Pale blue skies, heat is on the way. I’ve never been particularly good at analyzing my dreams unless they contain fairly obvious messages from my unconscious, but there are dreams that linger with me and some I can still remember from childhood. I’m reminded of Emily Bronte’s comment, “I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have shaped and changed my ideas; they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and alter the color of mind.”

A few nights ago I had a dream that the U.S. Senate was entirely made up of women. In the dream, I’m in the visitor’s gallery looking down at them and the group was vibrant, alive, sophisticated, hearty, and middle aged. They were assembling to establish an award to honor Bella Abzug, the late Congresswoman from New York. And I think of the old Gestalt advice about asking yourself how all the characters in the dream are some part of yourself. Maybe the dream is giving me permission to become more powerful than I ever imagined.

I read recently that when the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky slept he posted a sign on the door that said “Poet at work.” Think about it, you’re screenwriter every night, populating your dreamscapes with actors and dramas, pathos and understanding, shown for your private screening.

A few years ago I was at dinner at a friend’s parent’s home. They had served in the diplomatic services and one of their postings was in Italy. I asked them who over the years in their service was their most interesting guest. They claimed Nancy Reagan was their least favorite and described how she kept dignitaries including the president of Italy waiting while she changed outfits and had her hair done---a regiment of guards in ceremonial mail toppling off their horses in the heat. Abzug was their favorite guest and she described an evening in Naples where Abzug joined the musicians—I believe she was playing the mandolin.

.I just finished reading The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. It’s an amazing memoir and I’ve wanted to read it since I heard him interviewed by Terry Gross of Fresh Air. It is a coming-of-age story, about a fatherless boy becoming a man with the help of a group of men at a bar. It’s woven with interesting themes and a portion of his story tracks his growth as a writer. At one point while working as a copyboy at The New York Times he struggles to write a novel about the bar, but it wasn’t working out. He wrote: “Of course, had I been trying for a debilitating case of writer’s block, the conditions above Louie the Greek’s couldn’t have been better—hot, loud, the walls vibrating with every train pulling into and out of the station, the air vibrating with the aroma of pickles, bacon fat, fried potatoes and cheese. But I wouldn’t have found any at a secluded writer’s colony in the woods, because I was the ideal candidate for writer’s block. All the classic defects converged in me—inexperience, impatience, perfectionism, confusion, fear. I thought words were supposed to come unbidden. The idea that errors were stepping-stones to truth never once occurred to me, because I’d absorbed the ethos of the Times, that errors were nasty little things to be avoided, and misapplied that ethos to the novel I was attempting. When I wrote something wrong I have always too it to mean that something was wrong with me, and when something was wrong with me I lost my nerve, my focus, and my will.”

I believe that it’s one of the wisest statements on writer’s block I’ve read in a long time. For years I’ve heard people talk about writer’s block as if it’s like catching a virus—a mysterious malady that arrives out of nowhere, for no reason. But there are often reasons why a writer feels stuck or stalled and from what I’ve witnessed they usually are caused by lack of experience and knowledge. I wrote my first book Writing Out the Storm because over and over I met writers who were somehow stuck because they were afraid. Writers block is most often based on fear—of failing, of trying, of sitting in one place long enough for the words to come out right.

The marine air is still blanketing the sky, a pale pewter color and I woke up late—any time after 6 is late for me since I like to start writing by six, but I was awake after midnight reading a memoir by J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar. Most memoirs are about dysfunctional families and the pain thereof, and this book is no exception. However, at the heart of the book is a bar and the men who work there, the patrons who drink there, and the lessons this camaraderie teach a boy about how to be a man. In fact, the theme is about what makes a man and I cannot recommend it enough.

In a voice that sounded like old whisky, this morning on NPR Annie Dillard talked to Paul Simon about writing and how as a mature writer she now eliminates every unnecessary word. She read a segment from her new novel, The Maytrees. She also said, “Everything we know about writing we know from Hemingway.” When Simon asked her about writing habit she said you have to slow down and think. She’s against using computers to write because they dilute and spread out the story and spent 10 years on her latest novel. Don’t you sometimes feel that every time you blink you hear about another book you need to buy?

A few days ago I was teaching my critique group for our final session and one of my students, a lovely man and talented writer, started talking about his writing process. A few years ago he took a course called Dangerous Writing. Tom Spanbauer started the Dangerous Writing concept and according to Wikipedia, “The emphasis is on writing "dangerously" — writing what personally scares or embarrasses you in order to explore and artistically express those fears honest.” Chuck Palahniuk of Fight Club fame is probably the most famous alumnae.

Spanbauer says, “On the surface, that may not seem like a dangerous or even daring act. But it is. When the words one believes to be the truth about oneself are actually written, they take on a power that is no longer exclusively controlled by the writer. The spin that could be applied when the ideas were merely in a person's mind or coming out of a person's mouth melt away. The words lay the heart bare for all to see. Those words become a separate entity, an unflinching, unvarnished document of the self.”

Anyway, I’ve heard a lot of great things about Dangerous Writing classes over the years and since I never attended one, I cannot comment on them except that writers who have attended seem like born-again Christians—full of the light of minimalism and edginess. Back to my class--as were wrapping up for the summer and this student accused me of having a formula for writing, meaning that I believe people should outline and know their characters before they write fiction. Twenty years ago he wrote a novel where he did a lot of outlining and the one he’s writing now is coming from a deep place, but he started by writing the middle of the story.

I countered with the only formula I believe in is that writers need to stay close to their stories, writing every day if they can so that their characters speak to them. But I doth protest too much. I work with writers who want to get published. And over the years I’ve read so many dreadful half-baked and poorly conceived novels that I have longed to charge for pain and suffering. There are lots of people who are typing away calling themselves writers, but I prefer to work with people who are serious about what they do and who read a lot and analyze how other writers work their magic. This is purely selfish on my part because dabblers are extremely difficult to work with and they’re usually thin-skinned to boot…… In the years I’ve been teaching and editing what I’ve witnessed is that writers who know the ending of their story before starting out on the long journey of novel writing have an easier time of it and spend less time rewriting and reorganizing. I’ve also figured out that the more you know about your characters, the easier it is to bring your characters to life and shape a story around them. So if that’s a formula, guilty as charged.

