Burning Man: How Can a Place be Radical Anti-Establishment if I'm There?

(Click on pictures to expand)

Benny rides through Black Rock City

I turned off the car. My heart was pounding. Dust swirled on my windshield. I wanted to sit a minute, take in the fact that we’d arrived safely and were actually at Burning Man.

"There's Milo!" Benny shouted, seeing his friend. He wrenched open the door.

"Benny, your goggles!" I yelled, but he was gone. I pulled up my bandana and donned my own goggles and pulled my protesting legs out of the car. After four hours of driving, they felt attached to the floor. I hobbled toward the camp, trying to smile although nobody could see it through the red bandana.

Milo, his brother Felix, and his parents Michael and Andrea had arrived two days earlier and had created a little home. Camp chairs surrounded a cluttered table, a small stove sat on a metal shelf.  Heavy black tarps shielded us from sun and wind. Milo was in no condition to play; he’d gotten in a fight on the Kidsville trampoline, which didn't seem to follow Burning Man's 10 principles. Now Milo was nursing a bruised head.

The first day: Check out Milo's military gas mask.

Andrea

I left Benny to sit by his friend and set up the tent, gasping as I pounded the stakes into the cracked playa. As soon as I could, I scrambled in and zipped the door up, just me and a bottle of water sitting in a tent at Burning Man.

"Let's all go on a bike ride!" cried Andrea.

I tried to look enthusiastic, again a wasted effort, since my face was swathed in goggles and cotton cloth. I pulled Benny and my bikes off the car and we rode off.

I was glad to stop at a giant foam pit, covered with a metal cage. The boys scrambled joyfully up the cage and dropped one by one into the pit.

Benny at the foam pit.

While they played I drank more water and admired a large wooden catapult
swaying in the wind.

"They were throwing people with it," said a tall Laurence of Arabia lookalike beside me. "I bet it's a real rush."

"Are you going to do it?" I asked.

"Nah, they closed it. It'd be great, though, right?"





"Oh yeah," I said enthusiastically. "Too bad it's closed." I rolled my eyes. I was starting to like this whole wrap-up-against-the-dust thing. I could make all the faces I wanted.

I wanted to ask about other human-projectile structures, but Michael announced it was time for the crossbow range. So we hopped back on our bikes riding past a rolling Converse shoe. The line at the crossbow range was long, so Andrea and I headed to a party tent for a drink.

Playing Jenga.

"You need IDs," said a man wearing a Princess Leia hairstyle and a white thong.
Neither Andrea nor I had them.  I haven’t needed an ID in four years. I tried to show my age, but no dice. I never thought I’d be shopping my gray roots for a drink at Burning Man. So Andrea and I rode back to camp for our IDs and returned. I had the most amazing drink, a summer flower, with orange, grapefruit, lemon and lime juices mixed with vodka. This was the life, I thought, settling on a dusty couch in the shade to watch the boys play Jenga.

“We should see the playa,” Andrea called, referring to the large open space in front of the Man. “Let’s go!”

I gulped the last of my drink and tucked the paper cup into my backpack (“Leave No Trace!”)

Parasolvent: A mechanical expression of
loss, release, healing and decay.
With parasols.

By the time we reached the playa, the dust was really kicking up. We left the tents and RVs behind and rode among metal and wood structures rising out of the desert, nearly all in movement somehow: turning, spinning, waving, bobbing. A big dinosaur skeleton on wheels rolled by, then an Egyptian tomb steered by jackal-headed gods veered along in the opposite direction.

Resting in the library.

The wind grew worse, dust filled my vision. We rode to the “Library of Babel,” a lovely mosiac-painted and thankfully walled structure filled with handcrafted books. Burners took turns reading sayings and poetry out loud.  In any other circumstance I would have been fascinated and wanted to read the messages and write one myself. But instead I just sat and panted and watched the dust fill the doorways. Visibility was almost zero out there, and the wooden library rattled in the rising wind.

The wind died down just enough to tempt us out of the library, then hit again — even worse. We could barely see each other. I felt like I was choking. We kept having to stop — somebody would have to adjust their bandana, or would scrape themselves on their bike, or put their hat back on, or drop their water bottle or get dust in their eye. Felix cried out and when Andrea put a hand to his face it came back bloody. His nose was bleeding and drops of red fell on the sand. Benny and I were standing close together with his face against my shirt. At that point, I was pretty much done, but Andrea and Michael (these two could talk a fish out of the water) convinced to me to ride on, making one more circuit before we returned to camp.

I was looking forward to a few minutes resting in my tent, but everyone immediately seized on a new plan.

“The camp over there is making steak tacos!” Michael said.

“Can I have steak tacos, Mom?” Benny asked.

“Sure,” I said. “But why don’t you rest first, I’ll wipe you off.”

But nobody wanted to wait. Nobody wanted to rest. Nobody wanted to wipe off. Everybody wanted to dash off to tacos and I just wanted to go to my tent.

“Have a beer!” Michael cried.

“Don’t you want a taco? Should we bring one for you?” Andrea asked.

I repeated no thank you, no beer, no taco, just tent. I released Benny and they mercifully left. Heaven. I gathered some things and crawled into my tent, which was shaking in the wind, but it held. I poured an entire bottle of water over my head and sat there dripping. 

The rest of the evening was a blur. I don’t remember if we went out again that day. I remember putting a whiny and overtired Benny to bed. I wiped him down and put him in jammies and tucked him into his mummy sleeping bag.

Then I lay awake, listening to the revelry outside. What were we doing here? What would tomorrow be like? This was crazy. We didn’t belong out here. Actually nobody belonged out here. Humans didn’t belong out here. Why do these people host this amazing event out in a harsh, pitiless desert? Can’t they see how much nicer it would be in, well, just about anywhere else? But it’s not supposed to be nice. It's supposed to be radical and countercultural. I was trying to think of a way to be radical and countercultural in a pleasant meadow close to a Holiday Inn Express when I fell asleep.


