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