Anita Bushell: writer and editor
Speaking of grocery lists, I use mine at the Park Slope Food Coop, where I also write for the Linewaiter’s Gazette. My article about the Los Angeles fires and how they might affect produce production was just published. You can find it here.
Thanks for reading!
It’s amazing to me what a hunger there is for the activities we used to take for granted: drawing, sewing, cursive.
This week I taught the second of two workshops at the New York Public Library, with a focus on cursive handwriting. The participants spoke: they were less interested in the crafts from last week. They wanted more cursive.
We worked on three activities: lists, letters, and journals. First, we brainstormed what kind of lists we can make: to do, grocery, and new year goals were a few that came up. Then participants spent time writing their lists. Next, we spoke about letters – I had brought paper and envelopes – and discussed who we could write letters to. Friends, family, someone in the community were mentioned. Finally, we journaled: although we attempted the three full sheets of Morning Pages (Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way), this was tough in the time we had left. The goal was to finish one page.
At Artist & Craftsman, where I did a workshop last weekend, I had three ten-year-old students who had never had cursive instruction. They were delightful, and I could not believe how quickly they picked up the skill, simply using cursive alphabet tracing pages, and having lots of time to practice. Here’s the thing about cursive: like anything else, the more you practice the better you get.
Cursive handwriting is just one activity in what I refer to as the analog arts that so many of us are yearning for in our wholly digitally-overloaded world.
Teaching at the New York Public Library. My happy place.
This week I taught the first of two cursive-and-crafts workshops with a focus on Valentine’s Day. Last summer, the classes focused more on cursive handwriting – its history, current status, and how to re-connect – and this winter the goal was to combine cursive with crafting.
I brought lots of art images from old appointment books, colored index cards, and letter writing paper. Students turned their valentines into collage, added notes, and most of all, practiced their cursive handwriting skills. There were worksheets, and we went over some of those pesky letters – for example a lower-case “r” -- which lots of folks struggle with.
Oh, of course, there were pens. Ball points, markers, and even some Pilot fountain pens. For some students, these were a first. But they loved them.
The best part? For next week’s session, the students wanted to focus more on cursive and less on crafts.
Made my heart sing.
“I’ve learned first-hand,” says author Barbara Nickless, “that writing is a powerful tool for healing. My life has been pockmarked with tragedy—a wildfire that took everything. My brilliant mother’s slide into dementia. My father’s suicide.”
We’re living in a time of chaos, and we need a place to channel the churning thoughts that swirl in our heads all day. One safe space is a journal.
In my upcoming manuscript for struggling writers, I discuss the importance of journaling, as a place to simply start writing, as well as a haven for unedited thoughts. One of the multiple benefits of journaling is that it’s low logistics and cost. All you need is pen and paper and a little time.
Time is often the biggest challenge because life always gets in the way. In this case, however, writing is not a luxury but a form of therapy, a place where you can quietly sit, phone free, and simply be with yourself and your thoughts.
The Morning Pages, from The Artists Way, is a fantastic journaling tool: three pages handwritten without stopping. Why no stops? Because that’s when the “self editor” shows up. Ideally, Morning Pages are done at the start of the day, but many of us cannot do this.
A great place to start is on the weekends, if you can.
“When I suddenly remember a beloved object lost in the wildfire,” Nickless writes, “I will sit and write about that object and why it has meaning for me. Often, the object’s value is tied to someone I love, and writing about that person—even when they’re gone—settles me.”
We could all use some settling right now.
“My father says that there is only one perfect view — the view of the sky straight over our heads…” – George Emerson, A Room with a View
In yoga class, I happened to look up. Through the skylight I could see a bird sailing through a sea of pale blue. Air quality was probably quite good.
Not so much in California.
“It was the soot-colored swans, so dark they almost looked black, that first struck Gabriella Asad, when she arrived at the Lake Shrine on the second day of the fire.” – LA Times.
“Just the way the sky was, all the smoke, the way the swans were covered,” she said with emotion in her voice, “it took everything in me to do the best I could.”
Long time members of Self Realization Fellowship, a spiritual retreat in Pacific Palisades, Gabriela, her brother, and her father fought fires for seven hours, pausing “to gently rinse some of the soot clinging to the swans’ feathers.”
