Revivification

Hello blank page, I'm back. (Is the universe listening?)

Nothing like reviving one's blog with one of those words that's so long you must pull it apart syllable by syllable to figure out it's meaning, right? Re-vi-vi-fi-ca-tion. Welcome to my world, for that's what a writer does to breathe new life into her work: pulls apart words and sentences and paragraphs and scenes, constantly questioning their components for meaningful expression and relevant inclusion.

As my temporarily abandoned readers already know, I have used this blog to explore the way writing helps us address issues of healing. Life questions that got me journaling instigated that journey for me some eighteen years ago; my first husband's suicide spurred it on.

The 13th anniversary of Ron's suicide was yesterday. Because Dave and I moved to Doylestown last December, this is the first anniversary of Ron's death I did not spend on the farm where he killed himself after a day-long police standoff. I thought I'd commemorate the anniversary by powering up this blog again.

Truth be told, I've missed writing about my life. A memoirist uses perspective like a sieve: you drop in the events of your life, shake them around, and allow the drab to fall through so that you might more closely examine the bits that glitter with meaning. I'll show you what I mean by applying that same process to my blog.

Sifting back through my last several posts, I saw some sparkle of meaning beyond that which I purposefully applied to the page.

Sunday, March 22: Blessed detachment

Monday, March 30: Scene and Sequel

These two posts exemplify the yin and yang of my writer's life. Networking/holing up, crafting/learning, reflecting/living, dreaming/enacting, producing/marketing, responsibility to others/responsibility to self: these sets of dueling needs are a fertile source of conflict in the life of the writer who's in it for the whole wild ride. Just when I've figured out how to tame my schedule to encourage that elusive notion of consistency, one of these duels heats up to wreak havoc. Turns out we are all characters in an unpredictable story. Hallelujah!

Saturday, June 6: While I was underground

Writer or not, if you plan to live fully, you must play the game in a ready stance—you know, like in tennis: knees bent, weight over the balls of the feet, racket at the ready, eyes scanning the horizon for opportunity and peril, weight shifting back and forth to propel you in the direction of the next shot. You gotta try. But watch: it's often when you're fully committed to your forehand that you'll feel the ball zing past your backhand side. This feels unfair—I was ready!—but such reversals are a necessary part of a great story.

Saturday, September 19: What he left behind

Our legacies will define us for future generations. Ron left a legacy of shock and horror. If I choose to write it, my memoir can leave a legacy of perspective and hope. The written word trumps the echo of trauma, paper over rock. For me this post also exemplifies the energy required to boost myself beyond the forces that could have kept me in orbit around a traumatic event. In terms of personal growth, that is rocket science.

Monday, September 28: The illusion of control

Healing is not "getting a grip": it's the opposite. Healing, for me, has been reassembling that flexible ready stance I mentioned above, body part by body part, and regaining the heart to face whatever comes at me next.

Thursday, October 8: The stories behind the stories, Part 1

Tragedy need not define my life. My role as dance critic defined my relationship with a larger community even as the foundation of Ron's life crumbled beneath him—on the very day of the suicide standoff, for example, my editor at The Morning Call was awaiting a story I was writing on choreographer David Parsons in conjunction with his upcoming performance at Lehigh University.

Saturday, July 10: My lemon crosses America

The blog posts and essays and book-length material that comprise my memoir work, with its theme of how to carry on in the face of tragedy, is as serious as it gets—yet to become whole again one must honor one's whimsical side. Her move across the country was very stressful for my sister, but documenting the lemon's journey was a running gag that afforded much in the way of healing laughter. I can even find meaning in the choice of a lemon to exemplify my sister's journey: its sour taste doesn't mean it isn't good for you.

Forehand or backhand, ready or not, meaning whizzes past us every day. Writing about my life allows me to capture it on the page so I can mine the little stories for the big over-arching story. Finding the structure in that bigger story is in itself healing; what once seemed random is now architecture.

Please check back often, as I hope to update this blog three times per week. In my next post I'll explore why I temporarily stopped writing about my life.

My Lemon Crosses America

I recently flew out to Sacramento, CA to help my sister move her possessions cross-country in a Budget rental truck. The night before we left My sister's friend Mickey made us dinner. I noticed a tree in her backyard with these huge yellow globes hanging from it—lemons. I asked if I could have one, and the rest is recorded in this photo journal. Enjoy!

