Transcending earth

Place... 

in some of the most memorable fiction or movies, the place, like Macondo the village in "One Hundred Years of Solitude," takes on a character of it's own

.

It has a life that transcends time. It is more than a communal dwelling where the inhabitants greet each other at the grocery store or hang out at the local coffee shop and gossip. The place becomes a character as full of life as the congregants who live there. Magical things happen that can't quite be explained and events in the "real" world seems as distant as Neil Armstrong strolling moonside. You can think about this place and you can dream of it, but you'll never completely capture the essence of the place that is beyond time- 

Unless, you are the Creator of that Place!   

Don't call me a super hero just yet!

Circulation Clerk for Denver Public Library by day...
Writer by night...
Intrepid Photographer whenever I get the opportunity...
So for those of you new to my blog-- I combine my love of photography with my writing as often as possible. I hope you enjoy... 

Forty-five minutes from our front door (depending on how sardine-like the highway is) lies the liberal mecca of Colorado... Boulder. Boulder is well known for it's progressive policies in these parts-- maintaining their open spaces whilst Denver was expanding and growing, almost exploding while nearby Jefferson County would  have loved to have swallowed parts of Boulder County up into plans for FUTURE DEVELOPMENT! Boulder would have none of it, however, and many parts of the city remain quaint and old townish and the county itself is indeed, full of that shameful OPEN SPACE! It's a favorite place to visit, having the attraction that there are nearby rocks to climb (someday I'll tell you about my fear of heights!) and great bookstores and a lovely street shopping mall...

The Pearl Street Mall

The day we determined to head out, it turned out, was the near perfect day to hit the mall considering it was December and Boulder lies nestled next to the foothills and can be several degrees cooler and blusterier than it's big city counterpart. The sun was shining (YAY!!!) and we found parking a few blocks away without having to ask for a loan from the bank (YAY!!!!) (okay, I exaggerate... a little). Ostensibly we were Christmas shopping...

 but the temptations are too great. We can never pass up the opportunity to hit the great bookstores here. Besides we do buy books for the kids and each other (although to be honest I think the books had been purchased already)

After we made our purchases we were ready for some real shopping and we headed down the street.
There are many eye catchers as you walk past the eclectic residents of Boulder.
Buskers
and Street Performers abound
but because it was December,
the most astounding thing caught my eye...

Purple Pansies coloring the flower beds in the center of the walkway. Pansies are one of my favorite flowers because of their hardiness and their lovely coloring-- if there were a flower that I could choose to be it might be a just that- recalling springtime and summer while the cold winds blow just above and though the snows might cover them for a while, they often manage to come out from under it unscathed. But I digress...

  

So off we went...Oops!

Well, waylaid a bit. This bookstore is also terrific and cannot be passed up. Just look at those lovely shelves, chalk full of just about any book you could wish to find! Most of my favorite authors are covered here-- Jeannette Winterson, Paul West, Italo Calvino... You name it, they probably have it! New or used. Don't these shoppers look excited? And here they are looking over books that have stood the test of time as well as looking for exciting new authors-- 

All right, now really it's time to get to some other shops. Lets make our purchases and head out-- there is so much to offer here....

Outside the bookstore, a sad looking gentleman is struggling to play a chord or two while singing a song that is I believe made up as he goes along. He was in rather better shape than some of the other homeless performers we saw that day... one guy's guitar was duct taped together so poorly that I wondered that it made any sound at all.  

The dirty little secret about progressive Boulder policies is that the city hands out tickets to "campers." This means that if your caught in your sleeping bag on public property, too bad for you! You'll be handed a ticket which you can't afford to pay to add insult to your homelessness.

Nearby, we stop at a favorite shop with home decor and gifts aplenty. Ann Taintor (I love her!) mugs, lip balms, napkins, sticky notes, you name it are all found here. This was a new one that I enjoyed:

Sleighbells are ringing and the day is getting short! There's a candy store nearby that is too die for!

They are noted for their retro style candies. You can buy Snickers or a Hersheys but why would you... 

when they have candy that you may not find anywhere else on earth?!?!?!

This guy doesn't know what to do with himself! 

Even I was at a loss when it was time to choose just one before we left the store...

 Really? 

Just ONE??? 

A favorite kitchen store with just about anything one might need for their culinary pleasure and we had hit the best of the best in Boulder for the day..

