Christmas with the Old Masters--van Honthorst

 

This painting by Dutch painter Gerard van Honthorst caught my eye in 2018 when Roland and I visited the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, Italy. I think what attracted me is the way the light shines on the baby.

The painting is “Adoration of the Child” and was painted sometime between 1619 and 1621.  Gerard van Honthorst was known for painting artificially lit scenes. The references I read indicate that the light in this painting is supposed to be coming from the moon and that the two girls on the left are angels. 

The light surrounding the Christ Child reminds me of two verses in John 1.

⁹The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

¹⁴And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Or, to put it another way, here is a verse from the Advent hymn, “Savior of the Nations, Come.”

From the manger newborn light
Shines in glory through the night.
Darkness there no more resides;
In this light faith now abides.

There is one more post in this series, so join me next week as I discuss an unfinished painting by Leonardo da Vinci.

Have a Christ-filled 2021.

__________

I took the photo when we visited Florence in 2018. The painting is in the public domain because of its age.

Christmas with the Old Masters--El Greco

 

Doménikos Theotokópoulos, better known as El Greco, ignored classic ideas regarding proportion and created an altered reality with elongated bodies and unlikely spatial relationships. His “Adoration of the Shepherds,” painted near the end of his life between 1612 and 1614, is typical. You can identify the shepherds surrounding the holy family and the angels hovering above, but the distortion is obvious. This particular painting is located in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain.

The story of the shepherds in Luke 2:8-20 is one of the best known in the Bible and possibly the most read passage at Christmas time. Even so, it is worth repeating here.¹

⁸And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. ¹⁰And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be for all people. ¹¹For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. ¹²And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. ¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, ¹⁴Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. ¹⁵And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.” ¹⁶And they came with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. ¹⁷And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. ¹⁸And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. ¹⁹But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

Adoration is a common theme for nativity paintings by the Old Masters, and the last two paintings in this series also have that word in their name. Next week I’ll talk about “Adoration of the Child” by another of the lesser known Old Masters (or at least lesser known to me).

Have a blessed Christmas.

__________

¹I’ve been quoting from the English Standard Version in these blog posts, but this particular passage has such poetry in the King James Version and the passage is so familiar with those words that I have used the King James Version here.

__________

The El Greco painting is in the public domain because of its age.

Christmas with the Old Masters--van der Goes

 

When Roland and I were in Florence, Italy, in 2018, we spent a substantial part of a day at the Galleria degli Uffizi. I took lots of photos of paintings, including a couple I will feature in later blog posts, but the gallery was simply too large to see everything. I must have missed “Mary and Joseph on the Way to Bethlehem,” a 1475 painting by Hugo van der Goes that is apparently among the collection as part of the Portinari Altarpiece, which I also don’t remember seeing. That means I got this photo from the internet.

When Caesar Augustus took a census, he didn’t send people out to every little village. Instead, he ordered his citizens to go to the town of their ancestors to be counted there. In Joseph’s case, that was Bethlehem, the city of David.

The road to Bethlehem is mountainous and rocky, even today. The picture shows Joseph carefully guiding his very pregnant wife over the treacherous path on their way to be counted for the census. Here is the passage from Luke 2:1-5.

¹In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the word should be registered. ²This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³And all went to be registered, each to his own town. ⁴And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, ⁵to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

Next week I’ll look at a painting by El Greco based on some of the best-known verses from the nativity.

__________

The van der Goes painting is in the public domain because of its age.

Christmas with the Old Masters--Rembrandt

 

The angels announced Christ’s conception to Mary first, as discussed in last week’s blog post. But she was betrothed to Joseph, and it wasn’t his child.

A betrothal was more serious than an engagement is today. It was a legally binding arrangement that was treated with the solemnity of marriage even though the couple was not yet living together. That’s why the scripture passage refers to “husband,” “wife,” and “divorce” even though Mary and Joseph had presumably not completed the final ceremony and had certainly not consummated their marriage.

Rembrandt’s “Dream of Joseph” depicts the second angelic visit—this time to Joseph—to make sure that he didn’t reject Mary because she appeared to have been unfaithful.

Rembrandt painted “Dream of Joseph” (sometimes translated as “Joseph’s Dream”) around 1645. It is currently exhibited in the Gemäldengalerie in Berlin, Germany.

