I took a class at Grub Street (writers' organization) on Saturday. It was a beautiful late-spring day, too nice, really to sit inside, but we were.
When the class was over and I ventured outside onto Boston's Boylston St., the world was there. Serious numbers of people. My significant other met me, and we scooted into the Four Seasons' Bristol Lounge, where the upper 1% in fancy evening clothes were waiting, drinking and dining. Cars pulling up, lots of activity, quite a few foreign voices, people ordering champagne and who-could-even-guess-how-much-it-costs seafood platters. We had coffee and shared an order of Boston Cream Pie (delicious) that arrived with a berry sherbet and some fresh blackberries. Ah, the good life. Four people in suits came in, ordered large cokes, paid immediately, drank them down so fast they must have been burping all evening and left...all in the space of a few minutes. We left the hotel and saw even more dressed-to-the-nines swells in the lobby.
In the public garden, even more people. Trying to get out of downtown in an automobile was a huge hassle. I am still clueless, blaming the nice weather. We pick up a friend at UMASS, and head for Cambridge. Wanting to avoid downtown and knowing the Longfellow Bridge is closed, we decide to take the Pike. Yikes! Why is the traffic backed up for a mile getting off the Pike?
The light dawns. People are in town for various college graduations. Boston is not well-marked, and the Pike has no-cash lanes for those with responders and of course all the graduates' relatives are in the wrong lane. Well, you know. Our restaurant was a little off the beaten track unless you went to MIT and they always graduate late, so we were all right. The trickiest part of the evening was that when we existed the parking garage and tried to tell the GPS we wanted an address is East Boston, it became clueless. We were driving down a main street in Cambridge, and it kept telling us we were "off road," and then it gave wrong directions, and finally we got on the expressway and went thru the tunnel into East Boston, and SOMEWHERE UNDER THE HARBOR, it figured things out. Most mysterious.
You'd think maybe the mini-adventures would have been over and you would have been wrong. The GPS knew where we were, but it didn't know how to get us on I-93 South after exiting the Sumner Tunnel. It sent us over the bridge north to Sullivan Square and very elegantly and mysteriously brought us back across the Zakim bridge to I-93 South. We knew the way from there.
When I worked in Cambridge, I always took the train into town when Harvard graduated, because 10,000 clueless drivers from out of town was well, scary. Very scary. It was daunting on Saturday, too, with Tufts and BU and others graduating.
One MBTA station is closed for remodeling, the Bridge is under construction and one of the tunnels was just repaired after having been closed for a couple months. Anyone who suffered thru 10+ years of the Big Dig does not want more aggravations. Nope. Send your kids to college somewhere else. Or tell them you hate the graduation speaker and boycott.
Showing posts with label Grub Street. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grub Street. Show all posts
Monday, May 19, 2014
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Fall in New England
First, some of the maples turned, then lost their leaves. Subsequently, all the other trees and bushes sat there, like, well, like bumps on a log, apparently unaware that autumn was here.
Yesterday, driving up Route 128, hooray, finally, glorious color. Last night: monsoons. Many of the leaves fell, but good color today in the village of Mansfield. This is the weirdest fall ever, following the weirdest non-summer of the tomato blight.
We have three big tomatoes ripening in the kitchen window. Finally.
Last Friday we hiked up the hill beyond Concord Bridge. Always scenic. The beech trees were splendid.
The slough rose during the night, and we still have red leaves on the bushes within and color across the slough.
Yesterday was the first Boston Book Festival, and we took the Green Line into town to partake of the festivities. What a huge crowd. Gave me hope that there are a lot of writers and readers and bibliphiles out there. Not the usual geriatric crowd but lots of young folks. We particularly enjoyed Grub Street's Writer Idol, Orhan Pamuk's reading and talk and Boston Noir, a reading and after hours party with fine folk, food and bevs, a congenial crowd and what more do you want?
A fine day, and we got home just as the rains came in a major way.
