Port Meadow Frost

“What do you miss the most about home?” asked an American friend visiting Oxford. It was a rainy December day.

“Snow!” My children replied before I could answer.

Brunswick, Maine on New Year’s Day 2008 (by Stephanie Foster)

I had been missing snow until a deep frost settled over Port Meadow. My dog and I set off for our morning walk in mist so thick that it was hard to find the horizon. Bike ruts in the frozen grass looked like ski trails in snow. The meadow is a flood bank for the River Thames (called the Isis only in Oxford) and communal grazing grounds.

At this time of year, the cattle are gone and only a couple dozen horses are left to forage. Their warm breath melted the frost into green grass as the sun was struggling to burn through the clouds. Could this be England? I felt inside the pages of an Annie Proulx story, home on the western range. Or maybe a late Rothko painting?

A Shetland pony, not much bigger than my dog, watched us with curiosity. She looked warm in her shaggy coat, even dripping frost. My dog wanted to play, but the pony lost interest once she realized that Stella’s tennis ball was not a green apple. Seeing us every day, the herd barely twitch an ear at my bouncing golden retriever.

Despite the chill, Stella was eager to get to the river. She swims in the ocean year round back in Maine. Seagulls, geese and swans eyed my swimming retriever nervously, but Stella kept her eye on the ball. The Greylag Geese were once domesticated but now have gone wild, interbreeding with Canada geese. The Queen owns the swans. No one can explain what seagulls are doing here this far inland.

As we headed down the river past the lock, the water became a mirror. Another walker and his dogs were dots along the bank. Despite the beauty of dawn, we were otherwise alone. Even the wind had slept in.

The only sound was the honking gaggle of geese. The meadow teams with myriads of migrating water fowl and attending bird watchers during the fall. My son and I once surprised some black and white birds that took off with a startled “Eeek!”

Port Meadow is dog heaven for a retriever. Every writer should have a dog. I do some of my best thinking for my novels on our walks. I’m sure Port Meadow will feature in NOT CRICKET. Not so sure about the wet dog . . . .

Happy New Year! We spent ours in Cambridge.

Did other bloggers have trouble up-loading images or publishing? I fear everyone made a blog-more-often New Year's resolution.

An English Christmas

A swan feather frost covered Port Meadow last Thursday, but it melted into mist long before Christmas. I remember one magical year in Britain when we awoke to a sparkling frost, but mostly a white Christmas in England means dense fog. Back home in Brunswick, Maine, they’ve had 28 inches of snow just in December. Our buddy, Pete Coviello was out ice fishing.

When it comes to Christmas spirit, the Brits snow anyone over. Our corner shop, the Post Box in Wolvercote, has covered every surface in tinsel with Christmas crackers (more on that later) hanging from the ceiling. Carl, another Brit married to an American, decks his shop out “for the children.” He sells what I would call miniature X-mas trees along with his usual supply of free range eggs, organic juices, fresh veg, milk and canned goods. It’s also our post office but only open a couple of odd hours on assorted days. There is something very small town American about a post office/convenience store. It brings a community together.

Oxford at Christmas

All of Britain basically shuts down over Christmas, a national holiday. Even the trains don’t run for two days. Holiday cards are clipped to red ribbons and hung from the moldings. Most have nativity scenes or pastoral scenes in snow instead of the ubiquitous family photos and Santas you see in the US. Christmas feels far less commercial in the UK although many Brits go into debt paying for it. Decorations will stay up until twelfth night. People say "Happy Christmas" instead of "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays;" there is but one holiday for most of England.

We spent the long weekend with Henry’s family in Goring-on-Thames. It was a tight squeeze: 11 people and 2 dogs. The children helped their grandparents harvest mistletoe from the old crab apple tree. It spreads like ivy, clumping into balls – the male is yellowish and the female has the distinct white berries. They save a sprig for their house and barter the rest for a Christmas tree. Bits of holly are collected from the countryside to place over portraits of ancestors (that’s my husband’s great grandfather, Steven Cattley.)



Saturday was a “champagne” and canapés luncheon we all helped prepare for village friends. The English sparkling wine was surprisingly good. Camel Valley is in Cornwall. I met an old friend of Henry’s, the photographer Charlie Glover. His wife, Miranda Glover, writes women’s fiction just like me. We had fun talking shop and planned to get together soon. Like my character from NOT CRICKET, Miranda was at Oxford in the 1980's and recently moved back to the area. I’d love to meet her writer friends as I miss my support community in Brunswick. Writing is a lonely profession.

On Christmas Eve we had Christmas cake for tea. It’s a dense fruitcake with a two-layer frosting: marzipan then white sugar.

After tea we crossed the River Thames to Streatley to attend the children’s service at St. Mary’s. My son was christened in this 13th century church in a Georgian gown, a family heirloom. Note the small cars.

The service told the story of Jesus’s birth and invited the children to bring up the animals and figures to fill in the manger. Candles dripped as we sang carols. The children placed presents by the tree for underprivileged children.

On the walk back home, we stopped at the old Goring Mill. The woman who lives there creates a life size paper mache manger in her living room. The children count the little creatures (this year baby owls) and write the number down for a raffle. She also collects donations for her Swan Lifeline, aiding injured swans. My question is: why doesn’t the wealthy Queen look after her ailing swans?

At 6pm a torchlight procession gathers in Goring and in Streatley, convening in the fields for carol singing around a huge bonfire. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of participants. The flaring torches seemed to float above the river as they crossed the bridge.

To warm up, Henry and I slipped into our favorite Goring pub, the Catherine Wheel, for Hobgoblin bitter by the roaring fire. The pub was decked out for the holidays and full of families.

For Christmas Eve dinner we had lamb tagine followed by 3 puddings (English for dessert). The adults had mince pie, which is a miniature pie of dried fruit and minced meat or a substitute, which is topped with brandy butter and then drowned in double cream. For the children, my mother-in-law had crafted a Chocolate Log, which is basically a Maine whoopie pie: chocolate cake and whipped cream with a sprig of holly. Since I’m lactose intolerant (a sad fate in Britain,) Nicola had made a caramelized orange pudding for me. We never made it to the stilton and port.

After pudding, it was time for Christmas crackers. Two people pull (or you circle round the table) and crack! Inside is a paper crown and dinky prize for the winner like nail clippers. Also a dumb joke eg: what do you call a person who's afraid of Santa? Claustrophobic! Dear Elizabeth, an elderly cousin, buys enormous quantities of crackers so that no one is a loser. "There can never be too many crackers on Christmas,” says she.

On Christmas morning the children woke before sunrise for their stockings. We had a candlelit breakfast of croissants since the sun doesn’t rise until after eight. It sets before 4pm. We are even farther north than Maine. My father-in-law gets little sleep at Christmas since he was out past midnight ringing church bells at both Goring and Streatley. Before having children, we used to attend the 11pm carol service. Never one to complain about duty, Capt. Tony Laurence rang in Christmas morning as well.

Most of the grown ups headed to church and to champagne at a neighbors’ while Henry and I took the 4 children and 2 dogs for a walk along the Thames tow path. My nine-year-old nephew slid in over his wellies, and before we knew it, the 3 younger children were sliding down the muddy banks and jumping in the river with the dogs! It was raining so I hadn’t brought my camera. I was cold just watching them, but they have English blood.

It was a good distraction, as the children were going crazy waiting to open presents. This could not commence until after the Queen’s speech although my son suggested just watching it later on You Tube (half a million did!) At 3pm we gathered round “the telly” to hear the longest reigning British monarch address her nation. Then it was time for more tea and gifts. I got 2 umbrellas! That scared the rain away, and we were treated to a rare sunset. Note the balls of mistletoe in the tree.

Christmas dinner in England is always turkey, roast potatoes and Brussels sprouts. My husband and his sister Charlotte prepared the feast while the rest of us played charades. Nicola already made a traditional chestnut and sausage stuffing. There was also bread sauce made by simmering a clove-studded onion in milk (or, yet again, cream) and then dissolving breadcrumbs into it with seasonings.

The climax of the evening is the flaming Christmas pudding. Brandy is ignited that spreads to the sprig of holly. The pudding itself is alcohol infused fruitcake with hidden sixpences. The lucky make a wish on the old currency; the unlucky break a tooth!


Christmas was not over the next morning. On Boxing Day we journeyed out on the ancient ridgeway for a long walk. We passed through the site of the old Roman temple (below). The undulating greens were from a pastoral painting. An English Christmas is like stepping back in time.


Today it was 64F/18C! My son and I walked along the canal into Oxford. Last week's frost seems so long ago. Have a Happy New Year! It's been a fun first year of blogging for me, and I've enjoyed your comments. Thank you!

