True to the Truman

Margaret Truman. What’s that tiny smile about, I wonder? Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

I get a kick out of it when an author uses a familiar setting in his or her book, especially if that setting happens to be in the DC metro area. (“Hey! I’ve been there!”) David Baldacci, who lives in the DC area like I do, often refers to local places I’ve visited. So do mystery author Barbara Michaels and romance writer Nora Roberts, since they’re both Marylanders.

But the person who does it the best was Margaret Truman (yep, Harry’s daughter). I love to curl up with one of her murder mysteries, set at various DC locations such as the White House (they turned this one into a movie called “Murder at 1600″ with Wesley Snipes and Diane Lane), Capitol Hill, the Supreme Court, National Cathedral, the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building and the Kennedy Center.

Her murder mysteries do a great job at capturing the contrasts of DC — it’s sometimes elegant, sometimes desperately poor. And I like her characters such as Mackensie and Annabel Smith — they’re good for each other…close but not cloying, independent when they need to be, and smart.

I still have yet to make it to some of Truman’s locations. Call me crazy, but I don’t think they’d just let me stroll into the Pentagon or the CIA’s main buildings. I wouldn’t mind doing the Hoover building tour or the Library of Congress.

The trick is to have enough time to go over to DC. Don’t even get me started on what it’s like to park in DC, people. (Hello, Metro!)

Once I get to the Library of Congress, I think I’ll be in book nerdvana. Can there be any better fate? *sighs wistfully* Maybe someday.

 

Lost in translations

Wonder what amused her? Image of Kuala Lumpur lady courtesy of anuarsalleh, Wikimedia Commons.

Living in a cosmopolitan area like I do, I often meet people who have emigrated here from other countries in the Middle East, Central America, South America, Asia, Africa and other parts of the globe. It’s fun to meet people like this.  I love to hear their backstories about the country they came from, learn a bit of their home culture and discover why they chose to emigrate here to the U.S.

A few months back, I was helping a friend at a business conference oriented toward Asian-Americans, and I got into conversation with my fellow attendees over lunch. Some of them came from countries such as South Vietnam and Korea, and I asked them what was the most difficult thing to learn about America. For many, it wasn’t just the culture; it was the language.

English is a difficult language to learn and has many pitfalls, especially if one is learning English as a second language. I admire anybody who takes on the job of speaking, writing and reading English, especially when they’ve had the the nerve to make the drastic change of moving from one country to another.

Even a native-born speaker like myself has the occasional slip. I’ll say something to a friend and realize too late that what I said could be taken the wrong way. And while the friend dissolves into laughter, I’ll start giggling myself while protesting, “Wait! Wait! I didn’t mean it that way!”

Maria von Trapp, in her book The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, talked about how hard it was to learn English and how funny situations arose when she used the English idioms she learned. She quoted a hilarious story where she and a bishop were trying to go through the same door, and each was determined to let the other go first, out of politeness. Finally, Maria had to say, “P-lease, Bishop….scram!” It worked. The bishop’s advisors were scandalized, but luckily the bishop had a great sense of humor.

But I guess any language can have its funny pitfalls. Case in point: German. I speak some German, having learned it at school. One of the first things I learned was not to use the words “heiss” (hot) and “kalt” (cold) when talking about how I felt in hot weather or cold weather; you have to use the words “warm” or “kühl” (warm or cool). If you use “heiss” or “kalt” in German when you’re referring to yourself, you’re making references to your love life, and people start snickering.

Blog readers: Know of any other pitfalls in English or other languages?

The letter and the legacy

Governor’s mansion writing desk image courtesy of sienna12, Morguefile.

A few days ago, I explored a news site which had a large collection of President Obama photos. It fascinated me since the photos showed the President in a variety of different moods — solemn, playful, sincere, tender and formal.

One of the most intriguing photos showed the President reading a letter that was left for him in the Oval Office. The letter was on the top of the Resolute desk and written by former President Bush. This is a tradition at The White House; the outgoing president leaves behind a letter for the new president to find and read.

My writer’s imagination went to town on this one because I found this tradition to be charming. What did that letter contain? Was it short or long? Was the new president warned about on-the-job hazards, or did the letter just wish him good luck?

And what would I say if it was me writing that letter? I like to imagine that I’d impart some wisdom and maybe give the new President something to smile or laugh about. The road to The White House is a tough one.

I don’t know which President started the tradition, but it’s been going on at least since Reagan’s time. Mostly, the content of the letter is kept secret, but I found one letter you can read, at least.

