Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris - remembering Paul Gallico

 When I saw the title of the new movie version of this book, I knew it had to be a typo. The book was published - in 1958 - under the title, Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris.  I just learned - from Goodreads - that in Britain, the title was Flowers for Mrs. Harris. Notice that the British title did not drop the "H" from Mrs. Harris' name. I wonder if that bowdlerized spelling was considered a slur. Hmmm.

The author was Paul Gallico. I read all of the Mrs. Harris books. For a hardworking charwoman, she got around. She even went to Parliament.

I moved on to Gallico's less humorous works.  His first foray into authorship was as a "smart-alecky" movie reviewer. Then he became a sports writer. After asking if he could spar with Jack Dempsey, (he lasted two minutes), he wrote about the bout and his fortune as a sports writer was made.

Gallico was a storyteller at heart and in the late '30s he sold a piece of fiction to the movies, quit his sports writing job and moved to Europe to write fiction.

He made his mark with the novel The Snow Goose, the story of the friendship between a reclusive artist and the young girl who brings a wounded snow goose to the artist for healing. Every year the snow goose returns to the marsh where the artist lives. 

I read Gallico's books as a teen and all I could remember of this book was the returning goose and the boats rescuing soldiers at Dunkirk. The ending is bittersweet. I LOVED it. (I was young.)

Gallico wrote novels that will be familiar to movie goers - Thomasina, for instance. His Love of Seven Dolls (warning: this is a dated and sometimes troubling story) became the movie Lili  and was the inspiration for the musical Carnival. He wrote The Poseidon Adventure as well.

The 2022 movie version of Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris follows the 1992 movie that starred Angela Lansbury.

Looking into Gallico's work - 41 books, 20 or so movies - I realized I barely scratched the surface with Mrs. Harris, Thomasina and the The Snow Goose. I may have to find a few "sentimental" books by Paul Gallico.

Question of the day! What kid snacks did you eat?

My brothers and sisters and I were "free range" kids. Most kids in the 50s, 60s and 70s were. One of our favorite "ranges" was the corner store where Mom sent us with bottles to hand in for pennies or nickels. That was the recycling program of the time!

We took those nickels and pressed our fingers against the glass case where tri-colored coconut candies, candy necklaces, gumdrops, chocolate drops, wax lips, Necco wafers, chewy fruit slices, lay out on trays. "2 for 1c" or "1 for 1 c", (my keyboard no longer has the slashed "c" symbol that stood for a penny), OR, be still my greedy little soul, "3 for 1c" - at those prices, empty bottles bought us a paper bag of treasure!

Then we moved, much too far to walk to a corner store, too far from any store. So, we foraged for our snacks. Mulberries, wild raspberries, honeysuckle, - spring and summer was a veritable smorgasbord of stuff. Once, we even savored "onion" grass - wild onions with baby bulbs at the end. Once was enough for that snack.

In the Fall we ate the wild pears. So grainy! But still sweet enough for us to enjoy. In the winter, we ate crackers spread with jelly. On Bridge Club nights and the days after, we had pretzels, chips and candy! Popcorn! Oh, we loved popping corn on the stove. And Dad made us a treat he called a Black Cow - root beer and milk - yum! And Mom made an eggless, milkless chocolate cake that we adored. I still make it. Some people call it Wacky cake or Depression cake. I call it delicious.

I loved the fruit slices -Chuckles! - that came 4 or 5 to a pack - gummy candies liberally covered in sugar. I even liked the licorice slice that was always included. Next to that I loved the wild raspberries that will ripen soon.

 So the question of the day is this: What was your favorite kid snack? 

https://cdiannezweig.blogspot.com/2010/11/1950s-retro-candy-from-hometown.html

 

 

Question of the day! Doing without.

For Christians, it's Holy Week, the last week of the 40 day season of Lent. 

One of the traditions of Lent is to "give something up", do without something for all 40 days. I have always been totally dismal at this practice. So, here is the question of the day:

Did you ever "give something up" for a purpose? If so, what did (do) you usually give up?

