Greetings from Treasure Beach

 We're back at the Calabash House on Treasure Beach where the breezes are balmy and the ocean is rolling and we are suffering for our art.  Writing, that is.  Here Liz conducts her workshop on Time with our largest International Around the Block Writers Workshop yet.  What fun we are having.  Wish you were here!

It's a Wonder

Our first anthology of short stories came about through a series of wondrous events.  Our Around the Block in Dublin Workshop  was actually a last minute substitution once we learned Liz 's daughter was expecting her first child and would, of course, need her mother.  We cancelled our originally-scheduled workshop in Jamaica exactly at the time I was in Dublin, and although Ireland is about as opposite of Jamaica as you can imagine, our Dublin Workshop filled quickly.  Dublin in March?  Well, why not?

Our week in Dublin fell days after of the revelry of St. Patrick's Day, fell into that grim gray time that all north-lying countries face.  When the weather is fickle at best.  Except this March.  During our week in Ireland, the sun decided to come out and stay.  The trees burst into pastel blossoms and the flowers dazzled us in Dublin's green parks.  The streets filled with sun-seekers in shirt sleeves and less.  It was, quite simply, a glorious time.

We had no rain, and so we toured and strolled and hung out in pubs.  We drank buckets of tea and wine and Guinness.  We listened to music and literary recitations and looked for ghosts.  We heard Galway Girl more times than we can count.

And the writing?  Oh yes, we wrote.  We wrote quickly and vividly and cohesively by inventing characters to inhabit the place where we stayed.  The Charles Stewart Guesthouse, named for Charles Stewart Parnell and the birthplace of the poet Oliver St. John Gogarty, is a Georgian house on Parnell Square.  Close to everything, and around the corner from the Dublin Writers Museum, the Charles Stewart has exactly enough quirks to appeal to writers.  Along with full Irish breakfasts and WiFi!  And we are grateful to Helen and her staff for catering to our every whim.

Through Around the Block on Parnell Square, we invite you, too, to experience the wonder of Dublin.

Heat is Relative

(The view from Calabash House terrace, February 2011.)

Except for my collaborator Tracy, everyone I know has been suffering from this summer's heat.  Every night the weather map turns a deeper shade of red, and the humidity chokes the breath from our lungs.  It has been an ugly month.  So ugly, in fact, that it is difficult to comfortably conjure up the memory of our Around the Block Writers Workshop in Jamaica without wincing a bit.  It was hot there.  But as hot as here?  (Here being everywhere in the United States except California where Tracy lives.)  I can't remember.

What I do remember of our time in Calabash House on Treasure Beach comes back to me not from that week in February 2011, but from our recent week in Bemus Point, New York.  The heat was just beginning to rise in those June-green hills of Chautauqua County, so it was not the temperature that triggered my memory.  Rather it was the camaraderie of the writers who gathered there with us.

There is something about writers, some magical sense of wonder and joy in creating and sharing stories, that is positively infectious.   We find ourselves longing to write more, to stretch out our necks out and try a different style, a new approach.   We don't mind a challenge, because the act of stretching is a thrill in itself.  We are, I believe, a special group, and we carry our enthusiasm for our writing wherever we go -- from bucolic New York to energized Dublin to tropical Jamaica.  How could we not return to Calabash House again this winter?

Ah, yes, the heat.  Let me think about this: the heat of a Jamaican beach in the dead, cold, middle of February.  Once again I remind you that we are a special group, and we are happy to suffer for our art.

We hope you will join us.

Dublin in March

Okay, I'm the one to blame for the coats.  It's Dublin in March, I told them, it will be cold for the love of God.  Not only cold, but wet, and when it's not actually raining, it will be so damp and drear that it will feel colder than it is.  So here we are at The Duke, holding our coats during one of the warmest weeks on record, and waiting to begin our Literary Pub Crawl.