The event in the painting is described in Matthew 1:18-25, which is quoted here.

¹⁸Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. ²⁰But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” ²²All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

²³“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel”

(which means, God with us). ²⁴When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, ²⁵but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.

Next week I’ll look at a painting by a lesser known artist, Hugo van der Goes, depicting the trip to Bethlehem.

__________

The Rembrandt painting is in the public domain because of its age.

Christmas with the Old Masters--Botticelli

 

From now through Epiphany, I’m going to showcase seasonal art from the Old Masters, starting with Botticelli.

Allessandro di Mariano Filipepi Botticelli did several paintings of the Annunciation. This one is housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. According to the Met's website, it was probably commissioned by a private patron sometime between 1485 and 1492.

The event in the painting is described in Luke 1:26-38. Here are selected verses.

²⁶In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, ²⁷to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” ²⁹But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. ³²He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father, David, ³³and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

³⁴And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

³⁵And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, therefore the child to be born will be called “holy—” the Son of God. . .” ³⁸And Mary said, “Behold I am the servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

Next week I’ll look at a painting by Rembrandt.

__________

The Botticelli painting is in the public domain because of its age.

Writing About the Pandemic

 

When is it too soon to start writing stories about the pandemic? And should we?

When people are panicking, it’s not a good idea to feed into their fears. And if a writer is having a hard time handling it, maybe that person should wait until he or she can see it more objectively.

On the other hand, I’ve seen several good examples of how it can be done right. Since the comic strip Rex Morgan is written several months in advance, it took a while before its series on the Covid -19 quarantine began publication. But now I’m enjoying all those panels that show the characters living through what everyone else is dealing with.

Then there is humor. I bought a book from Audible called Inside Jobs: Tales from a Time of Quarantine, by Ben H. Winters. It is three short stories about crime during the pandemic and, since I purchased it on May 1, it must have been written quickly. The stories vary in style but all are interesting, and the first is hilarious as three gangsters working from home try to figure out how to steal a priceless postage stamp after the pandemic foils their first plan.

But what if someone is trying to write a contemporary novel? Will the writer date it by setting it during the pandemic? If he or she wants that specific setting, great. But the mystery I’m currently writing has nothing to do with the pandemic, and I don’t want to get sidetracked by it. So my “contemporary” murder mystery is written as if it was 2019 (without any reference to dates, however). Hopefully it will still be “contemporary” when life returns to normal.

Another option is to use the pandemic as inspiration for a historical novel with a similar theme but set at a different time. I recently read Pharmacy Girl, a middle-grade historical about the Spanish Influenza. Except for the historical markers, it could have been written about this pandemic. The book was published last year, before most people in the U.S. were even aware of Covid-19, so it wasn’t inspired by the current crisis. But it is eerily similar.

So if you want to write about the pandemic, go ahead.

__________

The photo was taken during the Spanish Influenza pandemic and is in the public domain because of its age.

Dealing with Reader Expectations when the Reader is Wrong

 

The courtroom scene from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is pure farce, and nobody would believe it. So why do television viewers believe crime shows that are almost as outlandish? And why do they expect me to perpetuate the fallacies in my own work?

I am currently writing a murder mystery with two parallel threads, one of which is a police procedural. I have done extensive research into those procedures and am trying to portray them accurately in the manuscript. However, I keep running up against critiquers who say, “but they don’t do it that way on TV (or in books).” And they give me the impression that my readers won’t believe me if I tell the truth. So what’s a writer to do?

In some cases, I’m dealing with the issue by being vague. Do the police really need a warrant or subpoena to see a murder victim’s financial records? I did an internet search and everything I came across discussed access to the suspect’s records, not the victim’s. Financial records aren’t crucial to the murder in my book, but I’m concerned that some readers may stop reading if they don’t see the procedures they have come to expect from TV. So when the detectives talk to the victim’s attorney, I wrote the passage this way:

Staci wrote down the information [about the value of the victim’s estate]. “Please give us her accountant’s contact information so we can review her finances.”

“I’ll email it to you,” Mr. Hunter said. “And when I talk to her daughter, I’ll ask if she’ll give permission for you to go through the records.”

Since those records belonged to a murder victim rather than a suspect, the police wouldn’t have any trouble getting them. Still, the process was always easier if the family cooperated.

