December 21, 1981

All her life Sylvia Everett Brown has had to accept things, to accept that she would be sent off to proper Boston schools, that her marriage would move her to Hiram Falls, Vermont to live with and in the house of her husband’s dreadful parents. She accepted that her father did not like her husband and, later, when he died, stipulated in his will that she was never to reveal her inherited wealth to Millard Brown who her father still did not trust.

She had to accept that she could not have children, that her husband lost interest in her and devoted all his time to running the bank and to strange night dealings in the study with men she did not know.

Then she had to accept that her father had been right.

And so she watched police haul Millard off to jail, went to Francis Lyman to arrange a quick divorce, sold the house – the monstrosity of a house Millard’s father had inherited – and moved to a small cape on Bickford Mountain, away from town, away from the whispers and stares whenever she walked through town.

She accepted the shame that came with having been married to a man who stole so much from so many. She accepted it because the shame was not, as the town conjectured, from anything she might have done to abet Millard’s schemes. No, her shame came for the fact that she had not even tried to learn what he was doing, had instead chosen to look away, ignore all of it, even Millard himself.

That was almost a decade ago. She has adapted. So has the town. No longer do they take notice of her step or point as she drives by. On the sidewalk, they nod, sometimes smile or give her a sorrowful look, as if thinking, ‘There but for the grace of god …’

She adapted. She reached out to a few acquaintances and made friends. She relishes her monthly visits with Ben Nash who takes care of her car. She often lunches with Vera or Carrie, and sometimes the three go to Jenna’s Diner where Lavender joins them even though Sylvia knows, without ever being told, that Lavender has no use for Millard Brown. Lavender has come to like Syliva, has even started poking her as only Lavender can do, one day saying: “You should have a British accent the way you hold that coffee cup. Is everyone from Boston like you?”

Sylvia laughed. “No, probably not.”

And there’s Doc and Flo and Gracie and David and even Rina Lapsa, the mysterious woman who lives on a cabin high up on Mount Riga. And she has Francis, too, her lawyer and confidant.

Sylvia accepts the solitude of her life, accepts that her aloneness is what her life has become. She is comfortable with that, though she knows something is missing and so sometimes goes for long drives, winding her way down the dirt roads, ending up at some backwoods diner where she eats an overdone hamburger and watches and listens to the other customers.

She does not fully realize why she does this. And she rarely remembers what she yearns for.

On this day, though, she remembers as she drives her electric green Rambler wagon on the snow-packed back roads, and recollects what her father told her long ago, “Sometimes, to find something, you have to stop looking.”

Sylvia takes her time on this day, even stops at the overlook on Lincoln Hill, her boots squeaking on the cold snow, to look at the panorama — the town, the river, the white-topped Adirondacks far in the distance.

She has made it back to town now. It is snowing again. She parks her car along the street and walks towards Fiengo’s Curios, watching the snow swirl on the sidewalk. She stops in front of the store and stares at the shop’s giant window, at the wooden box in front of it with its wooden lid and a bold white declaration painted on the side: Free Books.

Back when she lived in town she would sometimes walk down the hill late at night and lift the lid, comb through the books and take one to read. Sometimes she’d return it. Sometimes she’d add one of her own.

Sylvia stares at the box and does not move, does not reach out her hand to lift the lid, frozen there, maybe by the cold but not by the cold, but by the sudden realization, the oddness of which is jolting: I have never been inside his shop, she thinks. I’ve never been inside. I’ve never even met the man.

She opens the door, hears the bell on the door chime lightly. Immediately she is enveloped by the dry heat, the smell of books and books and more books — dry, dusty, pleasant, almost comforting on this winter’s day.

She looks around, her eyes trying to make order of the clutter, shelves of books everywhere, along the walls, aisles of them, some hanging from the low ceiling, shelves also crammed with records and kids’ toys and lamps. On a table in front of her are nearly empty bins of Christmas ornaments, odd-looking statues, a bust of Beethoven surrounded by copper Empire State Building replicas some tiny. She walks deeper into the store. A display of commemorative spoons. Porcelain figurines. A desk lamp with a gargoyle as a base. Stacks of old magazines. And books. Paperbacks, comic books, hardbacks some with cracked bindings by unknown authors.

She is halfway into the store now and sees the checkout counter with two stools in front of it, sees the antique cash register and stacks of papers and behind, a door to a storeroom, halfway open. A dim light shines on a dress rack near the door, and, closest, a bright blue dress, shimmering in the light. Before she can make sense of it, the doorway is filled with a silhouette: Fiengo. Old Man Fiengo himself. Why do people call him that? she wonders as he steps into the store. Perhaps it is his hair, his salt and pepper beard. Such a pleasant face, gentle face.

“Hello. Do you sell dresses, too?” she asks.

Old Man Fiengo looks embarrassed and begins to close the door.

“I’d love to see them,” she says.

He steps aside, swinging the door open with his arm, almost beckoning her in, and, as she enters, he flips on the light. Sylvia gasps. Dress racks cover two walls. They are filled with dozens of fine dresses. She walks past each one, gently touching their fabric — satins and silks, cottons and wools — she feels their quality, notices the stitching, much of it by hand she is sure. She separates the hangers so she can see the full fronts and backs of each dress.

She asks Old Man Fiengo if she could possibly try one on, in particular the one she first saw, the cobalt one, made of silk, with a Mandarin collar and a single yellow bird embroidered above the left breast.

Old Man Fiengo backs out of the store room and gently closes the door. The dress fits Sylvia perfectly. It makes her feel beautiful, young. She takes her gray-white hair out of its bun and drapes it over her right shoulder against the bright blue and opens the storeroom door. Fiengo’s eyes widen. He grins.

“Can I buy this?” she asks. She does not wait for his answer; she gets out her checkbook and, on the counter now, writes a check for $250, peels it off and hands it to him. ”I hope that is sufficient.”

“That is way too much,” he says, still staring at her, stretching his hand and the check towards her.

“Keep it,” she says, pushing back his hand. He moves to the cash register, pulls down the handle and sets the check in the drawer.

“How do you come to have so many magnificent dresses?” she asks.

Old Man Fiengo shows his surprise, not so much by the fact that he’s actually selling one of his dresses but by the question which he assumes even Mrs. Millard Brown should know the answer to. But, at that moment, he realizes she really does not know and really does want his answer.

“They were my wife’s.”

“And you bought them in hopes of keeping her,” Sylvia says, surprising herself that she has said out loud what she was thinking. She continues, leaping, unconcerned. “But that didn’t work, did it? And one winter’s night she walked out into the darkness and left the dresses behind.”

Old Man Fiengo is shaken because in all these years no one has ever said anything to him about his wife or her departure or even asked him about it. Even at the time, all those years ago, no one consoled him in his loss even though he knew everyone in town heard about it and talked about it but never said a word to him.

“That is right,” he says.

“What was her name?”

“Geneviève. I met her in Montreal.”

“I am so sorry that happened to you,” Sylvia says, pausing. “Sometimes we marry the wrong person, don’t we? It seems right at the time, seems right for a while, but then we realize deep down that something is wrong. Yet still we hang on because it is all we have.”

Sylvia is overcome now.

She feels things she hasn’t felt in years and watches herself spread her arms, move toward the surprised man and embrace him. He hugs her back, a tight, plaintiff grip, and she returns the strength of his embrace, and it feels so good to her, to him as well, to be held, to feel someone else’s body, so close, so warm, a feeling so absent for so long.

“I am deeply sorry,” Sylvia whispers as she releases her hug, feeling, as she does so, that something is different, has changed, has made her face flush. In that moment she remembers what she had forgotten, remembers what she has been missing, remembers what her father had once said. And she wonders again why she had not come into Fiengo’s shop years ago.

“My name is Sylvia,” she says softly.

“I am Vincenté.”

“It is nice to meet you,” they say, almost at the same time, he with an embarrassed smile as his hand instinctively brushes down the scattered white hair at the back of his head, she with a smile.

They talk for hours, like leaves falling from the trees, as they sit on the stools at the counter, she in her new blue dress, he getting her some tea, two cookies to share and a napkin.

Finally, out of things to say for the moment, they welcome the silence, sip their tea and look past the books, past the clutter, out the window of the shop, at the snow coming down much harder now sparkling in the shine of the street light, a blanket on their world.

I first met Nick Cowles in 1998, my first year in Vermont, when my family went to his orchard in Shelburne. The best way to describe Nick is to say he’s a “character,” and he’s a man who’s a gnat’s thigh from bursting out laughing. Always. Even when he’s pissed.

A year or so before the pandemic, I asked Nick if I could take pictures of his orchard — and of him and his workers — for a year. “Sure,” he said. So I did. I went over whenever the light was good at all hours of the day in all four seasons.

