Writing Retreat Report - Getting Started

Well into the second full day of my writing retreat at Wellspring House in Ashfield, MA, the town where everyone knows your name (if you live here) and cell phones don’t work. Every 1000 words or so, I change venues. Thus far have enjoyed writing in my room, the funky living room, outdoors, at the local cafe, at the lakeside park across the street, and now at the delightful little library.

RIP Tony Horwitz

Ah damn, I didn't know Tony Horwitz died yesterday. I loved his writings and none more than Confederates in the Attic, an absolutely brilliant book. If you haven't read it, I encourage you to.

From Slate.com: Tony Horwitz’s Greatest Book, Confederates in the Attic, Seems Even More Crucial Today

We've got a problem if we're entering a spelling bee

"Message"?! Seriously, Rhode Island? The most search word for spelling in the state is "Message"? I figured it would at least be something like like "chourico". How mundane.

From the Washington Post: Beautiful, bougie and all the other words Americans still can’t spell, state by state

The Dark Voice

Last night, I walked into the restaurant for our family Valentine’s Day dinner and gave my daughter a long, tight hug. She is only 6 and didn’t know what had happened in Parkland but I did. I knew about Parkland, Columbine, Newtown, Las Vegas, churches in South Carolina and Texas, and a nightclub in Orlando. (Did you realize that there have been eight shootings at schools just six weeks into 2018? Eight, where even one would have been a cause for horror in the past!)

It’s because I know of these things that I hear a dark, evil voice whispering to me every time I kiss my daughter and tell her I love her before school and at bedtime. The voice whispers, asking me if today is the day that something happens, if today our world comes apart, if today a gun goes off.

I hate that voice.

I hate the fear and that I’ll have to explain all of this to her someday.

I hate that she is growing up in a country where mass shootings are the new normal.

I hate that the freedom to carry guns has trumped the freedom for kids to go to school without having to practice lockdown drills.

I hate that children were texting their families to say “I love you” because they didn’t think they would ever be able to say it in person again.

I hate that parents who sent their children to school are now sitting in empty bedrooms staring at photos and videos, knowing they'll never hold their child again.

I hate that voice.

I wonder why the enablers of the gun lobby can’t hear it. Many of them have kids or grandkids. Does the voice not whisper the fear to them, too? Maybe it does but the sound of a Glock sliding into a holster, a magazine being inserted into an AR-15, and the clink of golden guineas in their re-election coffers drowns it out.

I hate that voice.

But I am stronger than that voice.

I love my daughter.

That's why I know we can be stronger than the guns. We need our voices to grow ever louder so that no parent has to hear that evil whisper the door to the school ever again.

A Blizzard, 40 Years Later

In retrospect, I can’t recall when it started to snow. I suppose I could look it up but it doesn’t matter all that much. It may have been snowing as I trudged to my bus stop on the corner of Irving and Blackstone Boulevard for school that morning or it might have started once I got into class. No doubt, like every other third-grader before and after, I was thrilled at the sight of the snow and the possibility that school would be let out early.

In February 1978, I was attending E.W. Flynn Elementary School, not far from Rhode Island Hospital. It was only my second year in the Providence schools, my family having moved from a small farm town in Connecticut a year and half before. I was among the first kids from the East Side to be selected to ride a bus across the city to attend the recently formed “Gifted Program.” The day of the blizzard must have started out like any other school day. I have no recollection of my parents saying anything special to me about the weather or hearing notes of panic on the television. Third-graders usually have more important things to be concerned with than weather reports.

As the snow began to fall more heavily, word finally made its way around the school that we were going to be leaving early, that the buses had been notified, and that we’d be home in plenty of time to enjoy the weather. We trooped out of our classrooms, lining up along the wall by bus number as we always did, and then began to wait. One after another, the school buses arrived. We couldn’t see them from where we sat but we knew they were there as group after group got up and disappeared down the halls and out into the snow. Our number was never called.

We continued to wait.

There’s something not quite fair about being let out from school early only to have your bus arrive at the regular time instead, hours after everyone else was home making snowmen and drinking cocoa. Apparently, our bus driver had never received the message and, as a result, assumed that school would be letting out at the usual time. So, hours after the rest of the buses had left and the school halls were empty but for a group of 30 annoyed elementary school students, we finally were told it was time to leave. We gathered our bags, boarded the bus, and left E.W. Flynn behind.

Our route home looped around behind the hospital, eventually intersecting Point Street on the west side of Route 195, down the street from the YMCA and only a few blocks from Classical High School, which I was to attend many years later. One student lived on that side of the highway. It seemed to take us forever to get there. I remember her getting off and making her way across the sidewalk and into the house. When she was safely inside, our bus monitor climbed back aboard and we slowly crossed over the highway.

