Grounded is the story of how two people react when cyberattacks lame the world. It’s also the tale of a father’s love for his son, a woman’s search to feel alive again, and what the Arctic Circle and a temple in a remote corner of India reveal.
I wrote the first draft in 2002, worked on it for over a year, and put it aside for a decade. I returned to the manuscript last year and reworked and rewrote. This book has had a very long gestation period, and I believe it was worth the wait. Please read it and let me know if you agree.
I have to relearn how to feel. My mother-in-law went into the hospital with a lung infection for a long week and a half. She rallied, and returned to the nursing home. I finished my third novel Grounded and began preparing it for publication on Amazon. Then Mama grew weaker again. A few days later we got the call we’d been expecting. The home phoned and said that we should come. Uwe and I had the blessing of being at her side as she died. Less than 48 hours later, my book became available.
We were busy with all the details that follow a death. People had to be contacted, and a funeral arranged, and Mama’s body transported to the town where she would be interred next to Uwe’s father. We drove down to meet with the funeral hall director and a pastor, and to visit Mama’s sister and her family. We cleaned out her room in the nursing home, sorted through the little that remained, moved furniture. The book would wait. I’d celebrate its release later. And I wanted to stay strong and present for Uwe, because these are the moments when your partner is so much more important than anything else.
When we finally got done with all the details a few days ago, I turned my attention back to a very special project that will take place next Monday, June 6th. My first-ever writing commission has been to write a story to connect an evening of Gershwin songs. In February I wrote in a 2-week blaze of inspiration for NEAT, the New English American Theater in Stuttgart. The four singers and a pianist rehearsed the songs. A Welsh actor will read my story. All I have to do is show up and sit in the audience and marvel and enjoy the talent on the stage.
I went to a rehearsal a few nights ago and heard my story spoken aloud for the first time. It is a surreal experience to hear one’s creative work interpreted and combined into a greater artistic work. I was speechless as I watched and listened. Up to that night, I’ve been numb. I figured I could finally allow myself to feel proud, to be satisfied with all the hard work I’ve done with my writing. I gave myself permission to be excited about my book and the Gershwin evening. But when I let myself open up to feeling something emotional, a tidal wave of grief hit me. I’m mourning my mother-in-law of course. I’m grieving for her, even knowing she was ready to go and had given us the gift of waiting until we got to her bedside to leave us. One of us, Uwe or I, have visited her pretty much every other day for the two years that she lived in the nursing home near us. I don’t have to feel bad about not seeing her enough, or caring enough. But I write this in the present tense, because it’s all occurring in real time still. The birth of my book, the death of Mama, the use of my words to connect the magic of timeless songs, it all weaves together for me, I can’t separate out any of the strands. I’m a hot mess, trying to remember how to feel again. I remind myself that any one of these emotions is huge, fraught with anticipation and months or years of living and taking form and interconnecting with hopes and expectations. Love, sorrow, hope, creativity, illness, dying, death, coming into being, leaving this earthly plane…. Trying to remember how to feel any one of these emotions, let alone all of them all at once, overwhelms me.
But mostly, mostly, perhaps what I feel is gratitude. To know what I have in my mother-in-law and my art. To literally feel in body and soul how it all connects. To be able to feel again, even if it leaves me in tears.
It’s vital to my sense of well-being that I feel safe. I grew up in Cazenovia, one of upstate New York’s beautiful small villages. No one locked their doors and crime was of the DWI and who-got-stopped-for-speeding variety.
I roam the streets of every place I’ve ever lived in. Uwe and I travel to exotic spots and go exploring with glee. We’re not foolish. You can’t go into situations where you don’t speak the language without being careful and keeping your radar up. We always do our homework before going.
But lately the world feels like a strange, strange place. ISIS openly auctions sex slaves on the Internet. Mothers, daughters, and little girls get ranked by age and attractiveness. On New Year’s Eve in Köln, Germany, one thousand North African men gathered at the main train station for coordinated robbery, sexual assault and in some cases rape. Over 500 women filed police reports. [1]
What does this mean for women? While the police aren’t reporting higher crime statistics overall, the danger is that people will become scared to leave their homes. We’ll alter our habits and our style of life out of fear.
