Happy 2008!
January 1, 2008 | 11:43 am
I’m working on a novel right now that takes place in 1942, and recently accessed a stack of newspapers from June of that year. Each copy cost five cents, though one is invited to subscribe for a year for two dollars. A strawberry social is announced at the Unitarian church. A local boy is featured in a children’s book about a dog. Tourists are in town, though pedaling bicycles rather than riding in cars. The community center is being remodeled to provide brighter and cheerier places for servicemen to attend dances and other functions. And the dragger Liberty is towed in by the dragger Stella when she develops clutch problems out at sea.
Josephine Tey wrote that history is not in accounts, but in account-books. And she is so right. I’ve read dozens of books now about World War II, about 1942 in particular, about the homefront in New England; but these newspapers are what really make me feel I understand the time in which my character lived.
What does that have to do with opening your heart? Plenty. As the new year begins, it’s a good reminder to look behind the easily accessible information, behind the obvious, and see what’s really there. To not be contented with the “accounts” we receive from biased sources — about news, about individuals, about situations — and see what the people really experiencing them have to say.
It’s going to be a great year for opening the heart!
– Jeannette Cézanne
http://www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: Something completely different, Opening the heart, Learning something new — jcezanne
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