In truth it was glorious.  All of it.  The bus rides and the cobblestone walks.  The scenery and the shopping and the sidetrips to Howth and Kilmainham Jail.  The readings at the Dublin Writers Centre.  The Evening Socials.  The music at the pubs.  Yep, here we are again at The Celt:

So really, maybe the weather didn't matter after all.  We had great craic, inside or out.  And writing?  Oh, yes, writing.  We wrote, by God.  In those wee few hours between socializing and sightseeing and trying to absorb as much as we could of the fair city that is Dublin, we wrote -- each of us, mind you -- a complete story of the characters we imagined to inhabit The Charles Stewart Guesthouse, our home for six nights.   Here's to creation!   And celebration of creation!  Cheers.

Well-Nourished: Another Lament on Aging

The year is 2012. I can remember when, in my 20’s, I used a calculator to figure how old I would be when the millennium ended and a new one began. The answer: 46. Both the new millennium and that age bracket seemed like science fiction to me then. Now I view them with nostalgia.

I have done all right at aging. My hair remains healthy—so healthy I need to have it thinned every six months—and has only just begun to grey. Through flurries of exercise (walking, yoga, and swimming, if I’m really serious), I’ve maintained what my primary physician deems a healthy body weight, though I’d like to be 15-20 pounds lighter. On behalf of honesty, I admit I took a peek at what another doctor, an orthopedic specialist treating a blown-out shoulder, wrote about me in his file: “Patient is a well-nourished, white female…” This read like a euphemistic personals ad, and tainted my attitude toward the otherwise gifted physician who cured the shoulder without surgery. I treat my healed shoulder with deference because I don’t want to go to his office anytime soon and revisit that file.

I’m vain, I can’t help it, and vanity keeps me from aging gracefully. As a young writer, I took an extension course from an LA Times journalist who, I thought, would teach the craft of human interest stories, but who rather used the class as a venue to perform, with guitar, her “Songs of Age and Rage.” Imagine the Lili Taylor of Say Anything only in her late 60’s, hair chopped off in a strangely-cowlicked pixie, shouting tuneless vitriol at age instead of her ex-boyfriend Joe. I thought the Times writer needed to get over herself. The presumption I’d care about her woes over the wreckage of time rankled me, and I quit the weekend seminar at lunch on Saturday without asking for my money back.

I invoke her memory whenever I look at my hands and see liver spots too numerous to bother counting, and when I’m soaping up in the shower and my hand passes over a raised, rough patch of skin the dermatologist calls a “barnacle.” Barnacle? What am I, an atoll? A humpback whale? I ask the doc to remove said barnacles, and he replies, “Why? They just come back again.” I hear furious guitar strumming when I ready myself for work and see jowls as I apply makeup, and am forced to gingerly zip my pants because of the dreaded belly fat. How did this happen to me? I never had a perfect body even at its optimal weight, but always a flat stomach. I’ve even given up a decades-long addiction to diet soda yet still sport my own personal adipose pouch, navel included, no extra charge.

I know I am supposed to love my aging body, that each wrinkle and scar and bulge and imperfection signifies a life fully lived. I know women of a certain, um, level of experience should be above taking inventory of superficial human flaws, their own and those belonging to others. I know these wise and worldly things, but vanity prevents me from accepting them.

And every time I think of that old raging broad with the bad haircut, I get my money’s worth of empathy.

Oh, Rocky

Jekyll Island is part small town and part wildlife reserve.  People here know each other, if not by name than at least by sight.  Even visitors to this Georgia State Park seem more familiar than not.  Here the deer and raccoon are so accustomed to sharing their island, they stroll through yards and flower beds unperturbed.  Alligators bask on the golf courses.  The most skittish creatures are likely the feral cats, which are fed and tended to by the locals.

Of course there are exceptions.

When I ask the waitress at the Sand Bar about her holidays, she says they were good.  "I had raccoon for the first time," she adds.

"Raccoon?"

"My friend made it."  She pauses with her tray on her hip and nods.  "It wasn't bad, but I couldn't get past the fact it was raccoon."

"Raccoon?"

"She boils it first and then bakes it in a sauce."

"Like spaghetti sauce?"

"Brown sauce.  It was real tender, but I kept thinking of furry animals and couldn't eat more than a bite."  She moves away to retrieve our order from the kitchen.

Around the Block in Dublin!