About this time, Claire Deromelaere asked me to take part in a production of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues”. The play depicts women talking about sex and sexuality. Further, it raises funds for V-Day, a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls.
Claire is one very cool lady. I met her when I joined the Writers in Stuttgart. When she got up to read at our public readings, Claire owned the stage.
Her presence amazes me. Claire is poised and expressive, and her voice projects. She captivates an audience.
I have a beginner’s ego as a writer/reader. I can only get better; there’s nowhere to go but up. I was terrified at first by public readings. I wanted to read like Claire. I studied her, listening and watching. I talked to her about how to be confident (or at least less terrified) on stage.
It was probably inevitable that she got involved in language as performance. Claire left the writers’ group for NEAT, the New English American Theater. “The Vagina Monologues” is her first play as director.
So I’m getting renewed instruction on how to be a better reader from one of my role models. I’m involved in a positive, powerful response to the hate and violence directed at women and children. And I have met an outrageous, wonderful cast of women of all ages and backgrounds, united in the belief that art can change the world. Eve Ensler says it best:
Art has the power to transform thinking and inspire people to act
Lasting social and cultural change is spread by ordinary people doing extraordinary things
Local women best know what their communities need and can become unstoppable leaders
One must look at the intersection of race, class, and gender to understand violence against women [3]
NOTES: [1] I want to add that in the days after these attacks, some North African men held up signs in public squares in protest, saying the assaults in no way represent how the majority of foreigners living in Germany regard women.
I always feel a little strange when I recognize it’s time to mark milestones and I have several to announce.
This is my 99th blog post.
I’ve posted in these virtual pages twice a month since I began way back in September of 2012. It all started with my husband’s suggestion that I establish an Internet presence….
My published books are fiction, and this blog serves as a good place to present excerpts. Potential readers of my books might want a sample of my writing and a glimpse of the human being behind the words. It’s also a place for non-fiction essays. I get to explore ideas and topics that don’t need to be transformed for novels. Posting every other week is great writerly discipline. I’ve never missed a bi-monthly posting date!
…. and this all began simply as a way to introduce my two novels Tsunami Cowboys and Broken In: A Novel in Stories. Both are available at amazon.com in book and eBook form.
It’s been a fun journey these last three years! Thanks to all of you for visiting these pages. I wish everyone the happiest of holidays. I’ll be back in the new year with an announcement. Milestone #2 is on the way!!!
My father lives on a very cool street. He’s got a little place on a small lake. When I visit, I spend hours watching critters on and in the water.
And then I take a stroll down the road, because Dad has artist neighbors. The Ferros’ artwork decorates the street.
The Ferro home is chock full of art, almost all of it made by Tino and Carole. When Carole kindly gave me and Dad’s partner Judy a tour of the house, I couldn’t stop taking photographs. Every single inch of space contained something interesting and wildly creative.
Carole and Tino. Check out the cicada! The glass lamp! That railing!
The 1920’s home originally belonged to Tino’s parents.
They added on, sourcing materials from old buildings in the area that were being torn down. These ceiling beams came from a church.
They run a gallery, just a few miles away.
Frog Pond Farm Folk Art Gallery North
Sculptures adorn the outside lawns; here is only a sample.
Two of the couple’s offspring joined them to create the gallery. Ninety percent of the materials they use are recycled or pre-used. The Ferro family also produces smaller pieces, glass work, and paintings. Click on the thumbnail photos for a closer look.
I loved the female figures made of recycled metal strips from factory punches and stamps.
She crouches over an outdoor fire pit
Tino and Carole worked and raised their family in Portugal from 1988-2008. Tino tells me Europeans still collect their art work.
The Ferros run a second gallery in North Carolina. I can only imagine what’s in that one. But I’m sure those neighbors love having Tino and Carole down the street!
NOTES: [1] For a similar post on sculpture, go to my earlier post Wine and Sculpture. [2] Contact info:
I’d been warned: the 5-Star reviews couldn’t last forever. “Be prepared,” people cautioned me. “Trolls are out there and sooner or later one of them will pan a book. It’s going to be ugly.” I don’t check for reviews on Amazon much as I take the long view. Writing a book is a slow process, and building up a list of reviews can take a while. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to receive consistently solid, glowing reviews.