The sky is pushing clouds off its blue backdrop and a single bird is chirping, the same four notes, again and again. Last summer one bird perched on the phone wire near my backyard and sang the same song, over and over, all day. Day after day, week after week. And now I’m hearing those same notes again although I cannot see it. As each day passed last summer and the bird took up its post I was amazed at its stamina. There were so few breaks in the song, so few pauses for food or water. Since I’ve been a kid I’ve recognized that birds are hearty as they withstand wind and storms clinging to a branch. But it’s only in the past few years that I’ve noticed how they can spend hours singing, that they seem born to sing.

I cheated this morning and spent the first part of my morning at salon.com reading an interview with Joseph LeDoux. He’s a neuroscientist who studies emotion and memory and his comments in the article are fascinating. I try to keep tabs on the research and writing from about a handful of neuroscientists. Years ago I was helping a psychologist write a book and started reading books and research that she was using in her work. The article is at www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/07/25/joseph_ladoux in case you’re interested.

On Monday I had a long conversation with my agent about the next books I’m going to write. Since I’ve finished the Bad Guys book and am waiting for my editor to send rewrite instructions, I’ve started working on several proposals. It was helpful to hear from her which ones she thought had the most potential, which ones might be easier or more difficult to sell. It takes me weeks, months to write a decent proposal since it includes at least one sample chapter. So in order to save time and pain, I want my agent on board before I invest my energy in new projects.

In the past few years I have written three books that were more than 100,000 words and I want to work on shorter books for awhile and start a longer book next year. But I’ve been thinking about how all writers need a person in his or her corner to help plot out a career path. In my work I see a lot of writers who don’t seem to develop a big picture of what they want to accomplish, along with solid plans for accomplishing their goals. It seems to me that if you don’t have an agent that you need to partner with another writer, teacher, or writing group to work out a trajectory for your writing career.

These days I’m also getting ready for the upcoming Willamette Writers Conference (www.willamettewriters.com/wwc) that is coming up the first weekend in August. It will be held at the Portland Airport Sheraton and attracts lots of interesting writers and talented speakers. It seems that conferences are good places to find not only agents and editors, but also writing partners. And that muddling along by yourself as a writer works for only a few writers, most need the community and insights of writers who are farther along.

Skies still overcast and birds singing away filling the morning air.

On Friday night I attended the Cathedral Park Jazz Festival. On Friday nights of the festival they feature a national blues act and this year is was Charlie Musselwhite. He’s originally from Mississippi and appeared with three much younger musicians—all hot, but his guitar player is one of the best I’ve ever heard. I stood and danced near the stage for most of the show and let the music wash into me. For the last number I was actually on the stage, but behind the bank of lights directed at the band.

And it was frickin amazing and the songs from that evening are still with me. Yesterday as I was writing and going through my day, I was remembering other musicians I’ve seen in concert who are now gone—Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Ray Charles, Charles Brown, and others. You can watch a bio-pic of Ray Charles but nothing captures the way he sparkles on stage except being there and witnessing it.

And I’ve decided while I make a point to see aging musicians in concert, I need to extend that list to authors and poets too. A few years ago I went to a reading by W.S. Merwin and came away so moved by everything about him, so filled with memory and imagery and language. When I left the place he was speaking I felt like I’d been on a canoe ride on a river that wound through an old forest. I saw Merwin in March of 2005. I know the date because I have the program and notes from his talk in my writer’s notebook for that year.

He was born in 1927 and his poems, essays, translations and other writings have been part of the literary landscape for more than 50 years. That evening when he spoke about he writing life or read his poems there was a church-like hush in the room. He began the evening by reading a poem by Emily Dickenson and talked about the link between language and poetry and music. He answered questions from the audience and talked about his home on Hawaii where he’s planted 80 species of palms that are in danger of extinction. He also mentioned that half the native birds of Hawaii are extinct and the other half in danger of extinction.

Merwin said about writing: “Writing is something I know little about, less at some times than at others. I think, though, that so far as it is poetry it is a matter of correspondences: one glimpses them, pieces of an order, or thinking one does, and tries to convey the sense of what one has seen to those to whom it may matter, including, if possible, one’s self.”

Overcast again today and because I’m going to an outdoor concert tonight, hoping that it doesn’t rain. But a week in the 70s has been heavenly—my favorite temperatures.

Yesterday I went to a visit a friend, her husband, and newborn. I walked through the hospital lobby and was thinking of how it looked like a high end hotel with plush seating, greenery and gleaming wood, and an air that no expense was spared. I was thinking about all the lobbyists who will probably never allow universal health care, when I walked into their hospital room. I haven’t been around a newborn in four years and holding little Holden Thomas in my arms was a revelation. I held him away from me so I could watch him, and his many movements, grimaces, sighs, squints, and frowns were eloquent as an opera.

Most of the time he appeared to be dreaming, and I kept wondering about when consciousness really begins, because it was obvious that he had a fully formed personality and already had memories. I learned that he had been circumcised that day so was wondering if that trauma was now stored away, tied forever to flesh. I heard Isabelle Allende talk once about the birth of her grandchild. She told the newborn, ‘remember where you came from and tell me all about it.’ I wanted to somehow quiz Holden about the Land of Babies, or his past life, or his memories.

When I woke this morning the radio news was reporting that today is the 38^th anniversary of the moon landing. When I was a teenager I lived in a small town in southern Wisconsin. It was an odd, conservative, boring place. At a high school assembly we once had a member of the John Birch Society describe how John Kennedy was a communist, and afterward, when I stepped out into the thrumming crowds of the school hallway spotted my social studies teacher’s face dark with rage. The thing about small towns is that there is usually not enough to do when you’re a teenager. This town didn’t have a bowling alley or tennis courts or community center. So by the time my friends and I were sophomores, we’d find ways to reach the next town over, Cedarburg, a few miles away, where there was more happening.

I remember the night of the landing as being hot and still and thick. My friend April and I were sitting on the steps of a grocery store, in the middle of town, watching cars going by, chatting. Probably hoping a car full of cute boys would pull up and change our world. And I can remember feeling a longing and restlessness that even today I can taste. The knowledge that far away men were taking part in a historical endeavor while below we were waiting for our lives to begin. The next day I’d watch the moon landing, grainy and black and white on our Zenith [back then American companies made televisions] and think about that faraway place. But on that sultry night, looking up at that moon, where sometimes a few clouds drifted past, was like looking into an impossible future.

Overcast and raining this morning but the birds are singing away as cheery as a gospel choir.

Yesterday I had another meeting with my fiction critique group and I wanted to write a bit about getting a manuscript ready for an agent or editor. These days in the publishing industry there is a clogged pipeway of unsolicited manuscripts—the notorious slush pile—and if more writers would perfect their manuscripts before they mailed them off, then the whole system would work more efficiently.

