THE AUDIBLE VERSION OF MOUNTAIN GIRL IS NOW AVAILABLE!

I’m very excited to announce that the Audible version of MOUNTAIN GIRL, narrated by the wonderful Kristin Ailin Salada, is available on Amazon.com and Audible.com

SIXTY YEARS ?!!?

Sixty years? It can’t be. That would make me an old lady. Oh dear. But that’s all true.

Sixty years ago today, August 28, 1963, at twenty-three-years old, I was standing in the middle of over 250,000 people listening to a man who was courageously saying what we all had in our minds and hearts. “I Have a Dream.”

With that many people making the effort to get to Washington D.C., all with the collective vision of a true democracy in which all people were equal, one would think equality would advance. And so, some has. But not nearly enough. It’s hard to believe, almost every day, and even as of yesterday, that racism is still blatantly occurring. Another racially motivated murder. From the taking of life itself, to employment, to economic and educational opportunity, and to voting rights, little progress has been made for people of color.

My journey to that event was on a crowded bus from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Washington, D.C. with fifty-seven people of varying ages and race, all with hope in our hearts that we could make a difference. I knew several of them, but the others were strangers, people with whom I felt an immediate familiarity. Moving about in the aisle of the bus, we all eventually introduced ourselves. A strong bond can form when several people find themselves on a shared mission. Most of them were students or faculty at the University of Michigan. Some were familiar faces I had seen in 1960 at the library on campus when JFK came and introduced the idea of a Peace Corps. And, later, in 1965, the same faces were on the campus Diag for anti-Vietnam war peace protests.

As it has been said, many times, our generation was one of hope and a need to make a difference. To bring about change. But now, as an old lady, facing each day and trying to be hopeful in a world that is full of discrimination, social injustices, inequality, and anger, it’s hard to capture that youthful, buoyant, optimism of that day we climbed back into the bus to return to Ann Arbor.

 All this said, we can not quit. We must keep trying.

THE ARTS—A BALM IN GILEAD

Thank goodness for benches in galleries and art museums. There are some works of art that I simply need to sit and look at, a long time. One such painting hangs in my kitchen/sitting room, over the fireplace. My old, worn, black leather Eames lounge chair cradles me in comfort and positions me to look up, straight at Leonard Craig’s painting, 43”x43.” The title has vanished from my mind. I can stare at it for hours, and each time I sit back down there and look at it, I discover something new.

 When Leonard delivered this painting with the promise to help hang it, he related the story behind the image. A scene he observed many times in the summer, driving to and from Unity College, where he taught art, and the mid-coast of Maine. The painting depicts his trip home to Unity at sunset, as he was driving, looking at the farm fields with livestock and horses. It has strong colors and shapes and I swear I can observe movement.

I love this painting. I loved Leonard. His work is so powerful, yet he was the gentlest man I have ever met. Soft spoken and charming. And apparently, an excellent art teacher.

In the best of two worlds, he lived in Maine during the summers and in Italy in the winters.

Many years prior, I had acquired another of his paintings. Upon walking into Maine Coast Artists Gallery in Rockport to attend the new exhibit, the largest paining that hung on the furthest wall immediately caught my eye. I knew, as I walked quickly towards it, that I had to have it. 60”x80” with black, white, grey, and gold-leaf paints. An abstract Monhegan Island. At that time, I could never have purchased it if Leonard hadn’t offered, “I know this painting is for you, Marilyn. How about acquiring it by monthly payments?” Its value has now skyrocketed, but I couldn’t part with it ever. I hope my children and grandchildren will have the same resolve.

 My old Cape in West Rockport, with its low ceilings, could not house “Monhegan.” It hung in my office at Moss Inc in Belfast, on the large wall across from my desk, giving me an occasional relief from the stress of work from 1994 to 2001, when we sold Moss Inc. It now resides in the house I built for my children and grandchildren in Camden, where it has found its rightful place. My wish is that Leonard could see it hanging in its final home.

 “Monhegan” pulls me into its mystery every time I sit and gaze at it. It too is powerful and has movement that draws my eyes into finding new shapes and dimensions.

 Music can have a similar effect on me. Particularly when I attend the live Bay Chamber Concerts. Sometimes, with my eyes closed, and other times my eyes glued to the musicians’ hands or faces, the music enters my ears and then flows through my body. I feel it traveling through the ventricles of my heart, then my lungs, down my abdomen through my legs and all the way to my toes. It can elevate me. Music is food for our bodies and souls.

 And we mustn’t forget about literature. How soothing a poem can be. How we can lose ourselves in a good and well written story. Or theatre. Or ballet.

To have any of the arts in our lives, whether at home or in museums and concerts, is our preservation. Experiencing art, music and literature in any form brings civility into an ugly world as killing, hatred, injustices, inequalities, food insecurities, domestic violence, flood and fire tragedies, and climate changes destroy our world. It’s times like these that we need to reach out for the arts to provide a balm.

MARILYN ROCKEFELLER & SUSAN CONLEY!

TO RESERVE A SPOT CONTACT www.leftbankbookshop.com

MOUNTAIN GIRL: FROM BAREFOOT TO BOARDROOM

I am delighted to announce that my memoir has just been published by Islandport Press. If you find yourself in Midcoast Maine on Sunday, December 11, come join us at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art for a book launch and celebration. The book will be for sale there and is also available from Islandport Press, Amazon, and at your local bookstore.

STUFF. STUFF. STUFF.