Yesterday, driving up Route 128, hooray, finally, glorious color. Last night: monsoons. Many of the leaves fell, but good color today in the village of Mansfield. This is the weirdest fall ever, following the weirdest non-summer of the tomato blight.
We have three big tomatoes ripening in the kitchen window. Finally.
Last Friday we hiked up the hill beyond Concord Bridge. Always scenic. The beech trees were splendid.
The slough rose during the night, and we still have red leaves on the bushes within and color across the slough.
Yesterday was the first Boston Book Festival, and we took the Green Line into town to partake of the festivities. What a huge crowd. Gave me hope that there are a lot of writers and readers and bibliphiles out there. Not the usual geriatric crowd but lots of young folks. We particularly enjoyed Grub Street's Writer Idol, Orhan Pamuk's reading and talk and Boston Noir, a reading and after hours party with fine folk, food and bevs, a congenial crowd and what more do you want?
A fine day, and we got home just as the rains came in a major way.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
The Muse & The Marketplace
Grapeshot as a skinny young mom who never worried about being remembered.
The Muse and the Marketplace is a sublime event for writers that took place at Boston’s famous Parker House (think rolls and Boston Cream Pie) Hotel last weekend.
As the title implies, the conference paid attention to the creative end of things (the muse) and to Mammon (the Marketplace). My particular interests in writing somewhat literary historical fiction were well-served by Jeff Talarigo’s and Sylvia Sellers-Garcia’s offerings. Randall Peffer’s audience-interactive “Drag Queens, Dead Goats, Sula and Peter Pan” helped attendees figure out some ways to craft literary mysteries.
Lisa Scottoline shared her agent’s name, some past rejection letters, and her upbeat advice. These days, upbeat advice makes me want to weep, but so it goes.
Michael Thomas quoted T.S. Eliot and James Joyce and played some cool music and the session almost transported me back to my undergraduate days.
Jonathan Franzen rocked with his keynote luncheon speech, which was a prime example of show, don’t tell. He provided me (unknowingly and inadvertently) for a quote for the opening of my new novel. He’s a funny man, and a literate man and his address did not make me want to weep. I bought a copy of The Corrections, at long last and am mid-point in the book. Wonderful writing, conflicted characters-- so enthralling to read such a fine novel.
D.Y. Bechard talked about creating “bad” characters, always a tricky thing for a writer, since all bad characters need some redeeming features, unless of course, one is deep, deep into genre.
When I am at these events, I am always reminded how invisible I have become due to no longer being a young woman. Once I had long blond hair and was skinny and wore all the trendy clothes (see photo) and I smoked like tires on fire and felt generally miserable, but I always got a lot of attention from males. Now I am one of the hordes of middle-aged women who frequent these events, and I can meet an editor 3 or 4 times and he still might not remember me. Whatchagonnado?
But The Muse, etc. rocked and I took away good information, inspiration and the urge to write. Kudos to Grub Street for a great event, and the food was extra-yummy, too, although I must be one out of one hundred who find bagels for breakfast a huge yawn. Sunday's scones were, however, delightful. One cannot live on bagels alone, although there is a place in West Stockbridge that makes you think maybe you could.
So say I.
Grapeshot
As the title implies, the conference paid attention to the creative end of things (the muse) and to Mammon (the Marketplace). My particular interests in writing somewhat literary historical fiction were well-served by Jeff Talarigo’s and Sylvia Sellers-Garcia’s offerings. Randall Peffer’s audience-interactive “Drag Queens, Dead Goats, Sula and Peter Pan” helped attendees figure out some ways to craft literary mysteries.
Lisa Scottoline shared her agent’s name, some past rejection letters, and her upbeat advice. These days, upbeat advice makes me want to weep, but so it goes.
Michael Thomas quoted T.S. Eliot and James Joyce and played some cool music and the session almost transported me back to my undergraduate days.