Unusual Holiday Lights

The Christmas lights around Oxford seem quite understated after the USA. Back home in Brunswick, Maine people go wild. I’ve seen a dry-docked boat towing a skiing snowman and Santa with all the reindeers on the roof. First prize for original Christmas lights in Maine this year goes to Melissa Walters and Bob Black. Check out their house lights above. That’s the date when the next American president will be sworn into office.

Given that there is no separation between church and state in England, I was not expecting much for Hanukkah. The stores were filled with only Christmas decorations and busy shoppers. Trees were adorned with lights and tasteful white stars hung above the high streets.

Sunday night we had just come from a lovely candle-lit carol service at Magdalen College Chapel when my daughter cried out, “Look a giant outdoor menorah!”

“Where?”

“Right there next to the Christmas Tree.”

At first I thought it had to be Advent candles, but sure enough it was a menorah on Broad Street. The biggest one I’ve ever seen. Add the gothic architecture and it was surreal. My daughter came back the next night to see how it was lit. At 5:00 pm a cherry picker truck hoisted up a rabbi to light the gas lamps. Brilliant!

Hanukkah is usually an understated affair, celebrated in the home by lighting candles for eight nights. Yesterday was the last night. It’s not the most important Jewish holiday but has risen in importance to balance the commercial appeal of Christmas for children.

Growing up in NYC with a Jewish father and an Episcopalian mother, my family celebrated both Christmas and Hanukkah as well as Easter, Passover, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I thought I was pretty lucky and have done the same for my family. Only my children, unlike me, went to Hebrew School for several years. It’s a relief when Hanukkah and Christmas don’t overlap. It makes the balancing act a little easier.

MOOSE CROSSING is about a mixed religion family that moves from NYC to Maine after 9/11. There’s even a scene with a moose menorah. First novels are often very personal. Common advice is to write about what you know. The characters and the plot are fictional, but I do like to draw from experience for setting and subject. S.A.D. also looks at multiple religions. Neither book is particularly religious, but belief and identity are important themes.

Right now I’m busy turning around S.A.D. for my next reader, Kim Slote, who will be reading over her holiday vacation. That’s a good friend! Kim does advocacy for Planned Parenthood in Florida as well as selling natural cosmetics. She’s a mother of two children and coincidentally from a mixed religion family too. I like to test my work on typical readers as well as get feedback from those in my profession.

As I work on plot, I highlight each plot string in a different color. That shows me how the sub plots are proportioned throughout the narrative and in relation to one another. Unweaving the plot helps me address specific criticisms and focus on inconsistencies, redundancies and verbosity. Each plot string needs to be able to stand alone and to weave seamlessly into the whole. It’s rewarding when it all comes together in the end. Still plenty of work to do!

I'm dreaming of a green Christmas....

Savoring Paris

One of the best things about living in England is having the rest of Europe at your doorstep. A long weekend in Paris is easier than popping down to NYC from Maine. The high-speed Eurostar train travels between London and Paris in only 2 1/2 hours. Security and passport control are so fast they recommend arriving only a half an hour ahead of time. After zipping through the Chunnel (the Channel Tunnel,) you just step off the train and are free to go.

We took the commuter rail to our friends’ house in the western suburbs of Paris. Craig Bradley, the former Dean of Students at Bowdoin College, is now working for the Aga Khan. Craig is helping to set up a series of secondary schools in developing countries.


It is Craig’s dream job, especially given his love of France, but we were sad to see his family leave Brunswick, Maine last year. Elizabeth Webb and their daughters were in my playgroup, and even our dogs were close friends. I can’t go to Popham Beach without thinking of our sunset picnics and ocean canoeing adventures, but happily they come back to Maine for the summers.

Their daughters are attending an international school designed for expats and repats. It is public school with a mini private program for different nationalities to maintain the second language. After the transitional year, the girls now take all other classes in French and are getting close to fluent. If they stay long enough, they can get French citizenship and will graduate with an International Baccalaureate.



The price is that the French approach to education is as regimented and conformist as the landscaping. My daughter's friend said she felt like one of those French trees. Individuality among school children or plants is discouraged. Trees are planted symmetrically and cut into even boxes in parks and along streets. Even the forest trails are numbered and drawn in straight lines with little regard to the topography.


Saint Germain-en-Laye, the birthplace of Louis XIV, is a charming town with little shops and an open-air market 4 days a week. Every transaction is conducted in French, which was great practice. That’s Elizabeth in the fromagerie talking cheese. This was something like my seventh visit to France, and I love their appreciation of fine food. On Sundays after noon you are forbidden to mow the lawn in case that might disturb dining.


For lunch we went to Larcher, a delicious creperie that the children adored. Then our family went to Paris on our own. There was an interesting cubism exhibit at the Musée Picasso and a fabulous Giacometti exhibit at the Centre Pompidou. The view of Paris from the outside escalators is worth the price of admission alone. Sadly, it was overcast for most of our visit, but at least it wasn’t raining. Plus at this time of year, there were few crowds.


My son is studying the French revolution and was writing a paper on Marie Antoinette’s abortive escape from execution. We drove 20 minutes to Versailles and history came alive. At this time of year the fountains are off and the statues covered but admission to the gardens is free. We headed to Le Petit Trianon, a “little” palace Marie Antoinette inhabited to avoid the grandeur of the Versailles court. The gardens there were in the English landscaping style, planned just as carefully to appear natural.

We didn't go hungry. In the mornings the girls picked up fresh baked croissants and pain au chocolat from the local boulangerie. On Saturday night we had a delicious meal at Au Pere Lapin. It was French but without the cream and butter and with an Asian influence. From the street we had a great view of the Eiffel Tower all lit up for night. Dinner is served late, at 8:00 pm or later, and lasts for hours. Rush hour in France is 6:00-7:00 pm, and many Parisians take a long lunch break.

On our last day, my son wanted to see the Conciergerie where Marie Antoinette and her family were held before execution. Prisoners were often tortured before going to the guillotine. After that they would go to Napoleon’s Tomb and War Museum. Elizabeth and I decided the ten-year-old girls would prefer to see Monet’s lily paintings at the newly re-opened L’Orangerie.

My husband proposed splitting into two groups: the death party (ou la partie de la mort?) and the lily party. The guys headed off with ghoulish eagerness. Elizabeth’s oldest daughter joined them as even death was better company than listening to little girls sing fake commercials. Talk about torture! It was my daughter’s second visit to Paris, but she was more interested in her long-lost twin. Hard to blame her.

A test of Monet’s skill was that the girls stopped singing long enough to admire the art. As much as these paintings are almost a cliché, it is an incredible experience to stand in the airy oval rooms surrounded on 4 sides by enormous lily canvases. You feel part of the landscape, like standing at a mountain’s summit.


My favorite part of being in Paris is just wandering the streets, the gardens and along the Seine. We walked half the length of the city to a free outdoor sculpture garden on the riverbank near Le Jardin des Plantes. In France you are allowed to touch the sculpture, as one should.

It was hard to say goodbye to our friends but easier to leave Paris in a downpour. We emerged on the other side of the Chunnel in shock: the sun was shining and the skies bright blue. It felt weird to be speaking English again. The time in Paris with old friends brings to mind one of Fredrick’s Fables where a poetic mouse stores memories of summer to get through the long winter. I shall savor the taste of Paris.

The market pumpkins reminded me that it is Halloweeen. We got some candy but will we get trick-or-treaters tonight? Back in Maine there will be a children's parade down Maine Street. It's not a day you can forget. I suspect Thanksgiving will feel odd too.


My kids as Pippy Longstocking and the BFG in our backyard in Maine

P.S. For those of you who are wondering how I could be in 2 places at once, the Times Record editor decided to sign my political endorsement letters Brunswick rather than Oxford. On Friday 11/2 is my letter for Bob Morrison for school board at-large and on 10/11 was my letter for Dugan Slovenski for district 2. Henry and I voted absentee.

The French have amazing turn-outs. Elizabeth asked a neighbor why, and she replied, "we fought so hard for the right to vote." So did we. Don't forget to vote Tuesday!

Shaping a Novel (S.A.D.)

It helps to have two book projects going on simultaneously especially while living abroad. I researched NOT CRICKET while I waited for S.A.D. to come back from my second reader. It was a long wait. There have been a series of wildcat postal strikes in Britain, the worst in 20 years. It made me sad.

The title of my second novel, S.A.D., stands for both School Administrative District and Seasonal Affective Disorder. I have always loved puns. The story came to me when I was caught up in a political campaign for building a new school in Brunswick, Maine. Why not plunder my hard-won knowledge of small town politics for fiction?

There is so much beyond a political activist’s influence in the real world, what a relief to be in control of a novel. Although sometimes I don’t feel like I’m really in control. I create the characters, put them in a setting and watch to see what happens. It’s more like directing than playing God.

An appropriate analogy since S.A.D. puts evangelicals on a school board who want to add Intelligent Design to the science curriculum. A lobsterman and a liberal professor fight back, and my protagonist is caught in the middle of the drama. The superintendent pays the deadly cost.

