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Text of the page (random words):
isiting the family just for the day and then i drove back to my little cottage in fairfield and never went out again not quite true of course like you i expect i stood in line outside the grocery store and took a walk as often as i could to save my sanity i wasn t too worried after all this wasn t going to last long i m there somewhere and then it became the year of zoom better than the year of doom which was the other alternative when i realized i would be stuck at home i held the writers meetings that i lead on zoom and started a new one at the request of our local library i was more or less obliged to say yes to that because my second novel is set in a similar library and i knew i d need their help in getting the details right what of my first novel you ask even if you don t i will tell you i signed with an agent in the nick of time she said she would retire after taking me on i tried not to take this personally but one wonders she sent the novel the bookshop of new beginnings around to various publishers and one came back with a couple of suggestions would i rewrite the whole thing with this and that in mind and she would take another look at it well yes i would so i joined a daily zoom meeting designed to keep me at my desk writing there would be witnesses if i didn t i got the rewrite done and have sent it off to another editor who i hope will only have minor tweaks to make before it goes back to the one who wanted to see it again i only hope editor number one remembers asking for it you never know i long for the days when like dorothy parker or nancy mitford you could walk into a publisher s office and slap a pile of badly typed papers on his desk he would then say this is a masterpiece leave it with me cut to next scene it s a book selling millions of copies alas no more it takes a village these days so i wrote a terrible draft of book 2 the library of lost causes while i waited to hear about book 1 still waiting and went back to the year of the flowers to keep myself moderately sane i started taking weekly trips to various gardens in connecticut see photos above although a resident here for over thirty years i haven t been much of a tourist new hampshire used to take up most of my weekends and vacations so i was amazed to find so many lovely places to visit nearby when the temperature drops i may have to switch to museums if they re still open if they aren t it will be on with the snowshoes and out i ll go oh and i m swimming twice a week all that sitting and writing isn t good for the bottom line bottom get it oh never mind i hope you have a good christmas roll on 2021 posted in christmas christmas letter family gardening writing tagged christmas flowers gardens highgate cemetery novels publishing writing christmas edition 2019 posted on december 21 2019 by gabi coatsworth 5 continue reading posted in christmas christmas letter family travel tagged amwriting anthologies california fiction india quebec rolling stones writing audio story best trip ever posted on august 30 2019 by gabi coatsworth 5 i used to help organize storytelling evenings and occasionally told a story myself here s one about my first trip to poland at the age of ten the cold war food shortages and a ride in a cement truck its less than 5 minutes long posted in family buying the tree posted on december 24 2018 by gabi coatsworth 7 here s a short extract from my memoir christmas always demanded a perfect conifer in his mind s eye jay my husband saw a tree that reached the ceiling but wasn t too wide because it would spread out as the decorations weighed the branches down and it must cling to its needles for dear life during christmases past finding such a tree entailed visits to farms to cut our own stopping at roadside stands or visiting expensive nurseries we bought a live tree for our second christmas together and planted it in the garden of the little house we lived in not long ago driving past our first home some thirty years later i saw it towering above the garage we built trees at spring ledge farm this year after we moved into the new hampshire house and began to spend christmas there every year we would stop in at spring ledge farm where the trees continue reading posted in christmas memoir tagged christmas christmas trees memoir christmas edition 2018 posted on december 22 2018 by gabi coatsworth 4 it s been an eventful year as always to begin with a few hours after i sent out last year s letter my son adam had a tia mini stroke followed by a couple of others and was barely out of hospital in time for the christmas festivities much drama followed in the new year with recurrences diagnosis of an unusual condition talk of brain surgery and the like all this concentrated my mind wonderfully as you can imagine they could have danced all night adam continued to improve so in july i wandered off to poland for my cousin stefek s wedding he and his bride are in their seventies and i could only watch in amazement as they danced for ten hours on and off mostly on through the day into the evening they met at a dance class and will obviously live forever if their current state of health is anything to go by it was a wonderful chance to catch up with other cousins and their children and to my amazement and delight stefek gave me the small perfume bottle shaped like a watering can that had contained violettes de toulouse my father had bought for his mother in france in 1939 it s mentioned in a post on my website if you re reading this online you can find it here i travelled on to krakow where i d booked a night in a hotel not realizing that it had formerly been a residence for priests visiting the city i was eleven years old when i and my twin sisters first visited poland my uncle a priest took us to see krakow where we lodged with some nuns but he stayed at this hostelry i wondered if i might be sleeping in the same room he d used but decided i probably wasn t i feel sure that even so many decades later i d have been able to detect a lingering trace of eau de cologne his favorite aftershave i took the train from there to zurich to meet up with my friend liz who normally lives in carmel california we spent a few days exploring the city and eating far too much chocolate at least i did i found out how much i enjoy traveling by rail as the train rocked me to sleep in my little bunk the memories of my first long distance trip london to warsaw many decades ago flooded back i squeezed in a three day writers conference at wesleyan university to get some feedback on my memoir which i did clean writing said a famous writer for the new yorker i d been hoping it might be a bit risqué but apparently not also got a crick in the neck from sleeping in my own luxurious dorm room on a dauntingly firm bed with the air conditioning blasting as if it were cooling the dairy section in the supermarket on the london eye only a few weeks later my daughter helenka and her two daughters traveled to london with me and suddenly i was longing for the air conditioning even if it came with a crick in the neck the temperatures were around 95f 35c during the day and 80f 27c at night and the flat i d rented hadn t managed to provide a single fan we found ourselves entering any establishment that looked air conditioned and taking boat trips along the thames to cool off at least helenka and the girls reconnected with all their cousins and helenka treated me to tea at the place