I wanted to interview Nick and had an idea of starting a series called “I Love My Work” on the theory that a) people who love what they do are usually good at it and b) they also have lots of stories.

Nick declined. “Nah,” he’d say, smiling, and he’d turn and walk away.

One day, though, he called me. “If you can get over here at 4:30 I can give you 30 minutes. That’s all. I have a concert tonight.” Yes, a man who’s worked on trees and apples and operated heavy machinery and has fingers the size of most people’s thumbs plays the mandolin. Pretty decently, too.

So I interviewed him. For 29 minutes. In the space where he makes apple cider in the fall and brandy in the winter (at least he makes it and then puts it in barrels for 7-10 years).

This story is a distillation (sorry) of that interview and of a year’s worth of pictures. Enjoy. (And see if you don’t laugh at the end.)

I found this photo in a hand-carved gold frame tucked in a nook in the attic of our family farm in Maine. My aunt and uncle, both in their 90s, were living there at the time. They were savers. They saved letters and newspaper clippings, old wagons and old magazines. Did I say letters? Lots of letters. You might call them packrats, except there was an order and purpose to what they preserved. And my aunt knew exactly where every one of her treasures resided.

I took the photo downstairs to my aunt to ask her what it was.

She knew right away. It was a picture of the family day cruise at the Boston Harbor Pilots Association. Once a year women and children were allowed on board of the pilots’ schooner and all went out for a sea outing.

The pilots sailed the schooners sometimes 70 miles out to meet a tall ship, where, sometimes in raging seas, the pilot would board the vessel and bring it safely into Boston harbor.

“Do you know any of the people in this picture?” I asked.

“Let me see,” she said, grabbing hold of the photograph and looking closely.

“That’s your great-grandfather (the man with the dark coat and dark hat on the left) and that’s your grandfather directly behind him. Over on the left there is your great-grandmother. Now she was a fierce soul.”

I asked her what else she knew.

My great-grandfather, she said, immigrated to the U.S. from Sweden in 1862, was immediately given U.S. citizenship and was conscripted into the U.S. Navy. A few days later he was put on a ship that blockaded Charleston, S.C., at the start of the Civil War. After the war, she said, he became a seaman and later a captain of a tall ship that plied the China trade. He would be gone sometimes for two years at a time. But when he was gone my great-grandmother wanted none of the loneliness of their farm near Boston. Instead she and her son, my grandfather, would move in with relatives in Chelsea (MA) until he returned.

My grandfather, she said, would have still been an apprentice pilot in the picture which I later learned was taken in July 1900. My great-grandfather, she added, was the captain of the last schooner commissioned by the Harbor Pilots in 1907, the Varuna.

The irony of this story was that one month later my aunt went blind from macular degeneration. She was the last person alive who could have identified the people in this photograph.

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The drive back from the hike showed us the rain was coming back soon. At home, we retreated to the porch to sit, sip, take in the night. Suddenly:

Our first thought: The fledgling which we had seen, under the watchful eyes of its barred owl parents, tumble out of a crook in a broken tree, its first flight not much of a success.

But, later, we had spied it up here:

But the sound came again. A fox. For sure. We waited. Finally, the fox drifted away.

We ventured into the woods where we’d seen the young owl. No sign of it. No sign of a tussle, no stray feathers. Adult gone, too. The day’s lesson done.

Walking back to the house, this is what we heard:

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It seemed an impossible coincidence. Ghostly even.

It was Sunday, June 5, 1994. I was sick and had been banished to the attic room in our house in Akron, Ohio; quarantined, as it were. The world was approaching the 50th anniversary of D-Day, the invasion of Normandy, and the TV was filled with stories and remembrances, old grainy footage and images.

I was overtaken with a fever-induced fantasy of seeing my father amongst the black and white photos and film of the beaches, of soldiers fighting their way into French towns, faces of pain and fear and hardship.

There were so many questions I wanted to ask him, so many things I wanted to know. My father, Frederick C. Gevalt, Jr., had died seven years previously. He had never spoken about the war or about that day.

That Sunday morning in 1994, I awoke and went downstairs to read the Akron Beacon Journal, the paper where I worked. My wife and children had gone to church. I sat down and began reading the special section on D-Day put together by my colleagues. I turned the page.

There he was. Standing up to his thighs in water, staring straight into the camera, his arm in a sling, his Red Cross helmet slightly drooping over his eyes, unshaven, looking exhausted. The photo was taken from inside a landing craft looking out; beside my father were five medics helping a wounded man onto the vessel.

I was overcome — by his absence, by not knowing anything of his experience that day, wishing I had asked him about it, pressed him. I realized I would never know what that day was like for him. Or would I?

This is what we knew: He was a doctor in the U.S. Navy, a lieutenant. His unit had participated in every European invasion: Africa, Sicily, Italy and Normandy. He was in the second wave of the Normandy invasion. He was wounded early on but did not evacuate; he was 29 years old.

A year before he died we learned this curiosity: He and my mom went to Normandy and visited the vast graveyard of soldiers. He told my mom to stay in the car and, alone, he visited a grave marker deep in the sea of white crosses. Through binoculars my Mom saw that he was sobbing. When he returned, he would not tell her a thing about it.

And here I was staring at his face from 50 years previous. I called Uncle Joe as we called him. Dr. Joseph Foley was one of my Dad’s closest friends, Navy buddies. They’d grown in different Boston neighborhoods, had gone to college and med school but first met on a ship in the Mediterranean. Foley was a neurologist in Cleveland; he was still alive but was ill. I called him. He had his daughter go out and get the paper.

“That’s Freddie all right.”

“Can you talk about that day?”

“You bet. Fact is I was thinking of going down to the mall with a sandwich board saying, ‘I was in the Normandy Invasion. Ask me about it.’”

But he didn’t have much stamina. So I kept the interviews to 20 minutes and each day asked him to tell me stories based on the senses — what did he see, hear, feel? What did it smell like? Sounds brought out the most stories. The rain and wind and sea coming in, the explosions of the German artillery, strafing airplanes, the screaming of the men with “shell shock.”

He told me that he didn’t land with my Dad. Each mile-long section of beach was assigned a military commander and a medical commander. He had the mile adjacent to my Dad.

“I was called over during a lull to patch him up and get him the heck off the beach to a medical ship,” Foley said. “But he refused to leave. Your Dad could be kind of a stubborn son of bitch.”

“Don’t I know,” I said.

So Foley cleaned out as much of the shrapnel as he could from my father’s shoulder, packed it with gauze and wrapped him tight in a sling. “That was all I could do.”

Foley went back to his section of beach and my father stayed in his and for the next five days they dealt with the wounded. They triaged. They patched up those they could. Some they evacuated. They used morphine to quiet the men who’d lost their minds. They tried to endure the dying all around them.

“Things were chaotic,” Foley said. “There was yelling, rifle fire, machine-gun fire. And they kept bringing us casualties. … We were doing pretty well until the fourth or fifth day; the weather got frightful. No craft was coming in or going out. The casualties were piling up.

“Your father and I were about the same emotionally. We were scared going in, but we were responsible as officers for the younger people with us. We tried not to show our fear. We tried to maintain the spirits of the people who were with us. … And we were busier than hell.”

Two weeks later, he said, all the docs and their teams were ordered off Normandy and put on a ship back to the States. Their orders were to have a little R&R before heading out to California to train for the invasion of Japan. But by the time they crossed the Atlantic, orders had changed; the invasion was off. “We learned why a year later,” he said.

With no orders, Foley and my father and the others did a lot of R&R in Boston. One night in a café, after a “cheery night” of drinking, Foley said, my father bumped into an admiral — literally. The admiral took one look at my father’s shoulder and ordered him to go to the nearest naval hospital and have it taken care of and to do it within 24 hours or be court-martialed. The orders were written on a cocktail napkin.

So my father went to Chelsea Naval Hospital. After surgery, he met and took a shine to a Red Cross volunteer named Sally Willits Young. She became his wife and my mother.

Foley had this odd detail: “Your father disappeared for a couple of days after he got out of Chelsea. When he got back he said he’d taken a train out to Indiana and back. … No. I don’t know why.”

Each time I spoke with Foley I had the same question: “Why did you guys never talk about it?”

“Talking about yourselves was, well, like bragging,” he said, one time. “You just didn’t do that sort of thing. Besides, anyone who wasn’t there wouldn’t really understand what we went through.”