Attribute it to Covid’s stay-at-home restrictions or my advancing age, but I decided I needed to clear out stuff. From my office. From the catch-all storage room. From my closets filled mainly with clothes that no longer fit me. From countertops, drawers, cupboards. I’m not sure what came over me, especially since I’m a great procrastinator. I had honestly wanted to do this for the last two years, ever since I turned eighty. But short of taking a pile of papers and books off one counter and piling them onto another, I found excuses. My writing was the pretext. Retreating to an uncluttered studio, writing or just sitting and staring out the window wouldn’t elicit guilt.

So, where did this sudden energetic urge to tackle the stuff finally come from? Picasso. Yes, that’s right…Picasso. I read an article regarding procrastination in which he supposedly said, “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” Horrifying.

Images scrambled through my mind of my children, Genevieve and Jeff, or my grandchildren coming into my office to discover every inch of the counters covered with old drafts, books, unfiled correspondence, old photographs, and well-handled manilla folders filled with notes for my book, Bill Moss: Fabric Artist & Designer, all on one counter. And a similar pile on another counter with notes for my memoir, Mountain Girl, along with newspaper articles, old CDs, a Native American basket with small stones from various travels. A tin box with cigar bands my son Jeff designed containing remnants of cigars I smoked many moons ago. Covering the entire end of another counter, a pile of drawings and architectural blueprints for the new house built two years ago.

After facing this deluge, my children would start opening drawers, cupboards, and lastly, two tall file cabinets overflowing with folders from various nonprofit boards I served on. Folders filling one drawer were filled with notes and papers from my attendance at Spalding University’s MFA Writing Program. Another drawer was brimming with family folders and horses’ and dogs’ papers.

By this time Jeff and Genevieve would be ready to haul all the stuff to the dump or have a bonfire. But they would hesitate, as I do now, afraid something important might be thrown out. They would then proceed to carefully examine each piece of paper and every photo, cursing me.

I cringe at this thought.

So, right after breakfast one morning, I headed for my office. But as always, a bump slows down the process. After all, there’s the right stuff. The free stuff. Cool stuff. Useful stuff (for someone) and trash. Picking it up, examining and considering which piece of paper or object falls in the stuff category takes time. At the end of the day, a large black plastic garbage bag was filled. But still, there were still categorized stacks of stuff covering my counters.

Another day?

MY EDITING JOURNEY

Being delinquent with my blog disappoints me. But I find it hard to do more than one thing at a time these days. Struggling to keep up with daily tasks, editing my memoir took every bit of focus I could summon. With the Coronavirus isolation and non-socializing, I had all the time I could wish for. Yet, little was getting done at any one time.

When I thought I had finished all the editing on my manuscript, my editor suggested, “let it sit for a week. Then, read through the entire work, not stopping, and see how you feel about it.” Am I happy with it? Or would I like to change, add or delete anything? Really? The manuscript was over 300 pages and is now, after a lot of work, it was now i78. And I was getting bored with it since I had re-written and edited many times already.

Meanwhile, I can reminisce back throughout the long process of writing my memoir essays. Could it be twelve years ago that I began? Yes. I’m afraid it was. Though I did take two years in between to write and publish a book, Bill Moss: Fabric Designer & Artist. I started writing these stories when I entered a graduate program for my MFA in Creative Writing. I had related some of them over the years to my family and friends who always stated that they loved hearing them and why didn’t I write them down. I suppose this is the way most memoirists start. But in my case, I had been a speaker many times for business conferences and workshops, telling the story of my company—why and how it became successful. At the end of my talk during the “any questions” time, an attendee would ask why I didn’t I write my company story. So, I started at school with that in mind only to have my writing instructor at the time say, “The reader wants to know who is this person that had no business education or training, using her intuitive senses and values running a manufacturing company.”

“Go back, Marilyn,” my writing coach said. “Put yourself in those shoes of the little girl, Marilyn Rae, living on a farm with grandparents, atop one of the Appalachian Mountains, in the Depression.

Tell us what she experienced, what she learned, her trials, successes and failures.”

At first, I found this awkward. I didn’t like to write about myself. I tried putting my thoughts down in third person. But it wasn’t real. Finally, one day, as I was trying to write, I started remembering and visualizing certain incidents that grabbed my attention. Milking a cow and the sting of the cow tail swishing against my cheeks on a cold winter morning, my tying her tail to her leg and her kicking out, breaking it. She had to be shot. A lesson that profoundly upset me. I loved animals.

Another recollection, my father teaching me to shoot a gun at age six. The fear. The feeling of failure in his eyes, finally overcome by success. The lessons from my father telling me “I can do it,” and never give up.

Running away in the middle of night at age six and being picked up by an eighteen-wheeler truck driver.

Sitting for hours in a hot, overheated, room full of people, staring at my father’s powdered face as he lay in a casket.

Climbing the highest tree. Taking risks upon dares by childhood friends. At age seven, hitchhiking to attend a Black church. Sent home from college for standing up for the rights of a fellow black student. Fingerprinted by the FBI for protesting the Vietnam War. Driving a race car. Learning about the world of food and how to cook with true joy. These incidents started flooding my mind with vivid emotions. I nudged my way into Marilyn Rae’s mind at the earliest recollection.

I started writing these stories down and found myself getting lost in the memories and emotions, learning more about that little girl, “Poor lil’ MarilynRae” as my grandmother called me. It was an unusual experience for me, but also a rewarding one. I learned to like this little girl and discovered more about who I really am. I could follow her and try to find her in my later years. What I truly felt. Finding myself, instead of the woman I had become, mostly formed by other people that I had been trying to please.