Then, when Mr. Hunter talks to the victim’s daughter, he says this:

“The police will want to go through your mother’s financial records. Sometimes family members think of it as an intrusion, but the police will get the information with or without your consent. It looks better if you cooperate.”

Hopefully these passages will satisfy the reader while being vague enough to include the real facts.

Another way to deal with the issue is to explain the seeming inconsistency. For example, on TV shows the detectives always seem to be present at a lineup. I’m setting my story in Chicago, and the Chicago Police Department procedures absolutely prohibit that. So while the suspect is participating in a lineup, my detectives are at their own desks. Here is the way I explain that:

Although Staci would have liked to watch, it wasn’t possible. Under departmental policy, members of the investigative team weren’t allowed to attend a lineup. Even the detective who ran it couldn’t know who the suspect was. That way, nobody would say or do anything, intentionally or unintentionally, that would suggest who the witness should identify.

Of course, this approach creates several challenges. The explanation has to be short but, more importantly, it must blend into the story and advance the plot. If it interrupts the flow or reads like filler, it is better to leave the explanation out altogether.

Another challenge is describing matters my POV character doesn’t witness. I usually resolve this problem by having someone who was there tell Staci what happened. Or, as in the case of the lineup, she imagines what would have happened based on her knowledge of the procedures, after which somebody comes and tells her that the witness did identify the suspect.

From Dust to Dust will go through more drafts before it is completed, and these passages may change.

But I refuse to sacrifice accuracy for reader expectations.

__________

The image at the head of this post is one of John Tenniel’s original illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Covid-19 Drags Publishers Into the 21st Century

 

Covid-19 isn’t a good thing, but it does have some useful consequences.

Last week I finished another round of publisher submissions for one of my middle-grade historicals, and it was easier than the previous time I submitted (a different book) to these same publishers. Then, three out of six took submissions by email, while the others required snail mail submissions. This time only one required snail mail submissions. So it appears that Covid has dragged two publishers—or 33% of the sample—into the 21^st century.

I never could understand why publishers preferred hard copies. Some of it may be paranoia about viruses, but requiring submissions as Word or PDF documents makes them unlikely, and good virus software detects and eliminates scripts and any other minor problems that may attach to those types of documents.

Email benefits the writer, the publisher, and the environment. I don’t have to waste money on paper, ink, and postage or spend time going to the post office. Editors don’t have to lug around paper documents but can read submissions right on their laptops or tablets. And if the editor isn’t interested, the submission can be deleted without having to recycle the paper, thus helping the environment.

It’s possible that those two publishers were teetering on the edge of the 21^st century already and would have gotten there without the pandemic. Still, I’m glad the pandemic has caused some publishers to rethink their submission requirements.

But I’ll be even happier if one of them accepts my book.

An Hour Gained--Or Is It?

 

With yesterday’s time change, I dug out a poem I wrote in 2013. I’ve printed it on this blog before, but it remains timely. (And yes, the pun is intentional.)

Spring Forward, Fall Back

Spring forward,

To save an hour of daylight.

Put it in the bank

Until the dark of winter.

Fall back

Into the evening gloom.

Open the vault

To lengthen the days.

Empty the treasure chest

Of sunlight and illusion,

Evening hours borrowed from morning

And then returned.

No hour gained,

No hour lost.

Each day still has twenty-four

To run its course.

Minds are easily deceived,

But you can’t fool Mother Nature.

Choosing a Protagonist from Another Culture

 

Last week I explained why I chose a Japanese-American protagonist for my first middle-grade historical novel. But that protagonist was half Caucasian and grew up in a white neighborhood with a culture not that different from mine, as contrasted to the protagonist in my second middle-grade book.

Here is the blurb for Creating Esther.

Twelve-year-old Ishkode loves here life on an Ojibwe reservation, but it is 1895 and the old ways are disappearing. Can a boarding school education help her fight back, or will it destroy everything she believes in?

Using a Native American protagonist was not an easy decision. I had no experience with the culture or reservation life, and I knew it would be a struggle to create an authentic character. But I wanted to tell the tragic story of how the boarding schools “civilized” the Indians, and no other perspective seemed to work.

