Sarah E. Moffett

So Robert Frost’s house gets ransacked, and somehow I’m motivated to start book two.

Who says there isn’t order in chaos?

Anyway, we all know the mantra, “write what you know.” I’ve tended to take that phrase a bit too seriously. See book one. Well, book two will be a continuation of the life and times of Moffettdom. Only this time, there will be an exploration of that thing that is harder than death. Living. But I digress.

I am posting this blog for two reasons. One, disclaimer. My blogging will be admittedly more sporadic for the next three weeks while I finish the first draft. (My goal is to beat Kerouac. Where is the benzene when you need it?) After that, I’ll return to the amusing anecdotes of Washingtonian living–give or take last week’s socialite book release party and the subsequent Karaoke bar debacle. This brings me to the second thing, which is for those of you that knew me from around 1995 to 2000.

Since it took me years to forget my twisted teen angst, the purple polyester culottes (not my choosing), and that thing that happened that day at that time at that place, I need help…remembering. Specifically, I’m looking for stories and photos of the life and times of Tri-City, the Wilds, Bob Jones University, and heaven help us, everything inbetween, from 1995-2000. If you have any thoughts, memories, photographs, or sentences that begin with “remember when,” please forward them to me either via comment or to moffett_s@hotmail.com. If you don’t have any thoughts to share but know someone who does, feel free to forward this along to them. Alternatively if you don’t know who I am, I probably don’t need your stories.

Disclaimer. This will not be a Truman Capote-esq non fiction novel. Your personal diaries are not requested. Then again, this won’t be James Frey part deux either. Whatever the case, credit will be given where credit is due.

Let the fun begin.

SEM

P.S.) The Growing Up Moffett promotion will be continuing. Yes, this means I’ll focus on the virtual tour. I promise. Maybe. We’ll see.

P.S.S.) Dear DEA, I do not support or recommend or take benzene or any other form of illegal drugs. Enjoy monitoring the website.

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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. A modern author. I know. Who reads them? Not me. So I couldn’t possibly tell you about the book that had me choking on my own tears at 35,000 feet as Jonathan Safran Foer pulled a modern incarnation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions with a significantly more sentimental twist. If you couldn’t speak, what would you say? And if you were 9, channeling Bill Watterson’s Calvin, and your Dad died in the Twin Towers, how would you handle it? Read, cry, feel, and above all, imbibe, this modern movement of evolving genius.

I read the first chapter of A Brief History of Time when Dad was still alive, and I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn’t even matter if I existed at all. When Dad was tucking me in that night and we were talking about the book, I asked if he could think of a solution to that problem. “Which problem?” “The problem of how relatively insignificant we are.” He said, “Well, what would happen if a plane dropped you in the middle of the Sahara Desert and you picked up a single grain of sand with tweezers and moved it one millimeter?” I said, “I’d probably die of dehydration.” He said, “I just mean right then, when you moved that single grain of sand. What would that mean?” I said, “I dunno, what?” He said, “Think about it.” I thought about it. “I guess I would have moved one grain of sand.” “Which would mean?” “Which would mean I moved a grain of sand?” “Which would mean you changed the Sahara.” “So?” “So? So the Sahara is a vast desert. And it has existed for millions of years. And you changed it!” “That’s true!” I said, sitting up. “I changed the Sahara!” “Which means?” he said. “What? Tell me.” “Well I’m not talking about painting the Mona Lisa or curing cancer. I’m just talking about moving that one grain of sand one millimeter.” “Yeah?” “If you hadn’t done it, human history would have been one way…” “Uh-huh?” “But you did do it, so…?” I stood on the bed, pointing one of my fingers at the fake stars, and screamed: “I changed the course of human history!” “That’s right.” “I changed the universe!” “You did.” “I’m God!” “You’re an atheist.” “I don’t exist!” I feel back onto the bed, into his arms, and we cracked up together.

