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September 8, 1965: 49th anniversary of the Delano grape strike walkout and an excerpt

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September 8, 1965. That was when about 1,500 Filipinos went out on strike against the grape growers in Delano, California.
– Pete Velasco, Filipino-American activist and Treasurer of the United Farm Union

One of my aunts still picking grapes in her 60s, summer 2005.

One of my aunts picking grapes, summer 2005.

Today marks the 49th anniversary of the walkout of farm workers from the vineyards in Delano, California. It is a historic day not just for Filipino Americans – whose forefathers struck for better wages and working conditions – farm workers, and the labor movement, but it’s a historic day for every American. The day before, September 7th, members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) took a vote to strike and in the early morning of September 8th, AWOC members sat down in the fields, walked out, or did not go to work.

In honor of that day, I offer an excerpt from my novel, A Village in the Fields, Chapter 11: Empty Fields, Empty House (Delano, September 1965-May 1966):

“Friends, come out of the fields! Join us in our struggle! We must all be together to succeed!” Fausto shouted from across the road. When the workers didn’t respond, he cupped his hands to his chapped lips and repeated in Ilocano, “Gagayem, rumuar kayo amin! Masapol nga agtitinulong tayo! Tapno makamtan tayo ti karang-ayan!”

Benny grabbed Fausto’s arm and squeezed it. Fausto imagined that his own face mirrored the mix of surprise and giddiness on his cousin’s face as they watched their fellow pinoys drop their clippers and slowly stream out of the fields. The sun was rising, though the air was cold and the sky tinted pink. Fausto stuffed his hands in his coat pockets. Benny stamped his feet to keep warm. By midday, the sun’s full strength would scorch the earth. When their countrymen crossed the road, Fausto and Benny threw their arms around them, congratulating them for their bravery, but the look in their eyes told them they were not yet convinced they were doing the right thing. None lived in the Cuculich camp or had attended any union meetings. Fausto recognized a handful as regulars at the pool halls and barbershops in Delano; they were local workers, some with families—not the migrant pinoys who had struck down south.

“You heard about the strike in Coachella, eh?” Fausto asked the group of men. “Our countrymen struck for ten days in the spring and the growers gave in. Some of these pinoys have come to Delano expecting the same wages. But the growers here are only paying a dollar ten. Is that fair to any of us?”

All eyes were on Fausto as they shook their heads.

“Then we must fight back!” Benny said. “We must strike for what is fair.”

“But what if the growers doan give in?” an elderly pinoy with milky eyes asked. “I seen what happen in the lettuce fields when nobody backs down.”

“The pinoys who struck down south don’t live here like we do,” another one said.

“Delano is our home. We don’t want our town mad at our families.”

“I have a wife and four kids,” a man in the back called out. With his gray hair, he looked to be the same age as Fausto and Benny. “We cannot feed on uncertainty.”

“Can you guarantee us the strike will end soon?” a stubbly faced pinoy demanded.

“We make sacrifices now to secure our future, manongs.” Fausto hoped that by using the term of respect manong to mean brother they would be more comfortable around him. “All we are asking for is decent wages and a union contract. If we can get all our brothers out of the fields—maybe a thousand today, two thousand tomorrow—then we have power. The strike cannot survive more than ten days. The growers cannot afford to lose their whole crop.” As the men looked at the vines thick with leaves, the ripe berries pulling down the branches, Fausto said, “Two years ago, these growers paid more than any other place in California. This year they are paying less. Do you have such short memories? They are paying less because they can, manongs. Ai, think with your heads!”

“We want the growers to sign contracts to guarantee us fair wages,” Benny said, when the men stared at Fausto in silence. “We are asking for one forty an hour and twenty-five cents a box. This is what you all deserve, manongs. Please listen to us.”

“Then what do we do now?”

“Where do we go?”

“My boss, Mr. Radic, will kick me out of camp,” the milky-eyed pinoy said.

“Manong, how many years do you have left in the fields?” Fausto asked in a gentle voice. When the old man shrugged his shoulders, he went on, “I heard Radic kicks out old pinoys when they can no longer work. He tells them his bunkhouses are not retirement homes or hospitals. He’s not keeping you in his bunkhouse out of charity! He has been overcharging you for years, making money off of you! Will it matter if he’s angry with you?” He couldn’t help but laugh. “Manong, Radic has deducted ten cents every hour you worked in his fields for how many decades now? You own that camp!”

