Anchor Babies

Stranded in the tiny berg of Cle Elum while waiting for a replacement catalytic heater for our truck, two days before Christmas, gave me time to read two books; Bossy Pants, Tina Fey, My Point…And I Do Have One, Ellen Degeneres.  Why do they make a joke out of everything, force funniness, I thought about the comedic formalistic tone of both authors.  Then it dawned on me.  Tina and Ellen are not really authors but comedians who write.   It is their life work to make a joke out of life.

Stuck in a small motel with a cat, dog and husband, all sharing one bed was not very funny.  We were though comforted by knowing our unanticipated calamity could have been worse.   We could have all ended up road kill on the snowy Snoqualmie Summit where the truck sputtered and died. Semi trucks the length of Manhattan screamed past close enough to part my hair.

After a long and expensive tow we were deposited at a motel with nothing more than us.  Luckily, I’d packed cat and dog food and managed to improvise a litter box for a cat born in Kuwait and now through the miracle of travel could pee freely in Eastern Washington gravel.  Aside from two books the only distraction was cable television.  On Comedy Central, the Colbert Report was listing new definitions included in the new American Heritage Dictionary.  Anchor Babies, was included.

“Did you hear that?”  I asked my husband who is hard of hearing.  He nodded.  The dog looked up and the cat just slept, undisturbed as I jolted upright.

When I referred to anchor babies (p. 195) in Suitcase, I thought it might, like other pontifications in my book, be construed as offensive.  Now, according to one comedian, the term is fully defined in a respected reference book. Or is this just another joke?

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/09/revised-definition-anchor-baby-part-leftist-agenda-critics-say/

That's the Spirit

I’m going to get off the rag about this self, myself, vanity, in vane, independent, dependent, publishing swill.  It’s Christmastime after all.  This is the point I want to briefly rag on.

 I am actually able to walk fast (four months after a total hip replacement…another rag) with members of my running group who no longer can run because of hip and knee issues. 

We walk faster than most people can think, let alone can run. 

In December, at 7 am. we huff along  the waterfront trail. Moon light winks on waves, seagulls scream, and fast walking ladies and their dogs leave steam puffs in their wake.  My little dog Henry wears an orange, reflective jacket and is not let off leash until there is enough daylight to see his little cat-sized body before it might be swooped upwards into the evergreens by wide-eyed owls.

My fast walking, talking companions muse on family gatherings, kids, grand kids, a banana split of people they will gift, feed and house over the holidays.  Quite honestly I am left out of the conversation.  There is nothing I have to add except, “Being an orphan with no family means I don’t buy, wrap or rapp.”  There is a short pause and their conversation continues.

I listen.  I think.  I listen.  My thinking grows darker as the sun rises.  I think I feel what a recovering alcoholic would feel at a party where everyone else was drinking, laughing and sharing good will, and, I am standing in a corner with an empty glass. It’s not like I can’t imbibe.  It’s just that this holiday spirit stuff seems like swill because my cup leaked empty a long time ago.

Late afternoon I take Henry to the beach down town.  The sun is setting on a picture postcard day- Mount Rainer a warm icy glow beyond the frigid bay, the community Christmas tree blinking, a doctor in a dark brown fedora walks by, his silhouette contrasts the sails of a boat flapping off-shore.  I also see a rag-tag gathering of people with back packs gathering outside a red brick building.  Gritty duct tape holds together a grimy orange parka one woman wears.  She also wears a bright red and white Santa hat.  The people around her point to her head smile and laugh as they wait for the doors of the homeless shelter to open.   

Reviews That Loose: Give me a little Nookie

“Out of this world”  Dean Koontz

“Scary Good”  Stephen King

“Worth Killing for” James Patterson

“I could burst into song” Jane Lynch

No, these praise-worthy blurbs were not penned  for Suitcase Filled with Nails, a tangible piece of writing, words inked on paper pages and set between slick cardboard covers.

These literary notaries and those of notoriety are praising a piece of plastic.  In particular, a Nook Tablet.  Their blurbs published in print on a full page ad in the New York Times Book Review.  Another interesting twist in the publishing paradigm…an ethereal one.  

