October in the Chair

I'm traveling to Boston for a work event today.  Brought Neil Gaiman's "M is for Magic" with me for the train ride.  Today's story was, "October in the Chair."

This short story is one that makes you smirk when you finish.  The premise is that each month, personified, takes turns telling a story - in order, January to December - and this turn belongs to October.  There is a bit of banter between the months so the reader can understand their "personalities", then October begins.  

October's story is about a bullied little brother, Runt, who runs away.  On his first night he finds a graveyard and bravely befriends a little boy who is a ghost.  They spend the evening climbing trees and running around.  Runt discovers that he is most happy in this graveyard with his new friend, seemingly a feeling he has never felt before. 

We hear a lot in the news about bullied kids today.  And it's so sad.  They feel so alone and scared.  And sometimes suicidal.  Just this week two local girls ran away because they were bullied at school.  Why don't we take more time to consider their feelings?  We think children feel so connected because they are on social media.  But we've all felt maxed out on our social media before.  Sometimes I think about how much social media I have and get confused because  I'm posting to the wrong account.  I should be work me but I accidentally post to my personal page.  Or my blog post gets shared to another page accidentally.  Which of these social media profiles is really me?  Two instagrams, three twitters, three fave books, who knows how many email accounts.  Sometimes even I feel a little confused about who I am... And I'm a working adult who has a solid group of friends.  Imagine feeling that sense of confusion and being 13.  Eek.  Though Gaiman didn't specify the era of when this tale took place, it feels timeless and I'm sure lots of young adults could relate.

Side note: know some readers feel Gaiman is too prolific and perhaps a bit commercial.  This story is one I would ask them to read to change their minds. Gaiman's ability to characterize the months of the year and cause no confusion is not something that is easily mimicked.  And, the ol' story within a story can seem trite... But not when OCTOBER is telling you a GHOST story.  So just chill, guys and enjoy it.  (Get it, chill, October, ghosts... Never mind.) 

Take the Donuts (AFP)

A friend recently asked me where this adventure would take me next.  

The answer?  DONUTS. 

I've been making my way through Amanda Palmer's recent release, The Art of Asking.  

For those who aren't familiar with AFP:  

She's an artist whose family is from affluent Lexington, Massachusetts.   She's married to my modern literary fave, Neil Gaiman.  As a student, one day she realized she wanted her "real job" to be an artist so she cut back her hours scooping ice-cream and became a statue.  You know the ones - people who paint themselves one color then stand very still until you give them a tip?  Yup.  That was her art.  She moved into an artist apartment and started a band (she had played piano her whole life) and became kind of famous! She hated being famous, though - the record companies kept telling her to stop talking to her fans.  They kept telling her she had to dress a certain way and had to play her music a certain way.  They even told her she was fat and that they'd have to edit her first music video to hide it.  So, she quit them.  In order to keep making her records, she started giving away her art for free.  She sold burned copies of her CDs for $5.  Stayed after her shows for hours signing autographs and talking with her fans.  She started an email list and responded to people who emailed her.   She put her songs available for "pay what you like" on her blog.  She became very active on Facebook.  And on Twitter. She throws house parties for free at fans' homes.  She has randomly scheduled pillow fights before her shows.  

What is Amanda Palmer most famous for, though?  Asking fans to pay for her to make a record.  And they did it.  She had a goal of raising $100,000.  Fans contributed $1,192,793.  Yup, almost $1.2 million dollars more than she asked for.  Since this successful campaign, AFP has continued making music, continued hooking fans up with free tickets, continued being a social media queen.   She even went on to do a TED to discuss her story and the success of making art and letting people pay what they want for it - even if it's nothing.  

In her book, AFP elaborates on this success.  She talks about artists often worrying that they'll be seen as frauds by the "Fraud Police" because their art is weird.  Or maybe the artist thinks no one wants to pay for their creation - how can they be legit if no one wants to give them money?  Her advice to those who fear such rejection?  Take the donuts.  She explains that even Thoreau - known for living in a tiny hand-made cabin next to a pond for years - had his mom bring him donuts and pastries on Sundays.  AFP asks the reader to consider whether Thoreau would be considered a "poser" today if he accomplished the same mission and was given donuts by his mom.  

I'm obsessed with this idea.  Be you.  Let people help you be you.  Let people give you donuts.  Recently I had a chat with a friend about how sometimes I feel like a fake because my circle of friends is extremely creative - musicians, artists, librarians, authors, video game designers - and I am not.  He told me that, though I feel like a fake - ahem, fraud - I am not.  The others see me as creative, too.  Me?  Really?  I was (and am!) flattered and hope I can continue with my artsy projects* so I feel less like a fraud.   I'll probably keep my day job and take a pass on becoming a statue, but I will most definitely continue writing.  I'm going to keep Pining dorky things on Pinterest.  I'm going to keep sending unicorn memes to my friend. 

Now, who's up for donuts?

