FOREVER

                                        The Smithsonian Postal Museum    Washington, DC
                                      
Remember the days when we used postage to mail a submission and an SASE? Those colorful bits of paper that would stick to the envelope? Don't use them much anymore in our digital generation--we can quickly email our manuscripts, short stories and non-fiction pieces, save money and time and sometimes get an answer back immediately.

But the stamps were and are beautiful and we could learn about our country's past, the vast world we live in and about the scientists, astronauts, presidents, stars and heros. Forever stamps entered the postal world in 2007 and their rate (45 cents today) will remain. To writers the term Forever is apt--a stamp issued a year ago honors Mark Twain and perhaps one of the reasons writers write is to have a part of us live forever.

In Roughing It, published in 1872, the book sold 75,000 copies within a year of publication. Mark Twain describes sitting on the back seat of a coach; the rest of the coach filled with three days of delayed mail. “Almost touching our knees, a perpendicular wall of mail matter rose up to the roof.  There was a great pile of it strapped on top of the stage and both the fore and hind boots were full.  We had twenty-seven hundred pounds of it aboard.” 

There are 27 stamps in the Literary Arts commemorative series included are Richard Wright, Julia de Burgos and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

Bests,

Elise

Scene Stealer, my cozy e-book mystery is available at Amazon, Carina Press, Barnes and Noble and wherver e-boks are sold. an audio version has been produced by audible.com

BONANZA

Enjoyed lunch with friends yesterday and found the mother lode of books. One friend and I have the same taste and we both enjoy many genres of fiction. When I returned home and gently removed the books from the shopping bag used to transport them I discovered a wealth of good reading. Elizabeth Gaskell, Alice Munro, Rosamund Lupton, Ruth Rendell, Jody Picoult and Kate Atkinson. I shall try to finish the New York Times Sunday edition by tomorrow and Ahab's Wife (happily waiting in my Nook) and begin. On my TBR list is Robert Caro's bio. of Lyndon Johnson, The Astaires by Kathleen Riley, Frank Langella's autobio.and The Age of Doubt by Andrea Montalbano.

In return, I gave my friend three more Reginald Hill Dalziel and Pascoe books. Buried in a page of the last Reginald Hill I gave her was an old, old bookmark from Benjamin Books. The address of the bookstore's corporate owner was listed as 330 Dalziel Road. Coincidence?

Bests,

Elise

NOSTALGIA

   Photo Sea of Light by Sedko-Dreamstime.com
Do you ever fnd yourself dreaming about the past? Not the recent past. Not  events that have happened to you, family, friends or the world during your lifetime but the earth as it existed centuries before you were born. Does that dream, linger in your thoughts, encourage research and come to life in a short story or a novel about a different generation who lived in another period with their own beliefs, customs, dress and language? Or does your mind take flight to another galaxy--a far-off place where your imagination can soar?

From cavemen to the Renaissance, Tudor England to Mars, Plymouth to prohibition, a cast of characters tell stories that can entrance, shock and connect to today. New Orleans and the blues, jazz in the twenties, the magic of Broadway's musical comedies in the forties, fifties and sixties, the Beatles generation, rock and today's rap all stir the imagination. Art from prehistoric times to today's modern works offer a bittersweet longing, a homesickness for places you've only fantasized about. A trip to bygone times allows us to form a mental image and a chance to create what might have been,  an opportunity to "sit around the campfire" and tell a story.

Bests,

Elise

ARE YOU ANYBODY?

An article in The NewYork times this past week about people who collected the autographs of celebrities made me think of The Ice Cream Man. When I was auditioning for the chorus in Broadway shows, we all  ran into him. He drove a truck and sold ice cream when he wasn't chasing a famous actress or actor. He showed up everywhere--the stage door of Broadway Theatres, rehearsal studios, restaurants where performers grabbed a snack during a break or Sardi's on opening nights. If he wasn't sure of who you were or how you ranked in the theatrical firmament, he would ask. His question? "Are you anybody?"