Come join us March 25-31, 2012 

for a whirlwind of writing, touring, and sociability

 in Ireland's vibrant historic and literary capital!

We will stay in the heart of Dublin at The Charles Stewart Guesthouse on Parnell Square.  Named for Patriot Charles Stewart Parnell, this Georgian house was the birthplace of the poet Oliver St.John Gogarty, pal of James Joyce.

The Garden of Remembrance  is across the street.

The Dublin Writers Museum is around the Square.

Our Summer Writing Classes

Lake Chautauqua from the porch of Hotel Lenhart

Here in Richmond, VA, the temperature hit 90 today, and the air is filled with the scent of honeysuckle. It's been a lovely May, a great pre-cursor to Summer.

Once again, Liz, Tracy, and I will return to Chautauqua County in July for a week of writing workshops. Although every Around the Block Writing Workshop is an adventure for us, this year we are adding more new elements. This year our classes will meet July 18 - 22 in the historic Hotel Lenhart Dining Room at Bemus Point, New York.

It does take some coordination to pull our classes together from our three different parts of the country, but we're happy with our results! Here they are:

Monday, July 18 -- Out of the Nest: The Free Fall of Writing by Tracy
Many of us like to feel we are in control, but good writing requires that we let go and allow the words to take control of us, especially in the drafting stages. In this class, we will revel in the joy of stepping out of inspiration’s way.

Tuesday, July 19 -- So To Speak: From the Poet’s Toy Box by Liz
Whether crafting a poem, writing a prose vignette or describing a fictional character or place—even when we’re just excitedly relating a story to a friend—we all use figurative language to enliven our narrative voice. Come play with various toys usually stowed in the poet’s toy box—a few figures of speech and devices to amplify sound and rhythm—and see how these can be used to enhance your poems, proems or poetic prose pieces.

Wednesday, July 20 -- Hero Worship by Sara
Whether writing memoirs or creating sympathetic characters, we sometimes depict humans as being a little too good to be true. Today’s class will study real life “heroes” to guide us in writing about people who are both flawed and likeable.

Thursday, July 21 -- Wooing the Muse, Part One
Our tempting menu for this class of tricks to inspire ideas good enough to write: “Literary Mad Libs,” “Food, Glorious Food,” and “Monologue: When One Voice Is Better than Two.”

Friday, July 22 -- Wooing the Muse, Part Two
Another day, a brand new menu of idea inspiration: “Putting Gossip To Good Use,” “What’s the Attraction?” and “Recipe for Baking a Poem.” Get ‘em while they’re hot!

Once again we look forward to seeing our writing friends and to meeting new writers. We anticipate our time together and our time with friends in the Creative Energy Workshops at Morning Glory Inn in Bemus Point. (Email us at info@writearoundtheblock.org for details.)

In short, we look forward to Summer, and wish the same for you.

Up Next

Come Join Us July 18-22!



Around the Block returns to Chautauqua County for a week of writing workshops in the lovely Hotel Lenhart at Bemus Point, New York. We will meet every afternoon from 1 to 3 p.m. for sessions in poetry, memoir, and fiction. ($25/day or $110/five-day week.)

Details on specific classes and activities to be announced soon.

Day 6: Andy Sachar on The Arts/ Jamaica

The view from Calabash House looking toward the road by Sherwood Brown











Art generally pops into being on its own in Treasure Beach. Flowering trees are currently showing red, orange, blue, white, yellow and pink. The sea is all turquoise blues and beach glass greens. And so on.

The women's cooperative down the road and off to the right sells carvings, clothing and other crafts from local artists, and hosts art classes for the community. Over by the market, a pair of teenage drummers perform an incredible duet, all smiles and pride. Calabash House itself is awash with its mosaics and paintings.

And then there's Sherwood Brown. While the rest of us are up on the veranda writing and laughing and making sounds of awe in class, Sherwood grabs his hat, walks outside with his paint brushes, paper, and the big enamel pan he uses as a water color palette, and comes back every day with a painting.


