TELL ME A STORY . . . HERE COMES THE ODYSSEY!

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By Helen Currie Foster

July 5, 2026

The Grimm Brothers’ tales, first published in 1812, are part of our childhoods—Hansel and Gretel! Little Red Riding Hood ( aka Little Red-Cap)! Cinderella! Rumpelstiltskin! Rapunzel! Sleeping Beauty! Snow White! The Bremen Town Musicians! As you well know, some tales involve grisly situations where children—to survive––must be resourceful. Hansel, caged by the wicked witch in the woods to become her future supper, sticks a bone through the bars to convince the witch he’s not yet fattened up. When the witch orders his sister Gretel to climb into the oven to see if it is “hot enough,” Gretel—no fool—persuades the witch to demonstrate—then shoves her in! The children escape!  

As folklore students in Hesse, Germany, the Grimm Brothers collected and edited (perhaps with extra moralizing) oral versions of tales from family friends. The Grimms ultimately gave us two hundred fairy tales. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Brothers-Grimm. 

The Grimms’ (grim) lesson that youngsters will use every means to stay safe—including trickery and persuasion—also appears in The Three Billy Goats Gruff (one of the Norwegian tales collected 1841-1844 by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe). https://bit.ly/4vffbac

The three hungry young goats, desperate to cross a bridge to reach their grassy meadow, are in peril of becoming lunch for the ravenous troll threatening them from beneath the bridge. The two younger goats cleverly urge the troll to wait for their toothsome big brother as they race across—and then big brother defeats the troll.

Hunger! Danger! Potential betrayal! The need for ruses! For cleverness! Even disguises! Fierce lessons for children!

And for grownups? Oh, yes. Consider the perils faced by Odysseus in The Odyssey, when the crafty architect of the Trojan Horse departs for home after the Trojan War. He will need all the ruses he can develop, all the disguises he can wear, all the courage he can muster, to deal with the Cyclops Polyphemus. The nymph Calypso, who traps him in her cave. Poseidon, furious. Circe! Scylla and Charybdis! A tale of tales….and of a teller of tales.

Such troves of scholarship in past years!  1996 brought us Robert Fagles’ translation of The Odyssey.  Fagles tells us this epic poem (12,109 lines of hexameter verse) was “composed, probably, late in the eighth century B.C. or early in the seventh…The poem, in other words, is some 2,700 years old.”

Fagles says copies of the poem “were to be found all over the Greek world of the fourth and fifth centuries B.C.” Fagles, at 3. https://bit.ly/4vbzDbR

The year 2014 brought us Adam Nicolson’s Why Homer Matters. Nicolson envisions Homer as recording the conflicts experienced when “the semi-nomadic, hero-based culture of the Eurasian steppes to the north and west of the Black Sea” moved south and encountered “the sophisticated, authoritarian and literate cities…of the eastern Mediterranean. Greekness…emerged from the meeting and melding of those two worlds.” At 2. For Nicolson, “Homer is a foundation myth, not of man nor of the natural world, but of the way of thinking by which the Greeks defined themselves” and “which, in many ways we have inherited.” For instance, which matters most? Individual or community? The debate continues.

Nicolson sees the poems as recording “the violence and sense of strangeness of about 1800 BC recollected in the tranquillity of about 1300 BC…written down (if not in a final form) in about 700 BC.” At 4. Nicolson says the oldest surviving example of written Greek poetry is three lines of Greek scratched onto a funeral offering, a wine cup. “The second and third lines…are perfect Homeric hexameters” but not, Nicholson says, of Homer’s poetry.

Both Fagles and Nicolson cite the pioneering work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord. In the 1920’s Parry discovered that The Odyssey and The Iliad were full of prefabricated bits (such as descriptions of the “wine-dark sea”). Using those bits could allow a singing poet—the bard­­—to keep the metrical pattern of the music moving, while letting listeners hear and feel the traditional elements they’ve heard before, and anticipate hearing again. Nicolson, at 77-79. In what sounds like epic grad school work, Parry’s student Albert Lord accompanied him for two years through remote villages of Yugoslavia to hear and record over seven hundred singers, each using their single-stringed violin (the gusle) (interesting to hear online!) as accompaniment to their “long epic songs of battle and disaster.”  Nicolson, at 83, 85. Albert Lord turned those two years into his remarkable book on oral composition of epic poetry by bards, in The Singer of Tales, Cambridge, Mass., 1960. https://bit.ly/4vQM6Da

Is there a bard in the 2026 version of The Odyssey about to hit our screens? Yes!

What will we hear?

Will it be poetic?

Nicolson reminds us that “Homeric epics are essentially the music of hexameters.” At 76. Each line has six “feet.” Feet can have a long stress and two shorts (dactyl) or two longs (spondee). The fifth foot is usually a dactyl while the sixth must be a spondee. Id. Because each line has a natural break in the middle, the bard can tailor the music to the varying stresses.

The Fagles translation is in hexameter, but Fagles notes, “Turning briefly to Homer’s metrics, I would also like to hold a middle ground, here between his spacious hexameter line—his ‘ear, ear for the sea-surge’ as Pound once heard—and a tighter line more native to English verse.” So his translation “opts for a freer give-and-take between the two.” He works “from a five-or six-beat line while leaning more to six” but sometimes, seven beats, or, for stress, three. Fagles, at 492.

But wait! In 2018, Emily Wilson published a new version of The Odyssey. And hers—is entirely in iambic pentameter! Five feet, ten syllables…as she shows us in line one: “Tell me about a complicated man.” Why?

As she says in her Translator’s Note, “The Odyssey is a poem, and it needs to have a predictable and distinctive rhythm that can be easily heard when the text is read out loud. The original is in six-footed lines (dactylic hexameters), the conventional meter for archaic Greek narrative verse. I used iambic pentameter, because it is the conventional meter for regular English narrative verse—the rhythm of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Keats, and plenty of more recent anglophone poets.” Wilson, at 82.

However the dialogue sounds in the 2026 movie version, I can’t wait to see—and hear—this version of Homer’s The Odyssey. If it was 2700 years old in 1996, it’s 2730 years old now…and still bringing in the crowds. Because, all these years later, we still beg, “Tell me a story!”

Helen Currie Foster lives and writes the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery Series north of Dripping Springs, Texas, loosely supervised by three burros. She’s drawn to the compelling landscape and quirky characters of the Texas Hill Country. She’s also deeply curious about our human history and how, uninvited, the past keeps crashing the party. Follow her at http://www.helencurriefoster.com and on Facebook. The ten books in the series are available online at Amazon and at BookPeople in Austin.

