unsolicited_opinion's photostream on Flickr.
Awesome photo of Interior Alaska. Yes, I wish they were mine.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Life - What's Really Happening
My boss told me yesterday I need to get Life written down so my son can read about it someday when Life becomes more important to him than being ten, playing with his friends, watching tv, playing Nintendo DS gaming or Wii, and tolerating everything else.
To me, Life is a common noun that needs to be capitalized. It's never a simple, mundane experience. There are critical times when change hits with such force, things never quite ever are the same again. There are fleeting times, when everything is rushing past in the emotions and experience of the moment, when you can't believe that suddenly it is all over and it has all become a memory. There are the painful times, when even a second of remembrance brings those tears and wrenches that heart. Then there are the images you hold close and cling to and revisit again and again, private images that Life has exposed you to.
My mom used to point out sometimes that we were going through yet another phase, with the undertone that it, too, would soon change and things would be different yet again. I never fully understood this until I, too, became a mom. Now I see my son going through phases, experiencing Life. His stories will be so very, very different from mine and have been since before he was born.
I've also always been a writer, and yes, a talker. I think talking can be a defensive wall sometimes. When I was Deaf, I was still talking all of the time. I know I got this from my dad. Mom always got impatient with it, and her family would joke about how my father loved to talk with people and leave everyone else waiting and waiting for him to get done. When you talk a lot, you don't need to listen, and sometimes, you don't need to feel, but my family will be the first to tell you that I've always let feelings out in all their extremes, and now that I'm married to someone who has rarely ever shown emotions and held everything inside, I can confirm that getting it all out can be much healthier for our psyche.
I'm not writing this for you, by the way. I'm doing this for me, and for my son some day. I've always been a writer, it seems, or had a camera in my hands. In a family of super athletes, being the chubby literate one who looked at everything as a story and hating to do most of the activities my siblings and parents thrived on, from long walks or jogs, to basketball and almost all sports, made me different. I think I was also one of the more emotional ones, but that probably ties with my brother. Six years younger than me, his temper as a young child and the competitiveness between us makes it a true miracle that we all survived. Not only survived, but became friends as adults, and now share a closeness all the more powerful because of how it used to be.
If I had to describe Life in one paragraph, Life resonates around sounds. After learning I was losing my hearing when I was seven, and having a mom, uncles, and maternal grandmother who were all deaf but not part of the Deaf world, Life became defined with that missing sense. Deafness shaped me in ways that likely Life never would have if I hadn't had to compensate. So from childhood until after my 50th birthday, I was deaf... and became Deaf... and that was Life.
Then I left Deafness behind. Sort of.
I can still retreat into Deafness when I want to be me again.
And now I'll stop this first Life of an Alaskan Author blog... because it's supposed to be one page. Today. Tomorrow, I'll go for the second.
To me, Life is a common noun that needs to be capitalized. It's never a simple, mundane experience. There are critical times when change hits with such force, things never quite ever are the same again. There are fleeting times, when everything is rushing past in the emotions and experience of the moment, when you can't believe that suddenly it is all over and it has all become a memory. There are the painful times, when even a second of remembrance brings those tears and wrenches that heart. Then there are the images you hold close and cling to and revisit again and again, private images that Life has exposed you to.
My mom used to point out sometimes that we were going through yet another phase, with the undertone that it, too, would soon change and things would be different yet again. I never fully understood this until I, too, became a mom. Now I see my son going through phases, experiencing Life. His stories will be so very, very different from mine and have been since before he was born.
I've also always been a writer, and yes, a talker. I think talking can be a defensive wall sometimes. When I was Deaf, I was still talking all of the time. I know I got this from my dad. Mom always got impatient with it, and her family would joke about how my father loved to talk with people and leave everyone else waiting and waiting for him to get done. When you talk a lot, you don't need to listen, and sometimes, you don't need to feel, but my family will be the first to tell you that I've always let feelings out in all their extremes, and now that I'm married to someone who has rarely ever shown emotions and held everything inside, I can confirm that getting it all out can be much healthier for our psyche.
I'm not writing this for you, by the way. I'm doing this for me, and for my son some day. I've always been a writer, it seems, or had a camera in my hands. In a family of super athletes, being the chubby literate one who looked at everything as a story and hating to do most of the activities my siblings and parents thrived on, from long walks or jogs, to basketball and almost all sports, made me different. I think I was also one of the more emotional ones, but that probably ties with my brother. Six years younger than me, his temper as a young child and the competitiveness between us makes it a true miracle that we all survived. Not only survived, but became friends as adults, and now share a closeness all the more powerful because of how it used to be.
If I had to describe Life in one paragraph, Life resonates around sounds. After learning I was losing my hearing when I was seven, and having a mom, uncles, and maternal grandmother who were all deaf but not part of the Deaf world, Life became defined with that missing sense. Deafness shaped me in ways that likely Life never would have if I hadn't had to compensate. So from childhood until after my 50th birthday, I was deaf... and became Deaf... and that was Life.
Then I left Deafness behind. Sort of.
I can still retreat into Deafness when I want to be me again.
And now I'll stop this first Life of an Alaskan Author blog... because it's supposed to be one page. Today. Tomorrow, I'll go for the second.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Friday, August 10, 2007
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Living with the world's largest mystery convention
I never could have imagined a year ago how life could change daily when working on publications and preparations for the 38th annual Bouchercon World Mystery Convention coming to Anchorage next month. Now that I am living it, it's an experience that will have a lifelong impact on me as a person and a writer. It's also motivated me to make some far-reaching changes I don't think I would have done otherwise, from getting bionic ears to a new job after 9 years in the same one. I really don't think any of us working on this convention will ever be the same!I actually started working on the Bouchercon Program in the midst of our dark Alaskan winters, and kind of floating along and sharing my ideas and designs with the small group meeting monthly for Alaska Sisters in Crime. By winning the bid for Bouchercon in 2002, only a year after our group hosted Left Coast Crime 2001, it gave me an opportunity to become a Board member for the organization, as our former officers resigned to form the Bouchercon07 Steering Committee.