Later that evening they returned, using hoses to extinguish consistently erupting “spot fires”. “It was blindingly exhausting work” the Times said, “and they believe it was the prayers and wishes of devotees across the globe who empowered them to do it.”
I see It’s a Wonderful Life’s Mary and George grabbing those hoses and doing what needs to be done. Perhaps Capra’s community is not a fantasy after all.
Years ago, it snowed on my block in Brooklyn. Then it got icy. Most of my neighbors shoveled and salted. One did not.
My elderly father was coming to visit on the subway. I looked at that one untended patch and worried about my dad. Later that day, the homeowner was outside, and I mentioned it to him.
“Oh, I didn’t get around to it,” he said.
Because this happened long ago, I am giving him possibly undue credit. Sadly, if memory serves, what he actually said was,
“I didn’t feel like it.”
In the last pivotal scene of It’s a Wonderful Life, George’s crisis is solved by the community coming together, one by one, to take care of him. It’s their way of giving back to the man who’s helped his neighbors, as did his father before him, for decades.
As the sadness sinks in from the devastation in California, one thing is clear. Many people are taking care of each other.
“The city has stepped up where elected officials have not. From firefighters and E.M.T.s to everyone who has offered shelter, volunteered and pitched in on GoFundMe pages, I’ve never seen such unity,” Amy Chozick wrote in The New York Times.
And in a beautiful piece of journalism, Ken Bennsinger and Ryan Mac wrote about an Altadena Arco-station-turned-help hub.
“Yet somehow this filling station, perched across the street from one of the most destructive wildfires in California’s history, had suddenly become the vibrant hub of a traumatized neighborhood, a harbor for residents desperate for food, clothes and, especially, community.” – The New York Times
First Lady Rosalynn Carter once said, “There are only four kinds of people in the world: those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers.”
Caregiving is what human beings do, whether we feel like it or not.
Capra is all about community. And I was going to talk about It’s a Wonderful Life this week. But I can’t get the girl out of my head.
She was young. She was walking down the road. And she was leading a horse.
I have family in Pasadena, and last year we drove through Altadena, high above Los Angeles, having just gone on a hike in the Angeles National Forest. It was ethereal, walking in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, minutes from a major metropolis, surround by cacti, pine trees, and nothing but the wind to serenade us.
As we drove back through Altadena, I noticed the historic cottages along the road. Modest, but full of charm, this seemed like the perfect combination of city and country combined. Indeed, locals refer to it as “paradise”.
And then I saw her, a young woman, walking a horse along the road. Clearly, for this community, this was the most natural thing in the world. A city girl myself, but from a very different city, horses are only seen in local parks.
As our friends in Southern California come together to process the infernos that have engulfed their communities, I wonder about the young woman and the horse along the road, and whether they are safe.
It’s been a good year, writing-wise. Time for a break.
The holidays are a great time to get up from my desk and get out of the house. What else is going on out there?
For one thing there is the mind-blowing Alvin Ailey exhibit at the Whitney. No dusty- museum-experience-of-my-childhood here.
This is a “…spirited, sense-surround show…” that is “a relatively rare example of a traditionally object-intensive art museum giving full-scale treatment to the ephemeral medium of dance…
it serves as a kind of audiovisual backdrop to many dozens of objects — paintings, sculptures, collages, prints — rich in imaginative variety, diverse in content…
Basically, it’s an evocation of Ailey, and his dance, through the lens of African American visual art, which is a record and reflection of the Black culture that shaped him, and that he helped shape.” (New York Times)
Then there is the Frank Capra tribute at Film Forum; the delightful Mr. Deeds Goes to Town was a great place to start.
Capra made multiple films with screenwriter Robert Riskin, who was a master storyteller. I am a huge fan of what I call the Boom, You’re In! method, wherein you are rapidly plunged into the conflict of the story, leaving you no time to become disengaged by, for example, a meandering pace.
I was lucky enough to study dramatic structure with the great Joe Stockdale, at SUNY Purchase, and our first assignment was reading Aristotle’s Poetics, in which he gives the reader the framework of storytelling: Setting, Rising Action, Conflict, Crisis, and Denouement.