WORDLORE

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OR

Fun With Words

By

Francine Paino, a.k.a. F. Della Notte

Writers love words…(talk about stating the obvious!) And there are so many words, proverbs, expressions, clichés, and idioms to choose from, it’s difficult not to fall into the trap of spending too much time in the world of etymology instead of focusing on telling stories. But for today, let’s do just that. Many online courses suggest that anyone learning a foreign language collect and learn at least some idioms to understand and speak like a native. So, here are some fun and not-so-fun expressions. Imagine taking them literally.

One of my favorites for wishing good luck in performance is the Italian “In Bocca al Lupo.” (In the wolf’s mouth.) This one requires a response – crepi il lupo (May the wolf die).  No. Italians do not try to stick their heads or other body parts into a wolf’s mouth. It’s the equivalent of telling someone in the theater to “Break a Leg,” which is the most common form of stage-show good wishes. It came from theater superstition that wishing someone good luck was bad luck, so they used reverse psychology by wishing a broken leg. But think about how a performer would react if they took it literally! Speaking of limbs, here’s one that is fun.

SHAKE A LEG – For this, we can thank the 19th-century Royal Navy. The Boatswain’s mate shouted “shake a leg, to awaken their crews. Members then stuck a leg out of their hammocks in order to prove they were awake and ready for duty.  So when someone says, “shake a leg,” do not stand still and shake one. Instead, hurry up!

Then, thanks to our own military, we have Bite the Bullet – a quick way to say put aside your distaste or unwillingness to do a task and get it done. This painful idiom originated on battlefields, when anesthetics were unavailable. Wounded soldiers were given sticks, or leather straps, or bullets to bite down on to endure painful procedures.

Expressions that create a more pleasant vision include “Fit as a Fiddle.”In today’s world, it means a person is in perfect health. Its origins date back to the 17th century and stem from the need to maintain violins/fiddles in good condition to achieve the best possible sound. So, close your eyes and imagine playing a fiddle or a violin while you take a run or lift some weights to stay fit like that fiddle.

Then there is the universal proverb, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” Although it sounds biblical, it is not. Its concept reaches back to Babylonian and Hebrew religious texts and sentiments. It was not coined as a phrase until preacher John Wesley used it in 1778, in his sermon titled “On Dress.” In the early 20th century, Mahatma Gandhi, on a lifelong mission to help his native India, promoted good hygiene, arguing that the mind and body must be clean to gain spiritual blessings. He noted, “Only when there is both inner and outer cleanliness, it becomes next to godliness.”

From the Southern U.S., we have a treasure trove beginning with Nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockin’ chairs, describing someone who is nervous and jumpy. The expression is rooted in Southern oral tradition and appeared in newspapers from the 1930s and ‘40s, particularly in Tennessee and Alabama. It is the original, longer form of ‘nervous as a cat.’

A new one to me was Snatch you baldheaded, aSouthern expression meaning to severely scold, discipline, or straighten someone out. The phrase is most often used as a warning from an elder to a child or younger person who is misbehaving. Its etymology likely grew from the older idea of handling someone so roughly that their hair would be pulled out. Over time, Southern speakers began using snatch you baldheaded and the related phrase jerk you baldheaded as colorful warnings rather than literal descriptions.

In the northeast, particularly in New York City, a true melting pot of immigrants, we find some of the most colorful expressions derived from foreign words. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, the largest foreign communities in New York City were Italians and Jews, thereby giving their languages and customs time to meld into the American way.

Here are a few Yiddish Words that have been incorporated into standard NYC speak and are frequently used and understood… in New York, that is.

  • Glitch: A minor malfunction or technical problem. This word moved from Yiddish into NYC tech and broadcasting circles, and then worldwide. It traces back to German glitschen (to slip, slide, or skid).
  • Klutz: A clumsy or awkward person. Another Yiddish word harkening back to its original German form. It entered American English in the 1920s.
  • Kosher: (NOT food). Something that is considered legitimate, proper, or acceptable. New Yorkers use it outside of a food context, and if something isn’t kosher, it isn’t legitimate. It derives from the Hebrew word kasher, which literally means “fit,” “proper,” or “suitable.”

And of course, there is a flood of Italian words that have been incorporated into New York City English, mostly in mispronounced forms, but totally understood.

  • Agita:  It is an Americanized pronunciation of acido or acidità (Italian for “acid” or “heartburn”), not a variation of the English word agitate, although itsounds like it might be. Its roots are in Southern Italian dialects, and it became common in NYC English in the 1970s.
  • Capisce: Pronounced ka-PEESH, in New York-ese. A direct substitute for “Do you understand?” or “Got it?” Capische (ka peesh e), with equal emphasis on all syllables, became common even among New York City’s non-Italians in the late 20th century.

Writers are always advised to avoid idiomatic expressions or use them sparingly, but there are times when including them in dialogue adds depth and color to a character.

Mrs. B, our heroine of the Housekeeper Mystery Series, favors the cleanliness proverb. She is a tiny bit OCD when it comes to cleaning and organization, but that doesn’t alter her ability to think through problems or solve crimes.

As for etymologies, there are hundreds of sites to entertain and educate anyone interested in the history and development of words. I’ve included some of them here.

So, happy reading, till next time.

Writing Wednesday: The Unexpected Stories Behind 9 Popular Clichés

https://www.ef.edu/english-resources/english-idioms

The Etymology and Origin of Clichés

https://www.mkgandhi.org/articles/gandhian-thoughts-about-cleanliness.php

High Tech, Hustle Culture, and Hope

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Fresh Golden Threads for The Emperor’s New Clothes

By Laura Oles

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” –C.S. Lewis

If you’re in search of a dark crime story, look no further than a classic fairy tale. Take a handful of jealousy, revenge, gaslighting, theft or even murder, and coat it with the sparkling exterior of a fantastical castle or a forest filled with magical beasts, and voila!  You have a crystal ball full of comeuppance. 

From: Folio Society Classic Fairy Tale Collection

There’s a kidnap plot in “Hansel and Gretel,” attempted poisoning in “Snow White,” toxic families and unpaid labor in “Cinderella,” and several breaking and entering charges in “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” 

According to the BBC, fairy tales can be traced back thousands of years. Durham University anthropologist Dr. Jamie Tehrani shared that some tales like “Beauty and the Beast” and “Rumpelstiltskin” are approximately 4,000 years old. Additionally, he told the BBC, “Some of these stories go back much further than the earliest literary record and indeed further back than Classical mythology – some versions of these stories appear in Latin and Greek texts – but our findings suggest they are much older than that.”

Ah, the long tail of crime tales…

As an avid lover of short stories, I was thrilled to be included in the recently released Wish Upon a Crime: Crime Fiction Inspired by Fairy Tales by Michael Bracken and Stacy Woodson. The opportunity to reimagine these stories in a current context was a fabulous challenge.  

My contribution, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” finds itself in the center of emerging tech hustle culture. Countless cautionary tales can be found in this world of big promises and bigger pitfalls, the brass ring always barely beyond reach for all but a few with secret access to the inside track. 

Oh, to be chosen.

