Mt. Tam wildflowers after the rain

As a born-and-bred city girl, I’ve never had the vocabulary to describe things I see in nature. I can reel off street names and ice cream flavors, but when I walk along a trail I’m left with “little yellow flowers on a bush” or “fuzzy leaves of something or other.”  This has been an occasional frustration when I’ve tried to write novel scenes set on the hillsides or beaches that so blessedly surround us here in the Bay Area.

On Sunday I had an opportunity to hike the Matt Davis Trail down the western slope of Mt. Tam to Stinson Beach with Libby Ingalls, a true wildflower expert. This was the first dry morning after a long spate of rain, so everything was moist and happy and the streams were about as full as they get. We’re probably still two or three weeks away from peak wildflower season, so there weren’t an overwhelming number of names for me to learn.

Still, I took photos and wrote down the names to help me remember. Here are some:

Calypso orchid (Calypso bulbosa) / Photo by Ilana DeBare

We were just at the right moment of spring to see Calypso orchids, which grow in the shade under Douglas firs. They’re tiny — maybe five inches tall, the blossoms only a half-inch wide — and easy to overlook if you’re not paying attention.

Hound's tongue (Cynoglossum grande) / Photo by Ilana DeBare

Milkmaids (Cardamine californica) / Photo by Ilana DeBare

The next photo gives a sense of how full the streams were after the rain. A few months from now, some of these won’t be flowing at all.

Stream on Matt Davis Trail / Photo by Ilana DeBare

In our three-mile walk down the side of the mountain, we went through five different habitats — pantoll chaparral, Douglas fir forest, open grassland, bay/laurel woodland, and coast chaparral. The flowers in the previous photos were from the shady Douglas fir forest. Then we came to these in the open grassy meadows:

California buttercup (Ranunculus californicus) / Photo by Ilana DeBare

The California buttercup is very common! But I never knew what it was called.

Blue dicks (Dichelostemma capitatum) / Photo by Ilana DeBare

Of course there were comments about the name of that one, even if we didn’t have any teenage boys hiking with us.

Popcorn flower ( (Plagiobothrys nothofulvus) / Photo by Ilana DeBare

You can see how tiny the popcorn flowers were, from the size of my shoe.

Coyote brush (Baccharis pilularis) / Photo by Ilana DeBare

There is Coyote brush all over the coastal hills of the Bay Area. But again, I never had a name for it.

And here we are with Forget-me-nots, from the shady bay/laurel woodland part of the walk. They’re an invasive species from Europe so would be considered “ecologically incorrect.” But they’re so cheerful in their profusion, and their leaves are an almost iridescent green.

Forget-me-not (Myosotis latifolia or sylvatica) / Photo by Ilana DeBare

Forget-me-nots / Photo by Ilana DeBare

This was a strikingly beautiful fungus, but I neglected to ask Libby for the name. Click on the picture for a closer view of the red stripes on the orange background.

Fungus / Photo by Ilana DeBare

At about this point, my camera battery died so I didn’t get pictures of  plants from the coast chaparral habitat close to the beach: Eupatory, Bush Lupine, California Sage, French Broom, Echium, Thimbleberry. Those are all common enough that I hope my feeble brain can remember them even without photo reminders.

I often think about how our vocabularies — our entire vision, in fact, and what we do or don’t notice as we go through our days — reflect our environment.  Native American children must have learned the names for hundreds of different plants and wildflowers. Meanwhile, I remember my neighbors’ son Daniel coming home from elementary school at the age of 6 or 7 having learned the Nike “swoosh” logo and asking for sneakers with it.

Libby Ingalls donated her guide services on our walk as a benefit for two worthy environmental organizations:

• The California Institute for Biodiversity, founded by my sister-in-law Carol Baird, which provides curricula, teaching materials and teacher training about California ecosystems.
• Great Old Broads for Wilderness. This may be the best name of an advocacy group I’ve ever heard. And the good news is that anyone can be a Great Old Broad, regardless of age, gender or personal greatitude.

