St. Patrick's day always brings a conflicted tangle of emotions for me.
I am of Irish ancestry, as is evidenced by my pale skin and my remarkable ability to blush crimson right up to (and including) my scalp. There is no small amount of pride for me in St. Pat's day.
I was also adopted, and March 17, 1966 is the day I was brought home to live with my aunt and grandparents by my miscreant of a father. This brings feelings of gratitude that almost, but not entirely, make up for the underlying feeling of abandonment and lingering anger and resentment for the less fun bits of my growing-up years.
And today is the day when everyone likes to pretend that they are Irish.
And that is offensive to me.
A very wise friend once said to me that when I have the urge to say "this might piss some people off, but..." to shut the hell up (OK, she was way nicer than that, but still the message was there).
But you know what? This is one of those times I am going to forge ahead.
Why is it acceptable for people to dress up in green, get blind drunk on Guinness and stagger around trying to speak in a badly affected brogue?
For me, personally, that behavior is as offensive as someone wearing blackface would be to an African American.
It is insensitive. It is biased. It is mocking an ethnic heritage that is ancient and proud.
Please think of that tomorrow as you drink your green beer and eat your corned beef and cabbage. For some of us (OK, for me,) this is a high holy day to respect and honor an ancient, beautiful, proud heritage. Please don't ridicule it.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
bios
Because I am going to lead a workshop session and be a speaker at the conference, the organizers asked me to write up a short biographical blurb for the program. They reminded me again of the special rules I must operate within: No profanity, no sex, no dungeon furniture. Thus limited, I came up with these four options, hoping one will fit the bill for the program.
1. Dawn is a 1995 graduate of a Women Unlimited 14-week Bridge and Road Construction Program and has worked since then on two Maine bridge projects, as a union sheet metal worker apprentice, a truck driver for a Midwestern agricultural coop, a metro bus driver in Minneapolis, MN, and Ellsworth, Maine, and is presently working as a self-employed contractor on Mount Desert Island. She has also worked in journalism, which accounts for her grumpy attitude. On good days she strives to fix more than she breaks.
2. Dawn is a case study in what happens when ADHD children grow up. Unable to sit still at a desk job and with an attitude so poor that it precludes her from working for someone else, she is now a self-employed contractor on Mount Desert Island. Even working for herself is touchy some days, although she has never had to fire herself.
3. Dawn is a 1995 graduate of Women Unlimited, where she learned welding, blueprint reading, first aid/CPR as well as getting her class B truck driver's license. She presently uses all of those skills in her job as a self-employed contractor on Mount Desert Island, doing home repair and light construction. In the past year, Dawn has installed a fiberglass shower stall, built a screen porch, painted the interiors of many houses, installed gutters, re-built window sills, washed and stained several decks, built a brick threshold, pruned trees, trimmed shrubs, created and tiled a shower stall, repaired a rotted shower enclosure and floor, demolished a greenhouse and built a custom sun porch, and built a delivery shed. She likes to weld and cook in her spare time. She is ruled by a small, bouncy dog.
4. Dawn prefers to lounge around days in her pajamas, playing on the Internet and face book. Unfortunately, she has not yet found a patron to support this passion, so she works as a contractor on Mount Desert Island. She can usually be counted on to say and do the wrong thing, but comes through with the right ones often enough to be asked to speak at this conference. She has a bad attitude and especially hates mornings.
1. Dawn is a 1995 graduate of a Women Unlimited 14-week Bridge and Road Construction Program and has worked since then on two Maine bridge projects, as a union sheet metal worker apprentice, a truck driver for a Midwestern agricultural coop, a metro bus driver in Minneapolis, MN, and Ellsworth, Maine, and is presently working as a self-employed contractor on Mount Desert Island. She has also worked in journalism, which accounts for her grumpy attitude. On good days she strives to fix more than she breaks.
2. Dawn is a case study in what happens when ADHD children grow up. Unable to sit still at a desk job and with an attitude so poor that it precludes her from working for someone else, she is now a self-employed contractor on Mount Desert Island. Even working for herself is touchy some days, although she has never had to fire herself.
3. Dawn is a 1995 graduate of Women Unlimited, where she learned welding, blueprint reading, first aid/CPR as well as getting her class B truck driver's license. She presently uses all of those skills in her job as a self-employed contractor on Mount Desert Island, doing home repair and light construction. In the past year, Dawn has installed a fiberglass shower stall, built a screen porch, painted the interiors of many houses, installed gutters, re-built window sills, washed and stained several decks, built a brick threshold, pruned trees, trimmed shrubs, created and tiled a shower stall, repaired a rotted shower enclosure and floor, demolished a greenhouse and built a custom sun porch, and built a delivery shed. She likes to weld and cook in her spare time. She is ruled by a small, bouncy dog.
