Comments from Friendly Readers

The people who have read the first three chapters have this to say about the book so far:

A - Wow, couldn’t stop reading once I started… really GOOD!! Is it all real or do you make some of it up? Totally sounds like you… I can hear your voice as I read… what happened with the ------ (spoiler)? Was it real?

B - You definitely have me wanting to read more and I love the Susquehanna County setting. (hmm, do I smell smoke??)

C - I just read the chapters that you sent. Funny thing is in the middle of the second chapter I stopped to go through Caroline's vocabulary words with her. And right after that, I read (spoiler)......

We both feel like we want to know what happens next! The story is progressing well. I especially like the reflections on (spoiler) ......it takes me back to my childhood. There is also good foreshadowing. We know something happened after the (spoiler) and we want to know what. I remember the first pages and the dangerous ....... and wonder if that was the scene of the problem. Is the ........? I need to read more to find out! This is all good.

These comments are great for me as a writer. They are very encouraging and I need that at this early stage. Who knows, maybe they are intriguing to you as a reader! Thanks, readers!

Plot and Descriptions

I've been continuing with the writing. Just wrote Chapter 3 Thursday. I'm finding that plot ideas are popping into my head so fast that I'm skimping on descriptions. It's like I can't write fast enough to keep up with the development of the plot. So, I've started keeping a separate document of plot ideas. I jot them down as they pop into my head. I may have to go back to the earlier chapters and add more description.

I've also been gathering information for one of the incidents in the story. It will be based on something that has occurred multiple times up here in NEPA, so I want to make sure it is realistic.

I'm also happy to say that I have seven friendly readers who are kindly reading the story and offering their comments. So far, so good.

Names

I was working on Chapters 1 and 2 yesterday. I had written chapter 1 about a month ago and then wrote chapter 2 almost independently, but with similar ideas floating around in my head. They didn't quite fit together, and needed to be reworked. I'm sure they still need even more work. There were simple problems like continuity of season, cast of characters, language style and names.

The characters so far are a middle-age woman (me), her husband and two children. I didn't want to use our real names, because the story isn't true. It's just that these are characters I know (and love) well. When I picked names at random, it didn't feel right and I couldn't remember who was who. SO, I decided to look up the meanings of our names and find different names with similar meanings. My name and my daughter's name both mean pure. My husband and son's name mean strong and bright fame, respectively. So, I chose Jenny (a nickname for Virginia), Kate (nickname for Katherine), Rich (nickname for Richard) and Sam (nickname for Samson). It feels good now.

friendly reader

Hi everyone! I have been continuing the story I posted last time, but decided not to post it. I think it's time for me to keep it hidden, in hopes that someday it will actually be published. If you would like to be a "friendly reader" and help me by making positive comments about the parts you like while ignoring typos and bad writing until the second draft, let me know! I can send you a copy by email.

The story will be about a woman whose community faces a sort of natural disaster and how they all deal with it. It will include day to day issues of parenting, philosophy and religious beliefs, moral dilemmas and the joys and frustrations of life in NEPA. I hope it will be funny and intelligent, but there's no guarantee!

The Greener Grass

"What do you mean you aren't coming back?"

"I just can't do it anymore. We started going when the kids were babies, because we wanted them to grow up in the church and I needed the hour of peace and quiet. The church we picked in Wexford had children's church and a nursery, so we could actually pay attention to the service. That was a great church, but this one just doesn't give me anything anymore. It was great for meeting people in town when we first moved here, but lately it's just a chore to go. I've had enough. I'm tired of being a hypocrite."

"Sally, please. We really need you in the choir and nobody else will take charge of Vacation Bible School."

"Well, I'll miss both, but someone will take over VBS. You just watch. There are lots of capable people. The choir will survive, too."

"They're talking about starting an adult Bible study again. Would that interest you?"

"Not if all we're gonna do is read a few passages and then sit there talking about how amazing God is and how things haven't changed over 3000 years. I need to go deeper, Nancy. I need to feel free to question. I need to feel like the words in that book are pushing people to look twice at the way they live."

"I don't understand what you mean. Don't you think most of us try to live by those words?"

Sally sighed. She really didn't want to have this conversation. She said, "We do try, don't we." and thought, 'When was the last time we fed the hungry, Nancy?'

Nancy answered and talked some more about all the great things the Sunday School and Women's group were doing, but Sally had stopped listening. She said "I know." and "Sure" a few times, but without any feeling.

Nancy got the message. "Well, I hope to see you soon," she said. "Take care. God bless."

