Women in Literature and in Life -- Modesty and Misogyny

Three years ago, I read Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, the story that weaves bold knights and chivalry with Richard the Lion-Hearted from history and known characters from the Robin Hood tales. It had only been sitting on my shelf for 16 years waiting for me to get to it. I know it was sitting on my shelf for 16 years, because it's encased in a fragrant leather book cover I brought back from a trip to Riga, Latvia in 1994. When I brought it home, I searched for the appropriate paperback to put in it and chose Ivanhoe; and there it sat in its place of honor neglected until recently.

There are many themes and thoughts I could expand on from Ivanhoe, such as the very unchristian way that the Jewish people were treated during this period of the Crusades. I do want to talk about a Jewish character, Rebecca of York, not as a Jewish woman, but simply as a woman.

As the story goes, she is sexually harrassed and kidnapped by the Knight Templar Brian De Bois Guilbert, a man who is sworn by his order to a chaste life. Rebecca must have feared for her chastity, because, in one of the book's dramatic moments, she threatens to throw herself from a parapet of the castle to save herself from him.

When De Bois Guilbert's crime is discovered by a superior of the Templars, it is explained away as the result of the Jewish woman's witchcraft and evil spells. That is the only thing that can explain this man's bad behavior. Rebecca is put to trial and sentenced to death at the stake for her supposed witchcraft. Of course, she is rescued by Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe who acts as her champion and wins her life back for her in a jousting match.

In the novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Archdeacon Claude Frollo parallels De Bois Guilbert in some respects. He falls in "lust" with the gypsy woman Esmerelda. Frollo's feelings cause him to kill his romantic rival, the soldier Phoebus whom Esmerelda loves, and have Esmerelda arrested for the crime. Later, he visits Esmerelda in prison, after she has endured torture, explains to her his feelings for her, saying, "Each night, on examining myself, I found that I was more helpless, more spellbound, more bewitched, more undone."

Frollo states:

"I learned who thou wert; Egyptian, Bohemian, gintara, zingara. How could I no longer doubt that there was witchcraft in the case? I hoped that the law would break the charm. A sorceress had bewitched Bruno D'Ast: he caused her to be burned and was cured. I knew him. I decided to try the same remedy."

Just as Rebecca had Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe as her champion, Esmerelda has the hunchback Quasimodo. He swings down on the ropes from the bell towers to rescue her from the gallows and takes her into the church for sanctuary.

Frollo makes several attempts to win Esmerelda's affection but is rejected each time. In the end, Esmerelda dies at the gallows, and Frollo dies at the hands of Quasimodo. The story of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is over all a tragic one. All of its major characters die in some tragic way.

Frollo, like De Bois Guilbert, could not take responsibility for his own actions. If he had feelings he shouldn't have for Esmerelda, it must be that he was bewitched. A psychologist might say that both De Bois Guilbert and Frollo used psychological projection. Unable to accept failure for their own sins, it was necessary to blame another.

Notice that it is two literary men, Sir Walter Scott and Victor Hugo, that write with such sensitivity about these issues concerning women.

Sir Walter Scott

Victor Hugo

Sadly, these examples in fiction make me think of real situations with real women. Another book I have read somewhat recently is the non-fiction Reading Lolita in Tehran, written by Azar Nafisi, a female literature professor, who gives a glimpse into what life is like for Muslim women in Iran.

There is one example in the book I remember where some Muslim girls find themselves in a similar position as Rebecca or Esmerelda. In one chapter, Nafisi describes comforting her daughter Negar who came home from school crying. Negar tells her mother her story.

"That day in the middle of her last class -- science -- the principal and morality teacher had barged in and told the girls to put their hands on their desks. The entire class had been escorted out of the classroom, without any explanation, their schoolbags searched for weapons and contraband: tapes, novels, friendship bracelets. Their bodies were searched, their nails inspected. One student, a girl who had returned from the United States the previous year with her family, was taken to the principal's office: her nails were too long. There, the principal herself had cut the girl's nails, so close she had drawn blood. Negar had seen her classmate after they were dismissed, in the school yard, waiting to go home, nursing the guilty finger. The morality teacher stood beside her, discouraging other students from approaching. For Negar, the fact that she couldn't even go near and console her friend was as bad as the whole trauma of the search. She kept saying, Mom, she doesn't know about our rules and regulations; you know, she just came back from America -- how do you think she feels when they force us to trample on the American flag and shout, Death to America? I hate myself, I hate myself, she repeated as I rocked her back and forth and wiped the mixture of sweat and tears from her soft skin.