4. Dawn prefers to lounge around days in her pajamas, playing on the Internet and face book. Unfortunately, she has not yet found a patron to support this passion, so she works as a contractor on Mount Desert Island. She can usually be counted on to say and do the wrong thing, but comes through with the right ones often enough to be asked to speak at this conference. She has a bad attitude and especially hates mornings.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
An honor (and the bit you won't get to hear)
Every year there is a conference for tradeswomen in Maine. Not Surprisingly, it is called the Maine Tradeswomen's Conference. It is a two-day affair, with a Job fair on Friday afternoon and dinner, plus a full day of workshop sessions and seminars and hands-on stuff on Saturday.
Because of my overwhelming charm (and a solemn promise not to say anything inappropriate), I have been asked to be one of the speakers at the Saturday night dinner hour. The chief woman in charge of this shindig is a friend and her instructions to me were: No swearing. And no sex talk.
Well shit, then. What am I supposed to say?
Something about being a self-employed contractor, work for myself, every day is something different, independence, freedom, yadda yadda. But none of the good stuff. Phooey. That's ok, though. I'll do it and be honored for the chance.
I have also been asked to do a session on installing ceramic tile. Seems I've done a couple tile jobs lately that make people think I know what I am doing. Got 'em all fooled, I say.
Actually, I am looking forward to the tile thing. I've been busy making lists and preparing lesson plans, such that they are. I was in the big city of Bangor yesterday and found some affordable trowels and tools and such, so I picked them up. I'll find some more at my local Reny's. There is a place called the Re-store that sells odd sized and leftover materials from construction jobs. I hope they might have some tiles that we can pick up on the cheap.
And I have been sworn to NOT share the story of my first tile job. Wanna hear? Of course you do. If not, you know where the knitters are. Have fun.
Many years ago when I was single (both are key points here), I lived in the big city of Portland. I was working with the union as a sheet metal worker apprentice and was doing the usual cycle of work like crazy, get laid off for a month or more. During those down times, it was nice to find little jobs to help supplement the unemployment pittance.
I had a friend from my old college days who I stayed in touch with off-and-on through the years. Back in college, I was hopelessly in love and devoted to my first girlfriend. Strictly unavailable. This friend of mine had a more, shall we say "fluid" understanding of relationships and would often swing by the newspaper office to flirt outrageously, get me all flustered and blushing and then flounce off to have coffee with friends.
We have always been close, and at one point she even posed for me when I did a series of black and white nudes for a class. She was enormously pregnant at the time. They are still some of my most treasured works. Interesting thing: when protected by a camera, I am unflappable. Same goes for when I am bartending. Behind the bar, nothing phases me. I can flirt and talk trash and be outrageous. I could light cigarettes, and make the girls blush.When I come out from around there, well, let's just say not so much swagger. Ahem. It is a sad truth of being me.
So anyway, years have passed, I was no longer with that first girlfriend, and I have been spending some time on the phone with this old friend. As is typical with me, I often cannot tell when a woman is flirting with me. Often we both have to be entirely naked before I am really sure that I am reading things properly. So she's lamenting that she doesn't like the tub enclosure in her house. I ask what she'd like. Tile, she says. I can do tile, I say, thinking with some other part of my anatomy besides my brain.
I had never held a ceramic tile before that day. Ever.
But, blessed (or cursed) with extreme confidence, I figured there were some pretty moronic tile guys out there. If they can do this, I can certainly figure it out. We scheduled a three-day weekend when I could come up and do this job, she flirted some more, I blushed some more, and we both marked our calendars for a weekend in October.
Another thing that might be of interest here is that this friend of mine was married back then. In fact, she married a guy in college - and had a baby with him - who had previously identified as gay. I don't have to tell you that this caused enormous concern and confusion among the gay community on our tiny little campus. Our numbers were small enough, but when something like that happens, it strikes at the dating pool of both genders. But, accepting as we were, we all said OK, whatever floats your boat, and we went to the wedding. I even took the pictures.
By the time she and I were talking about tiles, they had split up. He had his own place across town and they were doing the child-care and custody shuffle. So now I am dealing with a single mom. This is an utterly foreign thing to me, so I called another friend who was a single mom and ran the scenario by her. Am I reading into this more than I should? I asked. Not on a bet, she said. If she's sending the kids to be with dad for the weekend, that's a sign. As a single mom, I can assure you, you're in.
So I headed up the highway with a truck full of tools and a light heart (or whatever) filled with anticipation.
Only I arrived there late at night on the day before I was to start the job, to find her girlfriend in residence. Her on-and-off-for over-a-decade-rumored-to-be-violently-crazy-girlfriend.
Whoops. OK. I did misread all of that flirty stuff. I'm just here to fix the bathroom. Whatever. Gotta call that friend when I get home and tell her she's full of shit. I laid myself down in the spare bedroom and went to sleep.
In the morning I awoke to find that the girlfriend had just left for a four-day haul driving a truck.
