Shipped off to Shanghai



The Bund, Shanghai's turn of the century waterfront.
I took this photo on my first evening here
from a rooftop bar.

Just in case you were wondering why it's been quiet on this blog - I've shipped off to Shanghai for a week to visit a good friend, and it turns out that you cannot get to Blogger from there without some special interface which I've just acquired.

In the meantime I have been taking lots of pictures and have been collecting lots of impressions of this fascinating city, all of which I will soon share. Right now I'm almost overwhelmed taking it all in, but stay tuned, much to come soon!

Lee Strickland: "I was Always a Memoirist..."

Recently, my Advanced Memoir class at StoryStudio Chicago was fortunate enough to host, in person, Lee Strickland for an author Q&A, discussing her essay "Girl, Ruined," published in The Sun Magazine. Lee is a fellow teacher at StoryStudio and interestingly, she teaches fiction writing.

She is, however, quite articulate about the challenges of writing memoir as she has completed a book length memoir, from which "Girl, Ruined" is an excerpt. In this short excerpt of our conversation, she shares why she really feels she's always been a memoirist...

A Story in a Few Sentences

Sondra Radvanovsky as Aida at the Lyric Opera of Chicago

Last night I took my two older kids to see a performance of Verdi's opera Aida at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. It's part of their education, I tell myself. I grew up going to the opera, and I grew to love it eventually, but I also remember that as a teenager I got rather impatient with the slow action and the stories that take three hours to tell. So, during the first intermission, I mentioned to my daughter that really, it's not about the story, because the story is rather simplistic and can be summed up a like a fairy tale. Says she, "Mom, any great story can be summed up like a fairy tale, in a few sentences." Wise words from a 16-year-old.

It's certainly true of Aida: Nubian princess Aida, enslaved to Egyptian princess Amneris, is in love with Egyptian war hero Radames who is chosen to go into battle against her father, the King of Nubia. Amneris wants Radames for herself, but he's in love with Aida. Do you need to know more? All the conflict and tragedy is right there even though there are more twists to the plot.

This got me thinking - any book, any story, if it's any good, can be boiled down to a few sentences. Right? Isn't that a great way to test if you've got that narrative focus? If you're able to capture that central conflict? Especially in memoir where you have to tease your focus out of the plethora of happenings that is your life?

My Spring List: Things to Do in Spring



Spring began officially today at 12:14 a.m., flowers and trees are budding early in Chicago since we've had unusual temperatures in the 70s and 80s for a week now, so it's high time to think about what should be on my spring list. Of my seasonal lists, this is the hardest for me to do. I'm not a spring person, and much of what I love about spring is not about doing something but about enjoying firsts:

The first smell of freshly cut grass
The first whiff of a hyacinth, or lilac, or lily of the valley
The first time you can take your shoes off again walking the beach

I'm also a little hesitant to move into spring because we didn't really have a winter here in Chicago, so much of my winter list did not get accomplished. No sledding, sadly, and no ice skating. The latter could have been accomplished, of course, because the ice rinks were open, but I just never really got into that full winter mode.

Anyway, I'd love to hear if you have things you like to do in spring, perhaps it's your favorite season and you have a whole long list. Here's my spring list for now, but please bring on ideas!

• Plant a porch garden
• Hike Starved Rock State Park when there might be water falls from spring showers
• Buy hyacinths
• Make something with rhubarb
• Visit a botanical garden
• Make an effort to visit the Tulip Festival in Holland, Michigan

Photo Essay: Maple Sugar Festival

Going to the Maple Sugar Time Festival in the Indiana Dunes is one family tradition I started when the kids were little, and since we missed it last year, my daughter insisted we not miss it this time around. Every year, for the first two weekends in March, the National Park Service sets up a short trail in the Indiana Dunes woods to demonstrate how maple sugar has been made by Native Americans all the way to how it is still done today. This picture shows how Native American tapped trees before metal tools and pots were available, using wooden tools, vessels made of bark, and maybe a clay pot.

See the steam rise as a stone, heated in a wood-burning fire, is placed in these wooden troughs. Native Americans would probably have had several troughs like this, in decreasing sizes, to "boil" down the sap.

