NOLA Notes

My post yesterday expressed a lot of anger I have over what I have perceived as the culmination of an atmosphere that has been becoming increasingly charged in large part by the tea party and their much-touted gun rights position.

It was pointed out to me on Twitter that this vitriol we today are hearing so much about is heaped on both sides of the aisle.  I have given yesterday’s events a lot of thought.  And am writing this post in an effort to practice what one preaches–to take my own advice.

Based on what I recall in the news and various outlets, the outrageous and egregious political hate-mongering has been from the tea party.  But I concede that I avoid watching most all news.  And consequently there could very well be Pelosi-types that are making just as charging comments against her Right opponents as I can recall being slung from the Right.  Rather than spend my day googling or having comments left by others that can quickly point to the clips of just such Leftist venomous words and deeds, I concede that, in fact, such acidly bitter words have been slung from the Left.

Whenever I am faced with reconciling a truly horrific, violent act (9/11, the Oklahoma shootings, etc.), my immediate reaction is to seek to squarely place blame to those responsible–either legally or ethically.  That was yesterday’s post.

But soon after these devastating, inhumane acts, my feelings turn to what it would take to turn this crazy world around and stop seeing violence as an acceptable answer.  And such queries always lead back to myself: What can I do to reduce the violence in this world?  Because, you see, I cannot stop the Loughners or the McVeighs, the Taliban or irresponsible vitriolic American politicians.  All I can do is look within to see if somehow I played a hand in this atmosphere as well.

And an honest answer to myself would be that, sadly, I did.

I have a hand in further charging this vitriolic atmosphere when I think, and worse, SAY that any one ideology is the problem; when I disagree with the political climate but do nothing more than squawk about it rather than get more involved and take action; when I do nothing beforehand to prevent what I am oh-so-quick to I harp I-told-you-so about; when I am naive enough to think that the bitter lies are on just one side of the aisle.

Words have consequences.  And so does inaction.  And even thoughts of violence have consequences.  In these cold, hard days of being an American, it is time each one of us looks first to ourselves to see if our hands are just a touch as sullied as we cite our opponent’s are.  And work first to cleanse our own.  Only by cleaning one’s own hands, hearts and souls can the process begin to cleanse the nation.

It starts with me.  And you.  Can we walk together, hand-in-hand to a better tomorrow?  Or will we chose to continue to see our fellow Americans whose ideas of a better America being different from our own as the enemy?  This choice is before us, clanging louder than I’ve heard it clang in my lifetime.  May we Americans heed the call and rise up together and not tear each other asunder in the name of politics.

Yesterday, I learned Tulane posted on its listserv that is accessibly by all Tulane employees and students that an employee’s laptop had been stolen over the holidays, and that the computer had on it all, ALL, employee confidential information–name, social security numbers, salary, date of birth, date of hire–for all 2010 employees.  And Tulane’s response is to pay for each employee an identity theft protection for a year. No mention of the employee being fired.  Or why he had this laptop chuck-full of confidential information not on his person but in his car left unattended.

My response? Total irresponsibility.

WHY was this confidential information on a laptop and not a secure server?  How was this laptop allowed to leave the campus?  What training did the employee have about leaving this computer in his car?  As an attorney, I NEVER leave a file in my car. NEVER.  I take work home and stop to eat before I get home? My briefcase comes in with me.  Inconvenient but SAFE.  Why?  Because my clients have entrusted me with confidence in handling their files.  It would be irresponsible to toss it in the back seat and assume it will be safe.

The shooting of Congresswoman Giffords strikes the same chord with me.  At this moment, we don’t know the motive of the shooter.  It may end up being some jealous ex-boyfriend.  But it doesn’t change the climate of irresponsibility that is atwitter over gun-rights-folks ala Sarah Palin right now.