 Daniel Hayes finds himself at a crossroads after his last investment goes bust. He knows he has what it takes to strike it big—he just needs one more shot to prove himself. One more chance to quiet the chorus of naysayers and to demonstrate, once and for all, that he has what it takes make it in Big Tech.  

The universe drops a golden coin in Daniel’s palm, and he knows that he’s finally found the perfect opportunity to show his family, friends, and Instagram followers that he’s made it to the top. He may need to make a few compromises, but that’s a small price to pay, isn’t it?

Wish Upon a Crime is available now.   

THE TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • “Hansel and Gretel” by Joseph S. Walker
  • “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” by John M. Floyd
  • “Rapunzel” by Adam Meyer
  • “The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Laura Oles
  • “Three Billy Goats Gruff” by Michael Bracken
  • “Beauty and the Beast” by James A. Hearn
  • “The Bremen Musicians” by Debra H. Goldstein
  • “Jack and the Beanstalk” by Andrew Welsh-Huggins
  • “Cinderella” by Donna Andrews
  • “The Frog Prince” by Josh Pachter
  • “Little Red Riding Hood” by Barb Goffman
  • “The Briar Patch” by Tom Milani
  • “King o’ the Cats” by David Dean
  • “The Gingerbread Man” by Stacy Woodson

Laura Oles is the award-winning author of the Jamie Rush mystery series. Her work has appeared in crime fiction anthologies, consumer magazines and business publications.She loves road trips, bookstores and any outdoor activity that doesn’t involve running.She lives in the Texas Hill Country with her family. (https://www.lauraoles.com).

(Details) Ripped from Real Life

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N.M. Cedeño

I have a short story in the new anthology Detectives, Sleuths, and Nosy Neighbors III from Inkd Publishing entitled “The Assassination Game.” This is one of the few stories I’ve written that has been partially inspired by real events that happened in my community, many of the events taking place during my children’s high school years. I selected three unconnected events and assembled details from them like a jigsaw puzzle to create my story.

What were the incidents?

Senior Assassin!

Several years ago, I heard about the game of “Senior Assassin” being played at the high school while volunteering in the library. The game is generally played in the spring, not the winter, so I took some liberties by placing it over the Winter Holidays in my story. In “Senior Assassin,” members of the senior class sign up to play an elimination game, in which they tag each other, usually with water guns, vying for the honor of being the last one standing. The school building is off-limits for the game, which must be played outside of school hours. However, the parking lot is fair game. To move from the building to the parking lot, silly rules are employed to create safe passage. For example, to be protected from elimination, you might have to wear swimming pool floaties on your arms or a maybe a hat with animal ears. The game is generally in good fun, but it makes the news almost every spring because of someone mistaking a water gun for the real thing.

The second incident that I drew from happened over a summer, a time when bored high school students have been known to get into mischief. In this case, my daughter’s friend came over and told us about how her younger brother was riding his bike in their neighborhood when some stupid teens in a pick-up truck decided to take pot shots at him with a BB gun. He was struck in the back and bloodied. He wasn’t the only one targeted that day. A couple other children were also hit with BBs.

The third piece of the story came two years ago when I drove one of my kids two days in a row to visit a friend in the hospital, who was recovering from surgery for severe scoliosis. I learned months earlier, in the lead up to the surgery, that in some instances emergency surgery may be needed if the curvature of the spine worsens past a particular point. Unlike my protagonist, my child’s friend, to his parent’s relief, didn’t have to have emergency surgery. His surgery was done in the summer, when, I’m told, most scoliosis surgeries occur.

To be clear, the teenagers in my story bear no resemblance to the actual children at my kids’ high school, or to any of their friends or to their friends’ siblings. The story and its characters are fictional. I simply borrowed details from real life to build the story.

In “The Assassination Game,” my protagonist, JB, who is recovering from emergency scoliosis surgery, learns from friends that the seniors at his high school are playing an assassination game over Winter break. However, the game has gotten out of hand to the point that someone used a BB gun to shoot another player in the back to tag them out. JB hears that police are investigating the matter.

The story is also heavily inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. From Rear Window, I borrowed the names Lisa and Jeff, who became my protagonists. In the movie, Jimmy Stewart plays L.B. Jeffries, called Jeff by friends. My character’s name is Jeff, but his friends call him JB, and only his mother calls him Jeff. In the movie, Jimmy Stewart’s Jeff witnesses what he suspects to be a murder while recovering from an injury that has him stuck in his room in a cast up to his waist. My character JB sees something out his window that might or might not relate to the assassination game BB gun incident while stuck in his room recovering from emergency scoliosis surgery. As Grace Kelly’s Lisa did in the movie, my character Lisa visits her friend JB and becomes the active investigator, going to look for evidence of what might have happened.

Of course, things don’t go as the teens plan in their investigation.

“The Assassination Game” was fun to write. I’m pleased it found in home in Inkd Publishing’s anthology Detectives, Sleuths, and Nosy Neighbors III, edited by A. Balsamo. Now available at Barnes & Noble at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/…/detectives…/1150214504 and digitally from Books to Read at https://books2read.com/u/38oBw6. And on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Detectives-Sleuths-Nosy-Neighbors-III/dp/B0H2RBRG22/

I’ve already read and enjoyed this anthology. I hope you like it too!

UNDER CLOSE OBSERVATION…

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BY HELEN CURRIE FOSTER

May 18, 2026

One morning each year the bird genius, Jesse Huth, of Huth Avian Services, arrives from Wimberley to conduct our annual bird survey.

Every year I tiptoe along behind, hearing his soft announcements. “Green heron above the creek.” I look up, straining to spot the lovely heron in flight. While I’m wondering what it would be like to fly like that, I hear: “Red-tailed hawk.” Now Jesse’s facing a different direction, lifting his binoculars. Later, “American Redstart.” (I ask myself: what’s that?) We climb back up from the creek. Then, “Field sparrow. Lark sparrow.” (I peer, unsure of the difference.) Then off to the pasture. “Vireo, red-eyed.” “Vireo, white-eyed.” And “Vireo, yellow-throated.” 

Those vireos?—I never spot them, whatever they are doing––flying, darting, twittering, disappearing.

Then—such elation! Sitting boldly at the top of a tree we see the brilliant crimson of a summer

tanager, surveying its territory. https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/657490711.

And in the same tree—golden-cheeked warblers! https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/657490671

I’ve never seen one before. And finally, hiding in the branches, the ineffably gorgeous painted bunting! https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/657490695

Jesse’s an expert on birds. He has studied their voices, their habits, their preferences, their appearance. He knows how to use owl calls to draw a crowd of various birds. After Jesse departs, I grab The Sibley Guide to Birds to study those three vireos (red-eyed, white-eyed, yellow-throated).

