End of the Road with Writer Alice Hoffman

August 2, 2017 Musings

It’s Saturday and I have just traveled to East Nassau, NY through lush green rolling hills teeming with deer, woods, lakes and ponds. Queen Anne’s Lace embellishes the edges of two-lane roads. I’m experiencing that free, stepped outside my day-to-day life, good to be alive, wonder what it must be like to live here, feeling as I navigate beneath perfect blue skies.

I’m registered to attend The Ethelridge Road Knitting Salon 2017 Summer Retreat.  It’s billed as a knitting and literary journey with cousins Lisa and Alice Hoffman. Compulsive punctuality compels me to locate the knitting salon prior to checking into an inn for the night.

I’ve been using GPS since leaving Albany Airport and so far there’ve been no wrong turns.

And yet, I’ve reached those Private Property signs and this unpaved road. I’ve passed the Keep Out signs, but they are clearly posted, too. I begin questioning the GPS. What if I drive down that gravel road only to discover a Ted Nugent devotee with a personal cache of rifles and rocket launchers?

On the other hand, I’ve traveled all the way from Savannah, GA to attend the retreat with Great American Novelist Alice Hoffman. If you read my last post you know I took up knitting for that sole purpose.

Rifles and rocket launchers be damned! I know how to cast-on, knit and purl. Don’t mess with me.

I start down the road. It turns into a path with two tracks for tires. There is no turning back. No, that’s not an overused metaphor. Literally, there is no turning back. The narrow path is hemmed-in by trees and a drop on both sides. I can only drive the tiny KIA rental car forward. My anxiety grows; I’m here for the knitting/writing retreat  won’t hold sway with a certain type and I begin rehearsing, I’m here to join the militia.

Suddenly there’s a clearing and a big, black dog with a gray muzzle comes running up to chase my car. Her tail is wagging and she seems playful. Up ahead there’s a well-tended house and a small knot of people. I exhale. There’s no sign of rifles but I’m not sure this is a knitting salon, either. I roll down my window.

A woman walks over, introduces herself, smiles, and reassures me she would have come looking for the salon, too. She’s Laurie Kimmelstiel, owner of the Ethelridge Road Knitting Salon.

And then, a woman with clear, arresting eyes whose face I’ve contemplated on book covers that barely contain the magic within their pages, leans in, and says, “Hello, I’m Alice Hoffman,” and shakes my hand.

And so it begins.

 

Unraveling My Knitting With Author Alice Hoffman and Knit Designer Lisa Hoffman

July 26, 2017 Musings

While others obsess over Game of Thrones I’m rabidly learning to cast-on, knit, and purl so that I may make a pilgrimage to Ethelridge Road Knitting Salon North in East Nassau, New York to attend Knitting Retreat 2017 with favorite author Alice Hoffman and her knitwear designer cousin, Lisa Hoffman.

Fortunately, every time I make a beginner’s mistake there’s no need to travel far. Savannah’s premier knitting shop, The Frayed Knot, is only four blocks away. We’re on a first name basis now. Betsy has knit since she was a girl and I couldn’t have a better, more patient, teacher. She also has a subtle yet friendly hand with sales and somehow I’ve quickly developed expensive tastes in yarn. The colors, the textures, they’re quite addictive. How did I live without them?

I’ve discovered that when knitters come together in the back of the shop and spend a few hours on their projects they feel safe talking about most anything. It is not unusual to have a college student side-by-side with a seventy-something woman. People come and go as lives allow. Kindness and laughter weave their magic into the stitches. The Frayed Knot’s owner, Jennifer, has set up a lovely, supportive environment and she has bailed me out on more than one occasion when I have dropped a stitch. Now I understand the attraction of the cozy mystery genre involving knitters. There’s alchemy happening in the back of that shop.

Anticipating the upcoming knitting/writing retreat, I’ve been knitting and listening to Alice Hoffman interviews. I found a YouTube video where she answers a writing question at the 35:29 mark by talking about outlines and how she allows hers to change.

