Annette Gendler

Banner Update

2013-05-22T11:59:00.000-05:00

It's time to switch out that blog banner again! I've discovered I am pretty consistent about doing this every six months; my last update was December 7.

So here's what's new this time around:

The photo of me in the bright red wig is from a Purim (Jewish carnival) celebration at the office. Thanks to taking Susannah Conway's Unraveling class earlier this year, I discovered my funny side, or rather recognized it in myself. While my family contends that I don't have a great sense of humor because I don't get most jokes (and they are right about that, I don't), I can be rather silly. In fact, the jokes that I do get are the silly ones. For Purim I always dress up, even if it's just wearing a crazy wig. So this photo is here to remind me of my silly side, at least for a while.

This barn shot is a favorite vista on the way to our property in northwestern Indiana, and one time back in March I actually stopped the car and took some photographs. I love that this barn stands there on its own, slightly weathered, and beyond it you have the wide open expanse of the farm land.

This cityscape is a shot of Wabash Avenue in the Loop (=downtown Chicago), taken during the "blue hour," just before dusk settles in and the windows of downtown skyscrapers like the Trump Tower in the background turn blue. I love how this shot marries old and new with the ornate domed pavilions atop the Jewelers Building to the left of the sleek new Trump Tower.

These are the two landscapes of my life - the density of the city and the serenity of the countryside. Welcome to my world!

On Having a Friend Visit

2013-05-20T06:30:00.000-05:00

Scan of an old University of Chicago
postcard - to me it epitomizes
friendship

One of my very best and oldest friends (in the sense that we have been friends for decades) is arriving for an extended visit today, and I am beyond excited! Soon I am rushing off to the airport to pick her up.

As I have been anticipating her visit, straightening out the apartment, helping my husband clear his office which is also our guest room, getting work off my plate, and planning outings and a little side trip, I realized what a great privilege it is to have a friend visit. I mean really travel, in her case across an ocean, just to visit me and my family.

When I saw another friend recently at my former online writers' group conference, he thanked me again for having visited him and his wife two years prior. I was a bit puzzled by this. Wasn't I the one who had to thank him, because they had hosted me, showed me around, spoiled me? Of course, yes, but I am now realizing that it is also a great gift if a friend comes to visit, takes time out of his or her life, just to be with you, to see how you live, and what your life is like. It is a true act of friendship.

On that note, an interesting op-ed on friendship appeared in the Wall Street Journal this past weekend: Aristotle Wouldn't Friend you on Facebook. Basically, the author argues that the friendships of millennials like herself are less personal than those of her parents and grandparents: "Why visit a person, write a letter, deliver a card, or even pick up the phone when we can simply click a 'like' button?" She's bemoaning this, and I have to say I agree. I cringe at the fact that I had to find out about a good friend's mother dying via a cryptic Facebook post, and I consider myself fortunate to still have plenty of friendships that are personal. In which, for instance, a friend comes to visit.

A Salute to Joyce Brothers

2013-05-14T08:58:00.001-05:00

When I saw the news on my Chicago Tribune homepage last night that Joyce Brothers had died, my heart sank. I never met her, never had an exchange with her, and yet she helped me a great deal. She showed me the way, and she helped me sort out my head at a time when I was struggling. If I am ever asked what the five most important books of my life are, her book The Successful Woman would be on that list.

One day in 1990, when I had finished graduate school and was searching for my first job in the U.S., I was wandering about the Chicago Public Library's main building downtown, utterly stressed out and distraught about how I would manage to have a career and a family. And there, on one of the display shelves, I spotted the title The Successful Woman - How you can have a career, a husband and a family - and not feel guilty about it, published in 1988. It was just want I needed.

In The Successful Woman, Joyce Brothers shares how she and many other prominent women managed to be happily married, have a child, and a high-flying career. It presents many lessons learned, practical advice, psychological insights, trade offs and regrets - her main regret? That she felt having a career meant she could only have one child.

In my family, I was going to be the first woman to work full-time and have a family. My German grandmother was educated and worked as a teacher, but once she was married, she only worked during the war and post-war years when she had to. It hadn't been a choice. My American grandmother married young and was an excellent housewife. My mother was proud of the fact that she did not "have to work" once she was married, and she only embarked on reinventing herself as an opera singer once we children were about to leave the house. (She was thus a great role model when I reinvented myself as a writer in mid life.)

At the time I happened upon Joyce Brothers' book, I was still fairly new to the U.S. All my friends were fellow graduate students; I didn't yet have older friends to advise me like I have now. So Joyce Brothers, in her practical way, became my role model. This book, with its many examples of successful dual-career marriages, became a road map.

One example of a lesson I picked up from her: marital trade offs. When you go on a trip by yourself (be it business or pleasure), and your husband minds the home front, then you owe him one. And vice versa. One of her other marital insights (I'm not sure if it's from this book or another): Marriage is the salt of daily life - if it's right, it makes everything so much better, but if it's not (i.e. too much or too little), it spoils it. Thankfully, it's been right for me. My husband and I are going to have our 25th wedding anniversary in June.