Boiling down the sap got easier once pioneers arrived with their big iron pots, yet the method is essentially the same.

Here a park ranger "tests" the syrup. Over time, people have figured out that the ideal consistency for maple syrup is 66% sugar. Less sugar makes it more likely to spoil; more sugar will have it crystallize. These days we have fancy tools to measure sugar content; but if you're doing it the old fashioned way, you can only go by the syrup's color.

A jar of maple syrup, made the pioneer way. Trial and error got it to the right consistency.

I loved this pioneer "kitchen" of containers and utensils lined up in the open air. This year temperatures were in the high 60s for Maple Sugar Time, but I remember early March dates when it was so cold the sap froze into sweet icicles coming out of the trees.

Rangers like to ask the kids why a lid is put on top of the sap buckets. Any idea? Post a comment!

One cool tree.

My favorite shot from this trip, and it took me about ten shots to get it. This is inside the sugar shack at the Chellberg Farm, where the owners used to make maple syrup during the Depression Era. The glass bottles for holding the finished syrup are hung above vats where the syrup is progressively boiled down, so that they can warm in the steam and won't burst when the hot syrup is poured into them.

The Sugar Shack "Kitchen."

Sap Buckets.

The Sugar Shack from the outside; a less romantic shot, but it gives you a feel what the festival is like, including modern times equipment like the John Deere truck.

The kitchen inside the Chellberg Farmhouse is restored to about Civil War times, and a ranger was baking cookies, demonstrating various recipes with maple sugar. Quite a different smell from the wood burning fires outside!

I always wish I knew more about trees, and this list of Indiana Dunes trees would be a good place to start.

Of course we went on a hike, too, and came across this old farm equipment in the naked forest.



Writing Exercise: Color List - Black

The month of March has crept up without me presenting a color list exercise yet, but here we go. I have one more color left, I think, and that's an easy one: black.

For the uninitiated, the idea is to come up with ways to evoke black without mentioning the color itself since one of the challenges of writing effective descriptions is getting the color just right. Each month on this blog we've worked on one color, so far we’ve done purple, white, gray, brown, orange, red, green, pink, blue, and yellow.

Since you all have been doing such a great job with this, I shall just tip you off with a few words for black, and see what else you can contribute:

charcoal
soot
tar
wrought iron (see my picture)

Impressions from the AWP Conference

Photo courtesy of Sun Hee Yoon - it
reflects a serenity hardly found
 at the conference

It's taken me some time to recover from the last week's AWP 2012 Conference in Chicago, which surprised me because I didn't even spend all three full days at the conference. But with 10,000 people attending, hundreds of panels, a book fair that tops any mall shopping experience, the intensity of meeting old MFA friends, and hearing great writers read and discuss aspects of craft, my head was simply too full for me to produce anything these past few days, including a blog post. While the magnitude of the conference is overwhelming, probably for most participants, I am always struck by the great fortune of having such a conference in the first place. We are privileged that AWP provides such an impressive forum to meet so many others who are interested in literary writing, and offers this opportunity to discover and to browse.

Since the AWP conference is not a new experience for me, I asked some of my students for their impressions of the conference:

From Sun Hee Yoon: When I returned home after the 3rd day of AWP, the over-loaded laundry, piled dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, and my 4-year-old girl's scattered toys and children's books reflected what my mind looked like. I needed to tidy up! Now, a few days later, I can inhale and exhale at my own speed. I can listen to my heart beat. Since the AWP fog in my head is gone, I can think clearly. I admit that I had high expectations of the AWP conference and bookfair, and it was the experience that I needed to be challenged. Whether it was positive or negative, whether it was pretty or ugly, it was necessary. My questions are still same and the answers are still unheard. I always hold onto something, and this time it was a simple line, and I still hear the echo from Margaret Atwood, "Make them laugh, make them weep, and make them wet!" And I know what I need to do; I need to write.   