What is fascinating about watching the films of the Depression is how quickly you discover, say, the setting and rising action of a movie like Mr. Deeds. In the first two minutes you know the setting – the Italian countryside – and the rising action – a speeding car goes off a cliff, killing the American mogul inside. Newspaper headlines flash as a search ensues for said mogul’s heir. By the time we get to the third and fourth scenes we know the press and the lawyers are involved -- everyone wants in – and, before you know it, the heir has been discovered, a modest man and the mogul’s nephew, played by none other than Gary Cooper.
The Italian countryside served as setting for Capra’s own origin story – he was born in poverty in Palermo to parents who neither read nor wrote – and took him to the U.S. and eventually Hollywood, where, in one of his first jobs, he mucked out the studio stables. The documentary, Frank Capra: Mr. America, also showing at Film Forum, does an amazing job of capturing the complexity of Capra’s immigrant rags-to-riches story, without “Capra-corning” it.
Read my essay on studying with Stockdale here.
Freddy and Mo had met at a backyard barbeque on Douglass Street. He admired her sleek coloring a la distance. She thought his aerial acrobatics were quite impressive. However, he didn’t want to get too close. What if she was with someone else?
He waited for his opportunity and as the light was falling, he made his way over to her as she hovered by the picnic table. She had nice eyes. She seemed shy. That was good; he was a loner himself. He pictured them, two quiet loaners, hanging out in the shadows.
They chatted for a minute, then went their separate ways.
“Maybe I’ll see you at another barbeque,” he said as he flew off.
Later that summer Freddy was preening in the sun when he heard a familiar rustle. There, in the shadow of a flower pot, was his new friend.
“Oh, hello!” he said.
Ah, it’s you!” she squeaked.
“At your service, ma’am,” he said, as he bowed.
They caught up on the neighborhood gossip and agreed to meet again soon.
Freddy and Mo continued to see each other at various backyard parties in the neighborhood. One late summer afternoon, they found themselves talking through a garden fence. The weather was cooling, and the crisp fall air promised a long dark winter. Plans needed to be made. It was time to head inside.
Freddy was looking for a roommate. Mo needed a change. They agreed to find new digs together.
A great idea, not that easily executed.
“This one’s too clean,” he said, as they saw a Danish modern design, that was way too sleek. “And they’re vegetarians. That won’t do.”
“This one’s too cluttered,” she said, as they made their way through an old-school rent control. “Oh, no, no, no,” she added. “I draw the line at roaches.”
“Oo…this one!” Freddy said, as they snuck into an open house. “We could make this work.”
“No, we can’t,” Mo said, dejectedly. “They allow cats.”
“This is hard,” he said.
“I think we have to move on,” she said.
Mo had found the place on Douglass Street and spent the first few days checking out the interiors. It had good bones, she thought. The walls were not too solid. She could see herself settling in.
“Luxe,” he said.
“Bonus!” she said.
“We’ve arrived!” they cheered.
Freddy met her there on Thanksgiving. The door opened and he was home. This is it! he thought. Super warm. Very cozy.
There was a huge feast, with lots of food, and much to drink. Mo dragged a piece of bruschetta to Freddy, as he flitted over the banquet table.
There was, however, one problem. When the guests left, the place got cleaned up. Nothing remained. Nothing on the floor, or counters, everything put away in the highly inaccessible refrigerator.
“Well, this won’t do!” Freddy said.
“Absolutely not!” Mo chimed in.
They began hovering. They stalked the corners, and eyed the room, wondering what their next plan would be.
“We need water,” Freddy said.
“Food would be nice,” Mo said.
“Time for a new plan?” Freddy droned, as he nervously flitted about.
“Oh my…” Mo said, as she pondered a plan.
As luck would have it, hasty breakfast preparations were made the next day, with dishes left in the sink, and crumbs scattered on the counter.
“Our ship has sailed in!” Freddy buzzed.
“This will do nicely,” Mo added.
That night, Mo struck dessert gold. The candy dish had been left unattended and in the bottom, she discovered a bunch of sticky Mary Janes.
“Yum!” he cried.
“Sweet!” she said.
“Haste makes waste and a clean house doth not the creatures feed,” Freddy sang.