Oh.
It was a little unnerving, but not one to cross relationship lines, I grabbed firmly hold of the notion that my old college chum was in a relationship and thus off-limits, and I set to work on the upstairs bathroom. I worked and worked and ripped and tore and made it up as I went along. We drove to the big box hardware place and bought tile and cement and grout and she flirted and I blushed, but remained resolute in my understanding of the binary state of things. (She had a girlfriend, thus she was unavailable to me. Period.)
At the end of day two, a harsh rain blew in, covering the full moon with a storm front that sent my senses off the edge. I am sensitive to weather and the phases of the moon and have been known to make some of my most ill-advised decisions ever at the height of one or the other. We went to the local hotel spa to sozzle and shower, then out for dinner. The flirting increased. A delicate negotiation followed. More flirting. It all felt very "Dustin Hoffman saying 'Why, you are seducing me, Mrs. Robinson!' Pause. gulp. 'Aren't you?' " Are you sure about this? Quite and very. Well. Ahem. Yeah. Ahem again.
I gained a new respect for the heretofore in my experience largely unseen physical strength of moms.
The weekend went well. The almost ex-husband came over to say hi and check progress. If he noticed which bed was slept in and which wasn't, he didn't mention it, and he took the kids to his house for the night again. I dearly wish he had not turned out to be such an ass, but I did adore him for that one weekend.
When the tiles were up and done, the faucet and shower stuff put back together, and my tools were getting loaded onto my truck, I heard my - what? customer? client? Those words suddenly seemed awkward at best - friend on the phone. The girlfriend had just crossed back into Maine and would be home in a few hours.
I hit the road back to Portland, just a little bit shaken by the whole experience.
I vowed off tile jobs for a very long time after that. Too complicated, I said. No thanks. Oh yes, I do know how, it's just... well ... why don't you have me build a deck instead, hmm? Or paint the kitchen. Yeah, just not tiles.
Yeah.
And I don't get to tell that story, either in the workshop session or at dinner Saturday night. Can you imagine? Feh.
Because of my overwhelming charm (and a solemn promise not to say anything inappropriate), I have been asked to be one of the speakers at the Saturday night dinner hour. The chief woman in charge of this shindig is a friend and her instructions to me were: No swearing. And no sex talk.
Well shit, then. What am I supposed to say?
Something about being a self-employed contractor, work for myself, every day is something different, independence, freedom, yadda yadda. But none of the good stuff. Phooey. That's ok, though. I'll do it and be honored for the chance.
I have also been asked to do a session on installing ceramic tile. Seems I've done a couple tile jobs lately that make people think I know what I am doing. Got 'em all fooled, I say.
Actually, I am looking forward to the tile thing. I've been busy making lists and preparing lesson plans, such that they are. I was in the big city of Bangor yesterday and found some affordable trowels and tools and such, so I picked them up. I'll find some more at my local Reny's. There is a place called the Re-store that sells odd sized and leftover materials from construction jobs. I hope they might have some tiles that we can pick up on the cheap.
And I have been sworn to NOT share the story of my first tile job. Wanna hear? Of course you do. If not, you know where the knitters are. Have fun.
Many years ago when I was single (both are key points here), I lived in the big city of Portland. I was working with the union as a sheet metal worker apprentice and was doing the usual cycle of work like crazy, get laid off for a month or more. During those down times, it was nice to find little jobs to help supplement the unemployment pittance.
I had a friend from my old college days who I stayed in touch with off-and-on through the years. Back in college, I was hopelessly in love and devoted to my first girlfriend. Strictly unavailable. This friend of mine had a more, shall we say "fluid" understanding of relationships and would often swing by the newspaper office to flirt outrageously, get me all flustered and blushing and then flounce off to have coffee with friends.
We have always been close, and at one point she even posed for me when I did a series of black and white nudes for a class. She was enormously pregnant at the time. They are still some of my most treasured works. Interesting thing: when protected by a camera, I am unflappable. Same goes for when I am bartending. Behind the bar, nothing phases me. I can flirt and talk trash and be outrageous. I could light cigarettes, and make the girls blush.When I come out from around there, well, let's just say not so much swagger. Ahem. It is a sad truth of being me.
So anyway, years have passed, I was no longer with that first girlfriend, and I have been spending some time on the phone with this old friend. As is typical with me, I often cannot tell when a woman is flirting with me. Often we both have to be entirely naked before I am really sure that I am reading things properly. So she's lamenting that she doesn't like the tub enclosure in her house. I ask what she'd like. Tile, she says. I can do tile, I say, thinking with some other part of my anatomy besides my brain.
I had never held a ceramic tile before that day. Ever.
But, blessed (or cursed) with extreme confidence, I figured there were some pretty moronic tile guys out there. If they can do this, I can certainly figure it out. We scheduled a three-day weekend when I could come up and do this job, she flirted some more, I blushed some more, and we both marked our calendars for a weekend in October.