We didn’t get far. The roads had become impassable and our driver, no doubt in consultation with our monitor, came to the conclusion that we could go no farther. We had come to rest along the side of the road, the old Coro building all but lost in the snow across the street. While we waited on the bus, our monitor (I do wish I could remember her name) got off and made her way into an autobody shop close to the bus. After a few minutes, she came back aboard and explained that to keep warm and safe, we would all be going inside. We gathered up our books and bags and followed her into the warmth of the shop. The shop had been in the process of repairing someone’s camper and, with the mechanics’ blessings, we all trooped inside to get out of the cold and have someplace to sit down.

What I found out later was that none of our parents had any idea where we were as we made our way from school to the garage. They knew school had been let out early but thirty children had gone missing. Phone trees were set up, each parent calling several others, all trying to figure out into which snowbank their children had vanished. One of the fathers, unable to wait any longer, strapped on his cross-country skis and, in the teeth of the blizzard, began to ski our bus route from his home on the East Side. Eventually, he found our bus, buried in the snow, and discovered us, eating hamburgers. One of the mechanics had hiked to a restaurant down the street, explained that there were thirty famished children camped out in the garage, and then trudged back with armfuls of burgers and soda.

By the time it was my turn to call home and let my parents know that I was all right, my schoolmates and I were looking on this as a great adventure. Somehow I doubt my mother and father saw it in quite the same light.

Obviously, there was no way to get out that night so when it came time for bed, we climbed into the camper and the other vehicles and settled down for the night. Needless to say, we were all having too much fun to fall asleep immediately. Eventually, several of us got together in the sleeping area above the camper cab and had a spelling bee to pass the time. I suppose it says something about my personality that, trapped in the middle of a blizzard, I would choose to lead a spelling bee as a means of entertainment. The nice thing about it was that I won. Of course, the final result was rather biased. After all, I was the one choosing the words, including those for me, and I knew that I could spell “encyclopedia” and the second graders couldn’t.

Morning finally arrive and with it, our parents. They came on snowshoes, sleds, and snowmobiles, like a frosty tribe of nomads. My father’s transportation of choice was his cross-country skis. He came sliding up, dragging a toboggan and winter clothes for me behind him.  I changed into my snow clothes, said good-bye to our mechanics, our driver, our monitor, and my friends, and then set out across the city with my dad. I’m not quite sure how my dad managed it, skiing along, dragging his son on a toboggan behind him up Wickenden Street. By the time we had reached Fox Point, we were both cold and tired. However, in a show of extraordinary good sense, my father had made a stop on his way to retrieve me, dropping off dry clothes for both of us at the home of a friend. Together, dad and I climbed the stairs to the waiting cocoa, sandwiches, and dry socks.

The rest of the trip home was uneventful as we slid downhill to our home on Wayland Avenue. I spent the remaining days off building forts and not straying too far from my mother’s sight.

While I don’t live in Providence anymore, I do get to the city on a regular basis. I occasionally drive by the autobody shop. It’s still there, across the street from what is now Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Every now and then, I’m tempted to go inside, to see if they have any photos of a troop of children camped out among the tires and tools, if anyone remembers hiking down the street in a blizzard to keep us from going hungry, or if the owners of the camper were ever told that it had kept 30 kids warm and safe when they were stranded far from home.

(Originally written upon the 20-year anniversary of the Blizzard and submitted to the Providence Journal for its coverage. A text-only copy of the resulting article is posted below)

Cross One Off the Bucket List

On Friday, I was able to check off one of those bucket list items -- getting a letter to the editor published in the New York Times. This one was driven by the ongoing and rather frustrating battle between Amazon and the latest publisher that it's looking to pressure, Hachette. As a rapacious reader and a heavy investor in the Kindle method of consuming books, I am finding this whole process to be remarkably annoying.

However, after doing a bit more research, I decided that while I was ticked off at Amazon (so when exactly will we get our pre-ordered copy of the new "JK Rowling-writing-as-Robert-Galbraith" novel that's being published by Hachette and isn't available on Amazon now?), I didn't have much sympathy for Hachette and the other publishers either. Here's why:

To the Editor:

Neither Amazon nor the publishers are pure of heart. Amazon is facing serious pressure on the profitability front from investors, so it is looking to increase margins and reduce costs.

The publishers see e-books as their largest profit area. A Publisher’s Lunch article last year showed the profit breakdown for HarperCollins: A $27.99 hardcover provides a $5.67 profit to the publisher and a $4.20 royalty to the author; a $14.99 e-book provides a $7.87 profit to the publisher and a $2.62 royalty to the author.

While the publishers are making a claim to a noble struggle against Amazon’s efforts to devalue publishing, they are also seeking to protect their higher profits on e-books, not higher royalties for writers. While Amazon claims to want to offer readers the best pricing, Amazon has no qualms about using its powerful market leverage to get what it seeks while inflicting collateral pain on readers to boost its profits.

The two players that are suffering in this situation are the authors (book sales delayed or prevented, dramatically lower royalties) and the consumers, many of whom have invested heavily in the Kindle-based environment.