Until now.
I got my first 1-Star review. The German guy says Tsunami Cowboys is the worst book he’d ever read. He didn’t finish it. And, after page 56, HE BURNED IT.
WTF? Really?? In the 21st century, people are still burning books?!?
I went into shock. I was horrified. Shaken. Ashamed, even. In my worst nightmares, I never ever ever imagined someone would actually destroy my words like this. Until now, it was beyond my powers of imagination.
I got out a copy of the book. What could possibly be so offensive? I opened to page 56 and the peak of a chapter in which Coreen, one of the main characters, is trapped in a cult and can’t get out.
Ok…. Maybe the troll was upset by the topic. I sure was; that’s why I wrote about it. If he’d made it to the end of the book he would have learned the following: I’m religious. I believe in God. My heroine’s story continues well past the page where he stopped reading.
If he’d bothered with the author’s Afterword, he’d have learned my personal reasons for even including this thread in my book.
I’m appalled that someone would be so hateful. I questioned everything I am doing as a writer, and worried about the consequences of exercising my voice. Then I remembered: I just went to a high school reunion. It was a fantastic weekend spent seeing wonderful people again. By far one of the most lovely is a woman who was a missionary.
She’s read both my novels. At the reunion, she made a point of telling me that the story of Coreen and the cult disconcerted her, and she had to put Tsunami Cowboys down for a while. It hit a little too close to home. But, she said, she picked it back up a few months later, read it to the end, and liked the story I told very much.
So that reassures me.
Words contain a lot of power, more than we realize. My encounter with the troll really brings that realization home to me, and in the future I will pay closer attention. His other reviews have the same ugly caustic tone, so I’m not alone. I’m not sure if that makes me feel better, or worse.
As my dear writer buddy Nancy Carroll remarked: “You’re now in good company, Jadi. Think of the books that have been burned through the ages.”
Indeed.
Think about them.
NOTES: [1] http://www.ala.org/bbooks/
http://uwm.edu/libraries/exhibits/burnedbooks/
[2] I swear it just came to my notice that this is Banned Books Week: September 27th – October 3rd.
The last free residence of Luise Lepman. She lived on the upper floor.Translation: Here lived Luise Lepman, family name Kahn, widow of Landauer, born 1878. Deported in 1942 and murdered in Izbica
Date: May 23rd, 2015
Place: Stuttgart, Germany
Event: The laying of a Stolperstein for Luise Lepman
Man in cap: “I didn’t expect the ceremony would be so rote. He put in the stones like it was just assembly line work, just one of many.”
Jadi: “The whole point is that they’re not made in a factory. He makes every single one of them by hand.”
Man in cap: “And I didn’t know that his project began as performance art.”
Amy: “That’s how it began in Berlin. He’s been deeply involved in making Stolpersteine for over twenty years.”
Man in cap: “I’ve looked at his website. If you can get past the fact that they were all murdered, some of his subjects’ lives were pretty outrageous.” The man in the cap turns without saying goodbye and heads fast down the sidewalk.
***
Today I want to tell you about several remarkably modest people, and one remarkable project.
Amy Matney began as a massage patient and became a friend. She’s a charming, unassuming woman from Virginia. Just listening to her accent is to hear music.
School counsellor Amy Matney
Amy works with teenagers at the Patch Barracks high school. Last year she got her students involved in the international Stolperstein project. Started by the German artist Gunter Demnig, Stolpersteine are literally ‘Stumbling Stones’. These blocks or stones commemorate the last free place victims of the Nazi regime resided before being deported or murdered. [1]
Amy told me, “The students I counsel have every advantage. I want them to learn compassion as well. This project was a great way to get them to think about history and the world, and those less fortunate.”
For 120€ or about $140, anyone can sponsor the laying of a Stolperstein. Amy’s students went into historical archives and researched potential subjects. Once a month the students sent out a newsletter reporting the progress of their research. They chose Luise Lepman, a woman whose family had strong connections to America.
