1 Year, 100 Pounds: A Report Card of Sorts

Me at the Beginning: Hair washed,
earrings in place and a pan-fried disaster

This time, a year ago, I weighed 285. I'm not whining about this, and I'm certainly not bragging; I'm just stating a fact.  A year ago my extra weight brought my life crashing to a halt.  This seems like a good time to take stock.

If you had asked me, back then, if I could lose 100 pounds in a year, I would have cried and told you "No." It takes energy to burn extra pounds off, and I didn't have the "oomph" to clean my house or keep up at work, much less exercise. My house and yard needed cleaning and maintenance, my in-box was 7 inches thick, and  I was in the middle of the disaster area, exhausted and overwhelmed. Get my life and my world back on track?  I wasn't sure how to begin!

That's me on the left at 30 pounds down.
I can tell even if you can't!

I couldn't have made it through those first few months without the help of Weight Watchers.  They didn't judge me, they taught me to consider what I ate, and they rejoiced over every ounce I dropped.  They're still there today, full of helpful hints and encouragement and I look forward to seeing "my gals" at every meeting.  My writing teacher, Javacia, says we each need to find "our tribe" and when we do, love them hard.  Weight Watchers is my tribe, and I love Y'all.  You keep me focused.

Fitbit was my sister's idea, just what you'd expect from an athletic, skinny woman.  (Actually, she's perfect, but don't tell her I said so!)  Fitbit gets me up and keeps me going, always looking out for ways to cram in more activity.  I cleaned my closets to increased my Fitbit steps.  I sanded and repainted my porch for the same reason.  Each activity improved my health and my world, and because Fitbit always zeroes out at midnight, I can never rest on my laurels.  Between Fitbit and WeightWatchers, I dropped the first 60 pounds.  By then, I was ready for bigger measures.

1-month post surgery:
2 chins still but
now a hint of a waist.

I don't think weight-loss surgery is for everyone, but it's been a wonder for me.  Over the years, I had overeaten so much, my stomach had stretched, and I never felt full, even though I chased food like it was going out of style.  Dr. Cameron Askew's gastric sleeve operation gives me a new lease on life, especially whenever we eat out.  Three bites and then I start getting full; five bites and I'm done.  I still have the curse of the emotional eater; the mindless drive to graze when I'm unhappy, but the surgery has done its work.  I've dropped enough pounds to tackle bigger projects like replanting the garden and cutting back the trees that grew up while my weight tied me down.

1 year later

Now, none of this has been "easy" weight loss so far, and the journey is far from done.  I can tell you what it's like to lose 30 pounds, walk into a store and find nothing large enough to fit me; about waking up stiff and sore from yesterday's workout to find the scale numbers went up, not down. I've outlasted at least two weight-loss plateaus. And it turns out I've got an ungodly allergy to poison oak. But on Tuesday, the reading on the scale was 184.5. One hundred pounds in a year.  All of the sudden, I wasn't tired or itchy.

I still have fifty pounds to drop, bald spots on my lawn, and a second career that has yet to take off.  But I'd be lying if I said life isn't better or I'm not a healthier or happier person. And, after everything's been said and done, I'm thrilled about what can change in a year.

The Mystery of the Mystery Lady

Sorry if you've missed updates of this blog for the past week or two.  The combination of seasonal affective depression, a back injury and poison oak knocked me out for a bit.  Hope you enjoy the return!

Civilization's changed a lot in the last hundred years. (That's an understatement, wouldn't you say?) We've gone from flimsy, barely airborne planes to walking on the moon and probes exploring the solar system; wooden wall phones for the well-to-do to computer smartphones attached to practically everyone; tiny circles of close friends and family to global communities.  With all of that change, a lot of formerly private life have become increasingly public.  I'm not sure if Elizabeth MacKintosh would have liked the world today.  As a mystery writer, she was better than average, but the best enigma she ever created was her life.

You say you've never heard of Elizabeth MacKintosh?  Tell you the truth, I hadn't much either until I ran into J. M Henderson's Josephine Tey: A Life.  And that is the name mystery lovers recognize.  Josephine Tey, the creator of the Alan Grant mysteries and Brat Farrar.  The lady who entertained us by breaking the rules laid out by other mystery writers.  The author who included insights into girls colleges and "the life theatrical" in some of her books but never explained how she got the knowledge.  The answer is, they came from other, undisclosed parts of her life.

