A belated but heartfelt THANK YOU to the amazing staff, patrons and friends of the Canastota Public Library—and especially to PR maven/teen librarian Beth Totten—for being such incredible hosts when I visited two weekends ago. It was a hoot and a pleasure to share the story behind my book and my local connections, and then, for you to share your writing with me—what an incredible weekend. Y’all are amazing.
I adore libraries. Even though I love both my current gigs—writer-lady by night and non-profit prospect researcher by day—I can’t help but wonder why I didn’t pursue the library sciences when I was starting out. Something about being surrounded by books and all the lovely information they contain, and being in turn surrounded by the kind of people who love books and reading and information…perfection on a stick. Being a librarian was my ideal career and I missed it, at least on the first go-round. I blame my guidance counselor, who once told me, based on the outcome of a career interest survey, that my interests were so diverse I was suited for no career at all. True story.
Beth took me on a tour of her beloved library, a gorgeous and lovingly maintained Carnegie, and made a point of showing me the archive because she knew I’d love how it smelled. (She was so right. I tend to perfume myself mainly with soap/shampoo, but that’s only because no one has produced a commercial fragrance that smells like old books.)
Even more exciting was seeing how active the library is, and how much a part of the local community. Libraries are built to be used, and the CPL is—used, and loved. My grandmother, Marion Ruth Cardner VanSkiver, went to high school in Canastota and graduated in the class of 1936. Beth, bless her, found the class of 1936 yearbook, aka The Toot, which my grandma helped edit, a fact unbeknowst to my entire family before now.
I can imagine my grandma in that building, however the library (and she) might have looked seventy and eighty-odd years ago. And I know she must have loved it too.
2 comments
…me!
The lovely folks of the Canastota Public Library—a stone’s throw from Oneida Lake, New York—graciously invited me to visit their library for an author talk and writing workshop, starting tomorrow (Thursday) night. If you’re in the area, stop on by!
Author Talk
Thursday, April 14 2011 / 7:00 pm
I’ll be sharing the stories, artists and local inspirations behind This Must Be the Place. There will be slides (behold my mighty Power Point skills!) and possibly a really embarrassing childhood picture of yours truly. It will be epic.
Writing Workshop
Saturday, April 16 2011 / 1:00-3:00 pm
All ages and experience welcome—just come prepared with pen and paper or laptop! We’ll spend the afternoon brainstorming and writing, talking about creating scenes from memory and finding inspiration in the little things. Please give Beth Totten at the library a call if you’re interested in signing up, at 315-697-7030.
Both events will be held at the Canastota Public Library
102 West Center Street Canastota NY 315-697-7030no comments
1) The wonderful people of Printer’s Devil Review have published a very early, blinking-into-the-sun chapter from the novel I’m currently working on, which…doesn’t have a title at the moment, other than “the novel I’m working on that I like to describe as a cross between The Shining and Heathers, set at band camp.” Enjoy the angst!
2) If you’re going to be in Central New York in mid-April, pop on over to the Canastota Public Library—where I’ll be giving an author talk/reading and a writing workshop on Thursday (talk) and Saturday (workshop), April 14 and 16. Details to come soon!
3) I got a cat. His name is Gomez. He answers to Mr. Mez, Gomez, Mezcal, Sweet Baboo and HEY Don’t Eat That. He is the furry light of my life, the parents’ first grandcat, and for a while he annoyed the hell out of me by insisting that he sleep *on* my head, but now we are bonded as only a young woman making her way in the big city and her feline sidekick can be. He still does obnoxious things like hang from the screens by his claws and put his butt directly in my face, but all things considered, we are a match made in MSPCA heaven.
He would very much like to say HELLO, LOVERS (yes, that’s how he talks in my head), while leaning into his best J Crew casual pose. Don’t let it fool you. He’s nuts.
3 comments
I love (well, many things, but for the purposes of this post) three things: PBS, BBC programming, and murder mysteries, especially on my television on a Sunday night. I don’t know what it is about closing down the weekend with a dead body and a wily sleuth, but I do know that my love for it started at a young age with Jessica Fletcher, aka the woman I want to be when I grow up (yes, dead bodies and all). It continued through high school with the help of agents Mulder and Scully (I would argue that the monster-of-the-week episodes were murder mysteries crossed with creature features), and was recently revived when Masterpiece Theater Mystery! ran the BBC’s modern twist on the Sherlock Holmes stories, called, in the style of JustJack McFarland, just Sherlock.
And thus the confluence of my three aforementioned loves. This isn’t going to be a review of the miniseries, except in capsule (to wit: AWESOME. SO BRITISH. SO NERDY. LOVE.), but rather, a philosophical rumination. The new series is set in modern London—and gloriously filmed at night; add travel- to the different kinds of porn this show provides, along with whodunnit- and adorably hyperactive/skinny English dude-. Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch, whom Dickens rose from the grave to name) is a “consulting detective” and self-described high-functioning sociopath, nicotine patch addict, and technology obsessive. His right hand man and flatmate Dr. John Watson is a former military physician with a touch of PTSD from Afghanistan (played by Martin Freeman/Tim from The Office, squish!); the pair solves byzantine crimes using a combination of Watson’s level-headed humanity and Sherlock’s hyper-awareness and impulse control problems. The chemistry between the leads is phenomenal, and, not surprisingly, modern Londoners frequently assume Sherlock and Watson are a romantic couple.
The modern twists like that are fun—playing with the nature of their relationship, as grown men who live and solve crimes together, and adding smart phones and the internet to Holmes’ naturally impressive detecting arsenal—but what struck me as I watched was realizing that the world co-creators Steven Moffat (Coupling and Who dude) and Mark Gatiss (The League of Gentlemen) imagined is essentially an alternate reality: it is a world that does not already know Sherlock Holmes. Sure, all television/movies/fiction represent alternate realities in that they either have never happened or are suppositions built around historical figures, facts, or places. But the figure of Sherlock Holmes, the idea of what he is, has so completely informed our popular conception of what a detective is, that if you live in a world where Arthur Conan Doyle never introduced the concept that obsessive and/or wily peculiarity is the precise temperament necessary to solve crimes—what’s on your TV? Do you have CSI, with its nit-picky hypernerdy forensics? Do you have Murder She Wrote, with Jessica Fletcher’s keen writerly powers of observation? Hell, do you even have monsieur fussypants himself, Hercule “Order and Method” Poirot, or deerstalker-clad Nate the Great? A world without Nate=DO NOT WANT.
When we think of detectives—which I’m doing with some frequency, because a) it’s fun and b) I’m creating a detective-obsessed amateur sleuth for my next book—we think: loner. Strange and/or imbued with a certain clarity of observation mere mortals lack. And yet not without weakness: self-destructive antisocial tendencies (okay, maybe J.B. Fletcher is the exception, unless she really did kill all those poor bastards) seem to come with the territory, as though hyperawareness is both a gift and a curse that requires the occasional chemical escape.
And that’s Sherlock Holmes: brilliant, alone, destroying himself. Does all detective fiction come from him, either as homage or conscious opposite—or did he come from some Jungian archetype buried deep within our (and Conan Doyle’s) subconscious? Because Sherlock Holmes is THE detective, and where would be we without him?
…other than writing letters to the BBC to film more episodes. STAT.
1 comment
no comments