Entries tagged with new york

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Care

Random quote of the day:

“I did not see anything [in New York 1886] to help my people. I could see that the Wasichus [Whites] did not care for each other the way our people did before the nation's hoop was broken. They would take everything from each other if they could, and so there were some who had more of everything than they could use, while crowds of people had nothing at all and maybe were starving. This could not be better than the old ways of my people.”

―Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Desus and Mero, Beyoncé, or the Marine Corps Marching Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

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Review: Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town That Talks to the Dead by Christine Wicker

Lily Dale is a town in upstate New York with a long history of old-timey mediumship—you know, table rappings, séances, psychic readings, that sort of thing. The town was, as Wikipedia says, “incorporated in 1879 as Cassadaga Lake Free Association, a camp and meeting place for Spiritualists and Freethinkers. The name was changed to The City of Light in 1903 and finally to Lily Dale Assembly in 1906.” It may have updated its image in recent years, but it still is a town of spiritualists, with all that entails.

“Every summer twenty thousand guests come to consult the town’s mediums,” the back cover says, “in hopes of communicating with dead relatives or catching a glimpse of the future. Weaving past with present, the living with the dead, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Christine Wicker investigates the longings for love and connection that draw visitors to ‘the Dale,’ introducing us to a colorful cast of characters along the way—including such famous visitors as Susan B. Anthony, Harry Houdini, and Mae West.”

And I have to say, I really liked this book. It’s not so much about Lily Dale as it’s about the people whose lives changed after visiting and having their worldview shifted. That’s the ultimate charm of the book for me, how Lily Dale works on people. Ms. Wicker paints wonderful portraits of past inhabitants and current seekers, their traumas and triumphs and their inexorable movement toward something larger than themselves. It’s a very human book, for all its spiritualist craziness. The author manages to walk the line between empathy and irony without either mawkishness or mockery.

If you expect a book of scathing skepticism, this is not that book. If you expect a story of earth shattering mystic revelations and great truths…well, some of them may be there, but they’re subtly and often humorously worked into the life stories Ms. Wicker unveils—including her own. I loved her moments of struggle with what she’s encountering, her moments of self-parody and doubt, her will to believe versus her will not to believe. Despite digging in her heels and her best reporter’s instincts, Lily Dale works its charms on her, shifting her paradigm and leaving her feeling better about her life—without surrendering her rationality.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

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A hell of a town

Random quote of the day:

"You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now."

—Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York

( Illustrated version. )

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

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Ba da bing

Random quote of the day:

"Even if you're Catholic, if you live in New York, you're Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you're goyish even if you're Jewish."

—Lenny Bruce

( Illustrated riff. )

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Some days there isn't enough chocolate in the world

First, I had to write a self-evaluation today, an exercise in hyperbolic conflation if ever there was one. And I had to carve time out of a over-busy morning schedule to do it. That'll lead to chocolate bingeing every time. Then, I've been denied writing time two days in a row. Four if you count the weekend. I usually get some writing in on the weekend, but that didn't happen this weekend. More chocolate! Next, some people who had to do the same self-evaluation as I were having whiny snivelly fits about having to do it and I was not in the mood. Be a man! buck up! CHOC-O-LATE!!

Adding to all this, I've reached a point that I reach in every novel, what I call the panic point. That's when I've got a sufficient bulk of novel behind me to know I'll probably finish, but still have a ways to go before I type The End. This is also the time when the passages through the story start narrowing as I draw closer to the denouement. Alternate possibilities disappear on the horizon, never to be seen again, and I begin to wonder if I'm going to be able to pull off the vision thing as, well, envisioned. Do I really know what I'm doing? Is the ending as viable as it seemed when I thought of it, or is it just an absurdity echo in the gag factory of my mind? Am I about to make a really big fool of myself? Did I write the correct novel after all? Or should I have turned the story in a different direction and written that other novel?

Oh, slather me in chocolate!

Knowing this panic happens with every novel, I should draw comfort from it, but I never do. This time around I've got a fresh failure to remind me that I don't always pull it off at the end: the overly ambitious Night Warrior/The Making Blood—three, three, three novels in one! I expect that one's going to continue haunting me until I either do a successful rewrite or successfully finish another novel. I'm hoping Charged with Folly will be that successful finish, but one never knows.

I do like the ending of CWF. I took a mechanism I used at the end of my first completed novel, a sort of generic quest fantasy with a science fiction twist which will never see the light of day again, and will apply part of it to this ending. Then I took another piece of science and added it to the mix with a bunch of metaphysical/philosophical crud to finish off the concept. It seemed like a viable resolution. But some days there isn't enough chocolate in the world to reassure me—until the damned thing is actually done.

Random quote of the day:

"I'm here because I was born here and thus ruined for anywhere else."

—Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York

Something for the boys (of both sexes):