More on Friendship

As always, a book project has prompted me to solicit thoughts/ideas/reactions from various people; now, I'm thinking about--friendship. On 11/19/07, I posted an entry "On Writing and Friendship" with which there are also posted two comments about friendships.

Annie Unverzagt, a very special friend from the time we were graduate students in the mid-1960s, sent me her cherished copy of Gert & Frieda, by Anita Riggio (New York: Atheneum, 1990) along with her thoughts that she said I could post:
Annie on friendship: This delightful children's book tells a wonderful story about friendship. It seems to capture some essentials: emphathetic listening, acceptance of a friend's quirks and differences, enabling a friend to find their strengths, supporting your friend in good times and bad. Our family--especially the girls--have always loved this book, mostly because of "hugging around the middle" concept. I suspect we are attracted to the humor and whimsy that underlie friendship. No one is taking here--it is a relationship of giving on both parts.

As I get older, I am most appreciative of the timeless quality in a good friendship. It does not seem to matter if you last visited together yesterday or many years ago. There is the caring and interest in your friend's life and living that seems to transcend time, especially when feelings are mutual. You have moved beyond the level of getting something out of a relationship, even if it is only "does the person like me" to purely enjoying the opportunity to exchange in an atmosphere of acceptance.

I have always treasured loyalty as a time-tested strength of friendship. I suppose that is fruther refined to maintaining friendship without requiring anything in return. I think things are much trickier with political--or any other reason--friendships such as the one you are explaing in your book.

On Writing

Now that I'm in the writing phrase of Stirring Up the World, words, phrases, sentences spontaneously appear in my brain, including in the middle of the night. I went to sleep--or tried to last night--with an unsolved writing problem; about midnight a glimmer of a solution materialized. Humm, I thought, I wonder if it is worth getting up & trying this??? My body said no, but my brain was insistent--no, sleep for you until you see whether or not it works if you delete this and add that. (By works, I mean that I continue to move forward, i.e. that what I've written propels me onward, saying what I want to say, getting me to where I want to go, keeping readers turning the page.) So, I got up, stumbled in the dark down several flights of stairs to my basement office, and happily wrote and wrote until after 2:00 am! Double happily, this morning I reread my night-time writing and concluded that it works in the light of day too!

Grace Paley and The Great Hall at Cooper Union

Last night I went to "A Tribute to Grace Paley: An Evening of Readings and Remembrance" at The Great Hall of Cooper Union in New York City.
Paley was a poet, short story writer and political activist. Francine Prose, president of PEN American Center, opened the evening. She was followed by Paley's daughter Nora. Other participants, including Katha Pollitt, Sonia Sanchez, Walter Mosley, Michael Cunningham, and Vera B. Williams, read from Paley's works and gave reminiscences. The program opened and closed with a recording of Grace Paley reading her poem Responsibility that includes these lines: It is the poet's responsibility to speak truth to power as the/Quakers say/It is the poet's responsibility to learn the truth from the powerless/It is the responsibility of the poet to say many times: there is no freedom without justice and this means economic justice and love justice/. . . . It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman to keep an eye on/this world and cry out like Cassandra, but be/listened to this time.
The announcement of the event had this quote from Paley:
Let us go forth with fear and courage and rage to save the world.
Her dream for her grandchildren, Grace Paley said in a May 2007 interview was: It would be a world without militarism and racism and greed--and where women don't have to fight for their place in the world.
I was moved by the event and thrilled to finally be inside the The Great Hall of Cooper Union, the scene of many legendary speeches and meetings and events in American history. The Great Hall, which opened in 1858, has figured in several of my books, including Strike! The Bitter Struggle of American Workers from Colonial Times to the Present--where I wrote about the mass meeting of striking workers on November 25, 1909, when Clara Lemlich, a teenage worker who had been badly beating during her stint on the picket line, electrified the meeting with her words: "I am a working girl, one of those who are on strike against intolerable conditions. I am tired of listening to speakers who talk in general terms. What we are here for is to decide whether we shall or shall not strike. I offer a resolution that a general strike be declared--now!" Lemlich's call to action resulted in, what became known as, "The Uprising of the 20,000," a strike that dramatically demonstrated the power of semi-skilled and unskilled immigrant women workers and catapulted women into prominence in the labor movement, which had traditionally ignored them.

