Bomb-Sniffer Dogs

A story on All Things Considered last Monday reported that U.S. soldiers are teaching Iraqi security forces how to use bomb-sniffer dogs. The NPR reporter interviewed Army Staff Sgt. Aaron Meier, an American adviser to the Iraqi National Canine Program.

“The greatest tool you have in your inventory when working with dogs is love. A lot of dogs, that’s what they work for, just your affection,” Meier says.

When I heard the story on the radio, I knew exactly what Sgt. Meier meant. I’ve seen – okay, felt—how affection motivates dogs to do a good job. Just like bomb-sniffer dogs, Seeing Eye dogs work for love, too.

Realizing this connection, I contacted Lisa, the blog moderator at The Bark to see if she’d be interested in having me write a guest post about the NPR story. She was!

Lisa is familiar with my writing — The Bark has published a few of my stories in their magazine. It’s a thrill to be connected with a magazine that also publishes stories by the likes of Ann Patchett and Augusten Burroughs. If you’ve never heard of The Bark, here’s a description of the four-color glossy magazine from their web site:

Taking the magazine’s slogan to heart—Dog Is My Co-Pilot—Bark became the first magazine to tap into the exploding phenomena of dog culture and lifestyle, focusing on the growing bond between individuals and their pet companions.

You can read my latest guest blog at The Bark’s site and link to other Bark stories there, too—if you like dogs, trust me, you’ll like The Bark.

Thanks to Frank

Colleen gave me the best audio book I've ever heard, "Angela's Ashes."

While I was reading Frank McCourt’s obituary in the New York Times, a quote about writing his memoir Angela’s Ashes caught my eye. Or, okay, my ear.

“I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but I had to write it anyway. I had to get it out of my system.”

I can relate. When I talk to groups about writing memoir, or when I’m teaching my memoir-writing class for Chicago’s senior citizens, I champion memoir-writing as “cheap therapy.” Writing about losing my sight helped me adjust to the dark. Searching for just the right word to explain my feelings when the retinal specialist told me the surgeries hadn’t worked, or describing in words what it felt like to struggle with simple things like brushing my teeth, well…writing about it helped me sort out what had happened, who I was when I could see, and what might become of me in the future.

The more I wrote, the more my writing improved. A college student was paid to read my rough draft on cassette, and after hearing the story from beginning to end I started thinking maybe, just maybe, someone would be interested in publishing it. My husband Mike and my sister Cheryl helped me send cover letters and manuscripts to agents and publishers. Rejection letters piled up quickly.

It's no "Angela's Ashes," but I'm still proud of it. And thankful for Frank McCourt.

The manuscript was too short. It needed more dialog. It was too long. It lacked professionalism. One letter said they might be interested if I was willing to rewrite the story “so your baby is born healthy.” Maybe these folks were the lucky ones who found James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces instead?! The most disappointing rejection came from an agent who said I had a compelling story, but I wasn’t famous enough to have a memoir published.

And then came Angela’s Ashes. The only way you might have heard of Frank McCourt before his book was published in 1996 was if you drank with him at the Lion’s Head in Greenwich Village or had been a student in one of his English classes at Stuyvesant High School.

“Angela’s Ashes,” published by Scribner in 1996, rose to the top of the best-seller lists and stayed there for more than two years, selling four million copies in hardback. The next year, it won the Pulitzer Prize for biography and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

My friend Colleen had been following my writing progress. She had read the rough draft of my memoir. Up to her eyeballs in student loans for medical school, she dug deep in her pockets to buy a high-priced cassette copy of Angela’s Ashes for me. Colleen and I met as waitresses in high school, and she loves to tell the story of me hiding a paperback copy of Great Expectations in the pile of unfolded cloth napkins at the waitress station. “You’d sneak back there between tables to read Charles Dickens!” she laughs. “I figured you must be really, really smart.” Well, I sure fooled her.

Truth is, though, I have always loved to read. When I could see, I liked putting my own voices to the characters I read about. And I used to love curling up on the couch with a book. Now narrators provide voices for the characters, and lying on a couch with headphones somehow isn’t as romantic as holding a hardcover in my hands.

Unless, that is, the narrator whispering in your ear happens to be Frank McCourt.

Angela’s Ashes, read by the author, remains the best audio book I have ever heard. There is no doubt in my mind that it was better to have listened to this book than to have read it in print. Irish phrases like “I didn’t give a fiddler’s fart” roll off his tongue, and on those nights when his father came home drunk and sang to the children, McCourt actually sings the songs himself. I hear the humor, the love and the forgiveness in his voice. Gorgeous.