Beat Generation. Want to know why Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg where the names on college campuses in 1958? Read Bruce Cook’s Beat Generation. As Clellon Holmes said (possibly quoting Kerouac himself), “it’s a sort of furtiveness, like we were a generation of furtives. You know, with an inner knowledge there’s no use flaunting on that level, the level of the ‘public,’ a kind of beatness—I mean being right down to it, to ourselves, because we all really know where we are—and a weariness with all the forms, all the conventions of the world . . . . . It’s something like that. So I guess you might say we’re a beat generation.” I wonder who in this generation will be the next beats, the next furtives.

Funny Face. Not a book, I know, but I suffered, so should you. I stopped trying to figure out this movie when the pink doors appeared. I think that was 180 seconds into it. Thereafter it was iPod headphones and alot of Muse. There was a brief consideration of giving it a second chance. So I looked up from the laptop just in time to see Fred Astaire dancing with an umbrella. Only Gene Kelley can do that and be cool. Besides, Fred then added a pink cape. I didn’t look back up until was over. Way over.

 The things one reads and watches over a long weekend…

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2007 was boring. Really boring. There was a 10,000 mile book tour, a handful of road races, in and out of the car, falling in love with Kerouac and Vonnegut, approximately $1,050 in parking tickets, drinks in Monte Carlo and the train jumping debacle, two car accidents, losing mucho dinero in Vegas to those impossible black jack tables at the Venetian, running with the Elvises, the discovery of Blue Bucks, St. Ex, and good people and bottles at Schneiders, attending the debut of the worst Broadway musical, ever, that whole restaurant incident, and a stint as an attorney somewhere in between. Perhaps 2008 will actually have something exciting happen in it.

So for those of you that added spice to my blogosphere life, bless you. Linda, you are wonderfully insightful and need to pass me the Chianti. Jarod, thank you for the wit; now convert to a good Southerner. Michael, I’m flattered you think my blog is readable, but admittedly questioning your insanity. Will Write for Chocolate. Your name says it all, you endearingly hysterical woman. Listen Missy, Towwas, Avacado In Paradise (Did you know Capote called his attorney “avocado”?), you are wonderful people. Whisky Prajer, your 2007 Table Scraps was ingenius. And to all of you other gentle readers that have shown me through google analytics that you love when I get kicked out of restaurants, comment on Adam Levine’s sexiness, or try to die by running, thank you. I’ve learned my lesson. Now ALL I’ll write about will be literary events.

And Jerry Brito, thank you for making this website possible.

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“Excuse me, friends, but did you know that less than forty-eight hours ago I was standing in the middle of several thousand corpses in a muddy mass grave in a tiny African country called Rwanda?”*

These were the words Gary A. Haugen wanted to tell his neighbors on a D.C. Metro bus in 1994. And the product of that thought, coupled with those experiences, is what I went to see at a benefit dinner earlier this month.

Say hello to the International Justice Mission.

Founded in 1994, by Haugen, whose academic and professional pedigree is as blue blood as it comes, IJM is an “organization [that] makes available a corps of Christian public justice professionals (lawyers, criminal investigators, diplomats, governments relations experts and the like) to serve global Christian workers when they encounter cases of abuse or oppression in their communities.” IJM “documents the abuses and seeks relief for the victims either directly or in partnership with indigenous advocacy groups or through other international human rights organizations.”

Color me skeptical about any human rights organization. As a barely Gen-X’er, I’m admittedly the product of an overwhelmed, desensitized, skeptical and apathetic generation. To hear someone speak in broad terms and unfathomable numbers of death, slavery, and rape is common, even expected from our lovely news sources. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t picked up a paper or turned on a news cast in years. Why bother? The world is trying to beat death by killing itself first. I got the memo.

But then I heard about IJM. And I didn’t hear numbers. I heard a story. A story about one person, their struggles, their pain, and their suffering. And I heard how humanitarians, missionaries, and everything in between couldn’t relieve it. In this story, the slaves didn’t need food or water. They needed their freedom. Then I heard how a group of lawyers, investigators, government liaisons, and a myriad of other brave souls in a small community stopped being skeptical and jaded. They stopped accepting things. And they fought. And here’s the thing. They won.