We live in an era now where it’s more common to send a tweet, post on Facebook, text on a phone or click a button to send an e-mail, but I don’t think letters have completely lost their influence. It’s easy for us to click on a button and delete an electronic communication with a couple of clicks, but much harder to get rid of a paper letter. I’ve saved some letters that I received which were meaningful to me because of what the writer told me, and I still have them. I also have some letters from my childhood that I like to keep because they show me how my writing has evolved over the years.

As bloggers, I think that we understand more deeply than others how truly powerful the written word can be since many of us will probably never meet each other. We can’t see the faces of those other bloggers and interpret their facial expressions and body language (unless they choose to post a picture or put up a video of themselves), so we can only understand another blogger’s character by what they write online and how they express themselves.

And sometimes I wonder if future generations will find the letters we’ve saved and our blogs, and better understand what we were like. Maybe they will. I hope so.

Lorna Doone: Not just a cookie

Badgworthy Water at Malmsmead, with the Lorna Doone Farm in the background. Image courtesy of jusben, Morguefile.

Once upon a time, there was a boy named John Ridd, “of the parish of Oare, of the county of Somerset.” John was your basic good kid, but he had no liking for anybody with the last name of Doone (not surprising, since the Doone outlaws killed his farmer father and got away with it). So John was off exploring waterfalls in a hidden valley one day and he met a young girl named Lorna Doone. And so begins a forbidden romance.

R.D. Blackmore’s novel Lorna Doone, I think, is pretty obscure — it’s not as commonly known as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. To my mind, it’s just as good. There is danger, adventure, bravery, comedy, fighting, prejudice, character reformation, a stolen necklace, evil, a shooting, class issues (nobility versus commoner) and even a love quadrangle going on. All of this is set against the backdrop of the beautiful English countryside and the Monmouth Rebellion.

You’ve got to admire my boy R.D. — he really packed a lot into one book and there isn’t a dull moment. Maybe this explains why the book’s been made into a film several times. The BBC did an excellent miniseries in 2000 with Richard Coyle playing John Ridd and Amelia Warner as Lorna Doone.

Lorna’s really made something out of her name, the cheeky little hussy. (I’m kidding! I’m kidding!) In addition to the miniseries, there is a Lorna Doone shortbread cookie, a Lorna Doone Hotel, a Lorna Doone Farm and a Lorna Doone Trail, as well as a gift shop and campsite.

But all in all, it’s a fun read. I recommend a cup of good strong tea and chocolate-coated McVitie’s digestive biscuits (roughly similar to graham crackers) as accompaniments.

For those of you who prefer to watch your books, see MydieLy’s excellent YouTube video below, set to the very appropriate music of Taylor Swift’s “Love Story.”

When words fail me

Oscar Wilde: A man who always had something to say and said it well. Image courtesy of Napoleon Sarony and Wikimedia Commons.

As a professional communicator, I use words to craft a message and to tailor that message to appeal to my audience. I’m lucky this way, because I can pick and choose the words I think are most suitable and play around with them until just the right note is hit.

But sometimes in my life, there have been occasions — some comic, some not — where my eloquence takes a hike and I’m rendered speechless. Years ago, my parents and I took my neighbor’s toddlers to our house in the country for a weekend trip. I was playing hide-and-seek with my neighbor’s kids while my parents were fixing dinner. The youngest, M., went out to the porch, climbed onto the sofa, hid her head (and ONLY her head) under a pillow, and hollered, “I’m hidden! Come and find me!” She was utterly oblivious to the fact that the rest of her was COMPLETELY visible.

You’ve got to love kid logic. I laughed so hard that I couldn’t speak, my legs gave out and I fell on the floor.

Another time, I was working on a web page for a local college and the person responsible for putting it up and linking it to the rest of the college’s webpage informed me out of the blue that he was leaving the area. I had no inkling. I remember this incident vividly because I understood for the first time what it means to be rendered speechless. I literally couldn’t talk for about a minute or two, I was so astonished. Weird.

As human beings and as bloggers, we use words in so many ways — to amuse, educate, comfort, entertain, inform, set limits, woo and admonish. And that’s just for starters. I wonder how many words we read, write and hear in a lifetime? Now there’s a good subject for some professionals to study.

One of my most memorable experiences involved no words at all. The day after the ’95 Oklahoma City bombing, I stood in front of a newspaper vending machine, gazing at a copy of my local paper on display inside the machine. The front page featured a photo of the Murrah Building, massively destroyed by Timothy McVeigh’s bomb. An elderly gentleman came up beside me to see what I was looking at. We stared at the photo, looked at each other and stared at the photo again. And then the elderly man shuffled away, shaking his head in disgust at what human beings are capable of doing to each other.