From Barbara Coe: On Friday at a 9:00 a.m. session, I went to a tribute reading for the former editor in chief of Fourth Genre, Marcia Aldrich. I was captivated by one of the authors, Ryan Van Meter now has claimed rock star status in my eyes.  He read a stunning piece “Discovery,” published in The Iowa Review (Vol 40, number 1) which I went out and bought immediately. My second find of the conference for me was a surprise. I had not intended to slide into the 3:00 p.m. session on “Narrative Transitions: Teaching and Taking a Reflective Turn in Creative Nonfiction.”  I thought the emphasis might be teaching the craft so I put the topic on the back burner. Snoozing in one of the comfy chairs by the elevator after leaving the prior session early, I decided I should get up and try to find coffee, which I couldn't. To stay awake, I floated into the session and was engulfed in the most interesting question central to the memoir writer's task: How and when to reflect on the experience you are writing about. I loved the panel, but was exceptionally drawn to what Jennifer Sinor was saying. I approached her after the session and was struck by her accessibility. It always moves me that these people who are so busy will be so gracious to carve out time for someone needing advice. She encouraged me to read Live Through This by Debra Gwartney  as an example of memoir that does not allow the story of runaway daughters to hijack the book. I plan getting that very soon. 

From Diann Martin:  AWP was amazing, I was struck by the diversity in age, ethnicity and culture across the group; the commonality was the passion for writing and literature in all forms. Most of the sessions I attended were on nonfiction and the big debate/issue was truth. Interesting that in our century we are still back at this elemental level.  I learned so much from scholars and authors about point of view, handling time and its passage, telling a story, and balancing between narration and reflection.  I came away with a laundry list of "must read" titles and "must view" websites.  It was a challenge to be in a crowd of 10,000 people who all wanted the same cup of Starbuck's coffee at the same time that I did.  I was energized and recommitted to my writing practice and amazed at the work of my friends and colleagues.  I went home inspired to write and committed to stick with it.

From Kelley Clink: I attended the 2009 AWP conference in Chicago, and found it to be exciting and informative. I saw Nick Flynn and Donald Hall do a reading. I was introduced to the work of some great authors I might never have discovered otherwise (Peggy Shumaker, Bernard Cooper, Joy Castro).  There were timeslots so jam-packed with intriguing panels that I wanted to divide myself into four people. When I signed up for AWP at the end of this January, I was hoping I would have a similar experience. But once I took the time to sit down and look at the list of panels, my heart sank.  There were a few discussions I wouldn’t have minded attending, but nothing inspired me. The conference drew nearer and I learned it had been sold out.  Just the thought of cramming into hot rooms and fighting for a patch of carpet to sit on, my back aching and my elbows bumping against bodies while I tried to take notes on a topic I didn’t much care about anyway, exhausted me. When I registered on Wednesday, I determined to make at least one panel a day. I failed. All I ended up doing was picking through the book fair—which made a can of sardines seem roomy. Maybe it’s just me.  After all, I’m in the process of recovering from a long illness (which has taken a toll on my strength and my writing). Maybe I’ve come to a quiet dip in the curve of my career, where daily meditation, walking, and reading are more valuable than tips and strategies and discussion? Maybe it’s time to draw inspiration and energy from other sources?

Photo Essay: The Colors of Millennium Park

As some of you know from my recent "Drab & Color" photo essay, I've been hunting for color lately. Last week I had a little time before meeting a friend for dinner downtown Chicago, and as I walked down Michigan Avenue, I was captivated by the color display of the Crown Fountain in Millennium Park. While its two glass-brick towers are not spewing water these days, they change color every few minutes, which makes for a stunning spectacle, especially at dusk.

This interplay of the blue lights on a tree and the fountain's block of blue in the background initially caught my eye as I emerged from the underground parking garage.

The pictures on the sides where the towers face each other also change. Here it shows a waterfall, and due to the glare of its white light, it almost seems as if there is indeed water misting from the tower. However, there's no actual waterfall; the glistening wet on the ground is from a recent rain.

Here we're back to the faces staring at each other as it's getting darker.

Enough of the blue - here's some serious red against the blue of the sky. I assure you, this photo is not photoshopped. The yellow in the red even makes it a nice composition of primary colors.

I waited around for this shot because I loved how the red of the fountain is echoed in the skyscraper's neon red sign, and how it plays off against all the blue.

A closer look as the towers turned green.

A Crown Fountain tower bathed in purple with the backdrop of Michigan Avenue. How's all this for a cure from this month's drabness?