Living with the Past

That tower isn't leaning. It's a distortion caused by the camera lens. The point is, in Siena we see a 700-year-old city center and a brand new construction crane. How do they blend the old and the new?

We live better than kings. If you take a tour of a medieval castle, you realize that even poor people in the USA have a plusher home than the kings in their cold stony rooms. We have glass windows, indoor plumbing, electric lights. We have blue jeans and comfortable underwear. We have duct tape. Life is good.

While improving our standard of living, we tend to destroy the places we love. In Italy, they have had more practice - a couple thousand years - in striking a balance between improvements and preservation. While not perfect, they offer some lessons.

I'm no expert, but I'd like to use this blog to think out loud about how we can come to terms with the past, starting with the Italian example: How they show respect. How they preserve, and how sometimes they fake it. How they find balance. How they sometimes fail.

Mostly I'll use photos and try to keep my comments brief. Here, over the rooftops of old Piacenza, is the new Italy:

Blues Festival, Piacenza, Italy

Here I am at the Leaning Sign of Piacenza.

In a way, it was like going to summer camp: You travel away from home. At first you're a little scared. People welcome you. You make new friends. You see the world from a different point of view. You learn new skills. You come back a better person.

One thing I learned was how to make people want to read my book. It came to me during my first radio interview when the host, a man named Luca, asked me to explain the title. Here is what I said:

In the USA, each state has a different license plate. In the state of Idaho, every car, every truck, every motorcycle has a license plate with a message at the bottom saying “Famous Potatoes.” I always thought it was a funny idea: something so common, so ordinary, so down-to-earth as a potato could be famous. In my novel I write about people who are like potatoes - they’re the little people - the carpenter, the waitress, the truck driver, the prostitute - they live a hard life. They’re invisible. They have to be hard to survive. But if you dig them up, if you warm them, you can make them soft and sometimes you can make them sweet. That’s what I’m searching for in my writing: that softness, that sweetness in people who are living hard lives.

It seemed like a good answer, so I repeated it for the rest of my tour to about a dozen audiences. And each time after I spoke, people would go over to the book sale table and buy copies of Le Famose Patate. I wish I'd figured this out 30 years ago, when the book was first published.

Here are some more things I would say to the audience:

Another meaning of the title is that a potato lives underground, and in the USA, when you are hiding from the police, when you are living outside the law, it is said that you are living “underground.” The hero of Famous Potatoes is in a bar in St. Louis, Missouri on the Mississippi River when he gets in an argument with a stranger. During the argument the man is stabbed, and he dies. Everybody runs out of the bar and disappears along the river. It turns out that the dead man is a policeman. Our hero didn’t do it, but he can’t prove it, so he runs away - he lives underground - like a potato.

Another meaning of underground became apparent after the book was published. It was called an “underground novel” because it was popular among people who don’t respond to book reviews or advertising, people who passed it hand to hand and spread the news by word of mouth.

I sometimes feel like a potato myself. I’m a little writer. I’ve never been able to make a living from my books and have always worked with my hands.

Then, if somebody asked if the book was true, if it was based on my actual life, I would add:

People assume that everything in the novel is true, and I guess I should take it as a compliment that the writing was so believable. But not all of of the disasters and humiliations that happen to the hero are true, so it’s a little unnerving when a stranger comes up to me with sadness in her eyes, and she gives me a big hug, and she says “I’m so sorry about your testicles.”

Unlikely endings

Every Friday, Barb and I spend the day in San Francisco caring for Ravi, our grandchild. He has now been on the planet for all of 21 months, and it is a better place since he's joined us. This most recent Friday, we walked with Ravi down Irving Street to the Arizmendi Bakery on 9th Avenue, where we bought bread. Ravi asked for a choppachip cookie with no hot sauce, and I bought one. He loves chocolate chips, hates hot sauce (which the bakery man promised, sincerely, never to put on his cookies). Later we went around Hippie Hill to the children's playground in Golden Gate Park. We spoke to a giant bearded man who had a Dutch accent and was following a tow-headed boy around. The Dutchman said, "I can't wait to be a grandparent. Your job is to spoil the child and have all the fun." There is a carousel, which we always ride. On this day, Ravi rode on the ostrich with us - probably the tallest animal on the carousel - while the big machine played the song "Tijuana Taxi" and then, I think, "Cherry Blossom Pink and Apple Blossom White." Nearby, a mother rode on a carousel pony, bobbing up and down while chatting on a cell phone.

