Before the Landing

The shooting on our university campus Sunday night left two young men dead and the rest of us stunned. I've spent the week talking to students about their feelings, reading their writings about the incident, and being hugged by those who can't yet do the first two.

It's been a long week for all of us.

It's common for young people to believe themselves immortal. That's just part of the teen-to-adult transition package. This makes it especially difficult for them to have their own mortality handed to them in plain view. Tough enough when the tragedy is a car accident or some other mishap, but more difficult when they meet violent, senseless, wrong-end-of-a-gun death on the sidewalk in front of the dorm they live in, on a university campus that normally looks like a vacation postcard.

I could write about the drama of the Sunday night lockdown, or the outpourings of prayer and remembrance since. Both are equally important. I could even stretch the truth and say that we are all healing, those boys will be in a better place, and very soon we'll all be back to the routine of our lives. But I can't do that right now. It rings too false and I don't have the poker face for it yet.

There are two boys who can never again bask in the gaze of proud mamas, doting aunts, and sweet grandmas. All those women full of love and anger and no place to put it. There are four more boys who made a terrible, regrettable, heinous series of decisions, and whose mamas will soon be sentenced to a lifetime of gut-worry and penitentiary visitations.

The world tilted a little on its axis Sunday night and we're all trying to find new footing. It's not going to feel like a safe place for a while, and maybe it shouldn't. All the security mechanisms are in place, the counselors are working double-time, and the phones ring - parent to child - more often than they did before the shooting.

When the talking and the writing and the hugging is done, maybe I'll have space to make sense of what happened. I can't right now, though. As a mama and an aunt and a grandma I ache for women left to weather what comes after. As a teacher I have to assign and grade and keep talking like the world will go on, like it already has.

But it hasn't, and this limbo between the tragedy and the healing is a long stretch of time.

The Moleskine Quest Continues

My new Moleskine is in! After having an emotional moment or two over the discontinuation of my favorite Moleskine extra-large ruled black cahiers, I went on a serious quest and finally found a few. In the UK. For a lot of money. Damn the expense, though, because I ordered the next best and even more expensive thing - an extra-large soft cover Moleskine from The Journal Shop on Ebay. About $30 and a week later, I've got her sitting right next to me, ready for scribbling.

These soft-cover Moleskines are just larger versions of the ones everyone else carries around - 192 pages with a proper back pocket and workable elastic band protecting the most luscious ivory paper ever made. The cahiers are lighter, but you pay for that lightness with a cardboardy covers and a sad little back pocket that tears easily. I tell you, I'm in heaven.

I realize I'm just putting off the inevitable, though. When The Journal Shop runs out of these they'll be gone forever and I can't bear to be stuck without a proper notebook again. Enter Black Cover, a blog in search of the Perfect Moleskine Alternative. It was nice to find someone out there more obsessive than I am about such things, but even nicer to find so many reviews on notebooks. Finally, someone else gets do do the dirty work.

A review there of Piccadilly Notebooks has me ready to take a chance. They're close enough to Moleskine to make me happy, it seems, and while there's not an extra-large notebook, the large is mighty close. Price? I could've bought two Piccadillys for the cost of my one Moleskine. Availability? These can be had online at Piccadilly's site, but rumor has it these notebooks are also available at Borders. That will just have to be a rumor, though, since I'm miles and miles from Borders and their website is on the fritz. Luckily, Black Cover is having a little contest, and I could win some samples. Wish me luck with this, because otherwise I'll whine about notebooks forever.

No one wants that.

Are These Shoes Too Much for a Blogiversary?

I'm not really sure how to celebrate a blogiversary. It's a little like emailing the office that it's your birthday - something I'm sure Emily Post finds a little tacky. There's also no cake unless you make it yourself. I'm really better with traditional celebrations, and much better if the party is for someone else. Ultimately, that may be the whole point of the blogiversary, patting yourself on the back for keeping up with it, and thanking all the guests who stumbled in to eat ice cream.

