VIEWS
NATIONAL WRITERS ASSOCIATION LOS ANGELES APRIL 2010
REDUX PART ONE
Cook’s pot of mystery writers
Photos by: (banner, top) LaVonne Taylor; (Alan Cook, top left) Arturo Ruiz; (Edgar Allan Poe, Dover Publishing; (all others) Creative Commons.
drug addict, Sherlock Holmes. In 1894, Doyle killed Holmes off, but had to resurrect him as Holmes was so popular a figure. Alan said that the Holmes books are outsold only by the Bible, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Agatha Christie, and J.K. Rowling. And even to this day, many people think Sherlock Holmes was a real person. Author/Speaker Alan Cook
Armed with several copies of his novels and a pretty decent ability to pronounce French names when they appeared in his talk, Alan Cook outwitted several jammed freeways to show up on time at Mo’s Restaurant on March 20 and regale us with his comprehensive knowledge of mystery writers. Thanks to my tape recorder, I can pass on a few of his words of literary wisdom concerning the popular mystery genre. This is the first installment. Edgar Allan Poe (18091849), according to many, is the “father of the modern mystery” who wrote good stories that age well, such as The Murder in the Rue Morgue, The Edgar Allan Poe Mystery of Marie Roget and the Purloined Letter. Poe’s detective, C. Auguste Dupin said “a bizarre crime is easier to solve than a commonplace one.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) wrote four novels, 54 short stories and countless movies, up to this day, mostly centered around kindhearted Doctor Watson and his sidekick, the eccentric loner, musician-actor and corrupt
English author, G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was a popular early twentieth-century writer whose main character was a detective priest who relied on intuition to solve mysteries and sometimes let criminals go free. Prolific writer, Mary Roberts Rinehart (18761958), wrote hundreds of short stories, plays and novels and is responsible for the now famous phrase, “The butler did it!” Sir John Buchan (1875-1940) wrote around thirty novels including his most famous, The ThirtyNine Steps, which was made into a Hitchcock film in 1935 as well as remakes made in ’59, ’78 and ’08. Thirty-Nine Steps is also currently a Broadway play. Over two billion copies of books by Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1976) are in print, including 66 detective novels. Her play, The Mouse Trap, has been running since Dame Agatha Christie 1952 to this day, in London. Christie’s protagonist, Miss Jane Marple (who lives in St. Mary Mead, knows everything that goes on her little village and does
by Tom Howard
not travel until later in life) was seventy four when Christie first created her. Crime-solving Miss Marple then proceeded to age, novel by novel, for about twenty years after that! Christie’s other character, the elegant Belgian, Hercule Poirot, is famous for saying, “I have the habit of always being right but not boasting about it!” Some of Christie’s stories have been made into famous movies such as Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, Murder at the Vicarage, and The Mirror Crack’d. Alan also discussed California writer, Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) who wrote The Thin Man which resulted in six films; Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) whose character, Perry Mason, became a television mainstay; Mickey Spillane (1918-2006), creator of hard-boiled detective, Mike HamErle Stanley Gardner
mer; Helen MacInnes (1907-1985) who wrote Above Suspicion and many other spy books; and Ian Fleming (1908-1964), who himself had been a spy and wove his experiences into Sir Ian Fleming his James Bond thrillers, which became, as Alan said, “a zillion movies starring Sean Connery and practically anyone else with a British accent.” Author’s Note: In installment two of this Redux, in May Views, I will reveal more of Alan’s talk, where he discusses contemporary mystery writers such as Michael Connelly, J.K. Rowling, and Sue Grafton.
NWALA VP PUBLISHES A NEW BOOK
Joe Panicello writes about Italian historic figure quered Sicily and Naples and were heading for Rome. But in Rome he was stopped by the French who controlled Rome and the Vatican. He re-established himself in the king’s favor and was enlisted to fight against the Austrians in the north. Garibaldi was wounded several times and was captured by the Austrians, but was able to escape.
Garibaldi: A Man of Destiny is based on a true historical account about the love life and military experience of Giuseppe Garibaldi whose famous Red-Shirt Army conquered Sicily, Naples, and other parts of Italy from 18601871. It was his destiny to unite Italy – then composed of nine fiefdoms – under one ruler. Garibaldi was a professional liberator, a man who fought for oppressed people, even in South America.