The many rewrites and editing were too numerous to count. I read somewhere that Joan Didion rewrote her books sometimes fifty times before they were published.

This has been a long and sometimes painful journey. I have had numerous writers, coaches, editors, and friends read various sections of the manuscript. As you can expect, I received many different viewpoints. “This is great.” “The reader wants to hear more of it.” “Take this out. Unnecessary for the arch of the book.” “Delete the childhood stories in Appalachia and stay with the later part of your life. More interesting to a reader who doesn’t know who you are.” “Why did you leave out the early stories in Appalachia?”

Confusion? Damn right. It has been frustrating and grueling to rewrite, edit, delete, add, etc. I have worked hard on this. And, and I mean a big AND, I have learned a tremendous amount about writing. I have obtained tools that I didn’t even know existed. Do I regret the amount of time I have devoted to this project? Absolutely not.

At this age of eighty-two, I still feel that I have a lot more writing in me. I can’t dwell on years. I simply have to do it.

Why am I writing this? One, to reach out to other struggling writers. The longer it takes, the more you learn. Second, with the completion of my editing, I had to get these comments off my mind. I find it much easier writing about someone else, but I must admit this journey not only taught me a great deal about writing, but I’ve also gotten to know myself a lot better.

I encourage any of you writers, new or published authors, to share on my blog any of your experiences with writing memoir. The sharing of mutual problems or skills as well as the journey itself would be appreciated by me and others, I’m sure.

RUNNING BACKWARDS

Last Friday, the Supreme Court overruled Roe v Wade. I can’t stop the flow of tears—tears for the millions of women and young girls that will be affected by this; tears for all the women that braved the system to gain control of their bodies over the last fifty years; tears for the women who marched and were beaten and jailed when they fought for our rights. And all that work, for what my generation thought was lasting progress in our equality, just dissipated with the vote of six justices, against the will of two-thirds of the American people.

In 1989, Genevieve, my daughter who was attending Smith College, called. “Mom, I’m calling to let you know I will be going to Washington, DC with a busload of friends next weekend. I knew without asking why. Like her mother, whenever there was a chance to protest for women’s equal rights, or any equal rights or injustices, Genevieve would participate.

The bus she mentioned would take a full load of Smith women to march for Women’s. Equal Rights. I had been reading about it and anxious to be involved. Forty-nine? No way was that too old.

“Mom, why don’t you meet us there?”

“How will I find you?”

“At the northeast corner of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.”

She’s kidding, right? How would I find her among hundreds of thousands of people?

A backpack filled with snacks and water sat on the front seat of my Subaru as I left Maine and headed south early in the morning. In just under ten and a half hours, I arrived in DC. Trying not to be overwhelmed (though, of course, I was,) I found a parking lot as close as I could get to the Lincoln Memorial Center. Then walked. And walked. And walked.

Squeezing my way through shoulder-to-shoulder women, younger and older than I was, adolescent girls and a few men, I asked a hundred times if I was heading in the right direction for the designated spot. Suddenly, “Mom?” I couldn’t believe I found her. She and all her friends gave me big hugs and handed me a T-shirt like the one they were all wearing. It had a fist in the middle of the feminine gender sign.

We chanted and cheered the speakers, way into the night.

With today’s Supreme Court decision, women’s rights are heading backwards. No, running backwards. I can’t believe how fast most of this country’s equal rights are being

undone. Every day, another part of our democracy is being eroded.

I participated in the 1963 protest when Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

I was one of the protesters at the October 21, 1967’s Anti-Vietnam demonstration in front of the Pentagon.

And here we are again. Women’s bodies ruled by politicians. People of color still struggling for equality. And here we are, still fighting wars.

And, here again, we must FIGHT BACK. I’m thirty-three years older, but count me in.

“UNCERTAINITY IS POSSIBILITY” – the DALAI LAMA

My friend and a writing mentor, Diane April, interviewed Pico Iyer. Excellent questions and responses, but one comment by Iyer really resonated with me at this time. In regard to Covid global uncertainties, he said, “I always like it when the Dalai Lama points out that we have to fashion our hopes and determination in the light of an awareness of how little we know. As he [the Dalai Lama] says with characteristic succinctness. ‘Uncertainty is possibility.’”

In one way, I was drawn to this phrase because I thought, exactly. That’s the way I’m finally feeling as I attempt to come out of this morose Pandemic fog. Not only have I struggled with the uncertainties of this last year, as everyone else has, I sent out the manuscript of my memoirs, Mountain Girl Makes Waves, to agents and publishers. The waiting has been agony.

According to my editor, the responses so far have been typical. Eight agents responded, four of whom requested the full manuscript. Several pleasant rejection responses with good lucks. Many no responses. But I was hopeful about the four requests.

And then, nothing. Still nothing.

My editor says this process can often take many months. One of his clients received a contract a year after the agent received the manuscript.

“Maybe I should try plumbing,” I said with a laugh.

“No. Just be patient and go about your life,” he said. “Start another writing project.” Really? With the uncertainty that this one might not be publishable?

With only part of the global population vaccinated, and new variants of the virus emerging, the uncertainties that flattened us this past year persist. Not being able to plan ahead toys with our sanity.

But with this equivocation, we do need to get moving, “…we have to fashion our hopes and determination in the light of an awareness of how little we know,” as the Dalai Lama says.

So, absorbing this, I realize I need to start writing another book. Right? Easy to say.