I started this blog to make myself write something every single day for a real audience. My little black notebook just wasn't making much headway, and since I loathe sending my writing out for publication (lists, envelopes, records, bleh) it looked like instant publication was infinitely more relaxing.

Now, there's publishing and there's Publishing - Capital P Publishing is becoming a tad old school, what with all the academic fiery hoops and Gate Keepers and the year or so lag time while editors are busy filling up their own envelopes and their own record-keeping system for what they've sent out and what's not made it back. It's a lot like those dressing-room mirrors at Dillard's - if you stand in just the right place you can see yourself posing at yourself, a thousand times over. And they all make you feel fat.

My lower-case 'p' publishing on this blog has been a lot more fun. I scribble out a little something, hit the 'post' button, and there it is - Out There. The blog world is completely democratic and wholly Ben Franklinesque. We are all of us self-made. The blogging process occasionally spits in the eye of academia, and I find that entertaining as well.

Examples? Well, how about Stuff White People Like. That guy is traveling all over working the book circuit now after his bulls-eye hit. Nothing like a book deal six months after goofing around on a free blog. And how about Wide Lawns and Narrow Minds? She's got between 20,000 and 30,000 visitors a month. She's also working on her MFA so she can be a writer - HA! I suspect that gal will be staring down the barrel of much more than a few pubs in obscure literary magazines. And soon.

Bless their gifted hearts. I love stories where talent and technology win.

So I thank the handful of you who check this thing every once in a while. It's been a blast writing for you and a even more fun to find a new comment or two. I love 'meeting' everyone on here and it's always like Christmas when I check the blogs for your latest scribbling. It's the equivalent of those afternoon backyard get-togethers my mother and her friends used to have in the sixties. We trade stories, wipe jelly off of the kids, play a hand of bridge, and we're all still home for dinner. Just the thought of it makes me want to wear clam-diggers and tease my hair.

Let's keep doing this. It's free, it's fun, and we all seem to live in the same neighborhood.

The Ultimate Shelf-Cleaning Book Giveaway and a Blogiversary Surprise

That's right. Candace wins Flappers and Philosophers, Daisy Fay, and Bastard Out of Carolina. These kind of lucky moments show up in three's, Candace, so be careful what you wish for next. Slip me an email with your mailing address - ohmonda(at)gmail.com. Congratulations, gal!

Stop by her blog and read every last entry in her archives. She's the funniest woman alive, hands down.

Sadly, The Perfect Grandson did not honor us by pinching out the winning name from the salad bowl this time. No. He's been in a teething-induced unpleasantness of late that's only resolved by an early bedtime. Besides, there was a Jekyll-and-Hyde crayon throwing incident last night that got ugly. Bless his heart. Maybe next time.

Speaking of next time, in celebration of my first year on this blog I've decided to give away a little something extra to the next winner - a Blogiversary Surprise! So make your selections and take your chances. There's absolutely no telling what I'll tuck away in that package of books. I mean that. My daughter mentioned boxing up our black weenie dog and shipping him off, and although I paused to reflect on his tendency to dig in the trash, I guess we'll keep him.

That's the only hint you get - the surprise is NOT a smelly, black weenie dog named Boner. Don't ask.

As always, this bi-monthly book giveaway is as much fun for me as it is for you. Those of you living in the lower 48 may participate, but anything across borders or sea is a bit of a shipping problem for me. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post letting me know which books you'd like to have - my shelves clean out and everyone's happy.

