Creating Space in Your Garden/Life/Writing

I did a lot of gardening this weekend. Weeding, mostly, but also "editing." 

Since the last time I'd visited my garden, the plants had tripled in size and now looked like commuters in a subway car at rush hour. The less aggressive ones, like Jacob's ladder, were being crushed by the robust day lilies and the ever-encroaching lady's mantle. The solomon seal had marched its way across the bed, infiltrating and colonizing neighboring settlements. Nothing, it seemed, could stop its relentless assault. 

I have long held the belief that it's sacrilegious to divide plants in June in Vermont. Our season is so short I felt it my duty to let each plant fully manifest its destiny until September. Besides, I wanted as much color as each plant could muster.

But I found myself craving space. Each plant had grown indistinct. What I faced was a mass of leafy green giants, elbowing one another aside in their frenzy to attract pollinators. I hate to anthropomorphize, but some plants are greedy.

So I started pulling and digging, first lily-of-the-valley, and then violets, and iris, and gooseneck loosestrife. I carved out pathways and established boundaries. Now that I can see where one ends and the next begins, each plant has taken on an identity. More, I found, isn't necessarily better. Neither is bigger.

This got me wondering what other areas of my life might benefit from a little space. My writing? My volunteer work? My teaching? Each of my friends? My family? Exercise? Do I crowd so much into each day that I can't enjoy and appreciate the component parts?

If so, how do I go about making spaces? Something to think about.

Review of YA novel Seriously Wicked by Tina Connelly

In case you’ve been wondering, pixies are green, frog-like creatures with wings. You have to be a witch to see the wings. Seriously Wicked contains all the classic elements of a good commercial novel: a plucky protagonist with a quantifiable goal, friends in peril, an able ally, an antagonist who knows too much, complications aplenty, high stakes, and a ticking clock. This one also has at least one seriously evil witch and a really sympathetic dragon named Moonfire.

There are also star-crossed lovers, Camellia, our narrator, and Devon, the new boy. Their meet cute involves a goldfinch and a flaming phoenix feather, which might be a first in literary history. Seriously Wicked reads a bit like Harry Potter lite, but Connelly has developed her own taxonomy of elementals, witches, and spells, and a delightfully relatable alternative witch-world, whose residents rely on items like dragon tears, werewolf hair, goats blood, and elf toenails for their spells, and on WitchNet and Witchepedia for much of their information.

While you could read Seriously Wicked as an allegory about the demon in each of us and what we would sacrifice to save humanity from annihilation, it’s more fun to sit back, suspend disbelief, and enjoy the dilemma of a high school girl, imprisoned by a witch named Sarabine, who has summoned a demon that inadvertently gets trapped inside Devon, Camellia’s crush. Sarabine casts a spell, commanding the demon to accomplish a series of tasks, including locating a phoenix stored somewhere on the high school grounds in order to control its supersonic explosion, which is timed to coincide with the Halloween dance just days away. Camellia must find a way to stop this. There’s more. Much more.

If Seriously Wicked suffers from anything it’s a slightly overcomplicated plot. It is so convoluted (although clearly well thought out) that Connelly inserts summaries periodically to help the reader out. The narrative bogs slightly toward the end when the clock slows so that all the answers Connelly has withheld (Why does her friend Sparkle’s nose keep changing? Why aren’t Camellia’s real parents looking for her?) can be revealed in a flurry of expository dialogue. Great. But at this point readers might really just want to know if the town is going to blow up and whether Devon will be restored to his former “boy-band” self.

Connelly exhibits a sharp wit and a keen tongue that make Seriously Wicked a fun read. There is a grocer who stopped doing business with one supplier because he was “caught doing business with people who do business with people who don’t compost.” And our persevering protagonist at one point confides to the reader that she owns jeans that “don’t understand my butt.”

But, there are deeper issues to consider here: What would you do if someone whose beliefs diametrically opposed yours were driving your life? How does one choose between competing desires in a moral dilemma? Camellia insists that she is not a witch. And yet, in order to save the school, her friends, Devon, the town… She must learn, and successfully cast, a very powerful spell (and, meanwhile, not flunk her algebra test).

