A new study on why art matters

 

A cookbook combining writing and cooking.
Part of the ars?

When iconic Texas novelist the late Elmer Kelton told his father, a ranch foreman all his life, that he wanted to be writer, the elder Kelton gave his son a look that “could have killed Johnson grass” and said, “That’s the trouble with young people. They don’t want to work.” Elmer by his own admission never made a ranch hand, but he made a heck of an important Texas writer. Does it matter?

Almost every congressional fiscal resolution includes motions to defund the National Council for the Arts and the National Council for the Humanities, on the theory that the money could be better spent in more practical ways. In the US the arts usually play second fiddle to business and “practical” matters. Perhaps it’s our Puritan heritage, when art was suspect of being at best unorthodox, dangerous, and at a worst a tool of Satan. Perhaps it’s the more modern reality, as Elmer’s father thought, that it’s hard for a young person to make a living in the arts. Nonetheless the notion remains in too much of society that the arts are frivolous.

“The arts” is an umbrella term. What, really, does it include? When people hear the word, they usually think visual arts—painting and sculpture—with the performative arts next—theater, dance, musical performances, etc. And finally poetry. Somehow creative written works are often left out of the mix. And yet, they require as much creativity as the other arts. So I often include books in the definition and even that is too narrow, but it may be the best we have at the moment.

Writing in the “Maine Crime Writers” blog, author Dick Cass reviews the book Your Brain on Art, by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, an exploration of the ways that art and science, instead of being antithetical, actually come together. Our brains need both, and art, instead of being frivolous, is essential to good physical and mental health. Here are some of the research-based findings that Cass reported from the book:

·        Music with a rhythm of 60 beats a minute can synchronize with human brains to produce alpha waves, the brain frequency associated with rest and relaxation. Take it down to 40 beats or so and the rhythm synchronizes with delta waves, associated with sleep. Music can also help rewire the brain after a stroke.

·        Colors have a biological effect on human thinking and emotion. The color red raises the galvanic reaction in humans, how much sweat glands react, more than colors like green or blue. In one study, people in a gray-painted room displayed higher heart rates than people in a more colorful room.

·        Research into architecture shows that building with elements like curves instead of straight walls can reduce the blood pressure and heart rate of the people living within.

·        Imaging studies show that poetry has neurological benefits. Reading poems lights up the part of the brain associated with restful states, and rhythm is something our brains are hardwired to respond to.

·        Coloring, drawing, even doodling stimulate the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that keeps us focused and interprets sensory information.

·        Research even supports the notion that people who engage in art have a lower risk of developing chronic pain as they age.  

Note that the last finding specifies people who engage in art, not passive recipients who study paintings on a wall in a museum.

Are you familiar with the concept of Tikkun olam, literally meaning “repairing the world.” It’s a Jewish concept, although echoes are found in many Christian teachings and writings, that each of us is obligated to leave the world a bit better than we found it, to contribute something to the good of the universe. I worry a lot about that, because I fear I write frivolous things—young-adult literature, light mysteries. Yes, I hope my historical fiction brings a greater understanding of history and women’s place in it, but there are all those other works. What, really, am I contributing? Cass’ article and the book have made me turn my doubt on its head. The question is not what am I contributing through my art, but what is my art enabling me to do for others? Is it because I write, a creative activity that stimulates both brain and body, that I am able to write historical fiction and even some young adult novels that may shape some pre-teen’s reading.

The creative arts are not something self-indulgent nor something to be lightly dismissed. They are part of the total development of an individual.  Kurt Vonnegut put it so well: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

I think my avocation of cooking even falls within that category, along with writing. They are both activities that allow me to share some of me with the world at large, whether it be a book you read, a recipe in a blog, or a dinner you share at my table. And I think that is a good thing.

Go, free your spirit, do whatever brings you pleasure (well, within reason)—it will help you grow.

A personal note on our family woes: my brother thinks he’s a bit better, we are moving ahead with fixing the plumbing problem, and Sophie didn’t snap tonight for her shot (after three tries—I got a donut collar). Maybe writing about all that has helped.

Thank you for listening and sweet dreams.

 

 

Keeping busy

A post from the senior minister at our church this morning asked each of us to think about what we are grateful for in this time of stress. It hit home with me, because I have been thinking how blessed I am, so grateful for family, a safe and cozy cottage, plenty of food and wine, a dog to listen to me rant.

