Thoughts During Hurricane Sandy

Hurricane Sandy has destroyed many homes and communities and certainly upended lives, but I have no doubt that people  will pull themselves together and rebuild.  The human spirit is too robust and will never acknowledge defeatism.  And, of course, this can't compare with the agonies suffered by so many others, in all  wars and on into today.  Courage and resolve are the cornerstones of survival in adversity.  And Americans have that in spades. So many others were never given the chance, erased from history. Even at this very moment, atrocity abounds.   But it's in our human nature to look forward not back when confronted by hardship. And that is as it should be.

I wrote about my visit to Poland last time and wanted to write a little too about Hungary which was part of that trip.  Both countries' histories are difficult - but most especially Poland's as I tried to indicate in my last post.   The second part of my August  trip after Poland [and Slovakia] was to Budapest and the areas around it and along the Danube.

Hungary was under Turkish domination and the Ottomans for many years, 1541-1718; she too, as Poland, suffered from being invaded and carved up through history but became a powerful entity as part of the Austro-Hungarian empire for the years 1867-1918.  Much of the beautiful building took place during this time in Budapest. Unfortunately, Hungary was on the wrong side in  World War I- her fear of Russia made her join forces with the Central Powers, essentially the German Empire. As a losing power in that war, her territorial losses were huge.

Hungary also suffered during World War II; she chose to be on the German side, so she chose wrong twice.  But at the beginning of the war, Nazi Germany promised she would regain the territories she had lost,  so she collaborated.  When she saw by 1944 that the Axis Powers would probably lose the war, she sought a separate peace with the Allies. The Nazis responded by occupying her.  After that, the Final Solution was put into effect in Hungary as it had been in Poland and all across Europe. Between 440,000 and 600,000  Hungarian Jews and others were deported to concentration camps, mostly Auschwitz, aided by the detested Hungarian police.

After the war, occupation by the Soviet Union [again with collaboration by Hungarian "secret police"] continued a reign of terror which is well documented at Budapest's House of Terror: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Terror.



Budapest was bombed by the British and Americans and the city was severely damaged.  The misery didn't end then, however, as the Soviets occupied the country from 1947-1989, the "Communist times" as they are referred to. Thousands died, political prisoners and others, at the hands of the Soviets and the secret police in those years, especially after the 1956 uprising which was quashed.  The photo is of the Museum of Terror, the very spot on the elegant Andrassy Way where many interrogations, torture and hangings took place.

Today, as a member of the EU, Hungary's problems are mostly economic and Budapest is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe.  As with Poland, the human capacity for rebuilding, both the social fabric and culture as well as the physical  is incredible and admirable. One wonders if Syria and other Middle Eastern countries will be able to do the same in the years and decades to come.

But for me, visiting Poland and Hungary as well as Auschwitz [and later The Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.] truly made me realize what the terrible numbers of lost lives during the 20th century's most horrible period means - the awful silence of 6,000,000 Jews and 6,000,000 others and the loss of their contributions to society.  It's hard to imagine how different the world might be today.

So Hurricane Sandy should not be a cause for despair when looked at in the scheme of things.  Everything is fixable! Except the dead.

No Discipline!!

I can't believe I've let my blog languish for over two months - I mean, if anyone is finding me through the book website and actually reading me, I should be consistently out here!  I guess I'm still afraid and more than a little unsure of what I'm doing here.  My main goal, as a writer, is to promote my novel through social media and it takes discipline to sit down here and think of something, anything, useful to say or report on. No excuse!  I appreciate the few people who have somehow found the book and posted a "like" on my book facebook page [from as far away as the UK and Australia! - who are you?!]  I take solace in knowing I DO have a book out there, it's not going away, Amazon's createspace has helped make the process incredibly "doable", and there's no real rush. Hey, it will be out there for a long time to come and slowly, even slowly is OK, someone here or there will find it and spend a few hours in their lifetime reading it and [hopefully] enjoying their time with it. That's enough to make me feel content.