As Elizabeth MacKintosh, she trained at a girl's college and taught in England until her mother's death and her sisters' marriages returned her to Scotland.  To Inverness, she remained ever after Miss MacKintosh, her father's housekeeper and one of those women who lost a sweetheart in "The War."  Under this cover, Elizabeth began to publish under the name Gordon Daviot: first stories, then plays.

In Miss Pym Disposes, the title character has accidentally become a best-selling authoress.  Gordon Daviot's hit play, Richard of Bordeaux brought the same level of success and consternation to its author.  The money from it paid for the occasional bit independence from Scotland and her father's home, but now Gordon Daviot was supposed to be a writer of historical plays.  So Gordon continued to write for the stage, a dozen plays over the next quarter century.  And with a new pseudonym, Josephine Tey began to publish well-known mysteries at the same time.

How compartmentalized did Elizabeth MacKintosh's life get?  During the last year of her life, she was terribly ill but never released the news. Her death came as a shock to the celebrated actors who didn't know "Gordon" was sick, and the Josephine Tey fans who (at least) got one more "Alan Grant" story: The Singing Sands, found in her papers and published posthumously.

Henderson's biography helps flesh out some of the details hinted at in her subject's work and the research adds some sorely needed context, but in the end, we only learn what Miss MacKintosh experienced during her life, not what she thought or how she felt about it.  Those impressions were not available to the public under any name.  They remain the private property of Elizabeth MacKintosh  / Gordon Daviot  / Josephine Tey.  And maybe, that's as it should be.

Murder Amongst the Scribblers

One of the things fiction readers love is something Stephen King described as "pulling aside the curtain".  Grisham fans get a peek at the lives of lawyers because that's the world their author had known before he picked up a pen.  Val McDermid and Patricia Cornwell delight devotees with their stories of police and forensic detection because, as former crime journalists, they knew the turf.  But it takes someone like Josephine Tey to pull aside the curtain on that most nefarious tribe - the writers - and give readers an eyeball into the world of professional scribblers.  To Love and Be Wise may be sixty-seven years old but when it comes to describing the workings of a writer's community, this story feels like a vat of fresh, hot, gossip.

The plot is simple: Leslie Searle, an American photographer, has gone missing.  Since Leslie Searle is a celebrated photographer, no one is surprised he was staying at Salcott St. Mary, an English-Village-turned-Artist-Colony, when he disappeared. What is striking is how this unassuming, interesting, attractive young man managed to upset every creative mind within its borders!

It isn't enough for Toby Tullis, that imperious and pompous playwright, that the young and attractive Mr. Searle isn't familiar with his (Toby's) work or his house. Even worse, Searle's not impressed when they were mentioned! Silas Weekly, that third-rate imitator of D. H. Lawrence, might loathe Searle on principle (Weekly hates anything not ugly or covered in muck) and Serge Ratoff might despise him as a "middle-west Lucifer" but even harmless, sweet, romance writer, Lavinia Fitch feels disturbed by Leslie Searle's presence. In the middle of dictating her latest best-selling Harlequin story (Think the late Barbara Cartland) Lavinia wonders if Searle isn't perhaps, a little mad. Still, Walter Whitmore is the writer with the "Most Likely Suspect" award. That chronicler of rural English life was the last person actually seen with Searle, seen having an argument with the photographer. Now Searle is missing, everyone has a motive, and Scotland Yard is moving in.

Alan Grant, Josephine Tey's fictional detective, travels to this village that's a British cross between Martha's Vinyard and Yaddo to figure out which writer put the poison pen to Searle.  We follow Grant through his interviews and get a "behind-the-scenes" gander at the spots where writers work or malinger. It doesn't matter that these authors are fictional characters themselves.  There's a ring of truth in all of their scenes.

