choosing your friends wisely :: choosing wise friends

For me, and probably for a lot of writers, self-confidence is a friable and tenuous thing. The least little nay-saying inner voice can derail a whole project. I cherish my friends who inspire me with a sense of possibility. Here is a shout-out to one of the wisest women I know, author Dorothy Allison (remember, her watershed novel is BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA). Love this woman. Love her books. Her writing speaks for itself:

“I wear my skin as thinly as I have to, armor myself only as much as seems absolutely necessary. I try to live naked in the world, unashamed even under attack, unafraid even though I know how much there is to fear….I tell myself that life is the long struggle to understand and love fully. That to keep faith with those who have literally saved my life and made it possible for me to imagine more than survival, I have to try constantly to understand more, love more fully, go more naked in order to make others as safe as I myself want to be. I want to live past my own death, as my mother does, in what I have made possible for others–my sisters, my son, my lover, my community–the people I believe in absolutely, men and women whom death does not stop, who honor the truth of each other’s stories.” –An excerpt from Skin: Talking about Sex, Class and Literature by Dorothy Allison

Could she be any more honest and brave? Her bio reads like one of her novels, only with a happier ending. Born to a fifteen-year-old unwed mother who quit the seventh grade to work as a waitress, Dorothy learned the power and perils of storytelling at a young age. She recalls “hiding out under the porch” and listening to her aunts tell stories, and entering a library or bookstore “with a sense of desperate passion.” Books were her escape from the world. She told Salon Magazine, “To find a way out of the world as I saw it, I read science fiction. To sustain my rage and hope, I read poetry and mainstream novels with female heroines. And I read books by Southerners for ammunition to use against Yankees who would treat me mean.”

The public library has long been important to Dorothy. “My most profound library memory was the shock I got after we moved to central Florida and I went to the school library there. I was thirteen and had gotten used to the South Carolina school libraries which were pitiful—full of biographies of generals and judges but not much else. The central Florida Library was enormous and had a world of books I could borrow—novels, poetry and theologies, history books, and my favorite section of the Dewey Decimal system—with all those books on the occult. I tried to check out everything—which earned me a quick note from the librarian to my mama asking if she knew what I was reading. ‘Did I have permission to read those books?’ ‘Let her read anything she wants,’ my mama told the lady. But it took a signed letter to get me the access I wanted.

“I think I scared most librarians – because I wanted to read the books they thought I should not read—the grown-up fiction and those plays by Tennessee Williams and Carson McCullers. But the librarian I worked for when I was in my junior and senior years was a marvel. Mrs. James was fearless and just assumed all young women were like her and wanted to read everything. She was the one who told me about inter-library loan. Suddenly I wasn’t just stuck with what was in the Maynard Evans High School Library. I could request books from other High Schools or even the main library downtown.

“By the time I got to the eleventh grade, I had pretty much exhausted the new books, but Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty got me an after-school job at the school library where I got to record and accession all the new books. That meant I got to read them first. I am still grateful to Lyndon Johnson, and always will be. He may be known to everyone else for his role in the Viet Nam war, but to me he will always be the man who helped me save money for college and made it possible for me to first read the collected poems of Muriel Rukyeser.”

For Dorothy, the library was “the secret world where I could go hide and fall out of this world and into that other one where anything was possible. It had solid wooden tables, sturdy chairs, carpets and air conditioning. If I could have, I would have moved in and lived there. As it was, it was my home away from home—a refuge and a promise. I used to sit on the floor and lean against the bookcases, lean back and dream about having my own place some day—a place where books would be stacked just as high—novels and anthologies and blank books in which I could write my own poems. The library made me think all that was possible, and it was.