It makes me think back to many years ago when I first started to write every day. Writing was one of the suggested remedies for the grief that I experienced when I sold the company I had owned and presided over for thirty years. I missed the employees. I missed going to work every day. I missed the challenges. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

For a few years, near the end of my being President and CEO of Moss Inc, I was invited to speak around New England at various business conferences. By that time, we had become a successful company and had the reputation of getting profitable by doing good. What we now call “socially responsible.” At one of these gatherings, it was suggested that I write a book about the Moss story.

So, I got started only to get distracted at graduate school when I began to write my memoir. Then, another distraction happened. I wrote and published the book, Bill Moss: Fabric Artist and Designer. After completing that, I went back and finished my memoir.

Why not soldier on and take advantage of a possibility? I have returned to the Moss story, Barefoot to Boardroom. This will differ from the Bill Moss manifestation. This will be the story of how the company became what it did at a time when there were few female CEO’s. Of the incredible, loyal Maine employees who grew into a trusting, respectful and caring work community. Of my disintegrating marriage and the raising of two small children on my own. Of learning the hard way, by trial and error, with no business education or experience. Just leading with the intuition and the values I learned growing up with my grandparents in the Appalachian Mountains. Of encouraging and supportive stockholders. And of three mentors who guided me in the right direction. One to create a mission statement, one in marketing and the other developing quality into the production process.

Most new companies begin with uncertainties and mine with more than a few. Another example wherein lies the truth of theDalai Lama’s statement.

Stay tuned.

SILENCE

Such a simple word. And yet, it can have a different meaning depending upon its usage.“The complete absence of sound,” so states the Oxford Dictionary. But this is only one of the several meanings listed. “… the state of abstaining from speech.” “The avoidance of mentioning or discussing something…” “The state of standing still and not speaking as a sign of respect for someone deceased or in an opportunity for prayer.”

In the case of the last three meanings, there can be a myriad of sounds. The shuffling of feet, a cough, other people talking, a police or ambulance siren.

Using the word, silence, means different things to different people. In the classroom, the teacher will ask for silence when the students are taking a test. That just means, “no talking.”

My husband will say, “can’t we have silence while we read or dine,” meaning turn off the music or the radio. It is understood at a classical chamber or symphony performance the audience must be quiet. But there are still the sounds from the outside, or a cell phone ring, or a drop of a pocketbook onto the floor. The same with theatre.

Have you ever experienced silence, total silence, absence of ANY sound? Really? A walk in the woods? There is the scuffling of wild animals, wind whistling, leaves clamoring, birds singing.

It can appear to be silent in my studio when there is no wind, no external sounds of lawn mowers, tractors, cars on the lower road, airplanes—maybe. Close to it. But silence does have noise. My breathing. My dog sighing. A slight ringing in my ear. The strain of silence is almost a sound. Remember the Simon and Garfunkel song, “The Sounds of Silence?” Still one of my favorites.

There are times when, early in the morning before our farm comes alive with horses, dogs and people, I will sit and meditate. It appears to be silent. But the clatter of thoughts racing through my mind that I am so desperately trying to get rid of disturbs the silence until I can get it under control with my breathing.

I don’t even think I like silence with the exception of relief from the bombardment of a constant and unpleasant noise, or when I’m trying to meditate. I love to hear the birds singing, the soft grunt from my sleeping dogs, the rain hitting against the window, the rote of the ocean, the leaves on trees slapping like loose sails, the cracking of a wood fire, the lyrical tones of a stream rushing from the mountain top,. And I love music that penetrates my entire body and gives me a lift.

Solitude comes to mind, particularly now, during Covid-19. With this last year, we have experienced a certain silence due to the lack of dinner parties, friends stopping by, people chattering in restaurants, applause at the concert hall, our families visiting with kids running in and out of the house. That silence conjures up loneliness, which creates the feeling of silence.

If and when the Covid pandemic is no longer prevalent in our lives, will the return of the opposite of that silence feel strident or harsh? Will we have become so accustomed to isolation we no longer feel comfortable in what we called our normal world before Covid-19?

I guess we wait and see, but I for one don’t think life will return to 2020, and there is a certain abundance of things I’m certain some of us would NOT want to return to—a government in turmoil, the lies or the pervasive fear. I am hopeful for a renewed democracy and equality for all. To be free is to not feel fear. And to be able to lie in silence on the grass, looking at a bright starry night and hearing only the sound of our blood coursing through our body.

GETTING IT OFF MY MIND

My manuscript is finally completed and 50 pitch letters sent out to agents who have been successful in getting memoirs published. I was stunned when, within five to fifteen minutes into the emailing, I received twelve responses, four of which wanted to receive the full manuscript.

The second day, all quiet. My editor said this was a good response and probably more would drip in over the next month. Now, he said, “put your feet up, have a drink and wait.”

I’m sharing this for any of you that haven’t been through it as yet. In other words, you have to have the “patience of Job.” Not one to sit very long with my feet up, I am turning to my writing.

But herein lies the problem in trying to write—anything. How to focus with the enormity of upheaval in our democracy and the ensuing violence. How can any of us go about our daily lives with our sacred building and lawmakers in our democratic system being attacked? Fear is real. I am a Democrat but, knowing that the Republican party is dividing into two factions—gamers and breakers, as Timothy Snyder wrote in his New York Times article—can tear and weaken the very fiber of our democracy. And the fact that the extremists have infiltrated our Congress and policing forces has given rise to more fear. Now what?