The stories behind the stories, Part I

Now that we have a signed agreement of sale on our Berks County property the process of letting go begins. It's been a long haul: 27 years I've lived on this farm, 12 of them without the man who chose it.

This has me feeling nostalgic.

Perhaps to avoid larger issues for the moment, I thought I might share some of my favorite memories of writing for The Morning Call from 1984-2002. The stories behind the stories, that never see print. My tenure spanned an important portion of my life in that I began writing as Kathryn Williams and ended writing as Kathryn Craft. In no particular order:

• My first Nutcracker review. While previous reviews of the Ballet Guild of the Lehigh Valley's production were of the "look how cute, how hard they worked" ilk, I criticized artistic director Alexi Ramov for his production's overly made up dancers, lackluster Waltz of the Flowers costumes, and the use of bumbling children as soldiers in the ballet's climactic fight scene. In a scathing 3-page letter addressed to me and my editor--and which a Ballet Guild insider told me he read aloud to his school-aged company--Ramov refuted all my points, and took me to task for criticizing children.

Since this was my first Nutcracker review, and Ramov had said that its lead sounded "like the first draft of a high school journalism student," and that "you seem to employ a destructive atmosphere to cover for a lack of dance credibility," I sent the review and the letter to the professor in Ohio who had mentored me through my masters program, Lana Kay Rosenberg, so I could get her opinion. She found it sad that Ramov's need to retaliate had won out over common sense. Then she added: "I actually find your reviews rather bland with your need to find something good in everything. I think it's actually better to dismiss something entirely than to give it space in a paper."

I learned early on to try to be true to myself in my reviews, since I was not likely to please anyone else.

• The Edward Villella review. The most famous Balanchine dancer to ever visit the area was on his way to Lafayette College and I threw my back out that afternoon. I could barely breathe. But there was no substitute: if I didn't go, the event wouldn't be covered. And I hated to miss the opportunity to join a few other reporters in interviewing Villella before his talk. So I loaded up on ibuprofen and headed to the interview.

Was I glad I did. Villella brushed off the other reporters and seemed to hone in on me--for some reason it seemed vital to him that I, and I alone, receive his answers.

Then I figured out why. I had a tape recorder in my lap. He wasn't speaking to me so much as to the recorder, for posterity. The other reporters were taking notes. And later, in comparing our stories, I was the only one who had not altered his words.

• The Gregory Hines interview. Gregory Hines was by far the biggest mainstream celebrity I interviewed during my tenure at the paper. His people required a letterhead fax to set up the interview, and I would never learn a contact phone number--he would call me. Well, near the appointed time, I started to get nervous, and so when the call came through I was...indisposed. Ron answered the phone and put his hand over the receiver. "Oh Kathryn, it's Gregory Hines calling. Should I tell him where you are?"

• The barn call. I was trying to set up an interview with the artistic director of a New York City-based company and when the contact called me back I was in the barn mucking out the horse stalls. I tried to adopt my office persona as I answered the barn phone while wearing filthy jeans and squishy muck boots--you can't smell over the phone, right?--but my professionalism was ruined with one big cock-a-doodle-do. My New York City contact said, "Was that a rooster?"

• The Mark Morris interview. Baryshnikov wasn't doing interviews, so when I was to cover the White Oak Dance Project, I had to approach Morris instead. His schedule was busy; if I wanted the interview I had to do it at 2 pm on a certain day. Trouble was, Ron was buying a new horse and we had already arranged to go pick it up in Syracuse, NY that day. Determined that I could do both, I purchased a suction cup microphone I could use on the receiver of a pay phone and as it got close to the appointed time we pulled off at a Holiday Inn in Cortland, NY. As I dialed Morris's number from the lobby phone I could see the horse in the parked trailer, lifting her tail and taking a dump onto the macadam in the hotel lot.

The interview did not go well. Not only was Morris reticent to the point that I had to wonder why he agreed to the interview, some of what he said on tape was obscured by a roaring sound. Seems 2-2:30 pm corresponded with the exact, unalterable point in the cleaning lady's schedule when she needed to vacuum the lobby.

Okay, I'm having fun with this! More in next week's post.

The illusion of control

Two recent situations helped me identify one of the vehicles I used to drive my life forward since Ron's death: the illusion of control.

