From Manuscript to Book!

It's on the way! My manuscript, There Is No Future In The Past: A Travel Memoir, has been sent from my computer to be formatted for printing.

It has been a long journey for this book. It began as illustrative inserts in an earlier book that was always a bridesmaid and never a bride. Although it was some solace to get rave letters from publishers about my writing (in a day in which many book proposals are not even acknowledged as having been received), the "it doesn't fit our publishing projections for the year" or "we can't market it adequately"  meant it was writing no one would ever read. I finally stashed the manuscript in the back of the closet, because over time it ceased being relevant.

But thanks to today's computer software, which beats typewriters and yellow pads all hollow, I copied those illustrative inserts into another file. They seemed too good to waste. I began playing around with the paragraphs, having a good time with no goal as to whether any of them were publishable.The next stage was some travel essays that I thought might have something to say.

At the same time, I began hanging around with a group of writers interested in memoir. They had been together for a week with Catherine Watson, a travel writer, through the Split Rock Arts Program administered by the University of Minnesota. They are a wonderful, supportive group, who have helped me immensely in my development as a writer. However, memoir was a genre I never intended to write. As far as I was concerned, too many "confessional memoirs" had given the genre a bad name.

There is an old adage about being careful who you hang out with. My travel essays became more personal and revealing. Gradually, they morphed into a manuscript I never planned to write. So much for believing we know where we are going.

I grew up on the "flattest place on earth," as the farmland of the Red River Valley of the North is sometimes called. It was a time when conformity and proper roles took precedenceover everything else, combined with a religiously conservative community that preferred its isolation from the rest of the world . Needless to say, if I had been choosing a place to grow up, this place was not a good fit! When I graduated from college and my family could no longer dictate who I was supposed to be, I fled. My newly-minted husband and I went east to Washington DC - and would have gone further east if it wouldn't have meant falling off the edge of the continent into the sea. Life was never the same!

Hopefully, I will be able to hold this new book in my hands by mid-April. There is something magic about this holding concrete and tangible results of one's writing.  A sense of satisfaction, closure, new life for words spread out on pages over time. It won't be the last book I write. But for the moment, time will stand still and I will honor what has been born.

And then the sales and the marketing and all the rest that goes with insuring what I have written will be held by a multitude of hands. What a journey it has been!


Any comments, click below on comments.

Homogenized America

In "the olden days," part of the adventure of traveling to other parts of the country was the regional differences in the ordinary lives of people. Small cafes, grocery stores with unfamiliar names and different products, and differences in accents. And you knew you were somewhere far from home.

Today is a different time. Travel from one end of the country to the other and you can conclude quickly that America has become homogenized. Freeways assist the rapid speed of your passage from one place to another. Convenient signs tell you which brands of gas stations you will find at an easy-off exit. And  which fast-food places that are available to satisfy your hunger and add pounds to your already overweight body. Squint your eyes just a bit and you won't be sure if you actually have left home.

How ironic that at the same time, we live in what may be the most politically polarized era in our history. Perhaps we have erased so many of our differences that strong political opinions are all we have left.

It makes me think about what I would show a visitor from somewhere else what is unique and special about the place where I live. It would not be the chain retail stores or restaurants, nor the mini-malls and housing developments with acres of identical homes.It would not be the museums nor the cultural events that make living here so rich. It would not be the magnificent rivers nor the beautiful lakes that are such treasures.

I think I'd invite them to sit down with small groups of people, who could tell them what living here means to them.  How the particular landscape here shapes them. What they value - and what they would change.


Comments welcome. Just click comments below.

A Stiff Wind and 36 Degrees

Spring officially began at 6:21 pm two days ago. And the moon appears bigger than it has been for almost two decades. That's the good news.

However, the clouds have been so thick than the moon could well have moved to another galaxy. And spring? A stiff wind, drizzle, and temperatures in the mid-thirties can hardly qualify for the good citizen award of the week.But we shouldn't be complaining - the forecast for Duluth was gusts up to 60 mph and 18 inches of snow.

I close my eyes and remember the cloud of pink across acres of a Georgia peach orchard in full bloom. It is the hard-earned vision that sustains me now, after we drove many miles across the south, looking for spring. And remembering green grass and magnolia trees offering up their incredible flowers for all to see.

The sign on the garden center just down the street from our house that says "Plant Your Seeds Now." I hope beginning gardeners know that such planting is for inside. Too early to get a spade in the frozen ground - to say nothing about the sure sudden death of seeds planted too soon.

Spring will come, I know it in my heart. And my daffodils will force their way to the surface through still icy ground. How they do that is a mystery to me. Life does need its mysteries.



Comments welcome. Just click comments below.

My Heart Weeps for Japan

We first heard what happened Friday morning over our motel breakfast. Then every evening we alternated between CNN and the Weather Channel (to plot our itinerary and stay out of weather trouble ranging from severe flooding to tornadoes). Riveted to the TV screen we watched the horror evolve.