“Happy Holidays, my dear!” Mo squealed. “Who knew salvation could be found at the bottom of a crystal candy dish?”
“Poor Mr. Woodhouse was silent from consternation.” -- Chapter 15 Emma
There’s weather, then there’s worrying. And the world of Mr. Woodhouse is filled with worry.
In Austen’s Emma, the father is an elderly man reduced to his worries. Worrying about the weather. Worrying about health — his and everyone’s around him. And worrying about travel, both far and near.
In today’s world Mr. Woodhouse might be termed anxious. Indeed, his anxiety for everything and everyone around him reminds me of my late father, who worried about time — constantly checking his watch (even though he was chronically early for every appointment); the location of his wallet — patting his pants pocket multiple times after leaving the house; and, once he did, making sure he knew the whereabouts of his house keys. I cannot describe his consternation as we sat in a taxicab one winter’s day wondering whether we’d be late for a train from Penn Station.
One of the delightful features of listening to Austen on audio books is that you begin to feel the creeping claustrophobia of being in a room with an incessant worrier, such as Mr. Woodhouse. I walk while listening to Austen and whole city blocks can be measured by the amount of time taken to feel the fretting of Mr. Woodhouse on, say, a carriage ride in the snow, swimming in the sea, or the particular evil of eating cake.
Anyone who has spent any time in England knows about rain. And that particular damp chill that my late mother-in-law once referred to as “raw.”
In Austen, someone, always a female, sits inside looking out a window. At the rain, the clouds, the mud. The impossibility of going out.
We’ve experienced a drought – the first in a long time – and the days have been brilliantly sunny and mild. But this morning, as I walked the dog, it rained all day and it was raw. As well as grey.
Grey is very Austen – there is even a Miss Grey who mucks up the works for Marianne is Sense and Sensibility– and I once wrote an essay called “Getting Used to Grey,” about the seasonal shift in New York from the bright sun of the fall to the blanket of gloom that descends on the region around Thanksgiving, not to leave us until May.
This is the season of being inside, of tea and books, of distractions that take us away from the weather, which is certainly a character in much of Austen. An easy nemesis to many plans, it drives her heroines indoors, relegating them to endless games of whist or piquet or performances on the pianoforte. Indeed, there must be university shelves filled with weather as subject in the novels of Austen.
I am once more getting used to grey, battling my own tendency to stay indoors, and argue the impossibility of going out. Thank goodness dogs needs walking, errands need running, and bodies need exercise.
‘Tis the season of grey. And the return of rain.
It is always most evident that in times of great chaos a need arises for the utmost of comforts.
For some, it’s sports. For others, TV. For me, Austen suffices.
I have read most of her novels but am now listening to the most excellent Rosamund Pike on Audible. In order of publication, the glorious Sense and Sensibility, then the brilliant Pride and Prejudice.
I cannot describe how many hours my household spent watching the A&E P&P released in the 1990s, replete with the screeching Mrs. Bennett, and the ass-kissing Mr. Collins. But it is the extraordinary Anna Chancellor, who plays Caroline Bingley, that is most memorable, certainly for all the wonderful parts she has played over the years, but mostly for her “Duckface” moniker, aptly named by Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Why Duckface now? Because there is a marvelous scene where Caroline critiques Darcy’s handwriting, as he attempts to write a letter to his sister. She is all desperation, for of course she dreams of Darcy for herself.
Mr. Darcy was writing, and Miss Bingley, seated near him, was watching the progress of his letter and repeatedly calling off his attention by messages to his sister. Mr. Hurst and Mr. Bingley were at piquet, and Mrs. Hurst was observing their game.
Elizabeth took up some needlework, and was sufficiently amused in attending to what passed between Darcy and his companion. The perpetual commendations of the lady, either on his handwriting, or on the evenness of his lines, or on the length of his letter, with the perfect unconcern with which her praises were received, formed a curious dialogue, and was exactly in union with her opinion of each.
"How delighted Miss Darcy will be to receive such a letter!"
He made no answer.
"You write uncommonly fast."
"You are mistaken. I write rather slowly."
"How many letters you must have occasion to write in the course of a year! Letters of business, too! How odious I should think them!"
"It is fortunate, then, that they fall to my lot instead of yours."
