Lifescapes

You Can Win This!

Just finished this 12"x12" needlepoint and am offering it to a lucky winner, via a Story Circle raffle. To find out how to enter, go here: http://www.storycircle.org/raffle/  

First Daffodils and Other Pleasures

Here at Meadow Knoll, we measure the turn of the seasons in flowers. It's daffodil season in the Texas Hill Country now, and our earliest bloomers, always, are these lovely daffodils, brightening the edge of the woodlot, among the fallen leaves under the trees. A delicious sight, and a reminder that winter is on the wane. As if we needed one: the temperatures this week have been in the upper 70s, too warm for February. And dry, as well: no rain in the past 6 weeks. El Nino seems to have missed us, but it's still out there, so we're hoping for rain soon.

Homestead report. The potatoes I planted at Christmas are up, and I've planted another couple of rows. The perennial walking onions are flourishing (if a bit untidily), and I'm using them in just about everything but desserts. (Sweet onions work in desserts, green onions not so much.) Next on the planting list: peas. The Girls are up to full production: a half-dozen eggs a day. We eat a LOT of omelets.

Book report. Loving Eleanor is out, to excellent reviews. A Wilder Rose hit the top of the Kindle charts last week, thanks to a hard push from its publisher (Lake Union, an Amazon imprint), in honor of Laura Ingalls Wilder's birthday. I'm moving ahead with the historical, a World War II romantic triangle. I'll be working on it for the rest of this month. Then I need to go back and pick up The Last Chance Olive Ranch, the 2017 China Bayles mystery--it's finished but needs another run-through before it lands on my editor's desk on its due date, March 31. The upcoming mystery, Blood Orange, will be out the first week of April. 

Story Circle This year is extra-busy for me, since I'm serving as the current Story Circle president. Stories From the Heart, our biannual conference will be held April 15-17 in Austin, Texas. I'm keynoting, along with SheWrites publisher Brooke Warner. I'm also offering a workshop on publishing and a presentation on crafting dialogue (one of my favorite topics to teach). This is an all-woman, women-only conference, one of a very few offered in the U.S. April is a lovely time of the year in the Hill Country--hope you'll consider attending the conference and spending a few days in China Bayles backyard. Check out our conference program for a look at the workshops you can choose from.

Reading note. A daffodil bulb will divide and redivide endlessly. That's why, like the peony, it is one of the few flowers you can find around abandoned farmhouses, still blooming and increasing in numbers fifty years after the farmer and his wife have moved to heaven, or the other place, Boca Raton. If you dig up a clump when no one is nearby and there is no danger of being shot, you'll find that there are scores of little bulbs in each clump, the progeny of a dozen or so planted by the farmer's wife in 1942. If you take these home, separate them, and plant them in your own yard, within a couple of years, you'll have a hundred daffodils for the mere price of a trespassing fine or imprisonment or both. I had this adventure once, and I consider it one of the great cheap thrills of my gardening career. I am not advocating trespassing, especially on my property, but there is no law against having a shovel in the trunk of your car.--Cassandra Danz

 

 

A Researcher's Treasure

I learned to love research when I was in grad school at Berkeley, a couple of centuries ago. There's something deeply satisfying about digging around in manuscripts, old books, and diaries--finding forgotten or lost or never-before-discovered gems of information. This week, almost by magic, a wonderful document landed on my desk, just in time to serve as a valuable resource for The General's Women, the current biographical/historical novel I'm working on. Featured in the magazine is the torpedoing of the troopship Strathallan on Dec. 22, 1942. Kay Summersby, Eisenhower's Irish driver and one of the characters in my novel, was on that ship, on her way to join Ike, who had arrived in Algiers with TORCH, the first Allied campaign of World War II.

The Allies didn't publicize the sinking of their troopships (such admissions could lead to low morale at home) so most of the documentation of the Strathallan's sinking (like the stories on the wonderful website, www.thestrathallan.com) is compiled long after the fact. Hence, descriptions are usually rather general and details are fuzzy. However, by an interesting coincidence, a LIFE magazine photographer named Margaret Bourke-White was on that ship with Kay. When I learned that, I did some more digging and learned that Bourke-White's photos of the event were featured in the Feb 22, 1943 issue of LIFE. I ordered a copy (bless the Internet!), which arrived last week. When I opened it, I was delighted to discover not only six fascinating photos but a lengthy and sharply detailed report of the sinking, the hours on the lifeboat, and the rescue--all written just days after the event, when the details were fresh in Bourke-White's mind. Here's a sample:

In the lifeboat [No. 12, before it was lowered] I was astonished to find myself in water up to my hips. The torpedo splash had flooded the lifeboats on the port side aft. I hugged my cameras to my chest to keep them dry but as we made our quivering descent, columns of water began pouring down on us from lifeboat No. 11, which was swinging over our heads. Its crew was pulling out plugs to empty the hull before lowering away... Just then the attention of all of us was caught by a heavy, dangling chain which swung cruelly back and forth while we ducked and twisted our heads out of the way. We were in the water at last...Just as we had created a small margin between ourselves and the big ship, down came lifeboat No. 11 with its load of British [nursing] sisters. Its crew had been unable to replace the plugs properly and it filled to the gunwales. A couple of dozen sisters were washed over the side. Some of them were carried immediately back into their flooded boat on the next wave. Others started swimming toward rafts which were tossed from the upper deck...

The description of the sinking in Kay Summersby's two memoirs is interesting reading, but it's not nearly as compelling as Bourke-White's, which is a researcher's treasure. Even more intriguing, Bourke-White's LIFE photo-feature had an important repercussion back home: Mamie learned from this magazine feature that her husband's "pretty Irish driver," the "beauteous" and "comely" Kay (Bourke-White's published descriptions) would be a member of his headquarters staff in North Africa. Ike had neglected to tell her about this--an omission that is bound to tug at a novelist's eager imagination.

Bourke-White wasn't just a gifted photo-journalist--she was a talented writer, as well. In another post, I'll tell you more about her work, and more about the sinking of the Strathallan. Stay tuned.

Reading note: The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.--Dorothea Lang