In a moving ceremony on the morning of May 23rd, Ms. Matney, the students and their families, the commander of the base and well-wishers gathered in front of the last place Luise Lepman was known to live.
Luise boarded a deportation train on April 26, 1942. Not a single one of the 285 people forced to take that train survived.
The students talked about their experience and Susanne Bouché, the Stuttgart liaison for the Stolperstein Project, spoke.
Susanne Bouché & Amy Matney
And then, in respectful silence with no fanfare, Gunter Demnig placed the Stumbling Stone in the sidewalk. [2] I helped Amy hand out long stemmed roses. The witnesses laid them beside the stone.
Gunter Demnig, artist and creator of the Stolperstein Project
As Amy and I talked after the ceremony, the stranger in the ball cap came up to us. I’m not sure if we were more startled by his callous words “If you can get past the fact that they were all murdered, some of his subjects’ lives were pretty outrageous” or the complete lack of understanding the comment showed.
This is why we need projects like the Stumbling Stones, and people like Herr Demnig and Ms. Matney. [3]
NOTES: [1] After you notice the first one, you start seeing Stolpersteine everywhere. They honor the dead and remind us that we always walk with and through history. [2] Herr Demnig places each Stumbling Stone by hand. He installed three Stolpersteine in Stuttgart on May 23rd. [3] Ms. Matney’s school will sponsor a Stolperstein each year.
To this day the city of Munich refuses to allow them to be placed.
She placed her unbandaged left hand over his on the table top. “Don’t think I’m only a cynic. If I lost my faith in nations, I find huge bravery and kindness in individuals. I kept my faith – and how can that be, after what religion did to my country? But I did. I believe in God. You saved my life so I am saved again. It’s more than a woman could hope for.” She squeezed his hand. “How long do you stay in Stuttgart?”
For the first time his regret about leaving had to do with a person and not with his phobia. “I should take a train tomorrow. Actually, I’m scared to fly,” Guy admitted. “I was in a forced landing once. I’m afraid of being in another.”
“Why fear a statistic chance? Why worry about an abstraction?” Nadia’s shoulders rose and fell in the Eastern European’s shrug, a slow, weary movement that expressed the futility of every question. “Think about the poor people who are in tsunamis. Or a war zone, where real fear is to think, how do you keep walking on the street as a rocket hits somewhere near, or you hear thwack!, and the person in front of you falls down? First you think, this time it isn’t me. It took years for me to stop looking over my shoulder. Stuttgart is civilized, but even here I stumble over Stolpersteine.”
“Over what?”
“Stolpersteine.”
Guy shook his head. “Never heard of it.”
“Them. Come, I will show you. There are some up around the corner.” Nadia refused to explain further.
She insisted on paying the bill and tucked her arm in his as the two of them headed up the Königstrasse. She led him to a stop in front of a store. “What do you see?”
Guy saw Europeans out Christmas shopping, happy people laughing and drinking glühwein, store windows filled with beautifully displayed consumer goods. Was it something special about the storefront? He shifted his weight and his heel came down on an uneven spot in the cement. When he glanced down, Guy saw gold cubes embedded in the sidewalk. He squatted to get a better look. Königstrasse 60, a stone with the name of Clothilde Mannheimer, another beside it for Jakob Mannheimer.
Nadia crouched down next to him. “The Mannheimers lived in this building. They were moved by train to Theresienstadt and died in the concentration camp there,” she translated. “These are their Stolpersteine, their stumbling stones. Wherever we go, we stumble over reminders of the past. The stones make sure we don’t forget the dead, these make sure that people today can’t push the dead from our memories.”
Guy traced the imprint of the names. The little golden cubes were weightier than their size. “Are there more?”
“All over Germany. Other countries, too. The Stolpersteine groups wish to mark the last free place where the persons lived, not where they were sent. Sometimes a family asks for a stumbling block; sometimes a local group did research for victims. And Stolpersteine are for everyone. Especially the Jews, but also the Behinderte, the ones with handicaps,” she corrected herself, “the mentally slow or physically handicapped. And gypsies, Communists. All were killed or did have to leave.”