So at this benefit dinner, the IJM reps told the over 1,000 attendants to turn off their phones, cameras, and recording devices. The names, faces, and places were not for publication or blogging. They were to show us what 13 years of trying can do. What happens when pedophiles who go to Southeast Asia because they think they won’t be caught, are, and prosecuted. What happens when families enslaved in brick factories in Africa are set free and given emancipation papers.  Things like that.  Things we don’t have to deal with in America.  And then a woman spoke through a translator.  She told us that she and her family had been freed after thirty years of slavery in a rice mill. And the immaculate suits, and pressed ties, and black dresses, and white table clothes, and emptiness of D.C. suddenly were uglier than the clay dirt of Africa.

As I left and pulled yet another parking ticket off my car, the jaded side of me automatically asked, so what if one person is saved. What difference does it make in a world of six billion disasters? The other part answered. If I was that one person, wouldn’t it make a difference? And maybe even more importantly, perhaps it’s not about making a difference Sarah.

It’s about trying.

*Taken from Good News About Injustice, by Gary A. Haugen.

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Nothing like a hometown paper write up to make one feel important…or validated.  Particularly when said newspaper covers the geographical region of Leadville, Colorado (below), which is the home to several generations of Moffetts and shockingly the setting for part of my first book, Growing Up Moffett.  Prosaic, I know.

“Written with a good sense of humor and a feeling for family, Moffett’s book describes a girl’s coming of age and her ways of dealing with death.” So goes the Leadville Herald Democrat’s review of Growing Up Moffett, which is located here.  Spoilers alert.  The review includes a summary of the epilogue.  Feel free not to pass that part along.

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Well, more like top 20, but then it was two Moffetts trying to narrow it down.

Top 20.  (Not in order of importance.)

1. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
2. Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis
3. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte (go to Haworth, England. You’ll get it.)
4. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Marquez (the banned genius)
5. End of the Affair, Graham Greene
6. Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf
7. Night, Elie Wiesel
8. Lord of the Rings, J.R. Tolkien
9. Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger (you know you want to skip your last quarters across a pond in Central Park)
10. Count of Monte Cristo, Alexander Dumas (and his 300 assistants)
11. Alchemist, Paulo Coehlo
12. Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
13. On the Road, Jack Kerouac (think less Willie Nelson and more a shy James Dean)
14. Slaughter House Five, Kurt Vonnegut
15. Godric, Frederic Buechner (brace your soul, it’s in for a ride)
16. Written on the Body, Jeanette Winterson
17. Monsignor Quixote, Graham Greene (so we have a thing for the “novelist who happened to be Catholic“)
18. Letters to a Young Poet, Ranier Maria Rilke
19. Resurrection, Leo Tolstoy
20. The Republic, Plato

Honorable Mentions

A Separate Peace, John Knowles
A Soldier Returns, Rebecca West
Possession, A.S. Byatt

*The things being snow bound will prompt one to undertake…While visiting the family out West, the clouds opened up to deliver 3 days of unmitigated and uninterrupted family time in the form of a surprise snow storm. Holed up with only forty-five tins of Christmas goodies and the remainder of goods Mom purchased when she personally bought out Costco, we attempted to suffer through our predicament together. This meant that by the first night we were fat, warm, and philosophical.

This, of course, led to impossible questions. Such as the one that sister Rebekah, who is the real writer of the family, and I tried to answer. “What are your top ten books?”

The joys of cabin fever.

As we were wholly unable to narrow down our two-bottles-of-eggnog-and-a-loaf-of-pumpkin-bread inspired list down, we did what all good list makers do. We cheated, as you can tell. Anyway, we proceeded to spend more time wondering whom we left off the list than in actually composing it. Suggestions?

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And I don’t mean after you’ve had one too many rounds of eggnog.

Sans eggnog, I learned that the world of Douglas Firs do sing after I showed up at First Baptist of Alexandria’s annual Living Christmas Tree production. According to the injured choir member that parked it in the pew next to us, the seven performances that took place over several days required 100 brave souls on the scaffolding (choir), 50 narcissists (actors, S.O.S. girls, a costumed Frosty, etc.), a full orchestra and approximately 300 support staff. Who knows if his numbers were right, but given that over 6000 people had attended the performances prior to the finale evening we attended, I wouldn’t be surprised.

