Lifescapes

Work in Progress: Needlepoint

I'm all but done with this project, which I started at the beginning of May, with threads--both perle cotton and embroidery floss--out of my stash. It was finicky work, a lesson in patience, but that's what it's all about, isn't it? Patience and paying attention. Paying careful attention, because when your attention wanders, you lose your place in the pattern, and what you have left is a scramble. A helpful life lesson, perhaps.

Book report. I finished the full draft of The General's Women, sent it out to beta readers, and have gotten helpful responses. I'll go back to it when all the other responses are in--in the meantime, I did some research on Queen Anne's Lace and have started writing. This will be another "split-screen" story, one mystery happening in the distant past, the other in the present. If I get it right, they'll dovetail into a single story in the final chapters. I used this structure for Widow's Tears and Nightshade, two of my favorite China Bayles mysteries. It's a little more work, but there it is again: patience and paying attention, so that it doesn't end in a scramble.

Homestead report. The usual July heatwave is upon us, with a high pressure dome squatting over us like a giant placid toad. The garden is done for the summer; I won't be putting in the fall garden until the soil temps fall back into the non-combustible zone. The Girls are allowed out early in the afternoon, because they will roast if I leave them in their coop--and while we like roast chicken, these hens are here to make eggs. The wild pigs were holding nightly let's-dig-up-the-grass parties in our back yard, until Bill hooked up the varmint repeller, which emits a very loud clacking and some ultrasonic noise. The pigs decided to take their party elsewhere.

Yes, it's hot. Nothing new about that. But August is butterfly month, and the Swallowtails--Giant, Black, Spicebush, and Tiger--are lovely to look at and plentiful this year. This is a Spicebush catching a snooze on a juniper twig. Gorgeous.

Reading note, on patience: Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day. A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh 

Lorena Hickok: At Home (Part 1)

Lorena Hickok, one of the two main characters in my book, Loving Eleanor, is best known for her 30-year friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt. But, quite apart from that personal relationship, Hick (as everyone called her) led a fascinating professional and personal life. As a writer of biographical fiction, I like to know as much as I possibly can about the people I write about--and that includes the places where they lived.

When Hick came to New York in 1928 (from Minneapolis via San Francisco), she worked for a couple of months for one of the tabloids, then was hired away by the Associated Press: the first woman in the flagship New York AP bureau. She got an apartment at 10 Mitchell Place, a new 14-story red-brick apartment building just a quick walk from the East River, where she could run with her German shepherd, Prinz. The photo above is a modern view of her apartment, which has a balcony and a river view. Hick's furniture would have been different, of course--and the kitchen has probably been updated. The rent: $65 a month, which was exactly what she got paid per week--pretty good money for a woman, at that time. (Current valuation of this apartment: around $480,000.)

Hick was known as an excellent cook (Eleanor, not so much), and she enjoyed entertaining her newspaper and theater friends at weekend brunches in her little apartment. (She loved the theater and had many friends among actors, directors, playwrights.) It was sometimes a little crowded, she admitted, but "we were all good friends." She entertained Eleanor here too; ER sometimes stayed here when she came to New York from Washington.

Hick adored New York, loved its energy, vitality, variety--a "city with a heart," she called it. As a reporter, she spent as much time as she could on the streets, finding stories everywhere. New York gave her good work, a place to live completely, a place to find love. As a rising professional woman, it was the home of her heart.

Hick sublet her Mitchell Place apartment during the years she worked for Harry Hopkins at FERA (1933-1936). In that period, she was on the road as an investigative reporter for months at a time; she spent holidays at the White House or with her sister Ruby or friends in New York. She moved back to the apartment in 1937, when she left FERA and went to work as a publicist for the World's Fair, with an office in the Empire State Building. She kept the apartment until 1940, when her work--and her life--changed again. Watch for Part 2 of this little blog series, coming soon.

Reading note: “It was possible in this wonderful city [New York] for that nameless little boy -for any of its millions- to have a decent chance to scale the walls and achieve what they wished. Wealth, rank or an imposing name counted for nothing. The only credential the city asked was the boldness to dream. For those who did, it unlocked its gates and its treasures, not caring who they were or where they came from.--Moss Hart 

In Bloom This Week: Desert Willow

 

I love the delicate, frilly blossoms on our Desert willow tree, sometimes called Desert orchid. It's a small tree, 15 feet or so, with graceful limbs and willow-like leaves. But it's not a willow and hates wet feet. It's native to the arid Southwest, where Native Americans used the wood for bows and baskets, a decoction of the flowers and leaves to treat coughs, bronchial infections, fungal infections.The flowers produce an alluring nectar, to judge from the hovering cloud of pollinators, buzzingly busy, searching out that last sweet drop.

Book report. I heard from Michele Vega, my Berkley editor, that she's accepted the manuscript of The Last Chance Olive Ranch. It's due out April 4, 2017. When we have a cover, I'll share it with you.

This week: I started the third full copy-edit pass through The General's Women. But there'll be another copyedit after mine. Nobody's foolproof. Mamie Eisenhower is one of the three central characters. Here she is at 19, a gay, petite charmer in her wedding dress.

Homestead report. The thermometer has hit 100 every day this week. The chicken coop gets the full afternoon sun and it's pretty hot out there, so The Girls are getting an extra couple of hours of grasshopper-time in the shade of our spreading elm tree, where it's a little cooler. The nights are now in the upper 70s, too hot for even my Texas-bred Porter tomatoes to set fruit. So far this year: 5 quarts of tomato sauce in the freezer, for spaghetti and lasagna. Ah, summertime, summertime.

Reading note. All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.--L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams