People Watching

Today, I’m hosting Alayna-Renee Vilmont in a guest post about watching people — a fascinating pastime. The variety is endless. So see what Alayna has to say and then check out her book, Ophelia’s Wayward Muse.

I am fascinated by people. Whether you’re a bit of an eccentric and outgoing personality, the way I happen to be, or you’re a keen observer of others, I think you have to have a certain level of interest in other people in order to be an artist. Although I literally meet hundreds of new people each year, and even more if you count the virtual connections the internet brings into our lives, I’m often inspired by the people I don’t know. I have a terrible habit of doing something we’re all taught not to do, because it’s rude: eavesdropping.

I’m a city girl, and although I currently call Atlanta home, it’s the smallest city that has ever been home to me. Atlanta is an interesting place because it’s a city with a great deal of history. Once an iconic destination for all things Southern, it has now been invaded by people from all over the world who have made it a transient stop in their career path or life journey. I often joke that it took me moving down here to meet friends who are largely from the Northeast, where I grew up. It’s as if we know how to find one another, and I think perhaps that’s true. I’ve discovered you can generally tell where someone is from and why they now live here based on body language, appearance, personal presentation, and the energy they give off.

Much like Manhattan, you can’t go to a trendy bar or restaurant in Atlanta without finding an interesting conversation for your eavesdropping pleasure. In a way, it’s the ultimate in reality television.

A week or two ago, I’d wanted to go to an Asian place for dinner. Specifically, I wanted the kind of place that would be a relaxing spot with some ambiance, without being overly pretentious. My requirements were that I could get a bowl of spicy noodles and a martini—it had been a tough week, and in my world, this is comfort food. I remembered a place not far from my apartment where I’d hosted a New Year’s Eve bash with some friends. That night, everything was very swanky and trendy and the sort of place you imagine actual grown-ups hang out when you’re a teenager eating at Denny’s with your friends at midnight.

It turns out, if you’re there before 9, it’s a completely different crowd. We were seated between three different tables, all of whom had children under the age of 7. I thought I was going to get my martini in a plastic cup with a bendy straw. It was not the relaxing end to the week I was looking for.

Nevertheless, I was amused by this place because the bar area was filled with 20-and-30-something yuppie types obviously on first dates, or transitioning from “work friends” to “social friends”. Despite the children running around the restaurant ooh-ing and aah-ing at the baby sharks in the fish tanks and getting remnants of crushed Oreo all over everything, it’s still a magnet for “getting to know you” conversation. By nature, it makes it prime real estate for eavesdropping.

While I waited for my boyfriend to retrieve the car from the parking garage, I stood by the bar, eavesdropping on a couple that was obviously in the “getting to know you” stage of things. They looked, and their conversation gave the vibe, that a film crew was hiding somewhere, obtaining footage for a Match.com commercial.

The girl was clearly the Southern beauty queen type, with blonde hair and perfect teeth and a habit of saying “like” and “you know” in every single sentence. The guy gave the impression of being that confident professional dude who doesn’t need to be on a date with a beautiful woman, since he already knows many, but why not?

The guy asked the girl about her previous relationship, and she revealed that she was in love and with one person for a long time. It was, in fact, so serious that she was going to get married. Recently, they’d decided not to and broken up instead, which is why she was on this obviously half-hearted Match.com date.

Conversation is important, so he continued to ask questions about why she’d broken up with him and what she was looking for in a relationship. She launched into a diatribe about how her ex-fiance wanted her to give up her career and her friends and her lifestyle to stay home in their hypothetical home and raise their hypothetical children. Her concern was that she’d give up her whole life for love, and then if it didn’t work out, she’d be left with nothing—but if she didn’t agree to this scenario, all the years she’d invested in dating wouldn’t result in that thing every woman in the South wants: to be able to order monogrammed towels and hyphenate her last name.

(I personally believe hyphens are for first names only, but that’s just me.)

Her companion was very astute about this situation, nodding, and saying, “Well, you know, that’s just how Southern guys are.”  She looked distraught, batted her eyelashes, and displayed that look of panic that women in Atlanta have when they realize they live in a city where single women outnumber men 3-to-1, and they’re suddenly closer to 35 than 25.

She said, “I know. Maybe ending it wasn’t the right thing. But I felt like he was, I don’t know how to explain it, totally emasculating me all the time.”

To his credit, the guy just looked at her blankly, before asking, “How does that work? How does a guy emasculate you?”