It is irresponsible to advocate for gun rights, to tout, “Don’t retreat, reload;” to promote guns being carried at political gatherings and then to go silent when a politician is shot up at just such a political gathering.  It is irresponsible to suggest that what is best offered in such a case is prayer.  I am watching Fox to understand the Right’s position now.  That is where this talk of prayer was addressed.  Otherwise, the Right sees this a just another tragedy.

The focus of Fox’s Right guests seems to be on whether higher safety measures will be put in place in the future.  How very non-self-reflective of them.

I am told I am jumping to conclusions not even knowing if a gun-toting anti-Democrat was the shooter or what his motive was.  I am writing this now before that motive  is known to make the point that even NOT knowing his motive, that the silence coming from the Sarah Palins is deafening.  That all they can offer are their prayers and not an understanding that maybe, maybe, the position they advocate, the venom with which they spew it, the don’t-retreat-reload-stance is irresponsible.

And what if it turns out that a gun-toting anti-Democrat was the shooter?  That he took too literally the target Sarah Palin had of Giffords, and others, on her website?  I’ll bet the farm they will deem the shooter a lone wolf crazy person that didn’t represent the party’s true tenets and oh-what-a-shame.  And the question of what is one’s responsibility when advocating for the support of dangerous weapons in dangerous settings will not even cross their small minds.

My husband was ever so excited to show me the latest app for his new-fangled smart phone: Swype.  The idea is that you no longer TYPE on that ever so annoying virtual keyboard.  No, now we humans don’t even need the dexterity of our fingers to send a text, an email or even to tweet.  Now all one needs to do is move his finger around on the keyboard and HIT all of the keys in the general order they appear in the word.  No more of that annoying LIFTING OF A FINGER.

Folks, this takes the virtual cake.  I’ve always had a healthy appreciation for the smart phone being smarter than me.  But NOW I have to be insulted by the smart phone thinking itself SO SMART that it knows we humans are the epitome of lazy?  Well, here’s where I take a stand.  I WILL NOT succumb to this non-typing swyping.  I WILL NOT take the first step to the bidding adieu of the QWERTY keyboard.  I mean, QWERTY was invented to increase the typing speed of humans.  Now that we are no longer typing, that pesky QWERTY nonsense will be as obsolete as Liquid Paper in no time.  There is order in this Universe and this Swype app is a small step down a slippery slope to undo all that order.

Well, I for one want my daughter to learn to type and not just SLIDE HER FINGER AROUND ON A KEYBOARD LIKE IT’S A FANCY MAGNADOODLE.  Bad enough she’ll really never appreciate what “phones with cords” are all about.  But now I have to suffer the indignity of a keyboard used NOT TO TYPE?

I won’t be a part of it. No way. No how.

Good day.

I could give up liquor or cussing like a sailor.  Or I could start a diet.  Or swear off picking my cuticles on a bad day.  Or commit to reading only highbrow Russian literature written over one hundred years ago.  Or throw away my television.  Or go entirely green.

The options are endless.  What to chose? What to chose?

I am resolving to living healthier.  I need my mind sharp and my body functioning to the fullest abilities when I am 80 and 90.  We in my family live long.  We don’t always stay sharp though.

I’ve never much cared about being uber healthy or ultra thin.  I’ve always been in good health, and I suppose I am now.  But I can *feel* things are shifting.  Weight doesn’t fall off as easily as it used it when I put my mind to it.  My bum wrist is starting to show those early signs of arthritis.  My spine is more comfortable slouched than straight up.  And these now minor changes are as big to me as if they were a neon sign: Your body is getting older and not doing your biding as quickly as it always has.

So I am upping the ante.  If the same-old/same-old isn’t enough to get me feeling the best I know my body can feel, then it’s time to recommit to yoga.  And eat more vegetables.  And jumping rope too.

Living in New Orleans results in Food being a word that starts with a Capital Letter.  We LOVE to eat; to cook; to celebrate with Food and by Food.  I am NOT giving up Food.  I’d just as well as move to Nebraska where a good meal is simply a steak.  But in order to get the full benefit of life in New Orleans while at the same time keeping my mind and body fully functioning for another 41 years, I am resolved to getting off my sofa more and onto my yoga mat.