What I was driving away from was the polar opposite of control. Suicide, like any other murder, is chaos. No matter how heavily foreshadowed: that full day standoff with a heavy police presence might have been a clue, right? No matter how many hours, waiting, waiting for word, fully realizing the only possible outcomes for Ron would be self-destruction or imprisonment. Still thinking: This. Can't. Be. Happening.

Then word came.

By then it had already occurred, that horrific moment in which all choice and all plans and all determination and all hope were ripped from my grasp. The violence was already over but its echo would live on.

The choices I made in response to Ron's actions were the control I had. Until recently I hadn't realized how reliant I'd become upon my need to make them.

But my choices were good enough, because as you may have read in the last post, we made it. Over the past twelve years, on this farm Ron and I lovingly renovated, on this farm where Ron killed himself, I raised my two sons to adulthood. I am now selling the farm and wrapping up this chapter of my life.

All that was fine and good until someone else grabbed the wheel.

Incident 1: The oil burner man

To ready the house for sale I made an early appointment to have our oil burner serviced for the heating season. When I heard the gravel popping out in the driveway I went out to meet the truck and let them know they should come in the office door. But the van had already turned around at the top of the driveway and come back to me.

"So you've been here before," I said. I didn't recognize the technician; in recent years someone else had been coming.

"Oh yeah, I've been here before," he said, looking around. Then he looked right at me. "Didn't you have a big suicide standoff here a while back? With all sorts of police cars showing up?"

His unexpected words hit me with the force of a shotgun blast. The twelve intervening years dissolved. I stammered as I searched for a response.

From the beginning I have been able to talk with some sense of detachment about the events of that day. But it was only in that moment I realized that I had initiated those conversations. Always. Luckily for me, few people, as much as they might be burning to know, actually walk up to you and say "So what's it like when your husband offs himself?"

His questions felt like an assault because the control was his, not mine. As I sputtered for response his reason for bringing it up became clearer: his brother, too, was involved with a suicide standoff around the same time. It, too, was covered in the local papers. Turns out he had serviced our heater for some 25 years; had even met Ron. He would soon retire, and we would soon leave the house. This was his last chance to connect, however clumsy the approach.

Incident 2: Marty leaves home

My younger son has not taken to campus life at Drexel. He has often returned home on weekends to see his friends here, and lives at home for the six months per year he is on co-op.

Now, with a move to Doylestown wavering on the horizon for us and a new co-op beginning for him, I don't know how much longer I can offer him a place to stay in this geographic area. I told him she should start exploring options. Then assumed he would deal with it when push came to shove.

Two weeks ago, while I was away at my writing retreat for women, Marty stayed at a friend's house while Dave handled a bunch of house showings. When I returned from the retreat, Marty was just returning home as well. He gave me a hug and I settled in for a nice catch-up chat. He began.

"Doug and Brad said I might as well just move in with them," he said. "So I guess I'll just grab some stuff and go."

And he left the room to pack. My first thought: Not yet!

I wasn't ready. Of course it was time for him to make this move. He's twenty. Plus I had told him to make it. But push hadn't yet come to shove. Meaning, of course, that I had not yet done the shoving.

As proud as I am of him for growing up to be the kind of responsible young man who would take this proactive step, I did not respond well to losing my illusion of control over the situation. After he left I curled up in a ball on the couch and cried for all of the illusions I had lost in this home.

"Surrender" is still a tough concept for me. But I'll keep working on it. Because for each unexpected twist life has been good enough to substitute something even greater than the thing I was hoping to cling to. Lost Ron, gained Dave. Marty freed me to pursue the next chapter of my life without undue worry over him. Even the oil burner man came bearing gifts: I could survive the intrusion of unbidden memory.

For Marty and the oil burner man: I wish for you the same grace as you face whatever twists occur in the next chapter of your lives.

About the photo: this is Dave's grandson Liam, born well after the mayhem in my side of the family. But that look! His innocence already fading: "I want to take the wheel, but will I get away with it?" All I can say is, it's a good thing we can't see too far down the road, or we'd never drive anywhere. Only innocence gives us the courage to begin anything. But it is surrender, ultimately, that helps us stay the course.

What he left behind

If you are returning to my blog after my summer hiatus, thank you for coming back! I couldn't seem to handle writing these posts while also clearing out our little farm to ready it for the real estate market. Some periods of my life require so much energy that I must defer the recording of them for later. Leaving this farm was one of them.