But there’s one more thing: I am, as I long have been, grateful that I’ve built my life around books and reading. That focus means that I am never alone in my cottage. I always have something to do, something to write.

I’ve read some memes lately about introverts and extroverts, suggestions that while introverts are doing well with social isolation, extroverts are not. Introverts should reach out and check on them, just as we should check on elderly neighbors alone. I worry about people whose whole life is built around the social contacts of work, eating out, going to the bar, etc. If they are following the guidelines, they must be very frustrated and lonely.

I meantime am a happy camper. I am reading several books and websites for a proposed project—it hasn’t been officially approved yet, but I have strong indications that it will be. The reading, which has to do with food and mid-20^th century American culture, is interesting to me.

But better than that: I have a new project. Several years ago a university press director asked if I would be interested in editing my blogs into a book. Flattered, I made a stab at it, but it seemed an overwhelming task. I have been blogging since 2006, so it wasn’t simply a matter of compiling—it meant picking and choosing, and it meant settling on a theme. Writing is an obvious one—but I began to write almost thirty years before I began to blog—if this was going to turn into a memoir, there was a huge gap.

My brother urged me to collect the family-oriented blogs, and I still may do that. I would hope someday the next two generations would treasure such collections.

But for now I’ve decided on a collection of my thoughts as I tentatively journeyed toward writing mystery. I had already compiled a few blogs, and I’ve spent the last two days excerpting more—I am now through 2007, so you can see it will be a big project. And I realize once I get them together, I’ll have to edit and provide some running commentary. Will it work? Will it be publishable? I don’t know, but for now, it’s keeping me busy and happy.

The blog’s beginning in 2006 coincides with Jacob’s birth, and as I read, I find lots about what a happy, cheerful, sometimes rebellious kid he was. And there are darling passages about other grandkids, like Edie, who at the age of four called one morning, just to say, “I hope you have a lovely day.”. Or Sawyer, who was told to put on sunscreen and replied, “I’m going in the garage. There’s no sun in there.” Morgan who kept inching away in a family picture after the grandchildren were dedicated in church—she finally ended in a corner all by herself, and she has that independent spirit to this day. I may have to go back and do this culling all over again with a different criterion.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases, says this epidemic could last eighteen months. I wonder if that is long enough for me to sort out my blogs. Maybe, like all of us, I shouldn’t look that far ahead but should take each day as it comes.

Am I in Chicago?

The wind whistled and whined around the cottage this afternoon, making sad, moaning sounds. Took me back to days in Chicago which comes by its moniker of “the Windy City” honestly. Some days you had to fight to stay upright, particularly in the canyons of downtown Chicago or on the lakefront on a day when Lake Michigan showed its wild and stormy side. Today, with the Texas wind howling off the prairies to our west, I was glad to stay inside.

Perfect day for soup, so I cleaned out the freezer. Turned out I didn’t have as many leftovers as I thought—a small icebox dish of the last batch of leftover soup, another small one of a spaghetti sauce that was only medium but would be fine in soup, and a larger container of something that I could not identify by sight, smell—or poking my finger into it. That went in the trash, but I got some frozen peas out of the freezer, and a small bit of multicolor rotini (so glad to get that box out of my tiny pantry drawer). The thing that made the soup so good, I think, was the can of pintos that I discovered and added. Jacob of course would not eat my soup, so I fixed him buttered noodles—no nutrition and probably too many carbs. He asked for a giant helping. After I fed him, I finished my own meal off with my gingerbread and ginger-brown sugar whipped cream, which is beginning to sag as I knew it would. Still, it tasted delicious.

A milestone today: I finished going through the last of the boxes of research materials on the second battle of the Alamo. Tomorrow or the next day, I’ll plug in my notes from today, and then it’s time to start at the beginning and read through it. Because I kept adding bits and pieces as I found them, I know there will be repetitions and duplicates and probably some bad transitions. I still have lots of work to do.

Rosa came to cut my hair today, and I had my toenails done the other day—obviously I’m gearing up to be out of town. I’ve even made a list of things to take—one list for Sophie, one list from the refrigerator and freezer, a list of outfits (including the super new one I got last night), and a list of incidentals—like a legal pad for notes, honey for my tea (they probably have some but just in case), and shampoo. Looking forward to a few days away.

