March 2007
In this issue:
* Rainbow at Seal Rock
*The French Fry Song
* Publications
* Oregon writing events
* Book report
Double rainbow over Seal Rock wood carving shop
Buy Your Own French Fries!
Every now and then a writing exercise comes across the Internet that I have to try. The suggestion for Valentine's Day was to write the worst love song ever. This is what I came up with. The melody is not included, but there isn't much of one. Just snap your fingers and sing whatever notes you want to a steady 4/4 beat.
The French Fry Song
He reached for her hand
across the hamburger stand,
looked into her eyes, and said,
"Can I share your fries?"
She said, "I like French fries,
they're fattening it's true,
but they'll stick with me longer
than I'll be with you."
CHORUS
He said, "Baby, baby, baby, you know that ain't true.
I'll never leave you whatever you do."
She gathered her fries and put 'em back in the sack
and left that McDonald's without lookin' back.
They're crispy and salty
dietetically faulty,
they don't have your pecs,
but they're better than sex.
Don't try to romance me.
You don't have a chance. See,
I only date guys
who buy their own French fries.
Profound, isn't it? Maybe I had French fries on the brain because I have given them up for Lent. If you think that's goofy, I dare you to try going six weeks without a fry.
Publications
The new edition of Stories Grandma Never Told should be out by April 1. The pages are done, and the cover is in the works. I even have a bar code, ISBN number and a price ($18.95). This has been an enjoyable process, and the new books are going to look great. I have also started a blog at www.Portuguesegrandma.blogspot.com to share information about the women in the book and collect stories from others who want to talk about their Portuguese families.
Freelancing for Newspapers is also coming along over at Quill Driver Books. We still have a May 1 publication date. There's a blog for that book, too, at www.freelancingfornewspapers.blogspot.com. Click on over to read and write about the travails of the newspaper writing business.
I'm still writing articles for Northwest Senior News. March will feature Rose and Gary Cummins, the new owners of South Beach Fitness, and their yoga teacher/massage therapist, Steve Davis. My most recent Scriptorium column in the Everything But Writing series is "To Every Task There is a Season," about how sometimes writers find themselves doing all kinds of things that aren't writing. Next up: "Give the Muse Room to Dance," about how to clear out the clutter in your office. My old columns are now archived at The Scriptorium, so if you missed one, you still have a chance to read it.
Enough bragging: Anybody else want to share what they're up to these days?
Willamette Writers and Writers on the Edge
Our March 13 Oregon Coast Willamette Writers meeting will feature Lenor Chappell, whose memoir, One Step at a Time, about losing her leg and half her pelvis to cancer, received nationwide attention and was translated into six different languages. She followed it up with a sequel, The Next Leg of My Journey, and now has a screenplay called Walk On under consideration in Hollywood. An inspirational speaker, she will talk about how tragedy turned her into a writer and how writing helped her hold on when her world fell apart. The 7 p.m. meeting takes place at the Newport Library. Admission is free. For more information, contact me at suelick@casco.net or Dorothy Mack, dmack@newportnet.com or check the Willamette Writers web site, www.willamettewriters.com.
On March 17, Writers on the Edge will present short story writer Geronimo Tagatac at 7 p.m. at the Newport Visual Arts Center. Tagatac's The Weight of the Sun was a 2006 Oregon Book Award finalist. An open mic will follow the featured presentation. Participants are allowed five minutes to read their original work. Admission is $5; students get in free.
On April 21, WOE will host our second annual "Instant Haiku Madness," in which teams compete to write haiku poems. It's tons of fun. For this event, we'll meet at the newly renovated Cafe Mundo on Coast Street, with local songwriter Rick Bartow performing after the haiku contest.
Writers on the Edge has a new board with lots of new energy. Plans are in the works for a full year of new programs, including a 10th anniversary blowout in June. The outdated web site is being revamped. Check for updates at www.writersontheedge.org.
Book Report
Holdfast, Kathleen Dean Moore, The Lyons Press, 2004. A holdfast is a sea creature with suction cups or stick-em that allows it to hold onto rocks or the bottom of the sea as the waves pass over. In this collection of essays, Moore applies this theme not only to nature but to her own life, writing about the things she hangs on to and the things that keep her centered. A philosophy professor at Oregon State University, Moore offers a delicious blend of nature, philosophy and memoir. She finds the perfect details and metaphors in every situation. Here's a taste: "The song of the canyon wren is the sound of falling water. Its bright tones drop off the canyon rim and fall from ledge to ledge a step at a time, sliding down a pour-off, bouncing onto a sandstone shelf, then dropping to the next layer of stone and down againa falling scale, eight tones, a liquid octave of birdsong in the hard, sun-cut canyon." Beautiful writing, and she's a beautiful human being, too. Check her out.
The Club of Angels, Luis Fernando Verissimo, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa, New Directions Books, 2001. Those Latin writers definitely break out of the box. More Americans should read their work and escape the same old clichéd stories that keep getting published. In this short novel, Brazilian Verissimo tells the tale of an eating club, 10 men who meet once a month to share a gourmet dinner. As the story begins, a chef named Lucídio arrives and volunteers to cook for them. The food is heavenly, but every month the man whose favorite dish is featured dies within 24 hours. What is going on? It's a marvelous mystery touched with the supernatural and a bit of Shakespeare. Fascinating.
Montana 1948 by Larry Watson, Milkweed Editions, 1993. I'm still in a daze from this book, which I devoured in less than 24 hours. No wonder it won the Milkweed Prize. Our protagonist is a 12-year-old boy who watches his family unravel as a terrible secret about his uncle and the local Native Americans emerges. His father, the sheriff, bears the burden of deciding between family loyalty and the law. Watson gets inside the hearts of every character. His writing is clean and rich, and he tells a powerful story that will not be easily forgotten.
Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich, Metropolitan Books, 2005. In her previous bestseller, Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenrich went undercover, working a series of minimum-wage jobs to see how it really was. That book was fascinating. This one is not nearly as gripping, probably because the experiment on which it is based failed. For Bait and Switch, Ehrenreich planned to search for a white-collar corporate job. She figured she would spend about five months job-hunting, then actually work for a corporation and give us an inside look. Instead, this is the sad inside story of white-collar workers who are unemployed and desperate and the many scam artists who make money offering job-seeking help that doesn't work. Masquerading as Barbara Alexander, the author attended job fairs, networking meetings, workshops and boot camps. She spent hundreds of dollars on consultants to help her upgrade her image, improve her resume and guide her job search. Although she was highly qualified and did everything the experts told her to do, she didn't get a job, only some offers for commission sales work with no salary or benefits. It's a depressing tale. Ehrenreich could always go back to her real career as a successful writer, but by the end of the book most of her fellow job-seekers were still unemployed or had taken survival jobs at places like Wal-Mart. Ehrenreich's scholarly style, complete with footnotes, matches the seriousness of the subject. As a report on the failure of the American Dream, this is all too well told.
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That's all for now. My birthday is this month. Also happy birthday to Hannah, Mary Lee, Roy and everybody else born in March. These days on the Oregon Coast, the weather changes by the minute. It has rained buckets for days. This morning, it snowed a bit, and now the sun is out. Spring is coming. My daffodils are thriving, my hydrangea plant has big buds ready to unfurl, and the robins are back. Daylight savings time starts early this year. Don't forget to set your clock ahead an hour on March 11 or you'll be late to church.
Hugs,
Sue
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All contents copyright Sue Fagalde Lick 2007
P.S. I know there are two "Newsletter"
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to remove the extra one, I will. Diesel: big dog, big heart, big drool