So thank you, Joyce Brothers. You showed me my life was possible when I doubted it the most.

A Little Album of Love

2013-05-13T06:30:00.000-05:00

with my parents at age one

As part of my "Create" motto for this year, I've been reading Julia Cameron's Walking in this World: The Practical Art of Creatively, and I have found her books on creativity most inspiring (more on that some other time). A passage I read this weekend inspired me to just do a simple creative project that had been sitting around for a long time: Finally putting the black and white paper photos I have of my first year of life into the little Italian-paper-bound album I had bought for them.

The passage read, "The creative journey is characterized not by a muzzy and hazy retreat from reality but by the continual sorting and reordering and structuring of reality into new forms and new relationships." (Julia Cameron, Walking in this World, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2002, p. 137)

What better way to "sort, reorder and structure reality" than to organize a photo album? Thankfully, this one was going to be small enough (it took me about two hours to complete) since my dad took mainly slides, and so the number of actual prints is limited to those he sent to his parents in Germany (my parents lived in New Jersey when I was born) or to later photos, such as the one above, that my grandfather took when we moved to Germany when I was a year old.

As I glued in the photos and, in particular, when I came across two poems on yellowed onion skin that my grandfather had written for me, I was struck by the realization how fortunate I have been to have always had so much love in my life, and that that love was expressed and preserved in such tangible ways that I can touch it again, so many years later, when both my father and grandfather have been dead many years. I also realized, as I tucked those poems into photo corners so they could be taken out again and fingered and read, that I was creating a little birthday present for myself. My birthday comes later this month, and this album is more than an ordered piece of reality, it's a neat little package of love.

So here's to little tangible creative projects!

Patience, A Writer Must Have

2013-05-06T06:00:00.000-05:00

Patience, the trees seem to say, we're not ready to be green yet.

My kids have been into Yoda lately, thus my inverted title, but I really feel that Yoda's wording is appropriate for this mantra a writer must tell herself over and over: "Patience, you must have."

Last Wednesday I finished an essay, or rather I got it to what I think is close to its final form. I read it out loud to myself, one of my editing rituals when a piece is in one of its later incarnations. I ran Word searches for my writing foibles - starting too many sentences with "And..." or overusing "a bit." I edited some more. And then I felt this eagerness to submit it wash over me, especially because my Outlook calendar was reminding me of several submission deadlines in early May. Oh, it was so tempting to say, "It's done, and I'm sending it out!"

But no, I reigned myself in. I know that every piece needs at least one final look over from another pair of eyes, usually my daughter's, who is an astute editor (She's been especially keen on picking out all my non-parallel constructions.) This particular piece had been hard to put together as it is an excerpt from my memoir manuscript that I'm trying to rewrite into a standalone piece, and for that to work, I really need someone else to look at it, even after the umpteenth revision. So I sent it off to my writers' group and am patiently (!) awaiting their feedback. Hopefully, hopefully, they will tell me it's good, it's done, and they will have only minor editing suggestions.

However, once I do submit this essay, more patience will be required as weeks, if not months, will go by before anybody responds, let alone wants to publish it. So, patience is definitely the name of the game as a writer.

On Getting to Know a Place

2013-05-02T06:30:00.000-05:00

We bought our property in northwest Indiana almost five years ago, and getting to know this one place on Earth, exploring it over and over again, has been one of the joys I have discovered since I've seriously taken up photography thanks to this blog. I have, for example, become a bit obsessed with the reflection of bare trees in water, and I loved how this crate, which my husband has floating in the pond for some fish to lay their eggs under, disturbs the reverie of the trees.

Every time we are out there, I don my camera, and each time I ask myself, "What new thing could I possibly discover?" Especially if I've just been out walking a week earlier? Of course, I invariably happen upon something I hadn't noticed before, like this clean-picked skeleton of a deer.

This spot of moss is the only real green I saw on my walk the other day.

Even though we had temperatures in the 80s F this week, the forest was still grey and dead, only the warm air and white blossoms like these assured me that spring must be on its way. The forest shall reawaken at some point!

See? A spray of white in the forest - no green yet.

Mainly, it's still the rustle of dead leaves in the (now rather warm) wind.

One aspect of early spring that I love is the glacial green of the water in the pond - no algae yet, and thus no dark green and blue. That will come in summer.

Spring Fatigue

2013-04-30T06:30:00.000-05:00

Dogwood right in front of my cabin on the banks of the Potomac
at the writers' conference I attended the week before last

Even though the trees are finally budding here in Chicago, where spring has been especially late this year, I am feeling incredibly tired these days. As if I were suffering from permanent jet lag. Or perhaps this is because of spring? As I was moping about the apartment today, I remembered that the Germans speak of "Frühjahrsmüdigkeit" - literally translated this means "spring fatigue." Perhaps I am suffering from that?

I was super tired all last week but I blamed that on being exhausted from my previous week of travel and several late nights of hanging out with my cabin mate. But maybe it's simply spring? All that bright light all of a sudden? I shall find out soon because I'm also going to have a blood test, just to make sure my thyroid isn't acting up (I do have some issues there), or my iron is low (another issue). In the meantime, I'm sleeping, napping, and keeping up with life very slowly, which is not my usual modus operandi.