Choose three free books from the list:

Zelda, Nancy Mitford (HC)
Ugly Ways, Tina McElroy Ansa (HC)
Mr. Sammler's Planet, Saul Bellow (HC)
Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden (PB)
Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel (HC)
Leaving Cold Sassy, Olive Ann Burns (HC)
Evelina, Fanny Burney (PB)
William Faulkner and Southern History, Joel Williamson (HC)
Possession, A.S. Byatt (PB)
Lucky Jim, Kingsly Amis (PB)
Freud's Women, Appignanesi and Forester (HC)
Brother Odd, Dean Koontz (HC)
Odd Hours, Dean Koontz (HC)
Essays, Poems, and Addresses, Ralph Waldo Emerson (HC)
Until I Find You, John Irving (PB)
Blue Diary, Alice Hoffman (HC)
The Rector of Justin, Louis Auchincloss (HC)
Certain Things Last: The Collected Short Stories of Sherwood Anderson (HC)
False Gods, Louis Auchincloss (HC)
The Crack-Up, F. Scott Fitzgerald (PB)
Manhattan Transfer, John Dos Passos (ancient PB)
Thirteen Moons, Charles Frazier (HC)

Remember - these are used books. They're not meant to look like new because they've been loved and actually read. They're free. Who cares if they're perfect.

Help a girl out - choose a few books.

Austen as Antidote

I think I've found the cure for all this political doublespeak and tragic economy and war: Escapism.

The only thing better than a rich, fat novel is six thick volumes, all nicely bound and lovingly reproduced with original 19th century illustrations. Ahhh. A full set of The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen.

In my bi-monthly bookshelf scalping for The Ultimate Shelf-Cleaning Book Giveaway, I ran across this set and realized I'd never read Mansfield Park. Never. Not one page. It was like finding a hundred dollar bill in the pocket of last year's coat. And even though Anderson Cooper crooned about political strategies in the background, I turned off the TV.

For a half-second I wondered what might happen if our Jane were transported from her century into ours and - all techno fright aside - what she might think of a gal like Sarah Palin. Can you imagine? It's like those bizarre beauty contest questions that asks you to assemble a dinner table full of people, living or dead, for an evening of high conversation.

Jane Austen and Sarah Palin across the Limoges. One talking nonsensically nonstop and the other, well, probably taking notes for some low character in her next book.

Since I'd rather not take to drink over all this horror, I've decided to take to Austen instead. I'm talking 565 pages, with appendices. Portable Heaven and no scrolling ticker.

Windchimes and Widow-Women in Paradise

Writing about my sweet neighbor-lady's political fright yesterday reminded me of a couple of neighborhood issues in our Walled Subdivision Paradise. First, a brief history.

I moved here a few years ago when this little circle of patio homes was still all construction and dirt and sticks in the ground connected by string. I was seduced by the promise of marble counter tops, six-inch ceiling mouldings, and of never again sweating over my own yard work. Living in a 100 year-old Downtown Grand Dame of a place was fabulous, and while I'll always sigh a bit at leaving the wrap-around porch and Seven Sisters irises, that old house was more upkeep than any one woman could manage, even with an expensive and ever-changing team of electricians, plumbers, tree-men, and mowing neighbor-boys. I love the smell of New Construction in the morning. It smells like . . . victory.

What I didn't know was my new Walled Subdivision Paradise would become a sort of weigh station for retirees either headed for The Home or The Grave. I don't say this lightly. By the end of my first year here, I was the youngest resident by an easy twenty-five years and two neighbors had already passed into their Sweet Release. So far this year we've lost four.

There's quite a bit of turnover in this 'Burb.

Longevity is a woman's prerogative, so the majority of these homes belong to widow-women with small yappy dogs and an abundance of hanging windchimes. I'm not sure why the windchime thing is so important, but there it is. Walk the circle on a breezy day and and it's like driving home from a ZZ Top concert - a bit muffled and "huh?" for an hour or so. Everyone here has several chimes and at least one each of the gonging call-to-prayer variety usually reserved for Buddhist Temples.

I suspect I'm the only one bothered by the windchime concert because I'm the only one who can hear them. I've been on the porch on stormy nights watching for tornadoes as the wind whipped frantically through the streets. This happens regularly here and I always enjoy a good stormy night, but the collective throng of these hundred angered windchimes can drown out even the train-roar of an F-4. The widow-women sleep peacefully behind darkened windows and never know a thing, bless their hearts.