The Great Hall was also the scene of the first meeting of the U. S. Sanitary Commission that organized the hospital transport ships during the Civil War. I wrote about Katharine Wormeley, a lady superintendent aboard the hospital transport ships in Adventurous Women: Eight True Stories About Women Who Made a Difference. My essay about Wormeley includes excerpts of her letters. On May 31, 1862, from on board the Knickerbocker she wrote to her mother: It is a piteous sight to see these men: no one knows what war is until they see this black side of it. We may all sentimentalize over its possibilities as we see the regiments go off, or when we hear of a battle; but it is as far from the reality as to read of pain is far from feeling it.

And, of course, The Great Hall played a role in the fight for women's rights--meetings were held there and most of the male and female leaders spoke there, including the women I'm currently writing about--Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. At one time, Anthony had an office in The Great Hall.
p.s. I'm happy to report that two days ago I finally moved from the intense research phase to the writing phase of Stirring Up the World: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, a Biography of a Powerful Friendship.

On Writing and Friendships

The end of another long thinking
about--how am I going to structure this book?!?
Here's a picture of what my thinking "looks" like tonight. At one point in the day, I emailed my friend Dot: "What do you think about friendships??"
"Well, let's see," she replied. "Friendships are--rewarding, sustaining, inspiring, fun, frustrating, enduring or fleeting, friendships inspire growth, common interests hold them together, old friendships are a great source of comfort, new friendships are energizing and on some days, your pet is your BEST friend!"

Feel free to add your thoughts/ideas/experiences on the topic of friendships!

On Writing

Spent about 16 hours yesterday with the results of my research into the friendship of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. What do I have? Masses of material! Now the writerly question/decision is--what to do with all that material?!? How to turn it into a clear, coherent, compelling (my 3Cs of good writing)nonfiction narrative??? How am I going to structure this book? That question is constantly on my mind. In my sleep last night I was remembering the structures of some of my other books--5 strand interwoven multi-layered structure for Rosie the Riveter: Women Working on the Home Front in World War II, a topical chronology for Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts: A History of Burial, a modified chronology for A Woman Unafraid: The Achievements of Frances Perkins. In an early post (8/7) I wrote about a structure I "saw"--"knitting something with a pattern, i.e. I've got two main skeins of yarn--ECS (I'm thinking she's orange) and SBA (perhaps green) and I'll be picking up stitches from other skeins as I go." One of my tests of the viability of an idea is whether or not it sticks with me--that one is still with me. The ultimate test, of course, is whether or not I can implement the idea & this one isn't there yet. So, back to work!