It's OK to Lie in Memoir

2013-04-24T06:30:00.000-05:00

If memoir is the genre of truth, how could it possibly be acceptable to lie? Wasn’t James Frey fried because he lied? And yet, I venture to say that it is indeed OK to lie in memoir.

My series on memoir in the Washington Independent Review of Books continues; click here to read the essay. And let me know your thoughts!

Returning from "Writing Camp"

2013-04-23T07:26:00.001-05:00

Now I know how my kids feel when they come home from summer camp because that's how I'm feeling having returned home from what my kids call "writing camp:" exhausted, tired, exhilarated, full of good memories, glowing with the warmth of good friendships, and slightly disoriented.

I had once again the good fortune of attending the Writers & Critters Conference, a gathering of my former online writers group that my good friend Joyce Finn has been managing with great success for many, many years. Thanks to Joyce's formidable event planning skills, current and former members gather every 18 months at Algonkian Regional Park on the banks of the Potomac River in northern Virginia to enjoy two days of presentations on all things writing. But what we really come for are a few days of hanging out with old friends and making new ones. The conversations that spring up at our fabulous communal meals are priceless and easy, even if we are all introverts. After all, we have something immediate to talk about - writing and creativity. And then, of course, there are those great girlfriend conversations back at our cabins that continue into the wee hours of the morning. (Hence my fatigue...)

So, currently my head feels like that gnarl of trees that I photographed along one of the hiking trails at Algonkian - tangled and yet sprouting with new things. Once I've had a good night's sleep, have eased back into the obligations of family life, and have sorted my head, there shall be more blog posts with hopefully more substance to them.

Serenity at Mount Vernon

2013-04-19T07:31:00.000-05:00

This photo of the kitchen garden at Mount Vernon captures the serene and peaceful week I am having amidst my friends at the conference my former writing group puts on every year and a half on the banks of the Potomac, not too far from Washington, DC. I took this photo on Wednesday, when a friend and I made the one hour drive to do a touristy thing and visit President George Washington estate. Contrary to the still rather gray outdoors in Chicago, spring was well under foot at Mount Vernon, and I will share a photo essay of that trip. But for now, I shall enjoy another day of talking about writing.

Touring the Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District of Oak Park

2013-04-15T06:00:00.000-05:00

Urns in garden wall of Moore-Dugal Residence, built in 1895 by
Frank Lloyd Wright

Once in a while, it's fun to play tourist in your own town. While my kids are familiar with Frank Lloyd Wright's famous Robie House because it is right in our neighborhood, they had not been to the Chicago suburb of Oak Park where Frank Lloyd Wright lived for many years and began his career as an independent architect. So, on a brilliant day over spring break, we drove out there and explored.

We began with a guided tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio in Oak Park. Built in 1889, Frank Lloyd Wright moved out there with his wife Catherine when the area was still mainly prairie. Wright constantly tinkered with the house, adding space for his growing family, experimenting with new concepts, and eventually adding an entire office wing for his growing business. This picture is a scanned postcard (I didn't feel like paying extra to be allowed to take photos inside) of the dining room, which Wright expanded by adding the half-octagon of windows. I especially loved the skylight-type fixture above the dining room table - you can see architect and designer Louis Sullivan's influence in its lacy design; Wright worked for the Adler and Sullivan's firm when he first started out in Chicago. Of course all the furniture is designed by Wright. Most of it is, in my opinion, rather uncomfortable...

My son's favorite room in the Frank Lloyd Wright home - the children's playroom (again, a scanned postcard). It is really the home's most beautiful room, light and airy, on the second floor looking out into the trees. Everything is geared towards children - the windows, for example are at a child's eye level, the window seats house drawers for toys, and at the back of this picture, behind us looking at it this way, is a walk-up stage where the six Wright children performed puppet shows.

The Moore-Dugal residence, one block from Wright's own home, was his first independent commission and completed in 1895. Wright rebuilt it after a fire in 1923. With its exaggerated steep gables, timber work and churchy windows, I feel the house has something forbidding about it, as if it were an overgrown witch's hut. The garden wall along the sidewalk features the urns from my lead picture.

See what I mean by "churchy" windows? All this gothic detail is the eastern window front.

Here then, across the street, in the Arthur B. Heurtley House from 1902, is the prairie style for which we know Frank Lloyd Wright. Gone are the gables and the house lies low, on a concrete slab, without a basement, hugging the flat landscape.

Oh what a harmonious arrangement of shapes! The more I look at my close-up here of the Heurtley House, the more shapes I discover - the arch of the doorway, the curve of the urns, the triangle of the garden wall, the clean horizontal lines of the brick, and the row of the vertical window rectangles. And then the window panes themselves are broken up into smaller rectangles. This house made my daughter fall for prairie style, and she kept wondering what it would be like to live in a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Aside from being annoying with nosy tourists like us mulling about, but as she pointed out, they are built for maximum privacy.