Marin County or Middle Earth? / Photo by Ilana DeBare

Best rejection ever?

For the past two months, I’ve been steadily throwing stuff at the wall — um, I mean, mailing out queries for my newest novel.  Mostly I’ve been met with silence. Sometimes that means the agent hasn’t read the query yet. Sometimes it means they’ve read it but get so many queries that they can’t bother to respond. That’s annoying, and Miss Manners wouldn’t approve, but I can understand it.

I’ve also gotten a few rejections. Some are form letters: “Dear author….” Some are nice, personalized rejections along the lines of “You’re a very good writer but I didn’t fall in love with this.”

But this one — I have to share it.  From an agency that shall remain unnamed, it takes the form rejection to a new pinnacle. (Or should that be nadir?)

To Whom It May Concern,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider your work. Unfortunately, we did not feel your project was a right fit for our agency. But we do wish you the best of luck.

Please forgive the form letter, but the enormous volume of inquiries we receive obliges us to respond in this manner. Thank you, and again, best wishes in your future endeavors.

What sets this one apart is its To Whom It May Concern.

To Whom It May Concern!

It’s like they’re writing not to an individual author, but to an entire Department of Rejected Novel Production. Gosh, I hope I can route the rejection to the appropriate person or persons in the department, since there are so many of us here. Let’s see, there’s Rejected Adverb Writer. Rejected Pronoun Writer. Rejected Curator of Themes and Metaphors. I’m not sure if this should to go to our nice Rejected Help Desk people in Bangalore, or directly upstairs  to the V.P. of Global Rejection Sourcing….

And may! And concern!

It “may concern” me that I can’t sell the novel I’ve been working on for two years.  It just possibly may, a teeny little bit. Then again, maybe not! Maybe I am on so much Prozac that I am not the least bit concerned. Maybe I’ve left  this project behind already and am investing in thin-film solar arrays. Maybe I have received so many offers from so many publishers — oh yeah, from a couple of film studios, too, and then there’s that upcoming dinner with Michelle and Barack — that I won’t even notice that this agent is rejecting my work.

Okay, have I vented enough? Any more venting and I will be sitting in a thatched cabana, not a home office.

Despite my spleen, form rejections like this bother me less than when someone has read the entire book and rejected it.

I’ve actually had a good, busy week with some interesting ideas starting to percolate about the publishing world. But I’ll get to those in a future post.

What to do when you are covering a tsunami (or other foreign disaster)

I’m on an e-mail discussion list of women journalists, where USA Today reporter Elizabeth Weise recently shared notes about what she learned covering the Japanese tsunami.

The closest I ever got as a reporter to covering an international disaster was David Duke’s gubernatorial campaign :-) , but I found this really interesting — useful tips for reporting, yes, but also a  glimpse of what it takes to produce the news coverage that we all rely upon to understand our world.

You can read Beth’s notes on her blog or here, where I’m reprinting with permission:

Things I Learned Covering the Japanese Tsunami

By Elizabeth Weise

The first call you make is to the airlines to book a ticket.

The second is to get a fixer.

(A fixer is someone who knows the local language and culture and helps you do what you need to do – whether it’s tracking down the local funeral parlors, making hotel reservations or finding out where you can get buy a pair of rubber boots. Going in to any country where you don’t speak the language and most people don’t speak English, this is key. Freelance photographers are excellent fixers because 1) they’re fearless 2) they’re adrenaline junkies 3) they’ll go anywhere.

The third is to your credit card companies so you can use your cards outside the US (otherwise they think they’ve been stolen and turn them off).

Use social networks. I sent out notices on Facebook and most of the lists I was on saying I was heading to Japan and asking for contacts.

If you can’t find a fixer, ask for one on every social network and email list I’m on. It’s amazing how things get passed along. I started looking for one before 12 hours before I left the States (basically as soon as I knew I was going) and within three days was getting emails and calls from possible folks, one of whom heard about it from the ex-pat rugby team email list in Tokyo.