To be continued:
Burning Man: I Can See Clearly Now

Burning Man: Journey to Black Rock City

For me, Burning Man was not vacation, or a fun weekend away or even a camping trip.

It was an expedition, a journey to a harsh place where winds blew dust at 80 miles an hour and the pitiless sun baked the ancient lakebed until the ground cracked. There was no natural water or shelter. Obviously this was no ordinary party. By holding this event in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, they were making a statement. I was a little hazy on what exactly the statement was, but it had something to do with what they called "radical self-reliance." Well, to spend a week in a place like that (it made Death Valley look like Eden), you had to practice radical self-reliance or you'd find yourself gasping out your last on the playa, dressed only in silver hot pants and a pink wig.

Actually that's not fair, because another big thing about Burning Man is the sense of community. No money changes hands, except for coffee and ice. Everything else is traded or freely given. But still, I didn't plan to head out there without provisions. I'd been reading an memoir called "Cold Oceans" by a guy who kayaked along Cape Horn and braved the Northwest Passage. He said an expedition's success takes preparation, determination and the right mindset. (Although he failed in both those expeditions and nearly got eaten by a polar bear, so maybe he wasn't the best role model.)

I had the determination, but wasn't so sure about the mindset. I'm not very good at adopting the right attitude for success. I don't think I've ever approached anything with the right mindset. I'm generally more of a rail-against-an-unjust-world kind of gal. But I'd do my best.

One thing I had down, though, was the preparation. I had two distinct advantages here -- first of all, I was joining my friend Andrea's camp, which was already established. And secondly, I was a rabid researcher. The average Burning Man packing list contained 200 items, from bandanas to glow sticks to vinegar. I packed eight gallons of water, three plastic bins of food, a cooler, a tent, sleeping bags, face masks, bandannas, ski goggles, a first aid kit and a big tube of sunblock. I even brought cotton swabs to dab our nostrils with lotion. (That dust is no joke; on Friday, the day we arrived, we were caught in a dust storm on the playa and another kid got a nosebleed.) I brought warm clothes, cool clothes, dozens of socks. I even had the perfect sunhat — a cowboy hat I'd bought at a Giants Dugout store. I’m not a Giants fan (sorry), so I just tugged off the little orange SF carelessly glued to the front and I was set.

Burning Man is waaaaay out there, and I don’t just mean the culture. You leave Interstate 80 and drive nearly 90 miles north into the Black Rock Desert’s playa, or alkali flats. It’s actually a dried-up lakebed of the ancient Lake Lahontan. It’s so flat there that land-speed records have been set on the playa.

By noon on Thursday, I'd finished packing and was loading the car. Andrea kept texting me from Burning Man (She couldn’t call from the playa, but she could text.) Bring apples, she wrote. Bring wheat bread, potato chips, parmesan cheese and maybe some pickles. Don’t forget the watermelon. Ron and I installed the bike rack and shoved the bikes on. I kept running into the apartment for last-minute items. Did we have cleaning wipes and where the hell was my pink lei? What happened to the earplugs and Benny’s cape? Did I have my cell phone charger? The neon hair spray?

Sitting in outbound traffic on the Bay Bridge, I clenched the steering wheel, nervously running over last-minute lists in my mind. Benny sat in the backseat next to the cooler and read his “Underland” book about a kid who falls through a hole in his laundry room and meets a bunch of giant talking bugs and rats.

We spent the night in Reno and hit the road the next morning at 5 a.m. I'd barely slept a wink. Benny dozed in the back; I peered at the lightening sky and had second, third, fourth thoughts about this whole enterprise. What was I doing? What was I taking Benny into? I actually had my phone in my hand, ready to text Andrea. Can't come. So sorry.  I’d blame it on illness car trouble, a knife fight in Reno, anything.

No, I couldn't chicken out now.  So I drove on. We left Interstate 80 at Wadsworth and turned north. Seventy-five miles on Nevada road 447. The mountains were a bleak, washed-out orange. We drove past dusty little towns and Indian taco stands on the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation.  I bought a Sierra Mist at a taco stand and a toothbrush for Benny at a tiny market in Gerlach. There were few vehicles around, just the occasional pickup truck —  very little to tell me I was on the right road and not just headed out into the empty desert. Finally I reached a sign “Burning Man, turn right” and soon the Fit was rocking on gravel, the bikes swaying in my rearview mirror. I drove through the Gate and creeped toward Black Rock City at 10 miles per hour.

Two friendly young people — a girl with a head of braids of different colors and  a shaved-head guy in a black kilt — stopped my car. I presented my ticket, feeling triumphant. I had left little to chance when it came to this ticket. Earlier that week, Andrea had forgotten her tickets at home, and they didn’t realize it until they were almost to Reno. So the family camped near Truckee and Andrea drove back to San Francisco through Wednesday night, took a nap, then drove back.

Determined to take no risk, I had shoved my Burning Man ticket into an envelope labeled “Mom’s waffle recipe” and put in the car’s glove compartment. There, I thought. If someone steals my car and likes breakfast food, they get to go to Burning Man, too.

I probably looked a little freaked at Black Rock City's Gate because the girl asked with a big smile: “Is it your first time? Ring the bell!” I pulled my goggles on, got out of the car — staggering at the wind and heat — and hit the bell with a metal rod. I got a hug for that, and suddenly felt all Burny and powerful. The guy in the kilt just looked at me and said: “Your goggles are upside down.”