The old man began to weep in his hands, the dirt on his fingers turning muddy. Fausto pulled out his handkerchief to wipe the old man’s eyes.

“I don’t live in Radic’s camp,” the man with the family spoke up, “and I got years of work ahead of me, but I cannot afford to have Radic mad at me.”

Fausto told them thirty farms were being picketed. “Go find work for the growers who are not on the list,” he said. “When the strike ends, then you can go back to Radic.”

So far, he and Benny had avoided scouting and picketing the Cuculich farm. As owner of one of the largest farms, Mr. Cuculich employed hundreds of workers. If all of them left, Larry Itliong told Fausto, the strike would end sooner. Fausto argued that Mr. Cuculich was not like John Depolo, who had a reputation for having the most workers suffer from heat exhaustion and heat stroke. But to Larry, all the growers were the same. Larry advised Fausto and the other pinoy AWOC members to picket the farms of other growers to avoid being punished by their long-time bosses once the strike ended.
The idle workers shifted their feet, hands deep in the pockets of their jeans, waiting for Fausto to speak. “With your help, the strike will end soon,” he assured them.

“Go! Go now!” Benny said, and waved his arms to shoo them away.

They herded them toward the small lot of cars by the shoulder of the road and stood there until everyone piled into their cars and the caravan drove away.

“Can it be this easy?” Benny said to Fausto, as the last of the red taillights disappeared around the corner of the road.

“Ai, nothing worth fighting for is easy. This will be a long journey,” Fausto said.

Down the road small bands of picketing AWOC members—all pinoys, including Prudencio, Ayong, and Fidel—hung around Frank Radic’s property, but Fausto wanted to head back to the Filipino Hall, AWOC’s headquarters. The morning of the strike, Ayong told them the hall was filled with veterans—elderly pinoys who had weathered strikes in the lettuce and asparagus fields since the nineteen-twenties—and farm workers, many with families, who had never engaged in strikes or other union activity. The newcomers were eager to help, but they needed to be educated. Even Fausto didn’t know what to do beyond picketing farms and getting his countrymen and strikebreakers out of the fields.

Benny slapped his palms together to warm them up. “Maybe later we’ll picket the packing sheds and the cold-storage plants along Glenwood Street.”

As they walked to the Bel-Air, a pickup truck veered onto the shoulder of the road and shuddered to a halt inches from Fausto, who stood with shaky legs. He recognized the man with sideburns who hopped out of the cab as one of Frank Radic’s sons. Benny stepped back as the man raised a shotgun above his head, but Fausto didn’t move.

“Get off my land!” Clifford said, pumping the shotgun like a dumbbell.

Fausto pointed to the vineyards across the street. “We are not on your land.”

“Don’t act like you know more than me!” Clifford said.

“All we are asking for is a decent wage,” Benny managed to say.

“You ought to be working like every red-blooded American in this country!” Clifford swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down his skinny neck. “My great grandpa was a sharecropper, but he built this business from the ground up by himself. Now you’re trying to cheat our family without working hard yourself!”

“The government gives growers water for free and these farms live off the sweat of the braceros, Chicanos, Filipinos, blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Arabs.” Fausto spoke in a loud voice to drown out his thrashing heartbeat. “This is how these farms grew.”

Clifford worked his mouth open as if he hadn’t expected an old Filipino farm worker to know anything beyond picking grapes and pruning vines. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” He raised the shotgun high in the air and pulled the trigger.

Fausto shook his head to stop his ears from ringing. Benny grabbed his arms and their eyes met, but Fausto brushed off Benny’s hands and the fear in his cousin’s face. As picketers rushed toward them, Clifford hurled the shotgun through the open window of the cab. He revved up the engine and spun the pickup truck around, spitting out dirt beneath the fat tires, before rocketing onto the blacktop and down the road.

“Are you okay?”

Fausto recognized Ayong’s voice, his friend’s knotty fingers on his shoulder. He nodded, though his numbed neck felt as if the Radic boy had aimed for his throat.

“This is not good,” Benny whispered.

“I’m going to cut off that sonavabeech’s balls off with a bolo!” Prudencio sliced the cold air with his straw hat, as other pinoys gathered around Fausto.