In our darkest moods, my daughter and I have plotted systematically vandalizing the larger and more mellifluous of the chimes. We have our moments. We won't do it, though, because as well-brought-up Southern Women, we could never. If one of these widow-women should pass on in the night we committed a heinous windchime-attack, we'd never survive the guilt.

Or the prosecution. These old gals don't play.

That Genie Won't Go Back in the Bottle

I've seen and heard an awful lot of hate lately, and it worries me. It should worry all of us.

John McCain made an attempt yesterday to quell a bit of that, but the attempt is late and doesn't square with his campaign message. He's between a rock and a . . . well, rock. One one hand he's got to make Obama out to be the devil, and on the other - not devil enough to assassinate. Yes, that's a strong word, but some folks out there are riled up and the Crowd is starting to sound like a Mob. Some people believe anything you tell them, and once they become suitably inflamed they don't much like being told the devil's not quite as bad as all that.

You don't have to use a podium and a large hall to incite folks, either. I live next door to a sweet elderly woman who's cornered me several times in the yard to discuss "that HUSSEIN Obama" while her nervous little dog pees in my grass. She's convinced he's a Muslim/terrorist/A-Rab/communist/Antichrist, and she's genuinely afraid. Stirring up fear in people is one thing, but frightening old neighbor-ladies is an unforgivable sin. I try to avoid her on Wednesday nights after Bible Study and - of course - on Sunday evenings when her conspiracy fears seem to be most feverish. She's never attended a political rally and probably never will, but that doesn't stop her from knowing what she knows. She may watch FOX News, but she gets her real political information from the good people at church.

That, my friends, is a genie that can never go back into its bottle.

The Wednesday Night Bible Study group my neighbor-lady commiserates with will never cause a harm. To anyone. Ever. But there are those out there who who might. There are those out there who have, actually. Arkansas has its fair share of lunatics and I'm sure every other state can say the same.

It all goes back to my teaching mantra. I tell my students that in their essays and in life, the most important thing they will ever get right is to Know Their Audience. Words are powerful and require responsible wielding. I also tell my students that what they don't say is just as important as what they do say. Just ask those folks up the road who were around when Faubus closed the schools. They'll tell you all about the incendiary nature of irresponsible words and silences.

Working both sides of the aisle is going to be an even trickier business now, because McCain also has to work both sides of the pew as well. "Country First, "senator. Country. First.

Vintage Writing Keepsakes, because I'm Sick of Talking Politics

I believe it's time for a political break. The whole mess has put me in a sour mood and I'd rather talk about writing goodies. So here are a few vintage writing keepsakes I've been collecting while on my tiny address book binge. I can't help myself, really - they're cheap, easy to find, and a complete delight to actually use. The lovely embedded abalone memo book with pencil above is my absolute favorite, and it only set me back about $4.00 on Ebay.

Oh, you can spend a fortune on the real McCoy sterling silver keepsakes, but I'm all about the cheap brass or tin variety. The memo covers are always just this side of classy and don't seem to tarnish or wear in an unattractive way. The delicate brass pencil is a bit of a problem, though - I can't seem to find the right size lead. It has to fit perfectly. The whole thing is 2 1/2" by 4 1/2" and finding little replacement notepads is no problem at all. It doesn't appear to have been used much, if at all. only one piece of the original paper is torn off. This little keepsake must have lost it's initial luster quickly for some reason.

There's nothing quite like jotting a little here-and-there note in this compact keepsake - I've had to get over my post-it note brainwashing, though. It's embarrassing trying to stick a note that simply doesn't stick.

This little notebook is the same size and weighs almost nothing. It's made completely out of cheap tin, cost all of $2.00, and I couldn't love it more. The name "Evelyn" and pieces of an address in Pennsylvania are hand-etched on the inside cover, and it looks like our girl made her own notepads out of scratchy rag paper, cutting each page by hand and fastening them together with a staple.

This one wasn't a throwaway keepsake at all. I'm guessing Evelyn had this for quite some time, writing lists and addresses and directions and things to remember. I'm also guessing Evelyn in Pennsylvania was quite proud of this sweet little memo book and might have made a modest public showing of pulling it out to make this note and that. In rooms where all the girls have ornate sterling, it wouldn't work. But in a world of women with no silver memo books at all - tin or otherwise - Evelyn would be quite a hit.