If you’re reading this I’m sure you know better than to send off a manuscript that hasn’t been rewritten and honed and fretted over. The first draft is essentially for putting the story down on a paper, later drafts fix pacing and language, theme, character development, individual scenes and plot points. In your last drafts you’ll be analyzing scene goals and how quickly you’ve gotten in and out of scenes. You’ll make certain that your characters are vulnerable, achingly complex, and capable of surprising your readers. You’ll make certain that your story is highly visual and yet that you don’t have huge blocks of information weighing down the story. In your last draft make certain that each verb sparkles and gets the job done and that you can justify every modifier. Bottom line: if you haven’t gone over your manuscript at least three times, you’re not a writer, you’re a typist.

So after you’ve printed out your polished gem, you’ll want at least a few qualified readers to give you feedback. In my critique sessions I’m always amazed at the insights that other writers bring to the process. And while we have all heard about writers whose husband or wife is their first and most qualified reader, in my experience, a person’s spouse isn’t always in the best position to give intelligent feedback. Instead you want voracious readers to go over your manuscript; preferably people who read widely but still are discriminating and opinionated. Then really listen to what they have to say and weigh and possibly incorporate their suggestions.

At some point you’ll need to stop yourself from endless rewrites and tinkering and take the plunge of submitting. Over the years I’ve seen a number of manuscripts where the writer rewrote so often that the original thread of the story was buried and the result was a tangled mess. So quit when you’re exhausted and weary of the project and satisfied that there is nothing more you can do to improve it.

Next comes the hard part—trying to connect with an agent or editor. I’ve recently met a writer who mentioned how she had little trouble meeting agents and making contacts in the industry. She was a fiction author a while back and is now back in the fray, rewriting a suspense novel. I was rather fascinated by her and I wished that more writers had her confidence and chutzpah. It seems to me that too many writers see the publishing industry as the enemy and don’t realize that publishers and editors of every ilk need us.

You’ll want to adopt this writer’s confidence and you’ll want to do your homework and research the most appropriate agent for your story. It’s always a good idea to examine the front matter of every novel you read, especially the acknowledgments so you become familiar with the agents and editors in the game. Check out the agent’s previous sales, the types of books he or she represents, and the agency’s manuscript guidelines. Then follow the instructions to the letter.

The sky is still a summer blue and, oh hallelujah, ring the bells, clouds are moving in. It’s been unmercifully hot lately, but I guess folks living in Baghdad wouldn’t blink. Well, that is unless they lived in the Shiite neighborhood where American troops raided and switched off their electricity in order to gain cooperation because they’re looking for militants. I’m sure the residents, their neighbors dead and buildings destroyed are ready to kiss the feet of their American liberators. But then again they might be sticking to the floor since it was 114 degrees.

But I probably don’t need to explain how our failed occupation of Iraq deteriorates daily. Let’s get back to writing and such.... I have a few small luxuries in life that I can't get by without—fresh flowers, good wine, organic food, books, and magazines. I receive at least a dozen magazines in my mail box each month and Vanity Fair is sent courtesy of a friend. It comes every month thick with glossy ads, including perfume samples that I immediately toss out before I begin sneezing, a cover graced by beautiful people, and it opens me to a world far from my own. I ignore the stories about troubled heiresses and jewel heists and have come to appreciate their political coverage and an odd feature, the Proust Questionnaire that is on the last page of the magazine. All sorts of people have answered the questions from Norman Mailer and Helen Thomas, to Helen Gurley Brown (the August answerer). Now, I don’t give a whit about Brown, but each month I cannot resist peeking at the answers. And each month I’m also somehow surprised as when I discovered that Brown seems remarkably devoted to her husband.

The young Marcel answered the questions at two social events, once when he was 13, another when he was 20. Proust isn’t credited with inventing this party game; but was one of the first interesting persons to give intriguing and revealing answers.

I think the questions are delightfully revealing and fun. I also believe that all writers need to know themselves well and if they write fiction, know their main characters as intimately as they’ve known lovers. So here are the questions—I’d love to hear about your answers:

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
What is your greatest fear?
Which historical figure do you most identify with?
Which living person do you most admire?
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
What is your greatest extravagance?
What is your favorite journey?
What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
On what occasion do you lie?
Which living person do you most despise?
What do you dislike most about your appearance?
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
What is your greatest regret?
What or who is the greatest love of your life?
When and where were you happiest?
Which talent would you most like to have?
What is your current state of mind?
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
What is your most treasured possession?
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Where would you like to live?
What is your most marked characteristic?
What is the quality you most like in a man?
What is the quality you most like in a woman?
What do you value most in your friends?
Who are your favorite writers?
Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Who are your heroes in real life?
What is it that you most dislike?
How would you like to die?
What is your motto?

If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. Ray Bradbury

The sky is a pale, cloudless blue and the temperatures projected to hit over 100 today. Global warming is smacking us alongside the head here and my new hobby is watering—my sprinkler is misting the side yard as I write.

Last night I attended a summer concert and sat on the lawn with friends listening to music, drinking wine, eating picnic food and watching the trees bend in the night breeze. I arrived at the park before my friends and discovered I had forgotten my chair and book, so spent fifteen minutes watching the crowd, noticing the children greeting their friends, soap bubbles floating past, people unpacking food. I’m going to drink in these balmy days, store them for the winter months of gray and rain.

I want to call your attention to a terrific essay on summer at salon.com. It’s written Oliver Broudy and it’s called Air Head and is about his dilemma with buying an air conditioner. His reason for not buying one is that it blocks out all the sensory delights of summer—the sound and heat coming in through his windows in Manhattan.
Here is an excerpt: “….. But I grew up on the shores of Connecticut. To me, summer has always been a time of heat, the sun baking the paint on the bottom of old wood dinghies, small waves breaking, blackberry ice cream dripping down your forearm, and some lucky kid five years your senior fooling around with a kit-built remote control car.