Fausto raised his hands. “They’re angry because they’re scared. If enough workers leave, they will lose the whole harvest. They will not risk such a loss.”

“But even if they raise our wages, they will still be angry and harm us somehow,” Benny said in a quiet voice. “I’m afraid.”

Fausto gave Benny a withering look. “If you are afraid, then don’t show it.”

“Listen to Fausto,” Fidel Europa said, leaning in.

“Listen to us all!” Prudencio clapped Benny’s shoulder. “They can break us if we are weak and scared. So be strong, manong. Let us all be strong.”

The pinoys, grim faced and silent, raised their fists above their heads as they retreated to their cars. Prudencio and Ayong were going back to the Cuculich camp to check up on their bunkmates, who had refused to leave camp for work. As Fausto and Benny left, they passed rows and rows of berries hung low on the vines. Like Mr. Cuculich, Frank Radic would not let his grapes be picked until they were sweet. Let them drop to the earth, Fausto entreated. Let them drop until the growers given in. Let the flies be more plentiful in the fields than the rotting grapes and the vanishing workers.

Ripe Ribier grapes in September - the jewels in the fields.

Ripe Ribier grapes in September – the jewels in the fields.

The ‘Delano Manongs’ and the importance of historical accuracy

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The most effective way of destroying people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
– George Orwell, English author and journalist

Filmmaker Marissa Aroy introduces her documentary to a standing-room-only crowd.

Filmmaker Marissa Aroy introduces her documentary to a standing-room-only crowd.

Having missed the “Delano Manongs” at the CAAMFest 2014 (Center for Asian American Media Film Festival) in Oakland in March, I was so happy to be given another chance to see Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Marissa Aroy’s documentary about the Filipinos’ contribution to the Delano grape strike of 1965. The Manilatown Heritage Foundation hosted the screening of “Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes of the United Farmworkers” at the International Hotel Manilatown Center (868 Kearney Street, San Francisco, CA 94108, mfg@manilatown.org) last Saturday afternoon. Marissa brought to the forefront the “buried” history of the manongs, a term of endearment for the older Filipino bachelors who came to the U.S. in the 1920s to work in the agricultural fields and subsequently struck for higher wages and better work conditions in the Delano vineyards in September 1965, in the heart of the Central Valley of California.

After the 30-minute screening, two local social justice organizers joined Aroy on a Q&A panel. Audience members wanted to hear Aroy’s take on Diego Luna’s biopic, Cesar Chavez, which was released in March. I haven’t seen the feature film, but many in the audience had. I trust the reports that they reported – that the Filipinos were pushed to the background and that the plucky, straight-shooter Filipino labor leader, Larry Itliong, was also relegated to second-class citizen status in the movie despite the fact that Itliong organized the original strike and convinced Chavez to join. In particular, Filipinos were outraged that in the pivotal scene in which the growers finally sign the union contracts Larry Itliong was in the crowd witnessing the signing and not being recognized as one of the negotiators who got the growers to sign in the first place. In reality, Itliong was seated at the table, alongside the growers and Chavez. Critics responded that the Filipinos were being petty, quibbling over an “insignificant” detail as the placement of Larry Itliong in a movie that was, after all, about Cesar Chavez.

Marissa addresses questions about historical accuracy in films.

Among other topics, Marissa addressed questions about historical accuracy in films.

Here is where I call foul. If the detail is inconsequential, why bother deviating from historical truth? When a historical movie deviates from the truth several times, viewers, especially those knowledgeable about the events and the time period, begin to distrust both the person telling the story and the story itself. And those who don’t know the history subsequently accept what they see as the truth. Marissa was asked about that particular scene in which Itliong was placed in the crowd and not at the table. She said she could only conjecture, but from a filmmaker’s perspective, she thought that a stronger, more outspoken character like Itliong – who was sporting a goatee, dark-rimmed glasses, and a cowboy hat at the signing – would “take away” the spotlight from the quieter figure of Chavez and therefore would not be placed prominently in the scene.

