"God is not a bookkeeper, God is a painter."

Michael retired to the upstairs of his home in 2001 and took refuge in two rooms of his art studio.  “God is not a bookkeeper,” he tells me.  “God is a painter.”

While  writing Miss Ellie's Cafe, I stumbled on a painting by Luis Canizare in a restaurant on Old Brompton Road in London.  I am by no means an art connoisseur, however I was taken with this particular painting, Cambio de Tercio, and began to think of ways to incorporate it into the novel.  I had a painter as a minor character.  I needed to know more about the methods and what inspires painters, so I called Michael to schedule a visit.

Before you walk into Michael and Brenda’s modest home on Main Street, you are at first reminded of grandmother’s house in the early 1900’s; two story, white clapboard with a wrap-around front porch.  Once inside, however, you know that grandmother would never have allowed such things.  The walls are covered from ceiling to floor with large canvases and an assortment of serial abstracts.  In the middle of all of this sits a newly renovated kitchen with brass pots hanging from the ceiling and an antique cherry dining room table with silver tea settings on the buffet.  That’s Brenda’s world.  Michael’s world is upstairs.  “The most important benefit in my life (and strong goad to believe in Divine Providence) was to get the right wife,” he says.

Upstairs, paintings continue to hug one another frame to frame, and then you walk into “the studio.”  It is the desk of the great mathematician who has no time for organization, the desktop of the financial wizard who deplores folders or the philosopher who refuses to keyhole ideas into categories.  Surrounding me is a sprawl of acrylics, oils, pastels, brushes, oils, turpentine and, gasp - electrical wires.  A small heater sits in the corner of the room and a lamp from Michael’s boyhood provides light across a 6’x 6’ piece of plywood, used to create an extended table-top.

Having oriented me to the place he most loves, Michael proceeds to demonstrate a technique he’s developed call Line Painting.  Taking a pre-stretched canvas, which runs about $50 - $60 each, Michael uses an eyedropper to dip into small amounts of paint he has poured into plastic dishes.  As cautious as a surgeon, he releases two or three drops at the top of the canvas.  He slowly turns the canvas as the drops move to give the paint a bit of a sinuous curved.  When the  paint slows to a stop, he adds a few more drops to extend the line and continues to turn the canvas to accentuate the sinuous curve.  This is done several times before the line finally reaches its home base on the other side of the canvas.  That’s the FIRST line, mind you.  The first of hundreds more to come, maybe even thousands.

Michael warns me there are several things to watch for.  If the artist becomes impatient and adds too much paint at once the line may break and take off in an entirely different direction.  The paint must be the correct viscosity, thin enough to flow freely but thick enough to create solid opaque lines. “It’s all so simple when you think about it, and yet, I’m amazed at the number of unspoken assumptions I live by.”  A painting can start out as one picture and slowly develop into something entirely unexpected…sort of like life.

Line Painting is labor intensive and time consuming.  Each line has to dry before the next one can be added to make sure that the first and second don’t bleed into each other.  This requirement for patience can sometimes be excruciating.  “The Devil is always tapping on the window.  I have to constantly remind myself to honor my profession.”

Michael’s work can be found at Harbor Gallery in Norfolk, VA.  For more information regarding his paintings, contact me at www.brendaremmes.com  and I will gladly forward messages.  Bits and pieces of the information he provided are scattered throughout my novel, but unfortunately, far too much related to the talent and labor involved was determined to be unrelated back story.  Back story for a novel, perhaps, but the ingredients that create masterpieces in real life.

Doing the Research

Four basic tasks take up my time:  writing,  research,  critiquing,  and marketing.   One of the most pleasant surprises I’ve had is how much I enjoy the research.  I’m not talking about computer research, although I do plenty of that.  The fun lies among the people who’ve been there, done that, and will share what they know.  Their stories are the sources for the evolution of some of my best scenes.

While writing The Quaker Café, here are a few of the people who guided me through my research:  Quakers much more knowledgeable than I, an oncologist, a director at the Red Cross, a psychologist, an abstract artist, volunteer firemen, a hairdresser, a bridal shop owner, an Episcopal Priest,  an estate lawyer and a gun expert.