“He was really very masculine and responsible and, like, in control and stuff. I felt like he wanted to be in control of me, too.”

It took a lot of self-restraint not to turn around and inform her the word she was looking for was dominate. She obviously was engaged to a very traditional, macho type of guy with control issues, and he was attempting to dominate her life.

I’m not judgmental by nature, but I couldn’t help but think that it would be easier for her to avoid being dominated if she had a dictionary on hand to help her express, you know, like thoughts and stuff.

When I got into the car, I shared this story with my boyfriend. At the end, I summed it up by saying, “Well, it’s a good thing she’s pretty.” He replied, “And that’s what her teachers told her all the way through school.”

I’ve never been one to find the dating world difficult or challenging, and I’ve enjoyed being single just for the experience of being out there and meeting new people. I’m a pretty high-maintenance girl. If someone can’t make conversation, doesn’t open the car door, and doesn’t pay for dinner, he’s not interested in me enough that I should care. It’s worked for me, I suppose. I’ve had a colourful history of infatuations and relationships in cities that are known for being tough markets for single women.

I like to think it’s because, in my way, I’m quite endearing and hard to resist. The truth is probably closer to this: I’m great at dating because I have a large vocabulary, and I’m not afraid to use it.

Because, you know, conversation is like, hard and stuff.

Alayna-Renee Vilmont is a freelance writer, blogger, performer, and modern-day Renaissance woman currently residing in Atlanta, Georgia. Her first book, “Ophelia’s Wayward Muse”, is a poetic anthology based around the many facets of human relationships and experiences. It is available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and in .pdf format at Lulu.com. Alayna is also the voice behind Jaded Elegance: The Uninhibited Adventures Of A Chic Web Geek, which has been entertaining readers since 2000. She maintains an active presence on Facebook, Goodreads, and almost every other form of social media out there. If you’d like to follow the adventures of this modern-day wayward muse, please stop by and visit at www.jadedelegance.net

Strength of Family

I  am  writing this from  Norfork,  Arkansas  which  is located  in North  Central  Ozark  region.    My  husband  inherited  the family  farm  and we  are  down here  for spring break  accompanied my  two  teenage  grandchildren  and  one of their friends.  Today as  a special  treat for  my  granddaughter I  took her  to town  to  get  her  hair  dyed  various hues  of  blue,  purple and  pink.

As  the owner  started  the  work,  in walked  her  25  year  old son  who was  on leave  from the   United  States  Army after  completing his  boot camp.  He  sat  and  chatted  a  while with me  about  his  dreams and his  future  and  then  he  casually  asked  his Mom  how  she  was doing  today?    She  said she  was  great  and I thought  to  myself how wonderful it was that  a  young  man  was  so attentive  to  his Mom.    As the morning  progressed  I found  out  that  the  woman  had   just been  pronounced  “Cancer Free”.   She  had undergone 6  major  surgeries  and a  mammoth  number of chemo  treatments  but  professed  proudly  that  she could not  have done it  without her family  by  her side.

Eventually the soldier  left  and  we  were  joined by  the 11 am appointment,  a  sixty something  woman  who  was  bringing  her  grown daughter  to get her hair dyed  and her  eyebrows  waxed.  The  younger of  the two  seemed to be  in  great  distress  and the  mother  watched  over her  like a mother hen  watching  her chicklet.    As  conversation started  the  younger  started  laughing hysterically  and  fled outside as if running from  herself.   Her Mother  apologized  and said  her daughter had  just experienced  a  breakdown  and recovery was  slow.     I  told the Mother not to  apologize  for  anything- don’t  we  all go  through  dark  times.    As I watched them I was reminded of the great  love  and strength we  draw  from our  families.

I was drawn  back  to my own  memories  of  the  Heroin addiction  that my  nephew  and  the  entire  family  suffered  through  before  he eventually  fell  prey  to  the drug  and met  the Lord  in the summer of  2007.  Christopher  was first  introduced  to “ H”  in  high  school  and  with a family  pre-disposition  to addiction he  became  hooked quickly.    He  wrestled   the disease  through  his  teen years,  and  through the birth of  his angelic daughter, Caylee.    The  family   prayerfully  watched  always  positive that  the Lord  would  deliver him from this  evil.    When  he  overdosed  on a  cold,  bleak  Sunday  evening,  alone  on the floor  in his  house,  the family  all fought together to make sense  of this loss.   But  we  all  knew  that  because  of the  deep  faith  and  strength of our family we  would  survive .

