*Skips in merrily and plops on couch*
Good Morning Mr. Blog,
That book writing event yesterday was probably in the
top ten oddest things I have done this year.
I can't believe it took me four years to get over the
death of my mother and father and able to frolic again.
Of course Lisa Martinez is to blame for all my wild behavior
at this ripe age of fifty-three.
She was such a little rascal at Bryant when I met her
in 1966. We were in the after school bamboo dancing club
and girl scouts together.
Oh how I LOVED bamboo dancing.
I was such a fearless little thing and Mr. Hakola, the Vice Principal
even let me design the crisscross pole dance when I was ten.
Instead of dancing down and back through six sets of poles
we had two sets criss-crossed and we danced around
in a circle pattern until we built up the nerve to cut
through the middle!
Can you imagine that?!
Four poles slamming together that could potentially
break your legs if you weren't fast enough.
I was fast.
A childhood of being an unwanted little sister
helped me build up great speed.
If you are annoying, you'd better be fast!
So anyway, um. Lisa, odd things, over grief.
Lisa and reconnected all us Roosevelt people together
through Facebook and I started going to socialize.
Little did I know I would go to book readings and
high teas and other activities that I would
normally not know about.
But getting over my grief last winter
was like waking up.
So you know I have been going to BINGO most
Wednesday nights with Pam, Margo and Michelle.
A month ago I was at Third Place Books
down in Lake Forest Park and I saw a big poster
on the information desk for The Novel Live.
I look at everything and read everything in public places.
I noticed on the poster it said something about
The Seattle Seven.
A little light bulb went off inside my little brain
and I remembered reading about that group in
The Seattle Times book review section.
It is a wonderful book review section and I have
dozens of clippings of books I want to buy
when I get a job someday.
What caught my eye when I was reading about
The Seattle Seven, was Mary Gutterson's name.
I didn't even know she was a writer!
So anyway, I was at Lake Forest Park, looking at the poster
and they had a basket with invitations to this book writing
at a place called the Richard Hugo House.
I went home and googled The Novel Live
and was so excited to see Mary's name on it!
I called Margo right away and told her that Mary was
writing a book with thirty other authors
at a big event downtown.
She sounded excited too so I took the invitations
to BINGO and passed them out and we talked about it.
We had never heard of Richard Hugo or Hugo House,
but we love Mary and would do anything for her
so we decided to go.
Now that was where we had to do some serious planning
since all of us moved out of the crowded part of Seattle
when it filled up with awful skyscrapers and too many people.
Margo and Michelle are both in Shoreline and I'm next
door in Kookmore. Where the kooks are.
None of us remembered how to drive into Seattle
or where to park and didn't want to
so Margo had the brilliant idea of Michelle and me
to take her access bus with her.
Margo fell off a loading dock and broke her
back and hips and is waiting for a hip replacement
so she is in one of those electric wheelchairs.
Well, she got the arrangements made and Michelle and I
met her at her house yesterday at two PM.
It was a fine sunny day with just a little nip
in the air that got nippier and nippier as the day went along.
The van came and we met a nice lady going downtown to the doctor
that had had foot surgery.
We got into downtown and the traffic was
horrendous but we got to do some serious people watching
so we were quite happy to have to park in
the middle of downtown
while we off-loaded the nice lady.
It started misting of all things as we approached
the Richard Hugo House.
I thought it was by Lake Union but it was
on Capital Hill instead.
We found the wheelchair ramp and got inside
and it was the most wonderful old Victorian House
you ever did see!
I used to shop at the REI near there as a teenager
and bought my first backpack there in 1969
with my babysitting money.
We would sleep overnight on the sidewalk to be the first ones
inside to get the discounted down sleeping bags
that no one earning $1.00 an hour babysitting
and mowing lawns could normally afford.
So we go inside the building and it is darkish
and full of rich wood floors and furniture
and my blood pressure dropped like a rock
and I felt all kumbiiyaish.
The nice young lady showed us to the caber at stage
and there was an attractive young lady on the
stage typing!
Well!
I had never seen such a thing and I
was mighty impressed as you can imagine.
I mean, when I go to bed every night around eight,
I read for two or three hours
and I often wonder how writers can sit there and write
and there I was as an EYEWITNESS to this
novel being written.
Once we had our table, we wandered around a little and
guess who we found?!
MARY!
Margo said Mary had been ill with a cold
but she sure didn't look it.
If a human were to be labeled as a specimen,
like lazy, fast, slow, et cetera,
Mary would be labeled as vigorous!
She just plain exudes vigor and vitality and
warmth and friendliness.
She was happy to see us and let us take
a few pictures with her before she
went to the green room to study
what the twenty-two previous authors
had written.
The girls had coffee and I looked at all the
merchandise for sale
and dreamed of having a job
so I could buy a cute
The Novel Live t-shirt.
Mary had on the black and white one
and she looked so magnificent
with her still-girlish figure
and wild, dark curly hair.