It's hard to believe: when Marty turned 20 this summer I completed my goal of raising my sons to adulthood here at this farm Ron had chosen. I am free to move on, to choose a home for the first time in my life, and Dave and I are free to finally make a home together. This place hasn't suited our lifestyle for some time. It's for riding horses and animal romping and playing outside. But our barn has stood empty and cobwebbed for more than 10 years. Of all the chickens and goats and ponies and horses and cats and dogs, the last of our many animals--my cockapoo Max--died almost three years ago, and most of my day is now spent in front of a computer or a manuscript. I am ready to leave.

That didn't mean the farm was ready for us to leave it, though. This summer Dave and I and several stalwart family helpers cleared its most neglected recesses of 12 tons of junk. Most of this came from six outbuildings, one of which is a cavernous Pennsylvania bank barn that can hold a sinful amount of crap. We hoisted and we carried and we swept and we blistered and at the end of each day we tore respirators black with dirt from our sweaty faces and we didn't stop until we'd filled a 12-yard dumpster. Then another. Then another. Then another.

Leaving this farm turned into an extreme sport and my actions tell the tale: I'm ready to start the next chapter of my life in a new setting. But it would seem I had one more character study to complete first. Because this summer, going through the detritus that had accumulated in the house and outbuildings, I think I got to know Ron a little better through what he left behind.

What Ron left behind

1. Scraps of wood. I finally got it, this summer. Ron loved to work with his hands as much as I love to write, and he felt about wood scraps the way I feel about books: you'd better keep a lot on hand just in case you'll ever need them again. We cleared out room after room piled high with scrap lumber, saving only a few piles of respectable looking oak planks to give away to friends. (I was almost as hard on my own collection: I gave away eight boxes of books to the library for its fundraising sale.)

2. Well organized bric-a-brac. Part of what fed Ron's sense of material wealth was amassing metal and wood shelving filled with hand-labeled boxes and jars holding everything from clips and U-bolts to old door hinges and plumbing supplies. I think he would have been happy owning a hardware store, because that's what several of our outbuildings look like. The man had inventory.

3. Receipts. Ron was not much of a writer so I was surprised to come upon a box chock full of notes he had stashed in one of the barn's storage rooms. The money fixation that eventually devoured him was foreshadowed in a painstaking accounting he'd kept of which bartenders made what tips on what dates, and how this was all divided. I'm sure the IRS would have loved to see those documents 20 years ago. Oops--they'll have to landfill dive to find them now.

4. Booze. I was long aware of Ron's practice of washing out glass orange juice containers and bringing home booze leftover from the weddings he worked. This was all part of the trademark frugality he'd use to justify the extravagances he couldn't afford. I had given away so much booze after his death I guess I just didn't realize how much was still out there. About three dozen half-gallon bottles. All labeled, of course: scotch, gin, vodka, Benedictine, even grossly separated and rank smelling Bailey's Irish Cream. No whiskey, since that's what he drank. Some of the tops were corroded right through. I didn't know if it would be good for our septic system to put it all down the sink, so for lack of a better idea, I poured them all onto the driveway stones on a hot day and let the liquid evaporate. I'm pretty sure that any bird that caught a whiff of it--perhaps even God--caught a buzz that day.

5. A legacy of love. While our house hasn't yet found its next perfect occupant, we have gotten wonderful feedback from the people who've come to see it. My favorite: "It was a joy to show this property. The owners must have loved their home." I take my share of the credit, as my hands transformed each of the house's surfaces. But Ron was the crew leader, the one with the know-how back in the days before online tutorials. We were a good team when it came to the renovation, and I hope he knows what a great job he did. This farm will offer someone new just as wonderful a place to house their horses and raise a family as it did me. If you'd like to take a look at the fruit of our labors, click here.

6. A dream. I truly feel the weight of this, now. When Ron died he left behind his dream of raising his family on the farm we'd renovated--he killed himself just ten months after the final room was complete, when the boys were just 8 and 10. Of course his dream didn't die with him. I was still here to live it.

7. A hell of a mess. From the early biohazard cleanup to the financial and emotional and psychic cleanup to the final wood scrap dumping, we have been cleaning up after Ron for 12 years.