There should be.  When Josephine Tey published To Love and Be Wise, she'd been a successful author and playwright for more than two decades.  She knew the literary and theatrical worlds as well as the major players in them.  And, by all accounts, she liked to keep them at a distance.  Art, as work, needs to be taken seriously but it's hard to look at some artists for long without laughing. Without ever giving the game away, or leaving herself open to libel, Tey makes it clear she understands this world and how silly its inhabitants can be.

So, if you are in the late dregs of winter and longing for warmth and sunlight, imagine yourself in Salcott St Mary.  Come watch the artists at play. You'll have fun. Just stay away from the river, especially if you've irritated one of the locals. We wouldn't want you to disappear.

The Goal Skirt - A Weight Loss Story

I fell in love with it the first time I saw it.

My faux suede
skirt circa 2008

There, in the 2008 autumn catalog from Coldwater Creek, was the kind of skirt I've dreamed of most of my life.  Long. Full. So Western in style it could have been used on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. (Okay, so my fashion sense is cuckoo.) Draped on the model with a Squash blossom necklace, it was the essential Southwestern Dream, or so I thought. And, of course, it looked great in the picture. Even better, although the skirt looked and felt like suede, it was made of washable material.  Even though it cost an outrageous amount, I ached to have it.

That was the year I gave up carbohydrates and lost about 40 pounds.  I intended to lose more but as a partial reward, I bought myself the skirt and for the next few years, measured my self-worth by it.  If the skirt fits me comfortably, I am a terrific human being.  If I can, at least, manage to zip it, my overeating isn't that bad.  If I have to wear a sweater over the waistband to cover an inch of unzipped zipper, I need to lose weight.  Anything more and I was the worst person on earth.  For five years the skirt stayed in my closet while I stayed the worst person on earth.

So, last March, one of my hopeless hopes was that I'd wear the faux suede skirt again.  I really didn't believe it would happen, but my weight was so out of control, I knew I had to try something.  And I knew if I wanted to succeed, I had to have a tangible goal.  So I remembered the skirt.

Occasionally I would pull it out in the closet to measure my weight loss success.  In June, the skirt didn't come close to closing close but at least I got the zipper more than half way up.  By September, I could almost get the zip to stay closed but the waistband cut me in half. I kept at it, and in November the stars aligned, and, after years, I was back in the skirt.

Me and Goal Skirt at our last outing. 

I wore that darn skirt wherever I could, convinced I was the hottest thing in shoe leather.  I didn't care that it weighed a ton or was miles out of date.  By January, I didn't even care that the skirt no longer set squarely at my waist.  I cinched the skirt in with an elastic belt and kept on going to town.

Then this month I got a chance to see some photographs of a recent event where I'd worn "the skirt".  Know what I saw?  There I was, unconsciously clutching the buckle of the elastic belt, making sure it kept the skirt in place.  The extra fabric, bunched up under the belt, puckered out over my rear, making it look even larger.  The photos made clear what I didn't want to see: - my skirt didn't fit again. This time, it was too big for me. I either had to stop losing weight or I had to find a new goal.

So, last Thursday, I showed the skirt off one more time, to the wonderful folks in my weight-loss support group.  I told them the story.  And I explained why it was important for "Goal Skirt" to have a new home.  Sure enough, one of the members there saw what I saw years ago and she owns Goal Skirt now.  I think they'll look good together.

I never really understood, until then, the meaning of that old phrase, "If you love something, set it free." Goal Skirt is free to go on to a new life now.  And, happily, so am I.

The Best Rejection I've Ever Received

I guess it's no secret I've finished writing a book.  Well, up till last week, I thought it was finished. After 5 years of slaving away on paragraphs and polishing each sentence, I thought The Plucky Orflings was complete.  I liked it, my sister liked it, and my friends loved it, so I figured it was just a matter of time until some agent agreed.  Well, if so, that time isn't now.

Now, I suspect most agents are decent people.  They work incredibly hard in a difficult industry that gets more challenging by the day.  And, so far, not one of those that turned me down has said the dreaded words, "You can't write."  But none of them are interested in representing my book.  They say, it's "not right for us" or "not what we're looking for" and then they wish me well finding somebody else.  Since I only write to agents who work in the genre my story falls within (Historical Fiction for Middle-Grade readers), I had no idea why my book was wrong.  It's like being told you aren't some guy's type when you resemble his last three girlfriends.  Okay, what am I doing wrong?