Once inside, I consulted the map. The temporary city, created for nearly 70,000 people,  is a partial circle, its spokes like the hands of clock, bisected by roads named after letters.
The giant wicker man loomed above us, the highest point on the flat landscape. I nosed my car between half-naked bicyclists wearing lizard heads and angel wings, or gold wigs and silver vests. A man in a tiger suit (wasn't he hot?) stood outside a long line of port-a-potties.

I followed a giant rolling spider down 5:30, looking for Kidsville, a family-friendly camp located at 5:30 and G.  Benny bounced in the back seat, pointing at a little car shaped like a old-fashioned red telephone. Finally I pulled into my tiny parking spot.And there was the sign, "Welcome Christine and Benny," just where it was supposed to be. I’d made it!


To be continued:
Burning Man: How Can a Place be Radical Anti-Establishment if I'm There?

Headed back from Burning Man, dusty and happy. Here's Benny enjoying a well-deserved lemonade in Colfax, Ca.

Burn, Baby, Burn

A Higher Power wants me to go to Burning Man.

That’s the only logical conclusion I can draw from the events of the past two weeks. I certainly didn’t plan to take my first step toward attending a counterculture art rave in the Nevada desert when I woke up Aug. 18. It was Benny’s first day of school, and my main concern was getting a spot to take his picture before the bell. Which I did, of course.

But my friends Andrea and Michael were there, and we fell to talking. Michael’s an artist who takes his amazing lighted sculptures all over the U.S. (including Grand Rapids, Mich. of all places) and Andrea does sound editing for motion pictures. Just standing near them made me cooler, so it was no surprise to hear them talking about Burning Man. They go every year as a family and their son Milo is one of Benny’s closest friends.

“You should go, too, you and Ron and Benny,” Andrea said.

“We don’t have tickets,” I said.

“You could get them on Craigslist.”

“Uh huh,” I said. I could just see myself getting mugged in the Castro by a drug-crazed lunatic pretending to be a drug-crazed lunatic with a Burning Man ticket.

It was intriguing, though. So I went home and scanned Craigslist, and yes, there were plenty of tickets, but the face-value ones were like day lilies, blooming and dying in minutes. So I gave up on my dreams of practicing radical self-expression on a dried-up lakebed and reorganized my kitchen cupboards.

Andrea, however, didn’t let it lie. She started emailing me tips for snagging a hot ticket, and when it became obvious I was ignoring them, she started casting for one herself. (By now Ron had made his total – and sensible – lack of interest known and I was looking for only one ticket. Benny was free.) I found myself time-stealing at work, reading articles about the event and staring agog at the pictures and vehicles. On Thursday, Aug. 21, I received the text – she found one, and bought it for me. The first and biggest hurdle was overcome. Benny and I were going to Burning Man in a week!

But I needed a vehicle pass. I quickly connected on Craigslist with a guy who lived just 15 minutes away. I picked Benny up from school and swung by and we met up at the corner by his apartment. Hurdle number two cleared!

By now Benny was catching on to the whole thing. “You need a bike, Mom,” he said.

Oh, crud. I didn’t have a bike. I didn’t want to ruin Ron’s nice bike in an alkaline desert, and anyway it was a road bike. I needed fat tires for the playa. So I emailed a bicycle shop in North Beach. The next morning Ron and I turned up before work, and there was the perfect mountain bike, a “burner bike,” for $120. Then we needed a bike rack, so the next day we went to REI, which of course was having a sale, and picked up one of those crazy racks you stick on the back of the car.

So obviously a Higher Power Has Spoken: “And thus shall ye attend the bacchanalia and spend thy days wiping desert dust off ye child.”

That’s not to say the course to this reckless enterprise has run entirely smooth. I haven’t slept well in days. The bike rack turned out to be an enormous pain to install. (The instructions said it wouldn’t fit a Honda Fit, but the Internet said no, it won’t fit a Honda Fit Sport, and then we had to figure out the measurement between the rivets, and so on …) The list of provisions I needed to pack grew longer and longer and longer, and Andrea just wanted to know what costumes I was bringing.

Costumes? I’m over here pricing ski goggles and getting Benny’s sleeping bag repaired and she wants to know about my kick-ass wig and sequined halter top. My wardrobe tends toward the Boring Mom About Town side of style, and I was simply going to have to radically participate in the community wearing my khakis. Anyway, I needed provisions. I printed out a list and took it to Target, brought it all home and took everything out of its original packaging (“Leave No Trace!”). Then I wrote down everything I forgot and snuck out of work yesterday to finish my shopping at the hardware store (mask, propane tank) and Walgreens. I also talked to my brother Greg, who recently returned from his Army deployment in Kuwait. He thinks I’m crazy, but gave me good advice about surviving desert environments.

Now almost everything is tucked into baggies and stuffed inside plastic boxes. Ron has put the tent and other camping equipment in the car. The ticket and vehicle pass are displayed in the mirror by the front door. Benny and I leave Thursday at noon, where the plan is to spend the night in Reno and arrive at Black Rock City Friday morning.

So why am I doing this, might you ask? I’m not entirely sure. Does anybody really know why they do anything? As far as I can tell, people go to Burning Man for their own reasons, reasons they themselves may not understand. For some it’s the drugs, for some it’s the sex, for some it’s the art, for some it’s the feeling of belonging in a world that feels less than welcoming. For some it’s the friends they bring. For some it’s an escape. My guess I won’t know why I’m going to Burning Man until after I’ve returned. In the meantime, I’ve got this black and silver dress from a past Halloween, perfect for dancing at the Burn. It’s a sign.

First Day of 5th Grade

First day of 5th grade.

First day of kindergarten.

Gotcha!

Benny's last year of elementary school starts today, and I want to enjoy it -- volunteer more, attend more events, bake more cupcakes and generally milk this year for all it's worth. I've even changed my work schedule so I no longer work Mondays. Who knows how much longer he'll want me around?