The view from the hammocks at Calabash House by Sherwood Brown


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Day 5: Kathleen Worrell's Ode to Calabash Dining

What about the food? Has anyone talked about the food? That stunning bouquet of colors that Suzett arranges on our breakfast table: purple of star apples, pale pineapple, rose colored watermelon, the coral and orange of papaya and mango, creamy bananas. The richness of ackee scrambled with onions and peppers (ackee is a Jamaican fruit that is a buttery yellow with a large purple-black seed when opened. And you never eat it when unopened, or it will be your last meal). There is the exotic design of dinner: white meaty king fish with rice cooked in coconut milk and thyme, glistening jerked pork and rice and beans, peppery beef that falls apart on the tongue, the local green, callaloo, luscious salads of crisp green lettuce and rosy beetroot. And we still have two more days to go.

Day 4 in Photos

Our Breakfast


Our Painters and Writers



Our Shoppers


Our Flora and Fauna

Day 3: Gayle Marano-Brown's "Sunset Haven"

As the brilliant warm day gives way to dusk, we watch with rapt wonder the soulful Jamaican sunsets -- each glorious, all encompassing, and beyond awe. The azure Caribbean Sea is lit with gold, orange, yellow, and pink, while cloud formations appear to paint the sky. Doesn't this beauty abound all over the globe, you might ask.

Yah, mon, but Jamaica's got the edge on Soul. Especially at the Calabash House.

by Gayle Marano-Brown

Day 2: Up the Black River

Flora




This is such a wonderful experience! Challenging writing workshops in the mornings and wonderful adventures in the afternoons. Our group is so energizing because everyone brings such rich personal histories with them and as we share with each other, I find myself inspired to dig deeper and to write better. Then, the fun and laughter of our excursions --- walking down the road to the little shop for sodas, boating across the seas to the Black River with crocodiles and egrets to admire along the way --- dinners around the long table on the back veranda with the sound of the waves washing the shores behind us --- my senses are full and I feel myself letting go of all the tensions of work and responsibility. Watching Flora, our companion dog this afternoon in the launch as we cruised the Black River, her nose high and ears forward, eagerly searching the banks for crocodiles, made me realize how much I need to live more in the moment, how we all must relish every second that we have on this earth. And it's only Tuesday! I can't wait to see what Wednesday brings! Thank you Tracy, Liz, and Sara. You said it would be great and it really, truly, is.

--Nancy Shumaker

From the Grandiosa Hotel

After a relaxing night in Montego Bay, today we head to Calabash House for a wonderful week of Writing, Writing, Writing.

It's All Good

July ATB Reading at Wonderments Wine Shop, Findley Lake, NY.


I'm on Jekyll Island at the moment, and it is a mess. Heavy equipment zips across Beachview Drive to complete The Great Dunes Park in a timely manner. There is planting of palms and pines galore, and our very small shopping district is being torn down to make way for a newer, classier one. The entry onto the island is being re-routed in a semi-circular fashion, and the shops, businesses, and our local P.O. are being stuffed into mobile, metal housing for the duration of our progress. At least they face the ocean.

For as much grumbling as we may do, we all trust that every bit of improvement will be well worth the wait. It will live up to the new slogan for Jekyll's siege of construction: It's All Good.

Right now I'm feeling much the same way about Around the Block. The dust is flying around us, too, at the moment. Except for that brief wondrous week or weekend when we come together and meet up with real live students, Liz, Tracy, and I are always in three different places, doing three different things in three different ways. This fall Tracy has taken on a very special teaching assignment in California, and Liz and I will be doing our stints of Around the Block without her. Which requires a little shifting around, a little moving, a few more orange construction cones.

Here's the plan: Liz will have the month of September to work with you all, and I will have November. In October, Liz will spend the first two weeks with what she calls her Digging Deeper Project -- encouraging you to look at your work in a new way. In the last two weeks, I will encourage you to loosen up, to write in short, fast, bursts before we move onto to longer pieces of work. We think it will be fun.

We look forward to having Tracy back with ATB in the Spring, and --before then-- to spending a fabulous week in Jamaica with you, our real live students. Just take a look at these happy faces from our July Reading in Findley Lake and tell us it's not ALL good. We dare you.

A Week in July

Here's our daily schedule for Around the Block in Findley Lake:

Please note: The following classes meet at Hazen Manor from 1 to 3 p.m.