Last month, my rejected novel moved one baby step forward. An agent I had written to asked to see more of the manuscript. (If you don't know, agents specify how much of your work they want to read, and you'd better give them just what they're looking for if you want their attention.)  After jumping up and down for fifteen minutes, I pulled up the material she requested, re-read and polished it for the umpteenth time and sent it off, fingers crossed through the email. 

Eight days later, she turned me down.

But this rejection letter was different from the rest.  Instead of the usual "thanks, but no thanks," this agent told me what problems she saw.  How the book focused on a supporting character for too much time before the main players took the stage.  How I built expectations on the first few pages that weren't supported later on. That the main conflict wasn't all that conflicted.  As many times as I've read these pages, I didn't see all this.  But I looked again and what the agent said is true.

So, I'm going back to the drawing board, to re-write the darn story again and this time I've got some help. Even if I end up publishing The Plucky Orflings without an agent, it will still be a better book than it is right now.  And it will be better because an agent that turned me down.  I may not like rejection letters but this one feels pretty darn good.

Confessions of a Kitchen Clutter Monkey

I used to feel so sorry for the people on that A&E show, Hoarders .  There they were, self-imprisoned victims, overwhelmed by their obsessions with trash.  Most of them knew they were sick but, because of their illness, couldn't find the way to heal themselves. I'd sit in my mostly tidy living room and pity these folks, sure I didn't have a problem like theirs.  Well, I do and it's appeared in a very odd place.  I seem to be a kitchen clutter monkey.

This all started last Thursday when the leader of my weight-loss group talked about how "stuff" fills up our kitchen pantries.  Along with the staples we use on an everyday basis, people often store groceries they never use.  As everyone in the meeting began nodding, I got an idea. "Hey, let's all clean out our pantries and bring the extras to the next meeting so we can donate it to a food bank!"  Everyone agreed so I had to clean out my own shelves.  I wasn't prepared for what I found!

What was hiding in the pantry

Found: flea collar for the dog
that passed away more
than 15 years ago!

This is what came from my two-tier, under-cabinet, Lazy Susan pantry.  Yes, all of that was stacked on two tiers.  Frankly, with all that weight, the Lazy Susan had trouble spinning.  And, despite that cornucopia of cans, we rarely found what we wanted in that cupboard. So, Rog or I would run back to the market and end up buying more stuff.  Well, as of today, that practice was ending.  I was going to get us back to the items we wanted and needed!

The first step in sorting out this mess was to take out all of the unhealthy out-of-date food which, in itself, was an unpleasant surprise.  Some of these were souvenirs of an earlier time when we were eating some dish regularly. Others, like the sugar-free, Irish-Cream syrup that didn't taste like Irish Creme,  were food experiments that failed.  A few items fell into the "What was I thinking?" category.  Turnip greens? Watermelon Jello? Organic Grits? Rutabagas? Roger and I would never eat these unless we faced nuclear winter, so how did they end up in our pantry? (Seriously, who carried Rutabagas into my house?) As it is, some of them have been in this pantry almost as long as we've lived here. Well, they're going now!

Food too old to eat or share - I hate this kind of waste!

Once the bad choices and the oldy-moldy-goldy cans were sequestered, it was time to sort for the food bank's benefit.  Now, I don't want to sound selfish but I do need to be practical.  Giving away Roger's favorite pears may delight some hungry people but it won't fix my pantry space problem because Rog will just go get more pears.  So, what went to the food bank? The collard greens, the wax beans, the extra cans of chicken soup. (no one needs that much chicken soup!) The cake and muffin mixes I'm never going to bake; the unopened bottles of salad dressing.  My food bank donations ended up filling a laundry hamper.

Charlie has to get in front of the hamper of food-bank donations.

Of course, the cupboard clean-out held some good surprises as well.  An unopened box of one of my favorite teas had hidden itself in the cabinet. Behind the remaindered pumpkin, I found a jar of butternut squash soup.  These went back with the "keeper" groceries and would you believe the result?