Like any production, there is a large cast of characters working behind the scenes. Education lawyer George Isaacson corrected my interpretation of the law and found my scenario scarily plausible. I also spoke to teachers, administrators and a former superintendent. A couple of professors, a priest, a fire chief, a lobsterman, a pilot, a detective , and a marine patrolman helped with other plot points. The evangelical ministers didn’t return my calls so I just went to services. Plenty of book/internet research too.

After my husband, the first reader for S.A.D. was Kathy Thorson. Like my protagonist, Kathy is new to the school board and has red hair. The similarities stop there as I created Haley Swan before Kathy even thought of running. Sorry to ruin the fun, but my characters are all fictional. Most of the work is imagination. My novels may be based on research but are spiced up with plenty of romance and drama.

My second reader was author Charlotte Agell (check out her new website.) She encouraged me to enliven the narrative by playing out some of the drama in the classroom and through my teen characters. That has been fun! It broadens the appeal to a Jodi Picoult family drama audience. Charlotte, Kathy and George all live on my street back home. How’s that for a small town?

My third reader will be Abigail Holland in NYC, a former Harper’s editor now home with her kids. She was also the first reader of MOOSE CROSSING and encouraged me to publish it. After she comments, I’ll figure out if S.A.D. is ready to go to my last reader for a proof read.

Then S.A.D. will go to my agent, Jean Naggar, in NYC for her feedback. Other agents at her medium-size firm might advise. Any major changes would be tested on yet another reader. Once the manuscript is ready, my agent draws up a list of editors who have shown interest (think of a dance card at a ball.) An agent works on commission after the sale of the book to a publisher. Readers just get a line on the acknowledgement page and my eternal gratitude. I also read for other writer/readers.

At the publishing houses a manuscript may get several reads with marketing and publicity involved. A committee makes the decision to publish, and more work gets rejected than accepted. An accepted manuscript will be worked on by editors, copy editors, type setters, book jacket designers, marketers and publicists. Even after the editorial revisions are complete, it will be another nine months or so until you see it at the bookstore.

My agent’s assistant, Marika Josephson, made an insightful comment:

I always thought the Bible was so fascinating because so many hands went into the production of it. And you could see it all in each line if your ears were tuned to it. I never realized that a book you pick up off the shelves even these days is exactly the same. The whole entire package has been touched and sculpted by dozens and dozens of hands. I certainly can't look at books the same way again after having worked in publishing!



P.S. I received a comment from Rachel, who just moved to Maine. Talk about characters coming to life – that is the protagonist from MOOSE CROSSING. Welcome to Maine, Rachel!

Horses in the Mist

In the mornings, the mist is often thick over Port Meadow. The herds of horses and cattle come into soft focus as I walk the dog. The sun is low on the horizon, making the most ordinary objects glow. Only in Oxford can swans flying over a river be called ordinary.

The misty landscape is a reflection of my mind as I try to find NOT CRICKET. First there are the characters, shifting in and out of focus and teasing me at the periphery of my vision. Sometimes I think I see them clearly, but other times they fade away.

In my latest version of S.A.D., I decided my protagonist needed a personality makeover and changed her name from Agnes Wolfe to Haley Swan. Time in England is affecting even my American book although Swan is a Maine name. I try to be true to my settings.

The plot is pure fiction. It keeps changing like a folktale passed down through generations. The essential message stays the same, but the story shifts in details and in structure almost organically.

The plot is key to commercial fiction as it drives the narrative. It’s tricky to create a story that keeps the reader turning pages but also resonates on a deeper level. I like to keep the narrative open for as long as possible so as to explore the many paths. A story that doesn’t surprise me won’t surprise you.

As important as thinking is reading. Some books I read for research and others for writing inspiration. I have just finished a most lovely novel, Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses, translated from the Norwegian by Ann Borne. It is not long, and the prose is simple, but it says so much with so little. It breaths between the words.

A coming-of-age story, Out Stealing Horses explores the relationship between a fourteen-year-old son and his enigmatic father. The beautiful, raw setting roots the characters and frames the narrative. It is a small community in the northeastern woods of Norway. The narrator is an older man, looking back on a disturbing and formative summer shortly after WWII. When I finished, it was like saying goodbye to a close friend. I miss his voice.

Another story that relies heavily on setting is Ann Patchett’s new release, Run. It takes place close to home in Boston and Cambridge where I attended university. Patchett is one of my favorite authors, and her last novel, Bel Canto, was too good to match. In her latest novel she looks closely at a family and the effects of race and class. Her characters are so real you feel you know them. Run was helpful for me to read because it is set in winter like my first two novels.


Popham Beach, Maine in December

So many authors set their Maine stories in the summer, possibly because they only vacation there. For year-round residents, Maine is defined by its long winter and unpredictable storms. It is what makes living up north unique and special. Don’t get me wrong, nothing beats a Maine summer, but you feel like you’ve earned it after surviving the winter and appreciate it the more.

As it rains and the leaves turn brown instead of flaming red and gold, Maine feels far away. Still, I have to admit that I may be quite happy to see daffodils in February for a change. When I leave Oxford, I will dream about horses in the mist.

A Wall of Inequity

There once was a wall near my daughter’s school in Oxford. It cut off the council housing (low-income housing project) from its more affluent neighbors. Erected in 1934 by a private developer, two walls transected even the road. Following public protest, the walls were demolished in 1959, twenty-five years later. The inequities persist today.

My daughter was placed in the one school that still had openings. As we bike or walk the mile and a half to her school, we pass kids her age from this district going in the opposite direction like rats fleeing a sinking ship. There are no school buses. No city buses travel our route. We have submitted a petition requesting a transfer to our small village school, a short walk away. We have been waiting weeks for a hearing.

An Oxford academic explained that to revitalize the state schools with dwindling enrollments, all schools were open to anyone given space. Preference is given to geographic catchments. Joining late is a disadvantage.

There was no space at all in the large “high school” for her brother. The other option was a long drive away, and we heard of bullying problems there. My children are British citizens so they were not treated differently for being one-year visitors. We were able to send our son to public (ie private) school, but other families don’t have that option.

I find the lack of equity shocking in a system of national education. My daughter’s primary school includes most of the council housing population. There is widespread swearing among the students, and teachers routinely shout for order. Many children are in foster care and have difficult home situations. A large number of students are special needs.

The average mother/caretaker at school pick up time is smoking and/or wearing high heels and tight clothing with unevenly dyed hair. I consider myself a young mother, but most of the parents look ten years younger than me and have larger families. Quite a few fathers in work-clothes pick up too, even more than in Brunswick, Maine. The parents at our local school appear to be of a totally different class, age and educational level.

I’ve always considered the economically diverse student body in Maine public schools a benefit. Accepting this high degree of segregation in Oxford is not right. It makes the inequities that parents are rightly protesting in Brunswick pale by comparison. Why don’t parents complain here?

Despite the inequities, there are advantages to my daughter’s school that address our situation. Many foreign students live in the catchment area, and it is the school of choice for the few Japanese families. It has students from over 20 nations and is ethnically diverse. The school had a welcoming reception for foreign parents and does much to promote cultural sharing. They even studied the Jewish high holidays, although my daughter was the only Jew in the class.

Due to a strong national curriculum, all children in state school learn the same material. The school’s test results are the same as our neighborhood’s ones and average for the county. This is quite impressive given the high number of ESL students.

It helps that my daughter is not the only foreign student; there is even another American in her class. There’s a child from Georgia (the country, not the state) as well as several other countries. The girls have been very welcoming to her, and she already has had play dates with two friends whose parents are schoolteachers. All the primary schools are small with only one class per year although the class is large with 30 kids.

Math has been a challenge for my daughter mainly because the notation, term names and the system of learning are different. She was marked down for using commas and not setting her long division work into grids. I had to teach her long multiplication, long division and fraction simplification.

Math is taught sequentially in the US starting with addition then subtraction and not progressing until the basics are mastered. Understanding the concept and showing your work is as important as getting the right answer. This used to plague my son in elementary school who does math in his head and has sloppy writing. The Brits are even more upset by poor penmanship. Even math work is done in special handwriting pens.

My daughter has always done well in math and found it discouraging to have a teacher chastising her for not knowing facts that she “should have learned years ago.” The English system introduces all concepts at an early age through memorization so kindergarteners start work on multiplication but won’t understand that it is built from addition. They learn everything at once at an early age.

It appears that Americans do catch up. My son’s “maths” class is repeating material he learned last year in the advanced math class, but the pace here is twice as fast so he will be learning new stuff by mid-year.

Despite all the challenges of adjustment, my children have settled into school and are enjoying the curriculum and their new friends, if missing old friends from home. My daughter is thrilled to have a teacher who encourages creative writing, and the two girls we had over were delightful. All the children at her school have been polite and helpful when they see me. We know little of our son’s new world.