Most major religions fast, or do without, sometime during their liturgical year. In some traditions, religious or cultural, fasting is part of coming of age, preparing for a major life change, or an effort to ensure a desired outcome in one's life. (A vigil before a battle, for instance, or fasting before a major exam, or giving up something during pregnancy.) Liturgically, fasting encourages atonement, empathy, and an appreciation of what the faster usually has. Fasting is considered a form of prayer.

Because I went to a parish school, announcing what we intended to "give up" during Lent was often a classroom activity.  I always gave up candy. Then I did a little mental bartering.  I went from ALL candy to CHOCOLATE candy to SNICKERS. What a cheater! When did I ever have access to Snickers bars?

By the time we entered the middle grades, we added activities to our fasting. "I won't play solitaire during Lent." "I won't borrow my sister's perfume during Lent." "I will not call my little brother a baby during Lent." OR instead of giving something up, we added things. "I will do my chores before Mom reminds me." I will take flowers to my grandmother every week." I will put half my allowance in the collection plate every Sunday."

The worst thing about announcing our "give ups" was that classmates could call us out.  And they did.

This year, I didn't give anything up. But I have decided to TRY really hard to avoid screen games during Holy Week. (This includes the morning word games I get in my email.) Will I make it? I can but try.

Tell me...

Did (Do) you ever give up something for a purpose? If so, what did (do) you usually give up?

The Librarian Always Rings Twice by Marty Wingate

The Librarian Always Rings Twice  by Marty Wingate, 2022

 

Hayley Burke returns as curator of the First Edition Society  and things are not going well. Charles Henry Dill, the only living relative of Lady Georgiana Fowling, the First Editions Society's founder, has wormed his way into being hired to assist Hayley. His only interest is to find a way to get more money from his aunts' estate.

When John Aubrey arrives at the First Edition Society's first open-to-the-public afternoon and announces that he is Lady Georgiana's grandson, it sends people who knew the late Lady Georgiana into eddies of suspicion. Lady Georgiana had no children as far as anyone knew.

There you have the set-up. Someone connected to John Aubrey is murdered. The open afternoons bring in all sorts of people, most dedicated to the Golden Age of Mystery and the authors thereof - Christie, Sayers, Wentworth, Marsh, Allingham - just to name a few. But some visitors may not be what they seem.

 

I finished this book last night. Today, I want to go back into the world of Bath, England and the library of the First Edition Society and the canals that crisscross the countryside and the narrow boats and a new character that exudes an almost fairy tale charm.  

Wingate populates each of her mysteries with several characters that may or may not be the culprit. Some we hope to see again. Most we'd just as soon avoid. This book was a poser. The mystery of the murder was not nearly as consuming as the mystery of who or what John Aubrey was. 

Also, now I have to read Daphne Du Maurier's Frenchman's Creek.  The Librarian Always Rings Twice is a charming book filled with charming people. Read it.

Making Stuff. Question of the day

When I get moody, I make stuff - muffins, slippers, origami frogs. My hands are busy. My brain is engaged and the moodiness turns from blue to bright - or brighter, at least.

 I have always looked at things and wondered. "How could I use this to make something new?"

One Easter, (I was about 8 years old) I gathered cones from one of our evergreens. It was Spring so the cones were long and tight. I decided that I could use them to make bunny figures. So I taped them together with cellophane tape- a long one for the body, wrapped in white copybook paper, and shorter cones for the legs. Then I taped on paper ears. I cringe to think of them now because they were not pretty at all. BUT I liked them.

I set them out in the living room, hoping that the Easter Bunny might take them away and share them with other children.  

They were still in the living room when I woke up on Easter morning. 

Nope! This bunny did not want my pine cone rabbits.

 

My parents just told me that the Easter Bunny probably had too much stuff to hand out already. My Dad was not very kind about it. I think he suggested that I toss my pine cone bunnies in the trash. Ouch.

I was not as crushed as I thought I would be. Even at that young age, I knew the difference between a fun idea and a successful follow-through of that same idea. My idea may have been fun but I failed in its execution.  