This, of course, diverted the whole class [girls meeting in Nafisi's home.] Everyone tried to distract Negar by joking and telling stories of their own, how once Nasserin had been sent to the disciplinary committee to have her eyelashes checked. Her lashes were long, and she was suspected of using mascara. That's nothing, said Manna, next to what happened to my sister's friends at Amir Kabir Polytechnic University. During lunch, three of the girls were in the yard eating apples. They were reprimanded by the guards: they were eating their apples too seductively!"

The picture below is from the graphic novel Persepolis, an autobiography of Marjane Satrapi, depicting her life in Iran during and after the Islamic revolution.

An incredible burden is placed on Muslim women in some nations to guard their own modesty, to what would be deemed in most other cultures as ridiculous extremes. As with Brian de Bois Guilbert or Claude Frollo, if a Muslim man has a lustful attraction to a woman who is not his wife, the woman is blamed. Perhaps, she showed a little ankle or made direct eye contact. Maybe, she bit an apple seductively! A woman might even be blamed in her own rape, and thus victimized twice. Certainly, it is mysogynistic to put the full burden of purity on the woman, even to the extreme of defying all reason.

I confess I don't know how to bite an apple seductively. Perhaps, there are some people who might know how to make an attempt at it. But since what might be perceived as seductive is subjective, my thought is that these girls were merely eating apples with no thought of flirting.

I think I can relate to those apple-eating girls in a scenario from my own life. Once, I was with a friend shopping at a drug store in New York City.

The temperature was stifling hot inside the store, and my friend and I both found cold drinks to purchase which we carried with us around the store. My hair was quite long at the time, hanging halfway down my back. At one point, I lifted my hair and put the cold bottle I was carrying on the nape of my neck. Shortly after that, a man, who was a complete stranger to me, said something to me with a creepy leer on his face. I did not hear what he said. I only know that he made me uncomfortable, and I quickened my pace to hurry past him. It wasn't until months, maybe even years later, that I considered the thought that, perhaps, in this man's mind, my cold bottle to the neck was some sort of attention-getting flirtatious gesture, as I have since seen women on TV do a similar trick with a cold can or ice cube to some part of the body. The creepy leering man was quite mistaken if that's what he thought. My neck was hot, and that's all.

In the U.S. and Canada, rape shield laws have been put in place to prohibit cross-examination of the accuser(alleged victim)in certain areas, such as what she was wearing at the time of the incident. Of course, there have been cases where women have falsely accused men, such as in the 2006 case against three members of the Duke lacrosse team.

So it is hoped, that the truth would come out during a fair trial. Of course, it should be determined if the accusation rings true or not. However, in a case where there is force, not consent, I don't think it is really that consequential what the woman was wearing. Some choices of clothing may show poor judgment on the woman's part, but her state of dress or undress doesn't give license to the man to lose control of his behavior.

Modesty, pornography and related topics have often been a discussion point in my workplace, so I have given it much thought. Where does the burden lie in cases of sexual sin and sexual crime? Does the burden lie with women to guard their own modesty or does the burden lie with men to guard their own minds? I have heard arguments for either side, sometimes with an extreme lean towards one side or another, but I think the answer is more straight down the middle, a little bit of both.

As a Christian, I believe that all mankind descended from Adam and Eve. When sin came into the world with Adam and Eve, so did clothing. Adam and Eve first made clothing for themselves from fig leaves, and then God Himself made clothing for them from an animal's skin. If sin had not come into the world with Adam and Eve, I think it is reasonable to assume from the Bible that people would have continued to live in the Garden of Eden, as strange as it seems, in some sort of nudist colony type civilization. If everyone could be trusted to be pure-minded, nudity would not be an issue.

Nudity itself does not equal lust or necessarily produce lust. People of certain professions -- doctors, surgeons, medical examiners, people in the funeral business -- look at naked bodies repeatedly. We certainly hope that these professional people look at the body with a pure mind, in a professional way, and not a lustful way. Some people I know, who are not coming from a Christian worldview as I am, in debating with me, have taken this point to the extreme, that if we, as a culture, were less prudish about the body, if we were more lax about modesty and more lax about pornography, sexual crime in this country would actually decrease rather than increase. I think the point that my debaters attempted to make was that removing the mystery of the naked human body would remove the unhealthy obsession with it.