This is a fast paced, entertaining drama that offers readers the chance to contemplate the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, selfishness and compassion (as well pondering the current color of their auras). Readers will find a happy escape in Camellia’s fantastic world that includes a werewolf puppy and a dragon. But Connelly understands that we face real end-of-the-world threats in these days of rising sea levels, nuclear threats, and terrorism. Camellia, speaking here about witches (who live a really long time) makes a note-worthy observation. “If you know you’re going to be around to see it, you look at the fate of the world differently.”

Connelly supplies a satisfying ending for readers of Seriously Wicked, and some bonus material if you want to try casting your own spells. Before you do, you might want to brush up on your math.

(This review was first published on the New York Journal of Books website: http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/seriously-wicked-review-ii)

Review of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven is a complex story. Some assembly is required. 

Mandel begins with a death. An actor, Arthur Leander, plays King Lear in an unusual staging of that play: three little girls (who will grow into the king’s quarreling daughters) sit on stage as the curtain rises. Leander falters, flubs a line, flails out a hand searching for support, and collapses, dead of a heart attack.

In the audience, sits Jeevan Chaudhary an aspiring paramedic, recently a member of the paparazzi. Jeevan leaps onto the stage and attempts, unsuccessfully, to revive Arthur, as Kirsten Raymonde, the girl playing Cordelia, looks on. In the ensuing melee, Jeevan leads little Kirsten off to find Tanya, the child’s “wrangler,” and then wanders off into a snowy Toronto night. The rest of the cast retires to a local bar to discuss the evening’s tragic event and provide the reader with some backstory: Arthur’s three divorces, his one son by his second wife. 

Mandel closes this chapter with: “Of all of them there at the bar that night, the bartender was the one who survived the longest. He dies three weeks later on the road out of the city.” Unbeknownst to all, the highly contagious and lethal Georgia flu is quickly devouring the world’s population.

Mandel’s opening of Station Eleven is brilliant, and that brilliance continues throughout the book. Her take on a post-apocalyptic world is not as grim as might be feared. Station Eleven is as much about survival as it is about death and the end of civilization, as we know it. Still, Mandel provides plenty of opportunity for readers to ponder how they might fare in this new world order and the true value of what’s been lost.

Station Eleven moves back and forth in time and place and point of view, as Mandel slowly and carefully constructs her story and connects her multitude of quirky characters in a manner reminiscent of Dickens or possibly Shakespeare. 

We next meet Kirsten, “twenty years after the end of air travel” and follow her, now a member of a traveling Shakespeare company, as they drift from town to town, putting on shows in an often dangerous landscape, where those who survived the epidemic⎯and those who’ve been born since⎯encamp in abandoned box stores, hunt for food, and ransack empty houses for anything useful. They encounter other survivors along the way, including one self-proclaimed prophet.

Kirsten has only a vague memory of the time before, shadowy images of having been in a production of King Lear, for instance, and of the lead actor giving her several volumes of a comic book series called Station Eleven, which she now counts among her most prized possessions. Almost no one, including Kirsten, remembers who wrote the little booklets or why, and yet they begin to take on special significance and power as they make their way across this new land. 

Mandel’s observations about civilization, religion, Shakespeare, and relationships are astute and subtly rendered. The suspense builds slowly, in part because the narrative does not proceed in a straight line. The ending, therefore, doesn’t deliver the punch some readers might want. 

Then again, the final page of Station Eleven isn’t an ending. As Dr. Eleven asks in the comic book version, “What was it like for you, at the end?” The ghost of his mentor, Captain Lonergan, replies, “It was exactly like waking up from a dream.” 

The same might be said of Station Eleven. Emily St. John Mandel writes of a world that we will, with luck, never know⎯one that is dreamlike (no one keeps track of time, because there are no clocks) and from which readers may well find themselves strangely sorry to wake. 