Cranberry Harvest

Our Jersey Shore bungalow is near the cranberry bogs in Double Trouble State Park in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Luckily this year, we--me, Linda, and Sophie, my three-year-old granddaughter-- managed to get there from NYC in time to watch the wet, or water harvest; an event I've been curious about, especially after writing my forthcoming book Thanksgiving: The True Story. The first two pictures (left to right) show a cranberry bog with ripe berries (cranberries grow on a dwarf evergreen vine in a peat or sandy bog), and two specialized harvesters that knock the berries off the vine. In that picture, the first driver has lifted up the bar that has 9 metal circle because he's about to turn around (see next picture). The other driver still has the bar down and the circles are rotating and knocking the cranberries off the vine (note the water in the bog splashing up). The man wearing the waders directs the drivers and walks in front of them to make sure they don't hit a rock or other obstacle.
"Hey," I shouted to get his attention. "What do you call those machines?"
"Knockers," he shouted back. "Also pickers, I call them pickers."
"What do most people call them?"
"Ask him," he said gesturing to a man standing a bit behind me. Jose has been doing this for fifty years."
Turning to look as Jose, I asked, "What do you call them?"
"Knockers."
The next two pictures are of the bog after it has been flooded with 6" to 8" of water. Since cranberries float, the workers corral them by encircle them with a very long piece of black, flexible material about 8" wide that floats. We could see two workers standing in the corral using a type of push-broom to move the cranberries around but couldn't figure out why. Walking to the side of the truck, we found a man on a ladder who was watching the cranberries fill up the truck.
"Hi," I called out, "We have a question." I didn't expect him to climb down, but he did and cheerfully explained that there is a tub just below the surface of the water with a suction hose that sucks the cranberries up to a platform on the back of a truck. The men in the water are moving the cranberries toward the tub. Periodically one of the men walks over and tightens the black strip encircling the cranberries, thus making the corral smaller; a task, we all agreed, looks like hard work!
The last picture shows the workers standing on the platform. They remove pieces of vine and use a type of push broom to move the cranberries onto a conveyer belt that dumps them into the back of the truck that will go to the receiving station in Chatsworth, NJ. That is where the cranberries get processed into juice and cranberry sauce. (Cranberries that are sold whole are gathered by a "dry harvesting" method by which mechanized machines "pick" the cranberries). As we were leaving, a woman wearing a "Piney Power" T-shirt hailed us to warn us about chiggers (happily no problems for us). Ever the journalist, I asked her about her t-shirt, etc. and discovered she has a cool website (www.pineypower.com) with lots of material about the Pine Barrens, including information about cranberries.

A "Nonfiction Moment" and a 6th Grade Science Lesson

Dot Emer--Emer being the married name of Dot Chastney whose true stories about being a kid during World War II appear throughout my book Rosie the Riveter: Women Working on The Home Front In World War II (there are also photos from Dot's life then), and who you'll meet again in my forthcoming book Thanksgiving: The True Story--is a middle school librarian in Boca Raton, Florida. Dot just sent me the following email about the photographs of the Monarch butterflies on my blog: "Hi Penny, Just want you to know that your Monarch butterfly photos provided a nice science lesson on Wednesday. I went to the sixth grade science teacher and showed her your blog site with the photos. We threw the photos up on the SmartBoard so the whole class could see them and the teacher read your description. She also told the kids that when her boys were young they vacationed in Cape May and there were so many Monarchs on the move that they were landing on the kids."

This is such a great example of a concept I love to introduce when I teach courses in nonfiction writing and nonfiction literature and that is--a "Nonfiction Moment" i.e. anything real that really happens during the course of a day--a conversation, an incident, an observation, a taste, a surprise, an unexpected encounter, something you overhear--that sticks with you. Something that you remember. It doesn't have to be momentous. It can just be a snippet or a sliver of something. It doesn't have to matter to anyone else, just to you is enough. All it has to be is something that really happened--nothing made up--that catches your attention and hangs around inside you.

Friendship--Dear Jan, Thank you

Just now, I was working on Stirring Up The World and thinking deeply about the 19th century friendship between Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony when I heard a vigorously banging on my front door. Disoriented--remember my brain was in the 1800s--I opened the door & had to think a moment when the woman who was holding a big bouquet of flowers said: "Special surprise for Penny Colman. Are you Penny Colman?" The flowers, I discovered, are in celebration of my 20th anniversary as a freelance writer from Jan Kristo, my dear friend and colleague and co-author along with Sandip Wilson of the forthcoming chapter "Bold New Perspectives: Issues in Selecting and Using Nonfiction." Thank you, Jan, for the gorgeous bouquet, and thank you for the timely reminder of the joy and power of 21st century friendships!

Twenty-Year Anniversary

One month after my 43rd birthday, I became a full-time freelance writer. It was October 1, 1987. I mark that as my starting date because that was the first day after the last day that I received a salary from a full-time job with benefits, an office, and support staff. My first-born child--Jonathan--had graduated from high school in June and my second- and third-born children--David and Stephen, identical twins--were seniors in high school.