Sometimes, just making something is its own reward. We don't always need praise. We don't even need success. Nothing is wasted if it teaches us something or cheers us up.

So Question of the day: Have you ever made something that did not work out as planned? 

I made these bracelets. They worked out, I think.

 

Enthusiasm - Question of the Day?

 The license plate read ELMO! and hanging from the antenna was a little red muppet's face. It made me smile. I thought of how we all have enthusiasms - favorites - throughout our lives.

A friend's email address used to contain the letters "grdnr". Gee, I wonder what her enthusiam was.

My email address begins with the word "book."  Want to guess what one of my enthusiasms is?

Here are some things that catch my eye no matter when or where I see them. 

-Peeps - the JustBorn kind. I don't think they are very tasty but I love their plump shapes.

-Clouds - I get a little crazy about clouds. I have to keep my eyes down some days.

-Sparkly things - I am part crow, I guess. If I see a sparkly thing on a walk, I must stop and pick it up.

-Books - well, duh! and talking about books here are some more enthusiasms - or favorites.

-Seymour - the character in the Walter Wick books. I made a little Seymour character for us to play with one year.

-Elephant and Piggie - I know I am not alone in gravitating towards these characters in  Mo Willems' fabulous series.

-Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore and Piglet, et al. - The Ernest Shepard version. I am warming to Disney's bowdlerization of Milne's characters but, oh, I love the original Hundred Acre Woods.

So here is your question of the day. Do you have an enthusiasm, a favorite, a character or activity that you love?

Did you have one when you were younger? (Okay, two questions. You can handle it.)

In my teens, I collected little plaster elephants. I carried them in my purse to school and to work. No bigger than walnuts, they came in different colors. I had to have one of each. I have not thought of them in years. Then, I saw a car that announced that a grown-up still loved a little red muppet and I realized how much joy we can get from small enthusiasms.

Spring! Question of the day!

 Today we left our jackets at home and ventured out in our shirt sleeves! Spring doesn't arrive until Sunday morning but it beckoned to us with clear skies and balmy temperatures. The snow that fell on Saturday is G-O-N-E - GONE! 

So today's Question of the Day - or evening - is... what sight, sound or activity tells you that Spring has come?

Youngsters look forward to Spring sports - baseball, tennis, soccer - and games - pick up games of basketball, kickball, stickball, kick-the-can, capture the flag.

Gardeners look forward to snowdrops and crocuses and a chance to get out there and DIG!

Bird watchers look for migrating birds to return and nesting activity to begin. 

Last night, I am POSITIVE that someone in our neighborhood was out back grilling supper!

When I was a kid, duck eggs were an early sign of Spring.

 

My father walked to Mass most mornings in Lent and he walked home before we headed off to school.

One Spring, my brother and I took Dad's piety as a challenge so many mornings we walked with him - in to church, home again - and THEN - we walked with the younger kids back to school, which was right next to church.

At that time, the creek by our house was crowded with domesticated ducks. And those ducks laid their eggs just about anywhere. On the way home from church, my Dad urged us to find as many duck eggs as we could. Seriously.

The younger kids heard about this, and one day, as we walked home from school, my younger brother spied a duck egg in the creek. Splash! School shoes and uniform pants on, he jumped into the creek and came out holding a clean white egg.  He was so proud of himself.

Dad told us that eggs in the creek were off limits after that. His obsession for duck eggs only lasted that one Spring. My brothers and sisters still talk about duck eggs in our cakes and casseroles.

Spring is here - or soon to be. Birds will nest and lay eggs in hidden places. I will look in the grass and under the bushes as I walk by the creek looking in vain... for duck eggs.

Routine - Question of the Day

The question today is: Do you have a morning routine?

Today, I spoke with my brother who lives in Japan. During the pandemic, he started following a morning routine of self-care. I have noticed that he has become proactive about the pressures in his life. I wonder how much that morning routine has contributed to his improved mood.