Get an international driver’s licence and keep it up to date. I couldn’t drive in Japan because I didn’t have one.

Wear boots.

If it’s not summer, bring long underwear. You’ll be outside in the wind and there’s no inside to go to to warm up.

Write down every phone number anyone gives you in your notebook. Your phone’s charge will run out and you’ll be dead in the water but pen and ink abide.

Bring more business cards than you can imagine you will ever need. Hand them out to everyone. They give you legitimacy and it’s nice to be able to exchange something with someone.

Get people’s email addresses and send them photos you (or your photographer) have taken.

When you go into a large group of people, look around and see who makes eye contact. They want to talk to you. People who don’t look at you don’t want to talk. This can take awhile so don’t leave too quickly.

Sit down as low as you can get to people when you talk to them. Crouching down is good, getting down on your knees even better.

It’s okay to cry. But save sobbing uncontrollably for private moments.

Press credentials (the dog tags you hang around your neck) are vital. The more the better. I saw one guy waving US Open credentials at police officers and getting through roadblocks. One photographer created his own, with a photo and a press association that only he belonged to. They calm officials down.

Talk to other reporters. Ask them what they’ve seen, where they’ve been and what was worth visiting. Give information as freely as you get it.

Go back to places a few days later, to see what’s changed. People you spoke to the first time will be happy to see you and will tell you stories of what’s happened to them since you last spoke.

Don’t take no for an answer. In Japan after the earthquake and tsunami the freeways were closed to anyone but emergency personnel and press. (Which I learned from chatting with a Dutch film crew at the Aomori airport.) You had to go to a local police station to get the press pass. We just kept moving from town to town until we found someone who would give us one.

Photographers are fearless, shockingly courageous and will go anywhere and climb on anything. Follow them. They have become my new reporting heroes.

Corollary: Don’t be lazy. Photographers have to go to where the story is to capture it, they can’t make a phone call or check a wire. It’s a useful reminder for those of us in print.

Have your translator write the following in your notebook the local language, so that when you don’t have him or her around you can still talk to people. They can translate it when you get back together. I could pantomime interviews to an amazing extent, using broken English and Japanese, but without names I couldn’t use them. This way I could.

My name is XXXX. I am a reporter with XXXX.

What is your name?

Could you please write it down for me?

How old are you?

What work do you do?

I’m so sorry that I don’t speak XXXX.

The iPhone is the best invention in the history of mankind. I filed almost my entire body of stories in Japan from my iPhone. The data plan works where cell phones don’t.

A GPS is the greatest invention since the iPhone.

Twitter is your friend. It comes into your iPhone (see above) and tells you what’s going on in the world. In Japan, it was our main source of information on where the radiation was and what was happening in general. (Breaking News is the feed to subscribe to.)

Shoot video if you can. Even if it’s on your iPhone, you can show things you can’t tell (just as you can tell things you can’t show.)

Corollary: Unless you edit a lot of video, iMovie is your friend.  FinalCut Pro is your enemy.

When in doubt, get in your car and drive as far out as you can get, to where the emergency personnel haven’t gotten yet. Stop and talk to people you see on the road.

Expect some flat tires. We had one. One photographer we ran into had two, on the same day.

Sit with people. Silence is okay and it gives them the space to start talking.

Always offer people walking in the direction you’re going a ride. It’s the right thing to do and they might tell you a good story.

You can never have too many Clif bars in your backpack.

Carry a toothbrush and use it multiple times a day – you never want someone to avoid talking to you because you have bad breath (I actually learned this from one of my first editors at AP.)

It’s hard to have too much cash.

Some Sudafed to help you sleep is nice to have (if Sudafed makes you sleepy, that is.) It’s not so much to go to sleep but so that when your editor wakes you up at 3 am and then another 6.1 earthquake wakes you up again at 4 am you can go back to sleep.