Critics again say it’s not about Itliong or the Filipinos. And again, indeed, the movie Cesar Chavez is not. They say, tell your own story. And so Marissa has – she spent five years making the documentary. That’s why it’s important to have a movie like the “Delano Manongs” in circulation. It demands to be seen with a greater distribution. Luckily for us all, Marissa reported that the documentary, which has been shown in limited engagements thus far, will be aired on PBS stations in 2015. But we can’t wait until next year to talk up this documentary and its insistence on recognizing the contributions of the Filipinos to the UFW. Those of us know the truth need to relentlessly educate those who don’t. For me, that’s part of the reason I wrote my novel, A Village in the Fields.

There has been talk of systematic and subtle – to the unassuming public, that is – erasure of the Filipinos from UFW history. It’s sinister in its subtlety. It shows that the gatekeepers of the legacy of the UFW and Chavez feel threatened by the legacy of the Filipinos, which shouldn’t be the case. When we are united against an evil, as was the case with the farm workers fighting against human rights violations, we win. When we break down within, we all lose. So it is with the retelling of this period in time. It’s a disservice to American history to rewrite any part of our national history. Think of Orwell’s words. Give credit where credit is due. The Filipinos started the Delano grape strike and they were instrumental in the creation of the UFW and in the victories gained at the bargaining table. Do your own research. Watch the “Delano Manongs” and spread the word. The truth.

Ripe Ribier grapes in September - the jewels in the fields.

Our own grapes of wrath.

My literary vacay

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Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
– Henry David Thoreau, American author, poet, philosopher, naturalist, and leading transcendentalist

My library chair is calling me!

My library chair is calling me!

Not surprisingly, I have a stockpile of vacation and discretionary days, plus two floating holidays. Unfortunately, you can only carry over a certain amount of vacation and discretionary hours into the next fiscal year, which for my company is July 1st. When I checked my hours a few months ago, I realized I had to take time off. But when? There’s never a good time to take off because something is always due or meetings are scheduled either on the fly or weeks in advance. I understood that any time I would take off that wasn’t labeled “family vacation” was going to be writing time for me. I was not prepared to take a week off now, however, as such a chunk of time required activity that had to be productive, as far as I was concerned. I am not ready to sit down and write the second novel. But I am ready to sit down and read, conduct research, sketch characters, and plot storylines – all valuable, of course, and a precursor to actually writing.

The one thing I did know was that I did not want to take the same week off as my kids’ spring break. If I took off the same week they were out, I knew it would not be the “me” vacation that I so desperately wanted and needed. My kids were off last week. It was nice downtime for them. I am off this week, though I still have to push through some revisions, attend a meeting, write a summary, and respond to necessary e-mails. I scheduled an appointment with my acupuncturist to start the week off to be in a good place physically. In the weeks leading up to this week, I tried to clear off my home desk of tasks I needed to complete in order to have a clean work space and thus a cleared mental state of mind.

And thus yesterday so began my literary vacay. Note that I didn’t call it a stacay. Even though I’m going to be parked in my library chair with my tall stack of books on the Filipino-American War, pen and notepad, The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker, cup of tea (now gone cold), and most important box of See’s chocolates for sustenance, I consider this a vacation where I am not really at home. These books will be taking me to another country, another era. I scarcely will feel or hear the crinkly leather seat I’ll be inhabiting.

My trusty companion, Rex, will show me how to relax.

My trusty companion, Rex, will show me how to relax.

I will admit that once I was ensconced in my library chair yesterday, with a fortress of books around me, I started to panic. How would I ever get through all these books, remember all the historical details? How much time would I need? How long would it be before I get to the point of writing, and then how long will the writing process be? Will it once again be a 17-year odyssey as it was for A Village in the Fields? When you’re 52 and you have a full-time job and two kids, these are natural questions to ask. Stopping and smelling the roses is an iffy optional activity. I am often aware of seconds, minutes, hours, and making all of those measurements of time count.

I allowed myself to flounder a bit while I figured out what I could do. I thought back to last year and the year before – how did I restart and finish the first novel? Somehow, those years are smashed together when I look back. Last year, I finished the novel, blogged three times a week, and had an insane work schedule, along with helping with my kids’ schooling and attending their extracurricular activities, at the expense of sleep. I had more energy and was younger, of course, in those 15 previous years. Am I smarter as a writer after having gone through this writing exercise? Yes. So that’s what I told myself to hang my hat on. I did it before; I’ll do it again. Better and smarter. Don’t think about time. Just keep going. It’s what makes me happy, so in true Zen-like fashion, I told myself to enjoy the doing.