In the final interview, when I asked him again why the silence? he said the only way to really answer was to “quote a little Billy Shakespeare” and proceeded to recite, in its entirety, the famous soliloquy from Henry V that includes these lines:

“He that outlives this day and comes safe home
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named …
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered –
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”

---

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And that was the ending to the story I wrote for the Sunday Akron Beacon Journal. The story was also carried by the Knight-Ridder News Service and the Associated Press and appeared in papers all over the country. A story of coincidence, a story of a story found.

At work the next day, I got a call from a man in Chicago. “My name is, Charlie Potter. Does that name mean anything to you?”

“Why yes,” I said. “You were an usher in my parents’ wedding. You were in the Navy with my Dad.”

“You don’t know how much that heartens me,” he said. “I just wish you’d called me before you wrote your article. I saw your dad get wounded.”

Potter was the military commander of my father’s section of the beach. He was in the landing vessel with my father. He had more stories of the day; he filled in a few more gaps.

Here’s what I now know: Fourteen minutes after the first wave of the invasion, General Eisenhower ordered in the doctors, so my dad set out for Utah Beach in a crowded, small landing vessel, a LCVP. Eisenhower’s thinking was that sending in the docs would boost morale, on theory that if they’re sending in the docs, things couldn’t be too bad; they wouldn’t risk killing all of them would they?

It was windy and loud and the waves were high and tossing the vessel around like a toy boat. It was cold. It was raining. As they made their way towards shore, a teenaged soldier in the bow, a boy from rural Indiana, lost it and started screaming.

“Your father went forward and settled him down and stayed with him,” Potter said. But when they landed at 6:30 in the morning, when the front of the LCVP flopped down, and he and the kid jumped out together in the water, the boy was killed instantly by a bullet to the head. “Your father dragged his body to the beach and yanked the medical (dog) tag,” he said.

In the first hours of battle, the Allies knocked out the German guns. Almost all of them. At mid-morning, as a new wave of soldiers was landing, a German 88 mm shell whistled overhead and hit one of the vessels. Bodies went everywhere. My father, close to a protective cliff, leapt up, yelling “medics!”

Potter tried to pull rank: he told my father to stay put, to let the medics handle it. My father refused.

“You Dad could be kind of stubborn, you know.”

My Dad and the medics ran towards the water. Another 88 came over and exploded near my father, hurtling a piece of shrapnel into his shoulder and knocking him out face down in the water. A medic pulled him out.

Potter filled in another detail. “After he got back, your Dad went to Indiana to see the parents of that boy.”

But there was still more to the story.

I rewrote the story a few years ago with Potter’s information. I posted it on my old website. Out of the blue, I got an email from a history buff in France who bumped into my story. “I’ve been doing research because at the 75th Anniversary we realized there was nothing written about on your father’s unit.”

He attached the photo you see below. “I think that’s your Dad in the center.”

There he was, 29 years old, the morning of June 6, 1944.

Chaos all around him. The wounded. The exhausted. The dead. My father standing over a soldier covered with a blanket, my Dad’s right arm in a sling, his left forefinger pressed on the bottom of his nose. I had seen him do that once, at a time he was trying to hold back tears, not wanting to show his emotion. Here trying to keep himself under control.

What were you thinking, Dad? What was going through your mind?

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(Note. A few of you may have seen an earlier version of this that I published quietly in January. I did a major revision and sent this out to my subscribers. I’ve pasted in the comments from the previous version.)

It is the darkest part of the night, the time just before dawn. Hiram Falls is bone-deep cold. The wind swirls the falling snow up and down the street. Tiny twisters. Several street lamps flicker.

No one is about. Except for a man who glides more than walks, his feet leaving no impressions, no sign, as if he were the wind itself. He is tall and lean and wears a long, black oilskin coat open in the front, fluttering with his movement. He is wearing laceless leather boots that come nearly to his knees. He has no gloves but shows no sign of needing them.

He has wandered from a cave on the backside of Mt. Riga; has come down the mountain, across Upper Bridge to the shops of the lower village. He is settled now in front of Fiengo’s Curios, the wind gently waving his coat as he stares at the box marked “Free Books.”

Old Man Fiengo has been filling this box for years. It makes no sense, he knows, to give away for free what he had been trying to sell for a dime or a quarter or even one dollar. He did it first as a gimmick, as a way to draw people into his shop, but when the free books disappeared he got it in his mind that someone or some ones who couldn’t afford to buy them were reading them. It made Old Man Fiengo happy.

What Old Man Fiengo doesn’t know, and will never know even when, suddenly, his free books stop disappearing, is that it is this man and an older woman who take most of his free books. The man knows. He has remembered seeing the woman drop something into the box the other morning. He doesn’t remember when.

The man stands under the awning. The man who didn’t used to read, doesn’t remember whether he ever could, only knows now that he now can and hungers for the knowledge that comes from the words on the page.

The man has been all through the library, read hundreds of books in all the shelves — the books on science first, then novels and books of poetry, histories, books on mathematics and religion and gardening and animals, romance and humor and tragedy.

The man stands before Old Man Fiengo’s Free Book box with snow collecting on the shoulders of his coat now absorbs more than reads, finishes a book in the time it takes him to turn the pages, much like swimming with the minnows in Riga Creek or flying with the starlings at spring time, darting in and out of the aspens and birches and pines.

Nothing that he reads, though, brings him closer to knowing who he is and why he is there, standing in the silence of the snowfall in the bitter cold that he does not feel.

Under the streetlights’ dim illumination, the man lifts the cover on the wooden box resting on the table under the awning in front of the store. There, at the top, is a small book bound in leather, wrapped tightly with a leather strand tied in a careful knot. It is a handmade book.

He unwraps the leather string, opens the book, and tries to make out the lettering. It is called script, but he does not know that. For several minutes he tries to understand the letters, the words. Finally he makes it out, “January 1, 1918. 4 degrees. Cloudy …” He knows it will take him time to decipher this book. He carefully closes it, wraps the leather string around it and tucks it in his pocket as he closes the box softly. He drifts away in the wind.

No one sees him.

My Dear Subscribers,

Some of you may have noticed that over the last few months, more stories have appeared in your email. I hope you are entertained by what I am posting.

I’ve expanded what I’m doing here and here’s why:

In 2021, when I first came to Substack, I had a plan: Publish a version of my when-completed novel, Hiram Falls, as a digital series and podcast. What drew me was the simplicity, the collection of writers, the way you could incorporate sound into your text. And, of course, that it was free and provided a way for me to collect donations if I wished.

Evolution happens. I finished my novel. At the urging of my editor, I found an agent and now await word from 10 publishers who have it resting on their desks. I have my “Plan A” if I don’t get any nibbles.

But while I waited, I met up with , a kind soul with the metabolism of a humming bird and the expertise and kindness of a saint. Sarah helped me see that I had more to offer than my novel. She liked my writing; she saw that after 50+ years of writing, editing and working in digital spaces, I had much more to offer: oodles of stories, tips, and new ways of doing this writing thing. She also noted that I love bringing people together to write.

Thank you, Sarah.

So this space has evolved. I have migrated my best Stories here and am working on new ones. I have published my best On Writing tips, including using digital sound and images to enhance storytelling and new ones are coming. I am now marching over some of my Tiny Tales — bite-sized anecdotes and tidbits of every genre.

And I continue to post about Hiram Falls, including Sketches and A Writer’s Journal — how I wrote the book.

Now I am starting the fun part. I call it Connections. I will be providing regular Live Writing Sessions, Workshops on Storytelling and Digital Media and Critique Sessions. I have opened a Chat and am all ears if there is something you want to do. At the moment everything is free. We’ll see how it goes.

I will be doing the actual work on a new, private Substack to give people more freedom to write. (I will be cross-posting the prompts here along with whatever pieces participants want me to make public.) When I announce sign-ups, I will add you to the private site’s subscriber list.

My strength, I believe, is helping people write better. I have worked with everyone from interns to Pulitzer Prize winners to fifth graders to adults struggling with opiate addiction.

I like to devise new ideas to write to and new ways to do it. The sessions are governed by one word — respect — which allows participants to develop the trust needed to take creative risks. Many also develop deep friendships in the process.

My experience? An award-winning journalist. For nearly five years I ran online Live Writing Sessions — first weekly and then monthly; writers came from all over the world. I resumed those sessions recently with my first Thursday Live Writing Session; the writing was inspiring from writers from England to Colorado, Harlem to San Diego, Vermont to Georgia.

For nine months I ran weekly weekly writing sessions with people struggling with addiction; a powerful learning experience. And for 12 years I helped thousands of kids find their writing voices —and trained hundreds of teachers to better teach those students — through a nonprofit I created, The Young Writers Project.

I will continue to post the schedule of events, announcements of sign-up, the prompts. And please use my Chat here to suggest things that we could do that would help you become a better writer.

