The Flowers of Evil - The Alice Network

Les Fleurs - colored
Zentangle

How do women find their voices in times of war? For Eve Gardiner, one of the main characters of Kate Quinn's The Alice Network, it was to become a spy. In 1915, there weren't many opportunities for women to serve except perhaps to become a nurse. Eve suffers from a stutter and many believed that was a sign of lower intelligence so the best she could manage was to be a clerk/typist in a government office. However, she had an excellent command of the French and German languages and because of that and her stutter (what better cover) she was pluck out of the obscurity of the typing pool, trained in the ways of espionage (what the pencil pushers thought would be useful), and sent to France to join the other women of the Alice Network - all of them with floral code names. For Eve, like many in this occupation not all went well for her during the war.

Skip forward to 1947 and meet the other major character of the novel - Charlie St. Clair, a college sophomore with a "Little Problem."  Charlie's older brother came back from the Pacific Theater missing one of his legs and reeling from what today we call PTSD. He couldn't deal and sought relief in committing suicide. Charlie's family like many who have had a suicide in the family (like mine) didn't handle the aftermath well. Charlie dealt with her grief by becoming promiscuous, and hence the development of the "Little Problem." Charlie's family is wealthy and for the wealthy there have always been ways to take care of "Problems." Money could buy Charlie an Appointment in a Swiss clinic and the Problem would be solved.

Charlie has another problem - during the war her French cousin, Rose, disappeared and she is desperate to find her. Charlie has been searching for answers and has managed to secure the name of Eve Gardiner as a contact who might be able to help with finding Rose. So on her way to the Appointment, she slips away from her mother and goes to find Eve.

In 1947, Eve is a broken woman. Somehow Charlie manages to provoke her enough to begin the challenge of finding Rose. Here is where I will leave off the details and prevent any further spoilers for you. What's important is that both Eve and Charlie begin the process of recovery from their grief and guilt. Very often those who survive from a tragedy feel guilty for having done so, for leaving others behind, for not being able to help those they love. Grief then becomes crippling. Both these women were crippled by their grief and they had to learn how to voice it and come to peace with it.
So do we. For myself, the grieving process took much longer than necessary because I hadn't been given the necessary tool to overcome it - the knowledge that it was okay to voice my grief. Suicide is still a huge stigma in our society so we don't talk about it. The only way to deal properly with grief is to acknowledge it by talking it out. Charlie chose to find relief from her pain by having sex, Eve by drinking, me by overeating. It is by accepting our grief that we can begin to heal and live again.

The Bees' Needs

Nature's Genius - collage

I did a quick search of my blog and to my astonishment discovered that I've never written about Donna Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti mysteries.  Then it's about time that I do. First, I have to say this is one series that I haven't gotten bored with. Over the years I have encountered mystery series that have gotten predictable with their plot lines, but Leon has managed to keep her novels fresh with a variety of themes imbedded in her work, most recently those that center around nature and ecological issues (Guardian article - "Why I became an eco-detective writer).

Leon's novels have provided me with an armchair trip to Venice where Guido Brunetti lives and works as a Commissario in the police force. He is married to Paola, a professor of English literature with a focus on the works of Henry James, and father to a son and daughter. Leon gives us insight to Brunetti's character through his interactions with his family. His has a strong and loving marriage and manages to parent fairly successfully his teenagers. Oh and Paola manages to have time to cook these wonderful family meals (there's even a cookbook).

The newest in the series, Earthly Remains, finds Brunetti in need of a break from the job. On the advice of his doctor he takes two weeks off from work. Paola's uncle has a villa on an island in the Venetian lagoon where Brunetti goes to be by himself to read, swim, and row. The caretaker, Davide Casati, turns out to be an old friend of Brunetti's late father, and the two men take to rowing daily. While out in the lagoon, Casati shows Brunetti the habitats of birds and animals, and the tiny mounds of land where Casati raises bees. But the bees are dying.

Bees all around the world have been threatened. Colony collapse disorder (CCD) was first noticed in 2006 here in the United States. This is a huge concern as the honeybee is one of the major pollinators for our food crops - without them we wouldn't eat. Bees can fall victim to parasites like the varroa mite, fungus, changes in the climate, herbicides and pesticides. Leon in her novel focuses of the suspected dumping of toxic substances into the Venetian lagoon which in turn is impacting the bees, lowering the number of species of birds, and increasing the rates of cancer in humans. Her novel is a warning to us about the chemicals we have created - many of which are never tested for safety until there is an issue. Think back to Rachel Carson and her dire warnings against DDT in her book Silent Spring. By the early 1970s the use of DDT was banned here in the States, however, we still produce it for use in other parts of the world.