No words were needed. None were wanted.

We’re bloggers and we grow it

Oh sure, they look like young bloggers now, but wait until that stats envy hits! Image courtesy of gracey, Morguefile.

After you’ve been blogging for a while, I think you inevitably succumb to that ailment known as “stats envy”. It’s only human. Through the magic of the WordPress dashboard (for you non-bloggers out there, the dashboard is the behind-the-scenes control panel within a blog), it’s very easy to see the number of visits your blog receives and how many blog followers you have. Some bloggers choose to make this information known on their blogs through the use of widgets, while others choose to keep that information to themselves.

As a part of my blogging, I follow other bloggers and read their posts frequently. With bloggers such as Robin Coyle and LouAnn of On The Homefront, we often use our blogs to cyber-sass each other, all in good fun. Through this interaction we bloggers have with each other, our own blogs grow as we attract more and more visitors.

But sometimes I’ll see someone who started their blog about the same time as mine. Some of these bloggers have more followers or more visits than I; others have less.

I often wonder…what IS it that these other bloggers are doing to get more followers or more visits? And I get a tiny bit envious — what magic elixir are they using that I’m not? Are they posting more frequently? Did they just happen to pick a more popular topic among readers? Have they been Freshly Pressed several times? Are they spreading their blog post on Twitter, Facebook or other sites?

It’s hard to predict what’s going to be a hit with readers. About the only thing that is predictable about a certain post becoming a hit is that there IS no way to predict it at times. I was astonished to find that a blog post I once did about proofreading got a large number of views in three days, far in excess of my usual amount. I’ve also had one day where only one person read my blog post. (Well, it was a Sunday, which tends to be a slow day for me.) *sighs*

But I’m philosophical. The main points of my blog are to amuse, inform and entertain (preferably all three at the same time, with or without a supply of chocolate). If even one person learns a tidbit of new knowledge or gets a chuckle from what I’ve said, then the time I spent writing that post was time well spent.

Blog readers, what are your feelings about stats envy? Do you still have it, or are you past that point now?

Pardon me, which way to the beach books?

Anybody want to go to the beach? Just bring your towel and a book. Image courtesy of rikahi, Morguefile.

At this time of year, I get very hungry to see color outside. All you see now is bare trees and dingy leaves. Sometimes a snowstorm may come along and liven things up by gently adding an elegant coating of snow to trees, buildings and bushes, but not this year. Most of our snowstorms in my area have been barely there at all so far — maybe an measly inch or two.

I don’t mind too much. I fear a repeat of “Snowmageddon” or “Snowpocalypse,” when the DC metro area had not one, but two major snowstorms that gave us a grand total of 55 inches of snow. Yikes. That’s taller than some adults I know.

So at this time of year, I’m dreaming of the beach. Blue sky…hot sun…gentle breezes…soft waves lapping gently against the sand. Or maybe a cruise…okay, now we’re talking.

But since some of us can’t escape winter, I thought I’d entertain you by providing a list of my favorite beach books. I’m adding a twist to it, though. This is not your usual list of what to read on a beach vacation, but a list of good books that are all set on or near the beach. If you’re in the mood to escape the winter doldrums, get ready to go coastal!

1. Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O’Dell. A children’s novel about a young girl stranded on an island. Based on a true story.

2. The Reef, by Nora Roberts. Treasure hunting, scuba diving, strong characters, great plot and Roberts’ trademark humor…what’s not to like?

3. The Last Song, by Nicolas Sparks. Teenager girl and her brother visit her dad at the beach. Dad and girl rebond through music.

4. Misty of Chincoteague, by Marguerite Henry. Another children’s classic, about a brother and sister taming a wild horse.

5. The Shell Seekers, by Rosamunde Pilcher. An exploration of an elderly British woman who grew up in Cornwall during periods of significant historical change and her relationships with her children.

6. Colony, by Anne Rivers Siddons. Set on the Maine coast, this book is somewhat graphic here and there, but a wonderful escapist read anyway.

7. Evil Under The Sun, by Agatha Christie. Murder at an English seaside resort. But not to worry — Hercule Poirot is on the case!

8. The Moon-Spinners, by Mary Stewart. English tourist working in Greece visits a seaside town and gets mixed up in danger and mystery.

I guess I’ll have to make do with these books until spring gets here and the local crocuses start blooming. Or maybe I can  just fantasize about going on a sea cruise…anybody want to join me?