How can any of us take in the enormity of what has happened? We saw Anderson Cooper of CNN lose his cool with a new tsunami warning (Can I get out of here? Am I safe? Can I get out of here?) that didn't materialize. And last night, Diane Sawyer of ABC at a loss for words as she picked her way among rubble. One doesn't need to know Japanese to understand what people are saying.

If there were any questions left about our connection to each other, this triple disaster erases them.



If you wish to leave a comment, click on comment below.

Satchel Paige

Puffincircus (an online journal) said they would publish my poem in the March issue totally dedicated to BASEBALL. I was elated! BUT, Elizabeth and I were all packed and going out the door on one of our "road trips" in our van to travel south to Alabama and Mississippi (last of the two states we had never visited) to "Find Spring!" Needless to say . . . every night . . . I would locate the motel computer and check to see if the poem had shown up. (I got so tired typing in "puffincircus" every day.)

The the morning arrived. We were in a motel somewhere in Georgia and just before breakfast . . . it appeared! Sitting all around me and the computer were over-the-road truckers, their eyes glued to the TV News, joshing each other, and talking a blue streak. Such language it was . . . poetic in a way.  I was so excited to see the poem that I printed off a dozen or so copies and turned to the trucker group and asked them if they liked baseball. (Of course they did!) That was all it took. I was in luck . . . so right then and there I did a "poetry reading!"

And they liked it and wanted to know if they could get have a copy and if I would sign it. I said "you betcha" just to let them know that I was a poet from Minnesota. One even bought one of my books even if it wasn't about baseball. Several truckers huddled around the computer and scrolled down to read all the other poems about baseball. (Actually, you could do the same!)

Anyway, here is the poem I wrote. Sure is good to be home.


SATCHEL PAIGE

As my Dad told it -
as a young man, he liked playing baseball.
Did a while somewhere in South Dakota.
He said he could hit real good,
but couldn't run the bases because
of his short legs. So, there would be
a designated runner for him.
That's what they did. Worked out just fine.

That's what my Dad said, anyhow.

At family picnic gatherings,
I would see my Dad play baseball.
He could hit read good but he
sure looked funny. It was the way he ran.
Did'nt move his arms at all, just
his wrists. His legs went so fast
you almost couldn't make them out.
I was glad when the game was over
and we got to go home.

That's what I remember, anyway.

As my Dad told it -
one day in the late afternoon, his team
had a visit from a negro baseball player
traveling around the state with his catcher.
Gave guest-appearance demonstrations
for local baseball teams.
Satchel would pitch the ball so fast
no one could see it. But his catcher
always caught it. And everyone always
got struck out. Even the second and
third time around.
The ball just couldn't be hit.
Dad's team wanted to continue
even though it got dark.

That's what my Dad said, anyway.

Dad figured Paige and his catcher
had this agreement and he could see that
Satchel would wind up, pretend to
throw the ball, and his catcher
would make a sound with his fist and glove,
just like he had caught the ball.
Everyone continued to be struck out.

That's what my Dad said anyhow.

                                               -Clem J. Nagel

                            Comments are welcome! Just check on
                            the word "comment(s)" below

spring will come when . . .

the heavy, sweet scent
   of clove current wakes
      the neighborhood

fiddleheads slowly rush
   through leaf-covered dirt
      toward light

I touch fuzzy
   ground-loving purple
      wild ginger flowers

I hear the
   coo of a dove
      being answered

                       - Clem


Comments welsome - just click comments  below

March Butterfly

I walk along a still snowy
wooded path covered in
day-bright warming sunshine.
Then -
glimpse an erratic flight.

I see something again.

Unmistakable rich browns
of a Mourning Cloak.
It lands with angular wings
oriented to the sun,
blues and purples scattered
within cream-white fringes.

Then off again

Fleeting and gliding to
find dripping tree-sap
and perchance, a bark crevice
under which to outlast
the remaining winter.

       -Clem


Comments welcome - click on comments below

The Faces of Protest

Go to MinnPost.com, click on Community Voices, for Wednesday, March 2. MinnPost ran an article of mine on that day.

I have watched the protests and uprising in the Middle  East since they began in Egypt. Especially I have watched the faces of people who have had the courage to confront long-time oppressive leaders. As if those faces could somehow tell me what they are thinking and feeling as the unimaginable happens.

And of course, I have been watching the saga in neighboring Wisconsin. Just as any occupational category, there are teachers who should have been long gone from the classroom. All of us have had at least one of these "non-teachers." However, there are far more teachers to whom we are indebted - who taught us so many things, from the basics of reading and writing to understanding the world in which we live. Teachers who coaxed and challenged us to learn and who believed in our potential.

My father was a teacher who brought the union into his small-town school. As a teenager, I didn't pay much attention to what my parents were doing - what teen does! Now I realize what a hero he was. If he were still alive, I can imagine him watching what is happening in Wisconsin and elsewhere.



Comments welcome. Just click on the word comment below.