Because his destiny was always pulling at him, he decided to go back to Italy with his family, in spite of being a wanted man. The people of Italy, however, cheered him for his exploits in South America, which gave them
the hope for freedom. The newly crowned king of Sardinia, King Emmanuel, eventually pardoned him. He later brought home his Red-Shirt army consisting of thousands of exiled Italians from Uruguay to fight against the Austrians. Regardless of his pardon, he rebelled against the command of his king. He and his army con-
Friend of NWALA receives Shakespeare Award The South Bay Conservatory (SBC) and The Torrance Performing Arts Consortium (TPAC) announce the reading of A Tale of a Cat by Carson-based Charles Kray, a nationally respected playwright, at the second annual Shakespeare Awards on Friday, April 16, 2010, at 7:00 p.m., in the Torrance High School Auditorium, in Torrance, California. Kray is receiving The Shakespeare Award in recognition of his writing achievements. A South Bay resident and an outstanding playwright with a Master’s degree in playwriting from UCLA, Mr. Kray worked for Marlon Brando and managed Blackfriars Theater in New York City. Kray was also editor of the Gardena Valley News for many years. The annual Shakespeare Competition is sponsored by SBC and TPAC to encourage and recognize original creative works by poets and
playwrights living in Los Angeles County. This event is open to the public, and tickets are $10 per person. Visit www.torranceperformingarts.com or call 310-373-4149 for more information and tickets.
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Garibaldi’s destiny finally came to closure when King Emmanuel traded lands in Western Italy including the city of Nice, (Garibaldi’s birthplace) to Emperor Napoleon II for the city of Venice in 1871. Garibaldi was against the trade that, in is eyes, meant losing his birthplace to France. He died ten years later.
Prez Abundance and corner surprises Our lunch at Mo’s went well. For those of us who ordered sandwiches, we were pleasantly surprised to have the waiter direct us to a bountiful buffet table out in the main room where our sandwich plates waited to be piled higher with extras. After we feasted, Al Cook reminded us in marvelous detail that there are quite a few mystery, suspense, thriller, and spy novels as well as spin-off films for a rainy day. His talk was so rich, in fact, I had to divide the Redux into two parts. We don’t know yet who will be our speaker for our next meeting on May 15, 2010 (2:00-4:00 p.m. at Mo’s Restaurant, 4301 Riverside Drive, Burbank). Think of it as a surprise! LaVonne and I will be searching this abundant world for that special writer who will be announced and heralded in the upcoming May issue of Views. Call us if you have any leads! Until then, happy writing and enjoy the fertile month of April! — Tom Howard, President, NWALA
Art by: (top, book cover) courtesy of the author, Joe Panicello; (bottom, Shakespeare) Creative Commons, National Portrait Gallery, London.,
As a young man, Garibaldi had been condemned to death by King Albert of Sardinia, but escaped to South America. There he fought for many years against the Imperial Armies of Brazil and Argentina to liberate the small country of Uruguay. It was there he met and fell in love with Anita, even though she was married to an Argentine soldier. Anita’s husband was later killed in action, and her widowhood allowed her to marry Garibaldi in the Church.
The dashing Garibaldi became famous throughout Europe and the ladies worshiped him. After his wife, Anita, died he became involved with many noblewomen, especially a German baroness. He also became very popular in England where he had affairs with royal ladies and almost married one.
VIEWS SHOWCASE Lost on the mountaintop It was about our fourth or fifth day in California in January 1954, and I knew that I needed to get down to the business of finding a job. The six of us – Jokki, John, Tim, Nicole, baby Matt, and myself – were just having too much fun sightseeing. Baby Matt, who was only two months old, went everywhere with us. We had been to the beach and down to San Diego by the coast road (no freeway then), and we were completely enjoying the Southern California climate, a relief from our home on the lake outside Minneapolis, where it was 28 degrees below zero the day we left. The ice on our car windows didn’t melt until we were halfway across Nebraska.
Photos by: (top left, Don Peyer) LaVonne Taylor; (top right, watch) Dalvey FHW.