Finally, a Lazy Susan that spins and shows me what we have at a glance!  It took a couple of hours and more cleaning than I'd like to admit but my pantry is, once again, tidy. So, I may be a Kitchen Clutter Monkey but I'm in recovery right now. And I'm no longer eligible to star in my own episode of "Hoarders."

A Tale of Two Sisters

Parents don't tell you (even though they should) that it can be hard to grow up with a sister  It means there's there's always someone else around, and, whether you're older or younger, you two are always in each other's shadows. When the two of you are small, sisters are in-house competition for any family attention and favor. And, because a sister gets to know you well, she can figure out every last thing that annoys you. This is knowledge she uses religiously.  If someone meets your sister first, they may expect you to be a lot like her.  You're not.  In spite of, or maybe because of their physical proximity, sisters can grow up only seeing how they're different, believing they have nothing in common except relatives and DNA.  

Ask June Elbus in Tell the Wolves I'm Home how hard it is to have a sister in the house. At one point, Greta seemed like both a sibling and a friend, but now they fight all the time.  They can't help it; they're such different people. Greta is self-assured, in high school and a gifted actress.  June's still in Junior High and shy.  There's a lot of emotional distance between them and, square in the middle, is their Uncle Finn.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home is more than a story of sisters, it's a tale of the recent past. Finn, as the family artist and June's Godfather, is bent on painting a portrait of his nieces. June loves spending time with him while Greta wants to stay away.  After all, Uncle Finn is sick and everyone's worried about the modern plague. Everyone is terrified of catching the HIV virus and the death sentence that comes with it, AIDS. Uncle Finn is dying from AIDS.  

June must sort through the unspoken lies and half-truths she and her sister were told to sort out why Finn's picture is so important to the world.  Why her mother says Finn's death is murder. Why a sibling can be so cruel and still understand you better than anyone in the world.

Family and love are works of delicate mystery, as complex and layered as a Bach fugue or modern art. They're not easy to understand or dismiss.  But they are also the glue that can hold us together when everything else is falling apart. So it can be hard growing up with a sibling. It's even harder to lose one. Tell the Wolves I'm Home shows why family is important, even at the worst of times.

Much Ado About Much Ado

Posts occurring on Valentine's Day are practically obligated to have a romantic theme.  Well, this is as close as I'm likely to get: the Shakespearean play that made me fall in love with love.

Everyone remembers their first, I mean the first production of a Shakespearean play.  It tends to dominate their world view and every play by the Bard they see after that.  Present a newbie with the star-crossed lovers in Romeo and Juliet, and you'll find you've created a romantic; force another to audit a poor reading of Julius Caesar, and they'll loathe plays and politics for the rest of their days.  Like so many others, the first Shakespearean play I ever watched is still my favorite today.  It gave me the way I like to look at romance.  Tragic lovers can entertain somebody else, I favor the wit and laughter of Much Ado About Nothing.

What makes this lighthearted romp so different from Shakespeare's other comedies isn't the "supposed" leading couple of the piece (Claudio and Hero) but his comedic characters, Benedick and Beatrice.  From one perspective these potential partners have everything in common: they're both smart, funny, astonishingly verbal, unromantic, sarcastic and brave.  Their similarities give them one other trait to share: they hate each other.  These two began one-upping and upstaging each other long before the story begins, so the first time the audience sees them together is just a fresh outbreak of hostilities.  They don't just steal every scene, they up and run away with the play. 

What's great about Benedict and Beatrice is that neither ever gives an inch, even after they've fallen for each other.  Both of them are equally determined to have the last word and love makes neither one soft in the head.  Every smart couple, love-at-first-fight romcom owes a debt to these two.  I swear, they taught Tracy and Hepburn how to spar.

 2011 production of the play starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate.