8. Which leaves for last the most obvious answer as to what Ron left behind: Jackson, Marty, and me.

With a nod to my friend and energetic blogger Jon Gibbs, I'll end with a question: after you are gone, what will people learn about you from what you left behind? Feel free to leave a comment. I'd love to hear your answers.

While I was underground

This is conference season, so for the past two months my blogging took a back seat to an intense round of edits on my novel. I thought if I could block everything else out and concentrate hard I could get it right, finally. And again I have rediscovered that the word "infinity" is the distance between "here" and "the end."

I take time to return to my blog today for a few reasons. One is fan demand (thanks, Janet!). Another is that I have just returned from seeing my son Jackson sing with the Westminster Choir at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC. While he used his voice brilliantly, I lost mine altogether due to the spate of new allergens encountered in the low country. So if I want to communicate at all, it will be through writing. 

And, as usual, I am using my writing to to heal from painful chaos so I might make sense of my life.

Because I came home to some rather odd news. An independent editor I hired to help me with my novel wrote to say that while she was at BookExpo America she learned that THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY will be published by Algonquin Books in spring 2010. Good news, right? Publication is the result of a lot of hard work and through personal experience I can attest to the fact that it is the long awaited answer to the dream of its author: Heidi W. Durrow. 

Somehow, while I re-worked my own writing challenges with my head beneath the sand, I missed the announcement that the book had also won the 2008 Bellwether Prize, a cash and publication prize awarded to an author whose work promotes social change. Some of you may know that I had long considered submitting for this prize, since I believe the core issue of my novel—aberrant body image—is holding women in our country back and that change will only come one woman at a time as we learn to accept the gift of our own corporeal individuality. I have always hoped, through my novel, to help inspire that change.

By now I'm pretty sure we're all on the title page together here: the novel I'm referring to would be the novel I have been living and breathing for six years now, THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY. 

I remember when I first pitched my novel to an editor at a conference, four years ago. She said: "No matter what happens with this book, don't let anyone talk you into changing its name. It's brilliant."

Now, in deference to Durrow's publication success in the same genre, that's exactly what I must do. Even though titles are not copyrighted, common marketing sense dictates that I now leave behind the one sure thing that has guided me all these years, a concept so inextricably woven into the fabric of the story that ripping it free will leave a huge thematic hole. I must also give up the idea of submitting for the Bellwether, since although Durrow's theme of biracial identity is different than mine, her book is based on a girl who survives a fall from the top of a building. (If you read the interview at her website, you'll see that even though it was a different article, she was inspired to write it by something she read in the newspaper just as I was.)

I am left feeling that I woke up to find someone else living my life—and doing it more successfully than I could. Case in point: you can find the interview I would have given (with pertinent facts substituted of course) at Heidi's website. And the cover design is one I would have envisioned for my own book: the words of the title placed in a vertical column against a blue background, with a stylized stick figure falling below. 

While my head was in the sand, another author blew past me—and I was unaware that I was running a race. If you think it makes me feel any better that Durrow's original Bellwether submission title was LIGHT SKINNED-ED GIRL, and that the publisher no doubt influenced the title change, it does not. This beautifully archetypal title was not mine to own, yet I can't help but feel bereft. Even if I didn't have laryngitis, I wouldn't know what to say. I am having trouble looking at my husband in the eye because he has been so tremendously supportive of me and at present I just don't know what any of this means for the future of my own project.

 

I will rebound from this in time, because rebounding is what I do. But let me put the challenge ahead into perspective: I have, in the past, cried when a computer crash made me lose six hours of desktop publishing work. So it will take me a while to recover from six years of identifying my writing with a title that I couldn't have loved more if it had sprung from my own body.

At present, I am the Girl Who Fell. I can't believe the ride is over, and I am wondering how I'll ever make my way back up to that place where hope lives. Yet, like my protagonist, I will do it. Because that is not only the kind of story I want to tell, it is the kind of story I want to live. 

I have received so much incredible support from my writing friends in the development of THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY, for which I am incredibly grateful. I'm sure we'll have some great conversations about how Penelope Sparrow will rise again under a title that I hope to learn to love. But for now, thanks to my laryngitis, I have a great excuse not to talk about it until I re-orient to the reality of my new circumstances.