Saturday Barb and I took our two dogs for a long walk in the La Honda watershed, a lovely climb among forest and meadow with views to the ocean. And sometimes, fog. It's a splendid spot that always refreshes our spirits. Walking back down, we stopped to remove stick-me-tights from the coat of our small dog and discussed what would happen if one or both of us should die right now. We're both over 60. Sometimes you have to talk about these things. Back home, I spent the afternoon catching up on the bookkeeping for Barb's business. She's a therapist (and miracle-worker, in my opinion, bringing light to the lives of hundreds of children); my job is to keep the payroll running and the bills paid and the supplies ordered. In the evening we watched a dvd movie, a ritual in which Barb and I and the two dogs all snuggle up with a blanket on a loveseat. This night, we watched Last Chance Harvey with Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, a story that moved me to tears - the theme of putting your art aside (jazz piano, in this case) to earn a living strikes home with me.

Sunday Barb took a long walk with dogs and a friend while I answered e-mail from friends I made in Italy. I made some repairs to our drip irrigation system. Barb cooked my favorite dinner (which I sheepishly confess is hamburger - the way she prepares them, it is no ordinary burger but a gourmet delight) and roasted vegetables: red peppers, beets, and portobello mushrooms. After dinner I washed dishes while Barb gave our small dog a bath. Then we watched another dvd movie on the loveseat with dogs: Ballet Shoes, which is kinda sentimental and imposes an unlikely happy ending. But then, we need a few unlikely happy endings imposed on our lives.

Sunday night in bed, as I’m dropping asleep, Barb rolls over and says, “Happy anniversary.”

“Holy shit," I say. Then: “Have you been thinking of it all day?”

“No. Only once. Then like you I forgot about it.”

It’s our fortieth.

Le Famose Patate

In Italy, I got my first look at the new edition of my book. The American title is Famous Potatoes and the original Italian edition, published 30 years ago, was Famose Patate. When I saw the new edition, two things were immediately obvious:
1. It was a high-quality edition, nice paper, nice endflaps, beautiful print job, soft almost leathery feel to the paper.
2. They'd changed the title. Now it is called Le Famose Patate.

So I innocently asked Paolo, the publisher, "Why'd you change the title?"

Immediately Seba, my translator, started shouting (in English): "See? I told you not to change the title! Never fuck with an author's title!"

Paolo, the publisher, shouted back: "It was the right thing to do!"

Then they switched to Italian and continued to shout at each other.

Hey, I was just asking...

It wasn't until a week later that I got the true story. It seems that in the last 30 years a new slang expression has emerged in Italy. While 30 years ago Famose Patate meant Famous Potatoes, now to the Italian ear Famose Patate means, um, excuse me but it means Famous Pussies.

By adding the "Le," it means Potatoes again. Don't ask me how.

Great Review of Clear Heart

Last night I returned from Italy feeling sleepy and idiotic after eleven hours cooped up in an airplane. My muscles needed exercise while my brain needed sleep. Now I've had both, and when I check out the Internet after a three week absence, first thing I see is this great review of my book Clear Heart. The reviewer is Kari Hesse of The Village Carpenter. Here's part of what she said:

Well I didn't like his book....I LOVED his book. In fact, I couldn't put it down and sped through it faster than it takes me to read a magazine.

It's about a 55 year old ex-hippy carpenter named Wally—his bond with his workmen, love for his work, respect for wood, relationship with a "perky Presbyterian" and her kids, Job-like patience, and determination to build the perfect house, despite seemingly insurmountable odds.

But more than that—it's about the connection and interaction between men who are true craftsmen, their good-natured joking, routines and habits (like sometimes getting too friendly with female clients), temperaments, and respect for one another's capabilities. It's male bonding at its finest.

And it's filled with endearing characters like Juke, FrogGirl, Abe, Opal (okay, Opal kinda drove me crazy--that chick needs a chill pill!), and fast-paced, nail-biting mishaps.

It's about second chances, belief in the things that truly matter, mentoring, teaching, and friendship.

And it made me want to ask Wally: "You hiring?"

