Just got back from a quick trip to WI. Caught up with the kids and grandkids. Great food, fun. Got our fill of cornfields on the drive, but the beautiful mountains once we got to WVA compensated. Photos below were taken at the Madison farmers' market and in front of state capital building.

Now I'm back to wrestling with my short story and deciding whether it is good enough to submit to the Golden Nib competition. It's due on Saturday, so I only have a day left to fiddle. Asked for feedback from two readers, but didn't get anything actionable.

Just finished reviewing some tutorials in my AutoCrit subscription. Will go back and work a little more on Amen's character and on planting a couple of smaller conflicts inside the major one of slavery.

Starting Again

I started a blog in 2009, nine years and a few centuries from where I am today, in every sense of "where". I put it on hold a year later.

In 2014 I returned to blogging, creating a new site, which I named, "Chan's Plots - The Plot Thickens." Here is a link to it:

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6635200085280914860#allposts. 

Here is what I wrote then:

As the blog’s name suggests, the action of the story is intensifying, becoming more complicated, leading to the final denouement. In this case it is also a metaphor for my life. I am working on the plot of my current chapter, both literally and figuratively. In a figurative sense, at seventy-five, I am creating this late-in-life chapter that combines retirement, contemplation, contentment, and a keen desire for adventure and learning. There is no manual for it, and it takes courage, patience, and chutzpah to pull it off while negotiating with time and nature.

In the literal sense, I am putting in place a mechanism to create a daily writing practice. I have an on-line Dutch language app that tracks the number of consecutive days I take a lesson. I get an e-mail every morning that tells me “You’re on fire! Continue your xxx-day stretch!” I am now at 227 days. This is my first day on The Plot Thickens.

To get me started, I am going to write about a trip my husband and I are taking to the Netherlands in May. I used to write travel logs as a way of staying in touch with the family while on business trips. There was always so much to report, taking a few minutes to write about the day was enjoyable. That should be the same way with the upcoming trip, easing me into a routine that I can transition to the REAL next chapter, the one in the fiction piece I have been researching and ruminating on for way too long. Time to get it out!

So, here goes. The first real post will follow, and thereafter I may automate a daily email to myself, saying that I am on fire and reminding me to continue my x-day streak!

Then life intervened. Cue 2017 and still no daily writing practice. In October of that year I decided it was time to "put up or shut up", as my mom always said; so, with trepidation, I hit the key that signed me up for NaNoWriMo. By the end of the month I had 59,600 words and the draft of a historical fiction novel I can work with.

Since then I have been honing my research. I took another course on Memoir Writing, and have completed a few small creative non-fiction pieces. I even had the temerity to submit two of them to contests. You can see that I am not a toe-in-the-water-first kind of woman.

While reviewing some work I had done in the nineties, when I first started upon this fitful writing journey of mine, I came across the following journal entry:

May 28, 1991

I am hereby embarking on my adventure as a writer. I bought a book today at the Yale Co-op on the craft of writing. One of the points it makes is to review/read current examples of fiction constantly. Sometimes the object will be to look for techniques of introducing characters, other times it will be to study how feelings are explored. The important thing is just to keep reading and to keep the mind open for suggestions and methods.

So, this year is 2018, and now that it is moving again, I really do have to keep this train on the track. The end of the line may not be far away!

Naar Pulaski

August 5, 9:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Last morning in Holland. Willem's childhood friend who now lives in Belgium was having a meeting in Amsterdam later today, so he drove up early to take us to the airport. We wanted to be there by 11, so he met us at the hotel at 9:30. That left us time for a coffee together at the airport before we had to start going through the formalities.

This time the agents questioned my passport, which is still in the name Barksdale. My ticket says Offerman. There wasn't a problem with this in Detroit on the way over, but I had to show the Dutch agent's supervisor my driver's license as proof of identity. Apparently, they could have made me buy a new ticket. She was very nice, though, and suggested that next time I should buy a ticket with the name in the passport. I said I thought I would just get a new passport! 

Boarding was to begin at 11:30 for the 1:00 flight, so I window shopped on my way to the gate. I got there at 12:00 to find a very long line, because security procedures are done right at each individual gate rather than en masse. That answered our question about why they started boarding so early. Willem had already gotten through the first check-point, so rather than just joining him in line, I had to go to the back and start from the beginning. Slow going, but at least there was no further questioning of my passport.

We left right on time, taking off to the NW, and very quickly making it out to the North Sea. From there we headed in the direction of England and Scotland, and then out over the Big Water towards Iceland and the New World.

Amsterdam

Saturday, August 1 - Tuesday, August 4
We left Paris midday, again on the fast train. This time, though, our seats faced the direction of travel. On the way to Paris our seats (they are assigned and the train was full, so we couldn't change) faced opposite the direction of travel, and we got pretty dizzy from watching the scenery go by backwards at the high speed. I was also trying to write, but that didn't work well at all. We opted to keep our eyes closed. It was a little better on the return trip, but we still couldn't write or read.