I had been writing on and off for years and published some articles and a one-act play, but I had never really focused on myself as a writer. Instead I had concentrated on being a mother, a community activist, a wife. I had also compiled a diverse resume as a teacher, a speaker, an executive director of a social service agency, and founder of an art gallery. But as I moved into my 40s, I became aware of an increasingly insistent internal need to write. So, twenty years ago, I took the plunge.

Although I have written fiction, my passion is nonfiction--real stories about real people, events, things, and ideas. In my quest for true stories I've paddled a raft through whitewater rapids; hiked out of the Grand Canyon; tracked down grave diggers; walked across a high wire strung between two trees: interviewed interesting people; spent countless hours at archives, libraries, and historic sites immersing myself in the lives and words and deeds of historic women; and etc.--all amazing adventures!

The picture is of the gorgeous gladioli we bought yesterday at a fall festival in Mays Landing, NJ (we happened upon it as we were driving a let's-try-a-new-route-home from a research trip in Washington, DC)--$5 for ten stems--yellow, red, purple, lavender, white, and coral. We've dubbed them the twenty-year-anniversary-flowers. I love the array of colors. I love the way a gladiola unfurls and opens from the base to the top. Twenty years ago I could not--did not--imagine the challenges facing full-time writers, especially writers who hope to earn a living. But I'm so glad I couldn't & didn't because I might have gotten cold feet and missed twenty years full of fun and adventure and satisfaction and the opportunity to get to know many marvelous people! Thank you to everyone who has cheered me on, including my three sons who said--Go for it, Mom! and Charlotte who never doubted that I would make it & who buys multiple copies of my books, and Dot who is full of information and stories, and, of course, Linda who is always here and there and everywhere.

Ocean Scene

Back to my home-base in Englewood to teach two classes
at Queens College tomorrow. This picture was taken at Island Beach State Park, ten miles of beautiful dunes and wide beaches at the south end of Barnegat Peninsula (really an island). My favorite beach walk is the mile from where the road ends to the Barnegat Inlet, the channel of water between Barnegat Penisula and Long Beach Island, the other long barrier island of the coast of NJ.

More Monarch Pictures

It was a chilly night and I worried about the Monarchs (see previous post and picture 9/15).
But they appeared
fine when
I arrived about 8 am. There were more than a hundred butterflies roosting in the trees. They left during the day--off on their long journey. What a thrill--I saw a sight I had never seen but will always remember!

Migrating Monarch Butterflies

During a bike ride today, I saw many Monarch butterflies flying in the air--like a cloud, I thought. Awestruck, I stopped and watched and then noticed that some were heading for a row of trees, including two pitch pine, growing on the shore of Barnegat Bay. Walking closer, I saw a large group* of Monarchs resting, i.e. with their wings closed thus the tan color. Others, as you can see in the picture, had their wings open. Mid-September is when the Monarchs migrate along the Atlantic coast past the section of the Jersey Shore where I've been for a week working on a book. They come through on a north or northwest wind (and today there was a strong northwest wind) on their way to the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico. I took this photograph at 6:45 p.m. I'll go back tomorrow morning and see what's up.
*Not knowing what to call a group of Monarch butterflies, I did a search and it appears that a group of butterflies is called a Kaleidoscope, also a swarm and rabble. I discovered that the American Butterfly Assocation is holding a contest to select a name for a group of butterflies. Think I'll do some more research on this issue, but, for now, back to my book project.

Jersey Shore House & Writing

My favorite and most productive place to start a book is in this little house at the Jersey Shore. At the moment, I'm sorting through massive amounts of primary and secondary source material trying to figure out the structure for my next book, Stirring Up the World: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, A Biography of a Friendship (yes, that's a new title, which I'll explain in another post). On the left is a picture of Stanton, Anthony is pictured on the right. I've filled up one little bedroom with books!! I write at the kitchen counter with breaks for walks, bike rides, and kayaking.