Christmas anticipation is high. For those who celebrate, I hope your anticipation is focused as much on the gift we all receive from on high as on those packages under the tree. I quoted our minister today when I told one of my children I would rather have his presence than his presents.

The importance of neatness and organization

My living room

cluttered with research

Ever since I’ve been in my tiny cottage, I’ve stressed the importance of keeping a small space free from clutter and mess. Twelve-year-old Jacob has been the particular recipient of my repetitive lectures. So here’s how my space looks these days. My desk is a cluttered mess, and my living/entertaining space not much better.

The problem? Research materials for my latest writing project. Papers are strewn everywhere, as I try to put all these photocopies in meaningful order—important, marginal, probably not useful. The problem is complicated because I inherited someone else’s research—more on that story another time.

Yesterday, friends from TCU Press came to do a podcast, and I felt obliged to make a clean

sweep of my desk, hiding most of the loose papers and stacking the couple of books and magazines in a neat pile. Jordan came along and promptly laid a couple of loose sheets on top, destroying the balance—I incorporated them into the pile. But by last night, my desk looked as you see it in the picture. You’d think I could at least read Bon Appetit and get it out of the way, but it takes me two or three times through a cooking magazine before I can discard it. I must be sure I’m not missing a recipe I can’t live without. And these days I am driven to go through all those research papers in that huge box, so reading fiction or food magazines seems a little frivolous to me.

Typical of my dilemma—yesterday I came across a master’s these that could be central, but it was missing the first forty pages, including the attribution. I wasn’t sure who wrote it, where it might be stored, etc. Then I discovered I have it in digital form on my computer. I run into duplication all over the place. But I keep plugging away—and I’m having fun.

Yesterday was also a day of surprises. I washed my hair early so it would dry before the podcast—and then came an unexpected phone call. Rosa was here two days earlier than expected to cut my hair. I can’t say enough about Rosa, who’s been keeping me trim for years and has become a treasured friend along the way. Since getting out is a bit hard for me, she comes by on her way to the salon about once a month, and we get a good visit while she snips and cuts.

So there I was—trim and neat for the podcast, if not scintillating on camera. I haven’t seen it yet, but I will share when I do. We mostly rehashed my writing career.

Another surprise, less pleasant: when I tried to refill my ice water, the cube dispenser got stuck and sprayed ice cubes all over the kitchen. Not easy to sweep up from a walker. I swept, put the broom and dustpan away, opened the freezer—and sprayed a second batch of cubes all over. Repeat sweeping.

Pleasant to end the day at Pacific Table with Betty—Caesar salad, fried oysters, and a decadent chocolate brownie topped with peanut butter ice cream. I think my appetite is returning.

On top of the world—almost

A beautiful, sunny morning in Fort Worth, if a tad chilly—57 is just a bit below my comfort zone, and I am at my desk wrapped in the comfort of my prayer shawl. Big contrast to yesterday when I woke to dark and dreary skies that eventually produced a good rain. Our ground is saturated. But the rain disappeared, and the day brightened

This morning I’ve been corresponding with my BFF from high school—so wonderful that we are still close. We’ve mutually agreed that some of the good times of our past aren’t going to come around again, but we have rich memories to call up and enjoy. Like days and nights at the Indiana Dunes (a comparison sparked by a friend’s photos from the Sahara) and the time Barbara and her sister dropped a window screen out of their third-floor window to the sidewalk below. Fortunately, they didn’t kill anybody.

I’ve also sent notes to several close friends with whom I had not checked in lately (I heard a complaint, which made me put them first on my to-do-list). So, I am feeling much surrounded with love this morning. A medical report which had me a tad worried came back normal yesterday, I had dinner at the Star Café—chicken-fried steak again—and I slept better last night than I have in several years. Sophie slept well too, except for one episode of wanting her water dish filled at 1:30. When she sleeps well, I do better.

This morning I’m going to sort through files relating to my current project—it’s a long story, and I’ll share it another time, but the files were compiled by a good friend, so for me it will be an exploratory journal. And I’ll definitely have the Senate hearing on the TV while I explore. Sure is a big box of papers—sigh.

No wonder I’m almost on top of the world. Hope you are too.