Monday, July 19th with Tracy Robert
Confession: Creating Drama in Your Narrative

We’ve all committed crimes of a greater or lesser nature. (Oh, come on. You know you’ve at least contemplated them.) Learn how confession makes for compelling characters and narrative tension, and don’t worry. What happens at Hazen Manor stays at Hazen Manor.

Tuesday, July 20th with Sara Kay Rupnik
The Natural Approach: Using Nature in Memoir and Fiction

As readers, we expect memoir and fiction to include a visual world of trees and flowers and maybe a birdsong or two, but as writers we struggle to decide when the description of nature is too much or simply not enough. What bearing might an old elm tree, for example, have on the story you are sharing with your reader? Today we will discuss nature writing before slipping touches of nature into your own narratives.


Wednesday, July 21st with Liz Abrams-Morley
Honing the Image: The Process of Discovery

Many terrific poems and stories begin with a moment or picture that haunts us as writers and as human beings. We learn what we are thinking and feeling about that picture when we write it down, write from it, and see where it leads us. We'll work today from image to awareness, practicing a process which will help us to stay loose, to let the work unfold and to subvert the tendency we all have to cut off possibilities by over-controlling the movement of a poem or story.

Thursday, July 22nd with Tracy, Sara, Liz
Wooing the Muse, Part I

Do you have trouble getting started or being inspired?
Learn how Ad Copy, Words of Wonderment, and Writing What You Don’t Know can lead you into the composing mode. You may attend one or both of the “muse” classes (see below).

Friday, July 23 with Tracy, Sara, Liz
Wooing the Muse, Part II

Inspiration is tough; you need all the tools at your disposal.
Tools like Books of Questions, Epigraphs, and Greeting Cards are surprisingly complementary to the writing process. You may attend this class in addition
to Part I (see above) or exclusive of it.

In Defense of Keepsakes

Watching A&E’s reality show, “Hoarders,” is precisely like watching the proverbial train wreck. It is gruesome and gory and filled with pathos, but I cannot turn it off. The premise is always the same: we hear the traumatic history of the homeowner as we tour the house, every room crammed to the ceiling with incidental, useless articles of furniture, clothing, printed materials, outdated food, odd bits of machinery, and an occasional dead animal. Often there are collections such as imported beer cans or Peanuts comic strips, and, in some of the more unsavory habitats, garbage is strewn everywhere. With no passageways through the mess, the hoarders climb like mountain goats to venture from kitchen to bedroom. The one cleared seat is invariably in front of the television, and the bathrooms are universally appalling. Then the therapists and the clean-up crews arrive, and the real drama begins.

What turns the tale and rivets me to this program is the revelation that hoarders are generally well-educated professionals, men and women who are successful and intelligent and yet have the compulsion to save every iota from their lives. To save what they have and also buy more to add to their stash. I myself am a saver, the keeper of my family’s past, and I relate totally to those tearful individuals who cannot part with a greeting card or a teddy bear or an article of clothing because it is associated with a particular memory. “But you have the memory,” the therapist always says to the hoarder clinging to her grandmother’s quilt or her daughter’s first baby shoes. “You don’t need to keep this.”

I’m not so sure. What has become of the notion of preserving memories through items passed on to us from our ancestors: the lock of hair or the pressed flower or the letters of a loved one? As a writer, I worry that we are becoming too easily dismissive of the very things that spark our senses, our imagination, our wonder about people who lived in different times and different places. And what of the next generation of writers, bereft of tactile prompts like hand woven fabrics or handwritten letters or even so much as an email to hold in their hands? What will they have to say about us?

I admit that “Hoarders” has made me a more cautious saver, and while I feel virtuous with every bag of old things I haul off to Goodwill, I have also begun to consider the merit of labeling what I keep. By recording the name of the quilter and the year of her creation or the significance of the people and the place in the 1942 photo, I will be saving an artifact rather than a mere piece of trash. I will be leaving a legacy for tomorrow’s storytellers.