I mentioned in the last post that Kirby Larson used a white protagonist in his book about the Japanese-American incarceration and did it very well. Fortunately, there were a number of people like his protagonist and her father who sensed the injustice and sympathized with the Japanese-Americans.

That wasn’t true for the Native-American boarding school experience. Memoirs written by white teachers capture a very different feeling than the ones written by Native Americans. Even those teachers who truly cared about the children had the mistaken belief that they were doing what was best for them by taking away their culture and making them “white.” So even though I could have put a white teacher’s daughter among the Native American students, it would have been unrealistic to give her the necessary understanding of and sympathy for her classmates’ plight.

Creating Esther was a very hard book to write because of my Native American protagonist, but I felt I had no choice. After extensive research, I did the best I could, and I believe I was successful. If not, I apologize.

But sometimes you have to take the risk.

__________

Creating Esther is available in paperback and Kindle versions from Amazon and in paperback from Barnes & Noble.

Writing from Researched Experience

 

I’m about as WASP as you can get, but the protagonist of my first middle-grade book, Desert Jewels, is not. Here’s the blurb.

Twelve-year-old Emi Katayama is half Japanese, but she is all American. Then Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, and she suddenly becomes the enemy.

So why did I write this book? The Japanese-American incarceration is a part of our history that often gets ignored, and I wanted to change that. All American children should learn the bad parts of their country’s history as well as the good ones. If our children understand the past, they are less likely to repeat it.

I could have used a white protagonist who lives outside the camp, as Kirby Larson did very effectively in the Dear America book The Fences Between Us, but I wanted to get closer than that. I did, however, give my protagonist a Swedish-American mother and placed Emi in a “white” neighborhood in Berkeley rather than in San Francisco’s Japantown. That allowed Emi to share some of my culture.

It also gave the book a different perspective than most. Even 1/16 Japanese blood was enough to send a child to the camps, and, while it was rare, there were a handful of Caucasian woman in each camp who had chosen to join their children or husbands there. None of the books I read dealt with this experience.

Still, Emi is half Japanese and I have no Japanese blood. I have also never experienced life in an internment camp. So what qualified me to write the story?

Research is key. Since I didn’t live through the experience, my research relied significantly on the voices of those Japanese Americans who had. Autobiographies, letters, newspapers, and “as told to” accounts are better than history books for learning what people actually experienced and how they reacted emotionally.

I was fortunate to have good materials available when writing Desert Jewels. Emi follows in the footsteps of Yoshiko Uchida, who lived in Berkeley, was initially incarcerated at Tanforan Assembly Center, and was then sent to Topaz (officially known as the Central Utah Relocation Center). Hers was one of several memoirs by people who traveled that same path. In addition, the camp newspapers from Tanforan and Topaz are available online. So I had a wealth of information to use when trying to create an authentic experience for the reader.

Next week I’ll talk about Creating Esther and my thought process in choosing a Native American protagonist to tell that story.

__________

Desert Jewels is available in paperback and Kindle versions from Amazon and in paperback from Barnes & Noble.

Writing Characters from Other Cultures

 

The Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) has been presenting digital workshops free to members and archiving them for one month. I recently listened to “Writing Identity Elements Into Our Stories” with authors S.K. Ali, David Bowles, and Linda Sue Park. It was described as “how to accurately and respectfully write identity elements into our stories,” and I was hoping it would help with writing characters outside my culture. When I listened to it, however, the theme could be better described as “how to write a story from your own culture.”

Faithful readers of this blog know that I’ve published two middle-grade historicals outside of my culture. The first, Desert Jewels, is about a Japanese-American girl living in an internment camp during World War II. The other, Creating Esther, tells the story of a Native American girl who leaves her reservation in the later 1800s to attend a boarding school. My next two blog posts will explain why I chose to write those books and why I picked POV characters from outside my culture. But I want to direct this post to statements made during the workshop.

A preliminary comment, however. Other than in this paragraph, I won’t be using the word “race.” There is only one race—the human race—and we all share it. What we don’t all share are the various ancestries, heritages, cultural experiences, and skin colors within the human race. With that out of the way, here are my comments from the SCBWI workshop.

I really appreciated S.K. Ali’s reminder that no “culture” is unified but that practices and experiences vary widely within the larger group. Even though she grew up Muslim, she had to be sensitive to these differences when writing about her Muslim protagonist. And her insight applies no matter what group your character belongs to.