Books, books, books, everywhere

In our ongoing sorting and downsizing process, my ever-efficient daughter Jordan has bought plastic bins to store some of my books in a climate-controlled storage unit. She started today with my children’s books, a frustrating chore because the more she sorted, the more she found scattered in among other books. And then there were some boxes—Jacob unearthed three boxes of A Ballad for Sallie, not intended as a children’s book but taken that way by the publisher. When Leisure Books went out of business, they sold or gave the rights to Amazon, which reprinted it with a new cover. When Jacob found the new edition, he was completely flabbergasted.

In spells in which my fiction didn’t seem welcome, I wrote on assignment for several publishing houses that specialized in books for school libraries. Some assignments were traditional, and those books still bring me tiny checks every once in a while. Others were done as work-for-hire, and I got a one-time payment.

Jordan was astounded at the number of books and the variety—she came across single copies of books on vaccines, surgery, and passenger ships—how’s that for diversity? She also found single copies of a number of histories of various states and worried whether she and her siblings had copies of those. On the other hand, I have so many copies of the book I did on Christopher Reeve that we are awash and uncertain what to do with them.

The good thing about writing those books (beside the rather uneven pay) was that they required quite a bit of research, and I learned a lot doing them. Some stretched my creativity—like one on mapping the Old West. A fact checker questioned me, and I had to explain that no, I didn’t plagiarize but there aren’t that many written sources on how Native Americans found their way around. A book on the international treatment of women presented another challenge—until I convinced the publisher to let me create a fictional camp where teens from various countries came together to share their stories. I rather thought the book a success, but I have no idea what the foundation behind it thought.

Jordan is advocating for a “Judy Alter Night” at the Old Neighborhood Grill where I hold all my signings. She envisions one display of each of these books, plus introducing my forthcoming historical novel, The Gilded Cage. I am uncertain, but I realized when I looked at the display of books on the couches (she’s organizing stacks by title) that those books represent a lot of long hours of research and writing. Makes me kind of proud.

Happy Birthday today to my big brother. He’s sixty. If you believe that, then I am fifty-four. And if you believe that, I have a lot of books to sell you cheap!

When did research become fun?

A tad late today introducing my Wednesday guest on Thursday--thanks to the charming Radine Nehring for understanding. Radine is the author the "To Die For" mystery series, with the latest being A Fair to Die For. She tells us why she chose the Ozarks and how she picks specific sites to set her mysteries--there's an element of spiritual connection in her selection process. Take it away, Radine!

 

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Oh, yikes, do I remember!

When I was doing research for college and university themes and theses, research could be both tedious and frantic--the skimming of material, making of notes, (this was in the days before Internet) and then the jump to the next book on the stack, hoping to find applicable words of wisdom to be quoted or incorporated.  How I well I remember the process, and how flown are the words and even most of the topics they were applied to.

But now . . . ?

I fell into choosing and doing research at some of Arkansas's amazing locations and events in preparation for novels because of two accidents. 

Accident 1. I fell in love with the magic of the Arkansas Ozarks on a weekend camping trip in 1978.

Accident 2. The choice, in 2001, of Ozark Folk Center State Park as a setting for the second novel in

my "To Die For" mystery series. Husband John and I knew the place well. We had spent delightful long weekends in the park and the surrounding National Forest. I needed a setting for the second novel in my series. Folk Center?  Maybe. Plot ideas began bubbling. So, why not choose a real place, real events, characters modeled after the real people we knew, and add the salt and pepper of a plot true to the location that could be real?

That's what I did. It worked. The Folk Center embraced the novel, Music to Die For, and sold copies in their gift shop. The park hosted a release event and continues to invite me for talks and signing events. They now sell all of my published written work in book form in the gift shop.  (I was at an OFC gift shop signing this past weekend, in fact.)

Bingo. The choosing of sites for my series would fit a pattern, taking readers to popular Arkansas tourist destinations and dumping them gently into plausible crimes taking place at each location.

Though I had known the Folk Center quite well, that wasn't true for other places where I wanted to set mystery novels. Therefore, prior to beginning writing, I needed to do extensive on site research at any chosen location to support the realism I demand for my stories.  

In my non-fiction book, Dear Earth, I wrote that something about the Ozarks caught me, heart and soul, and created a sense of home. It still seems to me as if simply standing on Ozarks soil and rock creates a magic bond that comes into me through the soles of my feet, and I fall in love, once more, with a place.