Namaste and Happy New Year.

Well, this getting hacked has made me want to whitewash my blog and start fresh.  So the Manifest Theme from WordPress is scratching my itch.  I am certain that soon the oh, so white everywhere will start to hurt my eyes and I’ll want to jazz it up.  But for now, this look seems right.  To write, to wit.

My muscles are getting softer and my bones more brittle.  Being the youngest gives me the ability to look ahead 2, 5, 6, 7 years and see what predicaments into which my body will be getting me.

My mother started to “shrink” about 15 years ago.  We laughed that we were all getting taller than her even though we were no longer growing.  Then arthritis, bursitis and bone spurs started to demand her attention.  Now she’s just undergone shoulder replacement surgery.  Overall, my family is healthy.  But there are certain, common, ailments that we are slightly more at risk over–like osteoporosis.

I feel like I am falling apart–that I will follow the slow road to decline if I don’t TAKE ACTION NOW.  I simply MUST exercise more, eat more green leafy vegetables, practice more yoga, walk my dog more often.  Because unlike my mother who has already lived to raise her children and see grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I must stay together just to be sure Sun gets through school with me still in tack.

I was not ready to be a mother until I became one, at the age of 38.  I have no real regret over not getting there sooner–it just wasn’t the hand I was dealt.  But being an older mother does bring with it a bitter-sweetness: I, personally, am a better mother BECAUSE I am an older mother–I am more mellow, wiser, more patient–but BECAUSE I am an older mother, I have great trepidation about Sun’s future without her parents.

In 40 years, when Sun in my age, she will have, at best, two elderly parents and no siblings.  When we die, she’ll be an orphan.  Not to be melodramatic, but coming from a large family, it greatly pains me to think of my darling Sun alone.  All alone.  When these thoughts creep in, and they do often enough, I push them away by having faith.  Faith that Sun will make the right kind of friends to see her through her entire life so that when we are gone, she’ll have her own family and a lifetime of good memories in which to seek comfort and love and strength.

But between now and then, I have GOT to get my ass in shape so that I can make the most of my life with the ones I love.

This lil blog got hacked.

The techies, quick to the fix,

their brains barely racked.

But the site took on some licks.

So as things get reset

to the way of my choosing

don’t get sad or beset.

Enjoy festive boozing!

Yes, go sip an egg nog

or a Ramos fizz gin.

Nibble a yule log

And let winter set in.

Another funeral attended today

Squeezed between billable hours.

A life’s accomplishments recognized;

A day’s work to do.

Focus made on the small moments,

The quiet moments filled with love.

Allowing that one’s work is so much more

than the hours spent doing the job.

And permitting that pleasure is

successes and soirees and hard-won wins

to no less extent than it is

a family dinner with a green salad

followed by a well mixed drink.

I spoke with Laura Lippman last Friday.  She was engaging and articulate and has that special gift some people have that they willingly offer to others, if they’ll but pay attention.  Luckily for me, I was paying very close attention.

We were brought together to discuss Lippman’s new book, “I’d Know You Anywhere,” which I reviewed here over the weekend.  First up, I remarked upon her Katrina analogy to the villain in “I’d Know You Anywhere.”  She said of it:

As more people should know, the Mississippi coast got hit by a hurricane. New Orleans suffered the human inadequacies of poorly built levees.  With Walter, you have on the one hand these hints that his family was not as warm and supportive as they might have been of him, but they’re not sadists, they’re not unnaturally cruel; they’re just not great parents. And of course lots of people rise above that situation and manage to go on and have lives that don’t involve raping and killing people.  On some level, he’s probably a natural disaster; there’s something that’s probably innate that’s been wrong in his brain chemistry from the day he was born. But on the other hand he’s also somewhat created by his circumstances.  It’s the collision of what was innate in him, what was natural, and what circumstances he has come into and how he interacts with those circumstances.  So, he’s a lot like Hurricane Katrina when it hit New Orleans.  It was a storm that came into contact with human-made catastrophes waiting to happen.