Another thing that might be of interest here is that this friend of mine was married back then. In fact, she married a guy in college - and had a baby with him - who had previously identified as gay. I don't have to tell you that this caused enormous concern and confusion among the gay community on our tiny little campus. Our numbers were small enough, but when something like that happens, it strikes at the dating pool of both genders. But, accepting as we were, we all said OK, whatever floats your boat, and we went to the wedding. I even took the pictures.
By the time she and I were talking about tiles, they had split up. He had his own place across town and they were doing the child-care and custody shuffle. So now I am dealing with a single mom. This is an utterly foreign thing to me, so I called another friend who was a single mom and ran the scenario by her. Am I reading into this more than I should? I asked. Not on a bet, she said. If she's sending the kids to be with dad for the weekend, that's a sign. As a single mom, I can assure you, you're in.
So I headed up the highway with a truck full of tools and a light heart (or whatever) filled with anticipation.
Only I arrived there late at night on the day before I was to start the job, to find her girlfriend in residence. Her on-and-off-for over-a-decade-rumored-to-be-violently-crazy-girlfriend.
Whoops. OK. I did misread all of that flirty stuff. I'm just here to fix the bathroom. Whatever. Gotta call that friend when I get home and tell her she's full of shit. I laid myself down in the spare bedroom and went to sleep.
In the morning I awoke to find that the girlfriend had just left for a four-day haul driving a truck.
Oh.
It was a little unnerving, but not one to cross relationship lines, I grabbed firmly hold of the notion that my old college chum was in a relationship and thus off-limits, and I set to work on the upstairs bathroom. I worked and worked and ripped and tore and made it up as I went along. We drove to the big box hardware place and bought tile and cement and grout and she flirted and I blushed, but remained resolute in my understanding of the binary state of things. (She had a girlfriend, thus she was unavailable to me. Period.)
At the end of day two, a harsh rain blew in, covering the full moon with a storm front that sent my senses off the edge. I am sensitive to weather and the phases of the moon and have been known to make some of my most ill-advised decisions ever at the height of one or the other. We went to the local hotel spa to sozzle and shower, then out for dinner. The flirting increased. A delicate negotiation followed. More flirting. It all felt very "Dustin Hoffman saying 'Why, you are seducing me, Mrs. Robinson!' Pause. gulp. 'Aren't you?' " Are you sure about this? Quite and very. Well. Ahem. Yeah. Ahem again.
I gained a new respect for the heretofore in my experience largely unseen physical strength of moms.
The weekend went well. The almost ex-husband came over to say hi and check progress. If he noticed which bed was slept in and which wasn't, he didn't mention it, and he took the kids to his house for the night again. I dearly wish he had not turned out to be such an ass, but I did adore him for that one weekend.
When the tiles were up and done, the faucet and shower stuff put back together, and my tools were getting loaded onto my truck, I heard my - what? customer? client? Those words suddenly seemed awkward at best - friend on the phone. The girlfriend had just crossed back into Maine and would be home in a few hours.
I hit the road back to Portland, just a little bit shaken by the whole experience.
I vowed off tile jobs for a very long time after that. Too complicated, I said. No thanks. Oh yes, I do know how, it's just... well ... why don't you have me build a deck instead, hmm? Or paint the kitchen. Yeah, just not tiles.
Yeah.
And I don't get to tell that story, either in the workshop session or at dinner Saturday night. Can you imagine? Feh.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
March in Maine
"There's no place like Bermuda"
~click~
"There's no place like Bermuda"
~click~
"There's no place like Bermuda"
~click~
*opens eyes and looks around and the slushy slop*
"Shit."
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
more food porn
Today was not nearly as miserable as yesterday. I still had to shovel some, but the sun was out, the wind was mild, and it was a much nicer day all around. The weather forecast calls for four days with no snow or rain, so I went to the lumber store and picked up some lumber for a project I am working on. That's a good feeling. Gonna fire up the compressor tomorrow and bang some high-speed nails. Yee-haw. Or whatever. It's gonna be cool, I know that.
So tonight I decided to use the nice little pieces of flounder I found at the store yesterday. Six fillets weighed just 1.25 pounds - just more than we need for dinner.
Now this is a recipe that has a history to it. In 1983, my grandmother died. It was my freshman year at college, and it left my aunt and I very much alone in the world, it seemed. I came home for the funeral and such, and then had an already planned weekend home a couple of weeks later. I came home for it and we didn't quite know what to do with ourselves. Not without Nana there. Fortunately, a friend brought over this dish with easy instructions and a recipe card attached. It is so easy that we immediately adopted it as a staple and still enjoy it to this day. It is light and elegant and takes less than a half-hour from start to finish.