“I think the best thing about the library is and was how it always felt to me—not just that it was the repository of what I loved—books themselves—but that it was a place in which a reverence for the word was implicit. Libraries have always seemed to me temples of wisdom—places where study and quiet concentration were honored, and where wanting to read was admired, not held in contempt. I was the child of a truck driver and a waitress, a girl who lived in a claustrophobic house where both the television and the radio were playing loud all the time. The only books in our house—other than the few that were my own—were the big illustrated Bible and my mama’s collection of Mickey Spillane and Ross MacDonald. It worried my family that I tended to hide in a corner and read so much. I was constantly being told to ‘put down that book and go out and play’. But at the library, no one interrupted me, or if they did, they did it softly and with respect. At the library, reading was holy—which is how it felt to me, how it still feels to me.

“In my house, I limited my son’s access to computer and video games, but the house rule on books is simple. If he wants to read it, we will try to find it. And we not only go to the library frequently, we donate books to our local libraries all the time. I want the children in my county to have what I always wanted—new novels on the shelves waiting to be read. It’s just lucky that now publishers actually send me many of them, so that I, in turn, can pass them on.”

The Greenville, South Carolina native describes herself as a Southern novelist, feminist, confirmed flirt, femme, expatriate rebel, and born-again Californian. In a 1999 Salon interview, Dorothy says, “I was born to a very poor, violent family where most of my focus was purely on survival, and my sense of self as a lesbian grew along with my sense of myself as a raped child, a poor white Southerner and an embattled female. I was Violet Leduc’s Le Batard much more than I was Le Amazon, that creation of upper-class Natalie Barney. People tell me that class is no longer the defining factor it was when I was a girl, but I find that impossible to fully accept. Class is always a defining factor when you are the child one step down from everyone else.”

At the age of thirteen, she “…was always calculating how to not kill myself or how not to let myself be killed. That tends to stringently shape one’s imagination. I did not plan to fill up a hope chest and marry some good old boy and make babies….I was a smart, desperate teenage girl trying to figure out how to not be dismissed out of hand for who I was. I wanted to go to college, not become another waitress or factory worker or laundry person or counter-help woman like all the other women I knew. Everywhere I looked I saw a world that held people like me in contempt.”

After winning a National Merit Scholarship, Allison attended college and went on to study anthropology at the New School for Social Research. But storytelling was in her bones, and that, combined with an awakening feminist spirit, informs and inspires her award-winning work. For Dorothy, feminism “…was like opening your eyes under water. It hurt, but suddenly everything that had been dark and mysterious became visible and open to change.” The author believes her first book, The Women Who Hate Me, (1983) “wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t gotten over my own prejudices, and started talking to my mother and sisters again.”

Her literary influences are surprising. One was Flannery O’Connor — “that astonishing, brave visionary who told hard truths in a human voice — an outsider holding a whole society up to a polished mirror. She was as ruthless as one of her own characters, and I loved her with my whole heart…If I set aside Flannery O’Connor, I would have to say that science fiction made me who I am today. I spent my childhood buried in those books. Every science-fiction novel I fell into as a child…widened my imagination about what was possible for me in the world. There were those perfectly horrible/wonderful stories about barbarian swordswomen who were always falling in love with demons, and there were the Telzey stories and the Witch World books and countless brave and wonderful novels told from inside the imaginations of ‘special’ young girls….On another world, in a strange time and place, all categories were reshuffled and made over.”

Dorothy’s novel, Bastard Out of Carolina (1992), skyrocketed her to fame, boosted by a full page in the New York Times Book Review which proclaimed the novel “as close to flawless as any reader could ask for,” lauding the author’s “perfect ear for speech and its natural rhythms.” The Boston Globe her “one of the finest writers of her generation.” The novel rose to the top of national best seller lists and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. It was adapted and made into an award-winning and controversial movie, directed by Angelica Huston.

“In my family,” Allison says, “…we all commit some unforgivable sin and then spend the rest of our lives trying to redeem it in some fashion. And the romance of self-destruction: I truly do not know why some of us can resist it and some of us can’t, why some of us kill our children and some of us try to send them whole into the world.”

Dorothy serves on the boards of PEN International, the National Coalition Against Censorship and Feminists for Free Expression, and the advisory board of the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award, presented annually to a science fiction or fantasy work that explores and expands on contemporary ideas of gender.