In recent years, the “Own Voices” movement has been encouraging authors from “marginalized” groups to write about characters who belong to that group. I liked the way Linda Sue Park reframed it during the workshop, saying she prefers the term “lived experience.” This better reflects S.K. Ali’s comments about the many cultures within a culture.

The one place the “lived experience” concept breaks down, however, is in historical fiction. I could use my “own voice” for writing about a German immigrant in the 1800s, but it doesn’t qualify as lived experience because my ancestors’ lives were nothing like mine. Imagine eating beans for days on end while waiting for the crops that may or may not come in, or caring for a seriously ill family member on your own because the nearest doctor was one hundred miles away and your only way to reach him required the use of a farm horse built for heavy work rather than speed. Or imagine standing in a dirty, noisy factory for twelve hours a day without any safety measures to keep you from losing an arm. The only way I can understand these experiences is through extensive research, which is also the way I learn about protagonists with a different heritage.

The third member of the panel, David Bowles, compared his audience to people sitting around a campfire. The ones in the inner circle share his heritage, and these are the ones he writes for.

I write for a different audience. I think it is important for “privileged white kids” to understand what others have gone through and may still be experiencing. I commend David Bowles for writing for the inner circle, which I probably couldn’t reach. But it’s important to write for the outer circle, too. That was how I envisioned my role when writing Desert Jewels and Creating Esther.

Next week I’ll talk more about Desert Jewels and why I chose to use a Japanese-American protagonist in that book.

__________

Desert Jewels is available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle versions at this link [The Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) has been presenting digital workshops free to members and archiving them for one month. I recently listened to “Writing Identity Elements Into Our Stories” with authors S.K. Ali, David Bowles, and Linda Sue Park. It was described as “how to accurately and respectfully write identity elements into our stories,” and I was hoping it would help with writing characters outside my culture. When I listened to it, however, the theme could be better described as “how to write a story from your own culture.”

Faithful readers of this blog know that I’ve published two middle-grade historicals outside of my culture. The first, Desert Jewels, is about a Japanese-American girl living in an internment camp during World War II. The other, Creating Esther, tells the story of a Native American girl who leaves her reservation in the later 1800s to attend a boarding school. My next two blog posts will explain why I chose to write those books and why I picked POV characters from outside my culture. But I want to direct this post to statements made during the workshop.

A preliminary comment, however. Other than in this paragraph, I won’t be using the word “race.” There is only one race—the human race—and we all share it. What we don’t all share are the various ancestries, heritages, cultural experiences, and skin colors within the human race. With that out of the way, here are my comments from the SCBWI workshop.

I really appreciated S.K. Ali’s reminder that no “culture” is unified but that practices and experiences vary widely within the larger group. Even though she grew up Muslim, she had to be sensitive to these differences when writing about her Muslim protagonist. And her insight applies no matter what group your character belongs to.

In recent years, the “Own Voices” movement has been encouraging authors from “marginalized” groups to write about characters who belong to that group. I liked the way Linda Sue Park reframed it during the workshop, saying she prefers the term “lived experience.” This better reflects S.K. Ali’s comments about the many cultures within a culture.

The one place the “lived experience” concept breaks down, however, is in historical fiction. I could use my “own voice” for writing about a German immigrant in the 1800s, but it doesn’t qualify as lived experience because my ancestors’ lives were nothing like mine. Imagine eating beans for days on end while waiting for the crops that may or may not come in, or caring for a seriously ill family member on your own because the nearest doctor was one hundred miles away and your only way to reach him required the use of a farm horse built for heavy work rather than speed. Or imagine standing in a dirty, noisy factory for twelve hours a day without any safety measures to keep you from losing an arm. The only way I can understand these experiences is through extensive research, which is also the way I learn about protagonists with a different heritage.

The third member of the panel, David Bowles, compared his audience to people sitting around a campfire. The ones in the inner circle share his heritage, and these are the ones he writes for.

I write for a different audience. I think it is important for “privileged white kids” to understand what others have gone through and may still be experiencing. I commend David Bowles for writing for the inner circle, which I probably couldn’t reach. But it’s important to write for the outer circle, too. That was how I envisioned my role when writing Desert Jewels and Creating Esther.