At the opening, the Pastor, Don Davidson, observed that this was the 20th year of performances, which were a gift to the city of Alexandria as a “labor of love.” He then followed the D.C./NOVA event announcement requirement by asking everyone to please turn off their phones or put them on vibrate. Feeling his announcement was not strong enough, a persnickety little girl behind me ordered her mother in a stage whisper to “put your phone on vibrate.” Mother complied. The performance began. The 2007 Living Christmas Tree—Christmas on Track.

Ever heard 100 choir members from the world’s largest shrubbery belt out White Christmas from a lawyer’s liability nightmare of rickety scaffolding? Me either, but they were definitely singing in such a way that if the construction had collapsed, they would have all been welcomed through the pearly gates by Peter with an express pass to the choir loft.

The singing was interlaced with secular favorites, old time hymns, innovative combinations (Jingle Bells sung to every major theme in the Nutcracker was nothing if not “creative”), a light show that fixed my seizure activities and Christmas light needs for a decade, and a cheesy storyline played on the side stage about a group of strangers who find themselves stuck on a train before Christmas.

The program was rounded out with a memorable grand finale. While I’m not sure Handel ever envisioned his famed Hallelujah chorus being performed to a light show to rival the strobes of Las Vegas’s Strand, I do know he would have been proud at the chills everyone had as the last chord hung in the air and faded with the return of the lights.

In the end, I was pleasantly surprised by the concept of a Living Christmas Tree (see earlier thoughts here), and will be adding it to the list of annual Christmas activities. I will also be bringing sunglasses to future performances. 

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What is art?

Snoozing, aren’t you.

I generally am too when someone pulls that gem out of the air. Then I heard an answer in the most unlikely place.

If only all of life’s mysteries were discoverable in the midst of a rock opera complete with laser show, faux-snow, and pyrotechnician’s dream.

Paul O’Neill, one of the founders of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and creators of the above seizure inducing music show, said,

The purpose of art is to create an emotional response in the person that is exposed to that art. And there are three categories of art; bad art, good art and great art.

Bad art will elicit no emotional response in the person that is exposed to it, i.e.; a song you hear in an elevator and it does nothing to you, a picture on a wall that gives you the same emotional response as if the wall had been blank, a movie that chews up time.

Good art will make you feel an emotion that you have felt before; you see a picture of a forest and you remember the last time you went fishing with your dad, you hear a song about love and you remember the last time you were in love.

Great art will make you feel an emotion you have never felt before; seeing the pieta, the world famous sculpture by Michelangelo, can cause someone to feel the pain of losing a child even if they’ve never had one.

And when you’re trying for these emotions the easiest one to trigger is anger. Anyone can do it. Go into the street, throw a rock at someone, you will make them angry. The emotions of love, empathy and laughter are much harder to trigger, but since they operate on a deeper level, they bring a much greater reward.

These words led me to a moment of utter and ridiculous sappiness in which it occurred to me that we are all capable of art. The news headlines are filled with examples of bad art in the form of violence and hatred. The museums are full of critically acclaimed good art that occasionally becomes something more in a moment of human understanding. But perhaps with a sprinkle of love, hope, and peace, we can find it within ourselves to create great art without paints, typewriters, or clay to inspire in others emotions never felt before. Emotions that remind us and those we touch that we are human, we are flawed, but we are…living art. Which is something, in my mind, that goes beyond great art.

~Merry Christmas from an art junkie.

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And then there was only one…

Not THAT one…her new one.  And the only one available for sale.  J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard was snatched up yesterday by Amazon.com at an auction held by Sotheby’s in London. As discussed here before, Rowling’s book was set to start at $62,000, and only expected to sell for $100,000 according to this CNN article. Then capitalism happened. The acquisition has top billing on one of the holiday’s most hit websites, Amazon.com, who has devoted an entire page to the stories in an effort to share the book with the world. Amazon writes that

We’re incredibly excited to announce that Amazon has purchased J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard at an auction held by Sotheby’s in London. The book of five wizarding fairy tales, referenced in the last book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is one of only seven handmade copies in existence. The purchase price was £1,950,000, and Ms. Rowling is donating the proceeds to The Children’s Voice campaign, a charity she co-founded to help improve the lives of institutionalized children across Europe.