We all sit in our Covid isolation stressing out and wondering what we can do to help. Wishing for superheroes in Congress as we fortunately have in the hospital ICU wards across our country isn’t enough. We need to make it known that those responsible for the insurrection, for the mobs, and for those complicit in Congress, need to be held accountable. PLEASE write your congressmen and congresswomen of your support for this. They are receiving a great deal of pressure from their colleagues and need to know their contingency supports them.

So, as I sit here writing a blog, sorry. I have to get these thoughts off my mind before I can start any other writing project.

I recommend reading Timothy Snyder’s article on the split in the Republican party.

Here’s the link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html

PHOTO EDITING AND OLD PHOTO RESTORATION

To you other writers out there:

If you need any photo editing or old photo restoration for your books or articles, I highly recommend Jane English. She has restored 80-plus-year-old photos for my books and even older ones for my husband’s two books. Faded photos restored to life. Water marks, scratches and cracks in the photos disappeared. She removes dust and lint. Jane accomplishes a resolution for publishing.

You can contact her at: englishj17@gmail.com

GUILT OR SHAME?

I had moved from being shocked, to saddened, to angered, to depressed. Flopping through these emotions, I was seething. No amount of my Buddhist study and meditation could dispel my state. I became very low. So low, I was worried I had lost control of my thoughts. I didn’t want to do anything. And I mean nothing.

In the past, I could usually shake a low depression by going for a walk in the woods with my dogs. Not this time. It scared me. I came to realize I couldn’t handle my feelings alone. I went to my husband’s office where he was busy writing a story. I sat down in his comfortable leather chair.

“I’m sorry I’m interrupting you,” I finally said.” He turned his swivel chair to face me. “But I need your help.” I shared with him all the thoughts and events that were swirling in my enraged mind and how low I had sunk. My feelings of helplessness; my struggle to find my purpose or meaning in life; my feeling of not wanting to live to watch more injustices, more inequality, more deaths, more world destruction and with no peaceful solution.

I poured out my suffering to him as he sat quietly, watching and listening to me.

“I wake up in the morning with a mind enraged with a web of thoughts. May 25th to be exact. Watching the stark images of the police officer grinding his knee into George Floyd’s neck, as the man begged for his life, cut into my gut as if he were someone I knew. “

Stopping to wipe tears, I then continued.

“Photos of Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson, Stephon Clark, Eric Garner, to name a few, flash through my mind. And, I think of my biracial grandson, just coming into his teens. Will he be able to drive to the grocery store without fear?” I couldn’t stop. “The brutality that has been creeping into our news reports with the introduction of phone videoing is taking its toll on the black community, on me, and I think on many in the white community as well.”

I went on.

“I look back at my naivete in 1965, when I stood in the crowd at Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. listening to MLK’s “I Have A Dream” speech. I actually believed at that time change was taking place. I and the other hundreds of souls there that day had hope. Black and White. Hope in change. Hope for equality. Now at 80, my heart and mind are filled with fear. Fear that this country isn’t learning from its mistakes. Fear that we are not that democracy that we professed to be. Fear that the White Supremacist groups have increased and infiltrated a lot of our communities. Are you aware there are five right here in Maine?

I worry for the safety of my grandchildren and my son in law. I worry for my friends of color. I worry for our world peace and our earth’s health.

Do we who live in a light skin color think we can continue to go through life with the privilege of usually feeling safe to get into our cars and go to the store and without thinking of the rest of the human race who can’t? As hard as one of us can try, it’s impossible to put ourselves in their shoes. It’s obvious we know nothing of what it is really like, day in and out.” There was no stopping me. My anger was increasing.
“My heritage is Native American and I’m sure if I did a DNA test, I would find African American blood as well. Yet, no police officer or person in charge has ever stopped me with questions as why I am there, what I am doing, where I am going. The color of my skin. That carte blanche!” I was almost yelling by this time.

After I finished getting all this out of my gut, I stopped crying. My husband’s calm voice brought me out of my exhausting stupor. “Let’s walk over and sit on the deck at the pond.” “I don’t want to walk. I don’t want to do anything,” I said.

“Then I’ll drive you over.” This made me feel guilty as the pond is not a long walk away. If he’s willing to stop writing and make the effort to drive me, how can I sit here pouting?

We sat in silence, watching frogs hop into the water and trout rise to the surface, trying to capture dinner from the new hatch of bugs, as I dealt with the shame of riding in the car instead of walking.

Silence can be quite noisy. Especially when you are with someone who sits in calmness, saying not a word while your insides are about to burst forth. He didn’t say a word or ask any questions. He sat close with his arm around my shoulders. Slowly, his calm spread over to me. I could feel it easing into my skin, then muscles, then arteries, reaching my heart and brain. I almost melted into the wooden bench.

This different composure replaced the anxiety, the anger, and cleared my mind. But, what was it? Guilt or shame to then find my mind filling instead with all the wonders of my life. Of my wonderful caring husband. Of our place. Of my family. Of friends. Of nature and animals. Of Maine. How fortunate I am.

Depression is a horrible experience and I’m not sure I won’t go there again, but for now, I feel gratitude and hope.

* * *

Since I first wrote this, two things have given me immense hope: First, I received a video to watch from a friend, “Boat Life, 9/11.” Though this is depicting an event many years ago, it was powerful and moving. As a friend commented, “… an indication that humanity has the potential for unselfish kindness.”

The second thing was the announcement that Joe Biden had chosen Kamala Harris for his running mate. This put a resounding positive energy into the air for all of us.

I have been reading a lot of W. S. Merwin’s writings recently and I want to share one here:
“…in times of political turmoil: We try to save what is passing, if only by describing it, telling it, knowing all the time that we can’t do any of these things. The urge to tell it, and the knowledge of the possibility. Isn’t that one reason we write?”