There’s something about music that short circuits the defenses. I held it together for days, and then I listened to music on my iPod in the car one day and it just opened the floodgates of emotion. I don’t know why it has that effect but it does. Be warned.

A surprisingly serious Purim post

This weekend is Purim, the most light-hearted of Jewish holidays, when we are commanded to drink so much that we can’t tell Haman (villain) from Mordechai (hero). It’s also the most kid-friendly holiday, with costumes and carnivals galore.

My Jewish blogging buddy Linda K. Wertheimer has a lovely post that sums up why kids of all ages love Purim. And here’s an ancient  photo of my brother and sister in Purim costumes at our preschool, the 92nd Street Y in New York:

Purim, circa 1965 / Photo by Ilana DeBare

But holiday fun aside, I ran across a serious Purim blog post this week that I liked enough to want to share below. It’s by Marc Rosenstein, an American-born rabbi who lives in the Galilee in Israel and writes a regular column for the Reform Judaism blog.

I like how Rosenstein presents two very different ways to interpret the Biblical command to destroy Amalek, and then shows the parallel to a similar choice within Islam.

(Quick background: Amalek and his tribe were enemies of Israel in the Bible. Haman, the bad guy of Purim, is considered a descendant of Amalek. Some hawkish Jewish commentators also refer to enemies of modern-day Israel as Amalek — which has horrific foreign policy implications.)

Remember Amalek

by Marc Rosenstein

Therefore, when the Lord your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!
        -Deuteronomy 25:19

Last Sunday, as often happens, Iman, the young Muslim English teacher who was answering questions from a Jewish teen group, was asked about terror and Jihad.  She explained that as she understands the term “Jihad,” which means “struggle,” it refers in the Koran to historical conflicts between Muhammed’s followers and other tribes; but in current usage, it refers to the religious struggle of every individual Muslim to purify his/her faith and live a life of righteousness.  She rejects the interpretations of those who try to apply the historical text to current political realities, as if the battles in the Koran were still being waged.  Iman is not a scholar of Islam; her knowledge comes from her teachers, the media, and the imam of her local mosque.  We know that there are Muslims in the world who would not accept her interpretation.  It is simply the one she and her community live by. 

The next day, in Jerusalem, I attended the evening bet midrash offered to rabbinical students at Hebrew Union College, taught by Rabbi Shlomo Fox. As it was during the weeks before Purim, we studied texts relating to the Book of Esther and the meaning of the holiday. And we read several interpretations of the above passage from Deuteronomy which is read on the Shabbat before Purim:

Where is Amalek? The answer I once heard from my father is: every nation that seeks to destroy the People Israel turns, according to the halachah, into Amalek… And hence we are commanded to fight against any nation that schemes to destroy us, and it is a “war of mitzvah” [of complete destruction].

-Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, “My Beloved Knocks,” 1956 (major American Orthodox scholar and leader)

“Do not forget” this [obligation to wipe out Amalek] – in case there comes a time when you will want to be like Amalek, and like him to deny your [moral] obligation and not to know God, but will only seek opportunities…to exploit your power to harm others.

–Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Commentary on the Torah, late 19th century (founder of “modern Orthodoxy” in Germany)

So, is our struggle against Amalek the eternal war of annihilation between Israel and its physical enemies — is every enemy an heir of Amalek whom we are commanded utterly to destroy — or is our struggle against the Amalek within, against the tendency to forget our own moral scruples when we attain power?

The similarity between the Sunday and Monday conversations was really striking. Both religions have parallel opposing traditions of interpretation: Do we take the historical event as an archetype that keeps on recurring, a drama in which we are destined to play out the same roles over and over – or is the historical experience merely an experience, from which we are supposed to learn a moral lesson that can enable us to repair the world. And are the two approaches in conflict, or can they coexist?

And why does this matter? Because our future here depends on the answer.