Sally put the phone down and sipped her coffee while she stared out the window. It looked gorgeous outside. The sun was shining, which hadn't happened in almost a week. She could see pale green buds on the trees and hear the birds. The grass was bright green. This was such a great time of year, if only it would warm up a bit more. The weather had been so strange lately. When they were down in Florida over Easter, Dave had said that the forecast was for a cool summer in the northeast and hot and dry in the south. Oh well, nothing she could do about it and Dave was happier with cool. He always got hot and sweaty long before she did. He would have hated West Africa.

She walked into the living room and noticed the basket of laundry waiting for her. She'd been on her way up to the bedroom to fold it when the phone rang. She picked it up, headed upstairs and dumped it out on their bed. As she folded, her mind swept back over the years, remembering her days in Togo. In her mind, heat and Togo, West Africa were always connected. It was so long ago, it hardly felt real anymore. What was the name of that student who had helped her around the house? Kossi? No, that was the English teacher. Koffi? Hmmmm....She couldn't remember. She didn't believe in too much charity. She always made the students work for her if they needed money. It seemed to work out fine. She chuckled as she remembered their attempts to put in a garden. It was so hot that all the seedlings withered. They decided to shade the plot with palm fronds on a platform he built. It had worked really well, at first. The little plants had popped up out of the ground and Kodjo (Was that his name?) had been so pleased. Then, a pregnant stray dog had discovered the shade and lay down right on top of the seedlings. Kodjo was so upset, but she had smiled and said, "Oh, well. We'll just plant some more." She could see his reaction. He realized that day that she was just giving him busy work to justify the money she gave him for school. He was disheartened, disappointed because he wanted to earn his money. She'd hurt his pride and felt terrible about it.

The second student who came to see her, saying he didn't have any food left, was shocked when she said he could wash her floors, if he wanted to, and she would pay him. He hadn't come back. Kodjo was different. He really needed the money and worked hard for it. His hair had been orange when he'd first come looking for help. Kwashiorkor - not enough protein in his diet. It had turned black by the end of the year after he started earning money. 'I wonder what he's doing now,' she thought as she reached for her mug of coffee. She sipped and found it was already cold. Nothing like Togo. When she drank her coffee there every morning, she would break into a sweat, because the air was so hot and heavy with moisture. Sip. Sweat. Sip. Sweat. Dave would have hated it.

Back downstairs, she warmed the coffee up in the microwave. That would have been handy in Togo. She'd only had a little one burner kerosine stove that sat on the floor of the kitchen, because there was so little counter space. The coffee had been good, though. Maybe she'd buy some French bread and sweetened evaporated milk next time she shopped and try to relive the taste of breakfast in Togo. It would work better if the temperature rose by about 30 degrees!

At least the church here wasn't as messed up as the churches there, she thought. It amazed her the way they mixed together animism and Christianity. How could they think it was OK to be polygamists if they were Christians. She shook her head, pondering how lost and confused they were. A small voice in her head reminded her that the Bible was full of polygamy. Well, that's true, she thought. I should know better than to be blind to my own culture's prejudices. Cultural norms are just that, cultural norms. Could she possibly imagine the people here living the way we did in Togo? Hah. 'Let's see. Can I do it?' she thought. 'Can I picture five or six families in this town living in little cement apartments placed along the edges of a square, doors opening toward the inside of the compound, with a wall connecting them and a central courtyard? Who would be there? The Miners, The Bogerts, The Jennings, The Buddenhagens? It would have been nice when the kids were babies, to have other women around to share in watching them and to be able to send one of the older girls to the market if I needed something. Now that would be an interesting experiment to try.' It was a lot more like they lived during the time of Christ. She would have a pretty good idea of who needed food if they all lived so closely packed, doing their cooking outside in a common cooking area. 'Well, I guess here they'd have to have an indoor common kitchen area for most of the year, except maybe the summer.' But would it change anything? Would she share more if the need were more obvious?

She looked up and saw that she'd been day dreaming for too long and needed to get something out for dinner. 'How about venison in peanut sauce? That would taste good on a cool day like this and I feel like keeping my African memories alive today. Dave would have hated the heat, but he loved the food, the hotter the better.' She opened the basement door and walked down to the freezer. It wasn't very full, because Dave had only gotten one deer. She took out a package of stew meat and put it on the dryer while she loaded the washing machine. Now this was a luxury she would sorely miss if she lived in Togo. "No you wouldn't," she corrected herself outloud. 'You'd have a girl to do the wash for you. True... and clean the house, too. Yup, and it would be unthinkable to do it myself and deny people the chance to earn some money. Maybe I should call Don and find out if there are any jobs for us in Madagascar.' Don was an old Peace Corps friend who worked for USAID - The US Agency for International Development. No, her husband would never go for it. He wasn't nearly as adventurous as she was. Well, maybe she wasn't so adventurous anymore either, now that they had the kids to worry about.

