Lucinda Fleeson's Blog
November 27, 2009
Fleeson on NPR Thanksgiving
NPR aired an essay I read, on its book feature, YOU MUST READ THIS.
I'm thrilled -- I'm an NPR groupie.
Here's a link to the podcast. . .and the text:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/st...
The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
By Henry Beston
Paperback, 256 pages
Holt Paperbacks
List price: $15
November 26, 2009
Essay by Lucinda Fleeson
On a recent trip to Cape Cod, I bundled up against the wind and wandered off the path along sand dunes. Bits of crimson, like rubies, lay at my feet among scrub forests and shallow marshes. Cranberries. Everywhere! Millions of them, lying low, snuggling into shrubs. I gathered enough for a Thanksgiving sauce. After all, here, perhaps on this very spot, the first pilgrims came ashore on Nov. 21, 1620. They took a quick look around at the frigid land bereft of any other edibles, and left after only a couple of weeks. Eventually they settled in Plymouth.
New England author Henry Beston helped me see the glory of a Cape winter in all its desolation and rawness. I had rented an old farmhouse in Truro for a month's writing retreat and picked up a bunch of library books. I almost dismissed Beston's The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod. At first I thought it was just another chronicle of escape to the countryside. But Beston's writing stirs our primal need for nature at its most wild and pure. He reminds us that we still live on an untamed planet.
Beston had built a weekend retreat — a cabin, really — on Coast Guard Beach. He arrived in September, planning to stay only two weeks. But he found himself lingering on, so possessed by the "beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea" that he could not leave. For a year, he recorded his observations, writing at a kitchen table.
His words cast a spell over me. It was as if I, too, could see the skunk's tiny paw prints on a solitary November morning. Or the young deer marooned in icy waters. I cheered when three coast guards rescued her. The author was not only teaching me how to write about nature, but also showing me how to think about our estrangement from it. He wrote: "The world today is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things."
Courtesy of Lucinda Fleeson
Lucinda Fleeson is the author of Waking Up In Eden: In Search Of An Impassioned Life On An Imperiled Island.
Here's my favorite passage, though: "Nature is part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery, man ceases to be man. When the Pleiades and the wind in the grass are no longer a part of the human spirit, a part of very flesh and bone, man becomes a cosmic outlaw."
We can't all stay on the beach through the bleakness and grandeur of winter. Yet we yearn for a connection with the elements — and an author who can make us see and feel them.
You must read this: Henry Beston's The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod.
Lucinda Fleeson's book, Waking Up In Eden: In Search Of An Impassioned Life On An Imperiled Island recounts her two years working in a botanical garden on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai. She now oversees a program for international journalists and teaches at the University of Maryland's Merrill College of Journalism.
I'm thrilled -- I'm an NPR groupie.
Here's a link to the podcast. . .and the text:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/st...
The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
By Henry Beston
Paperback, 256 pages
Holt Paperbacks
List price: $15
November 26, 2009
Essay by Lucinda Fleeson
On a recent trip to Cape Cod, I bundled up against the wind and wandered off the path along sand dunes. Bits of crimson, like rubies, lay at my feet among scrub forests and shallow marshes. Cranberries. Everywhere! Millions of them, lying low, snuggling into shrubs. I gathered enough for a Thanksgiving sauce. After all, here, perhaps on this very spot, the first pilgrims came ashore on Nov. 21, 1620. They took a quick look around at the frigid land bereft of any other edibles, and left after only a couple of weeks. Eventually they settled in Plymouth.
New England author Henry Beston helped me see the glory of a Cape winter in all its desolation and rawness. I had rented an old farmhouse in Truro for a month's writing retreat and picked up a bunch of library books. I almost dismissed Beston's The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod. At first I thought it was just another chronicle of escape to the countryside. But Beston's writing stirs our primal need for nature at its most wild and pure. He reminds us that we still live on an untamed planet.
Beston had built a weekend retreat — a cabin, really — on Coast Guard Beach. He arrived in September, planning to stay only two weeks. But he found himself lingering on, so possessed by the "beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea" that he could not leave. For a year, he recorded his observations, writing at a kitchen table.
His words cast a spell over me. It was as if I, too, could see the skunk's tiny paw prints on a solitary November morning. Or the young deer marooned in icy waters. I cheered when three coast guards rescued her. The author was not only teaching me how to write about nature, but also showing me how to think about our estrangement from it. He wrote: "The world today is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things."
Courtesy of Lucinda Fleeson
Lucinda Fleeson is the author of Waking Up In Eden: In Search Of An Impassioned Life On An Imperiled Island.
Here's my favorite passage, though: "Nature is part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery, man ceases to be man. When the Pleiades and the wind in the grass are no longer a part of the human spirit, a part of very flesh and bone, man becomes a cosmic outlaw."
We can't all stay on the beach through the bleakness and grandeur of winter. Yet we yearn for a connection with the elements — and an author who can make us see and feel them.
You must read this: Henry Beston's The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod.
Lucinda Fleeson's book, Waking Up In Eden: In Search Of An Impassioned Life On An Imperiled Island recounts her two years working in a botanical garden on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai. She now oversees a program for international journalists and teaches at the University of Maryland's Merrill College of Journalism.