My grandmother told me once that if your pearls aren't real, you must either have an electric smile or a very fast walk. I'll bet Evelyn had a winning smile.

Losing Our Way

My God. Between the Wall Street golden parachuting and the tiresome Dance of the House in D.C., between posturing politicians and winking ambition, there is Addie Polk.

(CNN) -- A 90-year-old Akron, Ohio, woman who shot herself as sheriff's deputies tried to evict her from her foreclosed home became a symbol of the nation's home mortgage crisis Friday.

Fannie Mae foreclosed on the Akron, Ohio, home of Addie Polk, 90, after acquiring the mortgage in 2007.

Addie Polk is being treated at Akron General Medical Center after shooting herself at least twice in the upper body Wednesday afternoon, her city councilman said. U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, mentioned Polk on the House floor Friday during debate over the latest economic rescue proposal.

"This bill does nothing for the Addie Polks of the world," Kucinich said after telling her story. "This bill fails to address the fact that millions of homeowners are facing foreclosure, are facing the loss of their home. This bill will take care of Wall Street, and the market may go up for a few days, but democracy is going downhill."

Neighbor Robert Dillon used a ladder to enter a second-story window of Polk's home after he and the deputies heard bangs inside, Dillon told CNN affiliate WEWS-TV in Cleveland, Ohio.

"I just thought she may have fell or couldn't get up or something," he told WEWS. "I didn't know [she had shot herself] until I got in there. And even when I got there, she was breathing, but she wasn't saying anything to me. I knew she needed help then."

Dillon said he saw blood when he put his hand on Polk's shoulder.

"There's a lot of people like Miss Polk right now. That's the sad thing about it," said Akron City Council President Marco Sommerville, who had met Polk before and rushed to the scene when contacted by police. "They might not be as old as her, some could be as old as her. This is just a major problem."

In 2004, Polk took out a 30-year, 6.375 percent mortgage for $45,620 with a Countrywide Home Loan office in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. The same day, she also took out an $11,380 line of credit.

Over the next couple of years Polk missed payments on the 101-year-old home and in 2007 Fannie Mae assumed the mortgage and later filed for foreclosure.

Deputies had tried to serve Polk's eviction notice more than 30 times before Wednesday's incident, Sommerville said. She never came to the door, but the notes the deputies left would always disappear, so they knew she was inside and ambulatory, he said.

A recent Akron City Council study identified a number of lenders whose practices it deemed predatory.

"I get a lot of calls about this predatory lending where people are elderly and they're probably living on a fixed income and they get somebody to give them some money," Sommerville said. "Then they get in a situation where if they miss a payment they lose their house. I don't think people quite understand what happens."

The city is creating programs to help people keep their homes, he said. "But what do you do when there's just so many people out there and the economy is in the shape that it's in?"

Many businesses and individuals have called since Wednesday offering to help Polk,
Sommerville said.

"We're going to do an evaluation to see what's best for her," he said. "If she's strong enough and can go home, I think we should work with her to where she goes back home. If not, we need to find another place for her to live where she won't have to worry about this ever again."

He said that by the time people call for help with an impending foreclosure, it's
usually too late.

"I'm glad it's not too late for Miss Polk, because she could have taken her life," Sommerville said. "Miss Polk will probably end up on her feet. But I'm not sure if anybody else will."

I'm ashamed of us. One of these suave and semi-suave candidates had better do something for Addie and those like her, and be damn quick about it. And sincere. Fix it on the quiet and don't use her as a campaign commercial. Just save her because it's the right thing to do when our moral compasses have forgotten true north. Let Addie Polk finish her life in dignity.


UPDATE! Just found this (10/4) on CNN.com...

Fannie Mae Forgives Loan for Woman Who Shot Herself

I'm sending Mrs. Polk some flowers right now.