She walked up the stairs to the kitchen and started to make some lunch. As she ate, she thought about Sunday. What would the kids think if they stopped going to church? They'd always gone every week, unless they were out of town or sick. The kids always complained that it was boring and stupid and they didn't want to go, but how would she explain this change? It was so easy to just keep doing what they were doing and not rock the boat. Would she have to explain to everyone, or would they just let the family disappear? She heard the washing machine stop just as she finished eating and went downstairs to get the clothes. The venison stew meat was still sitting on the dryer. She put the laundry in a basket, grabbed the venison and went upstairs. After she'd left the venison in the kitchen to thaw, she went outside to hang up the laundry. The wind was blowing just enough that it wold dry pretty quickly. She should have gotten it out here sooner, but her mind was so pre-occupied today. It was that conversation with Nancy that had started it all. She hadn't longed for Togo in a long time, but all day she'd been wishing she could take the best of that culture and bring it home. Life had been great there. She tried to keep their life simple here, but it wasn't easy. The fact that she had to drive fourteen miles down a highway to get decent vegetables just drove her crazy. Well, in Togo there hadn't really been any vegetables, so..... She shook her head, trying to clear it. "Nothing's ever perfect, is it?"

She'd said it out loud and the dogs thought she was talking to them. They came trotting over, tails wagging, then bumping against each other, trying to get her petting and kisses. "You guys are so jealous. Come on, stop! I love you both. You aught to know that by now." She stooped down and gave them lots of love. They were such good company during the day when the kids were off at school and her husband was at work. She rubbed their bellies and scratched behind their ears. They decided they'd each gotten enough and sat down next to her on the lush grass while she finished hanging the wash. As she turned to go in the house, she heard a loud noise. It was strange, because it almost sounded like a clap of thunder, but the sun was shining. The dogs jumped up, their tails between their legs. 'Strange,' she thought. 'Wonder what it was.' "It's OK boys," she said as she patted them on their heads.

She picked up the laundry basket and went inside. Maybe she could get the front bed weeded before the kids got home from school, but first she needed to get dinner started. She put the meat in the microwave to thaw, turned the oven to 325 and got out the cast iron dutch oven. The venison always turned out better when it was cooked nice and slow in that dutch oven. When it was all set up, she went out to work in the flower bed. Five people called and left messages over the next hour and a half, but she couldn't hear the phone from outside. As far as she knew, the day was turning out just fine.

Character development

There's a fifty-two year old woman who lives in a house with two children, two dogs, a husband and a cat. She usually wakes up when her nine-year-old son wakes up, because he crawls into bed with her, around 6:30 am. Other days, the dogs, who sleep in the master's bedroom wake her up earlier, because her daughter or some other wildlife are roaming around. Lately, she doesn't want to get out of bed. She's been blaming it on the oral surgery (gum sliced open, skin pulled back, roots and bones scraped) she had earlier in the week, but somehow it seems that it's more than that. Her brain is tired. She's edgy. She's angry about something, but not sure what.

Her husband thinks that it's her normal cycle. Ten years ago, that would have meant her menstrual cycle, but those days are gone, and with no productive outcome. These days, it's the cycle of working and not working. She worked part-time last year, for a few hectic months. She seems to be happy when work ends, because she can regroup and try to get the house and kids in order, but after six months or so, she's done all the jobs she wants to do and the jobs that are left are jobs she hopes to avoid. She starts to feel lost, wandering the world, looking for a place to anchor, a bite worth taking, a purpose worth pursuing. Worth, that's the problem. SO little is worth it.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. She gets out of bed, puts on a fleece over here pajamas, lets the dogs out. She grabs a cup of coffee, helps by buttering bagels, feeds the dogs, starts to make lunches. Within thirty minutes, they're headed to the bus stop, the bus comes and she's back home. The dogs howl as she drives up to the house. You'd think she'd been gone a year. She grabs another cup o' joe, looks at the mess in the kitchen and wonders what to do. Usually, she'd switch into shorts and a sports bra to do aerobics for a half hour, but she's tired and the post-operative instructions say no exertion, which is just fine with her.

She could do some laundry, but she doesn't want to. She decides that mowing the lawn takes very little energy and will make her feel productive. She goes outside to check the grass. It's wet and won't be dry until after noon. She checks the mower, because it hasn't been used since last fall. It starts, but is almost out of gas. The gas cans are empty.