Adventure should have been my middle name, because I was always searching it out. I’d found renters for our house and left a good job in Minneapolis to set out with my wife and four small children, only a few hundred dollars in my pocket and without the promise of a job when we arrived here. We moved into a cute little house in Monrovia below Mount Wilson. The mountains fascinated us and, because the day was balmy, at least to Minnesotans, we decided on a trip. I don’t remember the road we took, but it ascended to a spot somewhere below Mount Baldy. We arrived at a level area where a number of cars had parked and we stopped. There were mountains all around us and the rocky terrain was inviting, so Johnny, age seven, and I set out to do a little exploring among the large boulders. We stuck together and after awhile started back toward the car. We came to a boulder as big as a house and I went to the right and he went to the left. Past the boulder I paused and waited for him to show up. I circled the boulder and called to him, but he had disappeared.
by Don Peyer
I searched the area and called his name as loud as I could. I couldn’t believe what had happened. Maybe he went back to the car, I thought. The car was in sight but he wasn’t there. Being a flat-lander, I didn’t realize how easy it is to get turned around and become lost in mountainous areas. Rangers tell me it happens far too often. Other hikers nearby seeing our dilemma were also concerned, and we were debating what to do – report it to authorities or start a search party ourselves. We devised a plan for Jokki to stay at the car with the other kids while the rest of us hiked back into the area to see if we could find him. It was late afternoon and darkness was already falling. In January, the temperatures drop very low at night in the mountains, as do the chances of survival. Now, decades later, I realize that this would have been a headline in the morning paper and wouldn’t have reflected well on us as parents. As we started back up the hill, a group of people were approaching. It turns out they were mountain climbers returning from their trek and with them was a young boy they had found lost and crying. The boy was our son. Seven-year-old John had described our car, a ’46 Chrysler Royal, which the rescuers said surprised them. But this didn’t surprise Jokki and me at all because our little guy was car crazy like many boys, and he had known the name of every car we met on the road from the time he was three or four years old. When he grew up, he acquired his own auto repair business and now builds and drives race cars with his grown son. The near loss of our first-born son was a powerful lesson. It doesn’t take long to get turned around and lost in mountainous terrain. We were thankful then and still are that this lesson had a happy ending for us.
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A volunteer leader’s code
by Walter Meares
The devil is in the little details and they do take more leadership time than you might imagine. Volunteers are not assets to be managed. They are partners in your efforts. Volunteers offer the most precious thing they own – time. It isn’t bankable for a rainy day. Today’s volunteer time is spent. If she’s happy and satisfied with the day’s achievements you’ve done the first half of your job. The other half is to be sure an attractive challenge draws her back again tomorrow.
Care and leading of volunteers: 1. You lead volunteers. 2. You manage programs. 3. You do not waste the precious gift of a volunteer’s time. 4. You do not use volunteers to replace staff to cut expenses. 5. You recognize volunteers as a valued asset. 6. You manage programs so each volunteer can feel she exercised initiative and carried out a plan of her invention to the plaudits of her peers led by you. 7. You provide professional trainers when training is needed. 8. You know your volunteer and her other commitments. 9. You mutually understand and agree to the tasks planned to be undertaken by the volunteer. 10. You develop a conscious understanding of your mutual strengths and areas where each may need help.
Can anybody spare a typewriter? Before I actually moved to New York City, in the fall of 1945, I had been going down there weekends and staying with my friend, Virginia Sutherbee, whose father taught at the Buckley School, (where the Rockefellers and others went.) I don’t know what her father taught, but I knew Virginia had a typewriter there. When I went to Seventeen Magazine for my job interview as an advice columnist, they gave me three letters to the editor and four pieces of blank stationery with “Seventeen” printed at the top, and instructed me to bring them in the next morning with the advice answers, typed. They were complicated but I didn’t worry, because I had just spent the entire past year teaching and counseling teenagers.
was about 6:00 p.m., their dinner time. I didn’t know beans about this church except that I liked it.) A woman came to the door and I said, “I’m from out of town. I’m in real desperate straits and I need to speak to the priest.” This woman quietly let me in, put me in a small waiting room. Then this priest came in. He looked at me, went out and then came back in. He told me his name was Monsignor Rigney and that he had taught up at a women’s college called Mt. St. Vincent’s. I looked across at him. With a direct gaze I told him my problem and he was so relieved. He heaved a big sigh
She had previously rented the apartment to somebody who went to summer school at Columbia Teacher’s College. It turned out that her typewriter was locked in a closet that night.