We need to be cognizant of what the chemicals, which make our lives "easier", are doing to us and our world. There has never been a time to be more concerned about protecting not only the bees, but our water and air resources.

I suggest reading The Beekeeper's Lament by Hannah Nordhaus. I was fascinated to learn about colony collapse disorder, and the major industry that centers around providing bees to farmers in order to pollinate food crops around our country.

Finding your voice (II) - A Touch of Stardust

Storytelling - scraps, zentangle,
washi tap, and a button

A blog is a wonderful place to make confessions and I have made a couple in several posts, so here goes another: I have never seen Gone with the Wind in its entirety. There. I know perhaps that doesn't shock you, but for someone of my age, the movie was a perennial event on network TV, back before cable, and well before Netflix, so what else was there to watch? It would be spread out over three nights (mini-series style, which was popular back in the seventies) usually starting on Sunday and continuing on Monday and Tuesday nights. I always saw Sunday night and Tuesday but for some reason missed Monday, which meant I missed the big burning of Atlanta scene.

The burning of Atlanta scene is exactly where Kate Alcott's A Touch of Stardust opens. Julie Crawford, aspiring screenwriter, is a studio flunky trying to get a message to the all important producer David O. Selznick who just so happens to be burning down the movie studio's back lot - the inferno is Atlanta and when the embers cool the crew will build Tara and the rest of scenery needed. And here again am I, listening this time (audiobook) as I dig in the garden, to this all important scene to Gone with the Wind.

The event was so important to history and to the people who lived through it that Margaret Mitchell was inspired to write her story. By the way, I did read the novel. I was an precocious reader and by eighth grade I was picking up paperback editions of books like: The Godfather, Jaws, The Exorcist, and Gone with the Wind. I can distinctly remember sitting on my bed at my family's cottage on the Rhode Island shoreline just soaking up the story.

And that's where finding your voice comes in - storytelling. We each tell stories. There are the stories of our childhood, of our families, of our school experiences, of good or bad work experiences, of our loves and losses, and of who we are. Most of our stories are pure non-fiction and others - well let's face it there are embellishments. Perhaps we don't want to share the whole truth or we need to throw in some humor to take the sting of pain out of the telling. Perhaps we are afraid others won't like us if we tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But it is in telling the whole truth that we let our true voice be heard by the world. Our voice tells the truth. Our voice is who we are. We are the author's of our lives and it is only by using our voice that we can create something worthy of winning the Pulitzer or an Oscar, or better yet an epitaph that we are proud to read.

Finding your voice

Zentangle - Musical clef and notes

There are many voices that we hear during the course of our lives as we try to find our own voice. There are those of our parents - the first voices. Those voices tell us we are loved and cute as a button (at least that is what we wish all babies would hear), but later, they don't mean to, but there come the messages about how to behave, how to fit in, what we should do, and what we shouldn't do. There are expectations and dreams communicated to us.

Then there are the voices of teachers, friends, authority, and society. Influences and lessons. Words of support or words of oppression. Sometimes there are just too many voices and we can't hear anything else. Very often we can't hear our own voice.

The Chilbury Ladies' Choir by Jennifer Ryan is the story about a group of women in a small English village who struggle to find and hear their own voices. It is 1940 when the story begins with the vicar's decision to disband the church choir since all the males have taken their voices off to war. One brave woman suggests that they can still have a choir - an all women's choir. That sparks controversy and dissension.

The story is told through journal entries and letters written by a small handful of characters and is  reminiscent of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer. Each small village is struggling with the changes that the war have brought to them. Most importantly we learn how war changes and shapes people, and we see the evolution of the characters as they find their voices. The women of the choir become independent taking on jobs left behind by their husbands and sons. They struggle with the new morality that results from a changing world. They will not be silenced.

That leads to me finding my own voice. After many years, I've finally begun to weed through all the messages that the voices in my life have given me, sifting through and choosing the important and valuable and getting rid of the junk. My new voice is more willing to take risks, to speak out for what I believe in even when that might not be the safe or popular thing to do, and a whole hell of a lot more authentic. I've also come to value that I can use my voice and will do anything necessary to protect my right to use it.

Finding your way home

Continuing in the Louise Penny's series of Armand Gamache is The Long Way Home, home being something that means many different things. Gamache and his wife have retired to a new home in the village of Three Pines to be among their friends there. Home can be the structure, the village, or the people with whom you live. It may be the feeling of safety and security that we all crave. In this story it was about traveling far in order to return in two respects to home the place and to home within one's self.