Because we’re always trying to get better, aren’t we?

I will let the birds do the talking. A hermit thrush first, its two-tone call unique, delicate. Ear candy.

Interrupted by a pileated woodpecker announcing its manhood by pounding on the tin roof of the woodshed as if saying, “Glory be, I am here.”

I fear death.
There, I said it.
I never say it.
I never admit it.
Never share it.
But now I do. With you.
I think about death every day.
I think.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night,
when I am awakened by my angry hands
that howl and screech and jolt me
with lightning bolts.
And that makes me worry
that someday soon I won’t even be able to hold
a penny
were I to pick it up from the floor.
Not that I would stoop so low
as to pick up a penny
because a penny is worth more for its copper
than its buying power.
And besides, my hands can’t pick up a penny anymore.

Sometimes I think of death in the middle of the day
when the sun is out
and the trees are swaying
and I am standing in my vegetable garden
or I am in the woods
and I close my eyes and
try to make out the birds’ voices
singing to each other,
me, the eavesdropper, trying
to differentiate one from the other,
trying to figure out what it is they are saying.
Will I be able to hear the birds when I die?

Sometimes, often, actually,
I think of death
right here in my basement,
my writing cave,
as I shape and cajole and let loose
a story that has rattled around in my brain
for so long I can’t remember when it was not there.
Is it an accident that one of my characters,
one of the main characters, now,
in this massive story, massive piece of fiction, massive project,
is a man half-dead?

Suspended between worlds
he is trying to figure out where he is
why he is
what he is
who he is
and what the question is
that he must answer
in order to pass through
to wherever it is that he is headed.

No. It is no accident.
There are no coincidences in the world.
I want the man to become a hawk,
that is where he is going.
I have decided this.
That he becomes
a noble, powerful, sacred bird
who will fly high above the world
with eyes like microscopes
able to see even the smallest movement
the slightest disturbance
in the woods’ floor,
a tiny creature unawares
or a tiny creature fully aware
but careless,
darting across the oak leaves
hesitating, taking too long.

This is a safer place in my mind
to think of death,
in the hollows
along a road winding through the hills,
the backwaters
with still, black reflections
where lurk
ideas not yet found,
emotions not yet felt.

Death is safe there,
in my imagination,
to offset the realization
that my body is failing,
is on its downward slide.
No longer do I feel 18,
or 28,
or even 48.

I find myself spending more time looking back
than forward,
which may be why I am so feverish
of late,
why I have piled up so many projects
of joy but of exertion, too.
Am I doing these things as distraction?
As a way to avoid
the unresolved question I fear?
It is an unresolvable question of course,
and that’s where the true fear lies,
the not knowing, the not controlling.
That is what I fear.

This is Ruth, Frank Glazer's life friend. Ruth Gevalt Glazer was my father's sister. This picture was taken in 1927 when she was 16 years old. She is resetting the pins on a sunny, cold day of ice bowling on a pond in Boston.

Ruth had a gorgeous voice. She was a soprano and in 1946 she debuted at Jordan Hall in Boston. For her concert, she sought out a pianist to accompany her who had backbone, someone who would not be afraid to tell her when she was singing it wrong or when she'd hit it right. She found Frank. "Now that was a pianist with backbone," she said. Six years later they married.

Ruth was a force. She could fill a room, a concert hall even. Her energy was boundless. You can see that in her eyes, here, in this picture, 80 years before she died.

Whenever the sugaring season begins I think of Dave Palmer, a one-time farmer, animal control officer in town and long-time maple sugarer. Dave, his family said, always thought of himself as being 29 years old. So I guess he died young, though with all the practical joking he did, I'd put his age at closer to the teens.

Dave was the first sugarer I ever met, though for the first year or so it was by phone. I was working at the Burlington Free Press and Dave was, as they used to say in the news business, a "dial-a-quote." Which dates me because most people don't know that you could ever actually dial a telephone. Or read a newspaper.

But when I wanted to check in on how the sugaring season was doing for a story on Vermont's most iconic seasonal business, I'd always call Dave because his answers to my questions were as unpredictable as they were funny.

"Dave, you ever have a bad sugaring season?"

"What's that?"

Dave saw sugaring as a way to get out of the house, wander the woods, drink with his buddies and swap stories. In no particular order. And, oh yes, make a gallons and gallons of maple syrup that he'd be most honored to sell to you.

Dave tapped about 1,500 trees and the sap came down from the hill behind his sugarhouse in tubes attached to the tree taps and all sucked into a storage tank by a vacuum pump. Dave was always up on the latest technology, particularly if it made the task a little easier and more efficient. Like use propane instead of wood.

“Never burn the pan now — like I used to do with wood,” Dave admitted once. “When I’m ready to hit the bed, I just turn it off. That simple.”

While he was a farmer – cows and then sheep – I knew him when he ran the grader in the winter and the mower in the summer for the Town of Shelburne. He was also Hinesburg's “animal control officer.” I once referred to him as a dog warden and he corrected me and told me the story of the wild-roaming emu he had to track down. “And did I tell you about the attack rooster?”

“Nope.”

So he told me.

One night, in the middle of March, I was heading home from work at 1 a.m. and decided to drive past his sugarhouse and see if anything was going on. The lights were on. Smoke was billowing out the stack and steam was flushing out the vents. There were about eight cars in the drive.

I pulled in. It was cold, below freezing for sure. And even though I've been wearing glasses for most of my adult life, I forgot what happens when you walk into a steamy sugarhouse from the cold outdoors. I couldn't see a thing. The place was quiet. Weirdly quiet. Then I heard the crunch of footsteps on the gravel floor coming towards me and then, from the steam, came a hand holding a can of beer with a label I did not recognize.

"Thirsty?"

I was. Still not having introduced myself, not even having said hello, not even having wiped my glasses so I could see, I popped the can, set it to my lips and chugged. It was cold. It was nice. Then I heard from my taste buds. It was hideous. Worst tasting beer I'd ever had in my life. I turned my head and spat it out on the gravel.

That's the moment I realized there were about a dozen of Dave's old friends in the house. They were beside themselves with laughter.

"Good God, Dave,” I said. “That's shitty beer."

More laughter.

I took my glasses off and in the slow ebb of a long chuckle, I introduced myself as the guy from the Free Press who keeps pestering him.

"But what's with the beer, Dave?"

"Isn't that just nasty?" he said, laughing, exposing what was left of his supply of teeth.

Dave explained: The other night, while boiling, Dave had discovered, to everyone's consternation and horror, that they were just about out of beer. So Dave sent his nephew, who'd just turned 21 and was only too glad to go buy alcohol for anyone, even to get some beer.

But upon entering the store, the nephew was struck by a display announcing that this particular beer was on special – two six-packs for the price of one. So the nephew, understanding the concept of frugality but not giving a thought as to how it might taste, bought a case.

And when he got back, everyone spat it out and one of the old timers went to town and got some decent beer, Miller High Life, which Dave was then handing me, in bottle form of course.

"Sorry about that," Dave said. "I couldn't resist. This will set your mouth straight."

It did. And my glasses cleared and Dave introduced me to all his mates, and it was 2:30 or so when I got up to leave. Dave had one last bit of advice:

"When you get home, be quiet when you go upstairs. Don't want the wife waking."

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(NOTE: For a primer on making maple syrup (and a story), click here.)

My father was one of the few adults who was stricken with polio just months before the vaccine was developed. At first they thought he had spinal meningitis. He spent nine months at what was then Children’s Hospital in Boston and came home to intensive physical therapy and resumption of his work as a doctor in a rural setting.

My mom drove him to his first house calls and was the primary person helping him with his therapy. Eventually, with a metal brace on his left leg, a corset with metal stays to offset his lack of back muscle, he learned to drive adapted cars, made house calls on his own and scooted around the hospital where he worked in a kid’s wheelchair.

My Dad bristled at the term “handicapped,” once saying that polio made him a better doctor; it slowed him down, made him listen more. Patients in our small town agreed, saying that when they saw my Dad muscling up their front stairs on crutches in the midst of a snowstorm, they didn’t feel half as bad.

The image I use as the lede in this story was one I found in an old box of personal stuff of my Mom’s. There was one of her as well. Both were taken in 1946 on their honeymoon in Havana, Cuba. What was startling about the picture of my Dad was the beauty of the moment, of the dive, of his legs. I have no memory of my father with full use of his legs.

I created this digital story with StoryCenter, a non-profit in California that helped develop the practice of creating a personal digital story — a story with text (often a narration), audio and images (sometimes with video clips).

Story Center focuses its work on helping you explore your own personal experiences on the belief that in the creating and telling of these stories, you find hidden meaning.