If this is the case and that point is valid, then it is only reasonable that cultures where people have traditionally worn less clothing should have less sexual violence.

In doing some research on this subject, I read Chapter 7 of "The Origins of War in Child Abuse," 2010, by Lloyd DeMause. What I found is far too disturbing to share in detail -- Feel free to look it up yourself. The book is online -- but the author made a study of this aspect of life in Papua New Guinea, Australian aboriginal culture and African tribal cultures. His study would certainly seem to suggest otherwise. In fact, some child abuse seems to be encouraged by the fact that some families in Papua New Guinea would sleep close together in the nude. This includes the abuse of boys and not just girls or women.

Clearly, removing the mystery of the human body does not lessen lust or sexual crime. It is true that, to the pure-minded, nudity is not necessarily pornographic. Titus 1:15, "To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure." At the same time, we are a fallen, sinful people, and we need the fig leaves. It is not wise to live as nudists or to wear provocative clothing. The mind can not be trusted to be pure, and we can not trust the minds of others to be pure. This makes modesty a necessity.

But how modest is modest? How much covering do we need? I Timothy 2:9 in Scripture says, "In like manner also, that the women should adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation..." But how do you define what modest apparel is?

Should women wear burkhas, smothering garments that impair both vision and movement?

Should we go back to wearing cumbersome Victorian swimsuits on the beach?

These measures are a bit extreme (certainly in the case of the burkha) but I think it's clear from the modern culture what is considered to be sexually provocative. Otherwise, a prostitute would not know how to dress. To be modest, a woman should not dress like a prostitute. She should not draw too much attention, as in showing cleavage, to the parts of the body that are eroticized.

Though she's far removed from being a theological or moral expert, I like this quote by fashion designer Edith Head.

In closing, yes, a woman should guard her own modesty, but, that said, a man should also guard his mind. "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." Proverbs 4:23

Women's Beauty, Photoshop and the Pursuit of an Ideal

Here is Keira Knightly in a poster for the movie "King Arthur" before and after Photoshopping. In the Photoshopped poster, her waist shrunk and her bust grew. According to an article by Dana Macario on MSNBC News online, "Concerned that the perfect images of celebrities we see every day are affecting kids' self-esteem, the Brits are fighting back. As part of a Body Confidence campaign, the government is urging parents to teach their kids about altered images." The British government is apparently providing youth with downloadable pamphlets showing images altered with Photoshop, concerned these ideal images would be damaging to self esteem and put girls under extraordinary pressure to measure up.

There are some videos I've seen put out by Dove, the soap company, that show similar transformations of models going through the entire process of beauty, make-up, photos and then all of the Photoshop retouching to the photos. They are astonishing to watch. This model, prior to this rigorous routine, actually seems to look much more like an every day "ordinary" woman.



I'm not suggesting women "let themselves go." I'm all in favor of women doing all they can within reasonable means to look their personal best which may include proper diet, exercise, makeup, choosing clothes that are flattering and so forth. Clearly though, some women, and young teen girls especially, go through turmoil in their pursuit of perfection and develop self-harmful behaviors like anorexia and bulimia. I also believe that plastic surgery, except for cases such as in correcting a birth defect or damage from an accident, is also going to harmful extremes in the pursuit of beauty.

Women have been distorting and crippling their bodies throughout history in the pursuit of a beauty considered ideal by the culture of the time. There was the practice of foot binding that took place in China up until the early 20th century. It stunted foot growth and caused women to hobble. I apologize for this painful photo below.

Some would say today's high heeled shoes and pointy toed shoes for women are also potentially damaging to the feet.

From Stylite.com on January 25 of this year, "In results published last week in 'The Journal of Applied Physiology,' the scientists found that heel wearers moved with shorter, more forceful strides than the control group, their feet perpetually in a flexed, toes-pointed position. This movement pattern continued even when the women kicked off their heels and walked barefoot. As a result, the fibers in their calf muscles had shortened and they put much greater mechanical strain on their calf muscles than the control group did." This information, by the way, has not prevented me from wearing heels, but neither do I wear them every day and for every occasion.

In Victorian times, bustles and corsets were used to enhance and create an unnatural silhouette. Look at this "Gibson girl" with her corseted waist. Does this not look painful? No wonder the women in Victorian novels are prone to fainting.