The biggest drawback of not having children in our local schools is not becoming part of the community. It makes me appreciate the wonderful experience of having my children attend a small elementary school near our house in Maine. I too made many friends and became involved in educational advocacy through that stimulation.

Small neighborhood schools can build community and encourage parental participation, but the ideal is often lost in the reality through poor management. Public/state schools should be all about equity and good education. Americans are not alone in struggling with these issues.

Photograph from Oxfordshire County Council Archive.

Build Consensus before a School

Last Thursday an unofficial straw vote rejected building a big consolidated school at the site of the old Brunswick high school. On Friday the local paper ran my op-ed criticizing the leadership on this issue. Today the superintendent resigned.

This is an opportunity to rally community support for a new, smaller school with a K-5 grade configuration as was the original plan. A second straw vote could ask voters to choose between the two options and help the town find consensus. Below is my op-ed which ran in the Times Record 7/27/07:

Brunswick may lose state funding for a new elementary school. This would be a serious setback because the town needs a new school to replace portable classrooms and accommodate all-day kindergarten.

With a lawsuit pending against the State Department of Education and Brunswick residents criticizing the proposed grade configuration, the 750-student school size as well as the proposed site, it would be a grave mistake to ignore the problems.

The original proposal to build a new, small K-5 elementary school to replace Hawthorne School and the mobile classroom units received broad support. Yet when the school size grew beyond 500 students and Superintendent James Ashe proposed a K-2/3-5 grade configuration, a large number of citizens objected.

Additionally, many have complained that there has been too little public involvement and participation in decision-making. In response, the School Board and the school department have asked the public "to trust the process."

How can there be trust when the "public process" has resulted in the same proposal Ashe offered nearly two years ago?

People are as frustrated about the process as the results. Trust needs to be earned not demanded.

Last November Kathy Thorson, running on a platform of small K-5 schools and equity, beat the incumbent, a proponent of trusting "the process." She won the at-large School Board seat by a significant margin in every single district in Brunswick. We have no better indicator of what would happen if a large grade 3-5 school were put to a town vote, the final step in the state-mandated process.

At the April 30 public hearing, an overwhelming majority of citizens spoke against the Educational Specification Committee Report's recommendation for K-2/3-5 configuration and called for more discussion and public input. Without any further deliberation, the School Board on May 9 voted 5-3 to accept the reconfiguration.

In June the Elementary School Building Committee voted to build a 750-student "double school" for grades 3-5 at the site of the old high school. The architects recommended replacing the old structure. In response, 71 residents have filed suit against the State Department of Education. Some object to the need for a new school, others to tearing down the old high school.

Even if these citizens fail to halt new school construction, this suit indicates public dissatisfaction with the new school proposal. Add this suit to a number of critical opinion pieces in The Times Record, to the public hearing testimonies and to the last at-large School Board election, and it would be foolish to conclude that the new school would easily pass a townwide vote.

Those who have voiced dissent in the past have been labeled "a special interest group." There have been claims that "a silent majority" supports a new grade 3-5 school. Yet there has been little evidence of broad public support, and such dismissive comments do not build consensus.

The lack of consensus and a grab bag of objections to a big public project bring to mind the public safety building that was voted down by a townwide vote in 2003. People had a broad range of reasons to object to the plan, but it was an up-or-down vote.

We need a new school just like we need a new public safety building, but the need itself will not be enough to guarantee passage of a project that has consistently ignored the public's concerns.

How do we build consensus?

The first step is opening the process to public input. We have an opportunity on Election Day in November to add a nonbinding ballot question on the new elementary school proposal. The question could ask whether the voter supports the new school proposal, and, if not, to check off the reasons such as grade configuration, school size, site, etc.

The ballot responses could help the town re-examine the new elementary school proposal and make necessary changes to ensure broader public support. Ideally, the school department and the Elementary School Building Committee would have already asked these questions of the public. It is not too late to ask them now.

The danger of plowing ahead without consultation and consensus is that we will forgo a new school and fail to meet the needs of the children. Brunswick has good schools, involved parents, dedicated teachers and staff and many civic-minded citizens. Let us pool our great resources to bring our town together and reach consensus. We have so much to gain and even more to lose. Ground has yet to be broken on the new school.

To read more of my op-eds and political letters search the archives section:opinions and keyword:Sarah Laurence and Sarah W. Laurence. Click on the tag below for more information on small schools.

Wild Blueberries

Every summer Carol and David invite our old playgroup for a potluck supper and blueberry picking. These berries aren’t the high bush variety you buy at the supermarket, but tiny, low bush wild berries that take patience and a strong back to pick. Better yet, send out the kids with buckets just like Blueberries for Sal. The only problem is kids eat more than they pick. Can’t blame them: these sun-warmed gems are the truffles of fruit.



Carol edits the L.L.Bean catalogue and David writes social studies textbooks. They both used to work in publishing. They relocated from Boston to Brunswick for the quality of life. David is a Bowdoin College alum and a vegetarian who grows his own vegetables and blueberries. Deer and sometimes moose come for nibbles as do their friends. Absolutely nothing beats Carol’s blueberry cake. Their daughter is a talented figure skater who even skates in the summer. You’ve got to love winter sports to live this far north.

When we first moved to Brunswick ten years ago, we knew nobody. We had only once gone to Maine for a vacation. I had lived in NYC, London and Cambridge, Mass. and had never thought of living in a small town. My husband had at least grown up in a similar size village, Goring-on-Thames in England, where he was visiting family and sorry to miss the potluck. More like under Thames, given the flooding.


Our first month in Maine, I met a mother with the most amazing name of Story Graves. Our sons were the same age, and she was pregnant while I was carrying a newborn. She invited me to join her playgroup that included women whose husbands either worked or had gone to Bowdoin College. Like me, these mothers were home or working part time and were well educated. We bonded over the challenge of being the primary caretaker to little kids without compromising our feminist roots. Our children became best friends and the families formed close connections that lasted beyond the life of the playgroup.

From that playgroup came a book group, and from that book group came my first novel, Moose Crossing. I was struck seven years ago by how few books were geared towards mothers in book groups. Busy, tired women need books that engage them intellectually but are easy to read and too engrossing to quit. They want characters they can relate to but settings that would feel like an escape. So many of our conversations diverged from the books into discussions about parenting, in-laws, memories of childhood and the challenges of relationships. Why not write a book just about that?

Moose Crossing is a romantic, suspense thriller to keep the reader engaged, but at it’s heart is the story of female friendships, mothering, marriage, family dynamics and balancing career and family. It’s a contrast between urban and small town life and about the choices a woman makes and their consequences. It’s fiction, but it draws from my personal experience of coming to Brunswick as an urban outsider.


It never ceases to amaze me how happy I am living in a remote college town so far north, but what could be finer than a potluck supper with friends on a typical Maine summer day? It’s warm, not hot, and free of humidity. The sun angles low on the horizon, casting a warm glow. Conversation, music and laughter linger, stretching longer than the shadows.

Plot Detective

For the second time in the past year I was in the police interrogation room. It’s in the windowless basement over-illuminated by flickering fluorescents. It amused the detective to be on the receiving end of the interrogation. The crimes never happened; they exist only in my mind and on the written page.

Like a character from one of my novels, Detective Mark Waltz of the Brunswick Police Department is not what you would expect. At Bowdoin College, Mark caught the law bug in Dick Morgan’s class on criminal justice. The summer after his junior year, Mark trained to become a foot patrolman at in his New Hampshire hometown.

Mark graduated from Bowdoin with the aim of joining the FBI, but first he would need three years work experience or a law school degree. Mark chose law school. Upon his graduation, the FBI had a hiring freeze.

To pay off his student loans, Mark joined a law practice in Brunswick. After four years, the police chief enticed Mark to join the Brunswick police force as a detective. The pay and benefits were not that different, and Mark missed police work.

Mark described his career change as “having a midlife crisis at age thirty.” He loves being a small town cop and still practices law (but not criminal law) on the side part time. He enjoys the personal connections on his beat and living in a good community to raise a family.

For Moose Crossing I set up an appointment last fall with Mark to discuss a missing child. I had a working mom dilemma. My nine-year-old daughter was home from school due to a teacher’s workshop, but the subject matter of my research made for the worst “take your daughter to work day.” I most certainly couldn’t leave her at home alone so I dropped her off with my husband to sit through student office hours. She learned about Japanese politics while I learned about the most heinous crimes.

I was relieved to hear that in my town, children have gone missing but never kidnapped. Mark talked me through the procedure of a missing person search. An expert can help me find the many branches from every plot twist.

For S.A.D., my second novel, I called once again. “Mark, I need your help. I found a dead body on page one, and I’m not sure what to do with it.”

Mark walked me through the crime scene and all the possible permutations. I don’t think I’ll use the autopsy detail about re-stuffing the organs into a plastic bag like turkey giblets and then sewing up the body for the funeral. Too much gory detail for women’s fiction!