I did this story as well as one on my mother’s death — A Story of Forgiveness — in part for three courses I taught with Joe Lambert, the founder of Story Center, and the late Maria Martin, creator of Latino USA on National Public Radio. I used them as examples for our students to consider, to learn from. Joe also had me show them A Giving Thanks Story, which technically was just a Photo Story as there is only one image with the audio.

As someone who has been involved with words and newspapers most of my life, the digital story is a freeing genre, it allows you to use captured sound and/or the intimacy your own voice as well as a sequence of images to deepen the story you are telling. They are perfect stories for the Web.

They also are relatively easy to do. In late spring, I will be giving workshops and you can do some yourselves. All you have to do is subscribe:

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Note: This story, written a few years ago, remains timeless. It has a slide show and audio.

Every year I sugar. Or, for those who don’t live in Vermont, every year I make maple syrup.

So every year I miss going to the Russell Family Sugarhouse up on the hill behind Lantman’s Market in Hinesburg. I’m too busy — at the same time they are. But not this year. This year I didn’t sugar. Or, rather, I only sugared for a couple of days. The rest of the time, I wandered down to the Russell Family Sugarhouse to see how they do it.

The sugarhouse was built some 150 years ago and rests on a hill on a large tract of land. The family has preserved the land forever and granted access to the public to trails that wind through the woods and fields. The family also farms it. Mind the cattle and watch where you’re stepping.

The family — Howdy and Harry Russell and their partners, Anne Dongan and her “boys” – Joe, James and Kevin – and their partners, Matt Mead and his kids, and other cousins and sons, brothers and daughters, parents and partners and a whole lot of friends tap anywhere from 900 to 1500 trees (depending on who’s available to do the work) the old way. They use metal buckets and collect the sap in a horse-drawn wagon with a large tank and they boil it down using wood. No vacuum tubes or reverse osmosis or fancy oil-fired evaporators for the Russell family.

How many gallons does the tank on the wagon hold? No one is sure. How many gallons does the holding tank in back of the sugarhouse hold? No one is sure. How many taps this year? No one is sure. Wait a minute, here it is, 930. They would have been more but Joe, a dairy farmer, has a new baby in the house. How much wood do they usually burn? Ten cords of four-foot logs split with a special, home-built gas-powered splitter. A cousin built it and hauls it up before the sugaring begins to take care of the huge logs that the family has cut and stacked in a big pile at the bottom of the hill. How many gallons of syrup do they produce? That depends.

An unusual thing: The main sugarer is a woman. Anne Donegan, a Russell by birth. And she has been assisted these last, er, “few” years by Andrea Morgante, a former town selectboard member and the person responsible for helping the Russells preserve their land.

It’s totally a family affair. Anyone’s family. Young mothers and fathers lug their kids up the hill – or, if it’s snowy, pull them up on sleds – to play with the dogs and other kids and to see the horses and smell the steam and, yes, sample a little sweetness.

Don’t imagine this isn’t tough work. Particularly for the horses. So whoever is driving them is careful and pauses often when the load is full and keeps track of whether the two horses — paired only for this yearly occupation and owned by two brothers — are getting overheated.

For Anne and Andrea, the work is hot, strenuous but fun. Labor of love. Storytime. Laughter time. Making sweetness.

This year’s season got off with a bump. Turns out one of the evaporator pans had a 3-inch crack and the sap poured out like a hose. Giroux' Body Shop in town was able to repair it in just two days, and all that sap had to wait in the buckets. Luckily it was cool; sap is as perishable as milk so it doesn’t take to sitting around in the warm weather.

This year’s sugaring season has been unusual. It started a little late and ended a little early with a long stretch of hot weather in between. For the trees to produce sap – or to create a “run” – they need freezing temperatures at night and 40 or more degrees in the day. Sun is good. It’s all about pressure. And physics. Warm attracts cold. (Or does the cold sap, like humans, want to get warmer?) So the tree, as it warms in the day, pulls cooler moisture up through the roots where it picks up the natural sugar in the tree and the sap drips out the taps into the buckets.

Same phenomenon holds true with the boiling. Cool sap flows into the first pan, the “warming” pan, and then flows into the finishing pan where the sap travels through the channels, the cooler being attracted to the warmer. It’s like magic. Sap first boils at 212 degrees, give or take, depending on the altitude and the humidity. It’s syrup when it’s about 219 degrees though its density is what determines whether it’s syrup. There’s a gizmo for that.

The syrup is drawn off from the boiling pan and strained through cloth filters (twice) to take out niter, a naturally occurring, mineral-like substance which tastes and smells like an old sock. The more niter you take out, the better the syrup. The sugar content of the sap varies. The first run usually has the most sugar, takes the least time to boil into syrup and thus is the lightest. And most delicate in flavor. Tourist grade. Sap from the later runs has less sugar, takes longer to boil into syrup so the sugar burns more and the syrups is darker.

Most of us like the darker syrup. It has more flavor. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?

In sugaring, everything is measured in numbers and time. On a good run, the buckets may fill twice in a day. It takes a couple of hours to get “a good boil” going. It takes a couple of hours for the sap to boil down to the point you can draw off a little syrup. Each tap will give you about 10 gallons of sap in average season; that translates into a quart of syrup per tree. This year was below-average (there is general agreement that there is no such thing as a “bad” sugaring season). This year the Russells put up 930 taps. But they made only 456 quarts of syrup. (For the math challenged: 114 gallons.)

The Russells had hoped for one last boil at the end, but the warm weather was unrelenting (imagine being sad that the weather in Vermont is too warm). So the last boil became a bucket collecting and washing party. It wasn't a party, really, unless you count a party as a time when family and friends get together, eat hard-boiled eggs, tell stories and laugh and work together on something that needs to get done. And, oh yes, sample a little maple syrup.

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I am turning back the clock to show you how a story about old buildings can yield powerful, personal and important non-fiction narrative.

Imagine with me for a moment. I am driving to work at The Akron (OH) Beacon Journal on May 9, 1995 in my red Volvo (which branded me, in that city of made-in-America tires and automobiles, as a probable vegetarian). At the bottom of the hill, where B.F. Goodrich had built its empire of dozens of manufacturing buildings (tires, zippers, raincoats, pipes, you name it), I saw a dozen old guys watching a giant crane setting up to begin demolition of Goodrich’s Building 40 to make room for a new enterprise coming to town. I sped to the paper, rushed in and saw Janet Moore sitting at her desk.

A word about Janet: Janet is snarly kind. That is, sometimes she’s kind of snarly. But mostly she’s just plain kind. And people sense both those things about her: A person not afraid to speak her mind but who will treat you with respect, who will listen. So people trust Janet. They tell her things.

Another word about Janet: She moved to Minneapolis where she married another veteran of the Akron newsroom, Will Outlaw, who decided the best way to safely exit the news business in lieu of laying off some of his reporters was to become a 737 pilot and captain. Which he still does.

Janet stayed with reporting, went on to head her newsroom’s union and did so with all the strength and in-your-face persistence that a good union chief should have, and then shed the duties to return full attention to reporting.

But back to May 1995: I walked into the business news department.

“Janet, can you go out and talk to those old guys watching the demolition?”

Janet snarled, as in, she folded the morning paper with drama, rolled her eyes, got up, grabbed a pad and pen and went out the door. And she didn’t come back for four hours. And when she did, she was smiling. She was excited.

What she found was this: The oldsters had all worked at Building 40 and had been meeting for lunch once a month ever since the building operations were shut down in 1983. So, before eating, they decided they’d watch some of the demolition. Janet did a story. A basic news story about the demolition, the new company coming to town, a few of the reactions of the men. But she wanted to do more.

We were blessed then with a new-fangled piece of technology—a phone answering machine and a dedicated line—so that Sunday we put a notice on the front page of the paper asking for anyone who had worked in Building 40 to give us a call and tell us a story.

Monday morning we went into the office and found 94 blinks on the machine. Janet called every single one of them back. Some she interviewed by phone. Others she went out and visited. They made her coffee and gave her Rice Krispy treats and shared photographs and souvenirs and, of course, stories.

They had stories of the local bars they’d hit after work, of the stepped-up production during World War II, of the monotony of some of the work, the danger of some of the work. Some talked of the stench of tire-making or, in some of their minds, “the sweet smell of jobs.” They talked of having a good job and a family and a comfortable life. They talked of making friendships. Like this one from Margie Zvoleff, 78 at the time of the interview, as she reflected on her early days at “The Goodrich” in the late 1930’s:

“ ‘I worked close to the time clock, so there was no problem to get out of the building about 5 after midnight to catch my bus. One night, it was raining terribly hard, just pouring down. Right across the street was a Universal Ford dealership that had a recessed doorway. I stood inside the doorway, waiting for the bus.

