Write Early, Write Often…Write Something!

Teresa Fannin, reader, writer, gardener, chocolate fan & tea drinker

Category: Writing The Past (Page 5 of 5)

hyperbole

04/23/2013 /

Hyperbole. A dictionary defines hyperbole as exaggerated statements, not meant to be taken literally. When I was in school, hyperbole meant we understood that the stories in the bible were to show the awesomeness of God. We read books like Werner Keller’s book, The Bible As History,  an academic study, not a quick read, but interesting. So, did the Red Sea really part for the fleeing Israelites? Probably not. More likely the water level was very low, the Israelites were able to ford the sea and the Egyptian charioteers’ wheels stuck in the muddy sea floor. A bit of hyperbole to get across the point of God saving the people of Israel, history written in supposedly simple stories.

Today, the news is being written large, in a 24/7, five-hundred channel world, where the rush to name events comes in at the penultimate level. The news channels create logos for each of the big events that catalyze us with a common bond, a bond that lasts as long as the headline remains the top story. Did this start with September 11, 2001? Has this evolved as the way to deal with events in the twenty-first century?  You have to wonder at the low-key ‘Troubles’ in Ireland, Na Trioblóidí, in Irish, certainly a violent conflict. Now, ‘Troubles’ seems so calm.

We have been jolted, pierced and bombarded with news. It’s almost too much to bear. And there seems to be no end to it. It’s still news, but we treat it like history. I wonder if there will ever be a book, The Media as History?  A book about events labeled at their most extreme; it is a crisis, a tragedy, a catastrophe, a calamity. And we precede those labels with adjectives; worst, appalling, horrid, ramping up the tension and the stress. Does this create something in the brain, blindsiding us from a sober look at the events, inhibiting an intelligent discussion of the causes and the effects, limiting our reasoning ability?

“Memory is tyrannical,” is a quote by Professor Rosenstock-Huessy. My BA thesis was on Jacob Christoph Burckhardt, a Swiss Professor of History, lousy historian, great philosopher of history and I came across the Rosenstock-Huessy quote in my research. If you study history, you know you get history after memory, when we’ve moved past the personally known, past the individual point of view. Yes, memory is tyrannical, but so is the media today.

Margaret

04/08/2013 /

Margaret, as in Thatcher, or, the Iron Lady, or, the last conservative Prime Minister of England. But still, Margaret. A grocer’s daughter, a university educated, mother of twins, because they said, leave it to Margaret, how efficient to have two at the same time!

When women were burning bras, there was Margaret. When women were marching for equal rights, there was Margaret. When women were listening to Gloria Steinem, there was Margaret. Margaret in university. Margaret standing for election. Margaret working her way up the political ladder. Margaret changing the face of the UK. While women were protesting for more equality, Margaret just strode into the room smiled, and grabbed it, moving on. And, always looking like a lady, suit or dress and jacket, hat on her head and nylons and heels. Well, it was the eighties.

I don’t have women role models. Personally I think role models are a bunch of nonsense. You’re asking someone to be ‘on’, the best they can be all the time. Not possible. TV and movies have ruined it for most. They take what people do on the screen as real. Well, hell, I’d have better statements and thoughts and career moves if someone was setting up the dialogue, planning the scenes and stabilizing the plot. But no! It just doesn’t work that way.

Margaret Thatcher was a hero. So was Marion Kellogg, the first woman vice president at General Electric, in Human Resources. I have others. And for all of them, they didn’t make a scene, they didn’t flail against the current, the established order. The niggled their way inside it, they stood tall, they walked tall and they conquered.

So. Rest in Peace. Here’s to you, Margaret!

 

 

search

03/26/2013 /

Search and re-search. Or is it research? I’m working on a non-fiction project. It’s taken me years to get to it. No, literally years. Not because I was so busy, but because I had no idea how to write it, what was important, why I wanted it to be out there, other than the fact that it has stayed with me for years. I was first interested in the subject in 1961, so yes, really, years, a bunch of them.

I’ve diddled around the edges. Been interested and then forgot. When the subject came up I read. But I did not seek out information. I didn’t search or re-search or research. But then, out at SCBWI LA a couple of years back, I attended a bunch of the sessions on non-fiction. It was enlightening and exciting and I felt really really dumb. I couldn’t figure out what I knew that would be interesting in non-fiction.

I have a BA in History. I love history. When I was in fifth grade I told my parents that was what I would study in college. My problem was that history was fascinating, but the tests weren’t and so the grades didn’t really match up to the appeal of the subject. When I graduated from Pepperdine with a MBA, my Dad questioned me, I was so good at the business side, why didn’t I get my undergrad in business. Well, I thought college was supposed to be a time of exploring, thinking, learning what ever came my way. History gave me that. I could study anything, literature, science, math, business, and it was all legit. Everything has a history, right?