My  four  older  sisters  and I wrote  our  book  Fluffy, Funny,  and Fabulous:  A Tale of Five  Sisters  as  a  tribute  to  that  miraculous  bond  of  family.   The book starts with fun stories of growing up in a small  town  and all  the memories  that held.    In further chapters we deal with leaving home, the death  of our  parent s and the death  of Christopher.  The  book is  written  to be  a  fun  read  but also  to  remind  us of the importance  of those  memories  of  our  past  and   also of  the strength of  family.

Our  book  was  published on  December  18, 2012  and  as a  mentioned is the  collaboration  of five sisters.   The  book  is  available on Amazon ,  Barnes and Noble  and several other sources.   It is  also  available through our  publisher  Tate  Publishing.      www.tatepublishing.com

We  maintain  a  website  for  people to share  with  us  www.thefivesisters.net .

Our  blog  is www.ourfanaticalfam.blogspot.com  and  we are  on Facebook   at  fluffyfunnyfabulous.

We  also  have  a non-profit  organization  that we  started  after  Christopher’s  death  where  we  attempt  to  help  others    heal  from their  own  family  tragedies,  do  drug  education  events  and outreach  activities.       Visit  us a  www.chriswalkagainstsubstanceabuse.net .

Thanks  to  Faith  for  allowing me this interview.   Her  book looks fantastic  and I  can’t  wait  to  read  it myself.

Sincerely,

Anita  Lewis

Fluffy,  Funny, and Fabulous:  A Tale  of   Five   Sisters

Wendell Berry: Another Turn of the Crank

“I am an agrarian,” Wendell Berry announces in the forward of his book, Another Turn of the Crank. “I think that good farming is a high and difficult art, that it is indispensable, and that it cannot be accomplished except under certain conditions.”

Berry is also a “member, by choice, of a local community. I believe that healthy communities are indispensable, and I know that our communities are disintegrating under the influence of economic assumptions that are accepted without question . . .”

Berry thinks that the “concentration of the best educated, most able people in centers of power, industry and culture is a serious mistake.” Instead, he believes the best “intelligence and talent” should be everywhere in the country. He quotes Wes Jackson, who argues that schools should have a major in “homecoming” instead of “upward mobility.”

In his chapter entitled “Farming and the Global Economy,” Berry argues that people who manage the land should form relationships with their places. “We need to adapt our farming much more sensitively to the nature of the places where the farming is done,” he writes. Furthermore, to be sustainable, Berry believes that the “long-broken connections between towns and cities and their surrounding landscapes will have to be restored.”

Berry doesn’t see a quick, from-the-top solution to developing sustainable systems. But it “can be done by cooperation among small organizations: conservation groups, churches, neighborhood associations, consumer co-ops, local merchants, local independent banks, and organizations of small farmers.”

In a second chapter entitled, “Conserving Communities,” Berry cites agriculture statistics showing that, by 1991, “32 percent of farm managers and 86 percent of our farm workers did not live on the land they farmed. These figures,” he writes, “describe a catastrophe that is now virtually complete.”

He argues that sustainable agriculture will be done by farmers who live within “securely placed” families and communities, who know “how to use the land in the best way and can afford to do so.” To empower food producers to farm sustainably, “consumers . . . must become active and knowledgeable participants in the local food economy,” Berry writes.

The book includes further chapters entitled, “Conserving Forest Communities,” “Private Property and the Common Wealth,” “The Conservation of Nature and the Preservation of Humanity,” and “Health is Membership.” Berry hopes his essays, published in 1995, will become a part of a “current, vigorous, and growing” conversation. That conversation has continued at greater or lesser volume for almost twenty years and the Berry’s recommended changes have begun in the form of such innovations as community supported agriculture.

What other sustainable changes do you see in your own local economy?

How About a “You” Narrator?

You stand in a restaurant built under the wing of a grounded C130 watching a sloth. He’s moved at least a foot in the last five minutes. You’re not moving very fast either. You just listen to the rain, roaring all around you and you wonder why it doesn’t wash that sloth right out of the tree.

Your mission here is to absorb everything. the sights, the smells, the sounds, the way the rain roars and soaks you to the skin—until you step three feet into the jungle where the canopy absorbs sound and the water drips, not pours. You can hear monkeys, or rather you hear leaves rustle as monkeys swing from one branch to another.