No Hypocrites

On my second cup of coffee, I am still trying to face the day, slicing open a new box of books to sell at the last day of this weekend Arts and Crafts.  It is 7 am, the sun is rising and the phone in my office starts ringing.

True to her word, Susan Jane Gillman is telephoning from Geneva, Switzerland where the sun is setting on the dawning cocktail hour.  She has called to tell me how much she likes Suitcase Filled with Nails.  We talk for an hour.  She talks like the words she writes in her best selling books…honestly, no-holds barred, ballsy, politically aware and politically incorrect if she wants to make a point, or mock a point. 

The point, and I must be so in-your-face about this again, is she likes my book.  It is I who should be bowing before the master (mistress).  She is the author of New York Times best sellers not me… Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress,  Kiss My Tiara: How to Rule the World as a SmartMouth Goddes, and Undress me in the Temple of Heaven.

My first summer home (2005) after teaching in Kuwait, I serendipitously selected Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, from the shelves of our town’s highly revered Carnegie Library.  I’d never heard of Susan Jane Gilman before and judged the book by its cover – a pouting girl in a pouffy white dress.  Check it out of your own library or buy it…for the full story.

One passage from Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress wedged within my withering brain matter (I’ll toast to that).  I would remember it again and again as the going got rough, those six years in Kuwait where I learned to duck and cover, stave off  back stabs and deliberate frontal attacks in an office warfare I wanted no part of.  Susan sums it up better.

     Had I been more experienced in office warfare, I might have strategized cunning ways to defend myself and retaliate.

     A horrendous job is like a chronic illness, a rotting tooth. It infects everything in your life: your world constricts and collapses into the toxic, throbbing ache of it. You can’t go into a café, walk your dog, or go away for a weekend without a constant, low-grade sense of dread.    (excerpted from  Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress and included, HONEST TO  god with PERMISSION  in Suitcase Filled with Nails).

I’ve sipped my second cup of coffee dry while talking to Susan.  Coyotes cry in the background as the moon sinks and the sun slinks higher, mustering enough sweat to warm away a Pacific Northwest cloud cover.   Susan says Suitcase Filled with Nails reminded her of experiences she wrote about in Undress me in the Temple of Heaven.  “Had I read it?”

Of course.  After I had written Suitcase Filled with Nails.

By the time we hang up the sun has set in Switzerland and it is sunny in Seattle.  Among other dichotomies and similarities we shared we identified with what it was like to be in a country where you had no rights and were subject to the whims of a not so whimsical government.  We are not alone in our observations and lived experiences.

Cha-Ching!

The only thing I like about crafts fairs is attending them, because the first and last one I displayed at over 25 years ago left me deeply scarred, rejection gashed into my self esteem.  All day long people walked right past my display of original oil paintings, a gem of a display, within the jungle of bobbles tuned out in neighboring booths.  The cha-ching of sales rung up by hawkers of pot holders and beach glass earrings –only empty sighs registered from my booth

When I was invited to sell my books at a large and well know crafts fair this weekend my immediate reaction was No Way, will I ever again subject myself to such humiliations. Besides, serious things like books aren’t what people are looking for among the knitted hats, jars of pickled garlic, turned bowls, hammered copper salmon, and goat soap.  I accepted the invitation because it came from a good friend and great humanitarian who originated and still manages this fair 25 years later.  

I packed along 15 books thinking I might be lucky to sell two.  I sold out long before the fair closed for the day and went home buoyed by this little success and the connections made with the people who bought my book.

Later, in my office littered with a new mess of checks and cash, I found my email contained greater richness.  The subject was Oh… from a Susan Gilman.

Ms. Wakefield,

You owe me two night's sleep.

Why? Because I received your glorious book on Thursday and I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN.  I LOVED it.  I stayed up until 2 a.m. this morning finishing it, and then I actually dreamed about it, too.  It's a TERRIFIC read, and please know that I don't say that lightly.