But the bottom line was I had veered from that path far into Fortune 500 companies. Seriously? What kid would want to know about those? So when pressed about writing a non-fiction, I was baffled. I thought I knew nothing. Both  Melissa Stewart and Alexis O’Neill told me to figure it out. And they were right. And, all the time it was right on the wall in front of my desk.

And the searching, which is just the looking for stuff, has to come before the re-searching, which is looking more closely at the stuff,  and researching, which is an orderly looking at the stuff that’s important. First I read about the part that had made me fascinated so many years ago. Then I read the really really dry academic part. Then I re-searched.

And, I’m finding that all those skills, talents and joy that I found in the fifth grade, that made me curious but not academic, are coming back. It’s really all in the search!

 

swallows

03/19/2013 /

March 19. The feast of Saint Joseph, husband of Mary, father, well, of sorts, of Jesus. In my family we always said this was Dad’s feast day, for St. Joseph the Worker. Not that there wasn’t a Saint James, but there are a bunch of them and who knew which James Dad was named for. So Mom called it. March 19.

Raised in California we always knew this was the day the swallows returned to Mission San Juan Capistrano. A beautiful mission, the oldest in building in California still in use, since 1782, we never went on St. Joseph’s Day. It was full of tourists and gawkers. We went on an off day, not even a Sunday, to Mass in the coolness of the mission. All the missions were cold. You went in the middle of summer, you brought a jacket. The deep and wide walls created a stillness and a chill, and you welcomed it when it was ninety-five degrees outside.

It’s very fitting that Pope Francis chooses March 19 for his installation as St. Joseph was declared  the patron saint and protector of the Universal Church by Pius IX. It’s also the day the swallows come to San Juan Capistrano. Swallows, a favorite bird of St. Francis of Assisi. It is considered the ‘miracle’ as they return each year at the same time, to nest, to spend the summer growing as a flock and then to leave on the October 23.

March 19. A feast day.

 

conclave

03/12/2013 /

Conclave. To replace a Pope! The Catholic Church in Rome. The Cardinals, the Princes of the Church. Conclave. A particularly Catholic thing. Not for the whole two millennium, but for a good portion of the recent times. I like that they go in and can’t come out until they’ve done their job. But, it’s crazy what some want from a new Pope. What they want the Catholic Church to be: women priests, married priests, accepting of gay marriage. Catholic Lite some call it. Cafeteria Catholic others say. Others want the church to be more Catholic and they say that with a capital C, not a small one. [Personally, I love that, catholic with a small c] And. It reminds me of the Second Vatican Council, John 23 and the ‘throw open the windows’ stuff. Fifty years ago. We stopped wearing hats to church, we stood around the altar while the priest was consecrating the hosts. We received the Body of Christ in our hand.

Did you ever read  Fyodor Dostoyevsky and The Brothers Karamazov? I studied Russian through high school and college.  Latin and then Russian. Catholic school, yeah, I know! Senior year at Alemany, I read all the great Russian authors. But the brothers stuck with me. It was all about faith and God, free will, ethics, morality. But what stuck with me was the chapter, The Grand Inquisitor, well, it’s really more of a parable, a story inside the greater story. 

The Grand Inquisition. Spain. Not the best of times for the Catholic Church. So, here’s the scene. Seville. Torquemada. Tomás, a Dominican monk who is in charge of who is faithful and who is a heretic. He finds Jesus traipsing through town, preaching love and God, performing miracles. And the people recognize Him and are prepared to adore Him. So, Tomás has Jesus brought in. Jesus says, “Do you know who I am?” And Tomás says, “Yes.” “So,” Jesus says, “Let me be about my work.” And Tomás says, “No. You’ve been gone for fourteen hundred years. You left. You think you can just waltz back in here and preach and perform miracles and it will be okay? You left this church to us. So. No. You need to leave.” Well, it’s really said a lot better by Fyodor, and longer, much longer.

I know this wonderful priest, who is like an uncle to me. Congregation of the Holy Cross? Notre Dame? “Go Irish?” I rarely see him now. He officiated our wedding. He baptized my children, my nieces, my nephew. I read Fyodor, I talked to O’Connor. I watched the changes in the liturgy and I love the liturgy of the Catholic Church. I miss high mass. I love the Sacred Tritium of Easter. I was worried. Then. And, now. But I remember what O’Connor said,  ‘never judge the church by the churchmen.’ That was Tomás’s problem.

 

 

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