July 30, 2009
ForeWord Review
Got a lovely review from the distinguished literary review, ForeWord Magazine:
"True adventures come without safety nets," writes award-winning journalist Lucinda Fleeson as she trades her staid East coast life for a Hawaiian adventure. Fleeson moves to Kauai to serve as fundraiser for the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG), a 100-acre parcel so rich in botanical treasures it would make any gardeners heart dance. Here are rare tropical plants, cliffs of molten lava, and spectacular beaches which Fleeson explores on foot, on horseback, and by racing canoe. Surely this is paradise!
But paradise has its poisons, too, as Fleeson soon learns. Upon her arrival, the NTBG staff does not shower Lucinda with Hawaiian leis; instead, they give her a vermin-infested shack and a broken-down car. She writes: "I rushed pell-mell into this momentous change and I am stuck with it, alone in the jungle, marooned in a filthy and dilapidated house. I am overwhelmed with loneliness and the feeling of having made bad choices in life."
She confronts board members and donors who treat her with disdain and academics whose egos are so inflated they would rather see endangered species perish than capitulate to a rival. She is threatened by island families still engaging in ancient feuds. Nonetheless, under the visionary leadership of director William Klein, NTBG begins to flourish.
As the garden recovers, the author heals from old wounds and discovers fresh passions. Her newfound zest for life proves that "gardens are for growing people," too.
Fleeson describes her adventures with a journalists even hand, but she does not shy away from controversy. When writing about the tumultuous development of the garden, she tells tales and names names. Thus, Waking Up in Eden is more than simply memoir or adventure tale. Fleesons account is both a refresher course in history, sociology, and anthropology, and a wake-up call to those who care about conserving the earths endangered flora and fauna. Included are commentaries on topics as diverse as Hawaii itself: Darwins theory of evolution; the bombing of Pearl Harbor; the formation of archipelagos; fossils remains from the Kawai sinkhole; Hawaiian culinary history; the influential, gay Allertons of Chicago; and wild, celebrity-filled parties held at the Allerton Gardens on Kawai.
Waking Up in Eden is a book for the Renaissance person who enjoys savoring an experience, even vicariously, and the gardener who revels in cultivating beauty.
"True adventures come without safety nets," writes award-winning journalist Lucinda Fleeson as she trades her staid East coast life for a Hawaiian adventure. Fleeson moves to Kauai to serve as fundraiser for the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG), a 100-acre parcel so rich in botanical treasures it would make any gardeners heart dance. Here are rare tropical plants, cliffs of molten lava, and spectacular beaches which Fleeson explores on foot, on horseback, and by racing canoe. Surely this is paradise!
But paradise has its poisons, too, as Fleeson soon learns. Upon her arrival, the NTBG staff does not shower Lucinda with Hawaiian leis; instead, they give her a vermin-infested shack and a broken-down car. She writes: "I rushed pell-mell into this momentous change and I am stuck with it, alone in the jungle, marooned in a filthy and dilapidated house. I am overwhelmed with loneliness and the feeling of having made bad choices in life."
She confronts board members and donors who treat her with disdain and academics whose egos are so inflated they would rather see endangered species perish than capitulate to a rival. She is threatened by island families still engaging in ancient feuds. Nonetheless, under the visionary leadership of director William Klein, NTBG begins to flourish.
As the garden recovers, the author heals from old wounds and discovers fresh passions. Her newfound zest for life proves that "gardens are for growing people," too.
Fleeson describes her adventures with a journalists even hand, but she does not shy away from controversy. When writing about the tumultuous development of the garden, she tells tales and names names. Thus, Waking Up in Eden is more than simply memoir or adventure tale. Fleesons account is both a refresher course in history, sociology, and anthropology, and a wake-up call to those who care about conserving the earths endangered flora and fauna. Included are commentaries on topics as diverse as Hawaii itself: Darwins theory of evolution; the bombing of Pearl Harbor; the formation of archipelagos; fossils remains from the Kawai sinkhole; Hawaiian culinary history; the influential, gay Allertons of Chicago; and wild, celebrity-filled parties held at the Allerton Gardens on Kawai.
Waking Up in Eden is a book for the Renaissance person who enjoys savoring an experience, even vicariously, and the gardener who revels in cultivating beauty.
July 24, 2009
Revisiting Huckleberry Finn
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was a reading assignment for freshman English, and I even wrote a paper on it, I think, but I don't remember a word. So when I saw the it on the library audio-book shelf, I picked it out for a recent long car trip.
Ernest Hemingway supposedly said that all American literature descends from Huckleberry Finn. And I also read that right after the Civil War, Mark Twain had set out to write about slavery, and this was his polemic, cleverly disguised as an adventure tale.
I have fallen in love with the book -- the descriptions, the use of dialogue (altho certainly not PC for the ol' aunt Jemina talk for ol' Jim).
A great rediscovery.
Ernest Hemingway supposedly said that all American literature descends from Huckleberry Finn. And I also read that right after the Civil War, Mark Twain had set out to write about slavery, and this was his polemic, cleverly disguised as an adventure tale.
I have fallen in love with the book -- the descriptions, the use of dialogue (altho certainly not PC for the ol' aunt Jemina talk for ol' Jim).
A great rediscovery.