While working on my second novel I’ve put even more time into one-on-one interviews.  To date I have flown with a pilot who handed me the wheel in a Cessna Skylark,  driven a tractor, made several visits to a root doctor, gotten basic instructions on the handling and shooting of a Colt 45, arranged for a date in juvenile court, met with both a judge and criminal lawyer, spoken with  a drug task force officer,  and made my first of several visits to a free range turkey farm. 

I gather a lot of information, but often use only tidbits.  I cut an entire chapter on abstract art, which I regretted since the artist had so graciously spent several hours with me.  But I failed to tie the chapter into the arc of the plot, and too much background on a minor character can bog things down.

Similarly, an oncologist shared an abundance of his valuable time to exchanged phone calls and e-mails to help sift through a plausible progression and treatment of a deadly disease.  Most was cut.  Too technical.  The medical terminology slowed down the reader.

After visiting Doko Farms last week, I thought of the amazing story to be told around that farm.  Add a mystery somewhere in there, bones being dug up on the property, etc. etc. and there is a novel.  But, that’s not what I’m about at this particular time, and while I will definitely use some of the information to develop my character, there remain many unwritten chapters.

So, I thought on my way home, “Why not include some of these interviews in a blog instead?”  Therefore for the next several blogs, I am going to focus on some of the people involved with my research.  What links them together is the fact that each one is passionate and committed to what they do and their enthusiasm is contagious.

A Letter to My Great Grandmother

            I moved into the home of two great aunts over twelve years ago.  While combing through the remnants of furniture that were left, I stumbled onto a trunk filled with pictures and letters they had saved.  This little adventure began my research into my family history.

            The house next door was built by my great-grandfather.  My cousin invited me into her attic one day and together we opened a sealed barrel.  This barrel contained dozens of letters wrapped in bundles and tied together with ribbons.  We had hit the mother lode, letters dating back to 1827. For weeks I sat and organized the thin parchment papers by author.  Each letter remained in its envelope, so that I could identify dates and the location from which it had been mailed.  I read for weeks, connecting the names within the family.  There were business letters, land agreements, letters of love and letters of disagreement throughout the 1800s and early 1900s.  The one letter that sticks with me, however, was written by my great-great-great grandmother to her granddaughter in 1879.  It begins, My dear Maude, I am now 74 and will not be able to give dates.  I forget so much now, and then proceeds to give an eight page account of her life. 

            Until that moment, the only thing that any of the family members knew about this particular woman, Martha Ruberry McBride, was her name and the dates of birth and death as recorded on her stone in the church graveyard.  Suddenly she became alive with a story to tell.  She walked us through her life before and after the Civil War, the deaths of her husband and only son, her love for her grandchildren, and her remarriage.  

            What fascinated me the most, however, was this record of a life for others to read. That letter sat in a barrel for 130 years.   Someone had the good sense to save it and store it properly.  What may have seemed like an effort to provide remembrances to a granddaughter blossomed into a treasure of history for my generation. I have since donated it to the archives of the Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina. 

            Everywhere I speak, I encourage people to write at least one personal letter to someone they care about describing their life.  E-mail will not suffice.   Write your personal history down on paper and either mail the letter to someone you love or place it in a safety deposit box with your will.  As Roger Angell writes in The New Yorker,  If we stop writing letters, who will keep our history or dare to venture upon a biography? You never know what great-great-great granddaughter, nephew or niece, might discover the letter 130 years from now that inspires the great American novel, or at the very least shows your family that you were a living, breathing person with a story to tell.

The Lady in Pink

One of the many wonderful things that happened when I wrote a family history (http://www.dabbscrossroads.blogspot.com/ ) was that I learned about the colorful relatives who preceded me.  Many of them reappear throughout my writing, some in tidbits, others full-blown.

The Lady in Pink in my novels is based on an absolutely delightful aunt, my Aunt Nell.  Nell raised four boys.   “My life was full of browns and grays,” she said.  “I’d had enough.”  When her last son had moved out of the house, she dedicated herself to pink…pink for the rest of her life.  Seriously…EVERYTHING was turned into pink.

The piano was painted pink.  Furniture was recovered or tossed.  The cotton balls in the bathroom were pink, curtains … of course, pink.  Bed sheets, kitchen appliances, cars and needles to say, all clothes, jewelry, glasses, and shoes were pink.  Her husband doted on her, and to everyone’s surprise, since he was a military man, accommodated her whim.  Every morning she picked out his clothes for him, and although his suit or slacks were never pink, he always wore a pink tie with pink socks, and most frequently a light pink shirt.  “I feel like a damn Easter Egg,” he once said, but regardless, like a good solider he followed the routine.