A bit farther down the same street, another, later example of Prairie style, the Peter A. Beachy House from 1906. Here already the plainer bricks and the concrete slab the house rests on seem to blend into the still gray flatness of the ground.

Here is the front of the Frank Thomas House, farther along the same street. Good privacy, of course, as the windows are so high up you can't peek in. I love how that fuzzy yellow on the branches looks like they are blossoming, when in fact it's dead fuzz from last year.

It always amazes me how modern, even contemporary Frank Lloyd's houses look. I have to remind myself that they were built more than 100 years ago in the late Victorian period, and they are often situated, as the Laura Gale House here, amidst Gothic and Queen Anne style houses that were the norm at the end of what could be called the Victorian Era, even in the U.S.

The Wide Expanse of the Day

2013-04-10T09:14:00.000-05:00

View from living room window this morning

It's an entirely cozy day here in Chicago - there's the patter of the rain, the swish of the traffic on wet pavement, the thunder in the low-hanging clouds - and I am fortunate enough that the entire expanse of the day stretches out in front of me. With no obligations, no appointments, no have-to-dos. My husband is out of town, my kids are all in school and occupied with after-school activities until early evening.

Often, when I see such a day coming, it ends up not working out. A child gets sick, a friend will be in town only that day, a doctor's appointment needs to happen. Not that I mind caring for my family or seeing friends, but once in a while I need a day all to myself, at home. A day to putter around, to work in silence, to follow a creative thread for however long I want.

And today is such a day - it worked out! I'll be on my couch, I'll tinker with an essay, I'll dig into the photography class I'm taking. All the while I'll listen to the rain, and the grey of the day will be at my back, and I will have zero guilt for not setting a foot outside. And if I do set a foot outside, I will feel mightily heroic and ever so productive.

So, here's sending you lots of good tidings from my cozy day and if you're not having one yourself, I wish you can have one soon!

Reading: Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz

2013-04-08T06:53:00.003-05:00

"It was my good fortune to be deported to Auschwitz only in 1944..." Thus begins Primo Levi's preface to his stunning but short memoir of his time as a prisoner in the infamous Nazi death camp. And already, from these first words, we know that we are in good hands. This is an account that has been masterfully rendered. Every word is in its place, and the story moves forward with a relentlessness that captures the cataclysm Levi found himself in and that we as his readers are pulled into from the first sentence. But from these very first words we also know that oddly enough, even though he is going to take us to the very bottom of what humans have done to each other, he is also going to have some kind of positive lens, if that could even be said about an account of something so harrowing. And yet, I found that this was the case.

Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I think this is the perfect time to write about Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz that my Advanced Memoir Workshop at StoryStudio Chicago read as our book selection last month. When the class decided to read this book, most of us, even those who voted for it, approached the actual reading with some trepidation. I certainly did. In fact, I decided I could only read this book early in the morning because I have learned that I cannot read Holocaust books at my usual reading time, which is bedtime, or I will have nightmares. So for a week, at five in the morning, I settled on the couch with this book, rather than doing my usual writing. And that, it turned out, was a blessing.

For reading Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz in the mornings put my days in perspective. Suddenly, the daily squabbles with my teenage son seemed trivial, easily surmounted. But more importantly, with Levi's deprivation in my mind, I went about my days with a certain celebration in my heart. I was overly conscious of my good fortune, even if it was just the simple luxury that I could get a glass of water any time I wanted.

One of the things that stuck most in my mind from Levi's account: The immense thirst they suffered in the Lager. And while the prisoners in their thin garments were yearning for the cold of the Polish winter to abate, they were also leery of the snow disappearing, because, after the Nazis had left, the snow was the only remaining source of water. Levi's account of the last days in the Lager, "A Story of Ten Days," the last chapter, is my favorite part of this book, even though "favorite" is not the right word for the story of such a precarious and desperate situation. And yet it amazed me how these few surviving prisoners, who hadn't been put on the death march that killed all the others because they were in the infirmary at the time the Nazis cleared the camp, in various stages of illness from typhus, diphtheria or, in Levi's case, scarlet fever, banded together to survive.

It was heartening to read how quickly their humanity returned after they had learned to live "every man for himself" in the camp. The cruel brilliance of the Nazis' simple dehumanizing acts is driven home when Levi shares, for example, how the tattooing of his prisoner number on the left forearm, where his watch had been, reminded him, as a new prisoner, every time he looked for the time, that he had no name anymore, that he was just a number, a creature with no possessions, not even a watch. But then, once the camp is empty, in the days before the Russians reach it, the prisoners are left to fend for themselves, and they stick together. One of them cleans up another patient who had defecated the entire floor of their small room, even though that mess was contaminated by typhus. And Levi brings some potatoes to a few diphtheria patients, even though he knows they will not survive.

Sadly, while reading Levi's masterful memoir, I also had in my mind what Elie Wiesel had shared about his friend Primo Levi when I heard him speak at a Chicago Tribune event last fall, as the conversation turned to the question of how do you go on after an experience like that. He had spoken to Primo Levi a few days before Levi killed himself in 1987. Wiesel had sensed that all wasn't well with his friend and had asked him whether he should come to Italy. Levi had answered, "It's already too late." And Wiesel felt he should have gotten on a plane right away; maybe, he said, he could have saved his friend, and he regrets, to this day, that he didn't act on that impulse.