I have another friend who has developed a morning routine. His health has improved and he feels more productive and less anxious.

Do you do something every morning - or most mornings - that helps you start your day?

I started my own morning routine. It gets interrupted by obligations but I try to finish each of the components as early in the day as possible. I have found that the routine improves my mood. (I HATE getting out of my comfy bed many mornings.) It gives me a feeling of control - a feeling that is missing in our lives these days. My routine also makes me feel cared for and valued. And everyone needs to feel valued.

Here is my morning routine:

Sun salutation - yoga; followed by tai chi. This usually takes 30 to 40 minutes.

Make my bed! After years of not taking the time to make my bed, I have become a crusader for this simple chore.  Call me crazy but I do like a neatly made bed.

Journal - I sit in the sun or in a sunny window. This journal is NOT about things I did or have to do or worries or gripes.  My morning journal is about what I see and hear and smell and feel. If an insight comes from observing, I write about that. If a question arises, I consider it.  I celebrate life and living, trains and crickets, birds and rabbits, squirrels, passers-by, barking dogs and snow, rain and wind. I chronicle trees and mist, shadows and clouds. It's awesome!

I'd love to hear about your morning routine.

Question of the day - Onion Snow

 The snow today reminded me of all the snows that we have lived through in March. Snow around the middle of March is sometimes called onion snow. It will take a better gardener than I to explain why.

Some gardeners want their peas planted by St. Patrick's Day, too. That's way too early for me.

The question of the day is:

What is your favorite snow memory?

I have a lot of favorite snow memories. When I was around 11, it snowed so heavily on Christmas Eve, that the Bishop announced that Catholics did not have to go to Mass that day. We went anyway! We walked up the hill from our house  (about half a mile) and a bakery truck picked us up and drove us the rest of the way to church (another half a mile at least). My Mom stayed home with the youngest children and Dad walked with us to Church. What an adventure! We have a picture of my four-year-old brother standing against a four foot snowdrift.

Thanks for sharing your memories!

Question of the day, #2

 What was your favorite hiding place?

Hmm. This is a hard one. We played hide and seek a lot. But I don't remember a particular spot. I sometimes hid in the closet, like a lot of kids.

When I worked with teens, we sometimes held after hours events. They were usually "meetings" but they always ended with a fun activity. Hide and seek in the library was a favorite. The rules were never under a desk with a computer. Never in the tech closet. After the second game, we added Never on top of the shelves. Yeah. Sigh. 

Now, I am not a little person and I am not agile. The teens asked me to hide and they found me right away. Once, though, I simply slipped behind the curtain in the corner and they were stymied. My partner in adult-ing and crime kept her mouth shut. They eventually found me but I had a few moments of quiet hiding.

Now I go upstairs to my sewing room to hide. Everyone needs a secret or not so secret spot.

The Question of the Day

 First question, have you considered contributing to the effort to help the people in the Ukraine? It takes a minute or two to contact charitable organizations that provide aid to refugees. 

This article from Forbes magazine lists the top 100 charities for dependability. The second column tells you which charities deal with international concerns.

The charity that is linked to your worship community has already started to offer support to war torn families. So ask your minister, rabbi, priest or imam for contact information. 

We are lucky that only two minutes of our time can send help to people around the world.

Question of the day Project!!!

Yesterday, my Mom could not remember when she talked to her brother. Was it last night or yesterday morning? She remembered what they said but the time of the call slipped her mind.

 Since then, I have been thinking about memory.  And I have been thinking about stories.  When I was a young mother, it was inconceivable to me that anyone could forget every single detail of their child's life. Silly me. Our memories fill up so quickly and it's hard to find those small significant details that we treasured. We don't have a database that helps us find those details.

So, for the next week or month - or until I forget - I will post a Question of the day to send you down memory lane.

Today's question is:

What did you see and hear on your way to school?

The road that led to our house was bordered by a stone wall, that was about 3 and a half feet high until we got to the the end. The wall turned the corner and continued up the road that met our road.