Much of what we see in Hollywood today is "fake" or artificially enhanced beauty, as so many celebrity women, the ones that are considered "bombshells," received their unnatural proportions through surgical enhancement. As harmful as this is to young girls, I think it may also be just as harmful to men. Even men who choose to avoid pornography -- it's easy enough to stumble across it accidentally on the Internet -- could be more subtly influenced by the media in unrealistic expectations of female beauty.

"Leonardo" Notebooks

I was inspired recently to start a project with a friend, to share a Leonardo-style notebook. Here is my first entry from that shared notebook.

Today, I hatched a crazy idea that will help us both develop our creativity and our writing as well as help us bond.

I've been reading a book called "How to Think Like Leonardo DaVinci" by Michael J. Gelb. DaVinci is a fascinating person to me. He was not only a great artist but a great inventor and a talented genius in all sorts of areas, the reason why, today, a multi-talented person is called a "Renaissance man."

 The concept behind the book I'm reading is not that anybody can learn to be a genius on DaVinci's level but that everybody can learn from DaVinci's approach to learning and creativity. The book makes suggestions for exercises and one of those suggestions is to keep a notebook like DaVinci. You may have seen replicas of his drawings, sketches for his inventions and writings

This reminds me of the time when I read "The Journals of Rachel Scott" years ago. Rachel Scott was one of the teen girls who was killed in the Columbine shooting. Like Cassie Bernall, Rachel Scott was a devout Christian, and her journals illustrate her faith. The published journals we direct replicas of the original, showing both her handwriting and all the doodles and sketches with which she illustrated them. At the time, I also learned that Rachel Scott shared journals with several of her friends. She'd make an entry, exchange the journal with a friend who would write her piece and back and forth. This actually inspired me when I wrote about two female friends in my novel, "And the Violin Cried." The two friends share a journal that is a combination of a journal, sketchbook and scrapbook.

The back cover of one of Rachel Scott's last journals



My youth novel


So, my suggestion is that we combine these ideas and share a Leonardo notebook, Rachel Scott style! We can exchange the notebook every time we see each other and make at least a small entry each day we have it in our keeping.

Like Leonardo's notebook, the notebook should have both textual and visual elements.

Ideas for textual elements: a letter to one another, random thoughts, a poem, a story idea or the beginnings of one, a journal entry about happenings in the day, quotes from a song, Scripture or anything inspirational, slice-of-life writing (Look up Wikipedia article on slice-of-life writing or the lyrics to "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega, an example of slice-of-life writing) or basically anything.

Ideas for visual elements: sketches and doodles (They don't have to super artistic,) a comic strip, a candy wrapper, ticket stubs, a short article clipping, pictures cut from catalogs or magazines...endless possibilities.

First Chapter of Contemporary Fiction

Here is the first chapter of a work in progress, a yet un-named novel. The working title for the novel is "Desert Flowers," although it takes place far from a desert setting. The title was taken from a line of poetry composed by the main character who compares herself to a desert flower. I am rethinking that title, since it seems misleading, indicating either a romance or a prairie story, and it is neither. I'd be interested to know if Linda Bradshaw seems like a character worth reading about...

Chapter One

Mystery

Linda Bradshaw stood in front of the microphone and swallowed hard. Initially, there was always a little stage fright but that dissipated. As she sang, she always felt as if she took on a different persona like an actress in a movie, and somehow this helped with the nerves.

First, the Celtic drum started from the drum machine, building in volume. Linda rocked on her feet from heel to toe. Then the synthesizer with a spacey chime setting started in and next the electric violin and driving electric guitars, building layer upon layer of sound.

Linda began to sing, her voice powerful and clear in tone, “You’re everywhere, and you’re nowhere, the invisible guest…” She flung her arms out to the sides, twisting from the waist like a washing machine, resting her voice as the guitars broke in. As she turned from side to side, she was aware of the triangle she formed with the Jones brothers, Mike and Jake, each one swaying both body and guitar. She continued to sing, and with computer accompaniment, her own voice harmonized, singing a descant over the more alto range melody she sang. It was the magic of technology and the result of her cooperation with Mike, using some sound software in an elective class at the high school.

“An unwanted intruder, impossible conundrum, your spirit won’t rest …” The computer played her voice layering over her live one, overlapping as in a round with some special echoey effects. She rested from singing and just the instruments played. The synthesizer switched to a voice setting, sounding like an alien choir from outer space. Linda could envision Kevin Van Dyne behind her, playing as she’d seen him do hundreds of times, his eyes closed, his fingers still finding the right keys.