My answer was, "Everybody is somebody." After reading the piece in The Times, I began to think about what turns a person into a somebody. Is it having the confidence to try to work at something you love? Finding contentment in work or family or using the gifts that were bestowed upon you by chance or birth or hard labor? Is it sharing those gifts? I began as a singer, became a stage manager and then a writer. As a singer I found excitement and a connection to the audience. As a stage manager, I enjoyed seeing the pieces of a show come together and as a writer I find fufillment in my words and characters. How do you define being a somebody? And do you ever redefine yourself?

Bests,

Elise

THE AMERICAN CEMETERY

     On the west side of the Greve river, approximately 7.5 miles south of Florence, Italy, set against a backdrop of hills dense with London Plane trees, headstones belonging to 4,402 American Military Dead stand on 70 acres of foreign soil. Pine, cypress, willow, oak and cedar trees enclose the section along with oleander, crepe myrtle and laurel-cherry shrubs.

     A bridge set between the cemetery office and the visitor’s center at the entrance to the cemetery leads us to row after row of crosses and stars of David. The cemetery is hushed except for the occasional rustle of a leaf or a fragment of a bird’s song. We wander among the headstones that bear the names and dates of birth of the servicemen and women who were lost to friends, loved ones and our nation. Here and there, we see a pebble placed on a stone; a way to say “We are here. We came to see you. We will never forget you.”

      Americans, traveling through the area, stop at the cemetery, on the west side of the Via Cassia, a major highway that links Florence with Rome and Sienna, to pay their respects to the heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice in World War II. The majority died in the fighting that occurred after the liberation of Rome in June 1944 and during the fierce battles in the Apennines right before the end of the war.

      The cemetery is one of 14 permanent memorials built by the American Battle Monuments Commission. The site was liberated on August 3, 1944 by the South African 6^th Armored Division; the stone used to construct the chapel and headstones was supplied by Italy. 

     On the highest of three terraces located in back of the burial site are two open sections partially enclosed by walls; to the east is the American flag. Tablets of the Missing, constructed of Travertine stone, connect the two sections. Visitors barely breathe as they read the Baveno granite panels; on the tablets are inscribed the names of 1,409 Americans—United States Army and Air Forces and the United States Navy—who died in our nation’s service and rest in nameless graves. They came from every state in our union but Alaska and Hawaii. 

     Men study the north section’s west wall where two marble operations maps tell the story of the American Forces in the area. Inscriptions in English and Italian provide an explanation for the maps and the military operations. A forecourt at the south end of the tablets leads to a marble and mosaic chapel—a place to meditate and pray for the peace represented in a sculpture that rests on a pylon.  

     Bests,

     Elise

Ah, The Books We Read and Love

Photo by GrafPhotographer

Authors have always been affected by the stories they've been told and the books they've read since they were babes in arms. The magic of fairy tales, romantic adventures of our parents and relatives and bedtime narratives dramatically illustrated by the reader. Many told over and over again. I remember my first two books--one was titled Rags, Tags, Wags and Obediah, the other Three Little Kittens and How They Grew. Like most children I went on to read The Bobbsey Twins and Heidi (loved the goats.) In my teens there was Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and Edna Ferber's Show Boat. The last introduced me to Show Business and an exciting career. Since I love fiction whether mystery, general, or literary and non-fiction that ranges from biography, and travel to politics I'm always reading and being influenced by words. I've loved words all my life which is one of the reasons I began to write and after my first short story was published began to call myself a writer. I'm at my computer every day and carry the usual pocket notebook with me. I'm hooked. How about you? What books have changed your life?

Bests,

Elise

4000 Miles

4000 Miles is now playing at the Mitzi Newhouse at Lincoln Center Theater. Four of us went to see the matinee last Sunday and werre introduced to a marvelous playwright Amy Herzog. Her work has been perfomred in festivals and repertory theatres all over the United States but this was the first opportunity we had to see a play whe'd written. I want to see many, many more. A superb cast was headed by Mary Louise Wilson--fine and funny and sharp. If you're in NYC, don't miss it.

The audience did have a few weird happenings. One member of the audience burped for about twenty minutes. A hearing aid pulsed loudly. A cell phone rang and a woman screamed, "Get your hands off me." through it all the actors carried on.

Bests,

Elise
Scene Stealer is available through Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Carina Press and wherever e-books are sold. An audio version has been produced by audible.com

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