MatadorU Chapter 1 Assignment -- Chewelah: A Walk to the Post Office

The crisp September air greets me as I step outside and shut the door behind me, slipping the letters to be mailed into my messenger bag.  I walk across the deck and down the steps to the sidewalk, enjoying the slight cool breeze after months of heat.  Crossing Washington Street, I head into town, passing the neighbor's junk heap, the largest and most spectacular of many about town, which contains everything from a broken-down golf cart to a mountain of black garbage sacks full of ancient aluminum cans.  From somewhere among the debris I can hear someone loudly expelling their morning phlegm.  Several houses down is a pristine turn-of-the-century almost-mansion towering over a lilac hedge.  A wrought iron lamppost overlooks a perfectly-kept lawn.  That's Chewelah.

I meander down tree-lined Webster, enjoying the way the huge roots of the maples have caused little eruptions in the sidewalk, as if Nature feels the need to remind civilization of its ultimate futility, as if the trees are saying, "We were here long before you came, and we'll remain long after you're gone."  Perhaps that shouldn't be comforting, but it is.

I cross the railroad bridge over Chewelah Creek, shaded by the surrounding willows.  Now I'm on Main Street, approaching the town's one stoplight.  In a couple of months there will be traffic heading up to 49 Degrees North, the local ski resort, but for now it's nearly as quiet as a ghost town.  One car wheezes by, an entire panel missing off its side.  The exposed frame looks like old bones.  I step into the crosswalk without waiting for the light, and continue down Main Street.

Beyond the drugstore on the corner, I find the new ballet studio.  It represents a triumph for the arts in Chewelah.  Ballet teacher Ann Marie Benedict has now taught in Chewelah for over twenty-five years, until recently giving her classes in a run-down gymnasium.

Why did she come to this tiny rural community?  Why did any of us come here?

A semi with a full load of fresh-cut pine logs roars by.  The driver grins, waves, and spews a brown fountain of tobacco juice out the open window.

Several streets down is the Flowery Trail Coffeehouse, where you can get your coffee specially roasted to your preference.  A little way beyond that is the park, where the local farmers' market sets up on Fridays.  We're proud of our farmers' market.  It's won the award for Best Small Farmers' Market in the State several years running.

We come for all different reasons.  Junk-heaps and phlegm aside, we stay for love.

I reach the post office and drop my letters in the outgoing box.  Then I turn for home.

Another Interview

I am one of the featured authors this week on Amy Manemann's site.  Check it out if you're interested and let me know what you think.  It's always a privilege to be interviewed by other authors.  Thank you Amy!


This weekend was exceptionally chaotic.  Really, it hardly felt like a weekend at all.  My husband played a show Friday night, my sister was visiting from Portland, my friend Lexie was home from college and her younger sister was competing for Chewelah's Junior Miss competition (though apparently they call it Distinguished Young Women now, though it's the same thing) on Saturday.  She won, by the way, as she should.  Then Sunday I drove my sister to the airport.  We left early and stopped to meet a friend for coffee, then, when we were ready to leave again, Gerry refused to start.  He had been running beautifully all the way there.  Of course, it wasn't a dead battery or anything simple, and even my dad's mechanic friend who came to our rescue couldn't find the problem then and there but had to tow it away to his house so he could examine it more closely.  But of course we still had to get my sister to the airport, so Aaron had to drive down in his car and we managed to get her there in time for her to catch the last flight of the day.  So, success in the end, but all factors combined to make the weekend rather exhausting.  And now Gerry is gone, hopefully to be reborn from the ashes soon like a black, worn, and dented phoenix.

Just a quick post to let everyone know that Ashford is officially available online at the link below.  Amazon.com is currently pending, but it should be available there shortly, also available by request in your local bookstores and libraries.  Anyone who requests it shall have my undying gratitude, and if you come to Chewelah I'll make you fresh-brewed espresso and home-made tiramisu.  Tired now.  It has been a very long but productive day, and I intend to leave my book-launch preparations for tomorrow and go downstairs to enjoy a cup of hot cocoa and somebody else's brilliant prose.

https://www.createspace.com/3695713

Publishing and Other Odds and Ends

Okay...do I remember how to blog?  It really has been a while, but September has been a very busy month.  I know, excuses, excuses.  But in all honesty, since the last time I posted plenty of things have happened: my sister broke her ankle, I went to Portland to visit her, my husband got a new job, and I wriggled my way through the preliminary steps of publishing Ashford, among other things.


Yes, I'm self-publishing.  A controversial move, but much less so than in the past.  At this point it can't do me any harm, and might do me some good.  The manuscript had been edited and re-edited multiple times, by others and myself, and was starting to build a little fan base.  It's time for it to exist in another form, and it's time for me to learn how to market it.


From the back cover:

Seventeen year old Anna is a naive American orphan, delighted to find herself on a tour of Europe in the spring of 1939.  A feeling of camaraderie with all mankind thrills her as she mingles with throngs of foreigners, but her joy is short-lived.  WWII shatters the world.  As fathers and sons, husbands and brothers dive grimly into the trenches, Anna is left stranded in England, disillusioned and afraid.  However, this worldwide catastrophe may be the perfect catalyst to mature Anna into the brave young woman she longs to be.  Even as the world is shadowed with disaster, Anna finds friends in the kindly Bertram family.  In the midst of all that threatens to tear her world apart, will she find a place to truly belong?