Boat Lift

THE EDITING JOURNEY

Being delinquent with my blog disappoints me. But, I find it hard to do more than one thing at a time these days. Struggling to keep up with daily work, editing my manuscript takes every bit of focus I can summon. With this Coronavirus isolation and non-socializing, I have all the time I could wish for. Yet, little is getting done at any one time.

My mind wanders off, sometimes in outrage over the latest Trump tweet or speech. Sometimes at the horror of the ER rooms in hospitals all over the world, inundated with Coronavirus patients arriving in large numbers and dying. Sometimes my mind conjures up the image of a man or woman on a ventilator, which terrorizes me, thinking that could be me or my husband. We both are high risk. I have adult asthma, already making it difficult to breathe in this humid heat. Or thinking of my family or friends in that position. As it is, I cry for those poor souls I see on the news. Or for the injustices that happen every day to people of color or the disadvantaged in some way.

And then, sometimes my mind worries about the future of our planet’s health or the mounting unrest all over the world. Will we ever have world peace?

Wait a minute…where was I going with this? See what I mean?

Now that I have finished all the editing on my manuscript, my editor suggests I “let it sit for a week. Then, read through the entire work, not stopping, and see how I feel about it? Am I happy with it? Or would I like to change, add or delete anything?” Really? The manuscript was over three hundred pages and now 167.
Meanwhile, I can reminisce back throughout the long process of writing my memoir essays. Could it be twelve years ago that I began? Yes. I’m afraid it was. Though I did take two years in between to write and publish a book, Bill Moss: Fabric Artist & Designer.

I started writing these stories when I entered a graduate program for my MFA in Creative Writing. I had related some of them over the years to my family and friends who always stated that they loved hearing them and why didn’t I write them down. I suppose this is the way most memoirists start. But in my case, I had been a speaker many times for business conferences and workshops, telling the story of my company—why and how it became successful. At the end of my talk during the “any questions” time, an attendee would ask why I didn’t I write my company story. So, I started with that at school only to have my writing instructor at the time say, “The reader wants to know who is this person that had no business education, training, or experience, using her intuitive senses and values running a manufacturing company?”

“Go back, Marilyn,” my writing coach said. “Put yourself in those shoes of the little girl, Marilyn Rae, living on a farm with grandparents, atop one of the Appalachian Mountains. Tell us what she experienced, what she learned, her trials, successes and failures.”

At first, I found this awkward. I didn’t like to write about myself. I tried putting my thoughts down in third person. But it wasn’t real. Finally, one day, as I was trying to write, I started remembering certain incidents that grabbed my attention. Milking a cow and the sting of the cow tail swishing against my cheeks on a cold winter morning, my tying her tail to her leg and her kicking out, breaking it. She had to be shot. A lesson that profoundly upset my emotions. I loved animals.

Another recollection, my father teaching me to shoot a gun at age six. The fear. The feeling of failure, finally overcome by success. The lessons from my father telling me “I can do it,” and not to give up.
Running away in the middle of night at age six and being picked up by an eighteen-wheeler truck driver.

Sitting for hours in a hot, overheated room, full of people, staring at my father’s face as he lay in a casket.
Climbing the highest tree. Taking risks upon dares by childhood friends. Hitchhiking to attend a Black church. Sent home from college for standing up for the rights of a fellow black student. Fingerprinted by the FBI for dissenting the Vietnam War. Driving a race car. Learning about the world of food and how to cook with true joy. These incidents started flooding my mind with vivid emotions. I nudged my way into Marilyn Rae’s mind at the earliest recollection.

I started writing these stories down and found myself getting lost in the memories and emotions, learning more about that little girl, “Poor lil’ MarilynRae” as my grandmother called me. It was an unusual experience for me, but also a rewarding one. I learned to like this little girl and discovered more about who I really am. I could follow her and try to find her in my later years. What I truly feel. Finding myself, instead of the woman I had become, mostly formed by other people that I had been trying to please. The many rewrites and editing were too numerous to count.

I read somewhere that Joan Dideon rewrote her books sometimes fifty times before they were published.

This has been a long and sometimes painful journey. I have had numerous writers, coaches, editors, and friends read various sections of the manuscript. As you can expect, I received many different viewpoints. “This is great.” “The reader wants to hear more of it.” “Take this out. Unnecessary for the arch of the book.” “Delete the childhood stories in Appalachia and stay with the later part of your life. More interesting to a reader who doesn’t know who you are.” “Why did you leave out the early stories in Appalachia?”

Confusion? Damn right. It has been frustrating and grueling to rewrite, edit, delete, add, etc. I have worked hard on this. And, and I mean a big AND, I have learned a tremendous amount about writing. I have obtained tools that I didn’t even know exist. Do I regret about the amount of time I have devoted to this project? Absolutely not.

At this age of eighty, I still feel that I have a lot more writing in me. I can’t dwell on years. I simply have to do it.
Why am I writing this? One, to reach out to other struggling writers. The longer it takes, the more you learn. Second, with the completion of my editing, I had to get these comments off my mind. I find it much easier writing about someone else, but I must admit this journey not only taught me a great deal about writing, but I’ve also gotten to know myself a lot better.

I encourage any of you writers, new or published authors, to share on my blog any of your experiences with writing memoir. The sharing of mutual problems or skills as well as the journey itself would be appreciated by me and I’m sure others.

Thank you.