The heat comes in and slows things. It comes in through the window where the ice tea sits brewing in the sun. There's a dog panting somewhere, behind the couch. For coolness, you'd drape yourself over the thick limb of a purple beech tree, or slide an ice cube back and forth across your forehead. You'd sneak a miniature fan into school and surrender it to a girl you liked -- a hopeful investment. The windows were open, and in the clean kitchen a fly would circle looking for some forgotten spot of honey. The most valuable commodity was a screened porch. We didn't have one, so my father built one. Then we put up a hammock. “

To read the essay go to www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/07/07/heat

Cloud cover this morning with temperatures in the 80s later on. I’ve been outdoors a lot this week and have been picnicking, eating el fresco, and walking in the evenings, so I feel drenched in summer. Today I’m going for a boat ride and we’ll land on the shores of the Willamette for a picnic. My memories of my childhood have been stirred a lot this week, especially when I was watching fireworks on Wednesday night head turned to the spangled sky, and felt connected back in time and to other places and people.

Back to summer reading. I’ve just finished Janet Evanovich’s latest book in her Stephanie Plum series, Lean Mean Thirteen—it’s a fun romp, with lots of misadventures, laugh out loud dialogue, and sexual tension. Evanovich has implanted a terrific device in the series in that Plum wavers undecided between her sometimes boyfriend Joe Morrelli and bad boy Ranger. The series work best when Ranger and her coworker in the bond bail business, Lula, a former ‘ho. are around a lot and in her 13^th book in the series she wisely showcases both of these characters. The story also includes her nemesis Joyce Barnhard, and her ex-husband, Dickie. All the secondary characters in the series are wacky or at least interesting and I believe that the key to her success is mining her quirky secondary cast.

Another book that I read recently is a thriller, Sharp Objects. It’s the first novel from Gillian Flynn and has so much tension in it that you practically break out in hives while reading it. Flynn’s protagonist Camille Preaker, a reporter, returns to her Missouri hometown to investigate the murders of two preteen girls. Back home, Breaker is forced to confront her past and truths about her twisted family. Camille is also fresh from a psych ward for reason I won’t divulge, but let me say that this character has a backstory that you’ll never forget. You’ll also never forget the whole Gothic feel of the story. If you like your stories sweet, or your characters to remain safe amid a saccharine world, by all means, do NOT read this book. If you want a real thrill ride, to shudder at depravity and suffering, and to study a fresh voice in this crowded genre, read Sharp Objects.

Flynn was lucky to garner a blurb from Stephen King whom she has never met who wrote: “To say this is a terrific debut novel is really too mild. I haven’t read such a relentlessly creepy family saga since John Farris’s All Heads Turn as the Hunt Goes By, and that was thirty years ago, give or take. Sharp Objects isn’t one of those scare-and-retreat books, the effect is cumulative. I found myself dreading the last thirty pages or so but was helpless to stop turning them. Then, after the lights went out, the story just stayed there in my head, culled and hissing., like a snake in a can. An admirably nasty piece of work, elevated by sharp writing and sharper insights.”

The sky is turquoise smeared with wispy clouds that you can tell will not last long. This morning on NPR Jon Clinch discussed the difficulties of writing his first novel, Finn (Random House Books). He says it’s like building a house with raisins. It’s the dark secret history of Huck Finn’s father and the excerpt read on the air sounded fascinating. Before Finn was published Clinch spent a dozen years writing fiction and wrote five novels that weren’t published.

I need to turn you onto a writer you’ve probably never heard of, Poe Ballantine. I have not read Ballantine’s novels but have been following his real-life, oddball adventures in The Sun magazine. He regularly contributes essays about his forays on the outskirts and strip malls of America. His lifestyle is spare, and he lives in crappy motels, working at minimum wage jobs so he can write. His writing is sad and funny and real and sweet and makes you think a lot about what is wrong with this country. Often his work makes me feel as lonely as hearing a far-off train whistle in the middle of the night. His latest essays have been collected in 501 Minutes to Christ: Personal Essays by Hawthorne Books. In the July issue of The Sun he has written about his experiences with meth and the essay is so searing and jumpy and that I got a hangover after reading it. I’ve always been baffled why so many people have gotten hooked on such a dirty, wasting drug, but after I read his essay I finally understand why people get involved with it. The essay describes how he moved home with his parents to write a novel, then because the writing wasn’t going well, got a job in a warehouse, then starting using meth. Here is an excerpt from Methamphetamine For Dummies where he described the aftermath of doing meth:

“God strike me with a urine-soaked newspaper if I ever do this drug again, the aftermath is simply unforgiving, a hangover infinitely more excruciating than you get from alcohol, as if your nerves have been shaved by an asthmatic witch doctor, pumped with musard gas, and then stomped crooked by a drunken plumber who refuses to clean his boots. I’m convinced that methamphetmamine is not a drug but a plague with which Nature has supplied us in lieu of yellow fever and cholera. There is nothing subtle ir romantic about this souped –up bathtub solvent concocted from the very same items I move daily at the chemical warehouse. It doesn’t inspire odes and lyrics the way heroin does. Think of all the great heroin songs, from Beatles’ “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” to David Bowie’s “China Girl”. No one writes songs about meth, for the same reason no one writes songs about yellow fever and cholera.

I am back at Javier’s the next Friday, Amphetamines can be useful, I tell myself. They make you productive, a creative dynamo even. Think of Ayn Rand, who wrote The Fountainhead—all 720 pages of it—on amphetamines. And my drugs are about twenty times stronger than hers.”

Ballantine currently lives in Chadron, Nebraska. His first nonfiction book is titled Things I like About America. In addition, his work has been published in magazines such as The Sun and The Atlantic Monthly Online. He won a Best American Short Story award. His novels are God Clobbered Us All and Decline of The Lawrence Welk Empire.

The sky is deep blue promising summer perfection. The news is full of car bombs reports and Glasgow airport is closed, and the latest American death in Iraq makes 100 for the month. The day looks too perfect for such senseless violence.

I’m afraid I’ve been a sketchy blogger lately—I plead that my writing energy was taken up with finishing my book. Yesterday I sent my final chapter of Bullies, Bastards & Bitches, the Bad Guys of Fiction to my editor at Writer’s Digest. Now comes the rewrites….

I went out with friends to celebrate and came home in time to watch Bill Moyers Journal on public television. Last night he interviewed Republican Victor Gold about his book INVASION OF THE PARTY SNATCHERS: HOW THE NEO-CONS AND HOLY ROLLERS DESTROYED THE GOP. After complimenting Gold on his terrific title they discussed Gold’s frustration with Bush, the neocons and fundamentalists who have hijacked the Grand Old Party along with his general complaints about the current state of politics. He wrote: The impact of the sound bite mentality which you find in both parties...is there's been a debasing of the system. Because if you listen to these — I call them the Stepford candidates — on both sides in these debates the only two candidates that speak clearly are the ones they call the kooks.