Taking Flight: the Wreluctant Wren

The second of two wrens that hatched in the little birdhouse hanging outside my office window finally fledged. I'd listened to their chatter for several weeks, watched mama and papa fly in with morsels of food and back out with the babies’ fecal sacs carefully clutched in their beaks. To avoid revealing the location of their brood, the parents never dropped the sacs below the nest. I’m curious about this practice: The hatchlings and nestlings almost never stopped twittering, and the parent wrens, while waiting for their eggs to hatch, sat in the lilac and belted out incessant, complicated, melodic trills. (Wrens are known as the little bird with the big voice.) A predator would not have needed any telltale fecal sacs to know where these babies were "hiding."

After the clutch hatched, one parent always hunkered nearby, clucking in response to their babies' ceaseless cheeping. Perhaps this reassured them. It certainly reassured me, as it let me know that the hatchlings were okay. Whenever a parent flew in with food, the babies' twittering rose in both volume and pitch, and I rushed to the window to watch. (A wonderful distraction from writing.)

The big day

Then, the first baby fledged. It left the nest and perched unsteadily on a nearby lilac branch, blinking at the enormity of the world it had just entered, but seemingly unafraid. I took heart from this open attitude: It’s easy to make assumptions about, and become intimidated by, the unknown. Number two wren remained resolutely in the nest-perhaps it was a few days younger-and peered out, maybe wondering where its nest-mate had gone, and why. The parents continued to tend to its needs.

Then, one day, the parents stopped coming. It was rainy and cool for August. The lone baby chirped. Its nest mate, still in the lilac, chirped back. Mom and dad remained silent and absent: no food deliveries. Apparently they'd decided it was time for number two to fledge. 

The wreluctant wren

The chatter between the siblings continued for several hours. Each time I checked on the reluctant fledgling, I saw it peering out through the doorway. Soon its body was halfway out. Come on, little one, I coached silently from my window, worried, though, that the day was too cold and wet for a successful fledging. Each time it ducked back into the safety of its house. Chirp, chirp, chirp beckoned its sib. Out came the little head, followed by half the body. Then a little more than half. Each time I was sure this was it! But each time the tiny bird slipped back inside. Over and over this process repeated itself.

Finally, the wren took the leap. And what a leap. The distance from house to lilac isn't far (perhaps two feet) but in wren terms, it was a long way over, and a long way down, considering that the little duffer had not yet discovered it had wings and could fly. 

This, I thought, is what a leap of faith looks like. The noisy chirper made it, and then hopped from branch to branch, fluttering its unfamiliar appendages as it climbed ever higher. It's sibling cheered the whole time. 

Soon, I heard the deeper chirps of the parent wrens. They'd been close by the whole time, knowing what had to happen. Knowing there was nothing they could do but wait.

How often have any of us stood on a threshold, wondering if it was safe to cross, unsure what lay “over there.” How often have we not made the leap, certain we didn’t have what it took, choosing instead to remain in the safety of the known. How much wiser wrens are, knowing that staying put, not changing, is not only not safer, it's not an option. Wrens seem to know, too, that such leaps are easier if we have faith that someone’s waiting for us on the other side.

Katharine Britton is the author of two novels, Her Sister's Shadow and Little Island

Fun Family Gatherings

Planning a family reunion this summer? Whether your group convenes at someone’s home, at a campsite in the Adirondacks or a dude ranch in Montana, a little planning will help ensure that far-flung friends and family member meet and greet, talk during the event, and remember the visit fondly long after it ends. 

Why leave food preparation to just a few? 
Divide the adults (and kids, too, depending on ages) into mixed, non-family groups and assign them each a meal, which they are responsible to plan, cook, serve, and clean up. This eases the workload and gives people a chance to mingle.

Rent a pizza oven for one meal, and have everyone make their own. Give prizes for tastiest, most creative, most unusual… (Try Fairy-ring Mushroom, Prosciutto, and Leek from Little Island.http://www.girlichef.com/2014/06/mush... )

Bake cupcakes and set out frosting, sprinkles, candies… and have people decorate their own. 

During meals it can help to have a few prompts to kick start conversation: 
Have everyone come up with two true statements about themselves and one falsehood. Guess which one is the lie. 

Ask people to get out one item from their wallet or purse and tell something about themselves based on it. 