“ ‘Oh, it was raining so hard. And the bus didn’t come. I was standing there and standing there. A man came up to me and introduced himself. … drove a 1935 black Plymouth … He said his name was John. We worked in the same building, only he was way down at the other end.

“’Could I drive you home?’ he asked me. He took me home. He drove me right up to the door … Later he asked me out on a date. We went to a place called the American Serbian Club. We could sit at a table and there was a little area to dance. He asked me to marry him first date we had. Honest to god. It made me laugh. I thought ‘My God, this guy doesn’t know me.’

“ ‘But he was so sincere. I saw him every single night from then on. Nine weeks later we were married. …

“ ‘He’s been gone for 22 years now. And whenever I dream of him, he’s saving me from something. Just like the night he saved me from the rain.’ ”

I caught up with Janet last week, and we both helped each other’s memories, and she had this to say about the process:

“I remember how some of them were obviously very sentimental, but most of them we're pretty matter of fact about what had happened to not only the building but to their jobs and the whole economy in Akron. They just seem to sort of accept it, a kind of sense of resignation.

“It really was a stark example of how these rust belt cities have changed over the years and how the whole economy of the country has changed. And I think in a lot of ways (it showed) the decline of the manufacturing economy and the outsourcing of jobs first to the south, which was non-union and then to Mexico and then places beyond, and how this gave rise to Donald Trump and the grievances of white men because there weren’t any jobs there anymore that pay such that you can support a family.

“Looking back, I wish I had folded in some more global events.”

But hindsight is always clearer. What stands out, though, was that for the subjects of this piece, time had washed away some of the baggage and perhaps, too, some of the sadness in their reflections. So they shared only their best stories, the ones with the most meaning to them. And they were honored to have the local newspaper ask them to tell them. Because, back then, there was an amazing bond between the Beacon Journal and the city of Akron. An example:

“After the story, one of the guys … came into the Beacon and said he loved the story, and he gave me this little ring that he had made for his daughter. … He said his daughter had died, and he wanted me to have it. It isn't anything I can wear because it is really tiny, but I was so touched that he wanted to give it to me. It was just a really kind and gracious gesture. I still have it.

“And that was another thing that came through: they were just incredibly proud not only of where they worked and what they did, but of their community as well, their city. They wanted to be in Akron for the most part … because that was the place where people went to, you know to make a living, make their fortunes, to make their families.

“I don't know if people feel that way about their communities anymore, you know, especially in the Midwest where a lot of these communities have been totally decimated.”

So Janet’s story had several “understories:” The appreciation older people have to be able to tell their stories and the sense of resignation a lot of manufacturing workers had and still have about losing their livelihoods. Both are and were compelling.

Below is a PDF of Janet’s story, Akron Beacon Journal, May 21, 1995.

Building40

8.35MB ∙ PDF file

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So now it’s your turn.

While this is a story of times long previous, that’s the point. Janet Moore was able to capture a slice of living history, stories that would have turned to dust had she not sat down and listened to what people had to say. Some tips:

Find a building

Admit it. Old buildings intrigue you, too. And there is an old building in your town that you’ve always wondered about. Perhaps it is occupied. Perhaps it is abandoned. Are you curious about it? What went on in there? What role did the building and its occupants have on the community? Does anyone have any stories about it?

Research

Ask people about it – longtime residents, the local historical society, the town clerk, the old guy in the hardware store. Check with the county records for information on when it was built, when it changed hands. What company occupied it the longest? Most recently?

Call for stories

Find a way to get word out – social media, your local newspaper or forum, local organizations – and ask if anyone worked in that building might be willing to sit down to chat. And remember this: People love telling stories. They’ll be honored that you are interested.

Listen

Once you find some older folks who have stories, go visit them (as safely as you can; sadly the pandemic is not over). See if you can get old photographs or mementos to photograph. You might also want to record them – adding the audio of their voices will create a deeper experience for the readers. (NOTE: It is always good to be clear with people that you appreciated their time and stories but once you sit down to write the story it might be that you are not able to include all of what they told you.)

Tell the story

Now the “easy” part: create the story. Choose the best, most diverse stories. Choose the ones with details. Choose the ones with emotion. And what is the understory, the deeper point of the story? Including photographs, particularly historic ones, will add a draw to the story. As will audio of the subjects talking. And if you have more material than you can use in your text, the audio becomes a way to supplement what you’ve written.

I wish you luck. These types of stories can be great fun, tell you things about your community that you didn’t realize and bring a lot of joy to those you interview. Not to mention your readers. If you do write something, please send me the url and I’ll give you some feedback. (You can leave it as a comment or email me at ggevalt(at)gmail(dot)com.)

And I would love to know what you think of Janet’s story. What did it bring to mind? Did it make you miss old style journalism? Please put your thoughts in a comment below.

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This is a true story. More or less. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Aaron and his wife, Nancy, live just outside of town. She is a weaver and has a studio upstairs in their small cape. He works for the state.

In the spring, Aaron took up the bagpipes. He’d been to a Celtic festival and fallen in love. He hadn’t a clue as to how difficult the pipes were to play. After a couple of nights of it, Nancy told him to “take that friggin’ racket outside.” Her patience was tried.

So Aaron settled on playing outdoors. Weather permitting.

Now this is the country mind you so their house is situated a five-minute walk in either direction from the nearest neighbors on their road. Behind their house is a lawn and a rolling field that rarely has cows in it so Aaron chose a high point in the field on which to perch and play.

On the far side of the field is a stand of pines and hemlocks and brush that’s deep enough and thick enough to shield a house on the other side.

Each night after supper Aaron goes out and blows his pipes and, well, makes a racket. Scares the crows even. Luckily, the Palmers don’t graze the cows there anymore — too far from the barn.

Gradually, and by gradually I mean glacially, Aaron has begun to eek out some real live musical notes but it still is a god-awful thing to listen to. But he’s kept at it. And Nancy’s kept the windows shut.

One day last August Aaron returned from work hungry and tired and hot and hungry and there, basking in the late afternoon sun on his kitchen table, was a freshly baked, still-warm wild blueberry pie. Thinking Nancy had baked it, and being hungry and all, he cut himself a piece. He ate himself a piece. And then he stood up, wiped his mouth on his sleeve and went upstairs to his wife’s studio.

“Thanks for the pie, hon. It was delicious.”

“Pie?” she said. “What pie?”

They went downstairs. They stared at the pie. Nancy looked around for a note, a card, anything. Nothing.

Nancy sat down and had a piece. Ummm. Aaron afforded himself another sliver which wasn’t a sliver at all. And they agreed. That was the best wild blueberry pie they’d ever eaten.

But who? Why?

For a week, then two, they quizzed everyone they knew. Their neighbors up and down their road. People at market.

Aaron even stopped in at The Tavern. No one had a clue. One man at the bar asked if they still had the pie, he’d love to try a piece.

Nope the pie’s gone. Ate it right quick.

Soon Aaron’s and Nancy’s curiosity was quenched. Just one of life’s mysteries.

Then one day came a knock on the door. A neighbor, Sid Palmer.

“Hi yah. Understand you’ve been wonderin’ about a pie,” Sid said. They invited him in. And soon the tale was told.

Seems Caleb Washburn, who lived in the house beyond the field and pines and hemlocks and brush who, as they’d politely say, “kept to himself” and was rarely seen, appeared out of the blue three Sundays ago at the The Holy Mary and Jesus Baptist Church.

Few noticed as he stood in the back watching the parishioners alternately singing and swaying and chanting and responding and then sitting to mull their own transgressions, reminded as it were, by Pastor Bowditch and his blazing sermon that seemed to go on and on for what seemed like forever.

And then Pastor Bowditch got to the apex of his sermon, the highlight of the service, the Call for the Devil.

“Friends,” Pastor Bowditch shouted, waking up poor Maude Perkins whose hearing aids were on the fritz, as he cleared his throat and scanned the crowd and let silence settle on them for a bit. “I now call upon you to share any time of recent when the Devil crept into your thoughts, when you felt his presence, when you were tempted by his unholy as he tried to worm his way into your minds and hearts.”

There was silence. No one wanted to go first.

Then, from the back, Caleb Washburn boomed: “I have been visited by the Devil, Pastor.”

And that’s when everyone saw Caleb Washburn shuffle halfway down the aisle in his grimy jeans and sooty coat, hat in hand, his hair a tangle, his voice gaining volume.

“Yes. I was visited by the Devil himself, Pastor.”

Everyone was staring. Rev. Bowditch removed his glasses, polished them and put them back on, leaning forward to get a better look.

