Welcome to Forgotonia

It was a lovely day today for the ceremony and a brief reading for 2012 Quad Cities Iron Pen Contest, held at the beautiful Bucktown Arts Center in Davenport, Iowa.

Participants had 24 hours to respond to an emailed prompt sent by staffers of the Midwest Writing Center, phrase or a line from a poem by Hart Crane: “A bridge will be written.”

I got third place in the nonfiction category.

Here’s me trying to take a decent picture, which is always a struggle for me… People always say, “Give me a big smile,” and I say, pissily, through frozen lips and teeth, “I am giving a big smile!”

"do I look writerly?"

This is how I feel much more comfortable in front of a camera: acting like a dork.

Iron Pen placer-- hear me roar!

OH, AND: every elevator in the world should have art pieces on the floor and walls like this one, inside Bucktown

Twistin' it up while I'm goin' down

The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal by Lily Koppel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked up this book immediately after having finished another non-fiction work, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and I think the style of that book impacted the way I felt about this one. In other words, in “Immortal,” the author involved herself in the story and made her hunt for information somehow seem suspenseful, (even though I knew from the beginning that the main subject of the story was dead).

As much as I enjoyed the “character” of the young woman (Florence Wolfson) whose life is re-discovered through the diary in this book, I wished the author (Koppel) would have told us more about the trail she followed to find the diary’s writer.

Also, at times, Koppel re-printed lines from the diary that seemed to beg further explanation or discussion, and none followed; then, several times in a row, she reprints a line and repeats it or explains it in a way that seemed redundant and unnecessary.

But I enjoyed how the author brought 1930s New York to life. And the keeper of the diary whose life and times Koppel resurrects–Florence Wolfson, later Florence Howitt–is so astoundingly original and ahead of her time, it’s hard not to feel that her era was somehow grander than ours. She had lovers in Europe; rubbed elbows with famous American literary figures; rode a horse through Central Park on her way to college classes; wore exquisite clothing, etc.

Essentially, what bumped this up from a three-star to a four-star book for me was going back and re-reading the prologue from Florence, the diary’s writer: hearing from her as a “non-genarian” in her 90s and how the diary revived her spirit. (Made me think there might be some value, after all, in hanging onto the huge stash of diaries I’ve kept since grade school…)

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• blow-drying my hair
• flat-ironing my hair
• ironing clothes
• putting away clean laundry
• cleaning the toilet
• washing and chopping up fresh vegetables after bringing them home from the store
• moisturizing my face
• moisturizing the rest of my skin (waiting for the fake-tan body lotion to dry)
• shaving my legs
• taking my makeup off at night

What’s a gal to do?

Thankfully, (and luckily, for my husband and for anyone who stands in line next to me at the grocery store), things like applying deodorant and brushing my teeth, at least, cause me less angst.

Please tell me how to make these chores fun. Please. (But it better be something other than “whistle while you work.” Also: “drink” is probably not a good recommendation for some of these. See “shave legs.”)

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An amazing story that’s disturbing and entertaining (as this writer tells it) at the same time.

I would’ve had no interest in the subject matter if the author hadn’t presented the story in the way she did, like a family mystery unfolding.

There were times when I started to lose my grip on the understanding of exactly why the “immortal” cells in question were able to live on the way they have–has there truly never been another living human whose cells could be as valuable in research as Henrietta Lacks’ have been? But otherwise the author breaks down the scientific matters to a level that the layperson can understand.

I read this book while I was (and still am) in the process of teaching African American adults who struggle with literacy, and I have to say I had serious trouble sleeping one night because of the way the black family in this book was left in the dark (until the author steps in with her investigation) about what had occurred after their mother’s death. The author also recaps certain medical experiments done on humans (but particularly blacks) that are unfathomable.

Overall, though, I thought the book was uplifting despite some of its disturbing subject matter, and inspiring to see how one journalist helped a family find answers and closure (and, to some degree, peace).

P.S. I read this book on my Kindle, and I “checked it out” from my local library, and, despite what I might have thought previously, I survived!

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