"Pray tell your sister that I long to see her."
"I have already told her so once, by your desire."
"I am afraid you do not like your pen. Let me mend it for you. I mend pens remarkably well."
"Thank you—but I always mend my own."
"How can you contrive to write so even?"
He was silent.
I’m reminded of the woman in my cursive handwriting seminar this summer, who spoke of her Mexican fathers and uncles and their extraordinary handwriting. “It was such a source of pride!” she said.
Indeed, in our time it is hard to picture how one would comment on the typing of another. What would one say?
“You type with such speed?”
“Oh, what crueler irony could there be than for the gods to infuse a young man with dreams of literary fame and then provide him with no experiences?”
Handwriting makes an unexpected appearance in Amor Towles’ delightful “Ballad of Timothy Touchett.”
The short story, part of the collection Dinner for Two, tells the tale of Touchett, an aspiring New York writer who sits in the Main Reading Room of the 42nd Street Library, lamenting his lack of experience. How will he write when he has nothing to write about?
Enter Peter Pennybrook, a downtown used bookstore owner who happens to notice Touchett practicing the signature of one well-known 20th century author.
“As he sat in the library staring down at a facsimile of a letter from F. Scott Fitzgerald, rather than taking notes on elements of craft or branching off on some promising tasks of his own, Timothy found himself copying Fitzgerald’s signature over and over, even as the minute hand on the Reading Room’s clock advanced irreversibly toward eternity.”
Suddenly Touchett, with a premise from Pennybrook, has a “promising idea” to branch off on, all because he can emulate the flourishes, loop-de-loops, and downward slopes of the American avatar of the Roaring Twenties, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Late last spring, curator Robinson McClellan of New York’s Morgan Library and Museum, was sifting through an array of cultural memorabilia, including letters of Brahms and Tchaikovsky, and postcards signed by Picasso.
“When McClellan came across Item No. 147,” The New York Times wrote, “he froze: It was a pockmarked musical scrap the size of an index card.”
What McClellan held in his hands, it turns out, was an unknown waltz by Frédéric Chopin.
“…the Morgan,” the Times wrote, “…is confident the waltz is authentic, pointing to several Chopin hallmarks…the paper and ink are consistent with what Chopin used at the time…the penmanship matches the composer’s...down to the unusual rendering of the bass clef symbol…the museum noted that “another Chopin manuscript in the Morgan’s holdings shows a similar bass clef symbol.”
One delightful bonus: the “manuscript is also embellished with a doodle by Chopin, who liked to draw,” the Times reported.
And there we have it. Signature confirmation because of handwriting analysis.
How utterly old school.
When he entered The White House, newly elected President Barak Obama asked for ten letters.
At the time The White House received 65,000 paper and 100,000 email letters – to say nothing of phone calls and faxes – weekly. Obama asked his correspondence staff to sift through them and choose – daily – the ten most meaningful ones they felt the President should read, representing all different sides of the American experience.
“Lately I’ve been getting a lot of health care letters, and this one is a good example,” Obama said, reading one about a family whose retirement funds were being drained as they supported a son who could not afford the cost of his insurance premiums because of a preexisting condition.
Another letter contained a photograph of a vegetable garden that a woman had sent, showing the president how she had used her stimulus payment.
And then there was the letter written during World War II.
“My dearest daughter,” it began, as the father, newly deployed, described to his newborn daughter what he was doing and why it was so important to him. And to the country.
“These letters do more, I think, to keep me in touch with what’s happening around the country than just about anything else,” the president said.
In the Season Three finale of Madame Secretary, Elizabeth McCord travels to Brussels, asking NATO’s alliance for their support in preventing an incursion in Eastern Europe. In doing so she removes a postcard from her jacket pocket and reads it out loud, illustrating the power of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“This is a postcard my uncle sent to his father when he arrived in Italy, William Adams. He was in the Third Infantry Division, the Battle of Anzio. ‘We landed safely yesterday, passed the ruins of a school today. Kids in grey rags scrambling over the heap. We got out some K Rations but no, they only wanted to shake our hands. Greatest feeling of my life.’ ”
She goes on.