where she was born yes that s right the former hospital a lovely regency building at hyde park corner is now an extremely luxurious hotel with an english afternoon tea so lavish that we didn t need to eat again that day back home in early august amanda invited me to join her and her family in a house she d rented on the shores of lake sunapee where we used to live it turned out to be delightful and we found time to attend the local barn playhouse for old time s sake but i needed to focus on writing i finished the memoir because i d made a bet with a writer friend and wasn t about to lose and got the manuscript edited by two editors one english and one american two countries divided by a common language as you know then i began researching publishers who might want it only to discover that the market for memoirs is in a slump so i m considering plan b a small independent publisher or plan c publishing it myself reading my story at a book signing i rashly agreed to help organize the first literary festival in the neighboring town of westport which turned out to be great fun and at the same time i was asked to contribute a short story on a time travel theme to an anthology when to now which was published on october 1 st i knew nothing about sci fi or speculative fiction so of course i said yes you can find it on amazon and throughout the year i kept running my monthly writers groups meeting other writers taking a class or two and generally soaking up the culture round here wishing you all a very happy christmas and an excellent 2019 posted in christmas letter family london travel tagged christmas letter family london poland switzerland writing an old friend posted on april 18 2018 by gabi coatsworth 3 one minute read i was giving him a quick hug the other day when i suddenly realized that my teddy qualifies for medicare his name is mish polish for teddy bear an old man he sits in the bedroom looking dapper in the tuxedo and bow tie i found for him in a toy bear shop in vermont twenty years ago he has no fur left to speak of and his eyes a choking hazard these days i m sure were replaced long ago my mother regularly sewed his arms continue reading posted in 1950 s anglo polish childhood family mothers tagged best loved toys childhood dolls clothes teddy bears hallmark saints posted on february 14 2018 by gabi coatsworth 2 2 minute read there s so much pressure on a person these days i was born with a victorian mind i think at least in some respects making a valentine from a lacy white paper doily a cut out red velvet heart continue reading posted in humor tagged admirers hallmark humor romance st valentine s day victorian times 2017 christmas edition posted on december 15 2017 by gabi coatsworth 10 i m sitting at my desk here in connecticut looking out at the icicles hanging from the living room roof as yesterday s thick layer of snow begins to disappear the sun is out and the local birds are feeling quite encouraged i can tell tahiti almost a year ago in january my friend liz and i were in tahiti and huahine bora bora rangiroa and moorea just the names make one feel warmer i understood why robert louis stevenson and rupert brooke two of my favorite authors were captivated the cloudless sky visible through my window today is nothing compared to those of tahiti in fact the place turned out to be a riot of color from the thirty eight shades of blue counted by a local photographer to the many tints of tahitian pearls which make white ones look as though they haven t really tried i managed to restrict my shopping to one or two single black ones imperfect in shape but striking just the same i could hear jay nagging me to buy more he would probably have come back with a freckled fistful of them delighted at the thought we d all have a string to wear as if to make the transition to connecticut easier winter wasn t making much of an effort this year so we had hardly any snow but i went down to florida in february to visit several old friends i made my royal progress from sarasota west coast to palm beach atlantic side and back to naples on the western shores studiously avoiding the topic of our new president except to agree with palm beach locals that the man and his entourage were an infernal nuisance whenever they visited mar a largo funny i thought he was more of a nuisance in washington my peripatetic friend liz called me in march to say a fellow traveler had dropped out of a projected stay in tuscany would i like to take her place i d never been so i said yes of course only to find about two days before departure that a twinge of muscle pain in my left leg was turning into sciatica ouch was putting it mildly i exchanged travel plans for a bottle of prescription pain killers and settled back in my only comfy chair by my new picture window to watch the garden slowly coming to life with spring bulbs and flowers i barely walked anywhere for about five months and decided if something like this could cramp my style without warning i would do the things i wanted to do while i was feeling fit which i can now thank heavens as though i d never had a problem i did manage to limp to my daughter helenka s graduation in may where she received her master s degree in education sitting under a big tent with rain and thunder pounding down outside i thought about the teenager who had rebelled against school and was now a highly qualified teacher in an extraordinary turn of luck other old friends asked me to join them in tuscany in september but i still wasn t confident i could walk further than a mile especially up the hills so i watched all the movies ever filmed there and admired the countryside from afar as autumn approached i decided to practice traveling again i started with a car trip to boston three hours each way to check in on the children and grandchildren who live up there i stayed with amanda co jay s daughter who organized a wonderful lunch with sons freddie and bertie and their girlfriends much hilarity ensued as we played a board game which depended on some skill with words i turned out to be hopeless at it progressing from driving to flying i crossed the country to carmel where the smell of smoke hung in the air from the forests burning 200 miles further north there had been a similar fire as i drove across florida in february it seemed the whole country was going up in flames still is nothing to do with climate change of course which officially doesn t exist my final trip was to a very sparkly london in late november with my son adam my apologies to those of you i didn t manage to see but this was adam s vacation mainly since he hadn t been for twenty years or so and wanted to revisit his roots being virtually immobilized for so many months gave me time to write and i ve been adding memoir pieces to my blog you can find them on the right my cousin john who lives in south africa has become my de facto editor this is terrific because not only is he an author himself but he remembers some of the people in my stories these are largely about my childhood that don t fit into my longer book about jay and me which has far too many pages so i m working on making it shorter i m encouraged by the fact that some memoirists i ve talked to have taken ten years to publish theirs and i ve resolved mine won t take that long i started a monthly group for writers to come and read something they ve written and am still running the one i ve had for a few years now the one where i promise those who come that we don t actually writ...