Ingredients:
1 pound flounder or sole fillets (SERVES TWO! Add two fillets - or one half pound - per additional person)
1/4 cup slivered almonds
1 box frozen broccoli spears, thawed
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
sliver the almonds if you were cheap and bought whole ones like I do
Line pan with foil and drizzle olive oil in the bottom
Lay the fillets in the pan, ugly side down and put the thawed broccoli on the fillets.
Sprinkle the slivered almonds onto the broccoli.
Fold the fillets over the broccoli and almonds.
Put in the oven for 10 minutes.
This is a good time to shred the cheese. I love these cheese graters - this is the sister one to the one I used last night to make soup. My aunt slices the cheddar to put on the fish, because, well, these graters used to be my grandmother's and now they're mine and my aunt can't for the life of her remember where she put hers..... ahem.
Remove fish from oven to discover that the fillets have UN-folded themselves. Bastards.
Try to fold the fish back over the broccoli (usually with limited success).
Turn the oven to BROIL.
Sprinkle the fish and broccoli with the cheese.
Put back in the oven, using one of the lower racks. (I used the next-to-the-bottom one. Cook for 5 minutes or until the cheese is lightly browned and bubbled.
Serve with rice pilaf or couscous.
Enjoy!
Monday, March 2, 2009
Food porn: Cheddar-broccoli-potato soup
Oh man.
It sleeted here today. It snowed overnight and then it sleeted. Little balls of ice fell from the sky and collected in yards and driveways and front walks and I had to go move them around.
This is the damnedest stuff. It's like trying to push tiny little BBs around and pile them here and there. They just won't stay. They won't stick to each other. What a pain.
And speaking of pain, it's amazing how sharp a teeny little ROUND ball of ice can feel when it hits the skin of one's face. A and I both worked with hoods up and heads down today. Miserable stuff, that sleet. And bitterly cold.
So it makes for a good soup night. And not just any thin, watery broth with flimsy vegetables and a couple of noodles floating in a bowl kind of soup, but a hearty, thick, creamy, stick to your ribs kind of soup.
I went online and dug around for a bit. I wanted potato and cheese soup. Maybe with broccoli, maybe not. It would depend on the recipes I found. I dug and looked and found one that looked like a good jumping-off place. What I did to it rendered it sufficiently different from what was
published that I feel zero compunction about not citing a source. Trust me, this ain't that lady's soup. I doubled some stuff, tripled some others, left out the bullion (in potato soup?? wtf?) and added a goodly lump of first-class pancetta. Bullion? Puh-lease.Bear with me here. Some of my pictures washed out with the flash, so there are some dark ones. My apologies.
I started with butter - about 3 tablespoons of it. Plunk, in a pot.
Then I took that goodly hunk of pancetta. I have no idea how much was there - about an inch and a half thick chunk, I think.
and I cut it into cubes and introduced it to the butter. Pig fat, meet milk fat.
They became fast friends.
Then I tossed in about three cups of large-diced onions and let them all sautee around together.
while I peeled and diced (about 3/4 inch big) between 3 and 4 pounds of potatoes. In this case, we ran out of the yellow potatoes we had, so L ran to the neighbor's and borrowed five medium-to-small red skinned ones. Cool. Those cook faster than the yellows, so they went in after the yellows, and I didn't peel them, either. There are no pictures here of onions or potatoes. If you need pictures of onions and potatoes, you have no business in a kitchen. Stop reading now and go see what Mel is knitting at Cabezalana. I think he is headed to India on vacation this week. Maybe he's knitting something. 
There are often kitty and puppy pics. Check it out.I'm sorry, where was I? Right, soup. We're making soup.
So after the onions are translucent (mine caramelized a little bit - no biggie) add a couple cups of water and the diced potatoes. Bring the pot to a boil, cover and let bubble for about 15 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender.
While that is happening, thaw about 20 ounces of frozen broccoli florets in whatever method you prefer. I run warm water over them in a colander in the sink. Just so long as they're not frozen when you add them to the soup.
Now is also a good time to grate about 16 ounces of decently sharp cheddar cheese and set it aside.
Remove about half of the potatoes to a bowl. Turn the burner
heat down to very low.And using an immersion blender, smush around the stuff remaining in the pot. It will look kinda nasty. Add milk here - maybe a cup - to thin it out a bit. It does not have to be a super-smooth puree, just moderately smushed. I suppose you could use an old hand-operated potato masher, but with that sexy stainless boat motor, why would you?
Anyway. Then you add the broccoli and stir it all around. (I
whizzed it a little with the blender just to mush some of the broccoli, too, but only a few pieces.) Let it come up to temperature and then begin adding the cheese, a little at a time, allowing it to melt and incorporate into the soup as you stir. when the cheese is all added and melted, return the potatoes back to the soup and stir until everything is back up to temperature. Be careful, the cheese and potatoes will want to stick to the bottom of the pan, so stir often and don't be tempted to turn the heat up.Serve in large bowls. Salt and pepper to taste. Serves four or five hungry people for supper, six or more as an appetizer.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
25 authors meme
Ms. Lady Deborah over at FROM MY BROWN EYED VIEW has tagged me for this little meme. Sometimes I get to the memes when I am tagged, and sometimes I do not. But this tagging so moved an impressed me that I have moved some things around in order to meet the challenge.