As for Italy, I have a lot to say. Not about tourism, but about craft, something the Italians know best. Instead of taking snapshots of statues and art like all the other tourists, I would be walking through some ancient village saying things like "Look at the size of the gluelam they used as a header over that garage door!" This is why my wife sometimes has to pretend she doesn't know me.

Let me sort through my 350 photos of Italian bricks, doorknobs, windows - and let me get a little more sleep - and I'll try to make sense of it all.

Buon Viaggio!

Last October I got this email and thought it was a joke:

Dear Sir,
I am a literary translator and a journalist.
I often work with Mattioli 1885, the Italian publisher who is trying to bring your books back to Italy.
I know that the deal for the reprinting of “Famous Potatoes” is still in the works, but it also seems that it is a matter of days before it is official.
I was very curious and intrigued when Mattioli told me they would be willing to reprint your book, which I never had the opportunity to read but which I’d heard of.
I am the art director of an interesting music and literature festival, not far from Milan and from the headquarters of your publisher.
Your publisher has decided to bring you over to Italy to promote “Famous Potatoes” and has decided to take care of all your expenses (flight fare, food and lodging). We’d be delighted to have you appear at our festival, which will take place between the 10th and the 17th of May 2009.
You would be with us for the whole week and participate in a series of events. The festival started as a music festival only but now it is both a music and literature festival.
The music still plays a major role and we try to always make references to it, but you don’t need to be an expert…
You can visit our website (which is in Italian and English) on this page:
http://www.festivalbluespiacenza.it/fbn/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=145&Itemid=27&lang=en
In 2009, we should have the likes of: Jeffery Deaver, Joe Lansdale, Ronald Everett Capps, Anne Perry, David Liss, David Fulmer, Laura Lippman etc.
Please let me know what you think.
All best.

Well, it wasn't a joke. Tomorrow I board a flight to Milan. For 3 weeks I'll be reading (and singing!) throughout northern Italy. I'll be on Italian national radio. I've already been interviewed by an Italian newspaper. It's all a little weird for an old La Honda hippie who makes his living as a building contractor and has never been to Europe.

I don't know whether I'll be able to post from Italy (I hear the electrons are metric over there), (that's a contractor joke), but in any case I return jet-lagged and groggy on Tuesday night, May 26 to the land where we measure in feet and inches. Wednesday, May 27 I'll be at Sullivan's Pub for the monthly reading. Come on down and I'll tell you what happened.

Ciao.

Living with Wood: The Art of Compromise

In the previous post I showed several projects that Aidan and I had built, including a shelf unit built of melamine with oak edging, hanging above a work table with an oak top and melamine cabinets. So just who am I to praise "natural" and "authentic" and "time-tested" craftsmanship? Am I a hypocrite?

I love wood. I hate to waste good wood. And it's in an office, not a crafts museum. It would pain me to see good oak wasted on shelving that, one day later, looked like this:

Offices mutate to meet rapidly changing business conditions and to accommodate rapidly changing technology. The shelf and work table may, a year from now, need to be moved or modified. Those cabinets under the work table are 3 separate units, each on casters, which can be wheeled to new locations. That was always the plan. The work table surface is the size of a single bed. At times we use the office as a guest room. For guests, we wheel the base cabinets out of the way, lower the table surface onto some short legs, lay a mattress on it, and - it's a bed.

The oak trim on the shelves brings them into the theme of the office, which has oak floors and a gigantic oak desk on the opposite side of the room. Too much oak would be overkill. Sometimes, you appreciate a little oak trim more than you would an entire wall of oak. It's a matter of accents, of proportions. And, I suppose, it's a matter of compromise.
In my living room, I built a shelf unit entirely out of oak. It's meant to be permanent, and the oak is a statement of permanence - and of values.

When I started out as a carpenter, I hated drywall. I hated Formica, plastic, Masonite, linoleum, fiberglass, particle board. I guess I've mellowed. That oak bookshelf in my living room would look worse, not better, if the wall behind it were paneled in wood. The painted gypsum wall is gentler on the environment and serves to make the oak stand out.
My younger self would say I've "sold out." My older self says I've grown up. My practical self says, "If I sold out, where's the money?"

Meanwhile, I'm just doing what I think is right. Sell-out? Practical man? Hypocrite? I'll let you decide.