Linda stretched her arms out to the side. With her eyes, she traced the outline of her right arm to the fingertips just as Nicole Howard lifted her electric violin, its hourglass shape just a framework in a stunning metallic blue. She placed the instrument to her chin and played hauntingly and with building passion and volume. Linda moved in motion to the music, rolling her shoulders and moving her arms in almost swim-like strokes. Her sleeves dangled and swished. They were tight at the elbow and flared in rows of ruffles to the wrist.

She rotated to the right just as Mike, who had set down his guitar, started with the theramin, manipulating radio waves with the motion of his hand. It was the instrument that made the spooky noise in the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” As she spun completely around, she caught a brief glimpse of the Power Point projections on the wall, Kat Anderson’s contribution, artsy digital photos manipulated in Photoshop. An image of a strange long hallway flickered by, then a flash of an empty room and then Kat herself, standing in a room, partially transparent, a wall painting and a sofa showing behind and through her.

Linda began to sing again, “The air is thick with you, and yet you are not there. A hallucination, a pervading atmosphere…” A crack of thunder sounded from the computer. And then her words and song returned to the beginning, “You’re everywhere, and you’re nowhere, an invisible guest…” She spun as she sang, moving her arms from side to side, strokes in the air that passed her face. “And I do not know if I want you to come or go…” The theramin sounded again its peculiar and wavery tones.

“But this much I do know, you have the un-Midas touch, and in your wake, everything disintegrates to rust….” There was a sound clip of shattered glass and a moment later, all the instruments came to a dissonant finale.

There was quiet and silence for a moment or two followed by applause. “Thank you,” said Linda. “We hope to come back to the Quite a Latte coffee shop in future dates. We’re working on putting a CD together so you can look out for that. Check out our website at www.barbaricyawps.com.”

After another burst of applause, the audience turned their attention to their coffees and each other, and in some cases, their laptops. Linda unplugged her microphone, wrapping the cord around it, and began to help the band tear down the equipment.

When she first went out to mingle, it was Kat she noticed first. She was straddling her chair backwards, her legs sprawling out. She had her head tilted to one side, sending her dark, streaked and color-treated hair flowing over one shoulder. Her left ear was exposed showing off a row of silver loops that trailed from her ear lobe to the crown of her ear. “Great show, Lin. I don’t know how you do it. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. I try to sing along with the radio, and people tell me I’m just singing the same note over and over again,” she said. Kat’s voice came out in a husky laugh.

Linda was temporarily reminded of her sister. Kat was feminine in her own way but had a bit of the tomboy about her.

“Your photos are great though, Kat. Thank you for that. They’re really great. I bet you could sell them. You should talk to the manager here. I bet he’d let you display some in frames, and you could see if you get any bites.”

Kat swiped her hand through her hair. “Really? I don’t know, but thanks.” Kat sipped a coffee drink through a straw, something topped with whipped cream and syrup. “These things are great. I don’t remember what it is, a caramel mocha latte something-or-other. Whoever invented making a drink from a coffee bean was some kind of genius.” She motioned to a chair across the table. “Sit down.”

Lin sat, and Kat turned herself around on her chair.

“I love your skirt,” Kat said. “Where’d you find that?”

Linda looked down over her lap, a short denim skirt painted all over with colorful concentric circles. Her two stick figure legs in black pin-striped tights poked out from the skirt, and the whole ensemble was topped off with an incongruous pair of tweed knee-high Converse boots. They looked very much like the Converse sneaker that just happened to lace all the way up to the knee. “I made it.”

“Get out! No, you didn’t. The girl who can do everything…”

“Yeah. I took a pair of jeans, my sister’s actually, cut them, and just sewed them into a skirt. Then I painted it.”

“You are so talented. Could you make one for me?”

“If you have a pair of jeans, you can give me, sure. But I wouldn’t do the same design. I never make the same design twice.”

“I have jeans I can give you, and you can surprise me with the design. I trust you. How much would you charge?”

“Twenty?” This wasn’t the first time Linda had come across this situation, but she never knew how much to charge.

“Only twenty? How about forty?”

“If you insist.” Linda smiled briefly. A second of awkward silence followed, and Linda looked at her lap then at the table, studying the intricacies of the infinitely repeating fractal design on the table top.