The deal is I am supposed to list 25 authors who have influenced my writing. Then I tag some people at the end and they make up their own list of 25 and tag other people. It is the living next generation of chain letters that my stepmother used to believe in so fervently. Whatever. I know that this will not make me rich, nor will it boomerang back around so that I have a ready-made cookbook of two hundred recipes. This is a task designed to prompt me to share a little bit about myself and to poke some people into doing the same. We may not all get rich, but there is a possibility that we could be enriched along the way. And that works for me.
Here is my list:
1. Herman Melville - Moby Dick was the first book I remember reading where the words felt as though they were meticulously and lovingly crafted by a master artisan.
2. Dorothy Allison - with dirt poor, dysfunctional white trash roots, Dorothy Allison writes from the gut and speaks to my experience.
3. Carolyn Chute - Author of "The Beans of Egypt, Maine" Like Dorothy Allison, but with a Maine accent. Unafraid to write tomes that would sink a ship and still gets them published. Wow.
4. A. A. Milne - some of the simplest, most beautiful prose I have ever read. His stories carry childhood innocence from generation to generation.
5. Gerry Boyle - Maine author of murder mysteries. He used to be my night editor when I worked in newspapers. Always gentle and kind, even as he hacked up my copy.
6. Bill Roorbach - probably considered a Maine author now, even though he is from away, he wrote "Summers with Juliet" and "Temple Stream." He also taught a class in advanced non-fiction writing back when I was in college and showed me that stories don't have to fall into the binary world of complete fiction or dry reports. Non-fiction storytelling can be creative.
7. Randy Shiltz - "The Mayor of Castro Street" and "And the Band Played On" non-fiction can be gripping drama. It can also inspire people to action.
8. Maureen Dowd - Acerbic wit, Irish heritage and fabulous hair. Perhaps she'll run away with me.
9. Molly Ivins - unafraid to gore sacred cows, and brave to the end.
10. Tabitha King (but not for the reasons you'd think) She is a horrible writer with far more ego than her modest talent merits. Married to Stephen (he's written some scary novels), she refuses to allow anyone to edit her material and thus has shown me that no matter what your name is, you need an editor.
11. Rick Copp - Another Mainer. He's written some murder-mysteries, but that is not what inspires me. He was one of the original writers on the television series "Golden Girls." That was the first show I ever saw that stopped me cold with the thought "I want to be a WRITER on that show. Holy shit."
12. Frank McCourt - "Angela's Ashes" and "'Tis" his words show a real representation of the Irish American experience. And his dialogue is beautiful.
13. Barry Longyear - "Manifest Destiny", "Naked Came the Robot", "St. Mary Blue", "It Came From Schenectady" (and many, MANY more) A science fiction writer and another college instructor, Barry challenged me to write clean dialogue and share things from the deepest point of my own vulnerability.
14. Marge Piercy - is still teaching me that there is poetry that speaks to me without being dull.
15. Rita Mae Brown - illustrates to me that a writer must still work very hard to produce quality material, even after they get famous and date Martina Navritalova. Unfortunately, she has not always done that.
16. Ernest Hemmingway - "The Old Man and the Sea" made me weep at its beauty. I want to write so that you can taste the salt on the pages.
17. Edgar Allen Poe - masterful, morose, dark. Not all writing has to be happy.
18. Rhys Bowen - Marvelous spinner of mystery tales in historical settings, her Molly Murphy series was delightful in its description of New York City in the early 20th century.
19. Dale McCormick - "Housemending: Home Repair for the Rest of Us", and "Against the Grain: a Carpentry Guide for Women" Not only has Dale inspired me to use my hands to earn my keep, but she shows me that many of the mysteries of the trades can be figured out with some patience and common sense. A good pencil-drawn diagram can be vital as well, and there is no sin in relying on pictures to show what words might not.
20. Nanci Little - "Grass Widow", "First Resort", "Thin Fire" shows me that lesbian fiction need not be over-mushy like Harlequin Romances nor hard-core, but can be good fiction in its own right. And she introduced me to my little dog.
21. Joan Nestle - because sometimes lesbian fiction can be Harlequin-esque
22. Pat Califia - because sometimes it can be hard-core.
23. Douglas Adams - Hitchiker's Guide series. One of the few things I can re-read again and again. Brilliantly funny with crisp, punchy writing. Love it.
24. Virginia Wolfe - for starting not just a sentence, but a whole book, ("A Room of One's Own") with the word "But." Take that, you stuffy old grammarians!