Happy Spring!

2013-04-05T08:33:00.000-05:00

Here's wishing you a happy spring with a burst of yellow, a treasure brought home from a day in the country - the first daffodils from our property in Indiana!

@ the Kenyon Writers Workshop

2013-04-03T06:30:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note to share that I will be a fellow at the Kenyon Writers Workshop this summer (June 15-22), which means I will get to assist the wonderful Rebecca McClanahan in teaching the nonfiction workshop, which specifically means I will get to read participants' manuscripts and conference with them. I will also get to hang out in the company of great writers and spend a week in the bucolic countryside of Ohio (I am already looking forward to exploring the nearby Amish county).

Rebecca was one of my professors in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte, and I can vouch for her being a terrific teacher. In fact, she is the one teacher I've emulated the most when teaching myself, see my essay The Box.

Rebecca tells me there are a few slots left in her workshop, so if you're a nonfiction writer, serious about your craft, and looking for a week of instruction, inspiration, and getting actual writing done, do apply, and let me know if you are!

The Many Lives of a Story

2013-04-01T06:30:00.000-05:00

Today I bring you what I think is a most inspiring post: My longtime student Diane Hurles has shared here before how she managed to find her voice as a memoir writer after having worked as a journalist all her life, and today she shares how she kept the ball rolling. One story, it turns out, can be many stories, and all of them can find a home. Thank you, Diane, for sharing and for staying with it!

The Many Lives of a Story

by Diane Hurles

You never know where a story will take you. Even a story as dusty as mine, now nearly 50 years old. I never intended to go way back and write about my childhood when I first enrolled in Annette’s "Introduction to Memoir" class at StoryStudio Chicago five years ago. A former journalist brand new to Chicago, I had signed up for the class because I was looking for a creative outlet, a chance to dive deeper into my writing. I was anxious for the challenge of trying to write my own story for a change, rather than the third-person articles I was used to as a reporter.

I intended to write about my recent move for a new job in the Loop - the trauma of downsizing from a three-bedroom ranch to a 1,000-square-foot city condo, the excitement of such a big mid-life adventure. But as I unpacked, I came across a box of old letters that I had written as a child, letters that had been saved and tucked away decades ago. In one envelope was a small note I had written to my mother, whom I lost to cancer when I was 12. "Please get well and come home soon – I am waiting for you," I had written during one of her long hospital stays. It had a pencil-smudged drawing of a sad face with tears.

I felt a wave of inspiration to share that little girl’s story. Thus began my first attempt at memoir.

As I wrote, my piece became more than just the story of my mother’s long years of illness – the story I probably would have written in my newspaper days. It evolved into the story of how the rest of the family coped. I reached deep within myself to unveil the ugly truth of how that little girl felt: Scared, overwhelmed and angry at the world. It was a hard process for me – putting such raw honesty into words – but as it turned out, it made all of the difference.

After three or four rewrites – with plenty of feedback from Annette and my classmates – that piece became my first published work of creative nonfiction when it was selected for inclusion in the anthology Wisdom Has a Voice:Daughters Remember Mothers. The book came out in the summer of 2011. That success alone left me more than satisfied – but there was more to come.

Jill Pollack, founder and director of StoryStudio Chicago, shared my excitement when I told her about the anthology. She immediately asked me if I’d write a post about it for StoryStudio’s blog, Cooler By the Lake. So I wrote a blog post about my writing process, the thrill of getting my story published, and the support I received from my class at StoryStudio.

But that still wasn’t all.

More than once Annette encouraged me to look into submitting to Chicken Soup for the Soul. "Your writing fits their brand,” she’d say. When I discovered Chicken Soup was planning a book themed “Inspiration for Writers,” I thought about my story, or rather, I thought about my story about writing my story – what it took for a late-bloomer like me to finally get published as a creative writer. So one weekend last fall I enhanced the blog post I had written for Cooler By the Lake and submitted it to Chicken Soup on a whim. I remember thinking that if I didn’t do it right then, I’d chicken out (pun intended!). It took several months to get a response, but I finally received an email telling me my story was on the “short list.” A few weeks later, I learned it had made the “final cut.” And then finally – about a month after that – I received an email that began with “Congratulations!” and went on to welcome me into the Chicken Soup family. Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inspiration for Writers will be published in May, and I’m beyond excited.

If there’s one lesson I’ve learned throughout my journey of trying to tell the story of one little girl’s loss and resilience, it’s this: Don’t be afraid to dig deep, get messy, and spill a little of yourself on the page. Oh – and take one of Annette’s memoir classes!

What is Memoir?

2013-03-28T06:00:00.000-05:00

The often incorrect use of the term memoir is a pet peeve of mine; after all, it is my genre. It's what I write primarily, and what I teach. So when the Washington Independent Review of Books asked me to write an essay defining memoir, I was more than happy to oblige. Read my essay.