Her advice to writers is succinct: “You learn to live with uncertainty and poverty if you are going to be a writer. I’m still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been able to make a living at it is astonishing. I know so many great writers who can’t and, oh, it is not about justice. I am trying to carry it off with grace and a sense of humor.

“Understand me,” she writes. “What I am here for is to tell you stories you may not want to hear….And to scare hell out of you now and then. I was raised Baptist, I know how to do that.”

Some of Dorothy Allison’s Favorite Books

Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown.

Sula by Toni Morrison – “I remember…how this great grinding noise went through my brain. Of course, I thought.”

Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers.

My Antonia by Willa Cather.

The Persian Boy, Fire From Heaven and The Friendly Young Ladies by Mary Renault.

Odd Girl Out and Beebo Brinker by Ann Bannon.

Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller.

The Female Man by Joanna Russ.

The Life of Poetry by Muriel Rukyeser.

Cookie tiiiiime!

Mine never look this beautiful. Image from hdwallpapers.com

This is the only cookie recipe I’ve ever committed to memory. These are pretty much the best rolled cookies there are. I used to call them “Sailboat Cookies” because for some reason, I was in possession of only one cookie cutter, and it was shaped like a sailboat.

• 1-1/2 cups pure unsalted butter at room temp
• 1-1/2 cups confectioners sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 cups flour

(You can add optional flavorings like lavender, almond oil, lemon extract, etc.) Cream the butter together with the sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla, then salt and flour. Roll and cut. Don’t make these too thin, because they’re very tender and will break (see below). Make them nice and thick. Lay on ungreased parchment lined baking sheets and bake at 325F for about 10 minutes, just until they start turning brown at the edges. Frost with your favorite icing or make a glaze of confectioners sugar mixed with an egg white. Sprinkle on colored sugar.

baking for the right-brained

From the Gundersen family right-brained recipe file. No cookie cutters required!

Christmas Morning Plum Bread

2 c. self-rising flour

2 c. sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. cloves

1 c. oil

3 eggs

2 jars baby food plums

Dump everything in a bowl and beat with mixer. Pour batter into oiled and floured pans. Makes 2 medium loaves, 4 mini loaves or one bundt pan. Bake at 325-350 for 50 min. to 1 hour.

Intensely Flavored, Moist Gingerbread

I adapted this from the Splendid Table website. I cannot tell a lie–I simplified it, increased the sugar and added the candied ginger and cayenne pepper. It’s pretty much the best gingerbread ever.

• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 cup chopped candied ginger
• 1/2 cup melted unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup molasses (dark corn syrup works, too)
• 3/4 cup very hot water
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg

Preheat oven to 350°. Line an 8-inch square baking pan with waxed paper (you can also use 2 loaf pans or 4 mini loaf pans), coat with nonstick spray and dust with flour. Beat together the butter, molasses, hot water and brown sugar. Beat in the egg and quickly add the rest of the ingredients, stirring until blended. Pour into pans. Bake 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean. Cool on a rack in the pan.

I (heart) bookstores

“Bookshops are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn’t find anyone to talk to.”

–Alain de Botton

The Firebrand

is a valentine to booksellers and a testament to the power of love and the mysteries of fate and happenstance. It has a lot of ground to cover.

In the midst of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, unconventional debutante Lucy Hathaway risks her life to save a baby girl, raising the orphan as her own while running The Firebrand, a bookstore that caters to suffragettes and free thinkers. Five years later, fate throws her into the path of Randolph Higgins when she discovers the scarred, bitter, divorced man believes his baby died in the fire. She realizes Maggie, the child she saved that terrible night, is his lost daughter.

Now the conservative banker and the fiercely independent Lucy must deal with each other for Maggie’s sake. Despite the resulting clash of wills and differing political views, the powerful attraction that drew them together five years earlier still exists. Can these two stubborn, opinionated people find a way to create a family for the sake of Maggie, risking their own battered hearts?