I’m not writing a murder mystery; still, a novel about educational politics and religious fundamentalism could benefit from some drama. I now know what to do with my dead body, assuming this plot line remains in S.A.D.. Anything can happen in between the first and final drafts. Like a detective, it’s my job to uncover the story.


Popham Beach: a setting for SAD

A Swashbuckling Pilot

I’m no longer alarmed to see men dangling out of helicopters or fighter planes banking. Over the years I’ve gotten used to the drone of jets. I barely glance up when a bomber flies in low over the Old Bath Road to land at the Brunswick Naval Air Station. Since World War II, the base has made Brunswick not only a college town but a navy town as well.

About 20% of Brunswick school children are naval, adding much needed diversity. A disproportionate share of their parents volunteer in the classrooms, help out at library fundraisers or coach sports. You would think a family only there for three years wouldn’t bother, but navy people give more than they get. My daughter’s soccer coach didn’t even have children, yet he volunteered to coach when he wasn’t training the naval bomb dogs.

My husband grew up in a British naval family, enduring long absenses of his father at sea. Later he attended a naval prep school and was a cabin boy on a merchant navy ship. My father-in-law, Tony Laurence, has an engaging memoir out on how British forces quelled a mutiny in Tanzania (then Tanganyika.) Captain Laurence was at that time the signal communications officer in the Royal Navy.

Over the years in Brunswick I’ve been friendly with a number of naval pilot wives. My husband goes off to do research in Japan for weeks and once months at a time, leaving me a single mom. The academic lifestyle before tenure feels almost military since the family has to follow the jobs. I find my naval friends understand the challenges of displacement, separation and reintegration. It’s hard to see your husband go but equally hard to reintegrate him back into your life.

For S.A.D., I’m drawing from these experiences to create my protagonist, a navy wife in a failing marriage. Her husband is having problems since his deployment to Iraq. He’s left active duty for reserve and a new career as a commercial pilot.

To understand my fictional characters, I turned to our friends the Bailey’s. My husband coached their daughter a few years ago, and the girls were reunited last fall on the same soccer team. During practice, Kristi told me about being a navy wife and suggested I ask her husband about being a commercial pilot on reserve.


Scott Bailey is the skipper, meaning he’s in charge of the 120-person reserve squadron at the base. These hardworking men and women have full time jobs in the private sector and come for reserve training during weekends and vacation time. Officially it’s only one weekend a month and two weeks a year (36 days minimum,) but in practice it tends to be 80-120 days a year. One man flies in from Detroit just for the weekend. Locals can put in night hours in the flight simulator after work. Either way, it’s a big time commitment to serve.

Scott gave me a private tour of the reserve unit on Saturday. I spent more than a few anxious minutes worrying about what to wear. Should I dress like the Queen inspecting the troops or for the cold, damp weather? Due to the climate and my limited wardrobe (no white gloves), I settled on a twin-set, pearls and cords.

The squadron leapt up to attention when we entered a room and were intrigued to have an author visitor. One young man in a leather flight jacket asked if there was going to be swashbuckling hero pilot. I replied, “of course.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him the poor guy would be suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

There was a cavernous hanger full of P-3 Orions with torpedoes lined up like luggage. These large planes with their 13-man crew search for submarines and hidden forces. They are even used for anti-drug operations in the Caribbean. In Iraq they scout ahead of the troops for danger in the desert with their state of the art surveillance systems. The planes themselves are not so high-tech but 20-30 years old. The P3’s were originally used to ferry passengers and then to track Soviet subs. I felt like I’d walked onto a movie set from a different era.

It’s an era that is due to end. The base will shut in 2011. Scott’s squadron stopped flying two weeks ago, and the reserve unit will be deactivated in November. There are also three active duty squadrons on the base; there used to be more. As the activity winds down, the air station will still be used for plane repairs and refueling before it shuts.

The Brunswick Local Redevelopment Authority will decide the future use of the base land. Many entities are competing for the space: Bowdoin College, a homeless shelter, the Conservation Commission and more than a dozen other worthy causes. I’m looking forward to finding the moose that lurk in the woods when some of the land is returned to the Town Commons.

The closure of the base will profoundly change the nature of Brunswick. It was part of the reason I wanted to write a novel about the time period. I may be a pacifist, but I have the utmost respect for those who are willing to risk their lives for our country and still funnel their peacetime energy into the community. I’m hoping some of these brave men and women will decide to settle in my town.

Smart Plot Growth

I just had the best day. Early Tuesday morning I swam laps, as I do 2-3 times a week to counter all those hours sitting at the computer, and walked slowly home enjoying the sun. I opened all the windows to the wonderful warm air and produced a NEW chapter after a long, painful week of controlling plot sprawl.

Rambling prose is quite a common problem in a first draft. Many writers can only discover their characters through writing. I need to hear them talk, meet their families and see the world through their eyes before I can decide what is worth sharing. A classic piece of advice I’d heard from a writer-friend: you needed to write that, but I didn’t need to read it.

Before my children came home, I interviewed a school board member/former superintendent for research on S.A.D., my second novel. I like to let my imagination run wild and then take a reality check, adjusting details for verisimilitude. Often I ask my experts to spot-check the section later for mistakes and jargon. It’s odd being active in real educational politics while writing an imaginary version – almost like living out a dream.

I could have gone back to proofing, but it was low 70’s with a cooling sea breeze and everything had started blooming all at once. I took the dog for a walk on the way to get my daughter from girl scouts and lingered in the playground. The girls were playing an inventive mix of baseball, badminton and freeze tag. Even close to 5pm the sun was high above the tall pines. In Maine the flip side of short, dark winters are blissfully long spring/summer days.

On the deck I broke out my library book, Lionel Shriver’s The Post Birthday World. It is written in back to back chapters contrasting what would have happened had the protagonist kissed another man on his birthday or stayed faithful to her life partner. It sounds gimmicky, but it’s very well done. There are amusing twists: when she’s unfaithful, her partner dotes on her, but he almost ignores her when she’s dependable. Her flirtation sparks her creativity, but her work suffers when she leaves her supportive partner. It’s the book that answers what if… in two versions, and it does so artfully.

To top the perfect day, Henry and I decided to try Sweet Leaves Teahouse with the kids for dinner. All three dinner options were delicious (pork roast, gnocchi and scallops) and it was open mike night. I started laughing so hard I thought I’d fall off my chair to Henry’s horror because he thought the singer was trying to be serious.

Afterwards I had to get the name of the woman who sang about menopause, rhyming “my breasts are sagging” with “my energy is flagging,” and “aging” with “hormones raging.” The singer recognized me from my blog and said I was friends with her sister the writer Charlotte Agell. What a small town moment and what a pleasure to meet the talented Anna Agell.

Last night I slept well which doesn’t always happen. Often during creative bursts I wake in the night and scribble plot lines and dialogue on file cards I keep in the bathroom. I can’t help it – the characters wake me with their chatter. Other times I have worried about getting published, but as a writer I keep on writing. I do it because I can’t stop and because every day I look forward to working. It’s a passion as much as an obsession.

Some people ask how I manage to concentrate while working at home or how I find self-discipline without deadlines. I must have attention excessive disorder. I love what I do, even when it is painful, mostly it is pure joy.

Building Values or Buildings?

"Brunswick School Plan Hits a Snag" is today's headline, front page in the Portland Press Herald, the largest newspaper in Maine. The Brunswick Times Record has a similar article: "Elementary Grade Level Regrouping Criticized" as does the weekly Forecaster: "School Reconfiguration Draws Angry Response." Click blue titles for links to articles.

On Monday night April 30th the Brunswick School Board held a televised public hearing on the Educational Specification Report’s recommendation to build a large consolidated intermediate school for grades 3-5. The state will only fund one new building, but the town can pay to renovate the old, small schools as well.

By June 2008 the town must vote through public referendum to accept or to reject the new school due to open in 2010. My children are too old to be affected although they attended one of the old small schools due to shut.

Twenty-eight community members from all 4 elementary school districts testified before a packed room. Almost all criticized the lack of public involvement and information. Most questioned grade reconfiguration and urged the town to build instead a new small K-5 school with state funding, as was originally proposed, or to analyze more options with less bias.

For more information read Size Matters.

Below is my testimony:

The proposal to build a new elementary school in Brunswick with full state funding is a wonderful opportunity for our community to discuss what we value about education and to be involved in the decision making process. This town has a tradition of not only encouraging but also seeking out public opinion and participation. Sadly, compared to other big town projects like the Open Space Plan, the Comprehensive Plan, the Maine Street Station and the land reuse of the Brunswick Naval Air Station, this process has allowed for barely minimal public input.