Next week I’ll talk more about Desert Jewels and why I chose to use a Japanese-American protagonist in that book.

__________

Desert Jewels is available in paperback and Kindle versions from Amazon and in paperback from Barnes & Noble.

Creating Esther is available in paperback and Kindle versions from Amazon and in paperback from Barnes & Noble.

Judging a Book by Its Typos

Should you judge a book by the typographical errors?

It depends.

No proofreader is perfect, and to find one or two minor typos in a book doesn’t say anything about the author. On the other hand, a self-published book riddled with mistakes leads me to believe that the author is a bad writer, and I don’t bother with those books. The same is true about a major factual error.

But I’ve just learned that I shouldn’t be so quick to judge, especially when the book is a reprint and the original author didn’t have the opportunity to review it.

Ever since I was a child, I’ve enjoyed the Little Maid books by Alice Turner Curtis, who was one of the original writers of historical fiction for children. The Little Maid books are set against the background of the Revolutionary War, and the historical facts appeared to be accurate, although I don’t think I had actually checked any of them.

But I recently downloaded the Kindle version of A Little Maid of Old New York.  I was immediately put off by the opening chapter, which said the story took place in 1788 while the British still occupied New York. It also said that the British had controlled the city for seven years, which would have made the capture occur in 1781. The problem is that the British captured the city in 1776 and the war was officially over by September 1783 when the U.S. and Britain signed a peace treaty. My love of the series was crushed by a single wrong date.

Nonetheless, I decided to do some further investigation and discovered that the British abandoned New York in November 1783. Given the length of time it took to get news across the ocean in those days, that date made sense. It also worked for a seven years occupation beginning in 1776.

So I’m guessing that Curtis had accurately set the story in 1783 and that the wrong year was a typo in the Kindle version, which was published long after her 1958 death.

Which just goes to prove, you can’t always judge a book by its typos.

__________

The picture at the head of this post is an 1879 lithograph called “‘Evacuation Day’ and Washington’s Triumphal Entry in New York City, Nov. 25^th 1983.” It is attributed to Edmund and Ludwig Restein and is in the public domain because of its age.

 

The Pen is Mightier Than the Riot

 

If you want to convince people that lives matter (black, brown, white, or whatever), you can demonstrate and you can riot. Or you can write a book.

I don’t usually plug books on this blog, but I just finished Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson, and her contribution to the conversation is as powerful and more compelling than any demonstration or riot.

Here is the description from Amazon:

Jacqueline Woodson’s first middle-grade novel since National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming celebrates the healing that can occur when a group of students share their stories.

It all starts when six kids have to meet for a weekly chat—by themselves, with no adults to listen in. There, in the room they soon dub the ARTT Room (short for “A Room to Talk”), they discover it’s safe to talk about what’s bothering them—everything from Esteban’s father’s deportation to Haley’s father’s incarceration to Amari’s fears of racial profiling and Ashton’s adjustment to his changing family fortunes. When the six are together, they can express the feelings and fears they have to hide from the rest of the world. And together, they can grow braver and more ready for the rest of their lives.

This isn’t just a story about the children we normally think of as minorities. The group includes a white boy who is bullied because he is the minority in that school. Woodson’s story shows you can’t judge any person by the color of his or her skin, but sometimes other people’s prejudices create negative experiences that children—and adults—must figure out how to handle.

Although the book is billed as a middle-grade novel, I would recomment it for adults, too.

With Harbor Me, Jacqueline Woodson proves that the pen is mightier than the riot.

A Covid-19 Story Idea

 

Earlier this year, I had begun planning a summer research trip to New England to visit lighthouses. Then Covid-19 closed everything down. I kept hoping I could get the trip in, but by now it’s pretty clear that I will have to wait until next year.

New England’s Covid restrictions are a big part of the problem. My plan was to visit lighthouses in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, with the largest number in Maine. But Maine’s Covid-19 travel restrictions—which are similar to those in other parts of New England—would make for a frustrating and futile trip.

Maine’s travel page states, “It is mandated that all out-of-state travelers coming into Maine, as well as Maine residents returning to Maine, complete a 14-day quarantine upon arrival.”  Quarantined individuals must stay at home or in their lodgings the entire time. They may not even leave to go to a grocery store, so unless they bring enough food for two weeks, everything must be delivered. Obviously, this also means no sightseeing.