Our Lake Michigan Circle Tour

Lake Michigan is a big lake. It covers 22,300 square miles and is the 5th-largest lake in the world. (If you count the Caspian Sea as the world's largest lake. Geologist say it's actually a tiny ocean.)

Two years ago Benny and I crossed the lake by ferry; this year the whole family drove around it, from Chicago to Milwaukee and then to Post Lake, Wisc. From there we entered Michigan through the back door: Tahquamenon Falls, Whitefish Point, Copemish and South Haven. Then we dashed south to Indianapolis and back, and Benny and I spent another week in Michigan before driving back to Chicago.

 Here's a map of the trip.

Thank you so much to the relatives who provided free room and board: Mike and Diane, Marlene and Ron, Mom and Paul, and especially Cindy and Scott, who hosted us for two weeks. Benny loves the Midwest ("It's so open here!")

I covered our trip extensively on Facebook (perhaps over-extensively) with phone pictures. Here are some shots from my camera, which I just downloaded to my laptop last night.

Our first tourist attraction was Tahquamenon Falls, mentioned in Longfellow's poem Hiawatha. I never could read that poem all the way through, but I do remember the part about the wind god falling in love with a dandelion* and who can forget the lovely Minnehaha?








We drove south over the Mackinac Bridge (pronounced Mack-in-aw) into Mackinac City, where we gorged on fudge, ice cream and popcorn. As we drove over the bridge, I couldn't help thinking of the poor Yugo driver who was blown off the bridge years ago in high winds. Weird. I drive over the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge all the time and never worry about that.






















In South Haven we saw my college roommate Jackie, her husband Doug, and Caitlin, Josh, Kyle and Alyssa. Jackie hasn't changed a bit since college, which frankly, is hard to forgive.

Mom and Paul took us to the Children's Museum in Indianapolis, which had eight priceless Chinese terracotta warriors on display.

Oh no! A dinosaur is chasing Benny!

Back in South Haven, we attended Harbor Fest and watched the dragon boat races.

Then it was back to the beach with college roommates Kris and Jackie and their families at Oval Beach in Saugatuck.

After nearly a month away, it was strange to be in San Francisco again, but the city gave us a warm welcome with one more beach day.

Benny and his friend Griffin at Ocean Beach.

We plan to return to the Midwest next summer to celebrate three high school graduations. We can't wait!


-------------------


* The word "dandelion," I happened to learn today, comes from late Middle English: from French dent-de-lion, translation of medieval Latin dens leonis‘lion's tooth’ (because of the jagged shape of the leaves). This factoid comes courtesy of my newspaper coworker who puts little quotes on the bottom of his emails.

Meet Mr. Economy

So when I was in Seattle pitching my memoir to agents, I made all kinds of blithe promises, including “I use the economy as a character in my story.” Now that I’m preparing materials for agents, I’m all “Holy crap, I have to use the economy as a character in my story. Who the hell does that?”

That meant I actually had to think about what kind of character the economy — specifically the economy of March 2007-March 2008) would be. Would Lord Economy be like Sauron, a dark, malevolent shadow over the landscape, occasionally sending out the Nazgul of Foreclosure or the Witch-King of Mortgage Derivatives? Or would we have Miss Economy, like the Queen in Narnia, who cast a spell over our happy land, forcing up oil prices and credit card rates? I was tempted to create an Economy God, a reckless, vengeful Poseidon whipping up economic storms to prevent our hero from reaching a safe harbor. But not even I was paranoid enough to consider myself an Odysseus, unjustly persecuted with hidden bank fees.

In the end, I settled on Mr. Economy, a mighty, well-meaning, but none-too-bright giant. In March 2007, our Mr. Economy was strong and confident, almost too confident. He was reckless, shrugging off any restraint, running faster and faster. He was a gambler, hopped up on easy money, greedily gobbling up debt instruments. The sun is warm, the grass is soft and it never enters his pea-brained mind that things could ever change.

He looked so strong then, but of course that strength was illusory. Real strength comes through discipline and training and experience. Truly strong characters develop sound judgment and act purposefully, willing to practice moderation and prepared for setbacks.

In March 2007, Mr. Economy was a happy camper, with corporate earnings growing big.  He notices a small pain in the housing market (foreclosures up, home sales down) but pays it no mind.

In June, he notices another pain, the investment banks, who suddenly are worried about their sketchy, risky investments.

But in July, he still feels great. Everything’s fine, the Dow hits 14,000 for the first time.

In August, Mr. Economy starts feeling sick to his stomach. He’s been gobbling up all this shifty debt and he’s having trouble digesting it. He behaves erratically, up one day and down the next.

In September, he’s getting some headaches from housing, retail and financial industries. But he won’t listen to the Federal Reserve asking him to pretty please be responsible with the foreclosures. He’s starting to bleed jobs.

October brings a high fever, and of course, hallucinations. Everything’s rosy! Dow hits record high of 14,087! The worst is over! But infection has set in.

In November, our Mr. Economy is feeling really bad. Banks are hammered, everyone says recession is coming.

By December, Mr. Economy is breaking down before our very eyes. One million U.S. homes are in foreclosure. Our giant falls to his knees — he’s tapped out and can’t run any more.

In January 2008 he’s crawling along. Oil is at $100 a barrel, the Dow is weakening. The Fed slashes interest rates, but even with mass transfusions of money, Mr. Economy hasn’t felt this bad since 1974.

By February the vultures are circling. Credit card lenders jack up rates and fees on consumers and inflation rises.

In March, Mr. Economy is hardly moving, crushing consumers beneath him. He now has a choice: will he take his nasty-tasting medicine and get stronger faster, or will be just lie there, still crushing consumers and hoping he’ll slowly get stronger?