I asked if when she was a newspaper reporter whether she reported on crimes.  She explained that although she was a full-time police reporter during her eight years in Texas, she was a feature writer for her twelve years at the Baltimore Sun.  She noted that although most of the crimes she writes about are based on true crimes, almost none of them are ones on which she ever reported.  She appreciates that one of the gifts she garnered from being a reporter is that she’s not shy about knowing how to find out things she needs to know for a story.  And this is not always a matter of calling a friend or contact.  “Sometimes you just have to go into things cold.  In one book, I needed to know a lot about the working life of a furrier.  And I certainly didn’t know any furriers, but having been a reporter, you know how to call people who know people.  And you sort of put word out ‘I’m looking for someone who knows this.’  And eventually someone says, ‘Well I know a guy.’ And you call this person up.  When you are a novelist trying to get stuff right, people are amazingly helpful and pretty good about some odd, cold phone calls.  Not so much when you are a journalist.”

So where does she draw inspiration about the crimes she writes if not from her days as a reporter?  From her past, as a “consumer of news, not a reporter of news.”  Generally, she is going back decades to pre-CNN/24 hour news days and to crimes that have stayed with her these many years later.  She prefers these generally unfamiliar crimes to provide her a good framework for the tale she will spin, the web she will weave, among the few facts she will retain from the true crime.

In asking her what drew her to write crime stories, I seemed to strike upon a topic about which Lippman had given a lot of thought (probably because she’s been asked the same question over and over). [Note to self: Don't ask crime writers why they write crimes stories.]  She concluded by telling me, “I came into it because it felt accessible and then I got there and realized I didn’t need to go anywhere.  I guess it would be akin to saying I came to live in New Orleans because my car broke down then I realized I was in a fabulous place.”  But in reaching that conclusion, Lippman had lots of advice to offer new writers.  Here’s what she had to say:

I had a friend say to me that for a lot of women who want to start writing, genre is often the avenue in because it seems less presumptuous.  You’re not saying, “I’m going to write the great American novel.”  You’re saying “I’m going to write just a mystery, just a romance, just a science fiction, just paranormal.”  And that was good advice; it really stuck with me.

One of the great things about the mystery genre for writers who are getting their feet wet is that there is framework.  There’s not a formula. There’s not a recipe.  There is no place where it is written down that you do this, this, this, and this.  But there is a framework that if you’ve been reading crime novels, you understand what the basic framework is.  There’s going to be a problem and your main character is going to solve it.

What’s different about genre fiction, and this is paraphrasing or fine-tuning something Raymond Chandler once said, is that mediocre genre fiction can still be successful in that there are lots of undiscerning readers who are perfectly happy with a book that takes them from Point A to Point C and does all the thing that the genre promises, whatever those things are, whether it’s a romance, mystery, science fiction, paranormal.  So very mediocre genre novels do get published. And what Chandler said and where I would disagree with him is he said you never read the ordinary or mediocre literary novel.  Well, I can’t speak for the times he lived in, I read mediocre literary novels all the time.  [I wondered at this point if she'd read my review of "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle."]

The mediocre literary novel is an out-and-out failure.  There’s nothing to recommend it except as a lesson in how not to do something.  The mediocre genre novel can be successful on its own terms because it does the very basic things that it set out to do.  Just because what is known as “literary fiction” doesn’t have the option of being mediocre and successful doesn’t mean that what is known as “genre fiction” doesn’t have the option of being as successful as a literary novel at its most successful.  There’s no ceiling on genre fiction.  It’s almost as if that when a crime novel, when a romance novel, when a science fiction novel is very, very, very good, then it has left the genre by definition of being good. I think that’s a fallacy.