So tiny, the differences! You have to see the eye, where the yellow is, and where it isn’t; you must notice whether it has the gray cap, or not…

Jesse has spent years with those birds under close observation, yes, and under closer observation, applying his knowledge of detail. He sees differences that escape me. He can distinguish their songs.

After two hours he’s observed, and recorded or photographed, 40 species.

Details! Writers also must choose details that work, that light up, that bring to life characters and setting. That phrase—“under close observation”—describes the writer’s job: finding just the right details of setting, just the right details of characters, to make the plot come to life and satisfy the reader, the audience.

We all know great examples. In Act I, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar closely observes Cassius:

            “Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort

            As if he mock’d himself and scorn’d his spirit

            That could be moved to smile at anything.

            Such men as he be never at heart’s ease

            Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,

            And therefore are they very dangerous.”  Act I, Scene II.

Reading that, did you get a glimpse of Cassius’s face, as Caesar describes it? And hear that firm conviction, “therefore are they very dangerous”? Right away we begin to hold our breath.

I confess I do want to like the protagonist, whether in a play, a novel, a mystery, biography, autobiography. I do not need to approve entirely of that character, but, whatever the genre, I prefer to spend time reading about someone I can empathize with. So, turning to autobiography, consider these excerpts from the beginning of Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen:

I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the North, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold. …

We grew coffee on my farm. The land was in itself a little too high for coffee, and it was hard work to keep it going; we were never rich on the farm. But a coffee-plantation is a thing that gets hold of you and does not let you go, and there is always something to do on it: you are generally a little behind with your work.

…Later on, when I flew in Africa, and became familiar with the appearance of my farm from the air, I was filled with admiration for my coffee-plantation, that lay quite bright green in the grey-green land, and I realized how keenly the human mind yearns for geometrical figures.

With these details Isak Dinesen makes us see the farm and the Ngong Hills, then makes us feel the air at six thousand feet… with “lipid and restful” evenings. We feel her emotional attachment—“a coffee-plantation is a thing that gets hold of you and does not let you go.” Then she catches our imagination, describing seeing her farm from the air while flying, and shares her discovery that “the human mind yearns for geometrical figures.” Her own observations of detail reveal to us the protagonist, the main character in this autobiography, as a thinker, a noticer, a person with staying power, who once (but no longer) “had a farm in Africa”—and now offers to share that adventure. Her intelligence, her sensibility, her brilliant use of detail, kept me turning the page.

Another protagonist we meet and can’t abandon: Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, of Amor Towles’s A Gentleman in Moscow. We’re introduced as the Count strides back from the Kremlin Gates to his home at the Hotel Metropol. On the way he greets the fruit seller, thanks the soldiers whose prisoner (we now perceive) he is, returns to his elegant suite—and learns that he has been dispossessed. He will spend the rest of his life in a tiny room in the hotel’s attic: “a cast-iron bed, a three-legged bureau, and a decade of dust.” He’s allowed to retrieve a few possessions. He wants “all the books” and also chooses two high-back chairs his grandmother’s oriental coffee table, porcelain plates, two table lamps, and the portrait of his sister…plus one trunk which he fills with clothes and personal effects, including his sister’s tiny scissors. We watch him take a last walk through his suite, then return to his tiny new room. A pigeon lands outside:

“Why, hello,” said the Count. “How kind of you to stop by.”

The pigeon looked back with a decidedly proprietary air. Then he scuffed the flashing with its claws and thrust its beak at the window several times in quick succession.

“Ah, yes,” conceded the Count. “There is something in what you say.”

I already liked this man, his exquisite courtesy to the pigeon, his apparent ability to laugh at himself, his apparent determination to stay himself, to refuse to give the state the satisfaction of causing him despair …despite the state’s efforts to destroy almost everything he has. Then I watch while he hosts a party for his friends in the hotel staff:

“The Count was something of a natural-born host and in the hour that ensued, as he topped a glass here and sparked a conversation there, he had an instinctive awareness of all the temperaments in the room.”

Personal tragedy, but humor, civility, sensitivity, courage—and determination. Okay, I’ll definitely keep reading.

Screenwriter Robert McKee, in his book Story about principles of screenwriting, points out that a story’s protagonist must have a conscious desire, but must also have the capacities, and at least a chance, to attain that desire. Also, according to McKee, “The protagonist must be empathetic; he may or may not be sympathetic.” Per McKee, “Empathetic means ‘like me.’ Deep within the protagonist the audience recognizes a certain shared humanity.”

McKee explains: “The unconscious logic of the audience runs like this: ‘This character is like me. Therefore, I want him to have whatever he wants, because if I were he in those circumstances, I’d want the same thing for myself.’” Amor Towles certainly accomplished that with Count Rostov.

So what details have kept you reading a book? What particular description made you think—this writer’s keeping me entertained, keeping me turning the pages? In particular, are there protagonists who—when you think about it—have some appealing characteristics you enjoy? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Now, a short report. First, no peaches. Tragically, after warm weather when the blossoms opened and tiny peaches formed, two late freezes killed the baby peaches. Sigh. Second, after unusual rain, the pastures out here in Hays County are bright green. No bluebonnets this year (well, maybe six), but we still have magenta Wine Cup, lavender Passion Flower, and so many yellow flowers—Brown-eyed Susan, Mexican Hat, Golden-Eye, Coneflowers, Sunflowers, Cowpen Daisy, Golden-Wave Coreopsis, Navajo Tea, Indian Blanket. Hard to know which is which.

I’m at work on Book 11 in the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series, set in the Texas hill country. That means working on the big triumvirate—setting, characters, plot. The protagonist, Alice, definitely has a conscious desire, and the capacities to attain it—but barriers lie ahead. Yes, she’s under close observation. Stay tuned.

Helen Currie Foster lives and writes the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series north of Dripping Springs, Texas, loosely supervised by three burros. She’s drawn to the compelling landscape and quirky characters of the Texas Hill Country. She’s also deeply curious about our human history and how, uninvited, the past keeps crashing the party. She’s active with Austin Shakespeare and the Heart of Texas Sisters in Crime Chapter of the national Sisters in Crime (come join us! 2-3:30, Laura Bush Library on Bee Cave Road, second Sundays of the month).

June 25, 2026–Watch for the DSCL Author Showcase–Helen will be presenting, along with Jo Pellinore and Michael Baldwin! Social at 5:45, Panel Discussion 6-7:30. Contact Dripping Springs Community Library to register.

Follow Helen at http://www.helencurriefoster.com and find her books on Amazon and also at BookPeople in Austin, Texas.

Dust Bunnies, Cat Hair, and Murder

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By

Francine Paino, AKA F. Della Notte

Occasionally, I like to revisit old blog posts about life’s constants. Chasing dust bunnies and cat hair are among those constants, and they can be murder when not addressed routinely.