“You see, my neighbor decided in his infinite wisdom to take up the bag pipes. And he decided to take his unholy racket to the field behind my house. He’s there every afternoon. Every evening. And sometimes it is more than I can bear.

“One night, I confess, I could not take it anymore. And I could feel him, I could feel Satan enter my house and creep up behind me and I heard his voice, Pastor. And he told me, ‘Caleb Washburn. Go get that shotgun hanging above the mantel and take care of that abomination. Rid yourself of that cursed noise. Go, Caleb. Go!’

“And I stood at that mantel, and I could feel the Devil whispering in my ear, pushing me, making me want to lift my arms and get that shotgun and go outside and through the woods and across the field, but I fought him, Pastor. I fought the Devil, and I beat him back.

“And I said ‘No!’ And I thought of our sweet Jesus and I could feel him return to my heart and suddenly I knew what to do clear as day.

“So I went into my kitchen, and I baked that man a wild blueberry pie.”

“Feedback on our writing is a funny thing, isn’t it?” my Substack colleague wrote recently in a Note. “We want it. We need it. But sometimes, even when it’s well-intended, it can shake something loose inside us in a way that doesn’t feel quite right.”

She’s right, of course.

We crave response. Yet sometimes it unnerves us, robs us of our confidence, confuses us. Worse, it makes us feel angry; we want to argue.

Yet feedback is an essential part of the writing process. Objective readers provide us clues as to how our words are being received. They tell us what parts sing, what parts are confusing or boring, show us how our words are misinterpreted, under-developed; we learn which sections work, which don’t.

Most importantly, it helps us focus our own objective lens on our work. It helps us know what to revise. And good revision is the secret to good writing.

From the reader standpoint, giving feedback is a terribly difficult thing to do. You don’t want to hurt the writer’s feelings. It’s hard to express what you are thinking, what you noticed. Heck, it’s even hard to know exactly what you think. And it’s much easier just to ‘like’ it and move on.

I’ve been studying commenting for close to 20 years. When I ran Young Writers Project — a nonprofit dedicated to helping kids write better and teachers teach writing better — I developed a commenting curricula for teachers. Initially I shared it with those in my Master’s degree class but later sent it to all the teachers using the private websites for writing in the classroom.

The guidelines for commenting were fairly simple:

• Don’t grade. Don’t judge.

• Let the students establish the rules of engagement. This builds community and they become the ones responsible to resolve deviations. (FYI, students ALWAYS did well with this exercise and chose guidelines that promoted civility, respect, honesty and kindness).

• You are an expert in what your brains notice about someone else’s writing. Articulate what you notice in a way that is well-received.

• Remember the purpose: Your insights will help the writer improve their work.

• Start with the good, shift to the more complex.

• First comment on posts that don’t have any (or many) comments.

• Writing a comment takes effort; make the commitment.

These guidelines, of course, can be applied to how we behave here on Substack if you accept my belief that this could become a vibrant, vital writing community.

And here’s a fun tidbit for any of you teachers out there: The class bullies became the class leaders. Really. In every school that we worked, bullying stopped. Because the “bullies” discovered that a) what they said — those snarky, nasty little things they liked to whisper to classmates — could be seen by everyone. Busted. And 2) they realized they could get even more attention if they accented the positive and gave a lot of people a lot of comments. And that’s exactly what they did.

Feedback on Hiram Falls

Getting feedback on a novel is no different, really, except it feels totally different.

As a writer you are asking someone for a huge commitment of time and energy. So you have to give them plenty of time, like a month.

That’s a long time to wait. On my first draft, it was agony. I wanted to get back to my writing routine. I missed the book and wanted to get back into it. Some days the waiting felt OK. But mostly it didn’t. Mostly I worried that the characters were drifting away, the ideas and energy was fading. Not to mention the late night fear that the book was crap.

I had chosen “beta” readers that I knew and a few that I didn’t know that well. But I trusted them. When I restarted the novel in late 2019, I decided to reach out to five people to see if they would provide ongoing feedback. I really was asking them to collaborate with me on my project. To my amazement they all said yes.

They ranged in age from their 20s to their 60s, from Colorado to Michigan to Vermont. They had different experience and tastes in writing. They had very different personalities and professional skills. They were all women — by design. I had several key women characters and being a woman was not exactly in my knowledge base. They would tell me if the characters I created were credible.

My primary criteria were: good readers, good writers and willing to tell me exactly what they thought. All five of my ‘angels’ — provided me feedback on multiple drafts.

On each major draft, I also added a new reader who knew zilch about the book.

I, too, established some loose ground rules:

• Do not hold back.

• Don’t worry about specific lines or passages; look at overall flow, consistency, plot movement and depth. Does it draw you in? Do you get lost, confused? Where? Does it ring true? Where not?

• At the end, when they finished the draft, I asked them to answer this question: “If you saw this book in its present form at a bookstore, would you buy it for a friend?” Yes or no.It took me five years to write the book.

(It took me five years to get the majority of them to agree to buy it for a friend.)

When they’d finished they sent me notes and then we talked via teleconference.

For the first session, I had to steel myself. Truth be known, I’m not the most confident person in the world. And this was my first novel. What the heck do I know about writing a novel?

• To prepare, I re-read what I had written.

• I jotted down the flaws I saw but spent most of my time thinking about what worked, what I liked. And I reminded myself I had accomplished something that is difficult — I wrote a novel.

• I gave my ego and my lack of confidence to several Peruvian worry dolls I had near my desk. I reminded myself of what I had told students and teachers over and over all those years: Don’t take feedback personally.

I needn’t have worried. My first real draft brought some wonderful huzzahs, like: “Wowzers. Just wowzers. I am in awe that you could actually pull together a cohesive and coherent novel. You are something. And onto something. There's so much I love here.”

And some terse, spot-on points, that would serve to guide me the rest of the way: “I’m not convinced you’ve found the full story here.” “Gevalt, you are still writing like a fucking journalist… Get inside the characters. You’re looking at them from afar.”

Like I said, they didn’t hold back.

But they also gave me tremendous insight into the characters, the rhythm, what they found captivating, what confused them. They had questions. Lots of questions. And sometimes they told me things about the story I hadn’t even seen.

The most interesting aspect was when they seemingly contradicted each other. On one draft, one reader told me how much she loved the ghost and loved how he could communicate with animals. Another reader, a former newspaper editor, said, “Gevalt what’s with the ghost shit? And the fucking talking animals? I don’t get that?”

That contradiction was easy. The ghost and “talking” animals stayed.

But there was an interesting dynamic between two readers — One I call Yang, a professional editor I hired, and the other Yin, a longtime collaborator and fellow writer. Yang was focused on structure, pacing, plot and characters; she was aiming me for The Big Five. Yin told me she defined a good book as one “that tells me something about the condition of humanity that I did not know.” Hmm, Yin, set your sights low why don’t you?

I realized, after a time, that they did not disagree at all; they just had a much different emphases and a different way of expressing themselves.

And once they did totally agree: My introduction, the Prologue, “is beautiful, but … it no longer works.” The only part of my novel that was exactly the same from the get go. Jeesh.

But I agreed. I now have a totally new beginning. And it’s better. And it works.

One highlight of my first round of feedback. After I’d spoken with the last reader, I sent out a note of thanks and said that I’d take Friday off but would dive into it on Monday.

One of the readers called me. By profession she is an art therapist. “Do not start in on Monday. Take two weeks off. Let your brain absorb and work with all that feedback you’ve been given.”

Point well taken. I was used to short stories. I was used to working on a newspaper. I held off for two weeks. I let my brain do the work. By the time I did resume, I had settled in my mind what I wanted to do and how to do it. She had given me brilliant advice.

So feedback is something we crave. It does sometimes unsettle us, but that’s a good thing. That’s how we get better. That’s how we begin to look at our work with an objective eye.

And that is absolutely essential for us to be able to do a good revision. And good revision is the secret to good writing.

NEXT: The art of revision.

‘Dress code? Who, please, decided that?’

I’m a sucker for old photos. I love to stare at them, trying to imagine who they were, what it was like for them to stand there — in front of a barn, on a pile of timbered logs, driving oxen, plowing fields with a single horse, whatever.

What were their lives like? How did they talk? What did they do after the photograph was taken?

I also love micro-fiction. And six-word stories.

It’s a famous prompt, of course. Ernest Hemingway is the supposed author of this gem: “For sale. Baby Shoes. Never used.”

Heartbreak? Or excess?

So take a look at the photo above (or below) and in the comments, try your hand at it. Write a six-word story about what you see.

This one from the Depression era:

Go wild like the wind, friends!

Do it once. Do it thrice.

Just remember: No prize at all!