After arriving at Central Station we took a tram to the hotel, which is less than a block away from the stop. The hotel is in a quiet street in the Museum Quarter, a small hotel in what was probably a wealthy town house at the turn of the last century. They do have a lift, so we don't have to walk up the steep flight of stairs to our second story room. On many occasions I have opted to do that, however, to offset some of the food and wine I have been taking in. In Paris we were on the third floor and in Rotterdam on the seventh. I took the stairs often there, because the elevator was very slow.

Our hotel is just off the Vondel Park, a large green space in the middle of the city, named for the Dutch Shakespeare. After settling into the hotel we took a walk through the park and enjoyed the sights. There was a large gay pride parade going on in the center city, and there were several offshoots of it making merry in the park. We window shopped and finally stopped for soup and wine at a restaurant next to the Koncert Gebouw concert hall.

We limited our intake of Amsterdam as we had of Paris. Our 2 planned activities were to visit the Rijksmuseum, recently reopened after a 10-year renovation; and take a canal tour. We enjoyed the Rembrandts, Vermeers, and Hals in the museum (we stopped with those) and heard a lot of interesting tidbits about Amsterdam on the canal tour. Much of it Willem had already told me as we walked along the canals and through the Leidseplein, with its concentration of restaurants and bars.

On a more sober note, in talking with Willem's cousin, Mas, this afternoon and then with the Lithuanian hotel clerk, we were surprised to learn how worried people are about Russia's next moves. Although this had not come up in previous conversations about Ukraine, increased Russian aggression is apparently a big concern. Mas even said she is glad that we are leaving now.

Paris

Paris
Wednesday, July 30 - Saturday, August 1
Wednesday morning we took the high speed train to Paris. From Rotterdam Central Station to Gare du Nord in Paris, traveling at 180 kph,  took only 2&1/2 hours, even with brief stops in Antwerp and Brussels. All of the transportation is incredibly efficient and departure times have no fudge factor.

Speaking of transportation, the bike still rules in Holland. There are special lanes for bikes on sidewalks as well as in the street, and stiff penalties for ignoring right of way priorities: pedestrian, bike, car. People confidently ride without helmets. Women ride in skirts and heels, and there are various ways of carrying children and groceries or other goods. I have seen them eating an ice cream cone, texting, talking on the phone, and holding an umbrella - all while riding. All ages ride, and it is not unusual to see even the very old pedaling.

The bike is fairly prevalent in Paris as well, although it is trumped there by the scooter. Parisian bike riders also eschew helmets, wear no special clothing, and use the bike as  just another way to get from A to B.

We decided in advance to do Paris "light"- meaning low key, without a lot of running around, We took a "Hop On, Hop Off" bus & boat tour, but didn't go inside any monuments or museums. When we hopped off it was to have coffee or a beer or wine, to eat something, or just to sit in a cafe and watch the action.

When we got off the boat tour near Notre Dame, there were several artists doing charcoal portraits. We decided to have ours done. I'll post a photo of it and you can decide whether or not it looks like us.

Parisians still smoke a lot. It seemed to me that there were many more smokers than in Rotterdam. It was common to see people smoking while walking or riding a bike and to find cigarette butts on the street.

We had a chance to ride train, tram, boat, and metro, and to come in contact with locals as well as tourists, so we felt pretty Paris-ized in spite of the short time there. Willem and I can both get along in French, and that certainly helped; but the people seemed friendlier than I remembered from previous trips. Maybe it was because August is here and many of them will be going on vacation soon. We found out that the woman who staffed the breakfast room and also cleaned the rooms in our hotel was about to leave on a 5-week vacation back to her home in Yugoslavia. 

One other thing we noticed about the locals is how many of them come from former colonies. Africans abound, many of the older ones wearing traditional dress. It makes the street scene very colorful. There are also many Middle Easterners, with women in varying degrees of coveredness; Asians of several stripes; and Roma, unfortunately holding up the stereotype.

Cousins

Tuesday, July 29
Since this was the actual date of Mas' birthday, we had planned in advance to spend it with her and Ma, the 2 favorite cousins. First we had lunch with Ma, then went with her to Mas'. Mas had arranged for us to visit her upstairs neighbor, who has a panoramic view of the city from her wrap-around balcony. We also spent some time looking at old picture albums. I enjoyed seeing baby and childhood photos of Willem and also photos of his parents, sister, and other family members, including Mimi De Jong and Jan van Hurk, who had both been in the Dutch resistance during WW II. Mimi is even pictured in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC because of her work rescuing American pilots shot down over occupied Holland. She was Willem's first cousin.

Delft

Monday, July 28
Our weather luck finally changed and we woke to typical rainy Dutch weather. Since we had both brought rain jackets, we decided to just suck it up and continue with the plan. We took the inter-city train to Delft, just 20 minutes away from Rotterdam. There we visited both the Old and New Churches, saw where all the Orange van Nassau royals are buried, and took a picture of a statue of Willem of Orange above his tomb. He was assassinated and the man who shot him was drawn and quartered! Civil people, these Dutch.

By afternoon the rain had stopped and we had lunch at a cafe in the central square before heading back. That evening we had dinner again with Fred and El, this time at a place that was like an Asian tapas bar.