Each week Moyers reads a rant/editorial. This week he talked about Rupert Murdoch’s plans for taking over the Wall Street Journal. Here is the opening of his editorial:

“If Rupert Murdoch were the Angel Gabriel, you still wouldn’t want him owning the sun, the moon, and the stars. That’s too much prime real estate for even the pure in heart.

But Rupert Murdoch is no saint; he is to propriety what the Marquis de Sade was to chastity. When it comes to money and power he’s carnivorous: all appetite and no taste. He’ll eat anything in his path. Politicians become little clay pigeons to be picked off with flattering headlines, generous air time, a book contract or the old-fashioned black jack that never misses: campaign cash. He hires lobbyists the way Imelda Marcos bought shoes, and stacks them in his cavernous closet, along with his conscience; this is the man, remember, who famously kowtowed to the Communist overlords of China, oppressors of their own people, to protect his investments there.

The ambitious can’t resist his blandishments, nor his power to get or keep them in office where they can return his favors. Mae West would be green with envy at his little black book of conquests: Tory Margaret Thatcher, Labor’s Tony Blair, George Bush. Even Jimmy Carter couldn’t say no. Now, Bill and Hillary Clinton, who know which side of their bread is buttered, like having it slathered by their new buddy Rupert. Our media and political system has turned into a mutual protection racket." To read the complete editorial and follow the astute journalist’s blog go to http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/ We need Rupert Murdoch taking over more media outlets like we need more bombings in Iraq.

Blue is appearing between puffy cumulus clouds and warmer weather is promised after a dreary, drizzly Sunday.

Summer is the second busiest season in the book publishing biz because it is when publishers bring out titles that they’ll hope you’ll pack in your beach bag and suitcase. I’m still compiling a pile of novels for my annual vacation at the Oregon Coast not to mention a stack for evenings spent on my patio, awaiting a cooling breeze. My main qualification for a summer read is that it’s utterly engrossing and allows me to surrender to the torpor of a sun-drenched world. Since I won’t be traveling to Paris or Provence, I need books to whisk me to other worlds, other lives.

In the past summer reads were supposed to be as substantial as cotton candy, but in recent years that trend has changed and literary novels and books by new authors woven around weighty concepts and themes are also making an appearance in book stores. So books by Annie Dillard, Ian McQuen, Amy Bloom Michael Ondaatje, and Ian McEwan are going to nestle in the stores along with the new titles by Janet Evanovich and Dan Brown, not to mention the final Harry Potter book. Summer is also a time to release memoirs and biography and this season includes Peeling the Onion by Günter Grass and Circling My Mother by Mary Gordon. Summer releases also include scholarly tomes such as Inner Workings: Literary Essays 2000-2005 by J.M. Coetzee, and Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America by Eric Jay Dolin.

This weekend after finishing up another chapter in my Bad Guys book and hosting a baby shower for a friend, I’m reading the third book in Nancy Martin’s Blackbird Sisters series, Some Like it Lethal. Part chick lit, part romp, the story takes place amid Philadelphia high society and settles me among people I’ll never meet in real life. Martin is one of those writers who make her stories look easy, but if you look closer at her scenes, you’ll notice just the right dose of details to make you believe in the story world and the gaggle of characters and murder suspects.

In case you’ve missed it, for the past month the staff at salon.com has made suggestions for summer reads that won’t leave your feeling cheap and empty. In the fourth part of the series they’ve focused on mysteries, a crowded genre and offer up reviews of these books: Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann, Mr. Dixon Disappears by Ian Sansom, Up in Honey's Room by Elmore Leonard, Body of Lies by David Ignatius, Body of Lies by David Ignatius, and The Margarets by Sheri S. Tepper. You can find these reviews at http://salon.com/books/feature/2007/0607/Summer_reads

Happy reading and writing to all.

Pale, pale blue grey sky and now summer has officially arrived. I went for a long walk last night down the Springwater Trail and the cottonwood blooms were floating on the night breeze and so thick on the ground it looked like a snowfall. No wonder my allergies have been driving me crazy.

Every month one of my favorite days is when my copy of The Sun magazine arrives. In case you’re not familiar with it, it is a literary magazine published from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It has no advertising in it and each month features an in-depth interview, essays, memoir excerpts, short stories, photography and poetry. The writing is first rate, the photography is evocative, and each issue is based around a theme.

However, when I receive the magazine, I always first turn to Readers Write section. In it, readers from all over write about their personal experiences on a single topic. This month is was “in the bedroom” and I read a piece by a man in Alexandria, Virginia about his childhood memory of sharing his bedroom with a younger sister with a heart defect. Because she was so ill, she rarely left the house and was not permitted to exert herself. On weekend mornings she’d crawl into his bed and they’d talk for hours and his sister would ask him about school and the world outside their home.

On a Friday he was sent to spend the weekend with an aunt and when his father drove him home on Monday explained that his sister had died over the weekend. She’d also been buried over the weekend in his absence to spare him the grief. When they returned home all her things had been removed from the bedroom. He writes: “The room I had longed to have to myself now seemed barren and lonely. I sat on my bed for hours, staring at her empty one, not even realizing I was crying until I felt my wet cheek.”

The June issue also contained an essay by Peter Selgin, The Man From ‘Stanbul. The essay is about, of all things, his enlarged prostate and the pain thereof. Selgin takes us through agonizing moments spent over the commode struggling to pee and to various doctor’s appointments as he tries to find a cure. Now, I’ve always been a woman who has been annoyed and fascinated by men’s relationships with their penis. Like many women, I’ve long been weary of the world’s preoccupation with all things penile and have questioned how a few inches of flesh has carried such significance in lives and cultures. And caused so much pain, violence, and craziness. So I wasn’t exactly thrilled when I at first realized I was to be taken on this journey of penis troubles….but oh my, what a trip.

The essay is wicked and hilarious and intimate and silly. I cannot recommend it enough. At one point he writes: “And now we come to that delicate portion of my story wherein I must tell you about my orgasms. Yes, I must. I said I once peed like an angel. Well, I used to come like the devil. I’ve seen enough porno flicks to know the difference between a squirt and a spurt, and I spurted. Back in those innocent days when hand jobs were about all a young lover could reasonably expect, a girlfriend of mine once remarked (on witnessing this spectacle the first time), “Wow, it’s like a fountain!” And it was, my own Old Faithful.”