And her smile.
A smile that would soften even the cruelest heart.
After browsing the merchandise,
I explored the building further
and happened upon The Green Room.
When I saw Mary sitting at the long table
covered with papers I tried to
inch back out quietly so I wouldn't disturb her.
She spotted me and yelled for me to come sit next
to her for a minute,
which I was disinclined to do
since she was scheduled to go on stage in five minutes
and I certainly didn't want to distract her.
She just laughed when I told her that
and I could tell right then that she was the
consummate professional.
She had already read the previous chapters
and was raren' to go.
She looked like a cat would look
if she were surrounded by a floor full of
open cans of tuna fish.
Happy, relaxed, full of Sudafed
and eager to dig in.
She was called to go out
and I glanced at the wall covered with butcher paper
outlining the plot and the characters.
It was fascinating!
Who has ever seen
the brainstorming for a novel on butcher paper
up on a wall. A twenty foot long space of wall
covered in ideas.
I just marveled at it.
I dashed out to snap a few photographs of Mary
getting settled in with the technology people.
They had hooked up an author-cam for the five day
event so people could see them typing and read
what was being typed at home on their computers.
Once Mary was settled in Michelle, Margo
and I sat at our table eagerly watching her
every move.
She typed like blazes Mr. Blog!
We were stunned!
We could just barely read what she was typing
before the screen scrolled up to a new page.
And brilliant.
Talk about Brilliant with a capital B.
I had been working the two previous days
so I didn't know what the plot was
but apparently the protagonist, Alexis, a teenager,
had been locked in a room by the evil Richard
and had to get out.
She saw her murdered friend's crow out the window.
We were SO EXCITED.
Mimi Castillo showed up a minute before our bus arrived
and Mary's parents and other friends were there too
and also her hot new boyfriend with a sexy accent.
When we slipped out to jump on our bus it was
really raining. Not pouring, but cold and wet.
We got on the bus and met the other rider, Swan,
that had just moved here from Chicago
and had a pleasant ride out of the
claustrophobic city out to Margo's house.
We were so excited about what Mary was writing
that we all had ideas of how we wanted Alexis to
escape from her twelfth floor prison.
Michelle wanted the crow, Habib, to somehow make a
parachute with the other crows to carry her off,
and Margo wanted Mr. Kenji to kick in the door and save her
and I wanted her to jump into a dumpster in the alley below.
Margo has a small machine called a Blackberry
and she was able to find Mary on the internet
and read us what she had typed.
When we found out Mary had all the crows enter the
building and cause pandemonium,
we all cheered.
We cheered so much we fogged twenty feet of
windows on the Metro Access van!
Well, I won't tell you more Mr. Blog because
I want you to buy the book when it comes out this spring.
The proceeds fund literacy in Seattle and
what more noble cause is that?!
Of course the advent of video games
has led to a nation of youth
that don't have to read for entertainment.
When I was little, TV was black and white
and had three channels and the remote control
hadn't even been invented yet.
But even as technology expanded I was engrossed
with the written word.
Especially character driven stories.
I loved Mary's book, 'Gone To the Dogs.'
It made me laugh and cry and I would call it poignant.
So after we made it to Margo's and parted
from each other with sorrow
and promises of future fun together,
I drove home in the miserable drizzle
and found my sons and Carlos
all snuggled in playing those awful
video games I can't stand.
But I woke up wondering
who on earth was Richard Hugo?
So I did some digging and found out he was born in
White Center of all places in 1923
and got a master's degree in Creative Writing at the UW
before moving to Montana to teach that subject
at the University of Montana.
He was a very famous poet and did some other writing
too and I would like to read, 'The Real West Marginal Way.'
We roamed that area as kids with my mom and her
boyfriend Bill Ravet in the late fifties and early sixties
when we lived in Rainier Valley and later, Beacon Hill.
Bill took us fishing in the Duwammish River along there
and around Harbor Island in a small boat.
And we'd eat fast food along Marginal Way.
Seems to me that was where there were some
Buildings that looked like Cowboy boots.
In 1997, Linda Jaech, Frances McCue and Andrea Lewis
decided Seattle needed a center for Seattle writers and readers
to congregate and they created the non-profit
Richard Hugo House, named in his honor.
Besides the cool cabaret area that Mary worked in,
there is a theater, art gallery, library and
meeting rooms.
It didn't look 16,206 square feet but it is!
What a good idea!
With three hundred and forty-seven cloudy,
gloomy days a year, Seattle is the perfect place
for writers and readers and artists.
It is far too miserable to go outside most of the time
so many people have time to live in their heads.
Then when a rare ray of sunshine comes out
the inspiration of life is a very heady experience.
Gets those creative juices flowing.
It was so nice to see Mary in her literary glory
and I hope she feels better today.
I hope she feels triumphant
but I know sometimes people can be
self-critical.
I'm an expert on that.
Well, I have a million and one chores and errands
so have a great day Mr. Blog!
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