But near the entrance of our road, one of the stone masons (WPA circa 1932) had pressed a small medallion into the cement that held the stones together. It was a picture of a child riding the back of a dolphin. We looked for it, and touched it, as we walked to and from school.

Several years ago, someone pried the medallion out of the wall. I still look for where it may have been. Old habits...

SIX ingredients for a "cozy" mystery

Even "Cozy" mysteries include evil. Although Aunt Dimity manages to avoid murder, blackmail, theft, missing persons, mean rumors, loud and obstreperous new neighbors, sinister strangers, missing or lost items of great value, ancient documents that tell of treasure and/or heartache, (I know that's an odd combination. Read Aunt Dimity for any explanations.), can offer a LOT of coziness.

Most cozy mysteries do deal with murder, (sigh).  I have spent a lot of time with Patricia Wentworth, Ngaio Marsh and their ilk lately. Alan Bradley and his preteen sleuth, Flavia de Luce, are favorites as well.

Picking up a new writer - Donna Andrews - I think I have found a series I can follow.  

I also believe I have deciphered the ingredients for a popular "cozy" mystery series:

SIX INGREDIENTS FOR A COZY MYSTERY

1. Quaint, charming, odd or intriguing setting.  A large family compound with forests nearby, a houseboat, a moldering family estate, a cottage in a secluded and eccentric village, a library, a museum, a farmer's market, hobby shop or shopping mall. If your mystery happens in a subdivision, make the neighborhood just a little unusual. You get the picture. Hint: Pick your favorite vacation spot.

1.a Historic Time Period.  Setting includes the time period. Perhaps, the sleuth is an ordinary housewife or laborer but lives in the Great Depression, or between the World Wars. That ups the interest but also the research needed to make the story credible. Of course, if your sleuth is Queen Victoria's great-granddaughter (Rhys Bowen's Her Royal Spyness series) you have to investigate royal protocol as well.

2. Recurring characters. LOTS of them. A large family to go with the compound. Village residents who fit certain "types" - gossip, busybody, disorganized professor, teacher or minister, playboy, shopkeeper, etc. Neighbors with unusual hobbies or habits. Best friends, old folks who depend on the main character. Old folks who ARE the main characters. Fill up that setting and then you have fodder for a LOT of murders or suspects at least. Hint: Look around. You know these people.

3. Specific occupations or hobbies. The main character can't just be the sleuth, he/she/they must also create murals for cities, or build sculptures from recycled material, or have a lot of kids or take in rescue dogs or... It's  convenient if they are law enforcement but a food writer or a pet groomer is probably more fun. Someone retired from academia or a profession that deals with people and their quirks will work as well. Use your imagination.  OR use your passion.

4.TEACH! A book that teaches me something is a winner. This includes recipes, jargon specific to a craft or profession, the inner workings of a newspaper or the workroom of a library. Instructions on how to throw a pot or thread - is that the right word? - a loom, all add a touch of truth to your fiction.

5.Victim! It never hurts if the victim is either highly unpopular OR very rich with scads of possible heirs. This makes for LOTS of suspects. If the crime is NOT MURDER, (see my first paragraph), the victim can be sympathetic because that adds urgency to finding the lost object or missing person or blackmailer or the identity of the person in the mysterious photograph.

6. Humor. It can be hokey. Some series writers love using puns in their titles to set a light tone. Check out Donna Andrews' titles for an incredible list of bird-oriented puns. Earlier writers, like the venerable Wentworth and Marsh, added humor by emphasizing their characters' personality traits or habits. (Roderick Alleyn's sidekick, Inspector Fox, mangles the French language in almost every outing.) Joan Hess, in her Arly Hanks and Claire Malloy series, included characters with predictable traits and penchants for nosiness to up the laughs.

There you have it. I want to read what you concoct from these ingredients.

WHAT??!! I did not add "a mystery" to my ingredients? DUH! That goes without saying.

There should be confusion as to how and who and you should add clues, of course. But if you distract your reader with setting and recipes and wonky characters and a sweet little romance as a subplot, you might get away with something not too taxing.