Do-it-yourself haggadot for the digital age

In my 20s and early 30s, I loved compiling my own personal Passover haggadah. I’d browse the massive selection of haggadot at the late, lamented Cody’s Books, buy a half dozen inexpensive paperback ones, and set to work.

Snip, snip, glue, photocopy… I’d start with a traditional version, add the Frogs song from a kids’ haggadah or “Man Come Into Egypt” by Peter Paul & Mary, throw in some feminist commentary or an environmental take on the Ten Plagues and… voila! our haggadah for the year.

Then we became parents. And it felt like an achievement simply to get matzah ball soup and homemade gefilte fish on the table. Farewell to the days of rewriting the haggadah every year.

Now there’s a new, possibly easier way to compile personalized haggadot — via (of course) the Web.

Haggadot.com offers an online library of Passover-related writing and images that you can copy, arrange and edit, scrapbook-style. Then you churn out as many copies as you want, free of charge, on your printer. You can also submit your own words or pictures to become “clips” for other people to use.

Image for cover of a haggadah, from Haggadot.com

I did a quick scan of the site today and found clips that included:

• A short essay by Anita Diamant, author of The Red Tent, on why feminists include an orange on the Seder plate.
• A Yiddish version and a Ladino version of the Four Questions.
• A GLBT version of the Ten Plagues.
• An intermarriage version of the Ten Plagues.
• Hands-on-activities to help children understand slavery.

Pretty cool!

The site, of course, isn’t perfect. Although you can search for clips by keyword, there doesn’t seem to be a way to search specifically for images — if, for instance, you were seeking that perfect drawing of a pyramid. Although you can focus your search on specific categories of Judaism — Orthodox, Reform, etc. — the site’s category of “secular/humanist” had no clips in it.

And a search for the keywords “Palestinians” and “Middle East” brought up no results, a shortcoming for folks who would like to incorporate readings about Israeli-Palestinian peace.

But the site is young, founded in 2007 by a graphic design student at California Institute of the Arts. It recently received a grant from the Jewish New Media Innovation Fund. I’m guessing that with time, Haggadot.com will grow — both in sophistication and in scope, as more and more people upload their own quirky, creative, personal takes on Passover.

Me? I’m not up for re-writing our haggadah this year, especially since Sam and Becca will be off visiting colleges for much of Passover week. But visiting colleges means getting close to attending college… which means getting close to the empty nest phase of life… which means I may have the time and impetus to get back into the haggadah creation biz again.

And when I do… I don’t think I’ll need that glue stick any more.

Ferberizing the cat

We have a lovely cat. A good-natured cat. A cuddly cat. Truly, he is the Spongebob Squarepants of catdom — happy-go-lucky and ready to call the world his friend. It’s hard to imagine a better cat.

Looking decorative during daylight hours / Photo by Ilana DeBare

Except around 4 a.m.

Over the past month or so, Bowie has developed a new routine of trying to get in to our bedroom in the dark hours.

We keep him out because of our allergies. Although he’s  less allergenic than most cats, we’d still prefer not to inhale fur while we sleep. And he has plenty of nice nighttime options: The couch. The rocking chair near the heating vent. The bathroom rug. The other couch. Becca’s bed — in fact, Becca loves to have him sleep with her.

But around 4 or 5 a.m., there’s a scratching on our bedroom door. Then more scratching. A few piteous mews. Still more scratching, which by now is starting to sound like zombies risen from the grave and hankering for our flesh.

Then more mews, and maybe a long pathetic sigh.

And then — WHOMP!  — he hurls himself at the door.

I’m awake, so I get up. He’s thrilled. He purrs. He falls all over my feet. He doesn’t want anything as mundane as food; he’s got a full bowl. He wants company, or he wants to be let out.

That’s fine if it’s 5:30, which is when I need to get Becca up for school anyway. But sometimes it’s 4:30. Last night, it was 2:30 and 4:30. And even a leisurely 5:30 wake-up whomp is not particularly welcome on weekends.