A Family Tradition: Hazelnut Torte (Kosher for Passover)

2013-03-25T14:05:00.000-05:00

My version of Oma's Hazelnut Torte on its very own cake stand, used
only on Passover

For every birthday of my childhood, there would be my German grandmother's Haselnusstorte (hazelnut cake). She lived a four-hour train ride away from us in Wiesbaden, and if she wasn't visiting for my or my siblings' birthday, the Torte would arrive in a package. She'd make sure to save the right kind of cardboard box for those parcels. Even after we'd grown up, when she wouldn't necessarily send it right on our birthdays, the tradition prevailed: The next time we'd visit her, a Haselnusstorte would be waiting on her kitchen counter, glazed in dark chocolate and neatly decorated with a gummy bear per slice, or for the more grown up among us, with a blanched almond.

My kids are more into piled-high soft American chocolate cakes for their birthdays, but my Oma's Haselnusstorte has become a different tradition in our Jewish household because, as it is flourless, it happens to be kosher for Passover. It is also tremendously easy to make if you have mastered the art of separating eggs, i.e., making 100% sure that no yolk gets into the egg whites (they won't stiffen otherwise). Tip: Use a separate glass for cracking the eggs and pour each egg white into a bigger bowl for beating once you're sure no yolk has gotten in there. If you have an accident, toss that messed-up egg white.

My husband, my kids, and so far all guests at our Passover Seder table love/have loved my Oma's Haselnusstorte, and so, every Passover, I make the traditional version using hazelnuts (also called filiberts), but over the course of the eight days of Passover I also bake an almond and a walnut version. See for yourself what version you like best. Here's the recipe:

Hazelnut Torte

6 eggs, separated
3 cups finely ground hazelnuts (= filiberts, about 9 oz. ground)
1 1/3 cups sugar
grated rind of half a lemon
1 bar of semi-sweet chocolate
canola oil and matzo meal for pan
9" round springform pan

Beat egg yolks until they are foamy, add lemon rind, then beat in sugar until creamy. Add nuts. Beat egg whites until stiff (=peaks in the foam will stay when you turn off your beater). Carefully fold the egg whites into the nut mixture. The nut mixture will be a little stiff but it will loosen up with careful folding in of the egg whites. Coat the pan with oil and matzo meal. Pour batter into the pan. Bake at 350F for one hour. Let cake cool off.

Melt the chocolate, add a teaspoon of canola oil (to keep it just a bit soft for cutting), and spread it over the cake.

Enjoy and Happy Passover!

A Walk through the Master of Nets Garden in Suzhou

2013-03-22T08:22:00.002-05:00

Moon gate at the Master of the Nets Garden in Suzhou, China - If you
remember my earlier photo essay about the Blue Waves Pavilion - moon gates
like this one are typical for a classical Chinese garden. Walking along a path,
you are suddenly presented with a neat hole in a wall, and of course you're
going to duck in to see what lies beyond.

I just saw on Paul French's China Rhyming blog that this weekend Shelly Bryant is offering another tour of classical Chinese gardens in Suzhou, China. Since I was fortunate enough to have a private tour with her just about a year ago, I thought I'd share my last set of photos from that excursion. A little early spring garden serenity seems in order, particularly as it is still really cold in Chicago right now. Plus, as the first anniversary of my trip is coming up, I am feeling a little nostalgic, so putting this photo essay together is a nice little commemoration.

That's me in the half moon - captured by my friend Miho as I am, as usual, taking pictures. Notice the intricacy of this garden: Every bit is decorated, in an elaborate yet non-garish way. There's the mosaic of the floor and the shard pattern of the doors.

Close up of a floral floor mosaic in another room of the garden.

Three women in a mirror - my friend Miho, Shelly and I

Remember the typical tourist photo where you stand in front of a landmark and have someone else snap a picture to document, "I was here!" Well, how did people do that before cameras? This garden was first built in the 1400s, and Shelly explained that the Chinese wanted to give people the feeling of being in the landscape, of seeing themselves as part of it. The solution? Mirrors! So here, we could look into this ancient, slightly beveled and spotty mirror, and see that yes, we were there!

As an added bonus, mirrors make small spaces feel larger, and this garden feels indeed much larger than the one acre it actually occupies. I was genuinely tired after walking through its labyrinth of paths, miniature parklands and garden rooms.

On this floor plan that I scanned in from Maggie Keswick's book The Chinese Garden, you can see that this garden is more built than planted. The three rooms in the lower right corner are really halls of the house, but even they feature trees and shrubs. The big "empty" space in the middle is the pond.

I don't have a decent photo of the pond, I guess I just wasn't that impressed with it, but this does give you a feel for the overall look of the garden (photo via Asian Historical Architecture).

I was more into the nooks and corners and all the intricate details.

Each window has its own lattice pattern.

One window leads to the next, double framing carefully arranged plantings.

Some of the window ornamentation in this garden is fancier than that of the Blue Waters Pavilion as it was first built during a time when tastes were towards heavy decorations, similar, in a way, to European baroque. See the rockeries among the trees beyond this window, meant to bring the mountains into the city.