Anyway, I set up some templates and began collecting book covers and researching authors who had already pre-registered or were identified as the convention's Guests of Honor.
I could not believe what I discovered! We had more books represented and a variety and breadth of writing that left me stunned! From best-selling to those with their first books, it just screamed talent! And I'll admit it, I hadn't read all that many mysteries beyond the ones written by some of our local members like Dana Stabenow, Sue Henry, Megan Rust, and the Alaska Women Speaks series. Some books I had read and so enjoyed, like Rita Lakin's Getting Old is Murder and related series, or recognized names splayed across the New York Time Bestsellers at our grocery bookstands like Lisa Jackson or Thomas Perry or Diana Gabaldon. I didn't think of them as mysteries or as Bouchercon authors.
Don't get me wrong. I'd heard about Bouchercon, but truly had no concept of what we were getting into until we'd begun. And I began a hopeless attempt to read as many books as possible before any of these authors set foot in Alaska. It's definitely a futile endeavor, but what I have read has only reinforced this sense of being in league with absolute greatness, of being in the midst of people who have not only yearned, as I have, to be the real writers of the world, the ones who write the books the world really reads.
I also would not have rushed into getting the cochlear implants as I've done if Bouchercon wasn't looming on the horizon -- but I'll never regret doing so, for I am so far ahead of where I was just a short month ago before the implants!!!
And daily to be not only loving so very much being a part of all of this, and working with the greatest group of people I think I've ever known, and looking forward to meeting all of these folks who have been sending their bios and photos and ads, and who are becoming more and more real every day, is just the greatest gift and that's what life is like living with the world's largest mystery convention. Sept. 27-30, 2007, in Anchorage.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Project Archaeology series
Here are some of the books I've written or edited for the Project Archaeology INTRIGUE OF THE PAST series. I began working on these books in 1992 and most recently worked on Idaho's. Alaska's student handbook uses a juvenile historical fiction approach to teach about archaeology and cultural resources. It is available through the Alaska State Office of History and Archaeology office. They now have Project Archaeology: Investigating Shelter - a module examining cultural use and archaeological remains of the Northwest Coast plank house. For information, 907-269-8728.
Living in Alaska
Real Alaskans learn to LAYER -- as we can't predict temps here or follow any weather forecasts (like we can anywhere else in the U.S. with some degree of certainty). So please think of LAYERS - we have had snow in September and in May, it is not that unusual. We also have huge mountains with ice fields surrounding Cook Inlet and the Anchorage Bowl, so even when it feels hot, there are places that are super cool. Sometimes those same places are hotter in the winter because they're closer to the winter sun, so you're sweating up a storm up in Turnagain Pass in January, while your nose quickly freezes and you can barely breathe, the air is so cold and dry, when downtown.
Visiting Alaska? I would suggest that along with your short-sleeved comfy shirts, you put in some sweaters or long-sleeved cooler weather shirts to wear over them, and then the outer wear. Autumn is coming too fast and is very fleeting here, and very beautiful. The colors actually blow you away (and I'm from Maine with the busloads of tourists viewing foliage every Fall)... tundra, birch, cottonwood, spruce, it is just amazing the colors that come out and almost impossible to capture in photographs. It normally gets pretty chilly at night in late August, although it can get very hot around noon and you need to take some of it off.
As an implant to Alaska, I've learned to think in layers. As a mom, I'm teaching my son the same. Never go by what you wake up with in the morning when in Alaska (for weather/temps). Keep the rain gear in the truck. Keep the mittens-gloves and scarf/hat in the gear box in easy reach, and always wear two or three layers.
My husband grew up here and also taught me that Alaskans in Anchorage rarely change lanes when driving - we usually stay in the same lane we'll be turning from. We don't wear gloves (mittens prevent frostbite better). We always watch and expect moose or bear, even on the 50 mph streets inside the city. We expect to pay more (but Anchorage has NO sales tax, so prices you see everywhere are what you get at the cash registers).
Visiting Alaska? I would suggest that along with your short-sleeved comfy shirts, you put in some sweaters or long-sleeved cooler weather shirts to wear over them, and then the outer wear. Autumn is coming too fast and is very fleeting here, and very beautiful. The colors actually blow you away (and I'm from Maine with the busloads of tourists viewing foliage every Fall)... tundra, birch, cottonwood, spruce, it is just amazing the colors that come out and almost impossible to capture in photographs. It normally gets pretty chilly at night in late August, although it can get very hot around noon and you need to take some of it off.
As an implant to Alaska, I've learned to think in layers. As a mom, I'm teaching my son the same. Never go by what you wake up with in the morning when in Alaska (for weather/temps). Keep the rain gear in the truck. Keep the mittens-gloves and scarf/hat in the gear box in easy reach, and always wear two or three layers.
My husband grew up here and also taught me that Alaskans in Anchorage rarely change lanes when driving - we usually stay in the same lane we'll be turning from. We don't wear gloves (mittens prevent frostbite better). We always watch and expect moose or bear, even on the 50 mph streets inside the city. We expect to pay more (but Anchorage has NO sales tax, so prices you see everywhere are what you get at the cash registers).
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