“He died the next day, at the counterattack. But the thing that strikes me is this validation of purpose. The invigoration of fighting for something greater than himself. For a future that he believed in. This certainty that he was on the right side of history.”
All on a postcard.
Last week I cleaned out my desk. And there was lots of paper.
Notepads, and holiday cards, and postcards. Oh my.
Lots went out. Some stayed on. Postcards present a particular problem. Unwritten ones are mementos. Memories of museums, places, and trips gone by. Small images, perfectly preserved, gorgeous gems of moments in time.
A friend and I are currently sending each other postcards. It’s absolutely delightful. A message accompanies the provenance of the card, “I was here with…” “I thought of you when I saw this…”
The ones I can’t pitch are the vintage, mid-century jewels of color rarely seen in nature, the ones of London or Paris, Venice or Rome, where the streets are scrubbed clean, and the skies are a swimming pool blue.
Tags #writingblogs, #writing, #letterwriting, #postcard
Mine is no mystery. And not nearly as elegant. However, I have every, single one.
My letter collection is still intact. From recent months, and years ago. Yes, indeed, even from childhood. The adult end met up with its former self when I cleaned out my dad’s apartment several years ago. There it was, untouched, in a childhood desk drawer, simply waiting to be seen. Letters from camp, letters from family, and, yes, letters from long-lost friends.
One is from high school and, just like that, I’m back, transported to the hallway, seeing the writer and how she dressed, her smile, as I now read her letter, pouring her heart out about – imagine – a boy.
Another is from middle school, a neighbor who moved away. How different her life was in sunny California, away from the grey of a New York winter, where we once made Lemon Squares together. She wrote out the recipe and my memory of her neat, manuscript printing matches the letter I now hold in my hands.
Then there are the ones unrecognized. I don’t know the writer. Were they friends not for long? Yet they took the time to sit down and write. I only hope I did the same for them.
As much as I adore the visual and tactile nature of my letter collection, what strikes at the heart is the sense of time, of its passage, of first loves and lost friendships, family that remains only in spirit, and memories that challenge us to think, reflect, and give context to a time gone by.
It’s a mystery, the contents of this box. Here’s what I know, so far.
Several years ago, I was cleaning out my aunt’s house. I found a box inside of a larger box, containing stamps from all over: Germany, Cuba, and the United States.
This box was nestled among clippings, hundreds of them, of letterhead(s) from mid-century American hotels, coast to coast: The Taft, the Biltmore, the Roosevelt. Beyond belief, though, were the train lines: the Los Angeles, and the Sunset Limited. The mind reels: there was a time when you could board an American train and write a letter on its personalized stationery.
The elegance of this speaks to an era when time spread out. I just started reading the letters of MFK Fisher and what is startling is simply the use of language for communication. This is no text speak time; this is when thoughts were developed, and full words were used. One pictures the writer, staring out the train window; locales pass by as thoughts come together.
To get back to Mrs. H.R. Burdick. It seems she collected both the stamps and the stationery, but not the letters. Luckily, there are many envelopes with multitudes of beautiful handwriting. Where does my aunt come in? Apparently, one of her many hobbies was stamp collecting, and she purchased these boxes from one David C. Burdick, of Sea Cliff, New York, the town in which she lived. One assumes David was the son of Mrs. H.R. Burdick.
There is no question that this treasure trove wants to become a book, or a museum exhibit. Or both. Stay tuned.
They loved the letters, as did I.
At the second cursive handwriting workshop I taught this week, I showed the communications of Jane Austen, Audrey Hepburn, and Eric Clapton. Each had their own style. Yet there were similarities.
While Austen’s resembled the classic cursive of the 18th century – slanted and elegant – Hepburn’s was round and vertical, with no slant at all. Then there is Clapton’s, which is so distinctive it stopped me. It was the handwriting of a college friend, raised in England. Not quite cursive, but not just print. It’s a hybrid, and almost resembles calligraphy.
The reason for this? “In Britain, in the early 1890s, Professor John Jackson introduced vertical writing, which he felt had superior legibility, and was easier for students to learn.” (Lynn Diligent, Dilemmas of an Expat Tutor).
We spent most of the class writing letters to friends or family. Participants were so focused you could hear a pin drop.
The best part? One of the letters was addressed to me, thanking me for teaching the class.