For the last twenty years of their lives, my aunt and uncle ate out every meal.  Included in her redirection in life was the plan never to cook again.  There were a series of restaurants they rotated through, according to the day of the week.  With age, they slowed.  A broken hip caused a limp and ultimately a shuffle.  But every day, dressed to the nines in pink they made their way across the restaurant floor to their favorite tables to eat their meals.  My aunt with pink sunglasses (she had no fewer than 20 pair), she would have a large cloth flower or bow pinned to her dress.  They entered arm and arm and slowly but predictably Aunt Nell would smile and wave to the diners one by one as if she were royalty recognizing her loyal subjects.

It never ceased to amaze me how a restaurant of sullen strangers would suddenly brighten.  How could you not?   Their dress, their smiles, their obvious long-term devotion to one another.  Many an evening I sat watching their entrance and marveled at the simple joy they brought to so many by just being who they were.  What a gift.  What a wonderful daily gift they gave us all.

Death at Miss Ellie's Cafe

I’m not giving anything away if I tell you that Maggie’s father, the Judge, dies at Miss Ellie's Cafe..  It’s the first sentence in the novel.  What I do want to tell you is that scene, as is the one in my second novel, was taken from a real-life experience.

I had an 88 year old uncle who was a delight.  We had dinner with him and several other relatives at a local restaurant every Friday night.  After his wife died, his health deteriorated rapidly.  While he kept up the routine of eating out, he often slept through the meal and then asked for a take-out when we were all ready to leave.  We became accustomed to this routine and began to expect it.

One evening when the restaurant was filled to capacity, eight of us sat around the table involved in our typical catch-up of the week’s events and my uncle passed away, still sitting upright in his chair.  The problem was, we didn’t notice.  When finally we realized the situation, in good southern fashion, we sat and  considered what options we might have to quietly remove him from the restaurants so as not to make a fuss.  My husband, being of sound mind and having been raised in Iowa where people are much more practical about such things, slipped away and dialed 911.  This resulted in a complete disruption of many people’s meals, for which we continue to apologize to this day.

We followed the ambulance with its blaring sirens to the hospital, to no avail.  The additional excitement and noise failed to revive my uncle.   With tears in her eyes, my mother wiped her nose and let out a gentle sob and then added the final cap to the evening, “This would have been so much better if it had happened at the Country Club.”

Euphrasia

Every Quaker Meeting I’ve ever attended has at least one elderly member(sometimes several) who seemed to embody Quakerism.  They had lived long enough to develop a generous degree of patience and respond gently to the impetuosity of youth.  For them, anyone less than 75 is considered youth.  Euphrasia would evolve into this type of woman over time and in many ways was already there.

 Euphrasia (pronounced: you-phrā-shă) is the name of a flowering plant found in the Alpine meadows and often used for herbal medicines.  Euphrasia Hoole, for me, was my great-great grandmother, a wiry little thing from the one picture I have of her and a devote Presbyterian.   She probably knew little if anything of Quakers.  I am fortunate to have a couple of letters that she wrote in the late 1800’s.  To my knowledge, no one in the family has ever chosen to  remember her by passing her name along to any offspring.  That may be a blessing, who’s to say?  I chose to remember her by making her a character in my novel.

The Names

Finding the right names for characters in a novel is a tricky business.  I have no magic formula.   John Hersey says that “novelist Sinclair Lewis doted on names; he believed people became their names.  He had a stack of telephone books from all over the world, so he could find an odd but apt name for a character…When he had to name a new character, he would make a list of a dozen possibilities and …day after day he would pick up the list and cross off a name or two, until he had made his final choice by elimination. ”

I am not nearly so extensive in my search for a character’s names, but I will admit to changing several halfway through the novel, sometimes, daily.  Every  now and then a name just pops out at you.  I asked a friend once if he’d mind it if I used his name in my novel.  It just felt so right.

“Tell me about the character,” he said.

“He’s a Quaker turkey farmer,” I replied.

He laughed.  “Just so when people google my name, Turkey Farmer doesn’t start popping up.”

To be so lucky.