A NEEDED INSPIRATION

In 1965, most career-driven young men aspired to live and raise families in Manhattan. Wendell Berry and his wife, instead, moved away from NYC and his rising career to rural Kentucky, back to his roots. I met Wendell Berry briefly when I was attending Spalding University’s MFA Writing Program. He was a visiting lecturer. I had read the Unsettling of America, but I wasn’t expecting such a vibrant, gentle and kind face. In this book, he wrote about how “small-scale agriculture is essential to the preservation of the land and the culture.” At that time, he was considered a radical by most people.

Now, as I re-read his book, Think Little, his former writings and life choices have so much more meaning for me in this period of isolation, when I find more time for self-reflection. Thinking of my values. What’s important? Down the road, when we return to a life without the dominance of Coronavirus, what do we want to go back to? Or not? Changes in our environment?

San Francisco, NYC, and other large municipalities show photos of how much clearer the air is without the deadly pollution of cars and industry. Water, too, has improved in quality. Isn’t this what we want? A friend recently said to me I think we should do this isolation once a year. Could this save our planet?

As Wendell says, “The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.”

Also, in Think Little, Wendell speaks of growing our food. “Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better for of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world.”

I haven’t had a vegetable garden for years. But, now, the urge has become an obsession. Like Berry, I grew up on a farm in rural Appalachia, a self-sustaining farm in a time of little, the final years and months of the Depression. I was raised by my grandparents, in poverty by most standards, but there wasn’t a time when we didn’t have healthy food on the table. Tilled land was respected. Farm animals a necessity. My chores were to plant, weed and harvest from our garden and the fruit trees. Gather eggs from the hen house. Shell the walnuts. Milk the cows. Can our food for winter. Store root vegetables in cellars. These chores not only gave us bountiful food but connected me to the earth.

As a child, I had no thoughts that there would ever be a time when our earth would be at risk. Now here we are, trying to save our planet from human destruction. Yet, one might say, just one little family garden isn’t saving the environment.

Wendell Berry’s vision back in 1965 was prescient. I can’t feed or save the world with a garden, but I can feed my soul, while still supporting our local farmers.

A bit of history: After a couple first years living in Maine, my former husband, Bill, and I bought our second house on Mill Street in West Rockport, Maine. It was a charming old cape with about 35 acres. It didn’t take me long to fill the back field with sheep, a donkey, dogs and cats. On one side of the house was a sloped hill, perfectly situated in full sun. I hired a young man to rototill a large area. Then, the thrill and excitement of getting some seedlings and planting some seeds. The usual collection for healthy family eating. But then I started to get into the challenge of Maine’s limited growing season. Melons, celery, garlic, lots of different eggplants, many different lettuces and greens. And peanuts.

“Whacha’ plantin,’ Marilyn?” my neighbor Milton said as I sat on the ground making the little mounds.
“Peanuts,” I said, looking up at him. He smiled and rolled his eyes.
“Come on, Ralph, let’s go home,” he said to his dog. I took my first bag of harvested peanuts to Milton.

I did cheat a little with most of the plantings by using little tent cloches that Bill made for me out of a Dupont growing plastic and fiberglass poles that Bill had used in experimental shelter projects. With these, I could plant seedlings earlier and take the season longer. Digging and sitting in the soil gave me a rich and rewarding experience. Why had I drifted away from this over the last years?

The time has come for raised beds so my eighty-year old back can plant, weed and harvest. In this time of isolation, I am returning to the land. Thank you, Wendell Berry.

A SURVIVOR NAMED JADE

Sitting in front of my computer, trying to wrestle my mind to think of something other than the news reports, the word survivor pops up. And then my thinking goes to Jade.

Fifty years ago, in Ann Arbor, Michigan my dear friend, Marie, gave me a small cutting from her beautiful Jade tree. As instructed, I took it home and placed it in a glass of water to watch for roots to appear. Our house was already cluttered with different house plants. Some were vibrant. Some looked in need of repair. I didn’t feel confident that this little cutting would amount to much and feared it would go the way of my failed attempts to grow avocados-stuck-with-toothpicks in water.

A Jade plant, or Crassula ovata, can live to 100 years. Mine is now 50 years old and huge.
I think of Marie every time I walk by it. And I think of the plant as an old friend—a friend who has been through a lot of trauma and hardships. Jade’s a survivor.

In my first marriage of twenty-three years, she was dragged around from home to home. In and out of different environments. Loaded and bounced around in U-Haul trailers. Withstanding various insects and blights. Throughout it all, Jade survived. She was carted in a dump truck to a new home and a new marriage, rolled into the old farm house on a dolly, and offered up as part of my dowry.

The rest of my dowry consisted of an old Maxima Station Wagon, a partially rusted-out gas grill, my favorite cooking pots and Sabatier knives, some paintings, some books, my Cranbrook Rug Loom, boxes of wool from my sheep, some already dyed and spun, an old Golden Retriever, and two pre-teen kids with chips on their shoulders as a result of their father’s lies about me. I think the Jade and grill were the most appreciated at the time by my new husband. He was quite impressed by how big and healthy Jade looked. Most of the other stuff was relegated to the attic. My husband bought me a new car and took possession of the station wagon. I had driven it from Detroit, Michigan to Maine fifteen years prior. It had some dents, rust and ninety-thousand, plus or minus miles. Pebble was delighted. He had never owned a new car in his life and, furthermore, “probably never will.” He drove the car to 135,000 miles. Fred, who works for us, and I talked him into getting another car only when he was literally ready to fall through the rusted bottom.