A room detail - sadly, I don't remember the name of the room. Some of them have beautiful names that hint at how the Chinese saw the purpose of a garden (this garden was rebuilt in the 18th century by an administrator who said he'd rather be a fisherman, hence the name):

"Pavilion of the Accumulated Void"

"Barrier of Clouds Hall"

"Hall from which One Looks at the Pines and Contemplates the Paintings"

The eye is busy (isn't it?) looking out of this window, going round in circles, almost trapped by the jagged pattern of the frame, the vertical of the bamboo, and the frame of another window beyond. I remember feeling slightly overwhelmed after being in this labyrinth of a garden; I was craving open space (that's the American in me).

Alas, this is the reality of modern day China: Here is the old canal that wraps around the Old City of Suzhou, beyond it spreads an endless carpet of highrise apartment buildings. And by endless I mean endless. On the almost two hour drive back to Shanghai, the vista of these clusters of apartment buildings does not relent and blends seamlessly into Shanghai's own carpet of apartment buildings. Suzhou is a mid-size city by Chinese standards, which means about 4 million people live in the city proper, and the metropolitan area has about 10 million people.

I shall leave you with this more contemplative view of a remnant of the old city wall of Suzhou. The canal was at my back taking this picture.

Leslie Maitland on Writing from a Different Point of View in Memoir

2013-03-18T06:54:00.000-05:00

My author Q&A with Leslie Maitland appeared in the Washington Independent Review of Books last week. Her memoir Crossing the Borders of Time, about finding her mother's first love whom she had lost in the Holocaust in France, just came out in paperback and thus has been rather successful. One of the questions I asked her dealt with writing a memoir about someone else's experience in the third person, i.e. from that person's point of view. I have gotten a lot of pushback from editors on that myself, often hearing, "That's not memoir," so I was particularly curious to see how she managed to get away with that.

My question: Large parts of your book are written from your mother’s point of view. Did you ever question your authority to do that? Did you ever fear you were betraying your mother in telling the story of her long lost love? Especially when you describe her in intimate sexual situations?

Leslie Maitland: Mom and I have always been so close that I never questioned my authority to speak from her point of view. She freely shared it with me, both informally throughout our lives and quite formally, in sitting down for in-depth interviews. I never felt that I was betraying her in telling her story, because she fully endorsed the project and assisted me in countless ways. She traveled with me to Germany, France, and Cuba on reporting trips, and she spent innumerable hours translating complicated documents and letters, many of them written in Sütterlin, a virtually indecipherable form of Germanic script that was outlawed by the Nazis in 1941.

No doubt, she was brave and generous in allowing me to write so openly about the troubles in her marriage, and because she is in fact a private person, somewhat shy, I’m sure the sexual scenes made her uncomfortable. At her request, there were a few things I cut out to satisfy her modesty. But everything that relates to her personal life is based entirely on what she shared with me.

Read more...

Study in Gray

2013-03-14T06:30:00.000-05:00

It seems to me that in March, right before spring, when everything is especially barren, nature invites contemplation. On my recent walk through our property in northwest Indiana, I had to move in closely, really bend down, and spend some time in a spot to see the beauty amidst the muted colors, such as the terrific mosaic of this fungus growing on a tree stump.

"Hello?" I wanted to say, "whose castle is this?"

Birch bark - another study in texture

Grasses by the pond and trees in the pond

There is a certain beachy happiness to be found in the pond.

Three stars under water

I am in the pond, too.

We had wind that day, and I am proud that my photography skills have advanced far enough for me to have captured the spinning of the windmill.

Looking closer, you can see the buds on the red maple.

And here, a definite sign of spring - the pussy willow.

On Belonging to a Group

2013-03-12T06:00:00.000-05:00

How could you not feel
elegant under this chandelier?
Ballroom of the Woman's
Athletic Club of Chicago,
where the concert was held.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the issue of belonging to a group - wanting to belong, bending over backwards to belong, finding that for all your effort the return might be nil, and on the other hand not seeing those who do appreciate you. This is an old wound of mine that itches once in a while, and this time the Unraveling - Ways of Seeing Yourself class I've been taking brought it up again when one week's unit asked, "Who's your tribe?"

I understand "tribe" as its own social strata, not as close as family and friends, but closer than acquaintances; with a tribe, there is some group cohesion around a common goal or interest. I have spent lots of time and energy trying to belong to some groups, with little or no results in terms of feeling that I belonged. I was not invited, consulted, considered; my own invitations were not returned or accepted. Why, I ask myself, do I keep doing that? And who are the groups that do welcome me? Do I even see them? Or am I focused on those that give me the cold shoulder?

In an effort to be more accepting of invitations I do receive, I stepped out recently and attended a chamber music concert despite rather forbidding weather, simply because my former boss had invited me. It was one of those group experiences that was unexpectedly easy, friendly and pleasant. I had nothing at stake; I only knew one person, who was, thankfully, attentive and generous. The music was beautiful, the venue elegant, and the luncheon after the performance had me sitting next to one of the musicians from Vienna, who was easy to talk to. So here, for once, I followed a door that was opened for me, rather than knocking on a door that I wanted someone to open.