When we leave Selgin with much reluctance in the final paragraph, he’s about to undergo a procedure that might cure him. Read it and laugh out loud. Also, if you don’t subscribe to The Sun, consider it, it’s well worth the price. Selgin’s also the author of By Cunning and Craft: Sound Advice and Practical Wisdom for Fiction Writers. His website is at www.peterselgin.com.

I you write about matters to you, then you’ll organically and naturally bring all of your talents and attention to it. Ron Carlson

The clouds have a silver cast to them this morning but will likely break up as the afternoon wears on. When I’m home at night I sometimes tune into my favorite public television programs such as Frontline. On Friday night there is the wonderful Bill Moyers who always manages to interview interesting people and who opens his show with sharp-edged commentary. Then there is The McLaughlin Group which this week featured Pat Buchanan siding with the law with his opinion that Skooter Libby should actually go to prison for his many acts of perjury and obstructing justice. Then Austin City Limits came on and I watched James Blunt, the English singer. After his concert he was briefly interviewed about his songwriting and he said, “the mind is a lonely place.” I was so struck with his comment because lately I’ve been thinking about the loneliness of the writing life and how sometimes loneliness is as familiar to me as my breath.

I think the way to face the isolation is to meet it head on as when you’re forced to wrestle with any problem you’d rather ignore. Because a writer is a person who needs to get comfortable with vast amounts of time spent alone, who has the patience to explore the loneliness and labyrinths of the mind. And it seems to me that these days everyone is bent on never being alone. I marvel at people who need to chat on their cell phones as they walk their dogs or squeeze tomatoes in the market. What’s wrong with simply paying attention as the day unfolds instead of filling it with the bric-a-brac and noise of diversion?

As I was thinking about this I ran across this quote by Ron Carlson in the July issue of The Writer. Carlson is perhaps best known as a short story writer and his newest novel, Five Skies has been garnering favorable reviews. In advice to writers he says, “A writer is a person who stays in the room. So you do your work, and when you’re tempted to leave, you don’t. You push on, even if it’s for just a few minutes. On one level, it’s about you, the person, being alone with your writing, away from all the temptations of the marketplace, away from all of the fun you’ll have with your friends, and away from all of the terrible noise on e-mail….The world is addictive. It wants us away from the desk, and a writer is a person who likes her work so much, wants her work so much, that she’s going to go get it. You’ve got to go upstream. It’s against the tide to get this kind of work done.

“The second level is, as you’re writing the story, don’t hurry. When you come to a scene, say there. Stay there long enough to find out what might happen. I’m just pleading for patience, because people do not sit still in a place anymore. There’s almost no here and now in our country, because of the computer, because of cell phones, and because of iPods. We’re all someplace else.”

Last night I was walking along the Springwater trail near my neighborhood and the sky was like an ocean of boiling clouds—so dramatic and beautiful. This morning they are a ‘whiter shade of pale ’ or grey and the sky is supposed to clear by afternoon. I’ve been working on a client’s manuscript the last few days and wanted to say something about subplots.

I’ve been studying subplots in the novels that I’ve been reading for the past few years. When I wrote Between the Lines my chapter on subplot was the last one I turned in to my editor and it never felt quite complete to me, so I’ve wanted to keep adding to my knowledge of the subject. It seems to me that sometimes subplots make or break a novel. Too many and it can become chaotic, too few and the story is flat and closed in. My client has got an intriguing concept for his 99,000 word manuscript, but two of his subplots are overshadowing the main plot and I’m creating a memo that I hope will help him balance out the manuscript. You see there are many aspects of balance in fiction and when a subplot is given too much weight in the story, it becomes unbalanced. I like to think of subplots as a means to provide complications and to prove that fiction, like life is dense and intricate.

S.ubplots are miniature stories woven into the main story, like threads woven into a tapestry, complete and intriguing in their own right, and serve to contrast, reinforce, or divert attention from the main plot. They are secondary actions in a story, complete and interesting in their own right. There may be more than one subplot, and sometimes as many as three, four, or even more running through a piece of fiction. Generally short stories do not contain subplots and subplots are distinguished from the main plot by taking up less action and having less significance.

Subplots enhance and deepen every aspect of story including the theme. Subplots are devices that drive fiction along with the protagonist’s emotional growth, dramatic action, and the significance of theme and premise. Subplots can involve the main characters in actions other than the main story line, or are based around secondary characters or can combine both. These stories within stories can run the entire length of the plot where they’re resolved near the climax or at the climax, or they can have a short run and end long before the climax.

Here are more tips for subplots:

• The number of subplots in your novel will depend on its length. The longer the novel, the more room you have for multiple subplots.
• Typically a shorter novel (60,000 -80,000 words) contains at minimum a main storyline, a second storyline or subplot starring the protagonist and a second subplot featuring a secondary character. A longer novel (100,000 + words) adds an additional five subplots (or more) featuring secondary characters or viewpoint characters in lesser storylines.
• Subplots will always have fewer words and scenes than the main storyline.
• Generally subplots are introduced after the inciting incident and deepened in the middle of the novel. However, a subplot can open the story instead of an inciting incident, be followed by the inciting incident, or can set the story in motion. When the main storyline arrives later the purpose of this structure is to acquaint readers with the protagonist and the story world before launching into the ramifications of the inciting incident. It’s important that if you use a subplot to start off the story that you stay true to the genre.
• The best subplots arise from a crisis.
• Subplots are effective devices for featuring main characters sorting out painful emotions.
• Subplots can be used as breathing room in the midst of intense events.
• Subplots can be also be designed from weather, setting, environment if they have a major impact on the main storyline such as when a storm or hurricane isolates characters on an island so that they cannot escape the danger there.
• The most effective subplots affect the outcome of the main storyline.
• The best subplots cause unbearable complications in the character’s life.
• The best subplots bring contrast to the story and cause it to range further and possibly explore different classes of people, subcultures, and lifestyles.
• Subplots are often best used to strengthen the middle of the story.
• Generally most subplots are resolved but there are sometimes exceptions such as when the outcome is left dangling in longer works or in series fiction.
• The protagonist’s or main character’s subplot, like the main storyline, will be focused around a goal. This goal will be met with opposition, causing additional conflict, tension and suspense.
• When plotting or outlining, it’s helpful to develop a hierarchy of your subplots.
• Avoid focusing too long on a single subplot, keep juggling the various threads of the storyline and subplots.
• Subplots never rehash events that have occurred in the main storyline.
• When designing a subplot ask yourself if it adds to the intimacy, intricacy and texture of the whole.
• When designing subplots ask yourself who are your most important secondary characters and their relationships to the protagonist.
• Remember that subplots are still plots and require the same elements of fiction as the main storyline, although they may not be a part of the full novel from beginning to end. Often they have a setup or inciting incident, the first plot point, a midcourse reversal, and resolution. Each subplot is associated with a secondary character.
• Subplots have many purposes, but many show complexities in your characters, prove that the story world is lifelike, a complicated, teeming place.
• The best subplots are a natural outgrowth of the main story and most contribute to the resolution of the plot in some fashion.
• Subplots are a great means to illustrate inner conflict.
• Use a subplot to expose a side of the protagonist that will not be revealed in the main storyline, such as how he interacts with more vulnerable characters.
• Subplots can be used to foreshadow events in the main story.
• Subplots can be linked to the back story if connected to the front story and changing the outcomes of the front story.
• Subplots often are structured of rising action then falling action.
• Generally subplots will contain less exposition and description than in the main story.