On another note [not an excuse], I spent part of August in Poland and Hungary - two vastly different countries and peoples but both equally interesting.   Poland has a truly tortured past, ravaged through the centuries by Swedes, Turks, Hungarians, Teutonic Knights, Mongols, Russians - you name it - and, most devastatingly, by Nazi Germany. Lastly, she was occupied by the former Soviet Union until 1989.  Polish people are fiercely independent and proud of their country; the extraordinary combination of Lech Walesa and Pope John Paul secured the road to independence for that country. The resilience and human capacity for recovery in the Polish people is unrivaled - Warsaw, a city left in ruins by the Nazis, has been beautifully rebuilt and its Old Town is one of the loveliest areas in central Europe - incredible.  The Nazi death camps decimated Polish Jews but almost 3 million other Poles also perished in the camps. [No wonder Poland reacted so vehemently to Obama's stupid mistake in calling them "Polish" death camps!]  They have NOT forgotten a thing that happened in the sorry 20th century! A remarkable people - dour on the surface but profoundly humane on the inside.  I was fascinated and awed by the people.  So much to learn from their history and their tough spirit! Below is Market Square in Warsaw, rebuilt as it existed before the war.

Comments on Hungary next - a far different story!

A Little of This and That

I just know one day [ha ha] One Fine Day will find a wider readership and be enjoyed by many more people as time goes on.  I periodically see a new "like" on my book facebook page and it always makes my day!  I've tried to expand my facebook image a little in hopes that more people will take a look at the book.  Hey, it's practically free and [pardon me] it's a much better read  than "Shades of...".

I've also entered the twitter world a little more even though I'm not at all sure how or if it helps get the word out.  It's all great fun though.  I really want to work on a second novel but fear I can't really justify doing that if novel #1 doesn't get more readership.  I will say, I'm getting tiny royalty checks each quarter [imagine] and that's always a thrill.

My next big trip is to Poland and Hungary in August so I've bit the bullet and started  James Michener's "Poland".  If anyone has read him, you know what a slog he can be, but he certainly does his research and tries to bring history alive through his fictitious characters.  I still keep Churchill on hand [now on Volume III - "The Great Alliance" ] as he has such a wonderful way with words and a wry humor.  It's so inspiring to read how dire the situation was for Britain in 1940-41 as Germany not only bombed day and night but tried to cut off life-lines by mining ports and U-Boat attacks on shorelines.  This was before the Soviets turned against Hitler and before the US could commit much in terms of aid.  In spite of these dreadful times - and Churchill's passages bring the turmoil to light as fresh as today's news - the British never doubted they would prevail.  It remains an incredible story.  I can't wait to dig into it again.

Also reading Alan Furst's new novel, "Mission to Paris" about the same time period in Vichy France, but much will take place in Poland, so it's taking me there too.

Scattered

The ferocious storm that swept across the eastern US has all of us wondering if changes in our climate are starting to speed up – record breaking temperatures almost daily [104 degrees two days in a row where I live – unheard of].  Driving on 66 West on Friday just after dark, we saw the spectacular lightening show ahead of us, not a typical summer thunderstorm’s that pops up across the sky like strobe lights  in vertical flashes from the sky’s dome to earth, one after the other, intense. This storm produced non-stop horizontal  slashes, like a swordsman ripping  through black velvet. And oddly, no thunder. When the car began to shake and rock from side to side,  debris started to blow all around us, trash, small limbs, pebbles and dust, like a western squall with tumbleweeds flying. It was wind, we later heard, that at its peak had reached 90 miles an hour. Tiny pellets of hail followed, then a brief torrential downpour. And with that, maybe 20 minutes, the storm had passed. The devastation was terrible, all of which has been on the news.  Clean up was exhausting in the heat. We were spared major damage but others lost 100+ year old trees.

Related concerns,  I continue to worry about the paucity of bees in my flower and vegetable gardens and my missing bats.  I have an infestation of mini-centipedes in my basement that has never happened before. Troubling. Mother Nature has been putting us on notice for awhile now – I think she’s decided it’s time to speed things up.  Have we caught on yet? http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/weather/july-dec12/climate_07-02.html

Who's Your Daddy?