Tonight is only the second School Department public hearing on the new school proposal in a year and a half. The only forum that openly debated the merits of various options was organized by parents, not by the school department. Building Committee meetings are open to the public, but no time is allotted for public comment. The Educational Specification Report we are discussing tonight is based on single visits to the elementary schools, which were, with one or two exceptions, poorly attended. The lack of public involvement is dangerous because a disenfranchised public might just vote down a new school in frustration when this town desperately needs more space to deal with crowding and new programming.

In order to win public support, we need a new school that reflects our values, yet the Educational Specification Report, despite its title, spent many more pages on building specifications than on educational values. Although many participants voiced support for small K-5 schools, the report concludes that school size and configuration does not matter and what matters is small learning communities. Then the report makes the leap to recommending a K-2/3-5 configuration that would, given our student population, necessitate building a large 800 student intermediate school. This conclusion does not follow from the data if educational philosophy were the driving force instead of building and administrative efficiency.

What are our educational values? For decades this town has had a system of small K-5 schools producing excellent academic results. The original proposal to build a new 350-500 student K-5 school to eliminate decades old portable classrooms created no controversy. By a large majority, the letters and Op-Ed’s in the Times Record were in support of small K-5 schools and equity. The newest member of our school board, Kathy Thorson at-Large won the majority of votes in every single district last November campaigning on a platform of small K-5 schools and equity.

Some people have said that a big consolidated school would solve our equity problems, but buildings don’t solve problems. The visible equity problems between our elementary schools will still exist inside the walls of a big consolidated school, only they will be less obvious to detect. There is concurrence in the academic literature that educational results decline, especially among children at risk, as school size increases. Who will find those lost children in the long halls?

I urge the School Board to vote against grade reconfiguration. Build two small K-5’s within one school building if indeed Longfellow School is too expensive to renovate. We need to start with educational values and design a building to fit our philosophy rather than change our philosophy to fit a building.

Children's Author Cynthia Lord

“It must be something in the water,” Cynthia Lord surmised. Cindy’s first children’s book, Rules, just won a Newbery Honor Medal and the Schneider Family Book Award. We both live on the same street as Charlotte Agell who has published eleven children’s books. I guess I should drink more water.

Rules is fiction, but it rings true. Twelve-year-old Catherine tries to teach her autistic younger brother the rules of life. David has to be told that it’s okay to take his shirt off to swim but not his pants. Catherine creates the words to communicate with her paraplegic friend, Jason, and struggles to get her busy parents to listen to her needs too. The characters have challenges that restrict their lives but don’t define them. They find happiness on their own terms without a miracle cure.

When I read Rules aloud to my children, it made us laugh and almost cry. It was quite an accomplishment to create a book that would appeal to both a nine-year-old girl and a twelve-year-old boy, not to mention their mother. The book was flawlessly well written.

“Most books about autism are so sad,” Cindy said, “but a family has to learn how to laugh or they’re not going to make it.”

CYNTHIA LORD INTERVIEW:

Is there a true story behind your story?

When my son was first diagnosed with autism, I spent forty hours a week on Behavior Modification Treatment because Maine didn’t offer it. The state flew up experts from New York and paid for the student helpers I trained. It was worth it to see my son recover the words he had lost at eighteen months.

Now my fourteen-year-old son attends the junior high for special classes like cooking and art. It’s too noisy there for him to concentrate in such a big school, so he does his schoolwork at home. His seventeen-year-old sister attends the high school.

How did you find the time to write Rules when your son was only five?

I realized I would have to make time for writing or not want it anymore. I set my alarm for 4am and wrote every morning until my family got up at 7am. In four months I finished the first draft and then spent a year revising it with help from readers.

Was the road to publication as short?

The first two publishers rejected Rules but sent the manuscript back with helpful comments. I rewrote it and sent out a query letter and two sample chapters to four more publishers. One rejected it with a form letter, but the other three asked for the complete manuscript.

I loved the Scholastic Book Club as a child, so I granted Scholastic an exclusive read. Then September 11th happened, and everything ground to a halt. After eight months, I finally got a call from the editor saying they would be running some numbers and planned to acquire it. I realized that I needed an agent to negotiate the contract, so I called Tracey Adams in New York. We had met at a conference.

So why did the book not come out until 2006 – almost five years later?

As a first time author, I was put on the slow track. The manuscript went from one over-committed editor to a second one. There were revisions to add more drama. Even when the manuscript was ready, I was bumped off the list by established authors. New authors were the first to be cut when the list had to shrink for financial problems.

How did you deal with the long wait?

It was demoralizing, but I kept writing. Scholastic bought my picture book; it’s waiting for illustration. My second middle reader (grades 4-8) was pending senior editorial approval when Rules won the Newbury Honor Medal. Scholastic immediately made an offer on that book and another one I have yet to write.

What is the next book about?

Halfway Between Hope and Hurricane takes place on an island off the coast of Maine with a protagonist whose mother teaches at the school. I drew from both my own experience as a teacher on Chebeague Island and an historical incident on another island. In the 1960’s Frenchboro Island tried to head off closure of their school by bringing in foster children from the mainland. For me the ethical question is the most important part. Do the means justify the end?

You won’t have to wait too long to find out. Halfway Between Hope and Hurricane is projected for a fall 2008 release. Since the Newbury Honor, Rules has spent 10 weeks on the NYT bestseller list and is in its fourth run. Cynthia Lord is on the fast track!

Mixed Religions & Mud Season

On Monday night I found myself walking home in an April snowstorm. Around my neck was a Star of David and in my raincoat pocket was that Easter egg. It was the first night of Passover. Torn between two religions and trapped in mud season, it can be hard to find my balance.

Barb Swisher throws an Ukranian Easter Egg party every year. You melt wax over a candle and dribble patterns on an egg; then drop the egg in dye. Whatever was waxed stays white. More wax and dye dunks, and colors emerge like dawn. It takes a steady hand, tricky given the free-flowing wine and amusing conversation. In a room full of women my waxy squiggles became sperm. I blame all the estrogen.


Barb is a special ed. teacher and a ski instructor. Her husband is a commercial pilot who knew enough to retire early to bed. Their house reminded me of Cambridge, Massachusetts with its wood stained moldings and doors, bay window, eclectic furniture and a jungle of houseplants. Barb (standing on the right in profile) has a close circle of friends who met through their little kids, who are now soon to be heading off to college.


Maria Padian (second from the left) and Charlotte Agell (left of Barb) both write young adult fiction. Maria’s debut book is coming out next March; it sold in only a month. She writes that well. Charlotte is waiting to hear back from her editor about her twelfth book, and I’m as eager since I was a reader.

Both Maria and Charlotte have read for me too – it helps to have the support. As Charlotte said, “having a manuscript out there is like standing naked, waiting for someone to throw you clothes.” Charlotte illustrates her books, and her egg was as funky, bright and original as her writing.

I had arrived late to the egg party after taking my kids to a Seder at Bowdoin. My nine-year-old daughter sighed with relief when they made only the college freshman rise to recite the four questions of Passover, normally asked by the youngest child. It begins with: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” The answer tells of how Moses led the Jews out of enslavement in Egypt into the desert onto Israel. A Seder is designed for children so that the lessons of the past will never be forgotten.


I like to tell my children that the Last Supper was a Passover Seder and that the Jews and the Christians worship the same God. We celebrate a sampling of the holidays: Passover, Easter, Christmas, Hanukkah, Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. My children attended Hebrew School for several years. At Christmas we go to see their friends perform the First Parish Church's pageant. For Easter Sunday we’re getting together with two Catholic families on Westport Island.

In England we return to Henry’s village church on the Thames. Our son was christened in a Georgian gown passed down through my husband’s Anglican family. My son’s Great Grandfather Eric lived just long enough for the christening. There were tears of happiness in his eyes as he gave his great grandson a silver mug that had been his.

Religion for me is more about tradition and family heritage than it is about belief. My father is Jewish and my mother is Episcopalian. Her mother was a Christian Scientist and her father a Congregationalist.

Raised among so many religions, it seemed only natural for me to take on religious diversity as a theme in my second novel. In S.A.D. (School Administration District) a Maine school board wrestles over adding Creationism/Intelligent Design to the science curriculum. Tangled relationships, gossip and quirky personalities interplay in small town politics. It's a dark comedy featuring a love story between a divorced naval wife and a lobsterman.

For research on S.A.D., I went to church. There are a large number of Catholics in Maine from the early French colonists and the Irish farmers who immigrated during the potato famine. In Brunswick there are two Catholic communities historically divided by the railroad tracks. On the downtown side are the French Catholics at St. John’s.

I attended the Irish Catholic church and was surprised by how casual it was. The choir leader is usually shoeless, and few people dress up. Afterward people hang out for doughnuts and coffee – there were many familiar faces. At this popular church there are three masses on Sunday and one on Saturday evening and on weekday mornings.