There is an indigo cloud in the midst of silver and blue ahead of me and I still feel like its part of the world of dreams I woke from recently since I slept in until 7:30. In the last dream before I woke my grandmother’s house had disappeared. I went outside on an errand and when I turned around the building was gone. I kept searching the house numbers, but the numbers had disappeared too and the neighborhood was gentrified and transformed and I was adrift on the street wondering what to do.

Just one dream in a long line of missive from my unconscious that I cannot quite decipher besides the obvious 'you can never go home again'. Well, in case you didn’t see the finale to The Sopranos just as you thought Tony and family were going to die in a hail of bullets while munching on onion rings, the screen went black. Apparently David Chase, the series’ creator has had the last laugh and we’re all wondering at his dark vision of America and puzzling over the lyrics of the crappy Journey song that provided the final notes of the scene. So the series now sleeps with the fishes even if we’re not sure if Tony and crew were splattered in a New Jersey restaurant. Oh well….Chase thanks for the great ride and speaking of great HBO, David Milch the creator and head writer for the brilliant series Deadwood and NYPD Blue (among other gigs), is involved in another series, John From Cincinnati which premiered after the finale. It’s set in the world of surfing and might be worth checking into. I miss Deadwood and could spend many hours in the gritty, dangerous frontier town. Apparently they’re going to create 2, two-hour tele-films, so all is not lost. HBO has been in transition since Chris Albrecht was fired so let’s all hope the networks stays as edgy and meaningful as when Albrecht was at the helm. (Christine Strauss is still the entertainment president).

Meanwhile, I’ve turned in another chapter to my editor, I’m working on a client’s manuscript, have proposed an article to The Writer magazine, am going to lead a fiction critique group tomorrow, and am trying not to panic every time I look at my to-do list of writing projects. Happy writing to all.

The sky is mostly blue this morning as if making an effort to push away the clouds. I’m pouring my second cup of Earl Gray tea and making my daily to-do list and thinking about the chapter I’m working on and the issues that need addressing in a client’s manuscript.

One thing I love about this time of year is how all the experts and book pundits weigh in in on books to read during the sweet days of summer. This morning on NPR’s Morning Edition show they featured a segment on reads chosen by independent booksellers. For the complete story go to npr.org, but in the meantime, here is the list: Soon I Will be Invincible by Austin Grossman, Divisadero, by Michael Ondaatje, Bangkok Haunts, by John Burdett, In Patagonia, by Bruce Chatwin, The Accidental Touris by, Ann Tyler, Five Skies by Ron Carlson, The Dud Avocado, by Elaine Dundy, Anagrams, by Lorrie Moore, The Children's Hospital, by Chris Adrian, At Large and At Small, by Anne Fadiman, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, Devotion, by Howard Norman, Finn, by Jon Clinch, Knots, by Nuruddin Farah, On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan. Doesn’t this sound like a delicious line up?

The NPR site includes excerpts from the books and short reviews. Also, at salon.com each Monday in June, beginning with June 4, there is a list of summer reads. I realize that summer is equated with reading because when vacations mean time to lie on a beach with a fat novel. I like reading in any season, but in summer I sit on my small patio, sipping wine or iced tea, listening to the birds go about their business in birddom, looking up from time to time with the satisfied gaze of a gardener at my various pots of blooms…..ah summer. Let’s all read more.

The sky is a tapestry of clouds in blues and grays, for me, as welcome as a kiss. When I first moved to Portland I would be amazed at the people who claimed to love the rain, the gray, the constant sullen sky. They would rhapsodize about how the rain made everything so green and I’d think they were all nuts. Well, as years have gone by, I cannot claim that I love the rain, but I know with a certainty that I hate heat. This past week the temperatures were in the 80s, and several times when I was out the sun felt as punishing as August in Kansas, the air lazy and parched and still. And I was watering twice a day and it was only May……..So I’m happy to welcome back cooler weather.

Recently a lovely writer in Portland sent me this question. She wrote: "The following quote from a New York Times book review stopped me in my tracks. (Underlining mine.)

“The Sea Lady” is a waterlogged, ramshackle contraption that fascinates even as it annoys. [Margaret] Drabble’s longtime readers won’t be surprised by the novel’s tactics. After all, the most important entry in her long bibliography may be her sympathetic biography of Arnold Bennett, one of the Edwardian novelists — along with John Galsworthy and H. G. Wells — denounced by Virginia Woolf. (“They have given us a house,” Woolf declared, arguing that their concentration on external description, on the workings of society, failed to convey the inner lives of their characters, “in the hope that we may be able to deduce the human beings who live there.”)

There is so much emphasis these days on concrete external details. I am much more interested in the inner lives of characters. It's nice to discover I'm in the excellent company of Virginia Woolf."

She then asked my opinion. What an interesting question…..First, I haven’t read too many Edwardian novelists and it’s been years since I read any of Woolf’s or Drabble’s books, but I love Woolf’s comment and I’d like to weigh in here. I was teaching a workshop on plot this past weekend in Olympia. As I began the day I talked to the writers about understanding the underpinnings of plotting. You see, when a writer understands the underpinnings of fiction— the three-act structure, plot points, turning points, reversals, and the like, the story is easier to write. You need a three-act structure because first you need to establish the fictional world and its characters and dilemmas. This set up should create a story question or problem that must be resolved. Then once you’ve established the conflict and situation, you need to complicate the situation and make it intolerable in the middle of the novel. You also need to send the story skittering off in a fresh direction in the middle with an interesting reversal. Then, as you write the final act, you need to resolve the situation. If you don’t have these three basic acts you don’t have a novel. If I were to try for an analogy, you cannot build a house without a foundation and lumber.