There are great crime novels that are as good as most literary fiction.  I mean, in some ways I guess what I’m saying about why I came to crime fiction is because I thought I could execute at the low end of the scale. [Lippman laughed as she said this.]  “Well, I can write one of those mediocre books.” And then I got inside and saw that it’s open to the sky and I can go as high as I want and the only limit here is me. There’s not an inherit limit in the genre.

What are some of her favorite genre books, books she feels can “stand shoulder to shoulder with current literary novels”?  Dennis Lehane’s “Mystic River” and Kate Atkinson‘s books about her private eye named Jackson Brodie readily came to her mind.  And although she wasn’t sure he is classified as a crime novelist (“I don’t how you’d classify him, just that’s he’s wonderful”), she also praised the works of Daniel Woodrell.

We returned again to “I’d Know You Anywhere,” focusing more on its central theme, how well people really know each other, or even themselves:

I’m really, really crazy about the short stories of Ellen Gilchrist, a fine southern writer.  One of her early stories has a character who is obsessed with her own reputation: What do people think of me? And I thought that was such a fabulous insight into the mind of a teenage girl.  I think teenage girls are fascinated with what is their reputation. How are they known? What are people saying about them? “Oh, God I hope people aren’t talking about me but what would be even worse is that no one is talking about me.”  Teenage girls in particular tend to be interested in famous people, and I think it’s natural that even as they are following and worshiping and thinking about some famous person they’ve never met, they can’t help wondering if people are thinking about them, following them, paying attention to them, asking themselves, “How am I known?”

She took care to explain that “the word ‘KNOW’ was a very deliberate choice in the title” of her new book: “it’s all about how we’re known and how we know others and what it means to know anybody.”

We may not really know each other and ourselves as much as we think we do, but what I do know is that I have thoroughly enjoyed the odyssey that has been the last six weeks beginning with my receipt of an email from Lippman’s publisher, the likes of which I usually ignore.  And regardless of whether “I’d Know You Anywhere” goes in the annals of fiction under “literary” or “genre,” it is very fine fiction.

Don’t forget, I have two hardbacks to give away of “I’d Know You Anywhere.”  For a chance to win one, just leave me a comment telling me some of your favorite mystery writers, private eye works, or other mystery genre books that were STILL with you long after you were done reading them.  Laura Lippman will be doing a reading at the Garden District Book Shop next Saturday, October 9th.  Get your comments in by tomorrow, September 30, so you’ll have her book in time to attend her reading and get her to sign it!

Laura Lippman’s “I’d Know You Anywhere,” opens on the tranquil domesticity of the Benedict family, Eliza and Peter, and their two children, Iso (short for Isobel, aged 13) and Albie (8).  But by the end of Chapter One, the first fissure of that sense of utter calm and peace is revealed: Eliza receives a handwritten letter from a woman writing on behalf of the man who kidnapped Eliza when she was 15.  Walter is now on Death Row with his execution date looming.  The letter says that Walter had seen Eliza’s picture in a magazine and that even after all these years, “[s]till, I’d know you anywhere.”  The letter goes on to explain that Walter feels he owes Eliza an apology and would “love to hear from [her].”

And so we are off.

This isn’t your typical Whodunit.  We know from the outset Walter did it, was caught, and was given a strong punishment.  We know early on that what he “did”  was rape and murder.  Young girls.  Only one of which survived: Eliza.

What we don’t know, what Eliza herself does not know, is WHY her.  What good did Walter see in her and not in the others to spare her life?  Or, from the 15 year old Elizabeth’s point of view, what didn’t he see in her?  What made her so different from the other girls way back then?