*Disclosure Statement:  My husband is probably laughing as he reads this because I have 45,395 hobbies.  I sometimes paint, I sometimes play guitar, I sometimes take photographs, I read a lot, I try to write a lot. And by sometimes I mean rarely.  And by rarely I mean I need to practice playing my guitar.  Right now. 

Taking the donuts is hard for a lot of people. 

It’s not the act of taking that’s so difficult, it’s more the fear of what other people are going to think when they see us slaving away at our manuscript about the pure transcendence of nature and the importance of self-reliance and simplicity. While munching on someone else’s donut. 

Maybe it comes back to that same old issue: we just can’t see what we do as important enough to merit the help, the love. 

Try to picture getting angry at Einstein devouring a donut brought to him by his assistant, while he sat slaving on the theory of relativity. Try to picture getting angry at Florence Nightingale for snacking on a donut while taking a break from tirelessly helping the sick. 

To the artists, creators, scientists, non-profit-runners, librarians, strange-thinkers, start-uppers and inventors, to all people everywhere who are afraid to accept the help, in whatever form it’s appearing, 

Please, take the donuts. 

To the guy in my opening band who was too ashamed to go out into the crowd and accept money for his band, 

Take the donuts. 

To the girl who spent her twenties as a street performer and stripper living on less than $700 a month who went on to marry a best-selling author who she loves, unquestioningly, but even that massive love can’t break her unwillingness to accept his financial help, please…. 

Everybody. 

Please. 

Just take the fucking donuts.

Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables

I started reading The House of the Seven Gables a few weeks before Halloween. Here in Salem we talk about this piece of literature quite often. Hawthorne was born here and wrote about our little city several times.  We also have a museum dedicated to the House of the Seven Gables, which includes Hawthorne's birth house - moved to the site of the museum in the 1970s - and I have visited several times. It's one of my favorite places to bring guests when they visit. I know about the gables, and the family who actually lived in the home (The Turners, not the Hawthornes), about how Hawthorne changed his name from Hathorne because he felt shameful of his family's history during the Salem Witch Trials. I know Hawthorne married one of the Peabody sisters - wealthy women known for making the world a better place through education and through writing.


Can I tell you a secret, though? I had never read this book. Not in high school, not in college. Never. GASP. I'm not finished yet, but I had a real-life experience that related so greatly to the beginning of those book that I couldn't wait to share it with you.


This gothic novel, written in the 1850s, is about family history dealing with guilt, shame, atonement, witchcraft, and the supernatural. Although it's written in sort of a matter of fact manner, the content is quite intense. Today, we'll simply talk about the pre-story. That of the house being built in the 1700s.

In the first pages: "Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm."

The land on which this house was built is nearby a beautiful stream, and Colonel Pycheon built the home in order to pass it on to future generations of Pycheons. The problem was, the man who owned the land, Matthew Maule, who is poor and seen by members of the town as a bit strange, refuses to sell it to Pycheon. So, Pycheon uses the Witch Trials as an opportunity... He accuses Poor Maule of being a witch - he's murdered by the "judges" in Salem, and the land is turned over to Pycheon. Terrible. Maule's last words: "God will give him blood to drink". Of course, when Pycheon dies mysteriously in his home, and when he is discovered he has blood in his mouth. Where were the lawyers?  Where was the documentation of who owned the land?

While reading this part of the book, I attended work meeting with several individuals around the county to discuss a large fundraising event I'm helping to plan. In those meetings, we talked with people who founded/work for nonprofits in the area that promote land protection for the greater good. For example, one organization uses old records from the City of Salem to determine who the official owners of land are. One individual shared stories with us about families who were given land in the 1700s in a town north of here called Essex. The land was to be used as wood lots - it was too swampy to live on and too rocky to farm on. Assignment of the properties was completed, mostly, verbally and very few actual measurements were used. Families knew their land "ended at the big, overgrown tree", for example. As coal became a primary heating source in the 1800s, the woodlots became used less and less and the ownership became more and more murky. Now, in the 2000s, there are some parcels of land that should be taxed but sit empty, and it is unclear who owns them. So, this small nonprofit uses its resources to review old records in hopes of finding the families who own the parcels, and convince them to create a conservation restriction on the land - then the land can be used for trails and other public use.

As the woman from this small nonprofit explained this all to me, I couldn't help but think of Pycheon and Maule. Their story could never existed but for the distribution of land with little or no record and the increase in use of coal for heating.   As I sat in this meeting listening to this history of the region, I started thinking about how sometimes there are lessons in life that are so obvious and sometimes there are lessons in life that sneak up on us, and sometimes there are lessons that we learn without ever even really learning them.  It never occurred to the settlers around Essex that the woodlots would become obsolete some day so they never felt the need to document more clearly who owned them.  There was a sense of trust that we can not understand in our modern society.  Was it better to leave the land ownership up to interpretation and to trust your neighbors?  Maule would say "no", that's for sure.  Would Pycheon be so lucky with his witch accusation if there was a document showing Maule owned the land?  I think not.