You’re here so you can set a scene—1941, before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Your character has come to Panama to protect the canal from a possible attack. In a few months, he will be a trained jungle warrior, aware of the snakes you photographed in the afternoon. He’ll hear that whippoorwill’s whoop, pause, whoop, pause, whoop, pause and the myriad of frogs clamoring—then stopping en masse for a few seconds before they resume.

You’ve watched white-faced capuchin monkeys unzipping backpacks and stealing all manner of food and trinkets. You think of what they could steal from soldiers stationed next to the canal. Would they come out of the jungle?

You’re grateful that you don’t have to worry about malaria or dengue fever like your character and you’re grateful you don’t have to take atabrine. You try to imagine walking around Camp Paraiso, the base where your character lives, and seeing yellow eyes—hundreds of soldiers with the whites of their eyes turned various shades of yellow.

Your remember waking in the morning to the howl of howler monkeys and you try to come up with words to describe that sound and the slow infiltration of warm light into the jungle. You try to guess what bird sounds you heard and note that you must ask about species. Definitely the squawk of parrots, but what else?

As you drink your pineapple juice at breakfast, you wonder what your soldier would have eaten. You’ve learned that pineapples hadn’t been introduced yet and bananas aren’t native, either. Coffee’s an introduced crop. Would your soldier have had access to the carrots, squash and guava you get with your lunch. Coconut. Palms grow everywhere. Will he climb the trees and eat the nuts. Will he use his machete to crack them?

Will the soldiers slash their way through the jungle on maneuvers or will they slink carefully and silently through the understory to “attack” their opposing forces?

As you consider all these bits of setting detail and the action that will engage your character, you think of perspective. Who will tell this story? Will you tell it as a second person narrator? Or will you choose to let the soldier tell it himself in first person? Maybe an omniscient third person will narrate.

This little exercise in second person was fun, but I’m not sure I could sustain it for an entire novel. How about you?

Hope in Hard Times

Suzan Colón finds hope in hard times through her family’s recipe files. In her book, Cherries in Winter,  she shares, not only the ways her family economized when money was short¸ but also the insistence on little luxuries to remind them “not to become miserly in spirit.”

Colón begins her story with “sturdy food that gets you through,” sharing selected dishes from generations of coping. “In my family,” she writes, “trying to avoid some sort of bad time was, as Mom puts it, “Like running through raindrops”—we were going to get wet no matter what.” The trick was to remember, “We may be broke, but we’re not poor.”

Colón describes being laid off at the beginning of the recession in 2008 and starting to adapt to living in New York on one salary—her husband’s. With a nod to the dislocation that comes with job loss, she serves up sixty years of recipes, but not just recipes for food. These are “artifacts from times both good and bad—not vague references, but proof that we’ve been through worse than this and have come out okay.”

It’s not a matter of economy when Colón writes, “I can’t bear to part with anything that belonged to my family.” It’s the people she holds dear, the memory of Grandpa using the potato masher.

She comments on the benefits of joblessness—time; time spent with people we love is the best gift; the catch is it’s temporary.” She remembers her grandmother responding to the inevitable, “How’re you doing, Tillie?”

“Fabulous,” her grandmother would answer, “Never better.”

“If she wasn’t,” Colón writes, she did the best she could and didnt waste time complaining.

Tomorrow’s Families: Clues in the Past?

In Threshold: A Memoir, I’ve written about an extended family and how it faced the challenges of two-and-a-half centuries. A good share of how that worked was based upon that one word—extended.  When times got tough, there were just plenty of them to fill any gaps.

Like when my great-great-great-grandparents, Hiram and Sicily Hendricks, moved to Nebraska. That was back in 1854 when the Territory opened for settlement and there weren’t many people out here. They didn’t come alone. Both their married daughters came too, along with their husbands. They had learned that living near their parents would provide them help and support when they needed it. Other families came along, as well, providing an instant community.

Like when Aunt Molly and Uncle Jasper went bust in Missouri and arrived in Nebraska just before the winter snows set in. They had their team and wagon with their household belongings, but no place to live. They drove that team to Jasper’s brother, my Great-grandpa Will and Great-grandma Frank. And they all got together and fixed up the old corn crib; made it over into a house that was tight enough and comfortable enough that Jasper and Molly, in their turn, hosted live-in guests that winter.