Jonathan Franzen rocked with his keynote luncheon speech, which was a prime example of show, don’t tell. He provided me (unknowingly and inadvertently) for a quote for the opening of my new novel. He’s a funny man, and a literate man and his address did not make me want to weep. I bought a copy of The Corrections, at long last and am mid-point in the book. Wonderful writing, conflicted characters-- so enthralling to read such a fine novel.
D.Y. Bechard talked about creating “bad” characters, always a tricky thing for a writer, since all bad characters need some redeeming features, unless of course, one is deep, deep into genre.
When I am at these events, I am always reminded how invisible I have become due to no longer being a young woman. Once I had long blond hair and was skinny and wore all the trendy clothes (see photo) and I smoked like tires on fire and felt generally miserable, but I always got a lot of attention from males. Now I am one of the hordes of middle-aged women who frequent these events, and I can meet an editor 3 or 4 times and he still might not remember me. Whatchagonnado?
But The Muse, etc. rocked and I took away good information, inspiration and the urge to write. Kudos to Grub Street for a great event, and the food was extra-yummy, too, although I must be one out of one hundred who find bagels for breakfast a huge yawn. Sunday's scones were, however, delightful. One cannot live on bagels alone, although there is a place in West Stockbridge that makes you think maybe you could.
So say I.
Grapeshot
Friday, April 25, 2008
Warby's???
Warby's? Wendy's is buying Arby's or is Arby's buying Wendy's? When our kids were small, we used to go to Arby's a lot, eating the roast beef sandwiches with the yummy barbeque sauce and the delicous little potato cakes. Doesn't take much to please hungry boys.
I may have been to Wendy's once or twice, but I haven't "done" fast food since my mom died. No, I didn't take a vow not to eat it or anything, but when I visited my mother during her last years of decline in Arizona, there were mostly fast food places in the neighborhood, and once I ate at McDonald's twice in one day. Visited the colonel, too. There's a reason grease and carbs are called "comfort food." Over the years I have lost most of my taste for it. But not for fried chicken or cheese burgers, Never.
Tomorrow I'm taking the subway into town for Grub Street's The Muse and the Marketplace.
Signed up for two days of writing seminars. Not that I have been writing much. A few edits to Festival Madness which now has two rejections. I have been sending out some queries, so we'll see how it goes.
Yesterday I read an interview with Agent Nat Sobel in Poet & Writers about getting a first novel published, and the news was not good.Or pretty. Last night I had an endlessly complicated dream about snobbery and exclusion, and in the dream I told someone that I wrote "commercial fiction." Looking back on the dream, it was more of a nightmare, in a genteel sort of way.
Genteel nightmares!
Ah well, it's a nice spring day and S.O. has had a most mysterious knee relapse, trashing plans to drive to Chatham for lunch today, so I'll work in the garden instead and send off a few more queries.
Toujours,
Grapeshot
I may have been to Wendy's once or twice, but I haven't "done" fast food since my mom died. No, I didn't take a vow not to eat it or anything, but when I visited my mother during her last years of decline in Arizona, there were mostly fast food places in the neighborhood, and once I ate at McDonald's twice in one day. Visited the colonel, too. There's a reason grease and carbs are called "comfort food." Over the years I have lost most of my taste for it. But not for fried chicken or cheese burgers, Never.
Tomorrow I'm taking the subway into town for Grub Street's The Muse and the Marketplace.
Signed up for two days of writing seminars. Not that I have been writing much. A few edits to Festival Madness which now has two rejections. I have been sending out some queries, so we'll see how it goes.
Yesterday I read an interview with Agent Nat Sobel in Poet & Writers about getting a first novel published, and the news was not good.Or pretty. Last night I had an endlessly complicated dream about snobbery and exclusion, and in the dream I told someone that I wrote "commercial fiction." Looking back on the dream, it was more of a nightmare, in a genteel sort of way.
Genteel nightmares!
Ah well, it's a nice spring day and S.O. has had a most mysterious knee relapse, trashing plans to drive to Chatham for lunch today, so I'll work in the garden instead and send off a few more queries.
Toujours,
Grapeshot
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