I'm in the middle of a writing-week at our Jersey Shore bungalow & spend my days and nights working on my bio of the friendship between Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony. However, when I need a break, I paddle my kayak to check up on the black swan.

Grand Canyon Magic continued from 8/18 post

Grand Canyon Magic continued from 8/18 post
May 4, 1987, Flagstaff, Arizona

The night before we started on our raft trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon we met the head guide, Dave Edwards, in a room at the Holiday Inn in Flagstaff. Arizona for a pretrip orientation. Anxiety and excitement played tag inside me while I listened to Dave, a tall, lean, intense man with years of experience as a river guide. (Here's a picture of Dave rowing a raft. Arlene is the "peep" sitting in the front of the raft.)

Quickly I scrounged a pen and paper (actually the back of a postcard Bob found in his pocket), and took notes: "first thing in the morning is coffee call . . . do approximately twenty miles a day . . . six hours on the river . . . hike in side canyons . . . drink lots of fluids, and not just when you're thirsty . . . carry out all waste for proper disposal except urine (this experience prompt me to write my first nonfiction book, Toilets, Bathtubs, Sinks, and Sewers: A History of the Bathroom). . . water is very cold because it's released from the bottom of the dam . . . everyone gets a waterproof ammunition can (army surplus) for personal belongings . . . for your sleeping bag and clothing you get two heavy rubber bags slightly bigger than a grocery bag (formerly used by soldiers to carry radio transmitters) . . . in an emergency you'll go out in a helicopter (a prospect I vowed to avoid).

Dave repeatedly characterized waterfalls, canyon walls, rapids, stars, clouds, etc. as spectacular. "I use that word a lot," he interjected a bit self-consciously, "but it's the way I feel." The next day, after a three-hour bus ride to Lee's Ferry on the Colorado River where the rafts and rest of the crew waited for us, we began to find out why Dave frequently said--"spectacular!"

Cousins from Argentina

Yesterday, August 26th, I had lunch with my 2nd cousin, Nany, from the branch of my mother's family that settled in Argentina after World War I. Nany's daughter, Mariana, my 2nd cousin once removed, lives in Brooklyn & found me through the Internet in 2004. Mariana joins us for holidays, comes to our Shore house, and once hosted a delicious Argentinean BBQ in Brooklyn. In 2005, Nany and her husband Guido came to the U.S. to visit Mariana and we gathered for a first-time family gathering at the Shore. Nany--who speaks English, which is good because I don't speak Spanish, although I've tried and will try harder--and I are in our early 60s and it feel as if we've known each other all our lives. Nany and Mariana are both wonderful, loving, vivacious, and smart women!

Linda took this picture at a restauant in Chinatown--Nany and Mariana came by subway from Brooklyn and we drove up from the Shore. I'm holding two beautiful potholders that Nany's mother Dora crocheted for me. Dora is 91 and I remember her trip to the U.S. in about 1959. My mother met me after school one day and said, "Come on, we're driving to New York City to pick up my cousin Doritza." In those days, it was about an 14-hour trip. The way back, I remember, my mother and Doritza talking in a combination of languages--German, Croat, Spanish, and my mother periodically translating for me.

Meeting Nany has finally cleared up a mystery that haunted my mother (she died in 1997)--the identity and fate of her birth mother, a true story I'll write about later.

Paddling Down the Colorado River Through the Grand Canyon

Twenty years ago I wrote Grand Canyon Magic, an illustrated memoir of my 13-day-white water raft trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. My husband Bob (we are now divorced) had suggested we take the trip to mark our twentieth wedding anniversary. All together, thirteen people were on the trip--six paying passengers--"peeps" in river guide jargon and seven crew member, a large crew because of additional people training to be guides. The picture is of me in the bow of the raft paddling through a rapid. Note my name on the strip of duct tape on my life jacket; we joked that that was so the guides could identify our body after we capsized and drown! Obviously I survived the trip, although I did capsize and bob/swim through a rapid in forty-eight degree water.