What to do? Maybe my friend Gina-the-pet-goddess will advise. Otherwise, I just have to fall back on my experience as a parent, which presents three options:

• Sucker mommy. I.e., keep getting up to let him out at 4 or 5 a.m. This is the kind of parenting strategy that makes conservative Republicans crazy.
• Water gun. Okay, so I never squirted Becca as behavioral conditioning. But it worked at teaching Bowie to stay off the kitchen table. Still, it seems cruel when his only transgression is seeking our company.
• Ferberize the cat. Back when Becca was an infant, one of the trendy parenting books was by a child development expert named Ferber, who offered advice for getting babies to sleep on their own.

Ferberizing your baby meant learning to ignore their crying for progressively longer periods of time, so they would become more and more able to put themselves to sleep. We tried it, and honestly, it was harder on the mom than on the baby. It worked.

I think.

(In reality, Becca was not that hard to put to sleep and both Sam and I were too exhausted ourselves to really remember what happened back then.)

In any case, it seems to come down to three not-really-great options. Maybe I learn to steel myself to piteous mews and Ferberize the cat?

How many bestseller lists does one reader need?

As a reader, I love the Sunday New York Times Book Review. As a writer, I love/hate the Sunday New York Times Book Review.

But both my reader and writer halves look fondly back to an era when the Times ran two simple pages of best seller lists — one page of hardcover fiction and non-fiction lists and another page of paperback fiction and non-fiction.

These days best seller lists have multiplied in the book review section like mold in a leaky basement.  It started innocently enough back in 1984, when the Times supplemented its lists of fiction and non-fiction best sellers with a third category of Advice, How-to and Miscellaneous books. Then in 2000, spurred by the Harry Potter phenomenon, it added a monthly list of Children’s Best Sellers.

In 2007 the Times paperback list underwent mitosis and became two separate lists of Trade and Mass Market Paperbacks. Then, just last month, it upped the frequency of the children’s lists to a weekly basis and added four new lists of fiction and non-fiction e-books and combined print/e-book sales.

The Times is now running sixteen (sixteen!) separate best seller lists in the print edition each Sunday. That takes up six of the section’s 28 pages.

Honestly, does anyone read all these lists and care?

I suspect the Great List Explosion is viewed happily by publishers, who now have more opportunities to slap a “New York Times Best Seller” logo on any given book, and who probably welcome even the teeniest marketing bump in today’s shifting marketplace. And I know the Times’ intent is probably to stay relevant as the industry wobbles between its print past and an e-book future.

But a lot of these lists just feature the same titles over and over. This week, for instance, James Patterson’s Tick Tock is number one on the print hardcover fiction list, number two on the e-book fiction list, and number two on  the combined print and e-book fiction list,.

As a reader, I’d rather relegate some of those lists to the Times‘ web site and use the precious print real estate for more reviews of more books. (By new, unknown writers!)

Or if the editors feel a deep psychological need to run multiple lists, let’s try to come up with some that don’t keep repeating the obvious.

For instance, I’d like to see a feature listing the ten top books at a different independent bookstore each week  — with the proviso that none of those books can also appear on the main national best seller list. What books — other than the James Patterson and Stieg Larsson ones that we all know about — are people scarfing up in Stowe, Vermont, and in Austin, Texas?

Okay, I freely admit that the multiplicity of best seller lists is not one of the burning issues of our day. Crowds will not occupy Tahrir Square over it. And it’s possible there’s some writerly sour grapes in all this — if I were the author of Tick Tock rather than an obscure history of girls’ schools, would I be complaining that the Times was including it on too many best seller lists?

But still, the Times Book Review is such a powerful platform. It’s the closest thing to a national literary discussion that we have. I hate when the Times uses its power as an echo chamber, to reinforce successes that already have trumpets and fireworks, rather than showcase great stuff that people don’t yet know about.

I hate how these mushrooming lists cajole us to shift our focus ever further onto industry data, and away from reading and writing.