You're only as old as you feel

Feeling old? Let me tell you about the speaker we had at a book luncheon at TCU today. When Mary Penson arrived at my office, I told her I was going to introduce her and asked, "May I say how old you are?" Her reply was, "Of course." She's 91, and she wrote her first novel at 70. TCU Press has published three young-adult historicals by Mary. Today at the luncheon she was a delightful speaker. To a roomful of women, with one lone man, she talked about how 19th century women were chattel and had two responsiblities--to marry and "pop babies" (I swear, that's what she said). When the gentleman in our midst said, "Sounds good to me," she threatened to see him outside after the lunch. And later something else she said prompted her to turn to him and ask if he was still with her. Then she said, "I'm really glad you came today." She talked about writing historicals so that she doesn't have to deal with the lingo of today's children, and she talked about her absorption in history. She said she felt her newest book, Martha Mary Overestreet, M.D., was her best to date (she's not through writing), and I agreed. It's the story of a young girl, eighth grade, in a small North Texas town in the late 19th century, who is determined to control her own destiny and not to marry and "pop babies." I've never asked Mary, but I'm sure her formula for living a long life is to keep busy and involved--and it sure works for her.
A friend I met for breakfast this morning gave me another clue for living a long life. She said her doctor had advised her to eat steel cut oatmeal (as opposed to rolled, which are cut into pieces and then rolled to make them thin). Steel cut oats are not rolled, and they take longer to cook and are chewy. But Mary said she feels the difference since she's been eating them with a bit of brown sugar, cinnamon, some dried apricots, and milk. It's on my shopping list for Saturday!
Tonight Betty and I tried a new restaurant--new to us and in a new location for the restaraunt. Called Chadra's, it's a Middle Eastern, maybe Lebanese restaurant. I had eggplant with ground sirloin and tomatoes--delish! And the small dinner salad was very lemony and good. A successful adventure!
I'm reading a mystery that started out slow, then seemed to diverge into two separate plots--one involving the husband and the other the wife--but now, two-thirds of the way through, the plots are coming together, and I'm finally hooked. I chose it because I read that this author wrote Santa Fe based mysteries but so far they have been only passing references to Santa Fe and no action there. I'm ready for a novel that sweeps me up and carries my away! But it strikes me as funny that I can so clearly see structural problems in other people's work, even published work in an established series, but I can get my own mystery published (and it of course has no structural problems--well, okay, not that I see!)

Of writers and agents--and spring

I sat on the porch tonight for a while, sipping a glass of wine and reading more of The Worst Hard Time. As one who writes a lot about the American West, I thought I knew the story of the Dust Bowl--but Tim Egan is opening my eyes to new facets of it. It's lovely to sit on the porch--the trees are about halfway green--some down the street seem filled out but the huge elm in front of my house still only has sparse leaves. It's an old tree, and periodically branches fall from it--mostly every time I leave town! I call the city, because it's in that easement between sidewalk and street, and I want to avoid huge tree trimming costs. But I always worry they'll just come and cut it down. The oak on the side of the front yard doesn't shed its old leaves until spring, but it has gotten rid of them now and sports new bright green leaves. And the redbud I planted two years ago has a few more blossoms this year, though they're already fading now. A bird--some kind of thrush I think, though I am not a "birder"--perched on one of my youpons, returning my look for a long time. Then, suddenly, he took off for the crape myrtles, which of course have not a leaf on them yet. It's fun, too, to watch the people who go by, most with dogs. One man came by tonight with a medium-sized black dog--the man walked with a funny forward lean, and I wondered if that was because of the dog on the leash. Would he stand more erect if he didn't have the dog or was he forever bent forward?
Someone once said to me that a relationship with a literary agent is worse than a marriage--and I believe it. My first agent was the man who first convinced me to write juvenile nonfiction about the West and whether he knew it or not launched me on a career that has given me "walking around" money over the years. He died before he should have, of cancer, and his wife took over--she oversaw the publication of my adult fiction but always said that she wasn't able to advance my career as much as she wanted. Then in the late '90s, she too died of cancer. Since then, I've danced with a lot of agents but married none of them. I am tired unto death of hearing them say that I write so well that they wish they could sell what I write. Which brings me to the mystery. I sent three chapters to an agent, a man I consider a colleague, maybe a friend, someone I respect as a good businessman. After long silence, he wrote that he had read it and worried over it, and his conclusion was that he liked it but didn't love it. It was too "genteel" for him. We mutually decided in emails that he wants hard-boiled, not an American cozy. I think I knew all along that the manuscript was wrong for him, but he was close and an easy contact for me.
I'm disappointed but not discouraged. I have a couple of acquaintances who write cozies, and I've written them to inquire about their agents. I'm moving on, determined to see Dead Space in print.
Tomorrow I'm going on a jaunt with my neighbor to a town about 30 miles away where a ranch has a butcher shop--boucherie, they call it--and sells grass-fed beef, pork, lamb, and poultry--no antibiotics, no hormones, and no crowded stinky feedlot. Plus eggs and cheese. Reading The Omnivore's Dilemma has made an impresson on me. One theory that made a lot of sense--cattle are the most efficient natural machines on the pasture. They were meant to eat the grass and fertilize it. They were not meant to eat grain (most cattle that are slaughtered from feedlots have diseased livers) and accumlulate huge piles of manure that we don't know what to do with. Once again, we've gotten the environment all wrong in the name of the dollar. Another thing I read--range-fed chicken is amisnomer. The chickens aren't allowed outside for the first few weeks, because they might "catch" something (or something catch them?)--then when the door is opened, they may be too timid to go. Even if they do, they are slaughtered a bare three or four weeks later. Michael Pollan, the author, is right--we can do a lot better with our food supply chain.
And I haven't even gotten to the vegetable meal yet, but Melanie tells me that the pesticides used to grow corn are polluting the surface water supply. Al Gore's "truth" is indeed inconvenient--but scary.