In today’s parlance, Household Management, Homemaking, Domestic Administration, or whatever term one uses to feel better about it, housework is a necessary evil. If you can hire outside help to keep those dust bunnies and cat hairs under control, I salute you, but in my life, the chores involved in maintaining a generally clean home fall to me. I do, however, have some unorthodox help, although they lift not one finger.

As I slog through the early-morning tasks involved in domestic engineering, two of my favorite fictional TV sleuths keep me company. They are as different from one another as they are from me.  

In the early episodes of Murder, She Wrote, JB Fletcher (Jessica), the down-to-earth, self-possessed, independent mystery writer, was occasionally seen doing domestic chores before she became a wealthy author who hired others to do that work. Jessica even types her own manuscripts on an old-fashioned typewriter – before moving up to a word processor, then a computer.  

Jessica, a retired high-school English teacher and a childless widow, writes a novel to distract herself from the death of her beloved husband. Her nephew, Grady, reads it, thinks it’s terrific, and sends it to a New York City publisher, who is taken with the story and decides to publish and sell it. Thus, JB Fletcher becomes the new mystery author in her second season of life.

Throughout the series, she grows as a writer and develops a reputation for being exceptionally astute. Her observations and deductions are worthy of any professional police officer or Private Eye – and both often consult her, as the storylines create different criminal scenarios. Through all the changes and growth, this classy lady and amateur sleuth never loses the personal qualities that set her apart.

For additional company, entertainment, and murder, while I haul the vacuum cleaner around the house, (don’t you just hate these chores?) I turn to my favorite TV homicide detective, Lieutenant Columbo, of the LAPD. As soon as I tune in, I smile.

Deliberately clumsy and unkempt, Colombo wears scuffed shoes and a wrinkled, ill-fitting trench coat over rumpled clothes. His facade as a mid-level cop with run-of-the-mill capabilities is fun to watch.

While JB Fletcher’s situations are more of a mystery, Lt. Colombo’s are more suspense/thrillers. The audience almost always sees the crime committed at the beginning of the show. The main question is: how will the bungling Colombo solve the case, or will he encounter a criminal more ingenious than he is? (I’ve never seen that.)

Unlike Sherlock Holmes, who leads with his abilities, Colombo hides behind a nasty cigar, always in hand, and his habit of saying goodbye – but then, “just one more thing,” to the annoyance of other characters, who wish to be rid of him, and some viewers too. Of course, this masquerade of disheveled clothes and a muddled mind makes most criminals underestimate his remarkable crime-solving abilities.  

In Ransom for a Dead Man, originally aired in the first season, Colombo encounters wily opponent Leslie Williams, a homicidal attorney who contrives a complex plot to get rid of her husband. Williams calls Colombo out on his grubby subterfuge, and her brilliance challenges his ability to capture this elusive adversary.

A plot, a word, an expression, or a look sometimes triggers ideas for my own stories. I stop my chores, grab a pencil, and something to write on, most often a scrap of paper, and jot down these nuggets of inspiration before they disappear in the fog of disinfectants.

A recent addition to my TV companions in housework is the Dalgliesh series, inspired by the PD James novels about a British detective-poet. Set in the 1970s, Dalgliesh is considered an intelligent, highbrow, thinking-person’s crime story. (Not exactly targeting the sparkle squad.)

I’m always amazed at how British crime dramas present even the most heinous crimes in a restrained, unemotional style. My only problem with Dalgliesh is that it slows down my house chores because it cannot compete with the whine and suction sounds of the vacuum, which I must turn off to give the detective my full attention. So, how do my characters stack up to my TV pals?

The lead male in the Housekeeper Mystery Series is a priest, Father Melvyn Kronkey, who is devoted to his parishioners, but wants to keep them at arm’s length, and can’t because of his housekeeper/ assistant.  

Mrs. B.  is not unlike JB Fletcher, with an Italian twist and runs on espresso. She has a nose for trouble, and reaches for it with both hands, dragging the good Father into the brawl. And there are a bunch of scene-stealing cats.

Unlike Dalgliesh’s calm detective work, they are often involved in cat-and-mouse chaos with unpredictable bad guys.  Guns and shootouts? Sometimes. Calm and measured? Hardly ever.

And while chasing dust bunnies is rarely as dangerous as chasing villains, it’s amazing what plotting can happen with a mop in hand. Dull and mundane though they are, domestic chores allow time and space for ideas, plots, and characters to incubate. Even murder methods and motives simmer with no other consequences than something not getting cleaned well enough.

And of course, in all these flights of fancy, the resident cats are never at risk.

HAPPY READING!

Writing, Thinking, and Miracles

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by Kathy Waller

“One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do
is to have the daily miracle. It does come.” ~ Gertrude Stein

I’m having a hard time getting this post started. First I started a sentence about buying Natalie Goldberg’s The True Secret of Writing but stopped half-way through. Then I began a sentence about the book’s title, finished it, and realized it had nothing to do with my topic. I’m still trying to get it right.

For most of us, the first sentence isn’t easy. Neither is the second. Often, the third is troublesome. Sometimes the process just goes on and on.

Okay, scratch all that. There’s nothing new in it. The first opening sentence I composed seemed off-putting, so I wrote another, and it wasn’t any better. So I’ll dive right in:

But it’s only fair to warn you: This post is about writing and thinking. It isn’t about childhood or cotton or plaids or sewing or shopping. But if you’ll take a minute to read through some cottons and plaids, the point will become clear.

The post is also about miracles.

Below, in italics, is a draft I wrote for another group blog, Writing Wranglers and Warriors:

I’d planned to write about Shakespeare today, but a picture of a trench dress fellow Writing Wrangler Nancy Jardine shared stopped me in my tracks.

I confess I had to look up trench dress. I’d never heard the term. Imagine my surprise when I realized I’ve had trench dresses of my own. Although I love nice clothes, the technicalities have never interested me.

What caught my eye about this particular dress was the plaid. It reminded me of my childhood. There was never a plaid my mother didn’t love and wouldn’t wrap me up in.

And that brought to mind the annual back-to-school treks to Comal Cottons in New Braunfels, Texas, where we bought patterns, fabric, and notions to make back-to-school clothes. Friends from up the street and their mother came, too.

We made the trip in July, and started early, to get a jump on the summer heat. The outlet store, about thirty miles from where we lived, was filled with bolt after bolt of cloth. Mother walked slowly, running her hand across every bolt—it seemed to me she touched every bolt—and saying, “Isn’t that pretty,” or, “That color would look good on you,” or, “That would make a cute…” I followed along. My job was to chime in about the colors and patterns I liked, but I was bored stiff. I agreed with everything.

Next step, patterns: Opening long metal file drawers, pulling out packets of patterns… Simplicity and Butterick patterns were the best; McCall’s instructions could be confusing. Then, mentally matching styles with material we’d seen, taking patterns to fabrics to make sure, checking yardage and price, reconsidering… I was sure we re-examined every bolt.