CHRIS WATSON
Barrington, R.I., May 31, 2014

(originally published in the New York Times op-ed letters section on June 5, 2014)

Rambling into Midnight

In the late 70s, when I was about 10, my mother took me to a movie at theAvon Cinema in Providence. The Avon still exists with what feel like the same seats but a better class of independent films and higher ticket prices. But back in the 70s and early 80s, as I entered my movie-going prime, the Avon was the sort of place that showed double features of It Came from Outer Spaceand The Creature from the Black Lagoon on Saturday afternoons and then a double feature of Conan the Barbarian and Stripes at night. Better still, the Brown students manning the box office didn’t care who went in to see the films so starting in 6th grade, when my friends and I were allowed to roam Thayer Street at night on our own, we’d go in, eat popcorn, watch R rated movies, and then go across the street to play Centipede or Tempest at Store 24 during the intermission.

On this particular night, though, it was different. I was there with my mom, for one, and second, we weren’t seeing the sort of movie that I usually enjoyed at the Avon. It was a concert film. I’m not sure if I went along because there was no sitter available or if she decided she wanted me to see it. For whatever reason, I sat there with my mom in the not-too-terribly-comfortable seats as the lights went down, pot smoke wafted through the theatre (“mom, what’s that funny smell?” “I’ll tell you later.”), and the cheesy “visit the snack bar” promo played.

And then The Last Waltz began.

I didn’t really understand the movie as I watched it. It wasn’t until later years that the conversations between director Martin Scorcese (who, I believe, may have shot this amazing film for free) and the members of The Band made sense to me as they reflected on 16 years together, life on the road, and the end of their collaboration. I knew the music of The Band and many of the guests in this now legendary concert documentary because my parents played so much of it at home. I was too young for it to be “my music” (that honor tends to reside mostly with the music of the ’80s) but I recognized the songs and I knew the names though not necessarily the importance of the performers. (I wondered why Ringo didn’t get a more prominent place, instead of just getting some guest drum work, for example).

At the heart of it all was The Band — Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko, and Richard Manuel. As a kid, I loved their music, which sounded so different than so much of the other stuff that my parents and my friends listened to. Songs like Ophelia, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, It Makes No Difference, and Up On Cripple Creek rank right up there with pretty much anything off of Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run as the first music that I really started to appreciate as music, as performance, as a form of language. Of course at 10 or in my teens, I didn’t really put it that way but that music resonated with me and continues to do so.

And The Band? Well, they’d already broken up by the time I was paying attention but they were all still out there performing in some fashion. My parents, very active in the arts community in Providence in the 70s, were friends with various writers and journalists. I remember them coming home from a night out in Boston with a music critic acquaintance where they not only saw The Band’s Levon Helm play but then went and hung out with him in his hotel room (or backstage, I don’t remember which).

When I went to college, my father bought me each of Robbie Robertson’s solo albums and sent them to me where I would play them repeatedly along with my copy of the soundtrack from The Last Waltz. When Robertson spent time exploring his Native American heritage, all of those albums joined my collection. Those albums made the transition from tape to CD and eventually to digital where I listen to one of them at least once a month while at my office or alone in the car.

While Danko and Manuel passed away years ago, Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm continued to make their way into the music and movies I enjoyed. Helm was the most visible, showing up as Sissy Spacek’s dad inCoal Miner’s Daughter, the aged sniper in Shooter, and my personal favorite, The Right Stuff, where he doubles as the narrator with his unmistakable Arkansas drawl and as Chuck Yeager’s (Sam Shepherd’s) mechanic and best friend, Jack Ridley (“Ridley, got any Beemans?” “Yeah, I might have me a stick.”). Most recently, it was his Midnight Rambles, an opportunity for artists, musicians, and friends to gather and perform at Helm’s farm in upstate New York that kept him in the music world, even to the point of winning two Grammys, following a debilitating fight with cancer.

Two summers ago, we spent a sunny August afternoon on my mom and stepdad’s sailboat anchored off Ft. Adams State Park listening the the Sunday performances at the Newport Folk Festival. The closing act and the highlight of the weekend, was Levon Helm making what was to be his last performance at the Festival. When he was announced and began to play, there was a surge in the crowd and a roar of appreciation. My mother, standing on the deck and holding onto the mast, kept saying “It’s him! Can you see him? It’s Levon!” and I could understand her excitement. This was a legendary performer, someone I grew up listening to, whose voice and music were among those I enjoyed the most and I was getting to see him live at least once, even if from a distance and with age and health sapping his ability to perform. Still, it was Levon (really, there’s no last name required) and it was worth it.

Yesterday, Levon’s family announced what all of his fans had been expected and dreading for years. He was in the final stages of his lengthy battle against cancer and his family appreciated the support and prayers being sent his way. His own personal, final ramble into midnight was approaching and that unique, memorable voice would be stilled. Thankfully, with the albums by Levon and The Band in my playlist, it won’t ever be silenced and that’s something we can all be thankful for.

*** Postscript added 4/19 to the original 4/18 post ***

RIP Levon, who passed away today at the age of 71.