I would love to meet you! Please mark your calendar for these upcoming events:

1 October 2010 – Poulsbo WA

• 6:30pm
• Chocolate and Wine with Romance Authors: Susan Wiggs, Sheila Roberts, Kimberly Fisk, and Julia Templeton
• Kiana Lodge, Poulsbo, WA
• Ticket Price: $25.00
• Join Susan Wiggs, Sheila Roberts, Kimberly Fisk and Julia Templeton at Kiana Lodge to support your library! An evening of chocolate, wine and words in a romantic setting. Discuss their writing styles, careers, and stories for an unforgettable evening of fun.
• Click here http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/109614 for tickets and more information.

11-16 October 2010 – Seattle WA

• “The Novel: LIVE!” event to benefit literacy. 36 authors. 6 days. 1 blockbuster novel. For more info please see Words4Women-subscribe.

  Firehouse Veggie Chili (adapted from www.marthastewart.com)

  INGREDIENTS

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 1 bell pepper, chopped
  • 1 carrot, chopped
  • 1 jalapeno pepper, minced
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 pound dried lentils, rinsed
  • 1/3 cup tomato paste
  • 1 (15-ounce) red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
  • 1 (15-ounce) pinto beans, drained and rinsed
  • 1 stewed (28-ounce) tomatoes
  • 1/3 cup chili powder
  • 4 teaspoons ground cumin
  • 1/4 teaspoon crushed red-pepper flakes
  • salt & pepper to taste
  • toppings of your choice–sour cream, chopped green onions, cheddar cheese, etc.

  In a large pot, warm the oil. Saute onion, green and red peppers, carrot, jalapeno pepper, and garlic. Stir in 7 cups water, lentils, tomato paste, kidney beans and pinto beans. Add stewed tomatoes, chili powder, cumin and pepper flakes. Bring to a boil; cover and simmer until lentils are tender, about an hour. If the chili starts to dry out, add hot water as needed. Season with salt and pepper, and serve immediately with toppings and corn bread.

  Stay cool!

  

breakfast of champions

When the peaches are this good, you don’t need a fancy scone recipe. Just this one. I’m posting it here because I can never find mine but I can always search my blog. Bon appetit.

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 stick cold unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup plain Greek yoghurt (Fage), buttermilk or sour cream
• 1 egg

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Mix flour, 1/3 cup sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Chop butter into flour mixture.
3. Whisk together yoghurt and egg until smooth.
4. Stir yoghurt mixture into flour mixture and form dough into a ball.
5. Place on a lightly floured surface and pat into a circle about 3/4-inch thick. Sprinkle with coarse sugar. Cut into 8 wedges; place on a cookie sheet (preferably lined with parchment paper). Bake until golden, about 15 to 17 minutes.

shortcake with peaches and faux romanov sauce

Okay, listen up. This is one of my most asked-for recipes so here goes. Sorry about the uninspired title of this post, but it makes it more findable when I search.

You can substitute any summer fruit you like–rasperries, strawberries, blueberries, nectarines…all your faves. I used peaches because this batch was amazing, from an orchard in Oregon.

Shortcake Recipe …kind of adapted from www.foodnetwork.com. I decreased the salt and increased the sugar, and used all butter, added the plain yoghurt because I didn’t have half and half, and suggested the romanov sauce. Changed the oven temp, too. So sue me.

• 2 cups flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup tablespoons butter, chilled
• 3/4 cup plain yoghurt or half and half
• Melted butter to brush shortcakes + coarse (demarara or however you say it) sugar
• fruit
• Faux Romanov sauce

Directions

Heat oven 400 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Cut in butter and shortening. Mix in half-and-half. Form cakes about the size of your palm. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with coarse sugar. Bake for 15 minutes or until brown. Cool and eat with summer fruit and Romanov cream.

Recipe: Faux Romanov Cream (healthier than the real thing, which involve creme fraiche which you probably don’t have anyway). I don’t have a photo because it was slurped down so fast.