25. David Sedaris - shows me how to use his own true voice and be poignant and wet-your-pants-funny at the same time.
There are others, I am sure, but this is what I am coming up with today.
Now, Ms. Lady Deborah did not give a little blurb about each one of her authors, but I did. Nobody says you've got to or you don't, just do it the way you'd like. The people I tag are going to do that anyway, without me telling them so.
Here are the people I'm tagging:
Sharon over at the Queen's Blog
dolphyngirl at The Verbosery
Elizabeth at Random Thots
Crum at Lost in the Bozone
Carole McDonnell
Jen at Never a Dull Moment
Bull at Cthulu's Family Restaurant
Joy at A Spot of T
Karen Zipdrive at Pulp Friction
Gladys at Gladys Tells All
Claire at Unmitigated
Kay at Perhaps we learned something...
A final word on this meme and a bit of an explanation as to why it was so important for me to honor it. Ms. Lady Deborah reads my blog nearly everyday. She leaves nice comments. I read her blog every day. Sometimes I leave comments and sometimes I don't. Much of what she writes about is the African-American experience that is her life. Often I have no words to offer. As a white woman living in a predominantly white world, her blog is a window into a world I can never know. I understand discrimination - I am lesbian, after all - but I cannot know her experience with it. I read because the writing is good and because I learn something every day.
When she listed her authors, there were some I knew, many I had heard of and some that were utterly foreign to me. That is to be expected. Then she tagged her people. First was Rippa, a very cool guy with a very cool blog; second was Sojourner's Place, another amazing blog; then Verite Parlant, whose blog is called "Whose Shoes Are These, Anyway?" I love it. Then there was Revvy Rev, a very cool progressive man of the cloth, and then me. Me. ME?! I hardly feel worthy to be grouped with such smart, thoughtful people. Me? Little old grumpy, middle-aged New England lesbian of Irish heritage? I was - and remain - profoundly touched to be included. Of all of the blogs she reads and follows, there was ample opportunity to make up a list entirely of quality bloggers of color. But she included me. I am at once humbled and honored.
I felt a little self-conscious about my list as I wrote it up. It seems I am indeed a product of my own heritage and experience. I have no authors who are people of color. I have a healthy dose of Irish ancestry sprinkled throughout, some women, some gay men, some lesbians, at least one transgender person, but no people of color. Lots of white guys, some quite old and dead, and some women, some similarly old and dead, but nobody that doesn't look like they could have come from my (extended) family tree. I am ashamed of that. It seems that my cultural education is lacking. I will take Ms. Lady Deborah's list and head to my local library to see what I can find. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing others' lists as they respond to this thing.
The deal is I am supposed to list 25 authors who have influenced my writing. Then I tag some people at the end and they make up their own list of 25 and tag other people. It is the living next generation of chain letters that my stepmother used to believe in so fervently. Whatever. I know that this will not make me rich, nor will it boomerang back around so that I have a ready-made cookbook of two hundred recipes. This is a task designed to prompt me to share a little bit about myself and to poke some people into doing the same. We may not all get rich, but there is a possibility that we could be enriched along the way. And that works for me.
Here is my list:
1. Herman Melville - Moby Dick was the first book I remember reading where the words felt as though they were meticulously and lovingly crafted by a master artisan.
2. Dorothy Allison - with dirt poor, dysfunctional white trash roots, Dorothy Allison writes from the gut and speaks to my experience.
3. Carolyn Chute - Author of "The Beans of Egypt, Maine" Like Dorothy Allison, but with a Maine accent. Unafraid to write tomes that would sink a ship and still gets them published. Wow.
4. A. A. Milne - some of the simplest, most beautiful prose I have ever read. His stories carry childhood innocence from generation to generation.
5. Gerry Boyle - Maine author of murder mysteries. He used to be my night editor when I worked in newspapers. Always gentle and kind, even as he hacked up my copy.
6. Bill Roorbach - probably considered a Maine author now, even though he is from away, he wrote "Summers with Juliet" and "Temple Stream." He also taught a class in advanced non-fiction writing back when I was in college and showed me that stories don't have to fall into the binary world of complete fiction or dry reports. Non-fiction storytelling can be creative.
7. Randy Shiltz - "The Mayor of Castro Street" and "And the Band Played On" non-fiction can be gripping drama. It can also inspire people to action.
8. Maureen Dowd - Acerbic wit, Irish heritage and fabulous hair. Perhaps she'll run away with me.
9. Molly Ivins - unafraid to gore sacred cows, and brave to the end.
10. Tabitha King (but not for the reasons you'd think) She is a horrible writer with far more ego than her modest talent merits. Married to Stephen (he's written some scary novels), she refuses to allow anyone to edit her material and thus has shown me that no matter what your name is, you need an editor.