By this time, my feet were killing me. (I was born with feet designed for sitting.) Comal Cottons had no chairs. Three bored tweens, one with aching feet, needed chairs. With chairs, girls can read books. Without chairs, girls stand around, one of them shuffling from foot to foot.

Then, decisions: making choices, stacking bolts on big tables, watching clerks cut material straight across, perfectly straight, and fold it. 

And then, the notions: buttons, thread, bias tape, zippers, and lots more considering.

 

And finally we headed for the car, bearing loads of raw material that over the next six weeks would be made into our fall wardrobes. Which in my case would include a plethora plaids. 

Now, like much else of my childhood, Comal Cottons itself is only a memory. 

Thank you, Nancy. With just one picture of a plaid dress, you brought back part of my childhood.

Well. To quote one of my former high school students, BO-ring. And, So what?

But as I wrote that last line about memory, the Daily Miracle arrived: A treasured memory of a different piece of fabric surfaced. The memory I really wanted to write about.

And then, another miracle:  I realized the story about the shopping trip was a warm-up. It was a seed of an idea starting to germinate. It was brain rubble that had to be expelled before the real subject could emerge.

Acting on the epiphany, I found my bit of fabric, snapped a photograph, and added three short paragraphs. Finally, I deleted the whole boring warm-up.

The final post read this way:

Fellow Writer and Wrangler Nancy Jardine recently shared a picture of a beautiful plaid dress that reminded me of  some fabric I’ve saved for more than fifty years. After residing all that time in my mother’s cedar chest, it’s wrinkled but intact.

The fall I turned eleven, my father’s father, whom we called Dad, gave Mother some money to buy me a birthday present. She purchased the wool shown in the photo and made me a pleated skirt. When I was sixteen, she remade it into an A-line skirt and a weskit.

DSCN1342

Opening the box at breakfast on the morning of my eleventh birthday was a bittersweet experience, because Dad had died unexpectedly the afternoon before. Mother told me she’d chosen the fabric because the blue reminded her of the color of his eyes.

Now, to prevent further strike-throughs, I’ll get to the point promised in the Warning:

Writing is Thinking.

A boring (bad, terrible, appalling, disgusting, abhorrent, loathsome, etc.) first (second, third, etc.) draft is not a Stop Writing sign. It’s a Keep Writing sign, signaling that brain rubble is loosening up, that something better is about to present itself—that the Daily Miracle will come.

Because the only way to get rid of brain rubble is to write it out.

To quote author Nancy Peacock, “If I don’t have the pages I hate I will never have the pages I love.”

I wish I had more time to work on this. It would contain less brain rubble. It might also be on an entirely different topic.

*

This post appeared on the Austin Mystery Writers blog in 2015. It’s since been edited. If it appears in the future, it will be edited again. That’s part of the process. It’s always something. (Remember Gilda Radner?)

**

Note: Nancy Peacock wrote A Broom of One’s Own: Words on Writing, Housecleaning & Life. Here’s what I think about it. Other people like it, too.

***

Images from Pixabay.

*****

Kathy Waller’s short stories have been published in anthologies and online. She is co-author, with Manning Wolfe, of a novella, Stabbed.

A native of small-town Texas, she lives in Austin but finds that cows, horses, and rivers keep showing up in her fiction, and no amount of editing can make them leave.

 

The Research Rabbit Hole: Hotel Room Doors and Locks

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By N.M. Cedeño

Recently while writing a story set in 1968 inside a fictional, historical hotel, modeled on the Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas, I ran into a question about hotel doors. Finding the answer took me down a rabbit hole of research into the safety codes and regulations governing hotel doors and locks.

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In the 1800s many hotels kept room keys on hooks behind the registration desk. A guest would be given the key when they checked in. When leaving the hotel temporarily, guests would leave the bulky, skeleton-style keys at the desk and reclaim them when they returned. Desk clerks would know at a glance if a guest was in the hotel at any given moment.

With improvements in locks and the manufacturing of smaller keys, guests began to keep room keys in their possession when leaving the hotel temporarily. Housekeepers and managers had to have master keys to be able to access rooms when guests were out or lost their key. Hotel doors in the early 1900s did not close and lock themselves. For my story I needed to know at what point the regulations changed to require hotel doors to close and lock themselves.

This turned out to be two different questions because the requirement for self-closing is separate from the issue of self-locking.

On the issue of self-closing doors, I learned that hotel fires spurred building code changes. The June 5, 1946, La Salle Hotel Fire in Chicago killed sixty-one people. The Canfield Hotel Fire in Dubuque, Iowa, on June 9, 1946, killed nineteen people. And the Winecoff Hotel Fire on December 7, 1946, in Atlanta killed one hundred nineteen people. On the heels of these 1946 fires, building codes across the United States were changed in the 1950s to require self-closing, fire-resistant doors in hotels, and enclosed stairwells to protect people escaping from fire. The regulations only required the doors to self-close, not to lock.

Additionally, in many places, older buildings were not required to meet newer safety codes. After the 1970 Ponet Square Fire, Los Angeles passed regulations requiring retrofitting older buildings over two stories tall with enclosed stairwells to provide a protected path out of the building. The Ponet Fire Door ordinance required the installation of self-closing doors that could block the spread of fire for at least one hour on rooms and stairwells. But different states and localities have different rules on retrofitting of older buildings. After the 1980 MGM Grand Fire in Los Vegas, a commission was formed in Nevada to discuss the need for making older buildings comply with newer regulations.

I still didn’t have an answer on the question on whether the door self-locked. Here Mr. John Payne, a forensic locksmith, came to my rescue. He said: “The lock side of the equation was solved earlier: Walter Schlage patented the “key shutout mechanism” — the core of what we now call the “hotel lock function” — in a series of patents beginning in 1933. The typical hotel function lock had an outside handle that did not move and a key was required to retract the latch to enter from the corridor. The door would automatically latch behind every guest who entered or departed the guest room. The combination of a self-closing door and a self-latching hotel lock cylinder meant that by the mid-20th century, a hotel guest needed to do nothing at all when leaving a room — the door closed, latched, and locked itself.” Thus, hotels built after the mid-1930s would probably have these newer door locks.

But Mr. Payne pointed out, many hotels didn’t consider functional door locks for guest security to be an important responsibility until after singer Connie Francis sued Howard Johnson Hotels in 1976. Ms. Francis was beaten and raped in her hotel room. Her attacker gained entrance through a sliding glass door that was easily opened from the outside. The hotel was aware that the door locks were not sufficient and that other incidents had occurred at the hotel. A jury found the hotel liable for the assault. Prior to this lawsuit, only the assailant had ever been held responsible for such an attack in a hotel. This lawsuit (Garzilli vs. Howard Johnson Motor Lodges, Inc.) was the first to establish that hotels are required to provide adequate security for guests, which includes functional door locks.