Frank McCourt had retired from the New York City school system by the time his memoir came out in 1996, but trust me, he was still teaching. Frank McCourt taught me that listening can be better than reading. Not only that, but the success of Angela’s Ashes inspired me to keep writing. Keep revising. Keep editing. Keep trying. And sure enough, seven years after Angela’s Ashes hit the bookstands, University of Illinois Press published my memoir, Long Time, No See.

I am very sorry that Frank McCourt died. But, boy, am I glad he lived. Thank you, Frank.

Doing a Trade Show? Bring a Dog Along!

A suggestion to anyone trying to lure conventioneers to your trade show booth: Perch yourself at a table between a beautiful dog and a gaggle of enthusiastic women. People will rush over to meet you.

That’s how it worked at the American Library Association convention this week, anyway. My publisher, Blue Marlin Publications, generously donated 80 copies of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound for me to give away there, and I signed books for librarians who visited the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) booth on Sunday, and then again at the booth for the Illinois chapter of the Society of  Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) on Tuesday morning. Hanni’s pawprint was rubber-stamped into each copy, too, and a flyer titled ”Hanni and Beth Love to Travel” was slipped into each book. The flyers gave librarians details on what Hanni and I do during author visits to schools and libraries. Librarians flocked to see Hanni, and the women working both booths were so helpful that I didn’t have to lift a finger. Except to sign books, of course.

Our time at the ASPCA booth on Sunday was especially entertaining — so many people came up to tell the staff how much they love the ASPCA, how they weep when they see the ASPCA commercial with singer/songwriter Sarah McLachlan, how they got their own cat/dog/rabbit at a humane shelter, how they named that animal {FILL IN BLANK HERE} and how much they love {FILL IN BLANK HERE}. The staff member would listen appreciatively, then ask, would you like a signed book?” She’d point to our book cover, and then to me. Saving the best for last, the staff member would finally point down at Hanni, nodding off comfortably on the carpet. “We’re asking for a ten dollar donation for each book,” the staff member would say. “The donations will go to PAWS Chicago and Chicago’s Anti-Cruelty Society.” How could they resist?!

Signing books at the ASPCA booth.

In my one hour time slot at ASPCA, I signed, brailled and rubber-stamped between 15 and 25 books. My publisher was delighted – this meant that their book donation had resulted in somewhere between $150 and $250 going to those humane associations.

Our time slot at the Illinois SCBWI booth on Tuesday was two hours long, the very last two hours of the entire convention. I was afraid everyone there would be sick of books by then! But I was wrong – the time slot turned out to be perfect. There was such a vacuum at that time –no other authors signing, no sessions going on — that Hanni and I were a major draw. Librarians actually stood in line to meet Hanni and have their copies of Safe & Sound signed. Thank goodness my friend Colleen and the SCBWI-Illinois staff were there to help — I was busy the entire two hours, signing books for librarians from the Bronx, Atlanta, New Jersey, even Hawaii! I had time to talk with each librarian one on one, which is what I enjoy most about doing book signings: I love meeting new people. And from a book promoter’s point of view, being last on the docket might have been the best time slot of all. The encounters librarians had with me might have been the very last (and hopefully, the most memorable) one they had with an author during the entire ALA convention.

You Can’t Judge a Librarian by Her (or His) Cover

Hanni and I are signing copies of Safe & Sound at the American Library (ALA) convention in Chicago this week. I swim at a lap pool in a Chicago hotel, and when I went to swim laps today I figured my eavesdropping along the way would tell me that the librarians had arrived. No talk in the lobby about which bobbie pins were best at holding hair back in buns, though. And nothing said in the elevator about which rubber stamp vendor to go to for stamping books at the check-out line. The people in the elevators didn’t all sound old and mousy –- a lot of them were young, and hey –- some of them were men!

From the conversations I heard, there could easily be a technology conference in town this week. Or a business convention. An academic conference. An arts convention. Because, if you think of it, libraries can be all of these things – a place to go for technology, a place of business, somewhere to find books, videos, music. And the professionals who work at these places? They’re as diverse as the libraries, all dedicated to providing information for others.