 (courtesy of Digital Theatre.com) 

There are two issues often found in productions of this play, both good and bad. First, the setting. For years, theatrical companies have enjoyed adding dimensions to Much Ado by giving it an anachronistic setting.  In the 70's, Joseph Papp's Edwardian Era themed production turned the law officers into Keystone Cops (hysterical, by the way). Kenneth Branagh gave us a film adaptation some 20 years later with 18th-century costumes and a villa, and Joss Whedon filmed a modern-dress version a few years ago that was shot in his own house. That's the fun bit.  The challenge is finding actors with matching comedic and Shakespearean skills to play Benedick and Beatrice.  This comedy only works if the audience likes and understands both characters as equals.  If either actor is too much of a ham or unable to handle the Elizabethan text, the equation gets out of balance.  But when both actors can meet the demands of the text, the result is pure champagne: bubbly, frothy, intoxicating fun.

So, if you are tired of the moody and lovestruck Heathcliffs and Edward Cullens; if you can't stand one more sweet, victimized, Juliet; if you've worn out your DVD of Pride and Prejudice and a neighbor has your copy of The Thin Man, re-read or watch a good production of Much Ado.  It's a Valentine for the mind and the heart.

Lost in the Fog of a Story

It's been foggy as all get out this week. I don't mean one of dark, pea-soup fogs that blacken city centers for days, but a daily, thick, white, winter mist that layers everything outdoors in microscopic droplets and obscures any object more than 30 feet away. Fogs that makes the world seem even colder than it is. We're talking weather an English Teacher can use to lecture about creating "atmosphere."

Well, fog works in stories, doesn't it? The very nature of the phenomena creates confusion, where good things and bad are hidden, and individuals are isolated. Writers have been using fog as set-dressing, plot-device, and symbols for longer than I care to think about. Since we're stuck inside until the sun breaks through, why not take a look one or two stories that turned these earth-bound clouds into art?

Fog and England have been associated for so long, it's practically become a cliche. Yet, if you are talking about bright, white, fog, forget about the stories of London. The soot and sulfur-filled clouds that permeate Bleak House and every Ripper tale ever written are peculiar to the city. Instead, look toward the southern coast for one of the greatest Gothic stories ever penned: Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles. Here, fog is used as a plot device to heighten suspense and terror during the story's climax. Holmes and Watson are running through the Great Grimpen Mire (what a name!) to catch the villain and foil his plot. The thick fog slows down our rescuers and blinds them to the approach of the terrible Hound until the last second. But the fog is even-handed in its justice.Just as it keeps our heroes from seeing where danger is, it hides the escape route from the criminal of this piece. Unable to find his safety markers in the fog, our bad guy gets lost in the quagmire of a peat bog and comes (we assume) to a wet, miserable end. However, the fog and bog add a note of mystery. Because the criminal's body is never found, Conan Doyle left open the possibility open for him to survive and return from the fog to threaten Holmes in a sequel!

My own Great, Grey Grimpen Mire

As isolating and dangerous as the fog can be, there are those that welcome it.  To Edmund Tyrone, and his mother, Mary, in Long Day's Journey into Night, fog creates an illusion of isolation. It also symbolizes Edmund's active alcoholism and Mary's addiction to morphine. As the drugs isolate them from reality, Edmund describes how fog transforms their world into a place where "Nothing was what it is. That’s what I wanted—to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue, and life can hide from itself." As for Mary, she admits,"I really love fog. It hides you from the world and the world from you. You feel that everything has changed, and nothing is what it seemed to be. No one can find or touch you anymore. It's the foghorn I hate. It won't let you alone. It keeps reminding you, and warning you, and calling you back." Notice that neither character believes the fog makes them happier or better people; these tortured souls aren't seeking happiness, but distance. The fog isolates them from their underlying feelings and their problems. Of course, like other wanderers in the mist, these two can't find their way out of this half-life because they can't tell how lost they are.  

It isn't as gloomy as O'Neill's Monte Cristo
Cottage, but it sure isn't cheery either!

If you think of this play as autobiography, it's amazing to realize these are the two family members who found their way out of the mist. O'Neill (as Edmund) eventually chose life and his work. His mother, by realizing her disease had a  spiritual as well as physical component, found recovery through a religious retreat. Ultimately, the fog's illusion of comfort wasn't enough for the real people.

