a whiner.
What may be more helpful:
“Even though this happens a lot, it’s always tough for the person going through it. Do you see any end in sight?”
The Good-Example Trap
“Look at someone like Helen Keller or Stephen Hawkings. They had to contend with much worse challenges than you do. If they could succeed, you can, too.”
What the speaker intends:
Look for positive role models and take inspiration from them.
How the listener may react:
Wow, I never realized before how much more could go wrong with my situation. I’d never be strong enough and brave enough to accomplish things like those people did.
What may be more helpful:
“Have you got a hero? Tell me about her.”
The I-will-or-will-I Trap
Psychologist Ibrahim Senay of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently published research on what he calls the willpower paradox. Test subjects were asked to psych themselves up before being asked to do a task.
Half of the subjects gave themselves a positive pep talk. “I will do this. I will succeed. I see myself succeeding.” etc. The other half were to ask themselves questions: “Will I do this? Will I succeed? What would happen if I don’t succeed?” etc.
That first group—let’s call them the power of positive thinking group—did much worse on the actual task than the second group, what I like to call the power of curiosity group.
This was true even when the pre-task preparation was seemingly neutral. In that test, one group was asked to contribute samples for an unrelated study on handwriting analysis. One group wrote over and over, “I will.” The second group wrote, “Will I?” Again the second group consistently outperformed the first group.
In a third study related to encouraging people to go to a gym to exercise regularly, the people who focused on “Will I?” stated a wider variety of positive reasons for continuing to go to the gym, while the “I will” stated mostly reasons related to generating guilt and self-disappointment if they did not continue to go.
It appears that one of the most helpful things that can be said to encourage another person is, “Are you curious about how this might turn out? Have you thought about what the different outcomes might be?”
_____
Quote for the week:
Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.
~James Stephens, Irish Poet (1882-1950)
I’ve heard tell that mystery writers are very fortunate.
In comparison to stories told by non-mystery writers, the mystery community is more supportive than others groups. There are the occasional you-said/no-I-didn’t/yes-you-did spats, but in general we seem not only to get along well, but to actually like and root for one another.
This past week I’ve had a kumquat-week related to encouragement.
A kumquat-week?
You know, your friend invites you to an avant-garde play called, “Under the Kumquat Tree.” As you’re sitting in the audience, you realize that other than a vague impression that kumquat is a fruit you know nothing about it.
For the rest of the week, you’re inundated with kumquats. They’re for sale in your grocery. A woman at work goes on about her kumquat salsa recipe. The magazine you pick up in the dentist’s waiting room has an article, “The Tonic Properties of Kumquats.” You seem to be surrounded by tiny orange fruit.
The past week I’ve been surrounded by stories about encouragement traps. People give what they think is positive advice, but if the recipient is discouraged, depressed, or has a low self-concept, they are likely to become more, not less, discouraged.
The Everyone-Goes-Through-This Trap
“Everyone goes through this. I certainly have.”
What the speaker intends:
This is not the end of the world, and you are not alone.
How the listener may react:
My problem isn’t important. Other people are smarter and more together than I am, so they sail through it. People are mad at me because I’m such a whiner.
What may be more helpful:
“Even though this happens a lot, it’s always tough for the person going through it. Do you see any end in sight?”
The Good-Example Trap
“Look at someone like Helen Keller or Stephen Hawkings. They had to contend with much worse challenges than you do. If they could succeed, you can, too.”
What the speaker intends:
Look for positive role models and take inspiration from them.
How the listener may react:
Wow, I never realized before how much more could go wrong with my situation. I’d never be strong enough and brave enough to accomplish things like those people did.
What may be more helpful:
“Have you got a hero? Tell me about her.”
The I-will-or-will-I Trap
Psychologist Ibrahim Senay of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently published research on what he calls the willpower paradox. Test subjects were asked to psych themselves up before being asked to do a task.
Half of the subjects gave themselves a positive pep talk. “I will do this. I will succeed. I see myself succeeding.” etc. The other half were to ask themselves questions: “Will I do this? Will I succeed? What would happen if I don’t succeed?” etc.
That first group—let’s call them the power of positive thinking group—did much worse on the actual task than the second group, what I like to call the power of curiosity group.
This was true even when the pre-task preparation was seemingly neutral. In that test, one group was asked to contribute samples for an unrelated study on handwriting analysis. One group wrote over and over, “I will.” The second group wrote, “Will I?” Again the second group consistently outperformed the first group.
In a third study related to encouraging people to go to a gym to exercise regularly, the people who focused on “Will I?” stated a wider variety of positive reasons for continuing to go to the gym, while the “I will” stated mostly reasons related to generating guilt and self-disappointment if they did not continue to go.
It appears that one of the most helpful things that can be said to encourage another person is, “Are you curious about how this might turn out? Have you thought about what the different outcomes might be?”
_____
Quote for the week:
Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.
~James Stephens, Irish Poet (1882-1950)
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