“Knowing all this it wasn’t hard for you to become a German citizen?”
She gave another slow Eastern European shrug. “I gave up my old passport a decade ago. It was less hard than I expected. My home country is one in the heart.”
A newly laid Stolperstein
– from my chapter “What A Guy” in Tsunami Cowboys. Available online at amazon.com. This link will get you there. I will post more on this extraordinary street art project shortly.
Medinet Habu, the Mortuary Temple of Ramses III, with none
Let’s get one thing clear right away: Uwe and I are NOT danger chasers. We don’t pick areas to visit that are experiencing unrest or natural disasters. When we went to Luxor for a week in May 2013, tourism in the area was wa-a-y down. But it’s so far from Cairo that we never felt threatened.
Edfu – Temple of Horus
A week after we were there Egypt imploded, and we would not have made that trip. As it was we had Luxor, the Valley of the Kings, and the ruins up and down the Nile banks to ourselves. What an experience, like getting a private tour of the world’s greatest antiquities!
Dendera Temple
Egypt was a special wish of mine for decades. My mom was a teacher, and when she died the last unit she was teaching was on ancient Egypt. At her funeral my family was touched to receive drawings from the children she’d taught. They’d drawn mummies, and Mom’s spirit as a bird. There was even a drawing of a mummified feline with a caption: Mrs. Campbell’s cat.
Luxor TemplePillars like lotus
Some of the world’s most spectacular ruins, and there were almost no other tourists. Occasionally a lone bus pulled in with a group from a cruise ship or daytrippers from Hurghada on the coast, but most of the week we wandered in amazement all by ourselves.
Deir el-Bahari, Temple of Queen Hathsephut
I can’t even begin to understand Egyptian iconography. Gods with the heads of cows?
The goddess Hathor
or an ibis? how about an alligator? A giant scarab as an object of worship — huhhh? It’s so foreign to me that Luxor was a glorious dip into an age that I didn’t even bother trying to grasp.
The scale of what we were looking at was also beyond my imagination, both in age and in sheer height! At each site we admired impossibly high ceilings. We could see the original paint, thousands of years later.
Original blue paint
Even the air feels like it contains the dusty molecules of ancient dynasties…. We sat each evening on the hotel balcony and enjoyed the view and the heat. On the day that I became older than my mother was when she passed away, I sat looking out over the Nile.
The ageless Nile River
Aside from dishonest horse carriage drivers, the Egyptians were all kind, helpful, and incredibly friendly. I look forward to returning!
Waiting.
NOTES: All photogaphs can be enlarged by simply clicking on the image. More of Uwe’s images from Egypt and his photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.
When my friend Liz lived in Germany, she and I would go exploring. One lovely spring day she suggested a trip to the nearby town of Weinstadt. It lies in the Rems Valley, a region known for vinyards and orchards. Weinstadt has charming villages, wooded hills, wine and sculptures… all mixed together.Weinstadt is actually five towns that joined together in 1975: Beutelsbach, Endersbach, Großheppach, Schnait and Strümpfelbach. We walked through the streets and the Sculpture Trails in the latter two (Strümpfelbach and Schnait).Weinstadt’s slogan is „Kultur trifft Natur“ or “Art Meets Nature”. A family with three (3!) generations of artists reside in Weinstadt. It is their art that decorates this already gorgeous area.Bronze and stone sculptures are tucked into bushes and vinyards, yards and walls.Professor Karl Ulrich Nuss first started the Scupture Route initiative. Karl is in the middle of the art dynasty that includes his father Professor Fritz Nuss (1907-1999), and two grandchildren of Fritz: Christoph Traub (born in 1964) and Felix Engelhardt (born in 1970).
Liz and I wandered through the vinyard’s sloped hills with our cameras.
Spring was running riot with blooming trees and flowers everywhere. The flowering Nature made the perfect backdrop to the artwork …
or was it the other way around?
NOTES: http://www.weinstadt.de/de/Home
Amongst other places, Fritz Nuss’s work is displayed in the British Museum and the Liederhalle in Stuttgart.