After this deep dive down the research rabbit hole, I had the answers I needed to make my story work. My fictional historical hotel built in 1886 might not yet have self-closing, self-locking doors in 1968, especially if it was scheduled to undergo a major renovation in 1969 to bring it up to code. My fictional hotel guests would still have to manually close and lock their own hotel room doors using the original Victorian era knobs and locks. Which means, someone might forget to lock a room, allowing for a robbery to occur. Thus, the crime in my story was plausible. Now, I won’t have people writing to tell me that the fictional thefts in my fictional hotel were impossible, and more importantly, the editor who questioned the door closing and locking situation and sent me down this research rabbit hole is satisfied.

Finally, I have a new story out in Black Cat Weekly #242. “The Case of the Dead Man’s Daughter” features genetic genealogy private detective Maya Laster. I’m thrilled for her story to be featured on the cover of the magazine.

Wordsmithing!

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by Helen Currie Foster

March 23, 2026

“Hop in the car, you little ragamuffins and tatterdemalions!” For so our papa fondly called his four children—two girls, two boys—on our long car trips.

Our papa was fascinated by words, and wordplay. Every Sunday he’d fetch the New York Times and finish the crossword…in ink. He abhorred sloppy word use, particularly if we said we “adored” something— “You adore a deity, nothing less.” He detested our casual use of “I swear!” Instead, “You may say ‘I affirm’ or ‘I attest’ but not ‘I swear’—‘Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay.’” Yes, some theological thoughts.

But only now do I realize how thoroughly we also absorbed our mama’s inherited expressions—maybe from forebears who brought to the New World some Scottish or English vocabulary. When getting ready for company she’d say “I’m all in a swivet!” I say the same thing and never realized not everyone uses that expression. Our mama also reminded us not to be “persnickety.” She turned clocks “anticlockwise” when appropriate and reported with raised eyebrows that someone was “fit to be tied.”  And she fostered independence: a frequent suggestion we kids got was “Root, hog, or die!” To her, “gumption” was a great virtue.

When we four children were scattered far from Austin, we eagerly awaited her monthly letters (typed, with 3 carbons—she alternated who got the original). She always reported on local politics, Texas football, drought/rain conditions and her ongoing war against bamboo in the back yard, and signed “Heaps of love” or “I love you more than tongue can tell.” In one letter she reminded us that our papa used to refer to her housecleaning (after she’d gotten in a swivet) as “rearranging the mess.”  In another, she said that after a welter of company “I bestirred myself to change all the sheets.”

Words! At Austin’s McCallum High School our senior English teacher, the redoubtable John Shelton, listed words on the blackboard for us to memorize each week—a task that sent us straight to the byways of the dictionary, a great (lifelong) destination. My friend remembers that one week the assigned words included “hygroscopic,” “tessellated,” “faience,” and “barghest.” https://bit.ly/4dF535p .

Other than “hydroscopic,” in ensuing decades I’ve never actually used any of those words in conversation. But that moment still may come!

Do you readers and writers keep a list of favorite words? Working on Book 11 in my Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series, Ghost Music, I’m aiming for precision and concision. But I hope somehow to sneak in “awry”, “gleeful,” “impudent,” and certainly “iniquity” (right on point for a mystery). Also, maybe “drudgery,” “jasmine-scented” and “catkins.” Possibly “hygroscopic”?

It’s tough work to produce consistently vivid word pictures, precise and concise. One master is Stephen Harrigan. Of Harrigan’s The Eye of the Mammoth (2019), Texas writer Lawrence Wright wrote, “Word by word, book by book, Stephen Harrigan has proven that he’s the best writer Texas has ever produced.” https://bit.ly/4t440Aj

Wright’s right. It’s a beautiful book that tugs you straight into each story. (The cover calls them “essays” but believe me, they’re stories, and you see the word pictures so vividly you’ll be surprised there weren’t illustrations.)

For instance, you may already know, as Harrigan tells us, that there were mammoths in Texas up until some ten thousand years ago, and (of course) they were larger than the woolly mammoths, “reaching up to fourteen feet high, with domed heads and huge, sweeping tusks”:

Sixty or seventy thousand years ago, a herd of these creatures was foraging in a floodplain a few miles west of what is now downtown Waco. The landscape, in the waning millennia of the Ice Age, would have been prairies and lightly forested savannas populated with all sorts of vanished megafauna: camels, saber-toothed cats, ground-dwelling sloths that could rear up to twenty feet high, and massive, armadillo-like glyptodonts that shuffled along like living boulders.

The scene is set. You’ll want to know what happened when the mammoth herd was caught in “a flash flood roaring out of the ancestral Bosque River…” I was already trying to imagine gazing up at Mammuthus columbi, our Texas mammoth, fourteen feet high.  Harrigan had me right there. Every word counted.

And he’s right about the time frame. Last weekend we toured the Gault Archaeological Site up by Florence, Texas, and saw the (now closed) excavation where Dr. Michael Collins and others excavated down to bedrock, around 10 feet deep, in the pasture next to Buttermilk Creek. The excavation (see white posts) is next to the gravesite of Mona, the ranch cow who faithfully visited daily during the excavation.

 Dr. Collins had long been dubious of claims that humans had only been in North America for 14,000 years or so, relying on the age of the Clovis points you may remember from high school classes. Sure enough, when the archeologists reached bedrock at the Gault site they found artifacts which are 16,000-22,000 years old. https://bit.ly/3NlC8J5

The Gault site is famous for very hard chert (visible in rock formations along the creek) which permitted Paleo-Indians to chip very sharp points for the spears/arrows they threw from atlatls. As we stood staring at the rocks it was easy to imagine mammoths in the big field by Buttermilk Creek…

Wordsmithing. Hard work, like blacksmithing. Heat the words till they glow red, shape them carefully, beat them into place. Luckily, after all that hammering, words are easier to move around, edit, and reshape… not so final as a horseshoe. Still, finding the right words for the right place—keeps me up at night.

Nathaniel Hawthorne has been quoted as saying, “Easy reading is damn hard writing.” Maybe he was repeating the words of humorist, essayist and poet Thomas Hood, whose letter to the London periodical The Atheneum in 1837 cited as one opinion on writing: “the easiest reading is d[amne]d hard writing.”

Still, west of Austin, the hill country offers generous terms to writers, at least as far as setting is concerned. The writer can count on buffalo grass, agarita, blue grama grass, and prickly pear cactus atop Cretaceous limestone chock full of snail and oyster and clam fossils. Also, painted buntings, tufted titmice, lesser goldfinch, summer tanagers, roadrunners, golden-fronted woodpeckers, ladder-backed woodpeckers, Swainson’s hawks, red-tailed hawks, great horned owls and screech owls. And jackrabbits, coral snakes, bright green lizards, newts, armadillos, bobcats, and raccoons trained to a high degree of thievery, including figuring out how to detach birdfeeders from trees and push them downhill into their favorite dining thicket. Finally, three burros live the high life, including daily carrots. Sebastian (the burro who undertakes to announce guests) offers to anyone who comes through the gate an enormous and distinctive bray of welcome, disproportionate to his small size.