I hear my library chair calling me. It’s gotten cold again and I must warm the old leather. And read. Take notes. Most importantly, dream.

Required reading list.

Required reading list.

March is Women’s History Month

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Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.
– Maya Angelou, American poet, memoirist, actress, and American Civil Rights Movement activist

Worn-out leather and jeans who well with vegan cut-out blouse.

Worn-out leather and jeans mix well with vegan cut-out blouse.

The National Women’s History Project‘s theme this year for Women’s History Month is Celebrating Women of Character, Courage, and Commitment. The Project honors 12 women whose lives and work serve as a source of inspiration for both girls and boys and women and men to make our world a more compassionate and more equitable place for everyone. In honoring these women and bringing their accomplishments to the forefront, the Project is making good on its goal of “writing women back into history.”

With that in mind, I thought a worthy exercise in honor of Women’s History Month would be to write a short essay on a woman in your life who exhibited character, courage, and commitment, and inspired you to do the same. For me, that’s easy – it would be my mother. Born in 1926 in the Philippines, she endured the occupation of her homeland by the Japanese in World War II, forced to witness such atrocities as the bayoneting of babies thrown into the air in the town square. “We looked away,” my mother had murmured when I asked her if the story my sister had told me was true. She worked to help put her brothers and sisters through school. She forsake true love and ended up marrying my father and coming to the States after the war. Instead of working to get her teaching credential here – she was a school teacher back home – she picked grapes in the summertime and packed oranges in the wintertime for decades, until she retired. She saved money like crazy, though she and my father didn’t make very much money, and we grew up never feeling poor, though we lived in a rural farming community. My mother instilled in my two sisters and me the importance of education, especially higher education, and being a good citizen. Those were the facts of her life, but there is so much more.

Boxy blouse, jeans, kitten-heel pumps, and clutch are an easy uniform to throw on.

Boxy blouse, jeans, kitten-heel pumps, and clutch are an easy uniform to throw on when mornings are hectic.

The day after my mother passed away on January 3, 2012, my old high school friend, Kimi, wrote about my mother in an e-mail to me in the early hours of the morning: “She was steel. Thin, lithe, wiry, graceful, resilient, unbreakable; tempered. She was beautiful, proud, determined, resolved, smart. If she had lived in a different time or place, if she’d had our opportunities, we can only imagine what she would have accomplished. But, she took the yoke and humble, coarse work that was available – and she lived her dreams through you. As an observer, and not the one grinding away to meet your mom’s expectations, it was always clear to me that she was very, very proud of you, Joyce and Heidi. She built the runway, you flew. She was happy. She felt accomplished. In the end, she achieved her dreams and she had a good life.”

I wrote Kimi back, accusing her of making me cry. What haunted me, what moved me the most of her words – If she had lived in a different time or place, if she’d had our opportunities, we can only imagine what she would have accomplished – still resonates with me as I think about Women’s History Month. My mother was at once meek and determined, dutiful and unrelenting, bearing burdens and yet strategizing for a better life for her family. Had she lived in a different time or place, had she been led to more windows and doors, she would have opened them and gone through. She would have built the runway and taken off herself.

Against a creamy cut-out blouse: Anthropologie statement earrings, stack of rings by Kate Peterson Designs (El Cerrito, CA), Alkemie scarab cuff made of recycled metal, and Laura Lombardi necklace (Eskell, Chicago).

Against a creamy cut-out blouse: Anthropologie statement earrings, stack of rings by Kate Peterson Designs (El Cerrito, CA), Alkemie scarab cuff made of recycled metal, and industrial Laura Lombardi necklace (Eskell, Chicago).

How many girls and women in the world today don’t even know that windows and doors exist? How many never realize they could entertain the crazy notion that they can build their own runway and take off or actually have a voice and the audacity to dream big and make good on them – as a result of the tyranny of governments and politics, religion, misogyny, and on and on? How do we as women, who are privileged and who have had our basic needs and more met, reach them?

When I think of all those questions and wonder where in those pockets and dark corners of the world those girls and women may be, I understand the desire to write women back into history, to use our voices, and shine the light on women’s accomplishments. These subversive acts  – which one day won’t be subversive, though we must always strive to be subversive when it comes to advancing girls and women – plant the seeds. And when we scatter them all around us, beautiful things will grow.