Now, lots of writers grow impatient or pissed off when I talk about underpinnings. Instead they want to be an artiste, they want their stories to be a flow of images dictated from the muse. But if you don’t have three acts and plot points and the like, you haven’t written fiction. You have ramblings and digressions and people floundering around on a flimsy soundstage or a ramshackle contraption. Or, you have something that’s thin and ghostly and empty.

Another aspect of fiction is change—a character is pummeled by a series of threatening changes. These changes will create conflict and force your protagonist to change in the way he or she needs to most change. Some protagonists won’t change or won’t change much—James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Kinsey Milhone. They’re designed to be static or fairly static characters because the reader’s are fascinated by the action, not the character growth or character arc. Or they’re designed to change over the course of a series, but change little within a single novel.

Which leads us to the writer’s question. A fictional world needs details because details create a reality. How many or how few details are entirely a matter of taste and the dictates of the genre. A historical novel, science fiction novel or fantasy novel will necessarily require more details than a contemporary novel because we need proofs of the fictional dream. Similarly, horror writers use more details because they want the story to be atmospheric and spooky, and they’ll want setting to impose another layer of tension.

When there are too many details or descriptions the story becomes cluttered and the reader becomes confused and bogs down while reading. You see, if you lavish three hundred words on an object the reader will imagine this item is important. Similarly, if there are too few details, the reader will feel ill at ease and confused. He won’t be able to unpack his bags and wander around in the story world.

Every writer must find the perfect balance of details and description to provide a vivid sense of place. When a room contains no colors or furniture or smells it’s possible that when the character is experiencing the crisis of his or her life, the reader won’t buy into the crisis because he cannot imagine the world. The more intense the character arc, the more firmly you need to create a fictional world that this growth and change can play out against. So a house and all its embellishments cannot replace the delicious arc of a character. But a character who acts out on a blank soundstage will not be believed either. If I have spotted the overflowing ashtray and empty beer cans and dust clouding the furniture, I’m much more apt to believe in the emotional fireworks that happen in the room. It’s all a matter of balance. If you want more information on how much detail to use, consult Stephen King’s chapter in On Writing.

June is such a sweet month. The sky is again a pale blue with only wisps of clouds and temperatures today will be in the mid-80s. I’ve got NPR on in the background and have heard that Jack Kevorkian has been released from prison after eight years. He was imprisoned for helping a patient with Lou Gehrig’s disease commit suicide. I imagine that Lou Gehrig’s disease is worse than any prison. And today is the first day of hurricane season in the Atlantic—now that we cannot count on FEMA any more, I guess people living in hurricane regions should batten down the hatches……

Alas, I’m still working on my bad guys book—I had hoped to be finished by now but my final chapters are not complete or polished enough to send off to my editor. After reading a spate of young adult novels, lately I’ve been reading horror stories and trying to get a sense of what’s happening in that genre. From what I can tell it’s exploding with fresh ideas and new writers. I believe that I previously mentioned Charlie Huston’s gritty noir series that began with Caught Stealing. Huston is a terrific writer and the plot that starts the series is a wrong man plot, sort of Hitchcock meets Tarantino. On his web site at www. pulpnoir.com he writes: NEW YORK — I write pulp. I write noir. Open one of my books and you'll see I'm not lying. I write about people killing each other and suffering or not suffering the consequences. I write about the halt and the lame and the addicted.

Huston is writing Marvel comics these days and is also writing a vampire series. Oops, I mean vampyre. Because in Huston’s books vampyres are undead because they’re infected with a vyrus and the vyrus needs blood. His first book in the series is Already Dead and his protagonist is Joe Pitt and he’s a sort of detective who lives in Manhattan as a free agent. Trouble is, all the other vampires are linked to Clans and turf is tightly guarded and like his character Hank Thompson in his first series, Pitt is in a buttload of trouble as he works to solve two cases {zombies on the loose and a missing girl] and bad asses are smacking him from all sides. I’m mentioning Joe Pitt because Huston has endowed him with a complicated personality and a particularly perilous situation. But mostly it’s interesting to note the intricate world he’s created [although at times it’s difficult to track], and the underbelly of Manhattan that makes the sex industry, porn industry, drug deals and the like look like playground larks. And if this isn’t a fresh take on the horror novel, well, then I don’t know what is.

Be warned, this is not a series for the faint of heart. Starved for blood and dying, Joe is forced to chow down on a victim: "And when the man is empty and I am full and my face is rinsed in his gore, I feel as I always do when I feed, like I want more." And that’s one of the less graphic moments in the story.

The sky is a mysterious mosaic of clouds although it will be clearing up later with highs in the 70s. Today I wrote a poem for Memorial Day and later I’m going to visit an old cemetery that is nearby to honor the veterans buried there.

I haven’t attended a Memorial Day parade since I was a kid. I grew up in a small town in northern Wisconsin, and we attended all the parades throughout the year, sitting curbside amid a cheering crowd. Like the annual county fair and the fourth of July fireworks, these celebrations were bright sparks in the calendar. I can remember that in many parades candy was thrown to the kids and we’d scramble after it like monkeys. 

And I remember parades as raucous celebrations, except for the Memorial Day parade when the crowd responded to the proceedings with occasional bursts of solemn applause, then dispersed to the cemetery to lay flowers and flags on headstones. In all our small town parades, there were usually fire trucks, tractors and shiny equipment from the John Deere dealership, floats made by local merchants, the high school band, and a ragtag group of Veterans straggling down the street, some so old or frail they were pushed in wheelchairs.

I’ve been watching the News Hour on PBS for years now, but since the Iraq occupation, whenever I’m home at night I try to turn it on. You see, at the end of each show a segment is broadcast in remembrance of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is a graphic of a yellow-hued sunset, then each soldier’s photo is shown in silence. When this segment comes on, I stop all my thoughts and focus sharply on the photos. Sometimes the newly dead are so young that all you can notice is their youth and wasted promised, especially when they’re shown wearing a prom tuxedo or their first official military photo in an ill-fitting cap. Sometimes the men (and occasionally women) are in their thirties or forties or even fifties, so you’re certain that their deaths have devastated families, left behind children without a parent. As the photos appear on screen, one after another, I will myself into a stillness and let my feelings of loss and sadness wash over me.