Everyone who has read One Fine Day thinks it's a memoir, or at least tells me they think it is a portrait of my family and all the characters are real people from my past.  This is not true!  If I'd been smarter, I would have thought to place a disclaimer on the front-piece, but now it's too late [unless I find a real publisher and it's relaunched!].  While it is true the story is based on some experiences I had, most of it is exaggerated and spiced up for dramatic effect.  Characters are combinations of people I knew and some never existed at all. My one main regret is that the parents in the novel do not come off as loving caring people; they had to be portrayed in the context of the novel's time period, i.e. victims of the 60's societal upheaval and subsequent "generation gap"  crises  which created the resentments and alienation of the era. It would not be fair to take for granted I've channeled my own parents into Bea and Karl Bruckner.  But that's the assumption.

My mother's girlhood home in Sullivan, Indiana

I have therefore decided to atone.  They are no longer alive, so  I have done this by reacquainting myself with my parents' roots which has renewed my appreciation of their life's journey.

My mother grew up on a farm in Indiana. I traveled to its location this spring, but, sadly, the farm had burned down a few years back [a charming farmhouse my grandfather had built with his own hands, see photo at right].  Surveying the vast flat, rural Indiana landscape, I can only imagine the loneliness and poverty my mother experienced  in the 1920's and 30's  growing up, though she always said her childhood was a happy one.  She was determined to make something of herself and worked her way to a job with the Tennessee Valley Authority. 

My father's boyhood home in Baltimore, Maryland

My father grew up in a row house in Baltimore. An only child, he lost his own father when he was 16 and had to quit school and go to work to support himself and his mother.  Those were hard times for him too; the Depression loomed and work was scarce.  Through a Depression-era  public electrification project, he won a job working on the Safe Harbor Dam in Pennsylvania and subsequently went on to TVA as well.


Both of my parents came from  hardscrabble backgrounds yet managed through work, hope and dreams of always better times around the bend to create a comfortable life for themselves and a privileged one for me.  I am grateful to them.  That a farm girl and a city boy met and built a life together is a wonderful and enduring story, of fate, of life-long devotion, and of, ultimately, thankful progeny. Me.

Shoulda coulda woulda

Well, another Indie author has hit the jackpot with a blog thanking Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing
for helping her self-publish  and getting noticed by Jeff Bezos himself. Bingo!  Book promoted front and center on Amazon's main page. Wish I'd thought of that...  Will be interesting to see how the book actually does [Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park] but, regardless, nice to be pulled out of the chaos of self-published books floating around out there. Definitely must make the blood sweat and tears of novel-writing seem worth it!

I'm considering paying for an ad with Kirkus Review's online newsletter and/or magazine to see if that might get One Fine Day noticed.  I've been passing out my book/business cards to folks I think might enjoy it, have not as yet made the effort I know book promoting  needs. Ah for the days when an agent would take care of all this [for when there were agents who would take a gamble on a newbie..].

But it is glorious to rise out of the pack and I take my hat off to Ms. Park!

Books, Art and Gardening - then Blogging

I continue to dip into multiple books at the same time but had to quit both "The Hunger Games" and "Fifty Shades of Gray" - I just couldn't get involved in the dark tale of teens offing teens and the latter book is so poorly written, I tossed it after a few chapters.  More power to the author, however, who tops the best seller lists and is happily filling up her bank account.
I just finished "Escape from Camp 14" by Blaine Harden, a ghastly, harrowing tale of one young man's life in and escape from a North Korean prison camp.  It's hard to believe the world knows of the existence of this and other camps in NK, yet nothing is done and no outrage is expressed.  Thousands are tortured and murdered annually, children are born and raised there who know nothing of the outside world. It's sickening to read this book. As I plan a trip to Poland and Hungary for this summer, and read about the death camps that murdered millions, it is  galling that we apparently haven't learned the lessons of repressive murderous regimes. 
I am also beginning the multi-volume history of World War II by Churchill, a very readable account of those horrible years.  The first volume, "The Gathering Storm" shows in hindsight all the warning signs of what was to come when again, the world was unable or unwilling to act.
On a happier note, my power point Art Appreciation lectures are off to a fine start. My seniors really seem to enjoy them! So far, I have lectured on highlights from the National Gallery in Washington, notable landscapes, ditto portraits and up next are family portraits, then "what did people do back then?" and am currently working on "War, Danger and Adventure".  What follows will be architecture and sculpture, 2 on modern art and wrap with "The Christmas Story".  Loving getting back into the art world in this way!
Vegetable Garden grows great guns.
This is why writing the blog has been put off for too long but I'm still committed.