Like when my great-aunt Edna lost her husband to a sudden appendicitis attack. She had four little stair-step children. Aunt Nina had just graduated from high school, so she moved in for a few weeks and helped out until Edna could get on her feet. Her dad and her brother got together, cared for, and harvested the crop her husband had in the field. Grandma Hazel and Grandpa George taught her how to drive. Great-grandma and Great-grandpa had the means to retire, so they moved to a little house in town and turned their farm house over to Edna, along with a few acres to graze a milk cow. There was a chicken house and a barn. Her oldest brother provided her a hog from time to time so the kids would have plenty of meat. And he hired her oldest son, when he was old enough, to provide wages for the family and to teach him how to work.

And “whenever we went to the store, we got something we knowed she needed,” Grandma said. “It was a duty, but we wanted to do it.”

And why did they want to do it? Because they were a family and they’d grown up together. “I suppose it was love,” Grandma said. Well, of course it was. But now we’re too scattered out and too stressed out to provide that kind of love and support. Two-income families struggle to survive and kids compete for whatever attention’s left at the end of the day, rather than enjoying their lives together.  A good share of the time, grandparents and aunts and uncles are hundreds of miles away and unable to fill in with laps to sit on and stories to tell. And no one feels safe; no one feels the presence of someone to count on when they just don’t have any more to give.

What about tomorrow’s families? Perhaps there are some clues in those old, traditional families, but that’s a topic for another time.

Niecey Roy’s Literary Fender Bender Brings Romance

Niecey Roy’s Literary Fender Bender Brings Romance: I finished reading Fender Bender Blues a few days ago and, although I’m not normally a big fan of romance, I just couldn’t resist the title. I mean, who can resist the blues. We’ve all had ‘em. And fender benders? I guess there are people who’ve never had any, but I’ve made up for their lack of fun. So I just had to find out where Niecey Roy got her ideas for this novel that’s why I asked her to answer a few questions for me and my readers.
1) Niecey, I’ve already given away your book title and genre as well as your name, so I wonder if you would tell my readers something about how you chose to write romances.
Faith, I don’t think I chose romance…it chose me. I’m a major bookworm. I always have been. When I started writing, I thought for sure mystery/thriller genre was where I’d go, but when I began to pen my first story, it was a YA contemporary romance. Then in high school, I wrote a historical romance. The next story I began writing was an adult contemporary romance, and the rest is history.
2) Is this your first novel, or should we be looking for other works by Niecey Roy?
Fender Bender Blues is my first published novel. But it won’t be my last! I’m almost finished with the second, which should be in my editor’s hands by the end of March. I’m also working on a contemporary romance series, and the first two books in that series should be out this year.
3) Now for the question I’ve been waiting to ask. Where did you get your ideas for a romance that begins, literally, with a collision?
Ah!!! I get this question a lot, ha! I was actually in a fender bender with a good looking guy in a suit. He backed into my tiny little Cavalier with his big ‘ole truck. My car had the most damage. We exchanged insurance cards, and that was it (I was married and pregnant at the time, so there were no romantic feelings). But when I drove away, I thought, What if… And that’s how Fender Bender Blues began.
4) In this novel, you’ve written a couple of characters who both have trouble with their careers, one who’s struggling to find a new one and the other obsessed with his. Are these characters patterned after people you know or are they completely fabricated?
Rachel is patterned a bit after me… For a long time I struggled with what my place in the world was. Of course, I knew I was a writer, but I’m also not rich, so I couldn’t afford to stay home and just write. I had to have a job to help put food on the table for my family, first. I didn’t know what I wanted to be! In high school, I was sure I would go on to law school, but then my sister got pregnant, and my first year of college I ended up having to quit so I could stay home and watch her baby so she could graduate high school. It was frustrating, and going back part time just didn’t work for me. I lost motivation, lost sight of what to do with myself, and just took business courses and English courses until I got married and had my first child. I felt lost for a long time. I think that’s where Rachel’s feeling of panic over trying to find her career path came from. Thankfully, she found hers, and so did I. I’m a legal assistant and I love every moment of it!
5) Who would you choose to play those characters, if the book were made into a movie?
Amy Adams would make a great Rachel, but I also think that Isla Fisher could nail the role. Chris Pine would make a good Craig (he has the right facial structure), but I also think Channing Tatum would be perfect (I love him!!!)
6) What other books would you compare yours to?
I think my style is more on par with Jennifer Crusie or Janet Evanovich’s romances. I think anyone who enjoys a Kate Perry novel, or even Rachel Gibson would probably enjoy my writing style.
7) How is your book unique within the genre of contemporary romance?
I don’t know… I think I just like to write what I like to read. It’s unique in that my love of cars shines through, and the real live men in my life were…