Just adulation and fame, that’s it.

Oh gosh, I just can’t stop.

What about you? Feeling the six?

Certainly a bunch of kids were.

Here’s how to take an idea to the max.

In 2008, we at the Young Writers Project, a nonprofit I started, collaborated with hundreds of young writers, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra and the Vermont Midi Project who mentored a 15-year-old composer, Joshua Morris of St. Albans, VT in creating six, one-minute compositions re-defining six six-word stories — written by the young writers — into music.

The VSO then performed the songs — with the kids reading in some of the concerts — in several performances that reached thousands of listeners.

The six stories, by the way, were chosen by a gaggle of young people I bribed with pizza to select the best of the best from 2,500 entries.

This idea was hatched when David Serkin Ludwig, then VSO’s composer-in-residence and on faculty at Curtis Institute (he’s now dean and director of music at Julliard), and I had double-shot espressos together and started scheming things we could do with kids with words and music. This was our first idea (there were others). David, by the way, was also serving as a mentor with the Vermont Midi Project, now called Music Comp.

This recording was made at rehearsal the night before two concerts at the Flynn Center in Burlington, VT. The piece reached about 2,000 people in two concerts that year and was performed again three times the following year. Needless to say, the unique piece wowed the audiences.

(Unfortunately, not all the students could attend to read their pieces so I read some of them. The authors, though, still got a kick out of their words being turned into music, AND being presented on stage.)

The stories:

Before the light hit the earth. — Bailey Walker, North Country Union High School

People finally stopped reading the newspapers. — Camille Sage Bower, Mt. Mansfield Union High School.

The aliens transported the cow away. — Emily Patch, Rutland High School

Her ghost restlessly haunts the castle. — Amie Schiller, Brattleboro Union High School.

I knew I should have walked. — Chris Smith, graduate of Spaulding High School.

No, sir, it’s a bird shop. — Misha Kydd, Mt. Mansfield Union High School.

I have to say that was one of the most fun projects I had at Young Writers Project, a nonprofit I ran until 2018. It was proof of the strong connection between words and music and of the power of youth to create.

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Don’t forget to post your six-worders for either or both of the pictures above in the comments on the site.

Photo by Virginia Roberts | Banjo by Anna Roberts-Gevalt

It is Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 1995. I'm taking a break from the cooking to go outside and sit on the front stoop. It's a glorious day: Warm, late afternoon sun basks the house in light. My youngest daughter Lily is two and a half. She suddenly crashes out the door with her little chair and sets it just so, right next to me. She sits down, faces the sun and closes her eyes. The sun turns her hair golden. She is beautiful.

“I love you, Lily.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I am so thankful you are in my life.”

“I know.”

She pauses, still facing the sun: “You’d be very sad if I died.”

“Oh my gosh, Lily, I’d be heartbroken.”

“I know.”

I turn back to the sun and close my eyes.

“You’d miss me if I'd never been born.”

“I would. Indeed. … But I wouldn’t know.”

“Oh yes you would. I'd be a tiny speck of dust and I would float down from the sky and land on your arm and I would burrow in and swim up to your ear and I would yell: “MY NAME IS LILLIAN” and you would hear me. … And you would know.”

I look at her. She hasn't moved, her eyes are still closed facing the sun full on.

She is smiling.

To know him was to see his smile
feel his warmth, his thick
soft hands, his keen blue eyes
watching, welcoming,
as you spoke, as you answered his
"How are you?" Because,
He really did want you to answer.
He was my doctor.
He was my Dad's doctor.
Dr. Christ.

We, together sometimes, would visit him,
far away in the big city
we, two,
bound by one thing,
one word,
polio.
Such a harsh word then,
so unknown now.

My Dad was struck down, they said,
survived a war and all its invasions
only to be felled
one hot summer evening.
He lost his legs, he'd say,
and the family focused on him
to help his recovery, to pray.

I was too young to know,
just two, then three.
It was then they figured out
that maybe there was a reason
I rather would crawl than walk.

My Dad and I would visit him,
our doctor,
Dr. Christ.
I was five or six
when they straightened me out on that one.

I thought he really was
the brother of Jesus,
the way he laid his hands on my gimpy legs,
or stretch my muscles,
the way he'd prod and wiggle my knees and ankles
or have me walk
without the hand rails.
"Grice, Geoffrey," they said with a laugh. "'Dr. Grice.”

And so my Dad and I would visit him,
our doctor,
in his green-walled office
with the high leather table
that would squeak when I
sat down,
grip my skin as I moved,
the room smelling so clean,
like no smell at all.

My Dad would wait outside
then, it'd be his turn.
Later, we'd drive in the long night's silence,
and when I awoke, I'd be home,
and my Mom would help me upstairs.

He would write sometimes, Dr. Christ,
to say hello, to ask whether
I was doing my exercises.
He'd prescribed skating,
lots of skating,
pushing a green chair across the pond,
and, in the summer, swimming,
laps down at the lake,
back and forth between the float lines.

When I was 9 the threat
of a brace all but gone, and,
one day,
Dr. Christ came to see us at home,
my Dad and me,
our doctor.
He saw Dad first and then me,
"How are you?" he asked, and
ushered me outside,
his thick, soft hands guiding the way out back
to the lawn,
our two-acre lawn that went to the field.

It was a cold early fall day,
crisp leaves, gray wind. October.
"Run to the hedgerow and back," he said.
"Can you do that? Can you do that without falling?"

I took off,
all the way in the tall grass
almost tripping
but not,
all the way back
without falling
first time
ever.

He raised me up to the sky and,
as I slipped down in his grasp,
I felt the stubble of his beard against my cheek,
and he held me close and said,
in my ear,
"Don't ever stop trying, Geoffrey.
“Don't ever stop trying."

He stayed for early supper
and then was off
he had a drive ahead
and a plane to catch,
he was going to see his daughter.

But his plane never made it,
forty-seven seconds from takeoff,
it ran into a flock of starlings
and came down in the bay.

A murmuration of starlings.
Imagine.

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Note: I am publishing more often than usual — I will soon confine my posts to Tuesdays only — to catch up as I expand my Substack to include Stories, a series On Writing and other material.

Note: I am moving my best stories to Substack and wanted to share this one with you.

Sarah Gibson Blanding, a native of Kentucky, was the first woman president of Vassar College. She was a visionary. In 1946 she admitted male GIs to the school, she strengthened the arts departments, built new buildings and in the early 1960s picketed a Woolworth's because they wouldn't let Blacks eat at their lunch counters.

In the mid-1960s, she and her sister Ellen retired to a house down the road from me. She became a friend and mentor — someone who'd give me a straight opinion but wouldn't judge; her faith in me didn't waiver. She had an engaging sparkle in her eyes, liked jokes and loved bourbon, cigarettes and reading, in no particular order.

I worked summers for her, taking care of the yard and gardens, though she and her sister were at odds at how best to use my time. Ellen would have me clean the garage and put some of "Sarah's junk" into the station wagon to take to the dump. Sarah would come by, howl, and tell me to empty the car. "Don't listen to Ellen," she'd say.

On hot days, Sarah invited me to eat lunch in the shade of her porch where she had lemonade and plenty of books. She taught me Faulkner. And Welty. And Steinbeck. Sometimes we'd talk about the writers, or their stories. Sometimes we wouldn't talk at all. Often, when I’d get up to return to work, she’d say, “What’s your rush? Stay and read.”

Each summer she had me prune her lilac bush. It was more a tree than a bush — it stood 25 feet tall and was the most prolific lilac anyone had ever seen. She had me carefully snip the dead blossoms at the outside of the "Y" of the stem. A lilac has a double blossom, and her theory was that a new blossom would come from each side. "From two will come four and from four will come eight," she would say, "and that's why I have so many blossoms."

Who was to argue.

I moved away after college, but we kept in touch by letters. Then, in the early 1980s she developed Alzheimers and moved to a nursing home. In 1982 I stopped to see her. She was confused. "How do I know you?" she kept asking.

I would tell her, but nothing worked. Finally I said, "Miss Blanding, I'm Geoffrey. I used to take care of your lilac tree. Remember? From two will come four, from four will come eight …"

"Geoffrey!" she shouted. A thin, silk veil seemed to lift from her bright blue eyes. She beamed.

“Oh, Geoffrey.”

And then, just as quickly, the puzzlement returned. A frown. "How do I know you?" She died in 1985.

Sometimes, when I write, I imagine that she is my audience.

(Notes: Anna Roberts-Gevalt on banjo. Photo taken Oct. 1949, when Sarah was 51 and received an honorary degree from Smith College. Life photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt. Photo available for personal, non-commercial use through Life Photo Archive hosted by Google.)