There is an exemption for anyone who has had a negative Covid-19 PCR test no more than 72 hours before entering the state, but this has its own logistical nightmares. If you get the test done in your own state before leaving, will you have the results within 72 hours? And in the case of my lighthouse tour, which would go from one state to another, we would likely need to be tested more than once to meet their requirements.

The Maine instructions say that if you haven’t received the results by the time you arrive in the state, you can quarantine “in your lodging” until you receive the results, but in the unlikely event of a positive test, the entire trip will have been wasted. Or you can quarantine in your lodging for 14 days, but who is going to spend the bulk of their vacation cooped up in a hotel room just so they can get a little sightseeing in afterwards?

But, you ask, how will the authorities know? The Maine rules require hotels, campgrounds, Airbnb hosts, and so on to obtain a Certificate of Compliance signed by each guest. Cars with out-of-state license plates are probably targets for police checks. And I’m guessing that rental car companies are required to collect a Certificate of Compliance, too. A traveler who violates the travel restrictions can receive up to six months in jail, a $1000 fine, and an order requiring that person to pay the state’s expenses.  

So I was concerned when I learned that a good friend planned to travel to New England this week. She was going as companion to a friend who wanted to do some sightseeing there, and I’m guessing the woman was making the arrangements and hadn’t thought to check out any travel restrictions. My first reaction was to warn my friend—and I did.

But my second reaction was to imagine the story possibilities. What if a clueless family traveled to New England and discovered they couldn’t get a hotel room without signing a Certificate of Compliance? Would they lie, and what would happen if they did? Would they turn around and go home? Would they tell the truth and quarantine in a hotel room until they could get tested and receive the results or even for the entire 14 days? And what kind of craziness would result from being cooped up together in a tiny froom without even the chance to take their St. Bernard outside for a walk? Maybe the story would even be the basis for another blockbuster comedy movie like National Lampoon’s Vacation or Trains, Planes, and Automobiles.

Or not. I have so many projects on my desk now that I may never get around to writing the story. I also won’t be traveling to New England anytime soon.

Because I’d rather experience it in fiction than in real life.

Writing the Storm

 

As I mentioned last week, I recently read finished re-reading David Copperfield. When I came to Chapter 55, titled “Tempest,” I was swept up in Dickens’ description of a powerful storm. The highest praise I can give him is to reproduce excerpts here for your reading enjoyment.

To set the stage, these first passages occur while David Copperfield is traveling from London to Yarmouth on the evening mail coach.

It was a murky confusion—here and there blotted with a colour like the colour of the smoke from damp fuel—of flying clouds, tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as it, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened. …

But, as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely over-spreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow, harder and harder. It still increased, until our horses could scarcely face the wind. Many times, in the dark part of the night (it was then late in September, when the nights were not short), the leaders turned about, or came to a dead stop; and we were often in serious apprehension that the coach would be blown over. Sweeping gusts of rain came up before this storm, like showers of steel; and, at those times, when there was any shelter of trees or lee walls to be got, we were fain to stop, in a sheer impossibility of continuing the struggle.

…

As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the sea, from which this mighty wind was blowing dead on shore, its force became more and more terrific. Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our lips, and showered salt rain upon us. The water was out, over miles and miles of the flat country adjacent to Yarmouth; and every sheet and puddle lashed its banks, and had it stress of little breakers setting heavily towards us. When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another shore with towers and buildings.

Upon reaching Yarmouth, David took a room at an inn and went down to the shore for a closer look.

Coming near the beach, I saw, not only the boatmen, but half the people of the town, lurking behind buildings; some, now and then braving the fury of the storm to look away to sea, and blown sheer out of their course in trying to get zigzag back.

…

The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to look at it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand, and the awful noise, confounded me. As the high watery walls came rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled back with a hoarse roar, it seemed to scoop out deep caves in the beach, as if its purpose were to undermine the earth. When some white-headed billows thundered on, and dashed themselves to pieces before they reached the land, every fragment of the late whole seemed possessed by the full might of its wrath, rushing to be gathered to the composition of another monster. Undulating hills were changed to valleys, undulating valleys (with a solitary storm-bird sometimes skimming through them) were lifted up to hills; masses of water shivered and shook the beach with a booming sound; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as soon as made, to change its shape and place, and beat another shape and place away; the ideal shore on the horizon, with its towers and buildings, rose and fell; the clouds fell fast and thick; I seemed to see a rendering and upheaving of all nature.