 Our free but time-limited parking was UP and we had to head back down the mall before we too contributed to the city's slush fund. 

But we'll be back...next time it will most likely be for a more outdoorsy type activity- most likely involving those hills you see in the background and perhaps a tale or two about my fear of heights.  

Eye Candy Blogfest!

It's sunrise at the place made famous by Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall...

Key Largo!

(Thanks to Vikki at Rambles & Randomness for hosting the Eye Candy Blogfest!) 

Lessons from Libaria for Writers

In 2004, I was the last ditch hiree by the last-resort Principal of a middle school here in Denver, Colorado. I, however naively, was thrilled with the job and jumped in wholeheartedly to the position. Soon thereafter I attended a meeting where a plea was made for reviewers "We need YOU!" The chairperson squawked into the squawky school microphone. An idea had begun forming in my mind, and as the meeting droned on I mulled the pros and cons. As we finished up, I approached the head of the department and asked her for special dispensation so that I (not a teaching librarian) could join THE REVIEW COMMITTEE. She agreed and the rest was, if not history, then at least in the past. SO... I was a paraprofessional librarian who purchased books on a very limited budget (at least most years) for kids who desperately needed good books (most of the kids in my school were very low readers) to read and I reviewed new books that were being published by mainstream publishers... 

I learned a few things. (which is why I joined the Review Committee in the first place. I wanted to review so that I could be a better writer-- it seemed logical that in reviewing other people's books that I would learn a few things about writing. But another bonus: I got free books for my library!)

The first thing I learned is that there are lot of books that are published that are not good. Each month we would gather together and choose from piles and piles of books that publishers would send out and I was astounded at how many of the books we received that were just terrible. As a librarian this was bad news. I had a limited budget. I could not afford to spend money on bad books. I had to learn how to find the books that were worth buying. As an author, I was discouraged to see so many poorly written books sitting on shelves. It seemed to me that this meant that publishers were spending money on books that would not sell... 

My responsibility as a reviewer then led me to a conclusion: Although I hated to tell people that the books they had written were not very good, nevertheless, my colleagues were also working with limited budgets. My reviews were one of the tools they would use to decide how they would purchase materials (but let's be real here I am not god-- my reviews were only one of the tools they might use-- most librarians look at more than one review and even then may bypass reviews if they need a book of a certain genre or topic) . SO It seemed to me, that candid honesty was necessary. If a book was bad, I had to write a bad review. 

I generally read middle school books as those were the audience I was purchasing for but I also read for high school and elementary age children as it became overwhelming to have too many novels to read each month. I found some wonderful books that I read with gusto and recommended to teachers in my building who then passed them on to their students- books I have since seen on the tables of Barnes and Noble. (I like to think it was a slow word of mouth growth that put them there. Barnes and Noble was definitely not promoting The Girl who Could Fly when it was first published!) 

The second thing I learned was that authors did not like getting bad reviews. Not that I blamed them (nor do I still). I have had the bad experience of having manuscripts rejected... it's no fun! And it is less fun to have someone say that you have too many characters and your plot line is disjointed, etc. One writer bullied the reviewer into changing her review and another was extremely cocky and annoying, also pushing for a good review. Lessons were not learned by either writer which is too bad. They were both self-published and I would imagine they will remain that way. As writers we put ourselves out there and reviews are part of the gig. It's part of life. When I was a singer and butchered a song, you could see it written all over the audience's faces (if they were even bothering to look at you). My darling Mo is my harshest critic-- which can be difficult sometimes-- but I have become a better writer as result of his criticism. And even when his criticism is wrong (in other words he isn't seeing what I am getting at at all) it is because my description is poorly done or my dialogue is confusing, etc. so he's still right. Critique is a time for learning. There is a time for cheerleading and supporting... but there is also a time to give real advice, real appraisal. And it's important- maybe more important than the strokes. 

I am reading Hemingway's biography. His editor and closest friend, Max Perkins was the one person who would tell him that what he had written was not his best work. He would encourage him to go back and edit out parts that should be cut or "go back to the drawing board" on others. When he passed away, Hemingway wrote,"Max was a great, great editor and a wise and loyal friend." Hemingway's final works of fiction that were published a few years after Perkins death were notable because only in sections is the writer's touch still evident- his biographer speculates that if his editor and friend had been around he may have been able to distill the best parts of Across the River and drop the worst... 

Even great writers need people to tell them when they have lost their way.