The book of five wizarding fairy tales, referenced in the last book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is one of only seven handmade copies in existence. The purchase price was £1,950,000, and Ms. Rowling is donating the proceeds to The Children’s Voice campaign, a charity she co-founded to help improve the lives of institutionalized children across Europe.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is extensively illustrated and handwritten by the bard herself–all 157 pages of it. It’s bound in brown Moroccan leather and embellished with five hand-chased hallmarked sterling silver ornaments and mounted moonstones.

Amazon also posts some fairly indepth pictures here should you want to see Rowling’s handwriting at 10 megapixels emblazoned across your screen.  What you may find more interesting should lack for material to make you go to sleep is the discussion boards that range in topics from “Witch Rowling” to “Pathetic.”  My personal favorite, not that I’ve read them of course, was the thread entitled “Why?” opening with the question “What is the point other than donating to charity? Will amazon benefit from this other than a little increased traffic for a day?” After several snippy responses from members of the public, Amazon posted the following:

Our primary reason for buying this book was to thank J. K. Rowling, who has done us all an immeasurably valuable service by enlarging our understanding of the way books can touch people-and in particular, children-in modern times. By purchasing this book, we can in a tangible way say thanks to Ms. Rowling for all that she has done for readers around the world. We’re also delighted that the proceeds are being donated to her charity, which has done so much to help children.

And we’re very happy to be able to share the book with her many fans through pictures, reviews, and eventually through a tour (which is in its very early planning stages). Like most of you, we are true bibliophiles, and we feel very fortunate to be in a position to share such a rare treasure.

And if I was as filthy rich as Amazon and could drop $4M on a book for charity, I’d be all about it too. For all the reasons they stated and one more that everyone seems to be missing.

End of the year tax write off.

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“Think globally-eat locally” is the slogan of one of Old Town Alexandria’s best restaurants. And since this particular restaurant (a) has a literary based name, and (b) did not kick me out, I am sharing one of my favorite Old Town secrets. Bilbo Baggins.

Walking into the restaurant off Queen Street, you would never expect the yellow row house with red awning and far too many twinkle lights to expand through a narrow entry way into a warm, rustic bar, and two large dining rooms. And by rustic, I mean these decorations make Eddie Bauer look cosmopolitan. The walls are knobby pine, and covered in wicker baskets, old fishing signs, and, most recently, a large digital clock counting down the days until Christmas. Once you reach your table, you’ll find chairs straight from a country kitchen and turquoise placemats you’ve seen once before at your uncle’s lake house (read: cabin). The downstairs waiters top off the down home feel in polo shirts, jeans, and clogs.

And then…they speak.

“Perhaps you’d like to start with duck and shiitake spring rolls, try for the entrée either the cinnamon pork loin with fruit chutney or veal scaloppini piccata with crab meat, and wash it down with a lovely 2000 bottle of our Fife from Old Yokayo Rancho.”

And the angels sang.

So in this completely non pretentious and but gloriously comfortable restaurant, we dined on peppered field greens tossed with fresh buffalo bocconcini and Roma tomatoes, drizzled with a basil olive oil and balsamic paint, tried not to cry over the warmth and fabulousness of the shrimp and mushroom risotto (with a whole lot of special ingredients I don’t remember), and embraced our inner Epicureans by partaking of the waiter’s perfect recommendation of a bottle of Fife.

And no one tried to hurry us along. And there was parking. And people were in jeans or business attire. And the check was more than reasonable. And, drum roll please, the people were nice.

As for those technical details, the Funside of the Potomac claims Bilbo Baggins is a “cozy local gathering place with delicious food, unusual wines and beers, and friendly service. 35 wines by the glass, 10 micro-brews on tap along with 50 imported beers in bottles.” Or in the Washington Post’s words, the “menu of plentiful, imaginative and tempting food leads you to order innovative combinations without even trying.”

As for me, Bilbo Baggins provides a comfortable environment that for one meal allows an escape from the D.C. dining scene to celebrate the marriage of the global creativity of Northern Virginia chefs to the rustic warmth of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  And if that’s not precious, I’m not sure what is. 

(Tolkien nod. I couldn’t help it.)

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