So what can we as individuals do? Nora Ephron entreats us to be the heroine of our lives. Do the small things in our homes, our neighborhoods, and our communities. Nurture and use your gifts for good deeds. Create windows and doors. Go through them, but make sure someone is behind you doing the same. Be compassionate. Be courageous. Be present. Be.

Mixing textures: weathered chambray, metal, nude patent, vegan cut-out, and faux snakeskin.

Mixing textures: weathered chambray, reclaimed metal, nude patent leather, vegan cut-out, and faux snake skin.

A Village in the Fields: a beginning for the beginning

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We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.
– Anais Nin, French-born novelist and short story writer

I finished my novel in December, but needed to proof it with one last check. This past quiet weekend was the first time I was able to get to it. Now that it’s done, off it goes. The end of the proofing stage means the beginning of its outbound journey.

Agbayani Village in Delano.

Agbayani Village in Delano.

To celebrate the launch of its next journey, I offer the beginning of A Village in the Fields:

Chapter 1: Visitors, Abgayani Village, Delano, California, August 1997

The fever was relentless—like the hundred-degree heat that baked the brick-and-tile buildings of Agbayani Village. Fausto Empleo lay on his bed listening, the window wide open, the curtains still, the table fan unplugged. He didn’t move, though his body pulsed with the chirping of crickets. The groundskeeper’s dog barked, and he imagined jack rabbits springing across the fields, disappearing between the rows of vines. Dusk was spreading across the vineyards like a purple stain, a crushed Emperor grape. With the sun gone, the silver Mylar strips hanging from poles that bordered the vineyard lost their hard glint. The crows—their caws growing in strength—swooped down to snatch the ripe berries as the shadows of the oleander bushes stretched across the grounds.

The heat lingered. Even as the world outside went black.

Fausto clapped his hands. On the third try, the nightstand lamp threw out a circle of light. His nurse, Arturo Esperanza, had given him the lamp weeks ago. Fausto usually laughed when he clapped. The lamp was magical, Arturo had teased him. But this time he drew his arm across his face to hide from the glare. He sucked in his breath, making his ribs ache. Something was seeping into his nostrils—burning wax from a candle, the faint trace of sulfur as if from a lit match. But he had no candles. Again, smoke and musty-smelling wax filled his lungs. When he lowered his arm, his room was studded with hundreds of tall, white tapers anchored in pools of wax—at the edge of his bed, on the dresser, icing a bouquet of plastic flowers, on the windowsill, his desk, the top of the television set—spilling milky lava across the linoleum. The flames merged into a constellation of blazing stars. He turned away, his face prickling from the heat.

He shut his eyes. “Well, God, are you calling me?”

The wind-up clock on his desk ticked like a giant tinny heart.

“Because if you are,” he said, struggling to unbutton his shirt, now cold and damp against his skin, “I’m not ready to go!”

He opened his eyes. The candles vanished as if by the force of his voice. He shook his head. Why did he say that? He was the last of the retired Filipino farm workers at the Village. The rest of his compatriots had passed away. There was nothing for him here. He should be begging God to take him now, but that would mean he’d given up, and he couldn’t admit to such a thing—not yet.

He willed himself to sleep, but sleep came in fits. He woke up in the middle of the night. The lamp had been left on, but its light was weak and it sputtered like a trapped fly. The room was silent; the wind-up clock had stopped at twelve-twenty. Before Fausto could clap, the light went out. A second later the lamp came back on, only to be snuffed out in an instant. It threw out light a third time, but it soon dimmed and then the room darkened for good. Fausto drew the sheets to his chest, afraid that something was going to drag him from his bed.

He listened for a knock on the door. Didn’t his mother tell him, as a child, never to answer a knock at night? It’s an evil spirit come to get you, she had warned. If you say, “I am coming,” the evil spirit will take you and you will die. Though she had counseled him many years ago to be “as silent as Death,” he cried out now, thumping the left side of his chest, “I’m still alive, son-of-a-gun! You go get somebody else!”

Ribier grapes from the Central Valley of California.

Ribier grapes from the Central Valley of California.