Pebble ended up loving my old golden as much as I and the children did. She lived to nineteen years. After some adjustment, my kids had finally found a father they could love, respect and trust.

Jade became Pebble’s project. She sat proudly in a sunlit corner of our kitchen/sitting room. At Christmas, she was adorned with white lights and a white dove of peace. But before that, she had been moved on a dolly to another room to make space for a Christmas tree. After three Christmas seasons, Pebble said “no more. No more are we going to move Jade. She has become too heavy and large to fit through the doorways.” So, with that she was blessed to be the yearly center of attention adorned with lights.

As time went on, (Pebble and I have been married thirty-seven years) Jade suffered sometimes from too much watering, sometimes from a blight, sometimes from white flies. But Pebble always nursed her back to health. One night, our kitchen door blew open with high winds, letting in the extreme cold and blowing snow. We discovered this the next morning. Jade had suffered. She’d lost one large trunk completely, making her look comically lopsided. The remaining half didn’t look all that great either. I thought she was a goner. Not Pebble. He pruned her unmercifully. She looked so skinny and pathetic in her huge clay pot.

With loving care and attention from Pebble, my doubt diminished. As we took the time to stop and talk to Jade, she regained the strength and fortitude to grow more leaves and send off new babies. Two of the babies are starting new generations with our friends Jane and Michelle.

I love to think of my friendship with Marie spanning all these years that her gift of Jade has been with me. Family members and friends have died. Our pet dogs, cats and horses have died. And Pebble and I will die. But Jade has struggled to endure and will outlive us. I must be sure to leave Jade in my will to someone who will love, care and nurse her to her 100th birthday.

SOLITUDE

(I used the above painting of Schoodic Point because, unfortunately, I never had my camera along on my trips)

In my thirties, running a manufacturing and design company while parenting two small children at times drained my physical and mental energy. My mind would become a whirlpool of bills to pay, payroll to meet every Friday, national and internal marketing travel, worrying about a company with a red bottom line, kids to get to school and their activities, shopping, cooking, on and on. I discovered a way to renew my self-esteem and energy—to be completely alone from time to time. But how? Where? I loved to camp, but the summer was my busiest time at work and it was too crowded anywhere nearby.

Schoodic Point in the summer had become a favorite place to take my kids. I wondered what it would be like in the winter? Who would be camping in the middle of a frigid Maine winter out on Schoodic Point? Perfect.

Bill Moss and I had done some family winter camping with our young children when we were a cohesive family unit to write stories for the Ford Times Magazine. That camping didn’t seem too difficult, except changing the diapers of a young child bundled in several layers of clothing during a snowstorm.

So off I went alone for the first time with our four-season Olympic Tent, a lantern, a Primus cookstove, food, a couple of cooking utensils, kindling and small firewood, a below-zero sleeping pad, myself well-layered and padded and a book to read. It snowed, the wind howled and shook my tent. My mind was anything but quiet.

What if my tent blows away and I freeze to death before I can get back to the car? No one will know where to find me. (No cell phones then.) What if a bear smelled my dinner and comes here to check it out? What if…what if…

Needless to say, I also didn’t do much reading or resting. As I climbed out of my tent in the early morning sunrise, things had changed abruptly with the promise of a blue, clear sunny day. Waking up to that beauty not only took my breath away, but cleared my head of how good I felt. Alone. Not a soul or four-legged creature in sight. The ocean, oblivious of the prior night, moved slowly under a small layer of sea smoke.

I made a fire, boiled some coffee and sat on my folding stool to warm my hands and simply observe. My business far away. Kids with babysitter. Creditors floating away. I let my negative thoughts be taken, one by one, with the waves, reaching and receding, until my mind was clear and still. After that time, when possible, this trip and tent became my sanctuary, repeated again and again, my solitude with Nature. And I would return to home refreshed and inspired to get things done, one thing at a time.

On one such occasion, I had driven to Schoodic Point from my office after work one night. I woke up the next morning to find large ice pieces washed up and piled like children’s blocks on the shore. Some were three or four feet deep, square and rectangular. The bright sun dancing on and through them. A spectrum of colors dappled the stones on the beach and water as it washed onto the beach. I was mesmerized and couldn’t believe my eyes, willing them not to blink, afraid the spectacle would suddenly disappear.

There’s not much to do when winter camping alone except walk and read, but this day I spent the time sitting on a rock, watching the waves lap against the ice and, eventually, as the tide turned, taking most of the blocks back out to sea.

The quiet was resounding, unbroken except for the cry of a lonely sea gull or the constant smack of the waves. A natural and automatic urge to hear something, anything—music, voices a motor running—only resolved into failure, the sound of nothing. It’s at this time I would feel at one with myself. Grateful for the solitude. Feeling the judgmental noises of my inner echo chamber ebbing away with the tide.

Truly seeking and loving solitude is the highest form of cleansing. As Wendell Berry stated, “…true solitude is found in the world places, where one is without human obligation—the places where one’s inner voices become audible.” It’s simply a way to find one’s most authentic self.

Not everyone can be alone for any length of time. Hermann Hesse had insisted that solitude took courage. Kahlil Gibran, wrote in The Prophet, “There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone. The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.”

As a child, I was alone a lot of the time. Yes, there were moments I felt lonely, but there were many other instances when I used the time to listen and watch what was around me. Fortunately, I was brought up in rural farm country where nature’s phenomena of plants, trees and all living things were abundant.

I don’t advise only solitude. We need balance. At least, I do. But, I can seek and feel those benefits of solitude. With ease and without effort.