• 1 cup Greek style nonfat yoghurt (like Fage brand)
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 tablespoon Cointreau, triple sec or some other orangey liqueur.

Whisk everything together and serve over shortcake and fruit.

for book groups

she is one smart cookie

So the lovely and talented Lindsey has made something for you. A downloadable, print-outable reading group guide, with a favorite recipe. Because we all know that a book club meeting without food is like a day without sunshine, eh? Enjoy!

Lakeshore Christmas- book club

My book club has trouble staying on topic. It’s such a great time to get together with friends. The one thing that excites us, though, is a really great read, one we can’t stop talking about. This fall, I convinced my gang to adopt When Autumn Leaves by Amy S. Foster for an upcoming meeting. I adored this debut novel and want to make all my girlfriends read it. I’m also excited about Tell Me Something True by Leila Cobo (yes, THAT Leila Cobo). Interesting that both Leila and Amy have strong, strong ties to the music industry. Look them up and see what I mean.

I would love to hear about your book group. What are your meetings like, do you get in cat fights, are Cheetos involved, what?! Inquiring minds want to know. Post in comments below.

just a taste

A sneak peek at Lakeshore Christmas. Maureen Davenport and Eddie Haven are bringing sexy back to the library.

Bake some cookies. Save the library. Save the world.

Click the link for a great recipe:

09_283_Postcard_Lakeshore

cookie tiiiime

“Think what a better world it would be if we all–the whole world–had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.” —Robert Fulghum

"Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you." --Robert Fulghum

I sort of made this recipe up, based on the typical toll house cookie recipe. Do yourself a favor and whip up a batch today.

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 2/3 cup white sugar
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 1-3/4 cup self-rising flour (maybe more if the dough seems too wet)
• 3/4 cup oat bran or rolled oats
• 3/4 cup white chocolate chips
• 3/4 cup macadamia nuts (coarsely chopped)
• 3/4 cup dried cherries or craisins

Cream butter and shortening together with sugars. Add eggs and vanilla and beat. Add flour and oats, then stir in the rest of the ingredients. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 8-10 minutes at 350F until they just start to brown around the edges.

Also would you please check out the flowers in the photo? My bulbs are kicking ass this year.

Shoot. The theme for April is supposed to be mothers and daughters. I’m totally blanking on how to tie this post into the theme. My mother’s favorite cookie recipe was always “rip into that tube of Oreos and I’ll pour the milk.”

Hey! Tell us about your mom’s favorite cookie recipe in the Comments section!

top o’ the morning

Nothing fancy, just a nice recipe for something called Irish Soda Bread, which has nothing to do with Ireland but it’s simple and delicious, so here you go. If you’re like me, you don’t keep buttermilk around so use yoghurt or cream or something, and a squeeze of lemon.

tastes better than it looks

4 cups unbleached flour, plus more for kneading

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

6 tablespoons brown sugar, packed

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

4 tablespoons butter

2 eggs, beaten, optional

1 1/4 to 2 cups buttermilk (use more if you omit the eggs)

1 cup raisins or currants, soaked in hot water

Combine dry ingredients. Cut in butter, add eggs and buttermilk. Stir in raisins. Knead a few times and let rest 10 minutes. * Shape into an 8- or 9-inch round. Score top with a knife in the shape of a plus sign. Place in 9-inch cast-iron pan and bake at 375 degrees until top is brown and toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 40 to 50 minutes. Remove and cool on rack.

Serve toasted with butter. Try it with a wedge of sharp cheese and a bit of hard-smoked salmon. Good luck!

Speaking of luck, I have written several books about Ireland because I love it there. I love the people and their history and heritage. Irish Magic and Irish Magic 2 are anthologies written with some of my favorite writers–Roberta Gellis, Morgan Llywelyn, Barbara Samuel. The Mist and the Magic takes place in Tudor Ireland. And the late, great Dancing on Air will be republished this year with a new title: At the Queen’s Summons. Good luck with that, too!