It was a wonderfully dignified affair, maybe not the deepest social interaction, but that isn't always needed, right? Sometimes it's enough to spend a few hours in pleasant company, in elegant surroundings, talking about sophisticated things like a Viennese musician's concert touring schedule, or cultural cruises down the Danube. It makes you feel special, taken care of, and maybe even appreciated.

Going back to the tribe topic - my former boss is the program director of this concert series, and so she knew people and was clearly a member of that tribe. Of course I don't know what frustrations and emotions lie behind the facade of a well run concert series, and while she did allude to a number of things having gone wrong, they weren't apparent to me. I could simply be there, watch her purse while she took care of something, and enjoy an event that a group effort had made possible. And so I'm left wondering whether the events we get to enjoy are those we aren't intimately involved with, while the ones we help put together or even organize ourselves will be the ones that leave us with a sense of satisfaction (hopefully!) or, more often than not, all kinds of emotional baggage.

The Writing on the Wall

2013-03-08T06:00:00.000-06:00

"Mom vandalized the wall!" - that was my son's first reaction upon seeing my word of the year written on our living room wall. "Hey, there's a word on the wall!" - "Does Dad know about this?" - those were my kids' other reactions. My husband was, thankfully, bemused, and happy to hear that it can be easily removed, and of course I did clear this new wall decoration with him.

I am plainly pleased. Now "Create!" calls out to me every time I sit on the opposite couch, in my spot, where I usually sit with my laptop, my knitting, or my notebook. Already I am imagining an exclamation point calling me to action as to what I should be doing when I'm pushing emails around or dawdling on Twitter. I only put it up earlier this week, but I can already say it's wonderful to have that tether, steadfast and beckoning me amidst all the mayhem of everyday family life.

I got the idea for the wall decal while visiting our electrician's new house where all kinds of nice family sayings decorated the walls. They looked like they were stenciled on, but his wife enlightened me that they were merely vinyl decals you can order on Etsy. So I had my own decal custom made to my specs by VinylDesignCreations. It was amazingly cheap, exactly what I wanted, and promptly delivered! I am (can't you tell?) very happy with my writing on the wall.

Snow Day

2013-03-06T08:51:00.000-06:00

Yesterday the biggest snow storm of the season hit Chicago. Never mind that it's March and we're more in the mood for spring flowers than snow flakes. It started snowing in the morning, picked up in the afternoon, and didn't stop until late evening. Officially, the city got 9 inches of snow - the biggest drop of snow since the February 2011 blizzard.

My two older kids' school declared a snow day, and so we got to spend a weekday together. In fact, I ended up driving my daughter to an appointment that we had moved to early afternoon so she wouldn't be out there in the evening. But that meant I was out there in the thick of it. Since inclement weather tends to make for good photo opportunities, and I hadn't been out with my camera in a while, I decided to pack up my gear, bundle up, and roam the parks with my camera. Here is a glimpse of my snow day.

emma & shel in the storm

I love taking pictures of bikes, and these snow-covered ones seem so dynamic compared with all the sleeping white cars in the background.

Ulysses S. Grant weathers the storm.

What's cozier than looking out at the storm from a café? Delightful Pastries in the Old Town neighborhood - their paczkis (Polish doughnuts filled with raspberry jam) are indeed a delight.

Once we had driven home safely, I was curious to see what the lakefront was like, so I didn't get out of my winter garb but headed out to the Point, a peninsula a block away.

Even in a storm, snow can appear as lace.

I am fascinated by snowy benches...

...and snowy branches.

The storm at the Point

Turn around and you see this - a lone tree on the edge of the white nothingness of the lake.

Back at home, looking out.

February Fireworks

2013-02-28T22:03:00.000-06:00

Navy Pier Fireworks (via ChicTraveler)

I moseyed downtown today after work to attend a gallery opening in the hopes of meeting Michael Thompson, whose art work Kosher I've featured on my blog. Attending gallery openings is not something I usually do, so I had to give myself a bit of a shove. Alas, Michael wasn't there, at least not when I was. I did ask a stranger who looked like him, and who said he knew him, and who confirmed that he wasn't there. So I took in some of the quirky work on display, and then I made my way back to the bus stop.

By now it had gotten dark - on my way to the gallery I had the great skyline view below when I walked across the bridge over the commuter train tracks. As I waited for the bus, I kept hearing popping noises above the traffic on Columbus Drive, and once I let my eyes follow that noise, what did I see? Fireworks exploding off in the distance over Navy Pier. Fireworks in February? What a nice surprise!

I tried to capture them with my Smartphone camera, but unfortunately there was too much light interference from headlights and streetlamps, and the traffic was too heavy for me to cross the drive to a darker area. So I just stood there and enjoyed the magenta and green and blue and white chrysanthemums of light blinking and popping and sparkling in the night sky. Upon returning home, a quick search informed me that today's firework display was in honor Chicago’s legendary Cubs announcer Harry Caray.

Goes to show that you never know what you might see once you venture out! Maybe not what or whom you planned to see, but something else entirely, and perhaps even more beautiful.

Chicago's Skyline from the South at 11th Street Bridge over Metra Tracks