End of Summer--New Beginnings

Ah...Summer has flown by, and this weekend marks the un-official "end of summer" though school has been back in session for weeks, for most teachers and students. The end of summer brings me back to San Diego, which is always a pleasant place to be--and where summer lingers far longer than in most other cities.
I'm looking forward--as always--to the Southern California Writers Conference at the end of the month. The Los Angeles Conference is held up in Newport Beach, Sept 23-25th; for those who haven't heard me on the subject yet, check out previous posts, and see their great site (full of book, agent, and author news, videos, and info) here. Of course, you can also find them on Facebook, "meet" some of their staff there, and follow their fearless leader's always-entertaining blog.
I'll be doing a couple of "pitch" talks at SCWC with my good friend, writer and editor Marla Miller, of "Marketing the Muse." Check out her site here.
My reading last month was mostly non-fiction--a history of the "Mexican War" and quite a few essays and articles written about the current immigration situation.

A great friend who lives in Tucson gave me Crossing With the Virgin: Stories from the Migrant Trail which was hard to put down. The true stories are full of interest to me, since it sheds light on the subject our film, "El Camino" deals with. No reading on this sad subject can be anything but depressing, but it is heartening to read how many people are working to help the thousands of unfortunate souls forced to cross borders illegally.
I just found a used copy of Wolf Solent by John Cowper Pwys, a book I've wanted to read for years; the author is often compared to Austen and Hardy, both favorites of mine. (No one who's read this blog can be in doubt of my favorite of those two being Austen, but Hardy has his gifts--description and character--that offset his bleak outlook). I'll start the book today, and will comment on it soon.
Hasta pronto!

Solar powered again!

It was a big moment--hooking up the solar panels (see the "Boat talk" page for more on those) and seeing the regulator blink on and start charging our boat's batteries. We are off the grid almost completely now, and only need to hook up the watermaker to complete our project of making the boat fully "self-sustaining". Boat projects like this take so long (much like house renovations) that one begins to lose faith in their ever being completed...Then, suddenly, task after task will get crossed off the "to do" list one after the other.
Cap'n Russel has been doing "home improvements" while teaching (two online screenwriting classes) this semester, and now that school is over, he'll be at it full-time for a few months. New additions greet me almost daily on my return from work. Friday was Bike-to-Work day and I bicycled home to find he'd installed the solar panel wiring, and was just awaiting another body to help with the final connection. Yesterday was a cabinet fashioned out of wood to hold our new clock, barometer, and depth sounder. Now installed in the main salon, it provides a wealth of information, seen out of the corner of my eye. Needless to say, I'll be more interested in the depth of the water under our keel once we are again at anchor. And hopefully I'll have more time to read, purely for pleasure.
Just finished a re-read of Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" (free download) and was amazed to find myself anxious to find out how it resolved itself, though I knew perfectly well (I've also seen the wonderful Ang Lee film of the book more than once) Why is it that I so enjoy re-reading the classics? Of course, that term ("classics") is subject to each reader's definition--I include any book that will improve with time and re-reading...and a few select books are added to my "to reread" list each year.
Sunday brings the Hillcrest Farmer's Market and I'm off to select fruits and vegetables for the week, and some fish for tonight's table. Yes, fresh fish at a Farmer's Market--this is San Diego after all. And luckily the sun is shining again--re-charging my batteries in more ways than one.
hasta pronto!

Austen versus Kingsolver

This isn't a competition--just finished reading Mansfield Park by Jane Austen and The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver in the same week. Which set me to thinking of their similarities. Both have protagonists that are poor orphans of sorts, who are brought in to grand houses (of sorts) and taken under the wing of sophisticated patrons. Both of these main characters are shy and shrink from notice and from any show of temper. Both are basically celibate throughout the narrative, and both have wonderfully romantic and rich inner lives.
The most striking similarity, though, is at the end of the book--in the way the ending is written. Both novelists choose to wrap things up rather quickly, and cooly, without big emotion, and without the main characters voice being heard at all. In the last chapter of Mansfield Park you get a "report" in Austen's omniscient writer voice: this and that happened, and oh, yeah, they did get married after all--a real "cop out" as we Boomers all used to say.
The Lacuna wraps up more organically, since Kingsolver introduces another character in the last part of the book who ends up doing the same kind of "report," but she's someone you've come to like and trust. Another literary device, but one that works.
The oddest thing of all was reading these two novels, written two hundred years apart, and finding myself just as concerned about Fanny Price, eventually, as I was about Harrison Shepard...And reading both of the books as e-books on my ipod! What would Austen think?
hasta pronto!