That sort of thing must happen at each book location I use, or no book is set there. I simply stay long enough to absorb the atmosphere, and so much else. It's like magic. When I visit potential story locations and the magic doesn't happen, I move on to the next place.

Pooh-pooh this if you want, but it's the best way I can describe what happens when I choose an adventure site for Carrie McCrite, Henry King, and their families and friends.

If you join me in one book or another of this on-going adventure, you can write it off as a free vacation for the price of a book!

Places covered after Ozark Folk Center State Park:  Hot Springs National Park; Eureka Springs, AR and the 1886 Crescent Hotel; Buffalo National River; Historic Van Buren, AR and its Civil War history, plus a ride on the real Arkansas and Missouri Passenger Excursion Train; the War Eagle area of Arkansas including Hobbs State Park, War Eagle Mill, and the enormous War Eagle Craft Fair.  And, more to come!  Stay tuned.

Don't forget, I have spent days enjoying each site covered. I can guarantee a good time there.

Radine Trees Nehring, 2011 Inductee: Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame
http://www.RadinesBooks.com; http://radine.wordpress.com
Sharing the magic of the Arkansas Ozarks in "To Die For" novels
including  A Fair to Die For from Oak Tree Press.

 

Looking to Grow Up?

Please welcome my Wednesday gust, Michele Drier. Michele was born in Santa Cruz and is a fifth generation Californian. She’s lived and worked all over the state, calling both southern and northern California home.  During her career in journalism—as a reporter and editor at daily newspapers—she won awards for producing investigative series.

SNAP: All That Jazz, Book Eight of The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, was published June 30, 2014.  The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles paranormal romance series include SNAP: The World Unfolds, SNAP: New Talent, Plague: A Love Story, DANUBE: A Tale of Murder, SNAP: Love for Blood, SNAP: Happily Ever After? SNAP: White Night and SNAP: All That Jazz.  SNAP: I, Vampire, Book Ten in the Kandesky Vampire Chronicles is scheduled for publication early 2015.

She also writes the Amy Hobbes Newspaper mysteries, Edited for Death and Labeled for Death. A third book, Delta for Death, is coming in 2014.

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I want to be an archeologist when I grow up.

That would be so cool...except I’m old enough that my knees wouldn’t hold up on a dig and I’m sure I’d lose my reading glasses at least once.

But I refuse to give up my love of research, of digging through information until I find those facts that answer questions, like “why?”

Mysteries, whether murder or otherwise, are the ultimate quest for “why,” as well as “who,” “when,” and “how,” and in my years as a journalist, I asked those plenty of times.

Now, writing mysteries, I still ask them, but my plots hang on them AND I have to know the answer before I write.

In my mysteries, my protagonist, Amy Hobbes, the managing editor of a daily newspaper works with her cops reporter, Clarice Stamms, to peel the onion back and find the kernel of “why.”

Having been close to crime and murders for much of my career, I discovered that an awful lot of murders are similar...and that there are usually only two motives: sex and money.  Unfortunately most murders today have some connection to drug and/or human trafficking. There are millions—maybe billions—of dollars at stake and the murder rate escalates as the value if the commodity rises.

Every so often, though, a murder stands out. Like the Yosemite Murders that happened while I was an editor at the nearest mid-sized daily in Modesto. I’m still haunted by the “why” although Cary Stayner had plenty of devils that led him to be a mass murderer.

To answer the “why,” mysteries are set against a larger issue. In Edited for Death, the issue was the theft of looted Nazi art works by a young GI. In Labeled for Death, it was the lure of substituting high-priced grapes with cheap varieties in some of California’s fine wines.

And Delta for Death is set against California’s water woes...an exceptional drought and a proposal to build tunnels under the Delta and ship northern California’s abundant water to central and southern California. There’s an old saying in California, “Whiskey is for drinking and water is for war.”

Even though I thought I knew some of the water history of the Delta, research—time in the California collection at a couple of libraries, online archives of the local newspapers,and lunch with one of the deputy directors of the California Department of Water Resources—gave me both more information and more research paths to follow.

I’m pretty sure that my days as a beginning archeologist are long gone. At least, though, I can do this research and digging without leaving town.

That’s bittersweet. I’m never going to discover a lost city like Troy in California’s Central Valley, but when I lose my glasses, I know they’re somewhere in the house.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

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