The answer, of course, is that the Fed doesn’t administer strong medicine, like allowing big financial institutions to fail and imposing new regulation. Instead, the Fed and the government administered massive transfusions of taxpayer dollars and a few weak restraints and called it a day. 

Which is likely why, although officially this recession ended in 2009, the recovery has been weak and why a wounded Mr. Economy continues to limp along, no matter what the stock market says. 

Better Living Through Dorkiness

So apparently Benny needs to know all the U.S. states and capitols by Sept. 13. Actually, the entire fourth grade needs to know their states and capitols. The school's really serious about this; we parents had to sign a little form saying we would help our children learn this lesson and not allow them to sink into state-and-capitol-less despair.

The form even had fine print, which I didn't really read but might say that if Benny fails, Social Services will turn up and place him with a new family that knows the capitol of Connecticut is Dover. I mean Frankfort. Hartford?

I realized tonight, as Benny and I were eating dinner, that I had a captive audience here and could address this topic in my own dorky way. So I started reading off states in alphabetical order: if Benny guessed the capitol, great. If not, then I would tell him not only the name of the capitol, but how the city got that name, on the theory that knowing the history behind the name would help him remember it. Well, I don't know if it works, but it was a fun way to learn new facts while listening to Benny moan every time I said, "Okay, let's look it up!"

After a while I didn't want to stop and that's how I learned about the following state capitols:

A piece of the Little Rock at the Arkansas capitol.

Little Rock, Arkansas
named after a little rock on the river that was a navigation aid for boats.

Hartford, Connecticut
named after Hertford, England, but pronounced Hartford.

Tallahassee, Florida
Indian name for "old fields" because earlier Indians had cleared a bunch of land already.


Atlanta, Georgia
I thought it was after the woman with the golden apples in Greek mythology. Actually, it was named by a railroad guy who called it Atlantica-Pacifica and it was shortened to Atlanta.

Des Moines, Iowa
Named after the Riviera Des Moines or "River of the Monks" in French, but I don't know what the monks had to do with anything.

Baton Rouge, Louisiana
French for red staff or stick, maybe after the big cypress tree on the site

I end with Lansing, Michigan, our home state.
Lansing was originally some lame little settlement named after some guys' hometown in New York State. But in 1847 the state leaders wanted to move the capital further into the interior away from hostile British Canada, which had taken Detroit in the War of 1812. Michigan's other big cities vied for the honor, but they chose some flyspeck village with 20 people.

Stay tuned for more dorkiness tomorrow!

How I Started Chapter Five by Freaking Out

I need to write Chapter 5: Recessions I Have Known, but I'm scared. I’ve done everything but write in the last 40 minutes. I’ve posted on Facebook, changed my Apple password, bought a Seal album, helped Benny create a birthday card. And now I'm at my desk again. It's scary.

Who does stuff like this? Who sets their lives against the economy, who strings together the major events of their lives using recessions like fat beads on a string that winds and knots? I’m going to tangle this up.

I’m feeling some pressure. I want to send this out in September. Chapter Five was supposed to be a light revision and now it's a whole new chapter, possibly one of the most important chapters in the book.

The god Pan.

 I’m trying to remember everything; the events, the memories, the history, the personalities. I’m having trouble focusing. I'm hyperventilating. It’s 10:52 and I’ve done nothing. I can’t stop thinking about the other things I need to do. I’m in a panic. How do I start a chapter about recessions? I'm in a panic. 

I'm in a panic.

Panic: a a sudden sensation of fear so strong as to dominate or prevent reason, replacing it with anxiety. A Greek word from the shepherd god Pan, who liked to frighten goats and sheep.

The frying Pan.

It’s also an old-fashioned word for a financial crisis, like the panics of 1857, 1873 and 1907. All triggered by worries over gold, silver or copper. Panic. All the goats and sheep scattered.

I'm trying to write about the 1973-75 recession. But it wasn't a recession, it was a Panic. 

Yay! I'm on my way! An hour later, I'm still typing madly.

There's got to be an easier way to do this.

Puzzle Pieces

We never really know anybody's life, do we? Even the nearest and dearest, we only know a piece of what's going on. We reveal little snippets here and there in conversation and on Facebook and in our blogs. We don't really know anybody's day but ours, the whole picture, the shape of the day, how we feel in the morning, how we feel about the day or the life.

We ask "How did you sleep?" "How was your commute?" "How was your weekend?"

Then later, "How was your day?"

What do we answer? We say what we think they want to hear, what we're willing to share, the highlights, but we don't truly answer. We all have secrets. Some of us have big secrets. Some of us have a secret so big that we carry it around all day, touching it lightly with our fingertips to remind ourselves that it's really there.

My own secrets are becoming a little problematic because I'm writing about my life. I'm writing a memoir about a year in my life and I'm skimming over some sticky parts. This is fundamentally dishonest. It may weaken the writing. So when I finish the first 75 pages and they are all polished and prettified and sent out and I can start writing rough again, I will tell all my secrets, get them out on the page. I don't have to show them to anybody.

Right now I'm telling myself that many personal details don't matter in this memoir, that this memoir is about the financial life and this might be true. Or it might be a cop out. The only way to find out is to let all the secrets out. Maybe I'll have to include some and hurt people. There's only one way to find out.

At any rate, I can't keep censoring myself. If I keep doing that, than the final picture of my life will be alike a puzzle with missing pieces, gaping holes where meaning is missing.

I am all the puzzle pieces. My life is all the puzzle pieces. Write every puzzle piece, no matter how ugly or awkward the shape. If you don't, then you won't have a prettier picture. You'll just have a picture with an awkward, ugly hole.