I wish I could write like that.

__________

The painting of the storm at sea is by Robert Witherspoon, a 19th Century British artist. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Remembering High School English

 

I just finished reading David Copperfield for at least the second, and possibly the third or fourth, time. But it’s the first reading in high school that sticks out in my mind. I was particularly struck by these two passages describing David’s stepfather after David’s mother died.

Mr. Murdstone took no heed of me when I went into the parlour where he was, but sat by the fireside, weeping silently, and pondering in his elbow-chair.

. . .

[He] took a book sometimes, but never read it that I saw. He would open it and look at it as if he were reading, but would remain for a whole hour without turning the leaf, and then put it down and walk to and fro in the room.

The teacher asked us to write a character study about somebody in the story, and I chose Mr. Murdstone. Most readers consider him to be a mean, hard-hearted man, and he is, but my paper concluded that he had a soft side and deserved to be pitied because of the strength of his grief.

I don’t remember what grade I received on that paper, but it was probably an A since that was my normal achievement in Mr. Leemgraven’s junior and senior English classes. I remember another paper for the specific reason that I received only an A- on it. The assignment was to critique an article from The New Yorker. I don’t remember anything about the content except that it used exaggeration as a literary advice and I didn’t think it worked. My problem was that I used “exaggerated” or one of its other forms several times, always spelling it with one “g.” Mr. Leemgraven marked me down for the spelling, and I wasn’t happy. I argued that at least I had been consistent, but I still ended up with that A-.

By my senior year, I had decided I wanted to be a lawyer. So when Mr. Leemgraven assigned a research paper, I chose the case against Sacco and Vanzetti, two anarchists who were convicted of murdering a guard during a robbery. I especially enjoyed reading through the court transcripts. I didn’t know if they had done it, but I concluded that the guilty verdict was a miscarriage of justice because the state had not met it’s burden of proof.

Mr. Leemgraven was a good teacher, and I learned a lot from him. I don’t remember ever telling him how much I appreciated him as a teacher before he died in 1985.

But I wish I had.

__________

The image at the top of this page is from the original 1849 serial publication of David Copperfield and is in the public domain because of its age. I didn’t find a reference to the cover illustrator, but since the interior illustrations were done by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), I assume he did the cover as well.

Photography Club Technology

 

I belong to the Calumet Region Photo Club (CRPC), which is a member of the Chicago Area Camera Club Association (CACCA). Covid-19 has been as hard on us as on other groups, but things are getting better. And a lot of that has to do with advances in technology that we didn’t even anticipate 20 years ago.

CRPC hasn’t met in person since March. We used to meet three Tuesdays a month—one for an education program, one for mentoring, and one for competition. Some of the other clubs have been holding Zoom educational programs and inviting us, and I did attend one of those, but we haven’t hosted any ourselves. In June we resumed the mentoring via Zoom meeting. And now we are getting ready to start the competition meetings up again using software developed for that purpose by a member of another CACCA club.

I sat “Zoomed” in on a demonstartion of the software last Tuesday, and I was impressed. Club members upload photos competition photos, review them, and can—until the closing date for entries to that competition—remove and/or replace them. When the competition date comes around, the judges will rate the entries online and the software will do the rest.

The biggest difference is that there will be no more print competition, at least for a while. It will all be done online, which means only DPIs can be entered. But within each of the two classes (advanced photographers and the rest of us), there will be categories for monochrome, color, and a special monthly theme. That’s at the club level.

The best images from the club competition go on to a CACCA competition. CACCA also has additional categories for individual entries in nature, photojournalism, portrait, and creative.

In the past, I’ve submitted some DPIs but never entered the print competition because of the logistics. Since the new system is limited to DPIs, I will probably enter more often.

Winning a competition is always nice, but that’s not my primary reason for entering. It’s more a way to get feedback on how my photos compare with other photos. But the new software sounds like fun.

And I’m excited about using it.

__________

The picture at the top of this post is a screen shot of a software page for reviewing uploaded photos. This one shows a photo I took of Diamond Head on Oahu.