I have praises to heap and questions to ask.  That said, since I live my life in front of a damn computer writing all day, I prefer real human voices to email correspondence. And so, be forewarned. I may try to call you this weekend, the 9-hour time difference between us notwithstanding.

If I can't reach you, you'll get the bombardment electronically. But know that your book -- and your story -- are remarkable.

Thank you for including my own work in yours.

With effusiveness & admiration,
Susan Jane Gilman

What?   You do not know about Susan Jane Gilman, this smack in-your-face-wit of a crafty writer?  Blog on…

First Christmas in Kuwait

After a lot of stumbling blindly about and choppy surfing, I discovered several blogs on women expatriates.  One in particular runs regular first person accounts on living abroad.

Expatwomen, accepted an excerpt from Suitcase Filled with Nails.  I simply cut out a relevant chunk from the book, titled it My First Christmas in Kuwait, and within 24 hours the excerpt was approved and posted on this blog below…….

http://www.expatwomen.com/expat-women-your-stories.php

The Rape of Kuwait

This is Ripe!

On page 8 of Suitcase Filled with Nails, I mention the only book I could find on Kuwait, prior to moving there was The Rape of Kuwait, written by Jean Sasson.  It was written and published in 1990 just as Iraq invaded Kuwait. During my stint there, I heard rumors that The Rape of Kuwait was commissioned and paid for by the Kuwaiti government as part of a marketing plan to publicize their plight.  Those rumors appear to be substantiated in a few paragraphs of the article below.

Arthur E. Rowse, Progressive; May91, FLACKING FOR THE EMIR Vol. 55

Issue 5, p20, 3p

Another major success racked up by Citizens for a Free Kuwait was The Rape of Kuwait, a quickie 154-page paperback by Jean Sasson about Iraqi atrocities. The publisher, Knightsbridge Publishing Company, a small firm in New York City, hit the stands with a first printing of 1.2 million shortly before the war began, advertising the book heavily on television and in newspapers.

Knightsbridge representatives firmly deny that the book was subsidized, and Mankiewicz says H&K {publicists} "had nothing to do with it." But the Kuwaiti embassy acknowledges that it purchased 20,000 copies of the book to send to American troops, and Citizens for a Free Kuwait somehow obtained enough copies to include it in thousands of information kits prepared by Hill & Knowlton for public distribution.

Though quickie paperbacks rarely receive such treatment, The Rape of Kuwait was featured in serious discussions on morning TV talk shows and received respectful reviews in such outlets as The Wall Street Journal. As a result, the book soon made its way onto best-seller lists and into a second printing.

The tattered copy I checked out of the local library in 2003, to prep me for my trip to Kuwait, was riddled with typos.  Maybe this was the first printing, dashed out on command. Doesn’t this take self-publishing to a new level?  

This is the picture Lois took of me at her Gallery, Wynwoods.  I am showing off her marvelous crystal bead necklace

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Wynnwoods Gallery Book Signing

Lois Venarchick owner of Wynnwoods Gallery took this photo

Book Signings/Readings

Started the weekend signing books at Wynwoods Gallery.  Friends, some long lost, stopped by my little table in front of the shop.  The next day, I read and signed copies at Max Grover Gallery.  It was my first public reading and I appropriately started with the church scene. Even though no one in the audience was even a lapsed Catholic, they all knew where the church I wrote about stands.

Cat Got My Tongue

I gave a live radio interview this afternoon on Suitcase Filled with Nails.  Like many interviews of past, on my Kuwait experience, I found myself on the defense and with my tongue caught by some mental cat clawing at my ability to speak concisely and intelligently.

During this interview, like many involving Kuwait, I am asked questions about a culture, politics and religion in which I lived, tried to abide by and out of respect, respect.  Normally, I never speak with suave, detached intelligence, because I am not a diplomat or a politician.   I’m really kind of an off-the-cuff, over-the-shoulder, thin-skinned, blabber mouth.  So, lobbying words put into my mouth during a blind interview only makes that cat curl tighter around my tongue.

I’ve either got to put a leash on my tongue or unleash the cat.