PNWA: The risky businesses of journalism and publishing

Beaten and battered, but still fighting.

Journalism and publishing are two very different industries, and the differences go far beyond the whole double-spacing-after-a-period thing.

Journalists work in a fast-paced environment and our jargon reflects this: scoops, headlines, cutlines, pull quotes, banners, leads (or leads), deadlines ... see all those verbs? We scoop, we cut, we pull, we lead and then we drop dead.

If journalism’s time reference is quick and human, publishing’s time frame is more … geologic. An epoch can give way to an era between a book’s conception and publication. At last month’s Pacific Northwest Writers Association’s conference, we were “authors” not “reporters” who wrote “manuscripts” not “copy” to be “published” not “printed.” The jargon was more sedate: advance, slush, pitch, royalty, galley.

But despite these differences, the two industries face similar challenges these days, a clash between the old and the new, as traditional professionals fight to be heard above online newcomers. In journalism, these newcomers are called bloggers or “citizen journalists,” the latter embraced by online newspapers as a cheaper, faster way to get content.  In publishing, those new guys and gals are self-published authors.

In traditional journalism not so long ago, a story was pitched to an editor, the editor followed up on the story’s progress,  the story was submitted and edited, then copy edited, then proofed. Then and only then did the story go public. Errors and typos still slipped through, but the process worked to create the most professional result possible. Ideally, the finished result would be a professionally produced work, the product of a group collaboration, not one single mind, no matter how talented.

Similarly in publishing, for a book to hit the shelves, the writer pitches an agent who sells the project to a publisher. A whole table of people vet this acquisition: editors, marketers, production staff, publicists … they all have to sign off on it. Again, the final product, while not perfect, is professionally produced, the result of a group of talented minds.

Furthermore, both journalists and book writers have a formal apprenticeship, years of writing before you get the plum assignments or the book contracts.

The Internet has changed all this, of course. Now traditional newspaper writers compete with bloggers and “citizen journalists.” Traditional book authors compete with self-published authors. These nontraditional writers often display great creativity and talent and are formidable competitors not to be underestimated.

But with the barriers to entry in both industries partly dismantled, readers are flooded with books and articles in various stages of professional development. It can be difficult for readers to distinguish between a professionally sourced news story and an amateur blog post. Book readers surfing on Amazon’s wave of titles may lump together the professionally agented, edited, marketed and designed books and their self-published counterparts.

At the PNWA conference,  I repeatedly heard speakers say today’s books have to “break through the noise.” I hear this phrase in online journalism too. So the question for both journalists and book writers becomes, how do we uphold the traditional standards of  our industry while still innovating and accepting change?

One thing is for sure, looking down our noses at self-published authors and citizen journalists may make us feel better but won’t help anyone. My newspaper recently wrote about San Francisco International Airport’s crackdown on those newfangled ridesharing companies. In an effort to protect the taxi drivers who take passengers to and from the airport, SFO has conducted citizen’s arrests of Lyft and Uber drivers for trespassing.

Well, as a taxi passenger who has waited an hour for a taxi, endured baffling, circuitous routes to my destination or has had to scrape up cash because the taxi driver’s credit card reader was mysteriously broken, I say the traditional taxi industry in San Francisco has left a gaping customer service hole large enough to drive a gleaming, black Uber car through. Ridesharing companies are filling a need, or they wouldn’t be so successful, and taxi companies ignore this at their peril.

Traditional journalists and book writers can’t be like those taxi drivers. We can’t close ranks against the newcomers. They are now part of our culture and our dialogue. I believe in traditional publishing; I choose to prepare my memoir for agents. But I believe in self-publishing too, although it is not for me.

There is one word I don’t hear much of in either the journalism or publishing industries, probably because it was so self-evident. That word is “risk.” My newspaper is currently making enormous changes and taking huge risks. Publishers take big risks every time they acquire a book.

Bloggers, citizen journalists and self-published authors are considered the risk takers these days. But as bookstores and newspaper stands close every day while my own articles and book manuscript inch along the longer path to readers, today’s traditional journalists and book authors remain the biggest risk takers of all.

PNWA Conference: Christine's tips

Well, I'm back from the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference in Seattle. I've been to exactly one writer's conference now in my adult life, so of course that makes me an expert.

So here are Christine's Top 10 Tips to a Successful Writing Conference:


1. Fly in the night before the event begins.
Everybody is boring the first two hours after they get off the plane. I could immediately spot the folks who flew in Thursday morning, staggering around all haggard in wrinkled clothes. I met a nice man that day with an undoubtedly fascinating novel, but he'll forever live in my mind as "The Guy Who Spent 40 Minutes on the Tarmac."

2. Want to make friends? Drop your registration packet while standing in line for pitch session registration. With any luck, you'll scatter the detritus at the feet of the host organization's president. It worked for me, although I lost two pens and an event ticket.

3. Don't wear a bright color or a vivid pattern on the first day. I met a woman who's writing a paranormal romance with pirates. Unfortunately, she was wearing a lurid orange shirt on the first day and I never caught her name or memorized her features. I never found her again.

4. For the love of God, figure out what to do with your business cards. First I had a special pocket, then I tried a special baggie, then I wrapped a rubber band around them. Finally I used my brain and stuffed a bunch into my name badge — problem solved. Then I could look on smugly while new friends ransacked their pockets and bags looking for cards to give me.

5. Linger after sessions. This is how I nabbed three of the four agents I pitched before my official pitching session. It's slightly more dignified than pouncing on agents on the elevator or in the bar. Plus you get to eavesdrop on the people in line in front of you.

6. This is a trick from my days covering board meetings as a reporter:
Draw a little map of panel participants first thing. That way, when the Question and Answer starts, you know who said what.