“You write the songs, don’t you?” Kat asked.

“Yes. Sometimes, Mike helps. He’ll add things and expand on it.”

“But you write the words?”

“Yeah.” Linda’s voice came out in a mere breath. She stared out across the coffee shop at the customers leaving and walking out to their cars parked on the street, at the traffic going by.

“Where do you get your ideas?”

“I’m not sure. They just come to me.”

“I liked the last one.”

“Thanks.” Linda folded her hands below the table, flexing her fingers against one another, making the knuckles turn white.

“I keep thinking about it ever since you put me to work on the photos. ‘You’re everywhere, and you’re nowhere…’ It’s so mysterious and spooky. I keep trying to guess your meaning.” Kat’s hazel eyes seemed to look off into the distance then at the light fixture above them.

Linda swiped her fingers through her bangs, angled bangs that hung over her eyes. Her landlady called it her sheepdog look.

“OMG!” Kat set her plastic cup down hard on the table. Her eyes grew wide for a moment and then softened in a sympathetic look. “You lost someone. Someone died?” Her eyebrows rose quizzically.

A cold sensation crept down the back of Linda’s neck, but she willed her face to remain expressionless. “No.” Kat wasn’t right, but she wasn’t so far off from the truth either. Linda picked up her purse, one made from recycled 45 rpm records. She pulled it onto her lap and began to fish through it. “How much for one of those latte things?”

“I’m sorry, Lin.”

“No need to be sorry. You said it yourself. It’s mysterious. It’s intended to be mysterious.” Items passed absent-mindedly through Linda’s hands: her folder of coupons, her house key, a couple of pens and a notebook. She didn’t have the money for a latte. She had the money technically, but though she craved one, it would be a three or four dollar luxury and a waste she’d regret later. She dropped the purse to the side, her face feeling hot and prickly.

“You want me to treat?” Kat asked. “I’ve got some cash. What do you want?”

Linda shook her head. “Nah, I changed my mind. What are you doing in photography class this week?”

“Old black and white photos that we’re scanning and colorizing in Photoshop. I have this photo of my great grandmother in this 1920’s style bathing suit, the kind with little knickers that go down to the knee. It’s hysterical. I’m going to do something with that.” Kat twirled a hank of hair around her finger. “Are you sure you don’t want a coffee?”

Mike walked over then, and Linda breathed a sigh of relief. “Kevin’s inviting us all to his house,” he said.

Linda picked up her bag and stood to her feet.

“Cool. Let’s go then,” said Kat.

“We just need to pack the gear in the van,” said Mike, gesturing with two thumbs towards the door.

Linda headed towards the stage corner of the coffee house and picked up two mic stands and microphones. Turning her head, she looked over to where she’d been sitting. In spite of his own instructions, Mike stood there talking with Kat where she had just a moment or two earlier. She was just glad to be free of the burden of conversation. She carried her load out to the sidewalk where Kevin’s old van awaited.

Outside in the chill fall night air, Kevin jingled the van keys in his hand, his red-blond hair blowing in the night breeze and streaming past his shoulder. “Well, my parents will be out all night at one of their functions…” He emphasized the last word with sarcasm. “And I’ve got booze. So, pile in and let’s go.”

Kat hugged her denim jacket closer around her. “I’m not in the band, but I’ll be your groupie. Can I come?”

Kevin gestured with his hands wide. “You did all that great photo work, and you operated Power Point. You practically are in the band. Come on.”

“Ooh, coffee and booze all in one night. Can you have coffee with booze?”

“Yes, yes, you can,” said Kevin. “Coffee with Kahlua, coffee with Irish cream, coffee with crème de menthe…”

Linda stood aside as Kat, Mike, Jake, Kevin and Nicole piled into the van. She shivered. She’d forgotten a jacket. She hadn’t exactly forgotten. Her jacket was sitting by her sewing machine at home waiting to be made decent again.

Mike poked his head out at Linda. “Come on, Lin. Get in.”

“I can’t….”

“Yes, you can.”

“No, I can’t. I have to study for my French test…”

“It’s Friday night. Who studies for a French test on Friday night?”

“And I have a paper on King Henry VIII.”

“Aw, come on, Lin. Can’t you do it tomorrow and procrastinate like any normal person?”

“I’m sorry. I’ll come to Kev’s house another time.” Linda stood on the sidewalk, hugging her arms for warmth.

“Well? What are you doing?” Mike asked.

