Some years ago, when I was living in Naples, I drove to the aiport in Rome to pick up my father, who had come for a visit. Parkinsons had already dimished his strength and he walked with a cane, but…
Blog Archives
Invitation to Time Travel
I was recently asked for an interview with the Pittsburgh Examiner. This turned out to be questions about History in general, with an invitation to time travel. Here are my answers. You can imagine yours. http://www.examiner.com/article/10-questions-with-historical-fiction-author-pamela-schoenewaldt (I’m traveling without much…
Too much audience involvement
When I was about 11, my parents took me to a Broadway production of All the Way Home which nearly ended badly from an excess of dramatic involvement. Based on Agee’s Death in the Family, a young father dies in…
Terror of hired hands
Years ago there was a children’s book, Flossie and Bossie, about two Bantam hens, the good, drab one, Flossie, and the mean, beautiful, vain Bossie. And their transforming friendship. I remember it as pretty gripping. However there was a spook…
Tagged with: children's books, Eva Le Gallienne, Flossie and Bossie, Garth Williams
Posted in Just life
Posted in Just life
Onions & the Cost of Fiction
Some years ago, I came across a recipe for onion flowers, saw therein a metaphor for the cost of writing fiction, and wrote about that. I made a simplified onion flower today and thought I’d share the original piece with…
What we share with oaks
My interaction with the Knoxville Utilities Board over a big tree produced an illuminating view of mortality. It happened like this. We have a red oak near the street which had grown until its bark was rubbing against— actually stripping…
“Dixie.” Really?
Checking for the year of the song “Dixie,” I came upon the remarkable fact that the original conceit of this minstrel song was that a freed slave is pining for the land of his birth and servitude. Huh? I always assumed it…
Posted in Just life
Last Christmas Present
In August of 1992, my mother was diagnosed with a virulent lung cancer. By early December, it was clear that there wasn’t much time left. I was living in Naples, Italy. My parents were in Austin, Texas. I’d arranged to…
Posted in Just life
When a yak is not enough
I always had a romantic fondness for yaks, dating from my child’s anthology of literature which included the poem below by Hilaire Belloc, illustrated with a pen and ink drawing of a friendly yak carrying a little girl who looked…
Feeling good/bad about our species
Last month we were in southern France and remarkably went to not a single wine tasting. However, we saw and climbed up to assorted castle/fortresses of the 12th C Cathar heretics, who so peeved the pope and king and adventure-loving…
Posted in Just life
