Writing Your Way

Hello Everyone --

I began writing this on Jan. 1, to wish you all a Happy New Year, with happiness, good health, and joyful surprises. Life intervened, and I am now sending this out in March 2007, the beginning of my birthday month, so a new year for me -- and soon, we hope, the beginning of spring. The days are getting longer, although my yard is still covered with snow as I write this.
The autumn of 2006 saw the publication of my novel Feast of Lights (Sumach Press, Toronto, 2006), in time for the Hanukkah season, and I hope this coming year will bring us all a feast of light, peace, and travels to new places we'd like to go, as well as a greater sense of coming home.

In this blog, Writing Your Way, I will comment on the passing scene, especially in writing, theatre, and related arts; provide news about workshops, readings, and other events; and share pieces of writing that I have discovered and enjoy.

I'll start with the discovery of a U.S. writer, Josephine Herbst (1892-1969), whom I just learned about, thanks to my friend Irene Briskin, who knew "Josie" in New York over 40 years ago. Born in Iowa, Josie became a radical woman writer in the 1920's and '30's, travelling to the U.S.S.R., Germany, and Spain during the Civil War. She later worked for the U.S. during World War II but was fired because of some of her earlier political activity. She wrote of that time, "common sense always looks treasonable in wartime." (doesn't sound anything like Washington DC. today, does it?) For much of her life, she owned a house in Erwinna, Pennsylvania (Bucks County) --near where my mother lives now, although both my mother and I grew up in New York City, where Josie also lived. This writer's activities are reminding me of my own in the late 1960's -- and I'm surprised not to have heard of her before. Elinor Langer wrote a biography of her, Josephine Herbst: The Story She Could Never Tell (Little, Brown, & Co., 1983, Boston), and four of her essays have been reprinted as The Starched Blue Sky of Spain (Harper Collins and Harper Perennial, 1991). And there was recently a play about her in New York City.

In our own writing this year, let's try to follow Josie's advice: "Come now, be muy inteligente, be valiente. Just try!"

*************************
Tribute to Gilda Mekler

I would like to honour the spirit and life of Gilda Mekler (1955-2007), who passed away suddenly in the early morning of February 7. Painter, wordsmith, editor, wife of the poet James Deahl, mother of Simone and Shona, and stepmother of Sara, daughter of Lucy Mekler, a good friend and a genuinely good human being. Her cheefulness, compassion, generosity, common sense, and sense of fairness will be deeply missed. "May her memory be a blessing."

**************************