“Going home. I’ll see you Monday, okay?”

“Can’t you at least let us drop you off at the house?”

“It’s okay. I was going to walk. I like walking.”

“You’re being weird, Lin,” said Mike as he unfastened his seat belt and climbed out of the van. Once his feet hit the sidewalk, he turned and poked his head in at Kevin. “I’ll see you a little later, Kev. Let me walk Lin home. All right. See ya.” And with that, he swung the van door closed.

“Why do you have to be weird? You have friends, and you push them away,” Mike told Linda.

“Sorry. It’s nothing personal really.” Lin shrugged her shoulders, but this time she couldn’t stop the shivers that ran down her body.

“You prefer to walk, but you’re freezing to death.” Mike removed his black leather jacket and placed it over her shoulders.

Lin slipped her arms through the sleeves and pulled the coat around her. “Thanks Mike.”

“You’re not supposed to let a girl walk home by herself at this time of night.”

Linda was surprised at his idea of chivalry, but then again, here was a guy who was absorbed with King Arthur and medieval fantasy games. “You don’t have to do that. I can take care of myself. I’m a big girl. I’m not afraid.”

“And there you go again.” Mike swung his arm towards her in gesture.

The overhead light above the Quite a Latte coffee house shone down on Mike’s hair, illuminating his short bleached and two-toned spikes. Linda was tempted to reach up and touch it to see if they felt like porcupine quills. She refrained. “Sorry. You can walk with me.” She turned to the right and started walking along the sidewalk, Mike walking beside her.

“Don’t you have any explanation?”

“Explanation?”

“Aside from your French test?”

“Yeah. I have an explanation. I don’t drink.”
“You don’t drink. Okay, you don’t drink. I can respect that. You wouldn’t have to get totally smashed just to be with us. You could be the designated…. Nah, I guess that wouldn’t work… Look what we’re doing. Then again, you could just carry us home in your arms.”
“That’s just pathetic.” Still, Linda smiled at that, catching the spirit of his joke and the ridiculousness of it all. The idea of walking across town, lugging his heavy limp body across her back was both pathetic and ridiculous.

Exotic and sometimes enticing smells piped out of the row of restaurants they passed: Caribbean jerk, Thai and now Greek. Linda looked through the restaurant window, staring at a group of Grecian urns arranged beneath a tasseled and white lacy curtain.

It was Mike who started to speak again. “Don’t you know alcohol inspired all the great ones? Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, Dorothy Parker, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, Miles Davis, Jon Bonham of Led Zeppelin, Bon Scott of AC/DC… Either that or opium, because then there was Edgar Allan Poe and Lewis Carroll. Okay, either alcohol, opium or LSD, because then there was the Beatles… the Beatles and half the other great bands of the ‘60’s. Okay, the list could go on. It’s part of being an artist.”

“Yeah, but maybe it doesn’t have to be.” Linda kicked a pebble along the path.

“Okay, so you’re a dry artist. As long as your imagination’s not dry.”

Linda looked over at Mike. He wore a black sleeveless shirt that exposed what seemed like a new tattoo, the head of a Labrador retriever. It was still pink around the edges and maybe a little goose bumped like the rest of his arm. “Is that new?” Linda pointed but was afraid to touch it. It looked sore.

“Yeah. Don’t laugh. It’s my dog, King. He died. I loved my dog.”

“I’m not laughing.” Linda had never had a dog, but she liked the idea of having one.

They passed a jazz club on the corner, lounge jazz and sliding saxophone notes pouring out onto the street.

“You know, I was talking to Kat,” Mike said. “She thought you were acting a bit weird too. She likes you, you know, Lin. She’d like to get to know you.”

“I like Kat. I don’t dislike her. We made a business deal. I’m making her a jean skirt.”

You know I’ve never even been to your house, Lin?”

His comment seemed unrelated but was related somehow. “You wouldn’t want to…” The wind blew just then, and a can skittered across the path, making a clatter as it scraped across the pavement. Linda wasn’t sure Mike heard. She wasn’t sure she wanted him to hear. She didn’t repeat it.

They walked on until they reached Dave’s Guitars, and it was only natural that they both stopped to admire. Peeking in the storefront window, she eyed a wide variety of guitars, both electric and acoustic, in a range of shapes and colors. Her eyes were drawn to one decorated with roses and another with a Union Jack. “You don’t need to come with me any further. We’re right at Dumont. If you take North Dumont Ave. a couple of blocks, you’ll come to Kev’s street, and you can still make the party.”