At the heart of this story are Clara and Peter Morrow, a husband and wife duo of artists. At the beginning of Penny's series Peter was the well known, successful artist and his wife - well she dabbled until she had her big break through. Very quickly Clara's star rose and outshone Peter's and he responded with jealously. With their marriage in jeopardy, Clara asked Peter to leave their home so that each of them could sort out their feelings. They set a date to meet one year later to discuss what their next step would be. When Peter failed to keep their appointment, Clara fearing for his safety goes to Armand for help.

I will leave the synopsis there since what I really wanted to discuss was the poignancy of the characters' discussions surrounding art and creativity.  Ruth Zardo, the curmudgeonly, poet laureate who lives in Three Pines invokes a quote of Robert Frost's "A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness," (Source  Robert Frost Quote) stating that writing a poem is much like coughing up that lump.

"Any real act of creation is first an act of destruction. Picasso said it, and it's true. We don't build on the old, we tear it down. And start fresh."
"You tear down all that's familiar comfortable," said Gamache. "It must be scary." When the old poet was quiet he asked, "Is that the lump in the throat?" (p.153)

The act of creating whether or not it is writing or a painting, a symphony or a dance is a scary thing to do. I've begun to work with mixed media and very often that fiend, perfectionism, sits on my shoulder and criticizes what I am working on. I've discovered that a finished piece is rarely like I thought it would be when I started. Take for instance the piece below.

Collage - brown paper bag and magazine scraps.

What you can't see is some of my own handwriting that I didn't like the look of. Instead I continued to look for images or phrases that could convey the same message. This is a work that evokes my thoughts about travel and exploration. Now compare it to the work below. These two pieces were completed on opposite pages of my sketch book. Clearly this one speaks of my desire to snuggle in and stay in one place. The two opposing sides to my nature.

Collage - Woven strips of magazine with scraps. 

"Don't get me wrong I believe in using your head. But not in spending too much time in there. Fear lives in the head. And courage lives in the heart. The job is to get from one to the other."
"And between the two is the lump in the throat," said Gamache. (p.277) Now isn't that the truth. To create you have to use your head and your heart. There is thinking to be done with the head, but one needs the courage to just get over the inner critic and do the work.

Summertime and the reading is easy

Blue Bird of Happiness
collage and zentangle

"Summertime and the reading is easy. Fiction is calling, and the book pile is high. Oh, your library card is smoking and your glasses need cleaning. So hush little reader, just you enjoy." - My apologies to Gershwin (Norah Jones singing).

As a teacher, I value the opportunity to recharge during the summer vacation. Many would say that teachers cram a year's worth of work into ten months and they would be right. For those of you who have never taught, please don't comment negatively about teachers and working conditions. The two most common responses I get when I say I am a high school science teacher are: "God Bless You" and "You'd never catch me doing that job." Enough said.

Part of the recharging process for me is to immerse myself in reading a variety of titles. Not to mention I download plenty of titles from my public library's catalogue in order to listen while I'm out working in the garden, walking, or driving about. So with the additional free time on my hands (there are all those projects that get put off during school that need doing hence the audiobooks) I will have the chance to read and get some blogging in.

Revisiting an old friend

Louise Penny's
How the Light Gets In

I discovered the author Louise Penny one day while searching the bookshelves at my local Barnes and Nobles for something new to read. I picked up, The Cruelest Month, the third in her Armand Gamache detective series. Opening to the first page to test read the opening paragraphs I saw my uncle's very unusual name - Télesphore. Never had I seen it in print, but I took it as a sign that I should buy and read this book. I'm ever so glad I did. The story is set in the province of Quebec, home to many of my ancestors, and the peppering of French words and the unique expletives of the Quebecois (reminiscent of those used by my father) made me love the story and its characters even more. Of course once hooked, I had to read the first two books in the series and then continue on. Then came that fateful day when I put down the series. I was angered and frustrated by the direction the storyline was taking and I needed a break. I will not provide spoilers here today.

Some time has past and I found myself once again needing a new book to read and my local library had How the Light Gets In featured in a display of holiday/winter themed books (this story takes place in the weeks leading up to Christmas). What the heck, I thought, why not try again? And like her other novels, Penny had me sucked into her fictional village of Three Pines and the intrigue and corruption that was running rampant in the police department that Gamache loves so dearly.

It was nice to visit with an old literary friend. The characters and the scenery were familiar and quickly memories of previous novels in the series floated to the surface from my memory. I should have trusted that Penny would eventually make everything all right once again. But even "happy" endings come with a price. The good guys prevail but they are bruised, left with demons to battle, and still ever hopeful.

Sometimes a break can be a good thing for a friendship. Each friend taking off to explore the world, meet new people, engage in new experiences, but when the time comes to be able to pick up the threads of friendship and return to the old intimacy. Lucky for me there are more books in the series and I can spend more time getting reacquainted with my old friend.