This is the second ALA convention Hanni and I are privileged enough to attend. Last year my sisters Marilee and Cheryl joined me at the ALA convention in Anaheim. Every day we went to author presentations, visited the exhibit hall, signed up for contests, picked up free pencils, post-it notes, books and catalogs. We made sure Safe & Sound was displayed front and center at any booth that carried this award-winning book. We knew librarians would love our book if they noticed it among the thousands of others featured at the convention! Cheryl couldn’t make it to the convention this year, but Marilee is coming in from Orlando — she’ll be with Hanni and me at our signings, making sure the lines flow quickly and I remember to include author visit descriptions and bookmarks with each book. We’ll be signing at three different locations Sunday, Monday and Tuesday:

• Sunday, July 12, 11 am to noon at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) booth in McCormick Place.
• Monday, July 13, 5:30 to 7:30, ASPCA Henry Bergh Children’s Book Award Ceremony in the St. Gallen Room at the Swissotel on E. Wacker Drive in Chicago. This one is a cocktail reception, and it’s free and open to the public.
• Tuesday, July 14, 11 am to 1 pm, in booth #1626,the Illinois Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators booth, sandwiched right between Scholastic and Charlesbridge – they get lots of traffic, so it’s a great location!

For more details on these signings, check out the schedule on my Web site. Hope to see (okay, hear) you at the convention!

Sonia & Me: My Connection with Judge Sotomayor

Okay, okay, she’s a woman. And yeah, yeah, yeah, she’s Hispanic. But the one thing about Supreme Court Justice Nominee Sonia Sotomayor that inspires me most? She has Type 1 diabetes.

Millions of Americans have diabetes. Only a small fraction of us have Type 1, though. That’s the one that is also known as juvenile diabetes. I was diagnosed with Type 1 at age seven. Judge Sotomayor was diagnosed with Type 1 when she was eight.

The other form of the disease, Type 2 diabetes, is way more common than Type 1. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 95 percent of the people in America who have diabetes have Type 2. Type 2 is usually diagnosed in people over 50, often linked to their poor eating habits and weight gain. Type 1, which comprises only 5 percent to 10 percent of diabetes cases, has nothing to do with the person’s behavior. In Type 1, the immune system destroys the cells in the pancreas that make insulin. This breakdown usually happens in childhood. Researchers have not yet been able to figure out why.

Insulin carries carbohydrates–from bread, pasta, fruit, beans, milk, so many other foods–through the bloodstream to other parts of the body. Sometimes when people gain too much weight, their insulin can’t keep up. Doctors often prescribe exercise to people with Type 2 — a number of people I know have been “cured” of Type 2 by exercising and losing weight.

Type 1 is a whole different story. Judge Sotomayor and I could run, jump, swim, skip rope, lift weights and do cartwheels from sun-up to sundown (okay, truth is, I could never do a cartwheel, even when I was a kid. But you get the picture) and we could shrink down to a size 3 dress, but we’d still need to inject insulin. That’s because, no matter how much we weigh, those of us with Type 1 produce no insulin. None. Nada.

And so, Sonia and I — along with the other 3 million people in the United States who have juvenile diabetes — take insulin every time we eat. We test our blood several times a day to make sure glucose levels are within range. We balance meals, snacks, exercise and medication to prevent diabetes complications, which can include kidney failure, amputations, and…blindness.

Fast-acting insulins, insulin pumps and home blood monitors were not available when Judge Sotomayor and I were little girls. We took shots, avoided sugar, and tested our urine at home from time to time to get a guess at what our sugar levels were. We were advised not to have children, warned of the likelihood of complications and told we probably wouldn’t live very long.

No surprise that throughout my childhood I saw my juvenile diabetes as a weakness. In early adulthood, though, I decided to fight back. I studied the disease, bought one of those new-fangled home glucose monitoring machines, and with my husband Mike’s help and support we started testing my blood regularly. I became more vigilant about exercise, walking everywhere and swimming every other day and closely monitoring how much that exercise brought my blood sugars down. I figured out how much my favorite foods brought my blood sugars up, too, and now I inject that new fast-acting insulin six, seven sometimes eight times a day to balance the meals and snacks I like to eat. A new blood monitor at home talks — it calls my numbers out loud, so Mike doesn’t have to be around every time I want to check my sugar levels. Controlling my blood sugar keeps my weight at a steady level and gives me good overall health. Best of all – it makes me feel good.

Judge Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court gives me even more reason to think that our juvenile diabetes is not a weakness after all. It’s a strength. Living well with the disease teaches us perseverance, self-control, discipline and resourcefulness. Coordinating meals with insulin injections forces us to think ahead and make good decisions.

I fully expect Sonia Sotomayor will be raked over the coals during the upcoming Senate confirmation hearings — she’ll be asked about everything from her background in the projects to her personality to her previous rulings and probably, even her diabetes. Whether or not she’s confirmed, I’m confident she’ll endure the scrutiny just fine. This woman has lived with Type 1 diabetes for 46 years. She’s one tough bird.