7. Never abandon a muffin to get to a session on time. You’ll end up surreptitiously crunching peanut M&Ms from the bottom of your purse at 8 in the morning just to survive the 90-minute session. Crinkly candy wrappers can be very loud in a hushed conference room.

8. Crash different genres at the Writer’s Café, where there’s a Memoir table, a Romance table, a Literary Fiction table, etc. I always like to know what’s going on in the galaxy at the Science Fiction table. Gene manipulation and artificial intelligence are apparently very hot this year.

9. The plot of your book should be a closely guarded secret. Plots take forever to spin out, and pretty soon people’s eyes start glazing over. If you start describing the climax of your book, and a certain person named Christine goes off to get another drink and look at the appetizer menu and she gets back and you’re still in the climax, it’s time to tighten up your book pitch.

10. If an agent you’ve pitched says “Fine, send me something” or better yet, gives you his or her card, this is your cue to disappear. I’d read this advice already from the fabulous Anne Mini, but that didn’t stop me from babbling some more to the first agent I pitched. Some people just can’t take yes for an answer!

Pretty Nervous Writing Aardvarks Speak Out!

Now that I'm back from Europe and life has settle down somewhat, it's time to think about my next trip: The PNWA Writers Conference in Seattle on July 25-28. That unpronounceable acronym, by the way, stands for the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. I call them the Pretty Nervous Writing Aardvarks so I can keep the letters in the right order.

I hadn't planned to attend the conference; it seemed like an indulgence so soon after Europe. But on Memorial Day I received a call from the Writing Aardvarks: My unfinished memoir, Too Small to Succeed, is a finalist in the Nonfiction/Memoir category. The PNWA lady (I was so amazed I now can't remember her name or hardly any other word in the phone conversation other than "finalist") asked me if I was attending the conference in July. Well, I am now, I wanted to stay, but mustered my manners and said I would very much like to attend.

So now I'm going, and I haven't been to a writing conference since I was 10, when I won a school writing contest with a poem about World War II. It went like this:

That crazy Hitler, he started a war,
and I have no doubt that there will be more. 
They won't be by him, because he is dead,
but from my point of view he had rocks in his head.

The poem went on for pages, I'm sorry to say, and my mother actually sent me a copy recently. Well, Benny liked it, anyway.

Anyway, this means that Too Small to Succeed is no longer just a Weird Little Project on the Side. I wrote the first two chapters in 2010 and then dropped it for two years, picking it up again last year. I kept working on it even after rejoining the Business Times in January and it's passed the 30,000-word mark now.

To help things along last summer, I joined a local memoir group. You know you're in a heavy crowd when your recession memoir tracing the country's financial collapse is the most lighthearted of the group. The other writers' topics ranged from sex cults to the Holocaust, much to the disturbance of other patrons at the Berkeley cafe where we met. The memoir group's leader ran a tight ship, necessitating a constant stream of emails and long phone calls about my writing purpose after I missed a few meetings.

So I ditched the memoir group, but I still needed feedback, so I entered the memoir's first 27 pages in the Writing Aardvark's literary contest, lured by the promise of detailed critiques from two judges.

Be careful what you wish for, for now my finalist status, the critiques and my preparations for the conference are making me self-conscious. Yesterday I read my 11 chapters for the first time in over a month, and while they hold up all right, writing new stuff has been difficult. I spent six hours writing yesterday, muttering at my laptop while Benny watched Sponge Bob and read his Percy Jackson books, hoping that eventually I'd produce something that wasn't terrible.

The results are not great: Chapter 12 is about September 2007, a month full of adjustments to our new apartment, my new editing job and Benny's new preschool, not to mention a horrifying pile of bills that added up to more than Ron's monthly take-home pay. Shiver. Throw in a Sept. 17 deadline to write 24 Latino Business Awards profiles in my spare time and this chapter makes me want to crawl under the dining room table with the cat. Not so funny. I'm having difficulty maintaining the amused detachment of earlier chapters. That humorous tone the judges liked so much is nowhere in evidence in Chapter 12, so now I must decide whether I've lost my voice or whether the story has simply shifted in a new direction.

This, of course, has happened before and as Stephen King says, sometimes writing feels like you're just shoveling shit from a sitting position. You just have to have faith that something good is buried in there, and if there isn't, that what you're shoveling will eventually lead to something good. In times like these, any encouragement helps and so thank you again, Pretty Nervous Writing Aardvarks.

Denny and Me

Basilica Saint-Denis.

After lunch the downpour ceased and the sun came out. I traded my soaked shoes for a pair of sandals and pulled out my damp and battered Lonely Planet guidebook, for I had one last destination: The Basilica of Saint-Denis.

I took the subway nearly to the end of the ride, about 20 minutes and popped out on a sunny square. No tourist hordes here; Saint-Denis was off the beaten path, even if nearly all the French kings and queens are buried here.

The Last Judgment Portal at Basilica Saint-Denis.

Saint-Denis is a very early Gothic Cathedral, built in the 1130s. Like Notre Dame, there are three portals in front, but see how more rounded the Saint-Denis portals are, looking a little more Romanesque. Like Notre Dame, the center portal depicts the Last Judgment. Christ is the judge, surrounded by apostles. Overhead the good guys are on the left side of the arch and the damned on the right.

Basilica's interior.

The basilica was nearly empty: just me, a few local school groups, and a bunch of European senior citizens. It was smaller than Notre Dame, but exquisite, with sunlight pouring through the stained glass and casting bright blotches on the floor. I admired the nave, then headed over to the Royal Necropolis ("Royal Death City"). 

Sunlight through the stained-glass windows
cast colors on the floor.

The tombs were a quick quiz in French history — I'd read "La Belle France" the month before, but I was still hazy on the Charles and Philippes, not to mention all those Louies.