It was such an amazing experience that I want to share it with you by periodically posting excerpts from Grand Canyon Magic on my blog. Pictures too. I'll use the title Grand Canyon Magic for the excerpts.

On Doing Research: The Stacks

I've spent the last two days in the "stacks" at Butler Library,
Columbia University doing research for my biography of the friendship between Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony). There are nine floors of books in the library--rows and rows of shelves that are 7 rows high and 15 feet long loaded with books, journals, and other printed material. It's a heavenly place. Here's a visual sampler: Butler Library, a corridor between rows of book, and a row in the "stacks.

A Woman's Story: 72 years ago

On August 14, 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) signed the Social Security Act. The woman in the picture is Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the subject of my biography A Woman Unafraid: The Achievements of Frances Perkins.

Perkins was the first woman in the United States cabinet and the architect of some of the most far-reaching and important reforms and social legislation ever enacted in America, including the establishment of Social Security. FDR had insisted that Perkins head the committee that created the Social Security Act: "You care about this thing," he told her. "You believe in it. Therefore I know you will put your back to it more than anyone else, and you will drive it through." And she did.

Perkins invited members of Congress who had fought for the bill to attend the signing ceremony, and she had enough pens for FDR to use as he signed the copies of the bill to give one to each person present. Except one for herself.

FDR noticed. "Frances, where is your pen?

"I haven't got one," she replied.

Turning to his secretary, Marvin McIntyre, FDR said, "All right, give me a first class pen for Frances."

"It is a great satisfaction to see the foundation stone laid in a security structure which aims to protect our people against the major hazards of life," Perkins told reporters.

Frances Perkins died at the age of eighty-five on May 14, 1965. Several years before her death, she had talked about the state of the world. "I hear people say that the world is in a crisis . . . . I think crisis has occurred in the world's history many times. I'm glad to say that in those other crises we didn't have radio, television, and the movies to run it up until everybody died of terror. . . . You can't do any of the things we did in the early part of the century if you're afraid. . . . You just can't be afraid . . . if you're going to accomplish anything."

For an NPR segment on Frances Perkins, see the link on the home page at www.pennycolman.com.

Black Swan on Barnegat Bay

Paddling our kayak on Barnegat Bay early Sunday morning (8/12/07) we headed for one of the islands to the north of our bungalow. In a channel on the east side, we saw a company of 26 Mute Swans (white with orange bills) swimming in a group, slightly to the north of that group 2 Mute Swans were feeding, in between swam a Black Swan--gorgeous black feathers with bit of white feather on the wing edges and a bright red bill!!!! We stilled our paddles and watched and watched. According to our Sibley's bird book, Black Swans are an exotic species. They breed in the southeast and southwest regions of Australia (one is depicted on the flag of Western Australia). A prized ornamental waterbird --and it is elegant--Black Swans are found in public and private collections in Europe and the U.S. The one on Barnegat Bay undoubtedly escaped from a public or private collection in the U.S.

We continued paddling around the island and observed 6 adult osprey and 2 or 3 young osprey in a nest built on a wood platform on stilts (the largest number we've seen in seven summers). All and all a thrilling journey, except for the green-headed flies that ignored Linda and feasted on me!

Today, we returned to Englewood & took Sophie to the Bronx Zoo (Sophie & her mother are leaving tomorrow to spend a month in Europe visiting family). She surprised me by saying she wanted to ride a camel, so we did--it was fun! Watched several performances by three marvelous actors--Brian, Trevor and Gail who are member of a terrific drama group--Wildlife Theater. We loved their energy, sense of fun, effective environmental lessons, and, of course, their acting and singing.

I'm inching my way forward with shaping the structure of my biography of the friendship between ECS & SBA. Once I get it, I'm thinking I'm going to write in sections instead of starting at the beginning and working my way through to the end. I'll write in section not necessarily in chronological order. Why? Because I'm curious how that would work & curiosity is a good way to keep me & my writing engaged and fresh.