And I haven’t mentioned the equally tough, equally resourceful, equally colorful characters that have settled here, some of whom have inspired the characters in earlier books in the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series and are inspiring Ghost Music.

Yes, easy reading is damned hard writing. Yet the material’s here. Just look around!

Author Helen Currie Foster lives and writes the prize-winning Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series north of Dripping Springs, Texas, loosely supervised by three burros. She’s drawn to the compelling landscape and quirky characters of the Texas Hill Country. She’s also deeply curious about our human history and how, uninvited, the past keeps crashing the party. She’s active in Austin Shakespeare and the Heart of Texas Sisters in Crime chapter of national Sisters in Crime. And she treasures speaking with book groups.

Follow her at http://www.helencurriefoster.com and on Amazon. Her books are available at Amazon and at BookPeople in Austin.

My Grandfather’s Cherry Tree and Other Fragrances

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by Francine Paino, a.k.a. F. Della Notte

Most of this is a reprint of a 2024 post, but I’ve added more on the beneficial effects of the aroma of coffee for my amateur sleuths.

A 2010 study published in The American Journal of Psychology found that “memories associated with smells were not necessarily more accurate, but tended to be emotionally more evocative.” How true!

From my office window in Austin, Texas, I look at the magnolia blossoms on the tree in front of my house. Pretty and pink, the blossoms are at the top of the tree. They are too high for me to reach and cut. Yet, I still enjoy their lovely fragrance when they fall to the ground. That scent transports me 1,500 miles northeast and back over half a century. Images of my grandfather’s cherry tree come to mind, unlocking memories of my life in an immigrant community.  

My grandfather’s cherry tree didn’t grow, surrounded by green hills and grass. It grew in a crowded Italian ghetto: a city within a city. Corona, New York. Here, cement sidewalks and concrete streets only allowed for narrow curb strips of weeds in front of houses, separated by narrow alleys. Few residences had any planting space to speak of, but my grandfather’s house was one of them.

Now, when I remember and look at pictures, I wonder how he dealt with the adjustment going from the grinding poverty in the beautiful, gently rolling hills and mountains surrounding Sassano, Italy, to a somewhat better existence but one encased in hard, cold, and grey surfaces. It’s a question I never did ask. I suppose his poverty-stricken but agrarian roots wouldn’t allow his small piece of the stark, utilitarian landscape to remain solid chunks of grey without a trace of nature, and so, the cherry tree.  

Planted in a small patch of dirt in his yard, surrounded by cement, my grandfather’s cherry tree grew straight and tall. Its round trunk was encased in bark that looked so dark it could have been black. The tree gave off a sweet fragrance in early June, only perceptible in the early mornings before the smells of car exhaust, trash, fumes, brick, mortar, and wood from the close-together homes crowded it out.  And once spring arrived, windows were kept open more often and the aroma of cooking wafted out, joining the profusion of smells that swept the neighborhood and overwhelmed the delicate fragrance of cherry blossoms. I found it strange that those sweet smelling blossoms produced a fruit that was mainly sour and enjoyed more by the birds than by the family.

According to the charts, cherry trees in the northeast are ready for harvest by the third week of June. I recall birds pecking at them and dropping ripened cherries into the cement yard. My grandmother would sweep them up fast to keep them from getting under our shoes and dirtying her faded but clean linoleum floor. The memories evoked by the cherry tree do not stop there. Like tendrils on a vine, places, events, and smells latch on to the Prunus Serotina.

In New York City, public schools let out by mid-June in the 1950s. That meant I could help my grandfather tend his little farm two blocks from his home, nestled between dilapidated houses on either side of the property and protected by an eight-foot-tall chain-link fence that ran around the entire perimeter.

The land in his little enclosure always smelled earthy. He’d fertilize it before the planting began. There were rows of corn, cabbage, zucchini, and Swiss Chard. There was an area dedicated to lettuce. The corn always had a slightly sweet and earthy fragrance. I have no recollection of smelling the growing cabbages or zucchini. Still, when I sauté garlic, I often recall my grandmother doing the same, then frying thick slices of zucchini and smothering them in a rich marinara sauce to finish cooking.

As a child raised in this hybrid environment, half city and half farm life, I took these scents for granted. Didn’t everyone have them? Perhaps my favorite olfactory memory comes from the herb garden. The lemony aroma of thyme is still one of my favorites. So are the peppery scents of oregano and the sweet, refreshing smell of basil. My grandfather would smile when he handed me a bouquet of basil. Maybe he already knew the beneficial effects it had. I’d bury my nose in it and breathe deep before walking the three crowded city streets back to the house with the cherry tree.

I’m amazed by how much scientific support smell has gained for its impact on various aspects of life, beyond memories of days gone by. Scientists at Brown University reviewed 18 studies on aromachology. They found that smelling lavender can indeed relax you, reduce stress, and even help you wake up more rested. Researchers examined studies on other scents, such as rosemary, peppermint, and orange. They propose that rosemary may help you sleep better, improve memory, and help with hair growth. Peppermint might boost physical performance, and the smell of oranges can reduce anxiety and help you feel more content or happier. Of course, more research is needed. If nothing else, taking the time to “smell the roses,” is already a step in slowing down and enjoying nature – in this case, the aromatic plants. When discussing memory stimulants and other benefits of scents, we cannot ignore coffee. While not an herb, it cannot be left out of the conversation.

Scientists would have us smell the coffee to wake up, reporting that the aroma alone of any preferred caffeine brew would awaken us. In a 2019 National Institute of Health article, it is claimed that “Inhalation of coffee fragrance enhanced cognitive parameters, including continuity of attention, quality of memory, and speed of memory, and also increased the mood score of alertness….”  

It is no wonder that for Mrs. B. and Father Melvyn, coffee is the house wine of St. Francis de Sales Rectory. The protagonists of the Housekeeper Mystery Series welcome the benefits of coffee and its aroma, which keep them sharp as they manage the parish, keep their cats happy and safe, and solve mysteries and crimes.

Enjoy your favorite fragrances and join me in savoring a cup of coffee.

Happy Reading!

PS: My grandfather was a javaphile too!

SOURCES:

https://www.bridgeportct.gov/news/whats-smell-it-might-improve-your-memory#:~:text=The%20researchers%20also%20looked%20at,push%2Dups%20or%20running%20faster.
https://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/articles/2008-03-26/scents-sensibility
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5198031/
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/rosemary-oil-benefits
https://www.livescience.com/2614-whiff-coffee-wake.html
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6881620/#:~:text=Results,modulate%20autonomic%20response%20to%20stress