Her place was on the border of Columbia University. (Horace Mann School was right across the street.) The next building over was the Corpus Christi Church. I walked past that and went where the stores were, over on Amsterdam Avenue, going from one to the other but they were all closed. Before I knew it, I was in all-Black Harlem. So I turned back, starting to get a bit worried, saying to myself, “Oh, My God! What am I going to do?” I had been going to the church next door to Virginia’s, a beautiful little church designed by Christopher Wren with a rectory on the side. I walked up and rang the bell to the rectory. (It
I went over to the convent. I knew a lot of nuns, but I didn’t know any that came down in an elevator and had a brother who gave them a typewriter. I remember that this sister came down and showed me her classroom that featured on the walls the five poets of New England like Emerson and Longfellow. She loaned me the typewriter and also got me a side job with her brother’s magazine. (Later, in one hour, I researched a cartoon about Valentine’s Day and made some extra money.) I carried the typewriter “home,” and took these four pieces of paper and these three letters to the editor of Seventeen Magazine from troubled girls (and I was allowed only one mistake.) I had never taken a typing course, but I did all right on the answers and everything. The editorial staff had this outline for me, “Dear So and so: We are so pleased that you wanted to write to us at Seventeen,” and so on. They were signed by the editor, Helen Valentine.
I thought, “I’ll be able to handle this,” and went back to Virginia’s place.
I thought, “This is no problem.” I was used to Harvard Square in Cambridge where they had typewriters for rent every fourth store. (They did in the old days, anyway. My grandmother, uncles and aunts had tons of typewriters around.) So I started walking out of Virginia’s place on 437 West 121st Street, and I turned left.
he wanted to have the best Catholic School there rather than in the Catholic Diocese of New York City that had 60 in the class. (Horace Mann had 22.)
and smiled. I guess he thought I was going to have a baby right there on the rug. The Monsignor and I talked some more and got to be great old friends. He said, “It’s great to meet a young woman like you coming from out of town who is an orphan and knows how to handle herself. These girls from Mt. St. Vincent’s are not interested in careers and all they want to do is get married.” He added, “I don’t have a typewriter but this nun over in the convent, upstairs on the second floor, she has a new typewriter that her brother just sent her.” The nuns were the Dominicans of Siscanaba, Wisconsin. The priest, Raymond Rigney, had brought the Wisconsin Dominican nuns to New York because Horace Mann School was a preparatory school of great renown, (across the street from Columbia Teacher’s College) and
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The next morning I brought in my application and my letters. They had this tremendous pile of letters to the magazine from girls all over the country, the world. Of all the people they interviewed for a job, they got some good answers, so they got some of their letters to the editor answered by the job applicants. The only problem with my effort was that my typing wasn’t that hot. The woman who was the secretary to Helen Valentine was a Catholic and was also the head of the Catholic Poetry Association. She advised me to just go and take a typing course. I couldn’t afford to do that, or I didn’t think I could (which was stupid). Anyhow, I didn’t get the job right away, but I had a nice interview with her. The foregoing is an excerpt from Chapter 11, “New York City, Here I Come,” from Mrs. Foley’s Flowers and Other Autobiographical Tales of Growing Up IrishCatholic in New England, as told by Trudy Mulcahy Howard to Thomas Acquinas Howard.
Photos by: (bottom, typewriters) clkr.com; (center, Trudy Howard) Leonard F. Howard; (top, Tom Howard) Arturo Ruiz
by Trudy Mulcahy Howard
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Members, please correct yo ur new direct ory I received my di rectory in the m ail-thank you! In lo oking it over I noticed that my email address w as listed incorrectly . It should read EditWriteInk@q. com (the “Ink” was left off). Thank you in ad vance for makin g this correction in the directory and notifying the othe r members. Best wishes, Kellee Henderson
Don Peyer is recovering well ... ... and hopes to be at the next meeting. He says, “I’m so sorry to have missed the March 20 meeting. The history of the mystery must have been a real treat. I have all of Poe’s and Holmes’ stories in my library and I love mysteries.” I want to thank you for the tribute on page 6 of March Views. The paper gets better and better. I am including my last column in the Daily Breeze, which you may or find suitable for printing. Again, thanks for showcasing my poetry in Views. Sincerely, Don Peyer Editor’s note: We did enjoy Don’s story and reprinted it on page 3.