Charles V (in wig), Queen Jeanne (with crown)
lying with other French royalty.

I admired the tomb statues of Charles V and his wife Jeanne of Bourbon, who is shown holding her pouch of entrails close to her heart.
During the Crusades and in medieval times French royalty would dither for years over where to be buried and would often write complicated wills commanding that their heart be buried in one place, their heart in another and the rest of the body in a third. Even the Pope's objection to cutting a body up couldn't make them stop until it finally fell out of fashion.

Childebert I.

More royalty, including Pepin the Short and Louis III.

The Frankish king of Paris Childebert I, who fought the Visigoths and died in 558, was there, and Charles Martel (died 741), the founding figure of the Middle Ages who helped develop feudalism and knighthood.

King Henri and Catherine D'Medici.

I saw the tomb of Francois I, the king who met Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn at the Cloth of Gold, and Henri and Catherine d'Medici, whose sickly son was briefly married to Mary Queen of Scots.

Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

The heart of little Louis XVII.

Revolutionaries desecrated many of the tombs during the Terror, but afterwards the bones were reorganized and put in their proper places. Statues of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were brought in, and even the remains of their 10-year-old son, Louis XVII, who died in prison, were brought to the basilica, including his heart, which is still on display in a glass urn.

Saint-Denis was my last sight on this European trip and I lingered, not wanting it to end. I thought of returning to the apartment and helping Ron and Benny pack up our big backpacks again. I didn't want to fly back to San Francisco. I wanted to take the Metro to the Gare du Nord and catch the next train to Prague the next day. Ahead of us was a 20-hour day full of security lines and flight delays and officials digging through my backpack only to find that the threatening object inside was Benny's six-inch tall Big Ben figurine. The Brits apparently didn't trust the French and required an additional security check before they'd let us transfer to another plane, and the airline kept the gate number for the flight to San Francisco a state secret until 15 minutes after it opened. But our flight landed nearly on time and we were the first through customs.

"Two weeks?" the customs officer repeated. "And that's all your luggage?"

"Yup," we said proudly.

But that was all ahead of me. I had a glass of wine on the sunny square before the Basilica Saint-Denis, my bag on my lap and my head stuffed with medieval carvings and French history. It was time to go home, I thought. We were almost out of money, energy and clean socks. Next week Ron had a biotech panel, Benny had tennis camp and I needed to prepare for a writer's conference in Seattle. Au revoir, Europe.

Notre Dame, or Mary Goes to the DMV

Well, it's time for literally the mother of all Gothic cathedrals, Paris' Notre Dame. It's on the Ile de la Cite, the center of ancient Lutetium and medieval Paris. In 1160, the Bishop of Paris decided to build a new church to Mary using the new, cutting-edge Gothic style. Notre Dame is an early Gothic church, so it isn't as big and pointy and airy as the later cathedrals. (The Basilica of St. Denis, where French kings and queens are buried, is an even earlier Gothic, but we'll get to that later.)

You can see how solid and imposing the front is; it still feels a little Romanesque. Benny, Ron and I sat on bleachers in the sunny square while I read out loud about the facade. You've got a big rose window that looks like a halo on the Virgin and Child statue in the middle. Below that is a row of 28 kings of Judah, Mary and Jesus' ancestors.

Portal of the Last Judgment.

Then we have three large portals. The center portal is the Last Judgment — Christ is in the center, and Michael weighs the souls of the dead and assigns them to heaven or hell. The souls to Christ's right head off happily to heaven in an orderly line (Medieval artists had a huge thing for orderly lines) wearing little crowns and looking at Christ. The damned souls are shoved off to Christ's left by nasty demons, all clutching a chain. This led to all kinds of uncomfortable questions from Benny, many of which would require two theologians and a Bible to answer properly, but Ron and I did our best.

The right portal featured Mary sitting in state like a queen, with a crown and sceptre and the baby Jesus. The left portal shows Mary's death, her ascension into heaven and her crowning as Queen of Heaven. Throughout this cathedral are numerous depictions of Mary's life, from birth to motherhood to death and ascension, over and over. I half expected carvings of Mary doing laundry, making dinner, going to the DMV, etc.

Little boats in the fountain at Luxembourg Gardens.

We actually didn't go inside the cathedral that day. The place was mobbed and it was just too bright and sunny that day. Instead, we walked around the Left Bank and had a picnic in the Luxembourg Gardens. That place was a just heaven for young children: they could sail model boats on the fountain, play on the playgrounds and the carousel, ride ponies and more.

An ominous cloud front over Paris.

The next day we rose early and started the 20-minute walk to Notre Dame. The skies were ominous and as we crossed a bridge into the Isle de la Cite, the clouds burst open and it just poured. We arrived at the cathedral soaked to the skin and squishing with every step.







And so we had a dripping look around the Cathedral: the incredible nave and various statues of the Virgin and Child. Outside was a severe statue of Mary, stiff and Romanesque. The central statue is 19th-century, showing a new mother juggling a baby on her hip. Finally we have a romantic statue of Mary, all sweet and windblown with a cherubic Jesus.











Here's a shot of the high altar, and the modern bronze altar by Jean et Sebastien Touret, another example of how Europe incorporates modern art into its historic sites.





After a while we became tired of dripping water all over a priceless religious and historical site and left, sloshing through the downpour back to the Rue de Rivoli. We swam along the Rue de Louvre to the post office, where I mailed some sodden postcards and a package. (I forgot the word for air mail and hand to flap my arms to get my point across.)

Then we had a quick lunch and returned to the apartment. Ron and Benny were finished for the day — we were flying out of Charles de Gaulle the next morning and the apartment was just trashed. But then the sun came out and I thought there was time for one more medieval church. But that's a story for another post.