I’m knitting two, purling two, when she uses the phrase, “I hate unraveling things,” and that leads to:

“I rewrite a lot. I think of stories as being kind of knitted together. I like the idea about fairy tales especially as being stories that are woven and they’re knitted together…but when you have to take apart your knitting…and put it back together again it’s very difficult and it’s very painstaking and it’s just part of the process. It’s not my favorite part of writing but I think it’s a really important part.”

As a beginning knitter, I’m learning that I don’t just need to learn how to cast-on, knit and purl. The wisdom of painstaking unraveling that Alice Hoffman spoke of is also part of the deal.

I came to grips with it in my writing some time ago but I frequently can’t truly see how the stitches come together in my knitting yet. Still, I’m hooked. And now I’m looking forward to the knitting part of the retreat with Lisa Hoffman just as I am anticipating learning from author Alice Hoffman. I have faith that in knitting, as in writing, it’s all in the doing.

Life and Death in The Writer’s Studio

July 18, 2017 Musings

It’s been a year since author Mark Morneweg died of adrenal cancer, a rare cancer with no screenings, no treatment, or, as he chose to refer to it, “freaky-deaky time”. The disease ravaged his body but it could not destroy his mind or his will to write.

Mark was my brother and the loss of his friendship and brilliance is still raw, still recent. I continue experiencing those brief flashes where I think I must ask him about something from our shared history only to recall that he has died and whatever I hope to learn will always remain a disappointing unanswerable cipher.

The photograph is of Mark’s last book, Penthe & Alphonse, a Civil War love story, which he wrote during the last year of his life. Most of it was written pre-diagnosis while he had cancer. I believe it’s his best work and continue to marvel over his highly original, vivid, masterful creation of the strong female character, Penthe:

The music started.

It was night. There were torches in the square.

She took her tignon off.

There was a beat, a drumbeat.

She danced.

She swayed her hips, and she danced.

Her hands were up in her hair.

There was laughter.

A slave man came out and danced with her.

She took the hand of a little boy and started him off.

A woman asked who the white girl was.

“That aint a white girl, that’s Penthe Anne.”

She danced more wildly now.

There was no moonlight.

There was cloud cover.

It was hot.

There were torches in the square.

Author Patricia Nugent wrote about Penthe & Alphonse:

“The beauty of Mark’s 99 pp novel lies in what he left out; much like poetry, his prose painted an image; gave an impression while trusting the reader to figure it out.”

After Mark was diagnosed he traveled with me from his home in Southern California to my home in Savannah, Georgia. It was a grueling trip, and although he hated it, he fit his 6’2” frame into wheelchairs to navigate through the terminals in Salt Lake City and Atlanta. For a while he lived with me and, although he was physically fragile, most days he would rise and come down two flights of stairs to sit on the couch in my parlor and write, where he would remain until late into the evening. On days when he couldn’t manage the stairs he wrote from his bed. He continued to create without looking back.

What did he write? He finished Penthe, wrote a treatment for a screenplay, and began a new novel during the five months and handful of days remaining. He also sat with his friend and publisher, Frank Mendelson, who helped him convert the manuscript for  Penthe & Alphonse, as well as his two other novels, The Electric Mandolin, and The Girl on the Forty-Yard Line. Before he died he held all three published novels in his hands.

When the steep stairs of my two-hundred-eighteen year old house became too much, Mark moved to the local hospice. Fortunately, he was placed in a single room with a view of Georgia pines. Frank encouraged him to think of the room as The Writer’s Studio and Mark embraced the concept. A sign reading WRITER’S STUDIO went up on the outside of his door. With the exception of the last two weeks of his life, when he could no longer handle a keyboard or pen, he wrote every day. When he wasn’t writing, he was reading, most notably, he enjoyed the works of Marcel Proust.

One day when I arrived in Mark’s room he told me a volunteer entered his room, for a well-meaning conversation.  As time passed and the visitor lingered, he finally said, “Sir, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m working here.” He was writing.

I spent hours with him every day. So I know that without exception he never felt sorry for himself. He measured his happiness and the quality of his final days by his ability to create and the time he spent with those he loved. On days when I struggle with the discipline to sit and write, or to see the gift of each day, I look to my brother’s example.

Penthe & Alphonse is available on Amazon.