I was surprised to find that The Seventh-day Adventist Church was not that different. There were hymns and Bible stories with an uplifting sermon. The pastor was a well-spoken woman, and the pews were full of young families and the elderly. The evangelicals weren’t dancing in the aisle, although there was more talk of salvation and seeing the light.

Researching my novels has been a broadening experience for me. Like the weather, Maine is never what you’d expect.

Horses on Popham Beach last Saturday.

Dog Blog

Henry with Stella 2004

“The dog ate my driver’s license,” I said at Motor Vehicles. I had to show her the half chewed card before she believed me. Then I had to wait for her to stop laughing.

We shouldn’t have gotten Stella in the first place. My husband, Henry, was having heart problems, but the children had already picked a puppy on Cape Cod. I called the breeder to explain. Before I could say anything, she told me we could have our first choice. My daughter hadn’t gotten over losing our first dog the year before, and my son wanted to know if his father would die too.

I agreed to drive into Boston to pick up the puppy, even though Henry was in no shape to travel. My friend Elizabeth drove down with me instead. She was one of the few people who didn’t think I was making a huge mistake, and she was right. We needed that crazy puppy for comic relief.

It wasn’t always funny. Stella ate herself sick on mushrooms and tried to commit suicide by chewing through a safety bottle of Advil. She left tooth marks on my father’s slipper when my parents came up so I could be with Henry in the hospital. My friend Mark Wild and his family offered to look after Stella on those days.

Other friends brought meals or took the kids overnight. When an ambulance arrived at our door, my retired neighbor crossed the street to watch the kids. Al didn’t even call first. Henry was turning blue, but I didn’t panic. I knew the paramedic; he was my friend’s brother, Peter Wild. A small town is special.

On and off through his recovery, I was still working, and Henry needed to rest in a quiet house. One weekend I loaded up the kids and the puppy to drive to Georgetown Island for a painting sale. During the week Stella yipped in her crate when I tried to write. She made me get out and walk in the sunlight and the kids giggle with delight.

My work and that needy puppy kept me sane as the months dragged into two years. I also learned from the experience to include comedy even when writing tragedy. Shakespeare figured that out before me.

For a year now Henry has been healthy. He’s finally on just the right medication with a pacemaker, and the puppy had grown into a somewhat more obedient dog. Still, today Stella brought me a chewed pencil in two parts as if she wanted to help me write. She’s good company even with the trouble.

MA2 Shaun Hogan with MWD Paco, bomb dog 2006

Researching Moose Crossing, I met the world’s most obedient dog. I imagined a scene with a police dog tracking a missing child through the woods, but was my vision accurate? In a classic small town moment, I discovered that my daughter’s soccer coach, Shaun Hogan, commanded the bomb dogs at Brunswick Naval Air Station. He’d trained his partner dog, Paco, to track humans as well and offered to stage a re-enactment from my book at the base. Paco was one of the dogs that sniffed out the 9/11 site before the presidential visit last fall.

Running behind Shaun as Paco tracked the scent, my fiction came to life. The passage is only a couple of pages, but it is true. Shaun, a former elementary school teacher, even checked the language for me. I spoke to a judge, police detectives, computer scientists, cyber-crime experts, missing children organizations, historians and a state wildlife ecologist about moose. It’s fiction, but I still like to get it right.

Sloppy facts and grammatical mistakes irritate me. That doesn’t mean rules can’t be broken. Natural dialogue is not always grammatically correct, and there is always room for poetic license. The trick is to create an imaginary world that sounds both plausible and appealing. The research is fun and takes me out of my office into the real world. Writers need more than dogs for company.

Turning Forty

Popham Beach this past weekend in forty degree weather.

My twelve-year-old son asked, “Mommy, what do you want for your birthday?”

“I don’t really need anything. Maybe a nice card.”

“Could you be more specific?”

“More specific than a card?”

“A card? I thought you said ‘a nice car.’ Some people need a new car to help themselves through a midlife crisis.”

“What?! That’s exactly what I do not need: absolutely no mention of midlife crises. Forty isn’t that old.” We both doubled over in laughter, which was exactly what I did need.

I’m not too happy about turning 40 this month. There’s nothing wrong with my life: great kids, happy marriage, good friends, nice home and I love my work. That’s the key: work. Big birthdays are benchmarks, and my book isn’t in print yet. No “young writer” awards for me, but I have at least written a good book. It just took longer than I had anticipated to reach this point in my profession.

I don’t regret the time I took off from career to raise my young children and to care for my husband during a two-year health crisis. Those were really important times for my family and for me. I grew a lot and gained appreciation for what I have. My writing voice matured through the experiences.

I didn’t even realize I was a writer until I had something to write, and now that I’ve started, I have so much more to say. There are decades to write all the other books in my head, and my kids only get easier and more independent every year. My husband is in good health again too.

I woke the morning I turned 40 with a sense of relief that nothing bad had happened despite my dread, like looking out the window after a storm or down to find my toes for the first time in weeks after giving birth. There's a sense of accepting who I am rather than of being what someone else expects. As a writer, my identity is inside not on the surface. And yet I still feel just a little sad as if I've lost something, despite Henry's poached eggs and our daughter's sweet card.

Why is 40 so hard? I spoke to a good friend who had just done it last year. She’s a successful doctor with two healthy kids and a strong marriage. They live in the most beautiful home, but even she was not satisfied. She wished she had time to pursue her creative side and publish children’s poetry. Knowing her, she probably will, but she hadn’t by 40.

Most women make trade-offs between career and family, and those who do it all are inundated. Then along comes the big birthday. Even with the balls juggled competently in the air, we only see the one ball that dropped and rolled away.

What’s the solution to the doldrums? Another friend, home with her kids, turned 40 last month. Her advice was to celebrate. She had a party for friends and family, was going away to Mexico with her husband and then off for a spa weekend with a girlfriend. I’m not making this any easier on myself by saying I’d rather have a book party.

I am going away with Henry this weekend and met him for lunch on my birthday. I chose Sweet Leaves Teahouse where we had planned to go on that stormy Valentine’s Day. It’s sunny and warm, just like its owner, Jessica Gorton. She moved here from NYC to enjoy the wilderness. The ingredients are local, wholesome and original. Like Frontier, it’s new this past fall to Brunswick and sponsors cultural events. There are open mike nights and jazz Sundays. It cheers me to find that my little northern town is becoming a hip place to settle for the next generation.


Jessica is stepping up a decade this month too, and shared her thoughts on turning thirty: "Most of me doesn't care at all, doesn't really think about age in that way. Part of me is sad about the end of my twenties (which, for all their drama, were a lot of fun). Another part of me is glad to be going into a new decade, and also to be of an age that (in theory) engenders more respect...now I'm an adult, and maybe will be seen as one."

Henry teaches at Bowdoin College so we are always surrounded by younger twenty-somethings. Some come to me to talk about alternative careers. All this free choice and opportunity and instead of feeling overjoyed, they’re overwhelmed. I remember feeling that way too. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life.

As we age, it’s easier to see what it is we want and hopefully to master the skills to achieve it. In our twenties we didn’t know where to start. Then in our thirties the ticking biological clock added complications. By forty we women should be happy and proud of what we have accomplished even if it wasn’t as much as we had dreamed. Isn’t it part of still being young to keep on dreaming and wanting more?


Bailey Island Photo by Catherine Ferdinand

A New Frontier

Spring is in the air if not on the ground. The snow’s melting, the red squirrels are out and birds are singing. Instead of shuffling along a crust of ice, every step is a Stairmaster plunge into knee-deep slush. My retriever bounds like a jackrabbit. She loses a tennis ball every walk, her muzzle white from digging frantically.

Who am I kidding? With but one day left until March, it’s not time to count crocuses this far north. There will be more snow, and then it’s mud season. Real spring with flowers and leaves comes in May. For now the village green is still a skating rink, waiting for June to become the farmer’s market with local produce and vendors selling hot dogs, wraps, ice cream and fresh squeezed lemonade. It’s a long wait until summer.

Brunswick’s sister city is Trinidad, Cuba. Opposites attract. The Cuban celebration is March 2-10. To kick it off, the Elks Lodge is throwing a salsa dance 7-11pm on March 2nd. Bowdoin has a lecture on Havana 7pm at Druckenmiller on March 5th. At the Little Dog Coffee Shop on March 6th, 4-6pm, poet Gary Lawless will read from Cuban Heart to benefit the Trinidad Children’s Library. Eleven restaurants in town will serve a special Cuban dish or drink.

The Frontier Café at Fort Andross will be playing Cuban music while the public is invited to create a mural with Christopher Cart. All week long, Cuban documentaries will air in the theater.

A welcome new addition to our town, the Frontier Café opened only last October. The location is phenomenal: looking out over the Androscoggin River’s hydroelectric dam from the 300-year old mill. It’s a gallery, independent film theater and gourmet café. The expansive space, healthy cuisine and refurbished/reclaimed decoration reminds me of San Francisco, but the view is rough industrial/bucolic Maine.