My thanks to Megan Andrews for the back cover description.

The golf season is winding down, and I have to say (surprise!) that I'm ready for it to be over.  It's been a good experience over all, but it's not my world.  People look at me when I speak, and it's like they don't understand the language.  In all fairness, I probably look the same when they start talking about golf.  That world and mine are like oil and vinegar (to borrow a phrase from Anthony Trollope).  Not to say that mine is better or theirs worse.  They just don't fit.

An Ode to Secondhand Bookshops.

So, I thought it was high time I dedicated a post to the haven of all literature and history lovers: the secondhand bookshop.  Is there one of us who can walk into a room full of dusty old tomes, ripped comic books, and back issues of Good Housekeeping without feeling that little thrill run through our innards?  Personally I skim over the comic books and Good Housekeeping, but I do know others who are as thrilled by them as I am by the dusty tomes.


Chewelah has, as do most small towns, its own particular gem in this area, made up of a deli in front and a wilderness of old (sometimes soiled or moldy and always dusty) literature behind.  I can never eat at the deli, because the old book smell permeates even the dining area and the atmosphere resembles a cross between a bad school lunch-room and your grandmother's closet.  However, I often go through to the back and spend a considerable length of time riffling through the clutter... for it's one of those delightful places with very little order and a goodly number of cardboard boxes.  I've found some of the best treasures in said cardboard boxes, particularly the ones under the "25 cent" shelf.  There I discovered copies of Thomas Costain's The Darkness and the Dawn and Elizabeth Goudge's Gentian Hill, among others.  Semi-forgotten authors, but none the worse for that.  It was through this place as well that I became familiar with the work of Anthony Trollope, and when you can buy Plato's Republic for a dollar it really seems a shame not to read it.  So you see, a great deal of credit for my post-high-school education is owed to the dusty back room of a deli.

That Crazy Time of Year

So this is it, the beginning of the mad, fun, grueling, wonderful rehearsal season, when we pretend to be real ballerinas and not just small-time slaves of Terpsichore.  Actually, we've been rehearsing one piece through February for a fundraiser at the end of the month, but the real excitement starts in March, when we begin to learn all the choreography and start working to bring the show together. 


Here I really must say something about my teacher, Ann Marie Benedict, because just the fact that Chewelah possesses such a gem is amazing.  In her youth she danced with a company in Los Angeles under the direction of Eugene Loring.  She never talks much about herself, but the stories she does tell from that time are fascinating.  She's been teaching ballet in Chewelah for over twenty-five years now.  I've been her student for twenty of them.  She is by far the greatest slave-driver I have ever encountered, and we love her for it.  It is easy, in a small town without much competition for quality, to become content with "good enough".  She has never allowed us to relax into a false sense of self-satisfaction, but always urges us to improve on what we did before -- to jump higher, balance longer, turn the double into a triple, express ourselves more.  Most important, she has passed on to us her passion for art in all its forms.


Our show this year will be on May 22nd, in Colville, Colville being the nearest town that actually has an auditorium.  One of the many challenges Ann has faced over the years is a severe lack of facilities.  Our classes and rehearsals are held in a dirty old gymnasium, and even though we have the space reserved months in advance, we are ousted whenever they need somewhere to have a blood drive, or rehearse a play.  However, plans have lately gone into motion for an actual dance studio, which would be the biggest step forward in years.  There is also the ongoing challenge of making ballet accessible to the inhabitants of a small town whose exposure to it often consists solely of multiple viewings of "Barbie in Swan Lake" with their very young daughters.  Chewelah does have a surprisingly strong core community of artists.  But there are certainly plenty of the other.


I like to think that these various obstacles have made us all stronger, more interesting dancers than we would have been otherwise.  In all events, they have certainly made us stubborn, determined, and maybe just a wee bit pugnacious.  

The Mandatory First Post

The first post is an odd thing.  Do I introduce myself, assuming there's someone reading this who cares?  Or do I just jump in right in the middle of something?  I think I'd like to start by saying something about Chewelah. After all, it is my hometown, and I have hundreds of  reasons to love it... and sometimes to hate it as well.  I mean, it's great to have people wave at you or stop to say hi in the grocery store, but it's less nice to have them comment on everything in your basket.


"Oohh! Someone likes cheese.  I used to love cheese, but I can't eat it any more because..." The rest will be left to the imagination of the reader.


Chewelah truly is a beautiful place though.  From my study window now, I can see all the autumn colors and look out across the valley to Quartzite on the far side.  And it's quiet and peaceful.  Altogether a wonderful place to live for an aspiring novelist, and my job at Flowery Trail Coffeehouse gives me an endless supply of character ideas.


I've spent too long setting up this blog now.  It's a lovely, bright autumn day and a walk is in order before ballet class tonight.  But first, I'm hungry.  Maybe cheese...