Much of the book swaps chapters from current day to 1985, when Eliza was 15 and still “Elizabeth.”  Coincidentally, the Summer of 1985 was also the summer that *I* was 15.  Elizabeth came from a good, middle class family; she was a touch shy.  She didn’t need nor seek to be the center of attention.  She liked that her older sister was the drama hog of the family because the energy always seemed focused off of Elizabeth and that was just fine.  And oddly, the same was quite true for me at 15 as well.  The Elizabeths of the world aren’t better or worse than other teenagers, but they just don’t KNOW exactly who they are yet and they’d prefer the spotlight not to be on them as they figure it out.

We follow Walter before he meets Elizabeth; as he kills his first victim.  We follow as Elizabeth takes a shortcut through the woods and crosses paths with Walter and is kidnapped.  We follow as Elizabeth’s hair is cut to disguise her look, and her clothes get worn day after day becoming soiled and unkempt.  We follow as Elizabeth struggles to work out who Walter is and how she can do things she believes will extend her time with Walter as a plan to extend the time when he will kill her.

Meanwhile, we watch in present day as Eliza struggles with not wanting to open further any line of communication with Walter.  Walter persists, however, and each unannounced missive from Walter shakes Eliza more: to whom else did Walter give her address? How far will he (they?) go to get her to hear him out?

Getting a letter from Walter was like some exiled citizen of New Orleans getting a telegram signed ‘Katrina.’ Hey, how are you?  Do you ever think of me? Those were some crazy times, huh?

Eliza decides to take his call, to hear his apology.  Why?  Because even these 20+ years later, Eliza still questions who she is, who she was, and how to allow herself to be okay with being “the lucky one.”  Well, that plus he promises he’ll tell her details of other girls so that other families can have peace.

But does Walter have yet another plan of manipulation of Eliza up his sleeve?  Will she unwittingly take his bait and play right into his hands?

Mystery aside, Lippman is a good writer.  Her characters are fully developed and evolving.  The relationships she describes are real.  So real, I wondered if Lippman was the mother of a teenage girl; if her parents were psychiatrists (as Eliza’s are).  Here’s a passage relating to Eliza’s father, Manny:

Manny was always careful to use the most neutral words possible–experienced not suffered, or even endured.  Not because he was inclined to euphemisms, but because Eliza’s parents didn’t want to define her life for her.  “You get to be the expert on yourself,” her father said frequently, and Eliza found it an enormously comforting saying, an unexpected gift from two parents who had knowledge, training, and history to be the expert on her, if they so chose.  They probably  did know her better than she knew herself in some ways, but they refused to claim this power.  Sometimes she wished they would, or at least drop a few hints.

Or this description of the woman who has befriended and is helping Walter:

Barbara knew from scared little mouses.  Mice.  She had been one, behind her cranky facade.  She had skittered to her car in the morning, worried it wouldn’t start, skittered into the school, tried to teach history to bored seventh and eighth graders, skittered out of the Pimlico neighborhood at day’s end, cooked dinner, fretted over calories and fat and cholesterol.  Graded papers in front of the television, usually falling asleep there.  Rinse, lather, repeat.

See? Not scary. Well, definitely scary but not macabre.  Bottom line, Lippman understands people.  She gets that we aren’t just “good” or “bad.”  That there are many shades of gray.  And the true gem of this story is NOT the crime or the mystery.  It is the artfulness that is Lippman’s insight and writing.  “I’d Know You Anywhere” is layered and goes deeper, more introspective, than others in its genre.  And to me, that is a beautiful thing.

Tomorrow, I’ll post about my conversation with Laura Lippman about her writing, Eliza and Walter, and other interesting topics.

As I posted yesterday, I have two hardbacks to give away of “I’d Know You Anywhere.”  And all you have to do for a chance to win is just leave me a comment telling me some of your favorite mystery writers, private eye works, or other books of intrigue that were STILL with you long after you were done reading them.  Laura Lippman will be doing a reading at the Garden District Book Shop on October 9th.  So this little giveaway ends Thursday, September 30, so that you’ll have her book in time to attend her reading and have her sign your new book!