Periodically ring a chime and have everyone answer one of the following: 
1. What was/is your dream job and why?
2. Which celebrity/famous person would you like to invite for dinner and why?
3. What is your dream vacation destination and why?
4. What is/was your favorite subject in school? Why?
5. If you were an animal, which animal would you be and why?
6. What is your favorite food / movie/ book / sport…?
7. What is the most important item you pack in your suitcase?
8. Name one modern convenience you couldn’t live without.

Some structured activities between meals will get people laughing and talking, rather than gazing at their tablets and smartphones.
Give everyone a sheet of paper and have them write down one or two things about themselves that others aren’t likely to know (and that they don’t mind others knowing, i.e., not that upcoming elective surgery.) Then have them fold the paper into an airplane. (Be forewarned, some folks will spend a long time on this.) Line up and launch the planes. Allow several tries and some time to refine designs. After the final flight, everyone retrieves someone else’s plane from those scattered about the lawn and tries to match the plane with the owner by what’s written inside. (You can award a prize for the plane that flies the farthest, most creative flight pattern, best design…) 

Organize games of sardines (a variation on hide and seek: when you find the person hiding, you hide with them); blob tag (each person who gets tagged attaches themselves to the person who’s “it,” and runs with them to tag the others). 
Plan a scavenger hunt.

Crafts are a great way to bring people together. 
Give everyone a sheet of paper, and ask them to make their coat of arms. Post these somewhere prominent. 

Have people paint t-shirts or faces. 

Ask each family to make a page for a family scrapbook. (Alert folks to bring photographs and items with them.) If you don’t have the materials for a scrapbook, make a photo exhibit.

If you have computer access, get people to post photos and entries into a family blog or Facebook page.

Other forms of entertainment:
Put together a family band and give a performance one evening. Have some noisemakers, drums, spoons… available for those with less skill and training, but who’d like to join the fun. 

Announce a book club. Have everyone read the book in advance (maybe Little Island; it’s about a family gathering, after all), and then discuss it in a fun setting like hiking up a mountain, or floating on rafts.

Make a video of the event.

Use Skype video to call those who couldn’t be there so they feel included.

Downtime
Remember that absence makes the heart grow fonder and allow some solo time for walks, naps, and reading.

Turning Words into Conversations

All my life I’ve enjoyed stringing words together and watching what appears on the page. While, initially, the writing process is solitary, at some point you bring in readers. Some authors do this early on: members of their writing groups read ten to fifteen pages every few weeks throughout the gestation period. Others, like me, wait until the whole manuscript is finished before handing it off to a few trusted readers. We then wait, anxiously, for their feedback. It’s not unlike sending your child off to school for the first time. Will others like her? Will he behave? Is she as delightful and precocious as I think? (Yes, yes, and no.)

You ask for feedback and, guess what? Your readers give it. Thus begins the first of many conversations you, the author, will have about your manuscript. A manuscript that is no longer entirely yours once you open the door and invite others in. “I liked this part.” “I found this part (the same part) kind of boring.” “Loved the protagonist.” “I just couldn’t relate to the protagonist.”

And so you turn to the solitary task of revising, but the writing feels different now because others have read your words and been moved by them (for better or worse). A conversation that you previously had just with yourself now has other people listening in.

Then you send the manuscript to your agent (or an agent, or many agents) and the conversation grows. The agent sends it to an editor. The conversation grows even more. That editor buys the manuscript, and the conversation grows again, and now it’s no longer just about the story. It’s about marketing and cover art and blurbs and reviews and marketing.

Soon publicists become involved and managing editors and copy editors. And the marketing department is still weighing in via your editor. And then you’re talking to booksellers and bloggers and media people. Once the book is published you again hear from readers. These are not all family and friends (although some, maybe a lot, will be). They won’t all like your book. But, if you’re hearing from them, through email or reviews or in person, they were moved by your words and are now part of the conversation.

A whole little industry evolves around your manuscript. A manuscript that started with you, alone at your desk, coming up with an idea, writing down that first word, and then the 80,000 or so that followed.