Sick of Winter

It has been a long, cold, wet season, and Tracy, Liz, and I are looking forward to summer. Thanks to little help from our friends Jennnifer TeWinkle, Jennifer Mills, and Barb Coryea,
here is an enticing little package to welcome you to summer in Chautauqua County.

COUNTRY RETREAT FOR WRITERS

JULY 18-23, 2010 in beautiful Findley Lake, NY


Includes:
• 5 multi-genre writing workshops to amuse your muse with 3 well- published, highly experienced writers/teachers, Liz Abrams-Morley, Tracy Robert, and Sara Kay Rupnik
• Lodging, breakfast and lunch daily, plus one dinner with entertainment from the Good for Nuthin’ String Band at lovely Hazen Manor
• Tai Chi and energy alignment classes, & a lake cruise also included
• Acres of rolling tranquility in which to write & a renewing week in the company of other writers
• Package price only $560 inclusive.
• Writing Workshop only rates are $90/week or $20 per individual class.

Winter Writing Retreat in Jamaica

I traveled to Jamaica over Christmas break to investigate a guesthouse as the potential venue for a warm-in-winter writing workshop. I expected the location of Treasure Beach to be picturesque, and Calabash House to be the same. I did not, however, expect to fall in love with the place.

We landed in Montego Bay several hours late because of air travel delays, and the rental car dealer warned, “I do not advise you to make the journey to Treasure Beach at night. It is dark, very dark, and winding.” We booked a hotel with a surprisingly good restaurant and bar, ate curry, drank rum punch, and motored to the south of the island in the morning.

Waiting turned out to be wise: the drive, even in daylight, was treacherous, but the scenery exquisite. Photo ops rewarded hairpin turns and stomach-lurching ledges. When we arrived at Calabash House, our cook, the lovely Suzette, and her assistant Euonie, fixed us sandwiches, even though lunch had not been part of our two-meal-a-day agreement. Elizabeth Seltzer, the owner and host, made sure we were taken care of, though by no means pestered or hovered over.

The town of Treasure Beach has much to be enjoyed and explored: a reggae club, a stylish spa, shops (including Elizabeth’s wonderful on-site Mermaid Art Gallery) and restaurants. It is not a shopping mecca, mind you, but it has commerce and nightlife. Our first evening there we walked down the road to the club, South Jammin’, and bounced to a band featuring drummer Joe Isaacs, who played with the legendary Jackie Mittoo way back at the dawn of reggae. On New Year’s Eve, a concert at Jack Sprat’s required the mediation of traffic police. Glowing miniature hot air balloons, close to a hundred of them, were released gracefully into the sky to usher in 2010.

The grounds of Calabash House are not grand, but are sweet and impeccable, groomed daily by staff member, Michael. Anyone lucky enough to stay there walks the twenty or so steps to the shore amid a delightful array of butterflies and flowers. I did not have sphygmomanometer handy, but would bet my blood pressure lowered by significant degrees every time I took the garden path. There’s a hammock to inhabit at the beach’s edge, in case a body becomes too relaxed.

And then there’s the water. Our group had at least three reluctant ocean swimmers who were nonetheless coerced by the bathing pleasures of Treasure Beach. The sea is calm and clear, varying shades of blue-green, and a temperature neither too warm nor too cold. Jusssst right. It refreshes you from the 80-85 degree heat; I swam and was renewed by my dips into the ocean a minimum of 2 hours a day.

The rooms at Calabash House are large and artful, graced by themed wall mosaics created by the owner herself. I wanted to lurk through the house and photograph each one, but refrained. At some point I realized the journey to Treasure Beach was about being there, not simply photographing it, and subsequently decided this was a wonderful place to conduct a writing workshop, a place to be.

Anyone interested? We would build into the workshop package 7 nights of lodging, van transportation to and from the airport so you wouldn’t have to make that wild drive, 12-14 meals, a nightly literary salon for those who are so inclined, and a boat excursion up the Black River and to the Pelican Bar. (The bar is pictured in the photo, and is only boat accessible.)

We are thinking about Presidents Week 2011, Feb. 19-26, or an earlier week in January. If you relish the thought of a writing retreat in the warm embrace of the Caribbean, let’s talk.