11. Rick Copp - Another Mainer. He's written some murder-mysteries, but that is not what inspires me. He was one of the original writers on the television series "Golden Girls." That was the first show I ever saw that stopped me cold with the thought "I want to be a WRITER on that show. Holy shit."
12. Frank McCourt - "Angela's Ashes" and "'Tis" his words show a real representation of the Irish American experience. And his dialogue is beautiful.
13. Barry Longyear - "Manifest Destiny", "Naked Came the Robot", "St. Mary Blue", "It Came From Schenectady" (and many, MANY more) A science fiction writer and another college instructor, Barry challenged me to write clean dialogue and share things from the deepest point of my own vulnerability.
14. Marge Piercy - is still teaching me that there is poetry that speaks to me without being dull.
15. Rita Mae Brown - illustrates to me that a writer must still work very hard to produce quality material, even after they get famous and date Martina Navritalova. Unfortunately, she has not always done that.
16. Ernest Hemmingway - "The Old Man and the Sea" made me weep at its beauty. I want to write so that you can taste the salt on the pages.
17. Edgar Allen Poe - masterful, morose, dark. Not all writing has to be happy.
18. Rhys Bowen - Marvelous spinner of mystery tales in historical settings, her Molly Murphy series was delightful in its description of New York City in the early 20th century.
19. Dale McCormick - "Housemending: Home Repair for the Rest of Us", and "Against the Grain: a Carpentry Guide for Women" Not only has Dale inspired me to use my hands to earn my keep, but she shows me that many of the mysteries of the trades can be figured out with some patience and common sense. A good pencil-drawn diagram can be vital as well, and there is no sin in relying on pictures to show what words might not.
20. Nanci Little - "Grass Widow", "First Resort", "Thin Fire" shows me that lesbian fiction need not be over-mushy like Harlequin Romances nor hard-core, but can be good fiction in its own right. And she introduced me to my little dog.
21. Joan Nestle - because sometimes lesbian fiction can be Harlequin-esque
22. Pat Califia - because sometimes it can be hard-core.
23. Douglas Adams - Hitchiker's Guide series. One of the few things I can re-read again and again. Brilliantly funny with crisp, punchy writing. Love it.
24. Virginia Wolfe - for starting not just a sentence, but a whole book, ("A Room of One's Own") with the word "But." Take that, you stuffy old grammarians!
25. David Sedaris - shows me how to use his own true voice and be poignant and wet-your-pants-funny at the same time.
There are others, I am sure, but this is what I am coming up with today.
Now, Ms. Lady Deborah did not give a little blurb about each one of her authors, but I did. Nobody says you've got to or you don't, just do it the way you'd like. The people I tag are going to do that anyway, without me telling them so.
Here are the people I'm tagging:
Sharon over at the Queen's Blog
dolphyngirl at The Verbosery
Elizabeth at Random Thots
Crum at Lost in the Bozone
Carole McDonnell
Jen at Never a Dull Moment
Bull at Cthulu's Family Restaurant
Joy at A Spot of T
Karen Zipdrive at Pulp Friction
Gladys at Gladys Tells All
Claire at Unmitigated
Kay at Perhaps we learned something...
A final word on this meme and a bit of an explanation as to why it was so important for me to honor it. Ms. Lady Deborah reads my blog nearly everyday. She leaves nice comments. I read her blog every day. Sometimes I leave comments and sometimes I don't. Much of what she writes about is the African-American experience that is her life. Often I have no words to offer. As a white woman living in a predominantly white world, her blog is a window into a world I can never know. I understand discrimination - I am lesbian, after all - but I cannot know her experience with it. I read because the writing is good and because I learn something every day.
When she listed her authors, there were some I knew, many I had heard of and some that were utterly foreign to me. That is to be expected. Then she tagged her people. First was Rippa, a very cool guy with a very cool blog; second was Sojourner's Place, another amazing blog; then Verite Parlant, whose blog is called "Whose Shoes Are These, Anyway?" I love it. Then there was Revvy Rev, a very cool progressive man of the cloth, and then me. Me. ME?! I hardly feel worthy to be grouped with such smart, thoughtful people. Me? Little old grumpy, middle-aged New England lesbian of Irish heritage? I was - and remain - profoundly touched to be included. Of all of the blogs she reads and follows, there was ample opportunity to make up a list entirely of quality bloggers of color. But she included me. I am at once humbled and honored.
I felt a little self-conscious about my list as I wrote it up. It seems I am indeed a product of my own heritage and experience. I have no authors who are people of color. I have a healthy dose of Irish ancestry sprinkled throughout, some women, some gay men, some lesbians, at least one transgender person, but no people of color. Lots of white guys, some quite old and dead, and some women, some similarly old and dead, but nobody that doesn't look like they could have come from my (extended) family tree. I am ashamed of that. It seems that my cultural education is lacking. I will take Ms. Lady Deborah's list and head to my local library to see what I can find. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing others' lists as they respond to this thing.
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