Looking forward to 2014

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For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
– T.S. Eliot, poet, dramatist, and literary critic, from Four Quartets

When I was in elementary school, my sister gave me a diary for Christmas one year. I had previously used a notebook and binder paper to record what happened or what I did on days that were worthy of recording. But once I got a real diary, I was spoiled and for several years afterwards I would get a new diary for each year. Soon my entries evolved from one-liners of what I ate or who came to visit to events that made me happy or sad followed by an analysis of why I was happy or sad. I created a tradition in which at the end of the year I would reflect and read what happened that year. I would write about what was memorable and what I learned. And then I would focus on my hopes and dreams for the following year.

A timeless LBD that reminds me of The Great Gatsby and Art Deco.

A timeless LBD that reminds me of The Great Gatsby and Art Deco.

I’ve since abandoned writing a daily diary. I rely on the e-mails that I send to friends as a record of what happened and what I was going through internally. I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions anymore, either. Or at least I don’t formalize them, write them down, and take assessment after a certain period of time has passed in the new year. When I write my holiday e-greeting letter, I do take stock of what I and my family did for the year, and at least in my head I reflect on the year and what goals I had set for myself that were achieved and what goals are yet to be met.

I think about what the New Year promises and what I want to do in the New Year. I could be detailed or I could just throw a blanket statement that covers everything. There’s something really attractive about simplicity, especially when I feel so cluttered with so many things in life right now. So yes, I’m going to make a New Year’s Resolution list this time around, but it’s going to be one that will be easy to achieve. So here goes:

Laura Lombardi necklace (Eskell, Chicago) and Abacus earrings (Portland, ME).

Laura Lombardi necklace (Eskell, Chicago) and Abacus earrings (Portland, ME).

Be mindful of the present, the here and now. More often than not, walking Rex in the early mornings is a task that I want to cross off my daily list of things to do as quickly as possible. During the fall, however, I took time to enjoy the turning of the leaves from green to deep reds and vibrant golds and oranges. I enjoyed the Christmas decorations on neighbors’ lawns and trees. It was a crazy busy month of December, but I made sure to enjoy our decked-out halls by, for example, bringing the laptop down to the living room to enjoy the fire and smell the tree while I worked. It kept the spirit in me. And I want to continue that mindfulness.

Get my novel out there, in whatever form and through whatever channel in which it was meant to be. I will try just a few literary agents this time around, but when I set out to finish A Village in the Fields last year, I had already come up with a plan to get it up quickly on Amazon, per the path a few colleagues from work have taken. Stay tuned.

Keep writing, read more. I’m looking forward to resuming research for my second novel, which I had abandoned back in 2006, and doing character sketches and plot drafts. I also look forward to revisiting old short stories that wise old eyes are now looking at anew and revising them, as well as revisiting old short story ideas and perhaps resurrecting them. Most importantly, I look forward to carving out more time to read – the single thing that makes a writer better.

Textures in the form of faux fur and velveteen, and gold accents.

Textures in the form of faux fur and velveteen, and gold accents.

Write more profiles for my blog. One thing that suffered a little as work overtook me this past fall to the end of the year was not having the time to interview amazing women for my blog. I have a backlog of women to interview, and I really hope to carve out time to return to this part of my blog. Stay tuned.

Take better care of my body. I cannot ignore the creaks in the knees as I walk down the stairs in the morning or the pain in my thumb joint, which I fear is arthritis and not carpal tunnel syndrome. Yes, I am getting older and with it comes aches and pains. But if I eat right, get some sleep – let me repeat that to myself again, get more sleep – and add greater variety to my exercise routine, some of those afflictions should be alleviated. I can’t stop time or growing older, but I can impact the quality of those years and the process.

Scatter joy. On my first trip to Maine perhaps a decade ago in August, my friend, Jack, indulged my request to check out this quaint shop called Flying Pigs, at least I think that’s what the shop was called. I came across a plaque with the words “Scatter joy” that was attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. I picked it up but put it down. Then at Christmastime that year, Jack sent the plaque to me, and it has been hanging above a door in our library for the last six years. Every once in a while I look up and remember how it came to our house, and it reminds me to do just that – scatter joy.

There is nothing more gratifying than seeing someone I care about smile or laugh or be happy because of something I said or did. It’s infectious and it makes my day. It’s easy to do. Every day. Scatter joy. Happy New Year’s Eve!

Time for a little New Year's Eve celebration!

Time for a little New Year’s Eve celebration!