Writing is a kind of alchemy. Authors assemble letters into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs… And, in doing so, create emotion and conversation. What an amazing process that I’m blessed to be part of.

With that, I hope you’ll leave a comment about this post, or books that moved you to contact an author or write a review, or any other topic that seems relevant.

Why Crows Don't Make Good Pets

Alternately winging and stalking around our local wildlife rehabilitation office, investigating the philodendron leaves, the computer keyboard, the top of the bookcase, a stray piece of paper, an electrical cord, a bit of red pepper… is a juvenile Corvus brachyrhynchos, American crow. Last spring, a nearby resident found this bird, then a nestling that had apparently fallen from its nest, and brought him to his house. The man and his family fed the crow (no small task as nestlings must eat every half hour) and provided shelter and affection. The crow survived and, in the process, became thoroughly imprinted on humans. Being a crow and more curious than was good for him, he somehow injured his beak, and the man brought him to the wildlife rehabilitation center.

The website, http://www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/babycrow.htm warns that, while baby crows might seem to make appealing pets (being exceedingly curious, crows can be quite entertaining) it’s important to remember that, because they’re wild animals, keeping them as pets is illegal. It is also a lot of work. Crows are extremely social and will demand constant interaction. Constant. This crow spends part of every day in the wildlife office, where he flies from bookcase to file cabinet, hops from chair to shoulder (and, keep in mind, crows cannot be diapered) splashes in the pan of water staff members have provided for him, and strews his food, including “pinks:” hairless, control mice donated to the wildlife rehab department by labs. There’s one reclining on the chair beside me now, and another submerged in the water basin. Having a crow around is not unlike having a toddler under foot, albeit one with very odd eating habits.

The crow has just stolen a staff member’s pencil from her desk and now struts off with it. She trades the pencil for a pea pod so she can get back to work. The crow accepts the exchange, and then tosses the pod on the floor. The staff member returns it to him. He drops it again. She, wisely, leaves it there. Within seconds, the crow has hopped down from the back of her chair, vigorously disemboweled the pea pod, removed the peas, and scattered them across the floor.

Now bored, he stalks around the office, holding the peapod with one foot, occasionally tearing at it with his beak, which is very sharp. I know this, because he has communicated his displeasure at my insistence that he not peck at my keyboard by pecking at my hand. The crow, like most toddlers, does not like the word, “no.”

The rehab staff is now this young crow’s “murder” (crow flock). They play catch with him using a balled up bit of paper towel, bring him “toys” to keep him stimulated: a feather, an empty gum package, dog toys, a chicken foot dangling on a string... He’s especially taken with computers, however, and pecks relentless at the towels covering the office computer and printer. He eyes mine greedily as he parades around the office now holding a peanut in his beak. Crows in captivity require special care and lots of patience.

What should you do if you find a baby crow on the ground?

 If the young bird has almost no feathers and cannot perch by itself, i.e., a nestling, or you are certain that the bird has been injured, call a local wildlife expert. If the bird is partially or fully feathered and can perch by itself, it’s probably a fledgling. Leave it alone. The parents may well be nearby, watching. Watch to be sure the bird isn’t injured or in danger. If you have a pet with you, restrain it. If necessary, move the bird to a high, well-protected branch for safety. To avoid imprinting, try not to let the young crow see your face. (At our rehabilitation center, staff members don feathered masks whenever they feed any of the young raptors.)

Once imprinted on people, crows are unafraid of them and cannot be trusted in public areas, such as neighborhoods or schools, where uninitiated humans (especially Hitchcock fans) are likely to misinterpret a crow landing on their shoulder and giving them a few friendly pecks on the neck. Nor can imprinted crows ever be returned successfully to the wild. Not realizing that they’re birds, they’re vulnerable to attacks from other crows and raptors. The Cornell website reports that crow ownership generally ends in one of two ways: “1) The crows start leaving for a day or so at a time (usually in the fall), and then are never seen again, or 2) some neighbor… kills them when they are too friendly/aggressive.”

There’s good reason for the law that prohibits individuals from capturing and keeping wild animals. As adapted to captivity as this crow, now gazing out the office window may be, he would have been better off left wild.