Scene and Sequel

Because I am a huge fan of delayed gratification, the two days of The Write Stuff conference put on by the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group is my favorite time of year. I love Christmas, too, but I only put a few weeks of preparation into it. I work on aspects of this conference for an entire year, so when it comes I watch it unreel in a dizzying blur.

On a day like today, when I have a chance to pause to take stock, I'm reminded of the terms author Jack Bickham uses to describe plot: "scene" and "sequel." The action happens in scene: a soldier runs up to a ditch, lobs a hand grenade, and runs back to safety behind a rock. That soldier reflects on his action in a sequel: Where did these guys come from? I thought we'd killed them all back at the river. I need to talk to Jonesy, bad, but the radio is back at the plane...

If the final weeks of conference prep are one unrelenting scene, today is my sequel. I want to take a moment to reflect on the fruits of my labor and of many fellow laborers led by conference chair Dianna Sinovic.

In this year's mesmerizing keynote speech, author and DeSales University creative writing prof Juilene Osborne-McKnight tapped her background as a professional storyteller to remind us that the stories that connect us are the reason for all that we do. To hammer her point home, I'd like to set down some of the stories that characterized this conference for me.

• After 9 years of attending and volunteering for this conference, I participated as a Page Cuts panelist for the first time, using experience gleaned from my role as editor at Writing-Partner.com to critique first page submissions from attendees. No story is good without an obstacle, so here it is: I had to do so without having eaten in the past eight hours. I wasn't the only one. Despite a break of almost an hour, and a restaurant less than half full, the hotel was unable to deliver our meals before we had to go to the Page Cuts room. I thought I had saved time by ordering a sandwich, but at least those who ordered entrees got their salads! Despite the hypoglycemia, I enjoyed applying all I've learned to help along a new batch of writers. After which I made a beeline for the crudites at the welcome reception.

• I had the chance to meet three different women I've gotten to know through my online writing consulting business. I first met them through their words and ideas; now I've met them in the flesh. Ever since I started writing for a newspaper 27 years ago, where I mostly met people by phone, I've envisioned people by their voices. I do the same now with people I meet in print, through their writers' voices. And you know what? Not one of these women looked a thing like I pictured them. A fun surprise.

• One of our conferees flew in from Texas so she could meet her favorite author, Maria V. Snyder, whom I had engaged in my role as program co-chair. In my role as Page Cuts coordinator I had randomly assigned this conferee to the room where Maria was a Page Cuts panelist. This woman was able to have her first page critiqued by her favorite author, and I played an unwitting role.

• I stood in the hallway at one point beside a conferee who asked a woman next to me where she was from. The answer I overheard: "Gouverneur, New York." I spun around. "You're kidding me! I know where Gouverneur is and I know how to spell it, too!" To which she replied: "Most of the people who live there don't know how to spell it!" Gouverneur is a village of about 4,000 near our summer home in northern New York; my grandmother was a school teacher there early in the 2oth century. This woman found out about our conference online, drove the 5-1/2 hours to get to it, and had a great time—and during the book fair, sat to talk with my husband Dave and I, who are almost neighbors to her during the summer.

• One of the last conversations I had before heading out the door was with my new friend, conferee Jon Gibbs, whom I'd met at last year's pre-conference workshop. We were tossed into proximity again this year: during an exercise at this year's workshop we exchanged papers, and later that night he was in my Page Cuts room. At conference end Jon was telling me what a superlative conference he'd had: all of the Page Cuts panelists had something good to say about his page; the agent panelist in that room approached him the next day, gave him her card, and said she'd like to see the whole manuscript; an agent to whom he'd pitched a different project wanted to see the whole thing; and then during the book fair he found out he'd won the fiction flash contest and got to read it aloud. When after that he also won a door prize he deferred, embarrassed by and a bit fearful of the confluence of riches.

Following a tradition we've had for a few years now, Dave and I treated ourselves to dinner out on the way home from the conference—this time at Bonefish at the Lehigh Valley Mall—and brought along our conference folders. We always attend separate sessions so we can compare notes after, and we like to do it while all is fresh in our minds. We sat at a "first come, first served" area in the bar across from another couple, who was fascinated by what we were doing. Their son is a writer, currently in England on a fellowship. We all ended up having a great time. 

Thanks for sharing my sequel. For all of these reasons and more, I am eager to once again enter "scene" mode and get to work on next year's conference.