Mike stepped a few paces back and looked up above the storefront, staring at the windows and the fire escape, guessing, Linda thought, that she lived in the apartment above the shop. She was quite willing to let him believe that if that’s what he wished. No guitarist could have a problem with living above a guitar shop. “Oh, here.” She removed his jacket and handed it back to him.

“You’re all right?”

“Yeah.” Linda nodded.

“Lin, you’re a mystery.” And putting the jacket on, he turned to head in the direction she’d pointed out.

Books in Review: Two Books I've Read on Kindle in 2011

So far, this year, I’ve read mostly all non-fiction. Some of the books I read with specific research goals in mind for various fictional projects. Others, I read for my own spiritual enrichment. In this category, reading on one topic often prompted me to read similar books on similar topics. Even among these books I read because they just captivated my interest, I think very likely they will have an indirect if not direct influence on my writing. “How Then Should We Live: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture” by Francis Schaeffer prompted me to begin reading “Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assualt on Mind, Morals and Meaning” by Nancy Pearcey. Since both books deal with communicating better as a Christian to the modern culture, I think they should definitely have some influence on my own writing.

"The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak

This is a novel written for youth. I first noticed in on an end cap in Borders and, since, it showed up in my Amazon recommendations. The story takes place during World War II, and unlike a lot of other World War II stories, the protagonists here are German citizens. The narrator of the story, strangely enough is Death, but the story is really one of survival, of evading Death. The main character is a young preteen girl, Liesl Meminger, who is raised by foster parents.

Her foster mother is a strict disciplinarian in the habit of using rough language, sometimes disguising a tender heart. Her favorite addresses for people were “saumensch” and “saukerl” which translate into something like “filthy pig” in the feminine and masculine. She used such mixed-up expressions as “Good girl, Saumensch” while hugging Liesl.

Her foster father was a gentler character, who was often at Liesl’s bedside when she was wakened by nightmares, brought on by memories of her brother’s death and separation from her biological mother. He would entertain her with his accordion and help her learn to read at odd hours of the night, including, as the title suggests, her “stolen” book, “The Gravedigger’s Handbook.”

Although Liesl and her friends are forced to take part in Hitler Youth activities, the atmosphere at home is definitely anti-Hitler. In fact, her family hides a Jewish man in the basement, a man who develops a special friendship with Liesl and helps nurture her love for books.

"Mystics, Mavericks and Merrymakers: An Intimate Journey among Hasidic Girls" by Stephanie Wellen Levine

I chose to read this book in preparation for writing certain parts of the sequel to “And the Violin Cried.” My first book deals with some Hasidic characters, who will become more important in the second book, and, yes, one of these is a teen girl, which made this book appropriate.

While a graduate student in American studies at Harvard, the author spends some time as living among Lubavitcher Hasidim in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Her study was among the teen girls, whom she observed in their homes, social and school activities. Whereas mainstream American teens have their own cliques and stereotypes like jocks and geeks, Levine discovered certain types among the Hasidic girls. Levine goes into depth of how girls live in a community that is really completely gender-segregated, and how life and expected roles are very different for Hasidic men and women.

She gave character profiles of several girls she met who fell into different categories. From her descriptions, you get the feeling of what their daily life was like, interacting at school, going out in the neighborhood to The Gap or a kosher restaurant, attending weddings, their religious customs and the tricky business of following the strict religious laws.

One type is the chassidische girls. Chassidische girls are highly interested in religious study and in the Lubavitcher ideal of reaching out to the outer Jewish community to draw people into a more orthodox religious lifestyle. These were a rarity. “Normal” girls were fashionable and popular. They may get themselves into slight mischief such as accepting a car ride from a man who is not related to them, something which, in their community, could hurt their reputation and their matchmaking chances. Their slight rebellion might include wearing long socks instead of stockings to school.

The author came across questioners and rebels. One questioner was highly respected by her community for her intelligence and yet this same community felt, “She was too smart for her own good.” Her intelligent mind caused her to question the religious system she was brought up in and which her family was part of for generations. Levine also came across a group of young rebels who left the community and who were rebellious by any teen standard, smoking marijuana, visiting strip clubs, exploring alternative lifestyles, etc.

It was an interesting glimpse into a culture I would not likely be able to see any other way.

More to Come...