When the river thaws, the fishing shacks are hauled off the ice, and the wildlife returns in full force. Outside the enormous windows, diners can watch bald eagles sparring with osprey for spawning herring, salmon and Smallmouth bass. On midstream boulders, cormorants spread their wings to dry in the sun. Kids come out to fish, and kayakers paddle the rapids. Traffic streams across the rusty bridge from Brunswick to Topsham.

The 38-year-old owner of Frontier, Gil, is as cool as his business. He used to lead adventure travelers to Russia, China and the Middle East, but the latter route was stymied by 9/11. Returning to the US, Gil and his wife, Chelsy, started up the Frontier without any previous restaurant experience. You would never guess.


Artists and craftsmen, who work in the mill studios, join locals and vacationers for fair trade tea, paninis and organic salads. In the corner hangs a Penobscot Bay Porch Swing. Sarah Bloy sews her cozy, colorful concoctions appropriately enough in the former textile mill. Gil’s buddy, National Geographic photographer David McLain, pins his exotic images to the walls. It’s a unique space that manages to be both here and there.


It’s been almost a decade since I moved to Maine, and in that time it’s been fun to see Brunswick transform into a cultural center with monthly art walks. The winters may be too long, but the summers are perfect and the fall an explosion of color. You don’t have to look far to find interesting material.

My former home is not so far away. This weekend I’m heading south to NYC for a visit. Hope the Manhattan snow’s melted by then!

Size Matters

The whimsical playground at Longfellow School
(due to shut?)


The Walmartization of our nation is bad enough without it spreading to public education as consolidated big-box schools. There are hidden costs to so-called economies of scale. The academic literature over the past decade concurs that small schools work better in terms of academic achievement, attendance, behavior problems, graduation rates, parent involvement and teacher/staff job satisfaction. Small schools are even cost effective.

The students most at risk are hurt more as school size increases. They are lost in the cavernous halls and in the tunnels of bureaucracy. The achievement gap between the well off and the lower income/minorities only increases and is harder to track. There has also been a large rise in attention deficit disorders and autism, and these students cannot bear commotion and distraction. Children at risk are the canaries in the coalmine, and what is dangerous for them is challenging for most children.

As the rest of the nation struggles to break down large schools into smaller units, Maine marches in the opposite direction. Small towns mean small schools, and some can be too costly to run for cash-strapped communities. There is, however, a huge difference between consolidating 80 student rural schools to the ideal 350-500 student size and consolidating ideal size schools into a 800 student school as my town of Brunswick is contemplating. The damage can be mitigated by building two schools-within-a-school, but why go there at all?

Brunswick does need a new school to deal with crowding and has a long-standing problem of inequity. All four K-5 elementary schools are old, cramped and have systems in need of updating. The two newer schools have been housing students in “temporary” mobile units for decades. The kindergarteners have to put on coats to use the bathroom. A teacher fell through the floor one year. Add to that, the two older schools are not adequately accessible for the handicapped and lack space for new special programming and even a cafeteria. Worst of all, the districting among the schools is not equal in terms of income or special needs.

Despite these problems, Brunswick still produces excellent academic results on a tight budget. Much of that credit is due to dedicated staff, teachers and parent volunteers, but a small learning community facilitates this dynamic. The principal at my daughter’s school knows the name of every student. Classrooms team up for multi-age mentoring, and teachers stay connected with their students throughout the formative K-5 years. Many parents and even neighbors volunteer. It is a warm and cozy place for a child. The good spirit spills outside school walls into the neighborhood, engendering a special feeling of community.



So why not just build a new small K-5 school to deal with crowding and make the old schools accessible? Equity issues between the schools could be dealt through informed redistricting. The problem is that the state will only pay for new construction; hence the pressure is on the town to build a big new school and shut the two oldest schools (pictured) despite their lovely old architecture and valued place in the community.



A shiny, new mega-school may prove to be a Trojan horse should educational quality decline. It hurts not only the children but the entire community. A remote, poor state like Maine needs to attract professionals and equip the next generation for the future, and for that good schools are key. In addition to building a new school with state funds, it might be worth renovating or adding onto existing structures to maintain a system of small schools. Investing local dollars in quality education will pay off in the long run.

It’s the school board’s responsibility to start with clear educational goals and insist that the building be designed to facilitate programming instead of fitting the programming into the building. The architects are artists and technicians but not policy makers nor experts in education. Without guidance from the building committee, the design may limit the programming options. If the town wants small K-5 schools, then the architects need to start figuring out the most cost-effective way to make this happen. Policy must precede blueprints.

The public should be invited to participate throughout the process well before the town votes to accept or to reject the new school. The school building committee needs to launch a public information campaign with all the facts and figures. It’s hard to trust a process that almost appears to be happening behind closed doors. Where’s the time for public comment? Transparency allows for informed decision-making and better public policy. Whatever the outcome, it must reflect the will of the people through true civic discourse.

Good Beginnings

I met my last reader, Mary Sreden, for lunch at Renaissance Bistro in Brunswick. Across from the old mill on the Androscoggin River, the tiny restaurant is a crimson gem of local art and ingredients. I have to admit I enjoyed the atmosphere more than the food, but that was only because the mint dressing was too oily on my duck salad. My starter, an apple-pear-squash soup, was very good. It was cozy and warm, which was a relief since the morning’s minus five was still below plus five at noon. The bright sun helped, but the stiff breeze did not.

Mary is a nurse who grew up in the Midwest and attended state university. Last June she left her four children with her husband and joined a male crew to deliver a sailboat across the Atlantic. She was the cook and nurse but had no previous sailing experience aside from day tripping. The seas were rough, and she came home bruised yet loved it. I figured she could tackle the novel experience of reading critically, especially since she’s a voracious consumer of women’s fiction. I had noted and admired her ability to speak her mind but with tact and sensitivity.

If you don’t count my family and my literary agency, I’ve had six readers. These women have read drafts of Moose Crossing and offered invaluable commentary. Half of my readers were writer/editor friends, but the others were typical readers of my genre, commercial women’s fiction. Half were local and the others “from away,” as we say in Maine.

When I asked Mary to read, I had just added a prologue and cut over 30 slow pages from my opening. The problem was I had the 101 other versions in my head. I needed fresh eyes to find the flaws and the vestigial traces of old plot.

Mary found an irritating dialogue and one embarrassingly corny line, but she enjoyed the rest. She mentioned several scenes that were either funny or emotionally resonant. The characters felt real to her. Most reassuringly, she was totally hooked on the new prologue and eager to read beyond the opening chapters.

I often find what a reader doesn’t say is as important as what she does say. If she doesn’t mention a scene, perhaps it is too slow and could be cut. The trick is to preserve what is working and prune out the rest, no matter how hard you worked on it. This is no more crucial than in the opening chapters of a novel.

I love the first title in the Lemony Snicket series: The Bad Beginning. Openings are so challenging partly because you write them before you truly know where you’re going. You need to grab the reader’s attention in those first few pages or you’re lost.

Just remember your last trip to a bookstore. How far did you read? I spent a morning at Bookland reading first pages before I tackled my new beginning. Search inside Jodi Picoult’s novels for the catchy first sentence.

Even with a punchy prologue, the job isn’t over. You must move the narrative along while introducing characters and setting while weaving in back story. Good writing takes not only talent, it takes the ability to absorb criticism and use it constructively.

More Trees than People

“We’re driving,” I said to my twelve -year-old son. No, the Subaru had not arisen from its grave. We also have an aging Volvo. Actually, the Subaru is not dead yet. The crash looked far worse than it was, and it certainly gave my husband a bad scare. At least the kids weren’t in the car.

“It’s only 7:00, I want to walk to the bus stop,” my son replied. It wasn’t that he was traumatized by the recent accident. “I want fresh air before school.”

“Fresh air? It’s 10 degrees out. Why don’t you go stand in the freezer instead. It’d be warmer.” I’m not exactly a morning person.

“Mom, 10 degrees is warm for Maine in January.” He’s not wrong about that.

Just like last year, it has been a warm winter, and you can’t help but feel worried about global warming. There are people out there who would drive to a bus stop to save themselves a 10 minute walk. I bundled up like Nanook of the North and followed my son out the door on foot.

The snow that came late in mid January was a welcome relief. Skiing keeps me from feeling low. It’s not just winter blues. Every time I come back to Maine from NYC, I experience reverse culture shock.

Before moving to Maine, I had never lived in a place where the trees outnumbered the people. Nine years later I have acclimated and love raising my family here, but I still feel out of sorts immediately after a trip to NYC. It’s so quiet and remote.

The solitude is good because it’s what I need to write. In the woods I ski alone with my dog and my thoughts. I come home to a house that is a mirror of my life. The backyard is old growth forest, but the front yard has a sidewalk heading into town.

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