What are you waiting for? Good luck! Get Writing!

In Bookstores Next Week - Witchlings by Caribel A. Ortega

 

I did not expect this package, an advance reader's copy of Witchlings by Claribel A. Ortega. I approached it warily. Would I like it? Would I not? Was it about an elderly or quirky sleuth? NO! Is it about bookstores, booksellers, authors or librarians? Not really.

Welll????? 

The pandemic has made me ultra fussy about trying new things. It takes me so much longer to dive into a book these days. I read a few pages and then, sigh, I put the book down. During the next read I go further, and then further into the plot. On my third attempt, I have to force myself to put the book down - IF the book is good enough.

Witchlings IS good enough!  YAY!

Seven Salazar enters the Black Moon Ceremony to find what coven will be hers. The one thing she does not want - or expect - is to become a Spare, one of three 12-year-old witches who are NOT chosen for a coven.

Right there, you know what is going to happen, right? That Seven's fate is shared by her worst enemy, Valley Pepperhorn and the new girl, Thorn LaRoux, does not make this terrible fate any better. Spares never become witches. If they are lucky, they get jobs that don't require magic. If they are NOT lucky, they are little better than slaves. Oof!

UNLESS!!! There is always an "unless". If I tell you what the "unless" is, I may be telling you too much. The book checks off a lot of boxes; transforming friendships; suspending judgment; accepting differences; learning to trust. Then, there are the adventures, the forays into extreme danger, the endangered family members and the unfair treatment of Spares. Plus a seriously creepy mystery derails the Spare coven's attempts at earning their witchdom. Just when you think you see the light at the end of the tunnel, everything changes.  Make NO assumptions, readers. This is a kaleidoscope ride.

But the story is NOT finished. Seven, Valley, and Thorn may have prevailed but evil is still out there...waiting. 

                                                                (Mwahahahahaha!)

(On sale on February 1, 2022.)

Packages

There might be holiday wreaths and garlands on some houses in your neighborhood but the HOLIDAYS are truly over.  We have turned the corner. 

There are lingering side effects. My desire to buy the "perfect" holiday gifts and my reluctance to go into crowded stores this Fall resulted in a new addiction - online buying and PACKAGES! "Brown paper packages tied up with string"...  except these packages come in padded envelopes with reinforced packing tape.  That doesn't have the same lyricism though. "Packages in envelopes with reinforced packing tape" does not scan.

The ease and allure of online shopping ate a hole in my credit card spending. I have a small self-imposed "cap" on my spending and every month, for the past four months, my credit card company warned me that I exceeded my cap. Don't worry. My credit line is much larger than my cap. Still, what happened to the Old Frugal Me? The Use Cash Whenever Possible Me? The I Don't Need That Me? Where did I go?

Well, the news gives me an answer to that. I turned into an homebody because it's Sickness Season and I hate being sick. I never much liked shopping in stores anyway. Too many choices and never the right one - shopping takes too much time.

Online shopping takes time, too. Why is looking at things on a screen so much better than fingering the same things in a store? Choosing online takes time and effort. But it also offers the joy of anticipation! 

Looking for packages has become the bright part of my day. A day without a package is a day without sunshine to steal a saying from an old ad. I don't even care if the package is for my husband. We open them with an eagerness unrivaled by any of our other activities. Do Not Judge!

Last night - our mail comes very late - I got a BOOK in the mail. The Paris Bookseller is completely outside my usual reading. I lean toward fiction for young readers and cozy mysteries with elderly or quirky sleuths.  It is time for me to BREAK OUT and try a new book about ... books. (You did not expect me to stray too far, did you?)

Back to packages...I like sending them, too.  And here's the best thing. I can send a package from HOME!! I have a postal scale and I can "Click'n'Ship". The postal worker picks the package up from my porch. It is truly awesome. 

OH HO! With packages and and shipping from home, I can complete my transformation into a cave dwelling hermit! Mwahahahaha! 

Next, I will give up showers. 

(not really!) 

I wonder what's in the package I hope to get today.