That's what fog ultimately means for people, in fiction and real life: confusion and the illusion of isolation from reality.  In the end, we have to deal with whatever comes along, even if it's illness or a big, scary dog.  No matter what the mist obscures, we aren't that far apart from each other. That's something we'll all see when the sun comes out again.

The Writer who Changed the World, One Story at a Time

Yesterday was the 65th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's accession to the throne.  It's an incredible milestone, one no other ruler of England has attained, and she deserves all the honor and respect she gets.  The woman has seen a lot of changes during her reign, but that's not what England should celebrate today. Today marks the 205th birthday of Charles Dickens, one of the most influential Britons and writers of any time. He didn't just watch the world change, he changed our language and world with his stories. He was the literary Colossus of the Victorian Age, and his influence is still felt today.  

Dickens in his early years

The life of Dickens holds enough drama to fuel a multi-season mini-series. His terrible childhood has become so well-known we label all other impoverished, chaotic beginnings as "Dickensian."  The funny thing is, he tried to hide these facts for years. Destitution was considered a social and character defect in the Regency and Victorian Eras and Dickens spent much of his life's energy trying to get as far away from his impoverished past as he could. That drive turned him into a law clerk, a court reporter, a freelance journalist and finally a novelist.  Like any good storyteller, he wrote about what he knew.  And his stories changed our world.

After witnessing how poverty corrupts and ruins lives, he wrote Oliver Twist and satirized the Poor Laws that punished the very people they were supposed to help.  The book exposed the disgusting London slum, Jacob's Island, to a heretofore unsuspecting public, who cleaned up the area so thoroughly that thirteen years later one bureaucrat insisted it never existed! In Nicholas Nickleby, Dickens wrote about the system of farming unwanted children out to boarding schools in Yorkshire where kids were neglected instead of educated.  An investigation shut that practice down.  In Bleak House, in The Old Curiosity Shop, in Hard Times, and more, Dickens attacked some social evil.  And because his books sold like hotcakes, his readers followed his pen to the trouble and tried to correct the wrongs.

Best-sellers!  It's hard to compare the popularity of any novelist writing today with Dickens.  J. K. Rowling came closest with the midnight publication parties for her Harry Potter series.  But those were orchestrated affairs hosted by the bookstores.  Now, imagine yourself in Victorian times.   Dickens doesn't publish a whole novel all at once, he serializes chapters in a magazine.  If you want to read the latest installment, you have to get each new issue of the journal.  In America, people gathered in droves on the wharves, to get the new issues as they came off the ship!  This wasn't some publisher's or PR agent's operation, these were people who couldn't wait any longer to find out what happened to Nell Trent or Little Emily!  Readers are crazy people, but they wouldn't have done that if the man hadn't created wonderful characters and stories.

Of course, his characters have entered our lexicon.  The saintly, too-good-to-live girl is known as Little Nell, and an insincere toady is labeled Uriah Heep.  (By the way, Dickens had a way of naming his characters that was second to none.  You don't have to meet Wackford Squeers, Fagin, Quilip, or Uriah Heep to know they are all villains; the sounds of their names are enough.) And people who have never picked up one of Mr. Dickens's books still know the worst miser is a "Scrooge."  That single story, The Christmas Carol, changed how we celebrate the holiday.  It used to be a relatively minor festival in the Christian calendar.  Now it's a season of family, parties, and charity because Dickens wrote about it that way.

Boz, the Grand Old Storyteller

Am I saying he was the world's greatest man or subtle writer? Of course not.  There's a fair amount of evidence suggesting he had faults as a family man and Ellen Ternen knew he was no saint. The way he treated his wife when their marriage fell apart is enough to make a feminist cringe.  And, as entertaining as many of his characters are, they lack the complexity and depth of real people. There are too many coincidences and far too much sentiment in a lot of his stories.  But that doesn't make them any less compelling.  And his influence doesn't lessen with the years.

So, pull out your noisemakers and cheer old "Boz" as he was known then.  Over-blown, over-sensitive, over-dramatic, Boz, who could tell a story that made you laugh, cry, and shiver with fear.  Boz who made money telling people what was wrong with the world and said it so well his readers tried to make it better. With Shakespeare and the Beatles, he may be one of Britain's finest exports. We're lucky he came our way.