She puts the gas cans in the car and drives to the gas station. The activity is raising her spirits a bit, but not much. She manages to fill the cans without getting gas all over everything, drives home, puts them in the garage and goes into the house feeling a little bit better. She decides to clean up the kitchen and take out the compost while the sun dries the grass. As she's walking to the compost pile, it starts to rain. Perfect.

She finishes up in the kitchen and sits down in her reading spot. It's in the living room. There's a little area in front of the fireplace where she's positioned a love seat, chair and ottoman. The chair is her husband's spot. The love seat is hers. Half of the love seat is covered with books, magazines and her laptop. This is where she sits every evening. Usually during the day, she's busy with chores, but today, she's going to sit and read and wait for the rain to stop, the grass to dry and her mouth to heal.

She grabs a book that a friend loaned her. It starts out resembling her life, sort of. The writing is OK, but not great. It's a lot like her writing. Nothing astounding, proper grammar and sentence structure. She thinks about abandoning it. She usually tries to read books that are more noteworthy, the prize winners, literature. This one doesn't seem to be worth the time it takes to read it, but she doesn't want to have to tell her friend that she didn't finish it. It's entertaining, but she's not learning anything new.

Maybe that's what's eating her. She makes herself some lunch: soft food that she can chew on one side. She takes small bites, concentrating to keep them on one side of her mouth and thinks about her mood, tries to dissect it. She's been a perpetual student. She loves to learn. When she isn't working, she isn't learning. She's been toying with writing, but there's not really much learning. She's known how to string together words since high school. She is guided by her writing book to think about her motivation, delve into her spirit, dig deeper, but these are things she has always done. As an old grad school colleague used to say, she has always "studied her navel". Grumpier and grumpier.

She wants to take a nap, but the grass is probably dry. The wind is howling. Her eyes are heavy. The kids will be home from school in two hours. Maybe she can mow after she picks them up. Right now, the most worthwhile activity seems to be napping.

Swingin' down.

"Swing low sweet chariot, comin' for to carry me home. Oh, swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home......Sometimes I'm up and sometimes I'm down."

Yeah, it seems to be a down day. Why? Not enough sleep, too much trouble in the world. Osama Bin Laden is dead and people are celebrating. Because it's justice? I don't know. I don't see a lot of justice in the world. Christ said forgive, but we don't. We'd rather get in the last word, the last slap, the last shot. I'm not much different. I try to be fair to those around me, but if my kids are nasty to me, I tend to be nasty right back. Not always, no not always.

So, that's how my day started. Shooting, killing and celebrating on the news. I just wanted to know if it was really going to rain for two days, because I never got around to mowing the lawn on Saturday. Thought I'd do it today. Well, it's not raining much, but a shower at 9 am will keep the grass too wet to mow for quite a while. No problem, there are lots of other jobs to do.

I did some jobs and was just sitting down to eat my lunch and decided to do a little Ess1 search, to have something to read while I ate. Ess1 is the name of the protein and gene I used to work on in Steve's lab in Albany. I really loved the work and the lab. I like to check in now and then and see what the scientific world has discovered about it, because it still interests me. Well, I discovered just a few papers. Nobody has figured out the thing that really interests me. It would take a while to explain what that is. Well, the short version is that Ess1 (the protein) binds to the end of RNA Polymerase II, which is a really huge protein that takes DNA and uses its pattern to make RNA. RNA is then used as a pattern to make protein by another big protein. Anyway, Ess1 binds to the end of RNA polymerase II at what is called the CTD tail. It's made up of repeating patterns of amino acids. They're the building blocks of proteins. When it binds, it changes the shape (conformation) of the tail and allows phosphates to be removed from certain amino acids. That, in turn, allows certain small RNAs to be completed and leave the machinery. I want to know why the elimination of Ess1 causes the cells to be unable to complete cell division and why that dephosphorylation only effects termination of those certain RNAs and not all RNAs.

Anyway, nobody who reads this cares about any of that. It's just that reading about Ess1 and glancing at the papers that have been published, I noticed that the first Ess1 paper that I published with Steve (in 2000) has been referenced in 109 research papers and the last Ess1 paper that I published (in 2004) is referenced in 21 papers, including two really great journals. It makes me almost cry. It makes me miss research. It makes me think I'm a big ungrateful whiner.

Oh, well, I guess it's time to stop moping and do something important, like fold laundry. At least the house is quiet and nobody's trying to kill me (as far as I know).